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LIVING MORE FULLY
It was very strange to have this title pop into my head when I asked the question what should I write about this month. Strange because at 51 I feel like I am still not living fully all the time, so how can I possibly write an article about it?
It is funny how relative things are. It was not that long ago that living fully for me was finding a way to get the next drink or drug. I remember a very special moment one evening after being sober for some time, I looked at a sunset and it was as if I had never seen a sunset before. I was awe struck by the color and beauty, I just stood there staring and watching as it changed hues and intensity. This was obviously not the first sunset I had looked at but I was seeing it with a new pair of eyes, the eyes of a sober person.
Now not everyone can relate to being an alcoholic but we’ve all had moments like this when we came out the other side of a difficult time in our lives and we saw things differently, more fully. It was as if we had awaked from a dream. What if we could live each day that way? As the saying goes, seeing things through the eyes of a child, as if was for the first time. I was hiking the other day with a friend and we came across some turtles in a small pool of water. She got so excited that it scared some of them back under the water and she apologized for her excitement. I later thought, what was she apologizing for, being excited by the beauty of life. WOW, if I could only live that way every moment of every day.
Now, twenty years after my last drink, living has changed a bit for me. OK: a lot and I am so grateful to see the beauty around me and in others. I do live more fully and I am learning to continue to live more fully each day. This is a process and journey for each one of us if we choose to step onto the path. It’s not always easy to continue to look at our lives, it seems much easier to just ignore our thoughts and feelings, to stuff things down. However, this is just an illusion that leads us into more suffering. Our guide into this suffering is our ego and we all experience the varying degrees of the ego’s effect in our lives whether we see it or not. We are all here for a reason and we all offer the world a gift, that is our presence here, but we sometimes make choices guided by the ego that separate us from our purpose and keep us from living more fully in the moment.
If you watch Oprah, you are most likely aware of Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now and A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. Eckhart says: “Your life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and it is secondary. Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that. You share that purpose with every other person on the planet - because it is the purpose of humanity. Your inner purpose is an essential part of the purpose of the whole, the universe and its emerging intelligence. Your outer purpose can change over time. It varies greatly from person to person. Finding and living in alignment with the inner purpose is the foundation for fulfilling your outer purpose. It is the basis for true success. Without that alignment, you can still achieve certain things through effort, struggle, determination, and sheer hard work or cunning. But there is no joy in such endeavor, and it invariably ends in some form of suffering.” Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, page 258
We cannot live our lives more fully without being in the present moment. In addition, we cannot be in the present moment if we are not in alignment with our inner purpose. For me living life more fully requires that I continue to explore the depths of who I perceive myself to be so that I may unfold to that which is truly me – not the illusion of how others see me or what I have been conditioned to believe about myself. I must continue to let go of the past so that I can be present with myself and those around me in the moment. This allows me to just be and live more fully. Truly, a gift of life and creation and something I wish for everyone on the planet: may we all see our next sunset with a new pair of eyes.
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