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HUMBLENESS

HUMBLENESS

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The characteristics of an authentically empowered personality are humbleness, clarity, forgiveness, and Love. Love is the big one. Each time you have the courage to feel the sensations beneath the impulse to shout in anger, withdraw in jealousy, judge or disdain, or need to please, for example, and instead of acting on it, act from the healthiest part of yourself that you can access – even if that means simply remaining motionless and silent with a good intention for the person or people you are with, you create authentic power. The more you create authentic power, the more the characteristics of authentic power become your characteristics, and the more meaning, purpose, and joy enter your life.

This Spring through the beginning of Summer, I am going to explore each of the characteristics of an authentically empowered personality in a different article. This month I am beginning with characteristic of authentic power that few people have thought about – humbleness. What do you think it is, really? What do you think it is not, really? And last, why do you think it would be good to develop humbleness?

A humble person walks in a familiar world. He or she sees friends everywhere he or she looks, wherever he or she goes, with whomever he or she meets. His or her perception goes beyond the shell of appearance and into essence. He or she sees the attributes of people around him or her – big body, small body, strong body, weak body, quick intellect, slow intellect, yellow skin, brown skin, male or female, young or old – and on and on – as costumes. He or she does not believe that anyone will change this costume at the end of the day, but he or she also knows that everyone will leave it behind at the end of a lifetime. Ashes will return to ashes, and dust will return to dust. That is the way it is with costumes. They do not last forever. They do not even last very long – a century at best and much less for most people. The soul is a different story. The soul is immortal.

The next time you feel less than someone else, inadequate, or inferior, remember that “humbleness” doesn’t have anything to do with those experiences any more than it means lowering yourself to make a connection. There are no lower levels to a humble person. There are no higher levels, either. There are only souls. There is only love. Humbleness is one of the great gifts of authentic power – and you give it to yourself.

Next month, I will look at “Clarity.” It might surprise you, too.

Love.
Linda & Gary

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CONNECTING WITH AN OPEN HEART

CONNECTING WITH AN OPEN HEART

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Last week I received an invitation from a small town in Wyoming to a ceremony for Vietnam veterans. The names of each are being etched into a plaque to be mounted in the town square next month. They invited me as one of their own – a vet from Cowley, Wyoming. I felt the depth of the honoring this town has for me and for my fellow veterans that came from there. I was so appreciative, but the thing is, I am not from that town!

I was busy, but I emailed back: I served in Vietnam, but I am not from Cowley. Thank you so very much for thinking of me. I feel like I have been adopted. Love, Gary. Within hours another email arrived: Hi Gary. I do not know how you received this email. I am aware of your great work. I love your books…and am baffled as to how you landed on this list. Love, John

Now I have a connection with Cowley, Wyoming, and John and the people in Cowley and the people from Cowley who served their country. This came at the perfect time for me. Linda and I live in a small town, also. Sometimes I forget how many people have read my books and appreciate them. This unexpected invitation helped me to remember, and it filled me with joy. I cannot say it was a misplaced invitation, because it found the person who needed most to read it. Me.

If you think you know all you need to know to reach beyond your familiar environments – to create authentic power – please consider my story. Without reaching out to others, you will never swim in the vast ocean of meaning and fulfillment around you. Like a small fish that has never left a coral reef, you will live in the illusion that you have experienced all your life offers you and that your joy and freedom demand. This is the life I was living when this picture was taken.

Connecting with others with an open heart is the greatest challenge and reward of the Earth school. Only frightened parts of your personality resist it, and they are the parts that confine you. The next time you feel withdrawn, uninterested, preoccupied, or overwhelmed, try giving the frightened parts of your personality the strongest challenge you can. Open yourself to someone. Open your heart and share your attention. Share the precious presence you are in the Earth school. See what you can learn about yourself. See what you can contribute to others.

You may also want to look at other frightened parts of your personality that could be keeping you from connecting with your heart, such those that are extroverted, the life of the party, gregarious, full of themselves, and too busy to answer an email that obviously doesn’t pertain to them.

