THE DAILY GURU

"Go For Passion!"
"There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life."
-- Frederico Fellini

How do you ration your passion?
In what situations have you experienced your life to the fullest? Do you live your passion as fully as you can? How do you limit your experience of passion?
Passion emerges when your essence expresses itself. How do you stop yourself from fully expressing who you are?

"Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark."
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

"We could hardly wait to get up in the morning."
-- Wilbur Wright

THE DAILY GURU

"Work With Tension"

"You never will be the person you can be if pressure, tension and discipline are taken out of your life."
-- James G. Bilkey

We need tension in our lives. It’s the force of personal evolution -- it sparks creativity and higher consciousness. If we’re not comfortable with a situation, we try to improve it, right?

Tension arises through our experience of opposites. These opposites fight each other as each one struggles for dominance. Tension is transformed when two opposite dimensions of reality are brought together in balance and in wholeness.
Know that tension is an integral part of growth. Instead of avoiding or resisting tension when it arises, identify the opposing forces at play. Make space for each of them to be there together and the tension will transform.

We encounter tensions between positives and negatives, mind and body, self and environment, self and others, and personality and soul – the dualities in our lives.

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone."
-- Neale Donald Walsch

THE DAILY GURU

"There's Light In The Darkness"

"Each difficult moment has the potential to open my eyes and open my heart."
-- Myla Kabat-Zinn

"Even the most daring and accomplished people have undergone tremendous difficulty.
In fact, the more successful they became, the more they attributed their success to the lessons learned during their most difficult times.
Adversity is our teacher. When we view adversity as a guide towards greater inner growth, we will then learn to accept the wisdom our soul came into this life to learn."
-- Barbara Rose

"No matter what difficulty you are facing, it is coming from Divine Light to bring you to a higher place within.
Write down every conceivable reason that this situation can contribute towards your growth.
Write down every way this experience can possibly set the stage for serving to uplift others.
When you are complete, and have come to the other side of this experience, you will then know 'why' it happened."
-- Barbara Rose

"The period of greatest gain in knowledge and experience is the most difficult period in one’s life."
-- Dalai Lama

THE DAILY GURU.

"Tune Into The Inner Critic"

"A critic is a legless man who teaches running."
-- Channing Pollock

Are you aware of your inner critic?

We all have this voice that tells us we are bad, stupid, clumsy, cowardly.... Although its intent is to help us succeed, the harsh self talk of our critic just serves to drain our energy and lower our morale and immune system.

To defuse the inner critic, we need to recognize when the critic is speaking. We need to know that this voice does not necessarily speak for who we really are. This is an old pattern that may no longer be serving us. We want to open to the possibility that the words are not likely true. We can ask ourselves, "Are these words helpful?"

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Abilities wither under faultfinding, blossom with encouragement."
-- Donald A. Laird

"Never react emotionally to criticism. Analyze yourself to determine whether it is justified. If it is, correct yourself. Otherwise, go on about your business."
-- Norman Vincent Peale

THE DAILY GURU.

"The Key To Creativity"
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
-- Albert Einstein

Do you know the key to creativity?
It rhymes with weed. It produces the oak tree. We often eat it or grind it up for flour. It can mean cause or origination. You guessed it. It is SEED.
Our minds love to associate one thing to another. But as we get stuck in very fixed patterns of thinking, we think of fewer and fewer connections. We are ruled by habits, associations and automatic responses. So we must stimulate our thinking with lots of different seeds to chart new paths in our brains.

"Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive."
-- Napoleon Hill

"Anyone can look for fashion in a boutique or history in a museum. The creative explorer looks for history in a hardware store and fashion in an airport."
-- Robert Wieder

THE DAILY GURU

"Don't Think Away Your Feelings"
"When emotions are managed by the heart, they heighten your awareness of the world around you and add sparkle to life. The result is new intelligence and a new view of life."
-- Doc Childre and Howard Martin

How do you intellectualize your emotions?
Many of us live so much in our heads that we intellectualize our emotions. We analyze, rationalize and explain them away so quickly that we don’t actually experience them.
Learn to honour your emotions at all times by being willing to feel them. Of course, you may need to exercise some judgment over how and when you express them.

"Learning to be aware of feelings, how they arise and how to use them creatively so they guide us to happiness, is an essential lifetime skill."
-- Joan Borysenko

THE DAILY GURU

"Don't Avoid The Void"

"When we feel stuck, going nowhere -- even starting to slip backward -- we may actually be backing up to get a running start."
-- Dan Millman

To change, we must go through a transition zone. It's not easy being in transition.
Thoughts, beliefs and habits are all in flux. It can create a sense of groundlessness, of being in a void that can be quite uncomfortable.

When we're in the void, our first impulse will be to revert to old habits because they feel comfortable.

Our goal is to hang in there until the change is complete.

Knowing that TRANSITIONS ARE PART OF THE CHANGE PROCESS helps us muster the courage to put up with the discomfort, the uneasiness, the void.
Change requires a letting go of what we've always known and done to allow in something new.
We need to trust ourselves and higher forces to unfold a new reality for us.

"Every positive change - every jump to a higher level of energy and awareness - involves a rite of passage.
Each time to ascend to a higher rung on the ladder of personal evolution, we must go through a period of discomfort, of initiation.
I have never found an exception."
-- Dan Millman