Posted by Dr. Parthenia in Class Articles

Eat, Pray, Love teaches the art of pleasure and devotion and how to balance the two.  The following are quotes I felt were profound enough to share with those who love reading great books as well as those who do not take the time to enjoy reading a good book, but who just might after perusing the following feast of food for the mind. – Dr. Grant.

Wars are fought over two things: “How much do you love me?” and “Who’s in charge?” (157).

All the sorrow and trouble in the world is caused by unhappy people … Happiness is the consequence of personal effort … You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings … I can see exactly where my episodes of unhappiness have brought suffering or distress or (at the very least) inconvenience to those around me.  The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world.  Clearing out all of your misery gets you out of the way.  You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else.  Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people … When you set out in the world to help yourself, you inevitably end up helping everybody (274, 260-261).

Look for God, suggests my Guru.  Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water …  Swamiji demanded enthusiasm, commitment and self control … Swamiji called silence the only true religion … God dwells within you, as you … to know God, you need only to renounce one thing – your sense of division from him (190-191, 156, 166) … In your service to your nephew, you are serving God … There, then.  He is your Krishna, your beloved (170).

Note: Once Elizabeth goes to an ashram in India directly from her stay in Italy, where she spent her time over indulging in food, all she wanted to do when she arrived at the ashram was eat, so Richard, a guy there from Texas, nicknamed her “Groceries.”

Stay put, Groceries, he said. “Forget about sightseeing – you got the rest of your life for that. You’re on a spiritual journey, baby. Don’t only go halfway to your potential. You got a personal invitation from God here – you really gonna turn that away? … You go sit your lily-white ass down in that meditation cave every day for the next three months and I promise you this – you’re gonna start seeing some stuff that’s so damn beautiful it’ll make you wanna throw rocks at the Taj Mahal …  If you can plant yourself in stillness long enough, you will, in time, experience the truth that everything (both uncomfortable and lovely) does eventually pass.  “The world is afflicted with death and decay, therefore the wise do not grieve, knowing the terms of the world,” says an old Buddhist teaching. In other words: Get used to it.  So I did it.  In stillness, I watched myself get eaten by mosquitoes. To be honest, part of me was wondering what this little macho experiment was meant to prove, but another part of me well knew – it was a beginner’s attempt at self mastery.  If I could sit through this non-lethal physical discomfort, then what other discomforts might I someday be able to sit through.  What about emotional discomforts, which are even harder for me to endure.  What about jealousy, anger, fear, disappointment, loneliness, shame, boredom (171, 174)?

In the search for God, you revert from what attracts you and swim toward that which is difficult … the devout of this world perform their rituals without guarantee that anything good will come of it … Devotion is diligence without assurance … The decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable .. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch.  Faith is walking face first and full speed into the dark … I couldn’t care less about evidence and proof and assurances.  I just want God.  I want God inside me.  I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself in water (175-176).

There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under my jurisdiction.  There are certain lottery tickets I can buy, thereby increasing my odds of finding contentment.  I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with.  I can select what I eat and read and study. I can choose how I’m going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life – whether I will see them as curses or opportunities (and on the occasions when I can’t rise to the most optimistic viewpoint, because I’m feeling too damn sorry for myself, I can choose to keep trying to change my outlook).  I can choose my words and tone of voice in which I speak to others.  And most of all, I can choose my thoughts (177).  He said, “Groceries, you need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select what clothes you gonna wear every day.  This is a power you can cultivate.  If you want to control things in life so bad, work on the mind.  That’s the only thing you should be trying to control. Drop everything else but that because if you can’t learn to master your thinking, you’re in deep trouble forever” (178).

Dear Lord, please show me everything I need to understand about forgiveness and surrender … The rules of transcendence insist that you will not advance even one inch closer to divinity as long as you cling to even one last seductive thread of blame. As smoking is to the lungs, so is resentment to the soul; even one puff of it is bad for you…. This is what rituals are for.  We do spiritual ceremonies … to create a safe resting place for your most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have to haul those feelings around with us, weighing us down … If you bring the right earnestness to your homemade ceremony, God will provide the grace.  And that is why we need God.  Keep cultivating gratitude … Next lifetime you might come back as one of those poor Indian women busting up rocks by the side of the road and find out life ain’t so much fun … keep cultivating gratitude … (185, 187, 188).

“The way my marriage ended is just an open wound that never goes away” …

“If you clear out all that space in your mind that you’re sing right now to obsess about this guy [or whatever] you’ll have a vacuum there, an open spot – a doorway.  And guess what the universe will do with that doorway?  It will rush in – God will rush in – and fill you with more love than you ever dreamed.  Stop using David to block that door.  Let it go.”

