inspirational

Multi-Generational Dining Can Be Humerous

I am a single mother living with my teenage son and elderly mother. Although this sounds like strange living arrangements, I feel blessed that I can share my life with both of them each day.

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This morning in church we read part of the Christmas story in Matthew 1:18-25. One part in particular struck me. It said that His name shall be called Emmanuel which means "God with us". I had heard these words many times before, but today they had a bigger meaning. The very name of Jesus, also Emmanuel, means that God is with us. God sent His Son to earth to be with us, to become human. His whole name reminds us that we are never alone.

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Nowadays a lot it is talked about sales and marketing. We receive mail daily from people or unknown establishments intending different products, studies and thousands of things. Everywhere we see advertising campaigns, discounts and offers of any kind. The press and the television neither escape to this fury for the market. It seems as if in the current world everything could be bought and be sold.

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I am continuing with my translation of "petits poeme en prose",
the novel of the great french author and poet: charles beaudelaire.He comes across to me as rather Melancholic.
This poem remindes me of why only crappy movies make money at the box office, while the fine movies don't make money but win oscars. here is the poem:
“My pretty dog, my good dog, my doggy, approach and breath an excellent perfume bought from the best perfume dealer of the town�

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When I read this poem,it reminded me of racism and hate that people carry on their back, and how Indifferent some people are to it.Beaudelaire put it so nicely on one of his petit poem en prose.
The title of the poem is chimera, I did translate it to English and am sharing with the readers,it’s a masterpiece.
“Under a gray sky, in a big dusty plain, without roads, without grass, without thistle, without nettle, I met many men who were walking bent.

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I am a huge fun of the eighteen-century French author Charles Baudelaire, of all his work my favorite is Petit poemes en prose. I taught about translating some poemes to English and publishing them in this blog and judging from the number of readers I can go on translating them or I would stop.
The poem I am translating today, I am sure a lot of people will find very amusing to say the least. It is titled Pleasant:

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Sometimes we are placed in a situation where we hurt. It can be either past experiences or something that is going on with us in the here and now. Whatever it is, it can be oh so painful. I have been going through something that is rooted in the past and which sometimes pops up its head in the present. It can be so excruciating that sometimes I wish it can be physical rather than emotional. The good thing about this whole situation is that it was meant to be. I am not just saying that, I can indeed see the difference in me, from within the marrow of my bones and the chamber of my heart. It is something that has made me, ME and I honour it. According to Carl Rogers - founder of the humanist approach to psychology - “the personality is like a triangle made up of the real self (I am), the perceived self, and ideal self (I should). This gap between the real self and the ideal self, the (I am) and the (I should) is called incongruity. The greater the gap, the more incongruity - being out of synch with your own self. The more incongruity, the more suffering". Permit me to share with you physiological symptoms to my incongruity and psychological agony:

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People meet people everyday. At work, at school, on the streets, in different organizations, clubs etc. While meeting people, we gravitate towards some, sometimes for no apparent reason. Some persons describe it as their relationship just having clicked. The truth is, we can never really, objectively, know who people are, especially strangers; but we can feel them. Something about their way of being and their general attitude tells us something. Their mental vibrations create an aura surrounding them that attracts you to them and vice versa; and so a friendship begins to flourish. Sometimes the friendship is short-lived, sometimes it lasts a lifetime. But whatever the case may be, people enter our lives for a purpose. Perhaps it was a lesson we needed to learn in order to reach the next level in our spiritual growth. This renders the popular saying true that “whenever the student is ready the teacher appears�. That teacher can appear in any way, shape or form; from experiences to persons. We sometimes complain of a bad relationship that we are having, or a friendship gone sour. Whatever that has happened is to teach us more about ourselves, to help us become more self aware and to help us realize how our actions can affect others.

