Eye of Tiger

[honeywawa]

I am new to this board and I apologise if it sounds forward or even rude to ask for your help but I would appreciate it. DOB 22-6-69 and at rock bottom right now. x

[eye_of_tiger]

Yes I read your introduction which told us that you considered yourself to be a disaster area, and noticed that you had already been given some friendly and timely advice concerning practical ways that you might be able to lift your spirits and get through this difficult period of your life with your sanity and sense of humour both still relatively intact.

I fully support and agree with everything that you have been advised to try with the positive intention to beat the extreme case of the blues you are enduring at present with such courage and a determination to successfully make it through this long dark night of your soul, so nothing in the following reading is intended to act as a substitute for or replace the wise counsel already given to you by other members who may or may not also be readers themselves.

I wanted to if I may as part of this reading more closely examine the subject of faith, not from a religious or abstract viewpoint as this is not a theological discussion, but more to do with how faith and a belief that everything happens for a reason, even if at the time the reason for it happening to us temporarily evades us.

Life can so often at times for so many of us seem too hard and to be perfectly honest it can for some of us seem incredibly cruel. There are always people around us (we may be one of them ourselves) who seem to have more than their fair share of life's many trials and tribulations, although what might seem like a disaster and  to be cruel to one person, may at the same time be like water off a duck's back to another.

Also how well or otherwise we will cope with our life's challenges can vary immensely according to what amounts of stress we are currently under in other areas, and our general level of health. Most of us fully recognise that when we are feeling under the weather that our problems can so easily and quickly be transformed in our minds and blown up out of all reasonable proportion by our distorted perception into an excuse for a full scale panic attack, when at another time  it would hardly have rated on our disaster scale.

So the question I am asking on your behalf here is with regards to how best we can weather life's worst storms, and still come up smiling and ready and willing to tackle the next obstacle which is placed in our paths, which could potentially be encountered t any minute of the clock.

How do we have faith and continue to believe in the basic goodness and fairness of life and our own ability to cope with such a high degree and constantly accelerating rate of change that we are forced to adapt to in our modern society on an almost daily basis when all the evidence appears at least on the surface to point to the opposite being true?

Just as our physical bodies we can be inoculated or immunised against a host of various disease causing organisms or pathogens by first exposing our immune systems to a small dose of the bug in a highly diluted and modified form that will not cause illness but will help our personal defence force to recognise and appropriately respond to the actual illness itself  in the future, similarly our soul or spirit frequently needs a shot in the arm or healthy dose of faith to protect it from being overwhelmed by the negative experiences which life inevitably sends our way in order to bring out the best in each of us, and hopefully make us a much stronger person within ourselves as a direct but often uncomfortable and even painful result of having successfully navigated our personal stormy waters.

I have observed throughout my 58 years of life that faith is believed by many people to be something of which we are only given a carefully limited amount at birth, and as life methodically and progressively wears us down (or seems to try its best to) our supply of this essential commodity eventually runs low and if not soon replaced from a source outside ourselves can soon totally disappear like melting snow.

According to many teachings passed down to us by people much who are thank God wiser than ourselves in spiritual matters, faith is neither in short supply, nor does it necessarily need to come from outside us if we are to be given the strength to keep going when it would seem easier at least in the short term give up on life and our dreams and ambitions completely, and feel sorry for ourselves as an excuse for not doing anything further to help ourselves and to make improvements.

The biblical claim that Kingdom of Heaven is within us is not merely an abstract statement that was only ever intended to offer us empty words of hope and comfort, for there is an infinite source of what we call faith always to be found n the human spirit and heart which can be accessed and drawn upon using certain definite and relatively easy techniques whenever our personal supply of it seems to be getting dangerously low to the point of possible imminent extinction.

You cannot it seems force yourself to have faith. For you already have an abundance of it within you, or so we are taught. It is not therefore so much that faith is in short supply in our lives, but instead it is accessing and learning to draw upon this infinite spring of clear, cool, healing water that requires many years and possibly several lifetimes of regular practice in order for us to eventually master the process of continuously topping ourselves up or recharging our spiritual batteries (which are fortunately able to be recharged, well into infinity and beyond).

Everything considered by each of us to be worth accomplishing in our life starts by planting a thought seed in our unconsciousness, which must gradually over time grow and develop under the right carefully controlled and protected conditions, until that thought seed germinates and ultimately breaks through the surface to meet the light of day our physical, shared reality and outer world.

The idea is that eventually what was first without physical form and direction, takes on both. Faith is a lot like that thought seed. Somehow in the face of all the obstacles and challenges, we must give faith both form and direction in our outer existence. What is the use of us having a large supply of faith at our beck and call, if we do not have something or someone to have faith in or apply that faith to?