“But I wish me and David could –“

He cuts me off.  “See, now that’s your problem. You’re wishing too much, baby.  You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be” (150) … “If you insist,” said Richard. “If that’s how you’ve decided to think about it, don’t let me spoil your party (183).

We must get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something … Do not apologize for crying.  Without this emotion, we are only robots (277, 86).

A true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life … They tear down your walls and smack you awake … Soul mates come into your life to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it.  The process is too painful (149).

At some point, as Richard keeps telling me, you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you. Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend  … The very fact that this world is so challenging is exactly why you sometimes must reach out of its jurisdiction for help, appealing to a higher authority in order to find comfort.   (155, 55, 53).

Keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it’s like you have four legs, instead of two. That way you can stay in the world.  But you must stop looking at the world through your head.  You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God (27).

I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential.  I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and then I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism (285).

“I disappear into the person I love … the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else … I was at a party and a guy I barely knew said to me, “You know, you seem like a completely different person, now that you’re with this new boyfriend.  You used to look like your husband, but now you look like David.  You even dress like him and talk like him.  You know how some people look like their dogs.  I think maybe you always look like your men (65).”

“Dear God I could use a break from this cycle, to give myself some space to discover what I look like and talk like when I’m not trying to merge with someone.  And also, let’s be honest – it might be a generous public service for me to leave intimacy alone for a while … Think of it this way – if you’d had ten serious traffic accidents in a row, wouldn’t they eventually take your driver’s license away? Wouldn’t you kind of what them to” (66)?

I’m choosing happiness over suffering.  I’m making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet to come surprises (85).

To feel physically comfortable with someone else’s body is not a decision you can make.  It has very little to do with how two people think or act or talk or even look.  The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not.  When it isn’t there (as I have learned in the past, with heartbreaking clarity) you can no more force it to exist than a surgeon can force a patient’s body to accept a kidney from the wrong donor.  My friend Annie says it all comes down to one simple question. “Do you want your belly pressed against this person’s belly forever – or not?  (294).

When that patriarchal system was (rightfully) dismantled, it was not necessarily replaced by another form of protection … I have given myself away in love many time, merely for the sake of love.  And I’ve given away the farm sometimes in the process.  If I am truly to become an autonomous woman, then I must take over the role of being my own guardian … my own husband … and my own father, too.  That is why I sent myself to bed that night alone.  Because I felt it was too soon for me to be receiving a gentleman suitor (286).

I have never been loved and adored like this before by anyone, never with such pleasure and single-minded concentration.  Never have I been so unpeeled, revealed, unfurled and hurled through the event of lovemaking (294). He wanted absolutely nothing from me whatsoever except permission to adore me for as long as I wanted him to.  Were those terms acceptable to me? (288).

“Darling, for you, I am even willing to suffer.  Whatever pain happens to us in the future, I accept it already, just for the pleasure of being with you now … For some reason, I feel the same way about you that I felt about my kids when they were small – that it wasn’t their job to love me; it was my job to love them. You can decide to feel however you want to, but I love you and I will always love you.  Even if we never see each other again, you already brought me back to life and that’s a lot” (311, 292).

I looked at each thought, each unit of sorrow, shame, anger and grief and I acknowledged its existence and felt … its horrible pain. And then I would tell [it] “It’s OK. I love you.  I accept you.  Come into my heart now.  It’s over … You are forgiven. You are a part of me.  You can rest now. It’s over.  When all of this was finished, I was empty. Nothing was fighting in my mind anymore.  I looked into my heart, at my own goodness, and I saw its capacity … my heart was not even nearly full … my heart could easily have received and forgiven even more. Its love was infinite. I knew then that this is how God loves us all and receives us all, and that there is no such thing in this universe as hell, except maybe in our own terrified minds.  Because if even one broken and limited human being could experience even one such episode of absolute forgiveness and acceptance of her own self, then imagine … what God, in all His eternal compassion, can forgive and accept … I also knew that I would have to keep dealing with these thoughts again and again … until I changed my whole life.  And that this would be difficult and exhausting to do.  But my heart said … “I love you, I will never leave you, I will always take care of you” (327-328).

When I get lonely these days, I think:  So be lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it for once in your life.  Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings” (65).

It’s easy to pray when you’re in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments … You meet some people who seem to be able to gracefully accept the terms upon which the universe operates and who genuinely don’t seem troubled by its paradoxes and injustices.  I have a friend whose grandmother used to tell her, “There’s no trouble in this world so serious that it can’t be cured with a hot bath, a glass of whiskey and the Book of Common Prayer.” For some people that is truly enough.  For others, more drastic measures are required (154).