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Listening in general can be challenging to us and even more when listening to our own hearts. According to http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=listening listening is the act of hearing attentively. So how can we listen to our hearts attentively? A sense of intuition has been given to us from the beginning of time and our fore fathers have used it successfully in order to survive. Intuition can lead us to our destiny, if only we tap into it. By listening to our hearts, we are actually recognizing our intuition. There is a little voice within us that tells us something or that leads us somewhere; some persons consider it as a nagging feeling. But how many of us actually acknowledge this nagging feeling? How many of us recognize that our souls do speak to us? How many are of us are open enough to even belief that? Life should be approached as lessons to be learnt, and our souls actually lead us in that direction. Wherever we are rightnow is due to a lesson we needed to learn. That is how our intuition operates. Unless the lesson is not learnt, our spirits cannot move on to the next level and so we keep making the same mistakes over and over again. How many of us have had an experience where our hearts lead us one way and we decided to go the other? What was that experience like? Were there regrets for not having listened to that gut instinct? And those times when we have decided to listen to our souls, was the outcome pleasing? These are questions that we need to ask ourselves. Have you been listening to your heart? Reflect on that question and share your reflections with me.

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What really is perfection? Is it something that one can attain? According to http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=perfection perfection is the state of being without a flaw or defect. Many of us strive for it, often suffering in the process because of our personal inability to achieve it. The fact is, although our perception of perfection is different from each other, what seems to be the common denominator is that it is something external that we need in order to make us feel whole, make us complete, and make us feel happy. Wow! Reality cannot be further from the truth. We want the perfect body, the perfect husband or wife, perfect children, the perfect job, the perfect house, car and the list goes on and on and on. We constantly make improvements on everything, ourselves, our belongings and even our family, but to no avail. We end up being in conflict because we are never satisfied. We never seem to gratify our idea of perfection. Now don’t get me wrong. I believe that we must always strive to be our best and motivate other persons to be their best. The problem arises when we are not satisfied with our best at the moment and when we criticize other persons for not living up to our personal ideal. Unfortunately we end up fussing and fighting because what we want is not happening, or so it seems. We use the external as a ruler to measure ourselves and for some reason, we oh so love to compare ourselves with others. Oh yes, we struggle daily to attain the greener grass that we think we see on the other side. And then when we perceive that nothing is happening and even when we think that we have what we need, we find it strange that we do not experience this bliss, this feeling of happiness, fulfillment and completeness. We then begin to feel that something is wrong with us, our self-esteem is shattered, we feel sad, depressed, frustrated and overwhelmed. Please, don’t feel dismayed. When this feeling comes up, it is very important that persons realize that the only thing that can make us feel whole and complete is really ourselves. No one else but us. Yes, no one else but you. Your mind is extraordinary and by just changing your perception of yourself and accepting you just as you are, you will feel a weight just fall off your shoulders. Consider yourself perfect in all your imperfection, consider your family perfect in all their imperfections and just by this shift in your train of thought, you would realize that everything that is meant to be is indeed perfection. It is perfection because it is meant to be. You are where you are supposed to be right now. Accept it lovingly and look forward to the daily lessons you are supposed to learn. That in essence is perfection. Look in your mirror everyday and tell yourself “I love and accept myself just the way I am; I am perfect in all my imperfections�. Try it, and then tell me about it.

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All of us, no matter what our situation in life may be, can either use our minds constructively or destructively. We can create a whole new future with our mind, we can achieve beyond our imagination and we can be experiencing eternal bliss just by using our mental powers. By thinking positive, our optimistic mental vibrations cause a ripple effect around us, creating an aura of success, achievement and self-actualization. Our aura is strong, and it has a magnetic pull, a force which attracts whatever it wants. To get the best, we have to expect the best. And that’s a spiritual principle that is rooted in universal or spiritual law. Yes, we get what we expect. If we notice that our train of thought takes a depressive slant, watch out! A ripple effect will occur and our greatest fears may be realized. A series of pessimistic energy can be released if we dwell on the negative. Many people believe in heaven, paradise, nirvana, mahasamadhi and the like, and all such beliefs should be respected. But how many people believe that in the here and now we can all experience such bliss even in this chaotic world? Yoga and Zen practitioners among others do believe in attaining this type of ecstasy through meditation. In yoga it is called Samadhi which means “to bring together or to merge�. According to the book “Heart of Yoga� the author TKV Desikachar describes Samadhi as “when we succeed in becoming so absorbed in something that our mind becomes completely at one with it�. Our brainwaves send out powerful signals and it is up to us what we want to focus it on. It is important to work on our spiritual growth. By spirituality I don’t mean religion or being religious, your spirituality has to do with you – your soul. It has to do with what you really are as a person (see my blog on Our Authentic Selves - http://bloggerparty.com/our_authentic_selves ) and what you want out of this life. This spirituality can feed our minds and make manifest our dreams and desires. Believe it, so you can achieve it!