Life beyond the reef is amazing.

Love.
Linda & Gary

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YOUR BUCKET LIST

YOUR BUCKET LIST

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Do you have a bucket list? Five-sensory humans think of physical experiences they want before they die, for example, parachuting, mountain climbing, or going to Paris. The parts of their personalities that originate in fear need experiences like these to make themselves feel valuable. Multisensory humans think of the contributions they can make to others and the world before their souls return to nonphysical reality, for example, tenderness, compassion, patience, and gratitude. The parts of their personalities that originate in love contribute these things continually, and contributing them brings meaning, purpose, and fulfillment to the personality.

As a personality ponders its limited time on the Earth, it is able to compare more clearly the experiences that it longs for from love and the experiences it desires from fear. Five-sensory bucket lists cannot satisfy multisensory humans, and multisensory bucket lists cannot satisfy five-sensory humans. Their perceptions, aspirations, and intentions are different.
A trip to Paris or sailing on an ocean are not always distractions from your fulfillment. But sometimes they are. Let meaning be your guide. Review your bucket list if you have one, or experiment with writing one. Then consider whether the goals on it are worthy of your remaining time in the Earth school.
Love.
Linda & Gary

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Miracle

The Miracle Of The Coronavirus – Part 1

The Miracle Of The Coronavirus – Part 1

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Creating authentic power requires distinguishing love from fear in yourself and choosing love no matter what is happening inside you or what is happening outside. Our evolution now requires us to create authentic power. The coronavirus is teaching us how to do that. The reality of the coronavirus is often lost in the fear of it (including denial). The reality of the coronavirus is that no one is immune to it, and it is extremely contagious. The mortality rate of the coronavirus is much lower than small pox or bubonic plague, yet it is a deadly threat. That reality demands that we bring our fears into our awareness so that we can choose responsibly between our fears on the one hand and love on the other. This is important because not only your health depends upon your choices, but also the health of others.

In other words, the coronavirus is the perfect teacher of responsibility. The coronavirus is contagious days before its symptoms appear in you. You do not know when you become infected! During that time you can infect others without knowing it and without them knowing it (because they do not know when they become infected, either), and they can (will) very quickly infect others and on and on and on and on. These are the things that make the coronavirus very dangerous. It is extremely contagious, everyone can unknowingly infect anyone else, and it can kill you. In other words, if you mindlessly endanger yourself, you mindlessly endanger others. If others recklessly endanger themselves, they recklessly endanger you. To echo Lakota wisdom, the health of one is the health of all, and the illness of one is the illness of all.

The coronavirus teaches us the most basic lesson about love and fear. To slow the spread of the coronavirus I must isolate myself from you and keep a distance. Yet these are behaviors of fear. How can I care for you and isolate myself from you at the same time? How can I love you and keep a distance from you at the same time? This is the contradiction that makes the coronavirus the perfect teacher of all that is truly valuable. There is only one alternative to all this. That is love.

Isolation requires me to proactively love you (there is no other way of loving), for example, calling on the phone, waving from a window, sending a text and more with the conscious intention of love. It requires you to proactively love me. Individuals in fear do not love accidentally. Love requires a conscious choice when fear is present.

Do you mindlessly distract yourself with food, television, or games in your isolation? With obsessions, compulsions, or addictions? Are they satisfying? These are the things that isolate you from yourself as well as from others. Do you look for things to do that are meaningful and rewarding? When you isolate yourself because you care about others, you make the big choice, the most important choice, the choice you were born to make. As you make it again and again, you move beyond the control of fear and into the territory of love, beyond the desert of emptiness and into the ocean of meaning. We were born to love one another. That is why it feels so good.

The coronavirus makes all this evident. It gives all eight billion of us opportunities to choose love instead of fear (to create authentic power) in the same context at the same time. It is the perfect gift for an emerging human species unlike any before. We are that species.

This is the miracle of the coronavirus.

Love

Linda & Gary

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