After Buddha awoke into enlightenment he said “This cannot be taught.” But then he changed his mind and decided … to teach the practice of meditation to a small handful of students.  He knew there would only be a meager percentage of people who would be served by (or interested in) his teachings. Most of humanity, he said, have eyes that are so caked shut with the dust of deception they will never see the truth, no matter who tries to help them. A few others … are so naturally clear eyed and calm already they need no instruction or assistance whatsoever. But then there are those whose eyes are just slightly caked with dust, and who might, with the help of the right master, be taught to see more clearly someday.  The Buddha decided he would become a teacher for the benefit of that minority – for those of little dust” (155).

[An Italian view of Americans]: “Americans don’t know how to do nothing …” Italians understand “the art of making something out of nothing … l’arte d’arrangiarsi.”  The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life’s achievement. (61). All Americans are repressed, which makes them dangerous and potentially deadly when they do blow up … a savage people” (61, 58).

Because the world is so corrupted and nothing in this world can be trusted … this is why Barzini says Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors .. but will never tolerate incompetent opera singers, actors, cooks, tailors .. In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud sometimes only beauty can be trusted.  Only artistic excellence is incorruptible.  Pleasure cannot be bargained down.  And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real … What can you do in such an environment to hold a sense of your individual human dignity.  Maybe nothing.  Maybe nothing except, perhaps, to pride yourself on the fact that you always fillet your fish with perfection, or that you make the lightest ricotta in the world town? … The appreciation of pleasure can be an anchor of one’s humanity (114-115).

Look around at these good Italian men.  See how open they are to their feelings and how lovingly they participate in their families.  See the regard and the respect they hold for the women and children in their lives.  Don’t’ believe what you read in the papers, Liz. This country is doing very well (110).

A major obstacle in my pursuit of pleasure was my ingrained sense of Puritan guilt.  Do I really deserve this pleasure?  This is very American too – the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness …Advertising understands this: You deserve a break today … this Bud’s for you … because I’m worth it. (62).

The Bhagavad Gita – that ancient Indian Yogic text – says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection (95).

YOGA in Sanskrit, can be translated as “union.”  The task at hand in Yoga is to find union – between mind and body, between the individual and her God, between our thoughts and the source of our thoughts, between teacher and student, and even between ourselves and sometimes hard-to-bend neighbors … The ancients developed these physical stretches not for personal fitness but to loosen up their muscles and minds in order to prepare them for meditation … Yoga also means trying to find God through meditation, through scholarly study, through the practice of silence, through devotional service or through mantras (121).

The Yogic path is about disentangling the built in glitches of the human condition, which I’m going to over simply define here as the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment … Desire is the design flaw … We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character.  We don’t realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme Self who is eternally at peace.  That supreme Self is our true identity, universal and divine.  Before you realize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair, a notion nicely expressed in this exasperated line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: “You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not (122).

We are all one and divinity abides within us all equally …everything is God in disguise.  But the Yogis believe a human life is a very special opportunity, because only in a human form and only with a human mind can God realization ever occur … “Our whole business therefore in this life,” wrote St. Augustine, rather Yogically, “is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen” (123).

A great Yogi is anyone who has achieved the permanent state of enlightened bliss. A guru is a great Yogi who can actually pass that state on to others.  The word guru is composed of two Sanskrit syllables.  The first means “darkness,” the second means “light.”  Out of the darkness and into the light … You come to your Guru, then, not only to receive lessons, as from any teacher, but to actually receive the Guru’s state of grace … You come to a Guru with the hope that the merits of your master will reveal to you your own hidden greatness (123,124).

Prayer is the act of talking to God, while meditation is the act of listening.

Ham-sa is Sanskrit for “I am that, I am Divine, I am with God, I am an expression of God, I am not separate, I am not alone, I am not this limited illusion of an individual (141, 142).  The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude.  The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That’s where you need to go (141).

Remember what they say, the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else (189).

Your treasure – your perfection – is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the world and go and enter into the silence of the heart. The supreme energy of the divine will take you there (197).

According to mystics the search for divine bliss is the entire purpose of human life. This is why we all chose to be born, and this is why all the suffering and pain of life on earth is worthwhile – just for the chance to experience this infinite love.  And once you have found this divinity within, can you hold it?  Because if you can … bliss (197).

Why have I been chasing happiness my whole life when bliss was here the entire time? … You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are already here (200).

Flexibility is just as essential for Divinity as is discipline … practice holding equilibrium internally – no matter what insanity is transpiring out there (206).

The hub of calmness – that’s your heart. That’s where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that center and you’ll always find peace (207).

What I’m seeing in some of my friends … is a longing to have something to believe in. But this longing chafes against any number of obstacles, including their intellect and common sense.

