A blog discussion on Creative Think, Roger von Oechs great blog on A Phrase Past it’s Expiration Date touched on an issue I have been sensitive to for as long as I can remember.
“When I was your age…”
“It’s just a stage….”
“My how you’ve grown.”
most often accompany a superior / patronising attitude or intent.
I had been looking at my own beliefs and read again page 49 of Joe Vitale book Spiritual Marketing where he describes how he knows if he is clear or not.He says “think of something that you want to have, do or be.”Why don’t you have it yet?” OK my list was mostly the same old chestnuts, abandonment, wanting only positive attention and love.
I like his clearing check list.
If your answer is something negative (or not a good feeling), you aren’t clear.
If you say anything except an honest “I know it’s on the way to me”, you probably aren’t clear inside. (clear of an unhelpful belief)
Next ask yourself
“What does it mean that you don’t yet have what you want?” The answer to that question will reveal your beliefs.
For example if you say
“I have to do … before I can have what I want”
means you have a belief that you have to do … before you can have what you want.
I personally found it wonderfully revealing!
On page 48 he says
Me and Jonathan made a pact that said
“Whenever I’m not clear, I am to call him.” Then whenever I let something in life throw me for a tailspin, I would call him. ( he (Joe) had originally gone to see Jonathan once a month realised he needed weekly sessions and then settled on calling as and when he needed)
I (Sue) was thinking I’d like to do the same with a friend and just in saying that, it makes me more aware and I catch and look at / dissolve or change whatever the old belief is /was. Also less need to call anyway. If it helps you could do the same.
Then I closed my eyes and had a flash of a program schedule and clearly saw the words
The Fisher King
The meaning I saw in the film was this,
Robin Williams keeps encountering a fearsome warrior on horseback each time (I realised) he feels love. His girlfriend in the film we discover was killed in an explosion in a restaurant so love for him was traumatically entwined with fear.
Until he allows himself to feel love again and then the warrior is gone.
The Fisher King, one of those films that has mixed reviews (= opinions / beliefs) but that had a great message for me.
Quote from The Fisher King
“It begins with the king as a boy, having to spend the night alone in the forest to prove his courage so he can become king. Now while he is spending the night alone he’s visited by a sacred vision. Out of the fire appears the holy grail, symbol of God’s divine grace. And a voice said to the boy, “You shall be keeper of the grail so that it may heal the hearts of men.” But the boy was blinded by greater visions of a life filled with power and glory and beauty. And in this state of radical amazement he felt for a brief moment not like a boy, but invincible, like God, so he reached into the fire to take the grail, and the grail vanished, leaving him with his hand in the fire to be terribly wounded. Now as this boy grew older, his wound grew deeper. Until one day, life for him lost its reason. He had no faith in any man, not even himself. He couldn’t love or feel loved. He was sick with experience. He began to die. One day a fool wandered into the castle and found the king alone. And being a fool, he was simple minded, he didn’t see a king. He only saw a man alone and in pain. And he asked the king, “What ails you friend?” The king replied, “I’m thirsty. I need some water to cool my throat”. So the fool took a cup from beside his bed, filled it with water and handed it to the king. As the king began to drink, he realized his wound was healed. He looked in his hands and there was the holy grail, that which he sought all of his life. And he turned to the fool and said with amazement, “How can you find that which my brightest and bravest could not?” And the fool replied, “I don’t know. I only knew that you were thirsty.”
What a beautiful, gift of a day.
Here in Surrey it has been the most beautiful spring day.
Warm, and sunny.
Isn’t the warmth of the sun just wonderful after the winter?
The birds are truly in full song.
I walked Ellie, our cocker spaniel the two and a half miles round the block, down a country lane and past fields ready for planting, the trees and hedgerows are beginning to tint green, and the walk has left me feeling full of gratitude.
Almost everyone we passed on our walk seemed more cheerful and ready to stop for a while, rather than rush on.
Ok, the weatherman say’s it’s going to snow over the weekend as air comes down from the arctic, and, today has been a gift.
I’m grateful for the following quotation by Melody Beattie
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.
It turns what we have into enough, and more.
It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.
It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.
Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow”.
