Taking Care of Ourselves

Nearly every day we are deluged with messages of doom and gloom.  Most of the times we can only sigh nonchalantly, shrug off our distaste for what's happening, and try to move on pass the unpleasantness to a more pastoral place. Whenever we feel like this, we are now willing to try anything to help us to overcome the powerlessness we feel about the economy, the political turmoil, our overall fears and the social carnage fueling the proliferation of violence and hatred streaming through the country.

To feel helpless is a terrible feeling to have.  When we want to do something, anything, to change what's happening around us, we create within ourselves a deeper level of anguish and pain.  Our suffering intensifies. We begin to believe that we cannot continue to stand idly by and watch what's happening without getting involved. Unfortunately, in many instances, we don't know how to engage ourselves in the process of change, because we don't know how to take care of our own selves. 

One of the greatest tests of our self-awareness is to understand who we are, and the power we have to take care of ourselves first before we try to take of others. This angst behavior is what causes so many self-proclaimed leaders to fall victim to their own teachings. They become over desirous to do something about the doom and gloom around them without first realizing it is there because of the way they think and act. Those who desire to change the world must first begin with ourselves.

The hatred we feel around us is there because of our beliefs. The same goes for the economy, the violence, the poverty and so forth. Every problem we encounter is there because of what we think about ourselves. If we believe we are powerless, the greater difficult we project into our problems. However, if we change our thoughts and empower ourselves with spacious minds, then we're able to perceive our problems as harmless expressions of our victim beliefs.

There's power in believing in ourselves. We can stop struggling to achieve something (s) that we have already achieved. We struggle because we're searching outside of ourselves for solutions to the problems we see in the world. And with our cloudy, victimized visions, we struggle to see ourselves expressed in the actions of others.  This cloudy vision prevents us from perceiving ourselves with the power to express whatever we desire to express.  In other words, we stop struggling to live as victims and begin to express the already present power of enlightenment within us.

 When work from the level of clarity, we are aware of everything within us. We know that everything we need to live successful in this world is contained within our intuitive-enlightened-consciousness. And regardless to the energies we devote searching for answers outside of ourselves, we will always return back to  ourselves for the answers. Unfortunately, for most of us, it's the doubts we have about ourselves that cause us to seek answers to our problems from outside sources.

There's something seemingly unnatural about victimizing ourselves into believing we are powerless to take care of ourselves.  As some of us know, we are what we think. It is our thoughts that embody the knowledge we have acquired from others.  Some of this knowledge tie us to victim consciousness. It causes us to believe we are powerless to take care of ourselves. And moreover, we must rely on others for solutions to the problems we believe are happening to us and others. 

Unfortunately, it is this knowledge that stops us from clearing away the doubts.  These are the beliefs causing us to wait on someone else to do it for us. In other words, someone will say what I'm thinking and then I won't have to do anything but agree with them.  This is how self-proclaimed leaders are born.

The challenge before us today is to become our own individual leaders. To do this requires clarity of purpose. We must remain mindful at all times about what we think and our actions.  We must change our psychological, emotional and physical diets so that we have healthy minds and bodies.

This means we perceive life with healthy attitudes. It also means we refrain from using our bodies as garbage disposals for the unhealthy foods we are eating. And we must learn to live without ingesting medications that assume to cure something that we can cure with daily dosages of meditations, healthy foods, and exercises.

When we become leaders of ourselves, we will witness our actions expressing themselves with the passion we see in the leaders of people. Most of these leaders express themselves passionately. They work fervently on telling the world how much they care about us and what must be done on our behalf. 

We must now do this for ourselves, because no one knows our feelings and problems better than we do.