When we understand that we don’t have to strive for a particular outcome, we escape a perpetual struggle. We free our self to learn the lesson, rather than fight the winds of destiny.

We eventually get the lesson. It is written. But we’re not on the clock. There IS no clock. We have eternity. We don’t have to spend eternity struggling, though.

Last night I struggled. I was trying to be honest and principled, while trusting the outcome. “Trying” is always a key word. I got unkind. I got ugly. And that is neither honest nor principled. That is untrue to my principles, and untrue to love. I’m not beating myself up, though. I am getting the lesson, on a deeper level.

That, my dear friends, is enough. Let’s accept our humanity. We are destined to align with love, but we are also destined to mess up, learn from the consequences, and move forward–not against the winds, but with the winds, as the winds. Let’s be grateful that we can choose acceptance, and that peace and joy come with it.

Love smiles on you,

PS: Let’s resist the temptation to justify our ugliness by pointing to somebody else’s. … More

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From the time we learn the word “no,” we begin to get the message that what we would do naturally is “bad.”

As young children, we can’t make a distinction between our behavior and ourselves, so we buy into a lie — the lie that in order to be good enough we have to sit still and be quiet, or look pretty, or SOMETHING. But some of the demands we place on children (and ourselves) are more apt to stifle them than make them good.

“Even if you were fortunate enough to grow up in a safe, nurturing environment, you still bear invisible scars from childhood, because from the very moment you were born you were a complex, dependent creature with a never-ending cycle of needs. Freud correctly labeled us ‘insatiable beings.’ And no parents, no matter how devoted, are able to respond perfectly to all of these changing needs,” says Harville Hendrix in his bestselling “Getting the Love You Want.”

We have a fundamental motivation to be accepted, which is why you might jump to defend yourself, your parents, your children (even while reading this). Rejection used to point to a problem that needed our attention, and our survival depended on how sensitive and responsive we were.… More