I would interpret your reading to mean that primarily during the period of the next six months or so, whenever your faith seems to be in especially short supply and an endangered species, that you should have one or more methods at hand to plant some more faith seeds and to sow your crop.

Now just as we are effectively unique individuals with regards to so many other things, the exact way that we plant our on seeds of faith and sow our crop differ greatly from one person to the next, and may even vary considerably at different stages of our own current lifetime. What gives each of us faith, and helps us to drink from the eternal fountain of faith which we have been assured exists within our spiritual centre is probably even more unique than we are overall in most other things.

Some people find their faith in their belief in God or Jesus. Others find all the faith they need in nature, or in the smiles of of an innocent child. Over the next twenty four weeks or so, identify your own unique sources or power symbols of faith, then take whatever action is required to rain upon these little seeds with positive energy and your prayers as well as realistic optimism, instead of plant food, water and fertiliser as a gardener commonly does with his or her most valuable seedlings.

I consequently commend this reading to you for your general guidance and with the hope and confidence that faith will spring eternal from your inner warehouse when it is most needed, as long as the above instructions are listened to and followed to the best of your abilities. You are looking for an improvement in being able to do this more effectively while under pressure over time, and never perfection.

There will no matter how hard and long you might try to do this always continue to be some days which are worse than others. The secret is to make these less than good or happy days gradually less in their negative impact on your spirit and health, and increasingly infrequent or further apart from one another.

Take your next small but significant leap of faith TODAY!

NOW would be a good time to begin.

Enjoy a soft and intensely satisfying landing, after having risked moving outside of your personal comfort zone once again.

EoT

[honeywawa]

What wise words you speak and I thank you for that.
I am usually quite a happy person but when hurt takes over, it loses me and this time seemed worse. I do have faith but I sometimes struggle to understand why. I guess I am only human but, yes, I do believe everything happens for a reason.
I feel quite selfish feeling like this especially when there are so many who are a lot worse off than me but I just couldn't shake it. I have always been there for others yet found it difficult to ask for help when I needed it. This time I had to.
Please don't think this is usual for me but I'm sure you already know this. I just read your words to others and have this fabulous picture in my mind of this 'all-wise being' (at the young age of 58 <------see? I amn't all doom and gloom!).
I can feel a peace through your words which is quite reassuring and calming. My own confidence has never been high but I had built it up only for it to be smashed very cruelly. Ouch.
''Enjoy a soft and intensely satisfying landing, after having risked moving outside of your personal comfort zone once again. '' - that reads like poetry and feels like a hug in itself.
Thank you.

honeywawa xxx

[eye_of_tiger]

Dear Honey,  :smt002

You are very welcome for the reading and I thank you sincerely for your constructive and in some places painfully honest feedback.

Good and decent people such as yourself often have an unconscious habit of taking humility too far and constantly apologising for for their very existence and not wanting to complain about their own problems because they do not want to be seen as chronic whiners when they believe that others life challenges are always more serious and infinitely more insurmountable than their own.

To a certain extent this can be seen as admirable and a noble quality to have, but over the longer term it can potentially wear away or erode the person's sense of self respect and indeed their very soul.

Nature has designed these methods of emotional release as a vital way of letting off steam and outwardly expressing your feelings which normally acts as a safety valve to prevent growing resentment, anger and depression from getting a foothold within you.

And by so doing you have quite unintentionally become your own worst enemy, as if not properly and safely released the person so affected is like a ticking time bomb which is about to explode at any second of the clock.

Of course I am not promoting the hedonistic idea that we should not exercise some amount empathy and self control and vent our feelings whenever we have the opportunity to and continuously show our own self pity to whomever is unfortunate enough to currently be our the firing line.

What I am saying is that we each need to find a better point of balance between the two extremes of on one hand being a professional victim and chronic complainer and on the other what so frequently amounts to everyone else's human doormat for them to wipe their muddy feet upon, who is thought to have no right at all to feel wounded when there is such a high level of suffering around them.

So the main message that I am attempting to communicate to you and whoever else takes the time to look at this is that some degree of healthy emotional release is critical for our personal physical and psychological long term survival as a species, and continuing to function as a coherent and civilised community.

And that constantly making oneself into a martyr and denying oneself of this safety valve can be taken so far at times that the personality self destructs, with terrible and lasting negative consequences not only for the person themselves in the way of their loss off self respect, but also for the rest of us in eventually being caught in the inevitable and unpredictable fallout.

''Enjoy a soft and intensely satisfying landing, after having risked moving outside of your personal comfort zone once again. '' - that reads like poetry and feels like a hug in itself.

Which are precisely what I intended this greeting to be and feel like to you as both a valued member of this forum, as well as hopefully assuring you that you are thought of by me from now on as being one of my newer internet friends.

God bless,

EoT  

[honeywawa]

That friendship is there, without a doubt.

Honeywawa xxx