The ocean takes care of each wave till it gets to shore.
Rumi
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Author Archives: naturalbridgeslearning
Response
Responsibility is not any one particular response
Responsibility is the ability to respond.
No one can tell us what our responsibility is.
We must tell ourselves
When we choose our response.
LA
Photo LA/HGC
The Next Moment
The Next Moment
What does the next moment hold when the present holds pain, or grief, or regret, or disappointment?
The pain, grief, regret or disappointment slides into
the next moment, which then holds healing, awareness, the reminder of completeness.
Like the two-sided coin, there are two sides to every moment. Just that quick, on the one side we can see, if we choose, light, healing, and awareness brightening. On the other side we can see, if we choose, darkness, difficulty, and confusion, indicating the need to adjust the path ahead toward light.
Transformation is the willingness to see this other side.
LA
Photo LA
The Day Breaks
Reply
Pictured: Rare Snowflake Flower
Letter to a Friend
I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep.
There is nothing I can give you which you have not got; but there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. No Heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take Heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace!
The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see; and to see, we have only to look.
Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the Angel’s hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty: believe me, that angel’s hand is there; the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing Presence. Our joys, too: be not content with them as joys, they too conceal diviner gifts.
Life is so full of meaning and of purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering that you will find that earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage, then to claim it: that is all! But courage you have; and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, wending through unknown country, home.
And so, at this Christmas time, I greet you; not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem, and with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.
Fra Giovanni Christmas Eve 1513
The Positive Opposite
Distancing ourselves from the negative in life does not mean sinking heads in the sand, denying, resisting, ignoring, or otherwise refusing to pay attention to the negative.
Distancing from the negative includes acknowledging the inevitable negative conditions in life, and then turning to the positive. Turning to the positive is how we distance ourselves from the negative. The positive realm is the only effective realm in which we can get to work relieving the negative.
We cannot create the positive, i.e. the solution, by continuing to focus negatively on the negative. And, we cannot create the positive if we ignore the negative.
Don’t wallow in the negative. We can go there, we can acknowledge the negative, we must acknowledge the negative, for that acknowledgment is crucial in creating and strengthening the desire for the positive opposite.
LA
Photo LA
Joy
Joy.
Joy is not happiness, necessarily.
Joy can be found in every emotion.
Joy is the fullness of life.
Even in death joy can be present.
When love, heart, and hands ease a passing, joy rejoices.
LA
Photo LA
Learning Through Pain
Some lessons are learned best through pain, some lessons are learned only through pain.
There is nothing like pain that can slap us to attention.
Physical, emotional, spiritual, psychic; you name it, pain can course through the pathways of human experience and instantly stop our lives.
Then what? Many of us, much of the time, want only to alleviate the pain, nothing more.
“Just make it stop.”
We can run from it, we can muffle it, we can avoid it, we can cover it, we can deny it, we can make it “go away”, we can think it went away.
Until we learn what there is to learn from our pain, it is only in hiding, and will come again.
Half a life can go by; a whole life can pass. Our pain will not stop until it has imparted its lesson. Rather, the pain will continue until the lesson is accepted.
And then we learn.
LA
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Natural Bridges Learning 