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We often complain when something that we perceive to be wrong happens in our lives. We do not realize that when these things happen, it is to bring out the best in us and to teach us a spiritual principle that we are yet to learn. Whatever happens to us is always for our best interest and to develop our selves spiritually in order to be our authentic selves. Some of us live our lives as if we are playing a part, always acting out what we think other people would accept from us. We seem to be hungry and thirsty for attention and to be accepted by other persons. In so doing, we live our lives for other people and become actors and actresses in our own right. We perform our distinct roles in a number of different occasions, and we perform well. Unfortunately, in the process, our real selves are lost. We have hidden it in such a secret place that we ourselves cannot seem to find it. At times we never even realize that we once possessed it. What many of us don’t recognize is that when our real selves are lost, our happiness also gets lost along with it. We can never be really happy living in pretence, we might seem to be happy but this happiness is as fake as the person that we present to the world. A lot of this pretense happens subconsciously; it is not something that we purposefully go out there to do. It just happens! Believe it or not, we have ingrained fears, biases, irrational beliefs that act as defence mechanisms preventing our real selves from dealing with a particular situation as it is. Hiding behind a façade is easier on our egos; it is also a common misconception that we need that façade or defence mechanism in order to survive. One may ask; how can we break free from this repressive state? Well here is one simple exercise that you can begin to do, it is a gradual exercise in the sense that you will not see the results one time but it does challenge yourself, your soul and your whole train of thought. It is something that Yogis and Zen practitioners often practice, here is it: “Look at yourself, eyeball to eyeball in your mirror without having any expectations!� Then tell me about the experience. Remember, it’s a gradual process to discover your authentic self.

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All of us have to make choices in our lives and whatever choice that we choose to make we have to live with the consequences of our actions. Whatever choices we decide not to make, we also have to deal with its consequences. A chance is made available to us and we are left to make a choice. This can be a mind boggling situation for some persons depending on the situation, but rest assured, we make similar decisions every day of our lives. Every day we have to make decisions, sometimes these decisions are simple; at other times they tend to be more complicated. We also must realize that by not making a decision, we are deciding on something. Whatever decisions that you made in the past, you are experiencing its consequences rightnow. If we have made past “mistakes�, we should accept them lovingly as so called “mistakes� and move on, relinquish it. If it is a so called “unfortunate� experience that we are going through rightnow, look at it as a moment for spiritual growth. You were supposed to have gone through this in order to learn a spiritual principle; be it “patience�, “acceptance of others for who they are� or “positive thinking�. You see, the reason why I use the words “so called�, is because I don’t believe in labelling moments or experiences as either “mistakes�, “bad� nor “good�. By labelling them, we are making judgement calls; everything is meant to be and everything happens for the best! Through moments that we label the “lowest�, “worst� or “unfortunate� are our biggest achievements. The human spirit is incredible and its amazing how under duress we can conquer what before seemed to have been unconquerable for us. The goal of our experiences is to bring out the best in us. Whatever that experience may be, there is a lesson to be learnt. Observe and analyze the situations that you tend to find yourself in. Is this where you want to be? Is this where you want to go? Is this what you want for you? Make sure that this choice is based on what you are passionate about, and NOT what someone else thinks is good for you. It is your chance to make your choice. Take that chance always expecting the best; and the best is whatever your soul needs rightnow for personal growth.

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Sometimes it is difficult for us to accept what is going on in our lives. We feel that life is just not fair and the problems that we face can just overwhelm us. At other times we feel stressed, depressed and the tears just flow uncontrollably. This is normal, and millions of people all around the world go through this same experience every single day. You are not alone.

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