A reminder from the great sage...

Emerson said, "As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star of a hundred million miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages and the ages explained by the hours."

There is a small and a big in every part of our universe and they are intrinsically and inseparably linked. One cannot exist without the other. And if this wisdom is to be used then the microcosm should be instructed by the macrocosm and the macrocosm explained by the microcosm.

So how can we do that? How can we use this wisdom so as to balance our lives and align them with this apparent law that relates the small to the big? The balance is found as we try to grasp infinity while we realize that this now moment is where we always are. We can use our experience as a guide while realizing that right now is what we have and that we are always at the point of choice.

We can have an overwhelming since of gratitude for the literally countless number of variables that had to fall just right over the eons the of universal experience in order for me to be here to write this and you to be here to read it. Meanwhile in this very moment, there are literally a countless number of little parts within our bodies; each part doing exactly what it was meant to do, exactly the way it was meant to do it without our even thinking about it. We can be grateful for all of this and let that gratitude be our primary attitude no matter if the outer circumstances of our lives look the way we think they ought to look or not. Even what we perceive as a negative experience is still after all an experience and it did not have to be that way.

Think of this: You are only able to stand because the Earth is moving. Sure, we'd have lots of problems if the world stopped turning. And since our balance and equilibrium are based on the rotation of the Earth, the first problem we'd have would be standing up!

There are so many things we can be grateful for! Try making a list of them. At Thanksgiving I enjoy making a list of 101 things that I am grateful for in my life at that moment. I definitely recommend this exercise to everyone and you can do it right now rather than waiting until the next Thanksgiving.

Bottom line: Gratitude is the way! And, each and every moment of our experience comes equipped with an incredible number of points of gratitude, even if it's the moment itself that we are being grateful for.

And finally, here's to the sage of Concord, Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for reminding us just how small and how big we truly are!

Growth

Growth is a funny thing. Everything must grow. Whatever Life is, and when I say Life I mean that which animates you and me and causes the flowers to stand up straight and be bright, must grow by its own nature. That which does not grow, does not live. Change is constant because growth is constant.

However, we have all had experiences where we did not welcome this inevitable change. We resisted, which almost always resulted in pain. We held on to the old us with all our might, forcing life to tug all the more harder. Why did we do this? Why is it that as positive as growth sounds, sometimes it feels negative?

Growth is our adoration for a particular lover getting stronger and stronger by the day which of course feels great! On the other hand, leaving that same lover a while later for whatever reason is growth too and can be so hard sometimes that people have put it off for weeks, months, years or even their whole life. Anyone who has done this was basically willing to endure the slow, dull pain of being in a bad relationship rather than taking a big gulp all at once like with a breakup.

Every day we have many, many instances where we resist growth. The trick is being aware of them. Sometimes we get caught up in the details and circumstances of the situation and in these cases we have forgotten the truth; that we are just growing. Simply being more aware that the seemingly negative situations in our lives are really gifts and are usually our biggest growth points can make all the difference. This shift can instantly turn a hostile universe into a friendly one.

A great question to ask ourselves when we are having a negative experience is, "What can I learn from this?" A question like this can quickly shift the experience away from "someone did this to me and it sucks" and into "this just happened and here's what I learned from it". This essentially shifts the experience from the negative end of the pole to the positive end.

Resistance doesn't help. We can take a cue from mother nature on this point . Can you imagine a tree holing on to its leaves in autumn; afraid that those were the last leaves it would ever have? How absurd? Growth is simply letting go of the old us so that the new us can become.

Growth is definitely a funny thing. I'm grateful for its constancy. And, I'm grateful for this approach that I have shared. I've noticed in using it that the positive growth points are more and more frequent. That's because when it comes to Life, our approach is 100% of the game.