I don’t know just how it happened—it’s all in my mind.

Reading these words, your words, mine, your life, mine, happiness, sadness, reality, non-reality. All mind.

“And I realize that no matter where I am, whether in a little room full of thought, or in this endless universe of stars and mountains, it’s all in my mind.” ~ Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler

Falling is easier than holding on to something you thought you believed in. Control is what keeps us stuck in conflict with reality.

Endlessly living the life you love starts with loving the life you live. Before getting there, confronting death and facing the stark truth, that this life will end, is a starting point from which to live. Only by dying first, can we truly live.

It’s the people who have faced death that know how to live passionately.

Do you find it easy to imagine that your life would be okay if only X or Y was present and you get rid of that annoying loan?

One could spend one’s life in debt and be waiting for the day that one is finally free of debt—that day may never come. When death comes, will you be ready?

It’s hard to imagine dying without regret.

The only way to die without regret, is to live without regret. The people who master life, master death too, for when their time comes (and the hour cometh!) they are ready to surrender.

The quality of life we live is directly proportional to our ability to love and be grateful for what is. We are the ones who hurt ourselves the most by removing ourselves from love.

I have thought about this a lot recently and realized that I am the one who hurts myself most. It’s ridiculous to blame other people. I create my own reality. I am responsible for my own thoughts, my own judgments, my own feelings. Not that I am not influenced or swayed by others.

And what about blaming our parents?

How truly ridiculous. It’s really not their fault. They got their bad traits from their parents. And think you can blame the grandparents? Well they too got their bad stuff from their parents alike. In fact, it goes like that endlessly until the start, the first ape man, or was it Adam!

Blame goes nowhere and removes the focus and responsibility away from the self. It weakens and disempowers.

Everyone meets people who are less than friendly—we all experience hurt, sometimes intended, often unintended. I only realized my own power when I understood that resentment created more pain in myself than in others. What is the point of continually hurting myself?

The pain may be the worst when someone does something extraordinarily rude or blunt or hurtful. Holding on to that pain is like holding on to cancer. Why would anyone do that by choice.

That’s why forgiving and letting go is the most powerful choice one can make for oneself and for humanity.

“Forgiveness is choosing to love. It is the first skill of self-giving love.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

The only moment of choice is in the now. It’s not if you can make a change, it’s when you can. Now is the power moment, the present is the pivot point. The magic happens here. Not in some remote part of the imagined future that may never come. In the now.

This is the infinity point.

One can also use this point of leverage as a power voltage surge to fill the vacuum of hurt with self-love. It’s not easy to do, yet when I started to forgive, I started to feel lighter, less resentment, less wronged – it became easier to love myself.

There is a shift happening in the world where we are seeing our responsibility in the events of our lives and seeing that we can be the movie director of our own lives—we can create (and recreate) a new story that is both loving, compassionate and empowering.

Where does my pain or hurt reside? How much better do I feel when I forgive?

“The peace of God is everything I want. The peace of God is my one goal; the aim of all my living here, the end I seek, my purpose and my function and my life, while I abide where I am not at home.” ~ A Course in Miracles, Lesson 205 (I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.)

Living the life you love is perhaps easier and more effortless than we’ve been taught to believe. Perhaps it is already here in the now moment. I’m starting with forgiveness and working my way back from there with letting go of everything I’ve been taught to believe.

Perhaps all the thoughts, ideas and concepts outside of the self have led to this one moment of joy. Once you release all that you are, you’re left with a void so vast, it could fill an entire universe. That stillness is infinite and waiting to be felt. In the space of unknowing, we discover who we are.

We are the space, we are the endless peace, we are all that – and more!

All the theories and talk about finding “optimal health” and the rest of the things we are meant to achieve – success, happiness, beautiful relationships, babies, families, money, houses, achievements, job promotions – all of these wonderful things out there – are outside of the one true reality. We are already whole and complete. We are already one with all that is.

I don’t mean this in a glib way or as spiritual hyperbole. I mean this in a way that is real and tangible and can be felt in the body.

Getting out of the way of the self is easier than one may think. It’s releasing all the ego junk that says we should be getting something, getting somewhere. It’s letting go of the identity we have created for ourselves. That identity is not who we are. That identity is a creation. It is only meaningful to the degree that we give it meaning, give energy to it, and to the degree that other people buy into this illusion. What’s important is what I am being, not what I am doing.

Living the life you love is loving the life you live. It starts now!

Reach and and “grab joy—enjoy and In joy—that’s the way!

* Remember this—I am endless like the ocean. So are you! Love—because nothing else makes sense. Not all questions can be answered by Google—feeling is far more real. Love is real. I am not.

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Editor: Ashleigh Hitchcock

Photo: flickr