Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Cultivating a New Attitude

Most of us like to brag about having a positive attitude towards life. There's little doubt that sometimes our attitudes don't measure up to our expectations. And when this happens, we begin to moan and groan about how unfortunate things are in our lives.

Whenever old attitudes collide with our desires to change, we have chaos. Chaotic behavior makes us distrust ourselves. Many of us begin to search outside of ourselves for the answers. And it is during these vain attempts to discover why we feel so badly, that we discover who's the real culprits. It is us.

As my friend Sage told me, "all roads lead back to us." Whatever we seek in life, we must seek it from within our minds. And by doing this we encounter some disappointment, success, happiness, sadness, and so forth. Yet, it is from our seeking answers (solutions) that we discover the essence of our attitudes toward life.

If we dislike the way we are acting, we can rewrite the script by changing how the protagonist (us) thinks and acts. We can make ourselves into anything we desire. All that's required of us is to create a new attitude about the things we seek in the world.

Let's play the mind game by creating a new person. As a new person, we desire to have more of life than less. We desire to have happiness over sadness, love over hatred, peace over turmoil, success over failure, fulfillment over money, and compassion over selfishness.

By having more of life rather than less, we must redefine the meaning of life. In this particular case, life is having the power to live each day as an expression of our manifest purpose. The more we express the qualities contained in our vision (goal), the greater abundance we have in our lives.

When we are happy, we are free of sadness. To express happiness from an enlightened awareness is drastically different from the happiness we experience from our awareness of ourselves as victims. Enlightened happiness is a happiness that's detached from the illusions we receive from the things -- money, people, fame, etc.

By expressing love toward others is far more rewarding than expressing hate. Enlightened love is beyond the selfish boundaries of victim beliefs. Enlightened love is self-contained love that requires no action on the part of others. It expresses itself freely and openly to everyone we come in contact with.

When we experience enlightened peace all the turmoil dissipates from our lives. From this perspective, peace is born from the ashes of turmoil. In other words, peace can only live if turmoil dies.

For us to live successful lives, we must first learn how to live without judgments. It is our judgments about things -- events, goals, people, etc., -- that create the failures in our lives. At the enlightened level of awareness, there are no failures, only clear thoughts without judgments.

When we have fulfillment of purpose, we have little or no need for money to enrich our lives. When we express fulfillment from an enlightened consciousness, we have achieved the abundance, happiness, love, peace, and success necessary to keep us awake and alert about what we are doing in the world.

So, today, we are now ready to express compassion in our lives. Compassion toward all beings is the quality of life that is born from a new attitude towards life. When we express compassion, we have reached the highest level of enlightenment. At this level, pure compassion encompasses all there is in life. This is the attitude we must cultivate if we are to change the way we think and live.

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