Thursday, January 15, 2009

What Season Are You In?



Today is so frosty & c-o-l-d. COLD. I have to venture out into the world today. Have to? I get to. Summer seems so far away, but memories of it keep me warm. As does my toasty wood stove. So much of what we experience in this world is in our own world in our head. It goes through our filters and we decide how to interpret it.

Victor Frankl, was a Holocaust survivor and a psychiatrist. In his book, Man's Search for Meaning, he describes a day of digging in the frozen ground with the rest of the prisoners. It was backbreaking work under inhumane conditions. But in his mind he was with his wife feeling absolute LOVE. And warmth. He never saw her again, and he wouldn't know for years that she had already been exterminated, but for that moment, she was there with him. What he says in his book is that when all else is taken away from us: creature comforts, materials things, our family, and our freedom we still have the ability to choose your attitude and what you focus on.

The other thing is this: strip everything away and there is still love. You have the ability to feel it now at anytime. It is who we are at our core, it is what we are made up of. No matter what the circumstances, no matter what season you're in or how far away it seems, there is always LOVE. All it takes is the sincere prayer to open your heart to it and invite it in. As Rumi says,

LOVE is the religion in me.

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