Snips

Watch out for shame. Many systems and people reek of shame. They are controlled by shame and may want us to play their game with them. They may be hoping to hook us and control us through shame.
We don't have to fall into their shame. Instead, we'll take the good feelings -- self-acceptance, love, and nurturing.
Compulsive behaviors, sexually addictive behaviors, overeating, chemical abuse, and addictive gambling are shame-based behaviors. If we participate in them, we will feel ashamed. It's inevitable. We need to watch out for addictive and other compulsive behaviors because those will immerse us in shame.
Our past, and the brainwashing we may have had that imposed "original shame" upon us, may try to put shame on us. This can happen when we're all alone, walking through the grocery store or just quietly going about living our life. Don't think... Don't feel... Don't grow or change... Don't be alive... Don't live life... Be ashamed!
Be done with shame. Attack shame. Go to war with it. Learn to recognize it and avoid it like the plague.
Today, I will deliberately refuse to get caught up in the shame floating around in the world. If I cannot resist it, I will feel it, accept it, and then be done with it as quickly as possible. God, help me know that it's okay to love myself and help me to refuse to submit to shame. If I get off course, help me learn to change shame into guilt, correct the behavior, and move forward with my life in immediate self-love.
Melody Beattie ©

"We are fragments of something whose size and shape we do not know, but as fragments of it, we are essential to its wholeness. This means that you and I have an assignment, an opportunity, a call to the light. There are dark places where love is not yet felt and known and expressed in our world, and it is our opportunity to bring the light into those places. It is in this way that we begin to discover and feel God's presence, and we begin to find a deeper relationship with God."
Mary Manin Morrissey

AA Thought for the Day / "No matter how much one wishes to try, how can he turn his own will and his own life over to the care of whatever God he thinks there is? A beginning, even the smallest, is all that is needed. Once we have placed the key of willingness in the lock, and have the door ever so slightly open, we find that we can always open it some more." / As Bill Sees It, p. 122

On the path of evolution, we move from being a willing and obedient member of the group to wanting to take control over our own lives. This is a necessary but difficult transition.
Andrew Schneider says, "At this point we are afraid of being ourselves. We are afraid of being unique and different. We are afraid of being individually powerful, and even successful. For all of these things stand against the old ways that told us that conformity was right and individualism was wrong."
For as long as we possibly can, we make a compromise. We try to live both lives - the dependent tribal life and the independent personal life - as contradictory and opposite as they are.
We want approval from others. We want to be accepted and popular. We seek this comfort to overcome our fear and feel more secure. ...So, at times when we conform, we don’t feel the fear of living. But we might lose the new sense of adventure, discovery, daring and enthusiasm for life that the questioning and questing have brought us.
Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in action and in thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate towards yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.
Tao Te Ching

You have to learn to seek first the kingdom of heaven, the place of stillness and quiet at the highest level of which you are capable, and then the heavenly influences can pour into you, recreate you and use you for the salvation of all human kind.
White Eagle

"The miracle is not to walk on water, but to walk with love on earth - as if your feet are kissing the ground."
Thich Nhat Hanh