Discover your true self by searching out all of you. Become willing to see the truth of who you are in entirety, no matter how unpleasant the findings. Search the nooks and crannies of your character with the intention of clearing it away. Once cleared, you have unlimited access to your original light at birth: The light of love. You’ve always been love and you will always be love, and virtue. The love and virtue may have been hidden under flawed traits, ones that hardened when other truths were making decisions for you in order to survive and caused you to treat yourself or someone else unkindly.

Bestow the happy, the love, upon every person you meet. Do not parcel it out like candy for a well-behaved child, casting it upon those you judge as worthy of it. Do not deliver it based on how you think it will be received or responded to. That’s strings attached love, conditional. Do not hold your love in reserve waiting for the day your beloved will prove to you that they deserve it. You are short selling yourself and the world around you if you impart your love like this.

As a sober alcoholic married to another sober alcoholic, and with mental illness in our families, I worry about the road my children may travel. I If you suffer from mental illness and/or addiction, or have these issues in your family, you may be concerned as well.

Forcing another person to change using the razor-sharp, double-edge sword of shame cuts you and them down simultaneously. It boomerangs as fast as an Aboriginal Australian huntsman can throw it, and only makes you feel worse. You cannot beat shame at its own game. Shaming someone into “right” behavior never works. Education, empowerment, and truthful discussions encourage accountability which lead to change, personally and collectively. The Shame Game does not.

Blending your light and your darkness in a way that creates self-worth is the art of living.

Your shadow and your shine coexist like decaying weeds among vibrant wildflowers, each one serves the whole. Witness your field of colorful emotions mix into a shade of gray; gray is the middle space where the opportunity for growth lies. It’s the color of both ash and of iron, the color of pain and strength.

We must be the ash to become the iron.

We are entering an era of higher consciousness, an enlightenment period where greed and ego will be replaced with compassion and humility, and most of all, with love.

Will you join in the foremost movement of all time: The Movement of Heart and Soul? You don’t need a million followers on Tik Tok to do it. You just need to connect with love.

Love is a necessity. It is nonnegotiable. It’s constantly seeking you, or rather, hoping you will notice it. Love has been seeking you since the day you were born and will never turn its back on you, no matter how often you turn your back on it.

Buddhist philosophy suggests we check all communication through this test: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? Most likely what you feel you need to say will not pass at least one of these considerations.

Most things do not need to be said and if they do, they probably do not need to be said by us. (Some things absolutely do need to be said. Our job is to discern between the two.) Emotionally mature humans understand that the less they say, the better. The provocation to speak typically arises to fill a personal need, and often times we aren’t thinking much about how the person is going to receive the message. We tell ourselves that people need to hear things for their own good but if we get honest, it’s to calm a fear and quell an anxiety or to prove something to somebody, to get them to see and hear us.

A precious metal such as titanium is known to have integrity. Highly durable, it can withstand extreme heat without melting. It has the ability to tolerate intense pressure and remain true to form. Let your love persevere like titanium, with grit, stamina, and resilience—under all conditions.

We are being called, as a humanity, to live and to love with this level of emotional integrity.

Living and loving with emotional integrity each day, through every situation in life, will create an uninterrupted belief in your graciousness and your goodness, so much so that you will no longer doubt your thought patterns and actions.

The word confrontation evokes an aggressive, oppositional feeling. We compare it to an argument. However, dispute is only one definition of confrontation and a sacrificial one at that. We sacrifice solution when we enter conversations aggressively and with opposition. A more palatable definition of confrontation is a face-to-face meeting. That’s it, a simple one-on-one talk. Replace the word confront with approach.

Go, go, go. That’s me, always on the move.

Sometimes I need to relax and appreciate what I’ve done instead of rapidly moving on to the next thing; I have to consciously tell myself to stop and enjoy “A Period of Appreciation.”

I use this time to just be, witness my self-worth, feel my self-love, and honor the core of who I am. Once these stones are in place, the foundation is set to move on to the next venture. This period of appreciation is vital for future success. If I skip this time of self-reflection and do not reup my sense of goodness, I charge forward in a desperate attempt to achieve in order to prove my worth to myself and others. This pathetic energy, the one reeking of ego, most likely will not produce the desired result.

