Personal Meditation no. 209

“Your beliefs are your actions. What you say is just what you think.”

Embrace the Within.

I really hate my plan being questioned. And after two decades of teaching, there is always a cadre of students every year that question my plan. And that does aggravate me at times. The audacity of a student to question whether the teacher knows what they are doing. BUT then I look around and see a lot of teachers that have been doing this for much longer than me that do not have a plan so I totally sympathize. I need that perspective at times to realize that sometimes it is good to question whether someone has a plan or not. It can even be helpful to question if the plan is a sound plan. BUT I cannot expect to understand the plan if I don’t plan myself. Just like I cannot expect that students get where we are going to be in June when they come into my class in August.

BUT I think a lot of us like to question the Almighty’s plan just like that. We come in with a very limited perspective of what the end goal is and the steps along the way to get to the end product and we start to question the plan. We start to question the motives and methods of God. We start to believe we have a better plan. We start to believe we have a better way. And we end up with the world as it is. All these great plans made by humans have let us arrive exactly with the world we see today. And we are allowed to keep trusting in our plans or to put trust in the plans of the All Knowing.

I have only been doing this for a few decades and I wonder at the questioning I get. How much more audacious are our questions of God’s plan? How much more bold and proud are the ideas that our plans are going to be better than God’s? Nothing is more humorous to me than looking back at the plans I had for my life and seeing where I am today. I have, on so many occasions, thought I had this whole life thing figured out. I had a plan and a direction and a goal and I was sure it was going to work out that way. BUT God has a plan that I tried to ignore. I tried my best to question. I tried my best to change. And look where it got me? Right back on the plan that was intended.

And I think a lot of my problems and probably a lot of yours as well come from fighting God’s plan for us. We think we have better ideas. We think we have a better plan. We think we know what is best for ourselves and our world. BUT we are just like that student who lacks the perspective to see the big picture. I take time to make sure that I plan with the end in mind. Do I believe that God doesn’t plan with the end in mind? Do I think I have a better perspective than God?

And I think we might do a little better to work on questioning our motives for wanting the plan to change. I think we might do a little better to think about the limitations of our own minds and our own perspective. And I think we might do a little better asking for directions more than imposing our will.

Have the day you want. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for.

#ThinkBetter #BeBetter #NoGodsNoMasters #MyBodyMyChoice #MakeYourselfGreatAgain #EmbracetheWithin

Personal Meditation no. 208

“It may not be your fault but it is still your problem.”

Embrace the Within.

A lot of folks are still looking for hope in this world. And looking around at other folks to try and find a solution, an answer, any sort of peace is just a pointless activity. Look at how we respond to obstacles and challenges in our lives. We want to fight them. We are a people filled with violence. And there is no opportunity that folks will find a solution to that problem while looking to other violent folks. It is such a redundant process that I no longer get angry, see violence in my own heart, at the process getting repeated. I know what the next steps are because I have seen this movie before. And if we just make enough laws, then everything will be perfect.

That’s the human solution to everything. Add a little more government to any problem and then it is no longer my problem. BUT the truth is that everything is my problem. Everything is your problem. And you are not going to find the solution in laws, in governments, or in people.

I heard someone being interviewed about this recent act of violence and they said we don’t have a mental health problem in America. Can you imagine that? People acting violently is not a mental health problem. Folks finding the use of violence as a solution to their problems is so normalized in this country that it is not a mental health problem? I don’t know about you BUT if there isn’t something wrong with the brains of folks then there is a deeper problem of health here. Maybe they aren’t physically or mentally ill, however, their spirit is most definitely sick. The soul of this society is cancerous. And we get to decide if that soul gets to continue in its current state or if we are going to get it healthy.

And that choice to get healthy never comes from government. That choice to get healthy is not going to come through more laws. That choice to get healthy is going to take a change in our own spirits. The soul of this country is sick because we are making it sick. Our choices influence the soul of what is around us. It’s your fault, it’s my fault, it is all our fault that society is sick. And we’re not going to get anywhere acting the way we always do.

We’ll go into political party mode, echo chamber mode, and fighting and arguing and choosing violence mode. BUT we won’t go into healthy mode. We won’t go into love and compassion and joy and abundance mode. We will choose the worst way to respond to each other and then wonder why the world is the way it is.

I was talking to my father last night and he is thoroughly exhausted with the way folks are in this world. And I am about half way there with him. I do get frustrated with the sickness I see around me. This preoccupation with violence as a solution to all our problems. In the liberty community, most folks want to pick up a gun and fight the folks in government BUT they don’t want to make themselves better people. Normies want to riot and march and shout and argue with other normies BUT they don’t want to get healthy. Party lines are not where violence ends. Folks are violent despite what flavor of snow they choose to embrace. BUT folks don’t want to make the tough choices. Folks don’t want to look inside and realize that they are wrong. We don’t want to admit that we are the ones choosing violence. We don’t want to admit that inside we are capable of things just as horrible as what we hear or read about in the news. BUT we are. We are capable of such horribly destructive actions to ourselves and others. Take a brief look at human history that starts with a brother killing a brother and gets us where we are today.

We are the problem. And only we can work on changing our spirit before we can work on changing the spirit of a community, a city, a county, a state, a nation, or a world. It all starts with changing how we embrace the world around us. Are we looking for conflict and division or are we looking to really make things better? Am I looking for a fight or am I looking for peace? Am I looking at my own self interests or am I being a caretaker of this planet? When we start answering those questions honestly. When we start making a change in our spirit. When we start being better people personally. We might then see the world around us change. Until then, the soul of this nation will die.

Have the day you want. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for.

#ThinkBetter #BeBetter #NoGodsNoMasters #MyBodyMyChoice #MakeYourselfGreatAgain #EmbracetheWithin