Do you feel bad for “putting someone out” when you need help? Feeling bad when someone does something kind or goes out of their way for you is a sign you are about to take their power away. Refusing help because you are worried it will make others uncomfortable is doing them a disservice—you eliminate their choice to meet you in your suffering and to help you. You deny them the opportunity to practice compassion and love, and to find connection.

Can sharing in joy and in suffering with compassion replace our current cues for rewards like consumerism, drug addiction, and money? Can seeking connection on a consistent basis create an addiction to morality, purposeful living, and higher consciousness, instead of short-lived, often impulsive, shallow gratification? Can we swap the motivation which drives harmful actions (the ones we choose while in hot pursuit of a quick fix) for lasting, meaningful connection?

When tasked with making difficult decisions in your relationships, the principal question to consider is: Will this decision serve the highest good of myself and others?

The answer to this question is reached by intermixing guidance from my Higher Power, my Higher Self, and wise friends; I find a middle of the road solution, choosing the route that does not only benefit me, does not only benefit others, but benefits both of us. Seeking action which benefits everyone is always the best action to take, and these actions are typically deliberate, and always compassionate.

Is your value based on the number of birthday cards you receive each year or the texts you get on other important dates? Does proof of your worth arrive in the form of gifts and compliments or do you believe people love you regardless of gestures? Do you know whom reached out to whom last?

If so, you are functioning from a place of self-centered fear and not from wholehearted love. You are keeping score; therefore, you cannot live freely. Allowing someone’s behavior to dictate your worth means you give away your power to love as you were meant to, as the light-filled soul of generosity and compassion that you are.

Expectations are at the heart of disappointment, and disconnection. We must learn to manage expectations if we want to feel loving partnership with ourselves and others.

I often live in delusion, believing that someone is capable of a certain emotion or of changing, or that they are interested in becoming capable when they aren’t. When I learn they cannot or will not do for me what I want them to, I get resentful and pull away.

Let humanity be grounded not in physical, political, sexual, or ideological similarity. Rather, let diversity be the jumping off point for unity, dissonance no longer threatening the human tie that binds. Let’s create a playground to explore, to investigate our differences, and become comfortable enough in our own skin to not reject each other because of those differences.

The weaving together of strong and opposing yet valid opinions, ideas, and feelings broadens our heart space, and if we allow it, can lead to peaceful cohabitation. Like a stack of multicolored pick-up sticks, or the suits in a deck of cards, we can share similar qualities while maintaining our individual identities. Secure in identity, we feel less threatened by others and safe to join in harmonious camaraderie.

Are you so comfortable in longing that when you achieve a goal you choose to yearn for more instead of appreciating how far you’ve come? Do you constantly want and need more instead of savoring what you have right now? Does happiness seem ever-elusive, always slightly out of reach? Happiness is a mindset, not a destination. We deludedly think the next thing will make us happy. I’ll be happy when I get married; I’ll be happy when I have kids; I’ll be happy when I get the dream job. You will not get those things without being happy first.

Has anyone been offended when you gave her or him a compliment? Did they ask you to take it back? I bet they didn’t, and I would place a bigger wager they smiled, thanked you, and left the exchange feeling good about themselves and about humanity. They may have even walked away wondering why they don’t do those kinds of good-natured things.

Who are you? How honest are you about your character, the inner workings of your heart and mind? It’s easier to portray an outward show of honesty than it is to get honest within. It’s convenient to be dishonest with myself about why I do certain things. I’m not talking about dishonesty such as giving an excuse for why you don’t want to go to the high school reunion. I’m talking about dishonesty as it relates to what we tell ourselves about personal fears or deficiencies, and about motives.

Have you found your higher purpose, your reason for being? True purpose is discovered in connection with your truth, your authenticity. While attempting to locate your purpose, think about something that catches your attention, something that gets you going. Now think about if you could get involved with that thing on an impactful level. Notice the feeling inside. Is the feeling the same as when packing your bathing suit and sunscreen for Hawaii or while watching your children open gifts on their birthday? Does it give you butterflies or the chills? Does it nourish your soul?