His hands … were all pimped out with giant, gold rings and magic stones.  About seven rings total.  All of them with holy powers … To meditate, you only need to smile.  Smile with the face, smile with the mind, even smile in your liver and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy … [when you make a] serious face … you scare good energy away … This smile will make you a beautiful woman. This will give you power to be very pretty. You can use this power – pretty power – to get what you want in life . Never argue about God with people. Best thing to say is, “I agree with you” ((315, 231, 241).

He keeps his body strong, he says, by meditating every night before sleep and by pulling the healthy energy of the universe into his core.  He says that the human body is made of nothing more or less than the five elements of all creation – water, fire, wind, sky and earth – and all you have to do is concentrate on this reality during meditation and you will receive energy from all of these sources and you will stay strong … Everyone is out of balance; everyone needs equilibrium restored (142).

Man is a demon, man is a god. Both are true … both dark and light are equally present in all of us … it’s up to the individual (or the family, or the society) to decide what will be brought forth -  the virtues or the malevolence.  The madness of this planet is largely a result of human being’s difficulty in coming into virtuous balance with himself.  Lunacy (both collective and individual) results.

So what can be done about the craziness in the world?

Nothing, Ketut laughed, but with a dose of kindness.  This is the nature of the world. This is destiny.  Worry about your craziness only – this will create peace for you.”

But how should we find peace within ourselves? I asked Ketut.

“Meditation … the purpose of meditation is only happiness and peace … very easy. (251).

Yogic sages say that that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy (325)

.In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices (334).

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Excerpts compiled and arranged by Dr. Parthenia Onassis Grant

With the divorce rate at 68% and climbing, along with almost everyone we know openly admitting that the relationships they are in are either dysfunctional, abusive, unsupportive, manipulative, draining, or too demanding, we are in a relationship crisis unlike any other time in recorded history.   In fact, many young people, after looking at the failed marriages all around them, are opting to either put off marriage until they are in their 30′s or not to marry at all.   Others are beginning to question the sustainability of a patriarchal institution originally based on women as the property of their husbands.   As a result, the entire institution of marriage appears to be headed for a paradigm shift.   Moreover, the increasing propensity toward same sex couples appears to attest to the fact that traditional male-female relationships are at risk, or in the very least headed for an overhaul.   Some questions that naturally arise are: What is at the root of this crisis?   What can we do to heal the distrust and hurt that stands between men and women having inter-dependent versus co-dependent relationships?

Recently, I asked six critical thinking classes of approximately 300 students if they were in a functional, satisfying relationship with the opposite sex.   Not a single person raised a hand.   Last semester, out of six similar classes, when I asked that same question, one lady out of all six classes raised her hand and this was her second marriage.   As Marvin Gaye would say, “What’s going on?

It appears we are at a crossroad in human relationships.   We’ve tried women’s liberation and it isn’t working.   Men complain that too many women have become masculine, too independent and too distrustful of men, while women complain that too many men have become afraid of women; refuse or fail to give women the support they need; or have taken on feminine traits such as expecting the woman to take care of them financially; to pay when they go out on dates; to pursue the male; or to initiate within the relationship.

Answers may lie in looking at the out of control masculine principle in society today.   Originally, nature created a balance between the masculine and feminine energy that resides in both men and women.   Today, however, the out of control masculine energy, in both males and females, takes a tremendous toll, creating difficulty sustaining healthy, functional relationships.   The problem is that today both genders have lost sight of the basic function of the masculine and feminine principles:   Nature designed the masculine principle to initiate, protect and provide for the female that he chooses as a mate; whereas, the feminine principle was designed to be a receptive, nurturing, caretaker.

Nature set it up so that the male, as aggressor, initiator and hunter, would chase the chosen female, fighting off competition to gain or maintain the title of alpha male.   The winner walks away with the prized female.   Today, many men still engage in territorial battles over females with the prized female going to the guy with the best financial portfolio, fastest car, biggest house, best looking body, most charm, highest intellect, or most muscle.   Any combination of these assets assures the female that she and any future offspring will be taken care of while she is pregnant and while the child is young and dependent.   This symbiotic role was created to ensure the healthy survival of the species.

Even though many women today can financially provide for themselves and take care of their young, almost all of them confess that, ideally, they would prefer to raise a family with a strong male at the helm of the ship.   Moreover, even females who do not want children, still prefer a strong, alpha male.   Nature always seeks to balance itself out.   With that in mind, a man whose masculine energy is too feminine, cannot hold on to a female whose feminine side is in balance; she will be naturally drawn to her polar opposite, a more masculine male.   By the same token, a male whose masculine energy is balanced, will be naturally repelled by a female whose masculine energy is dominating her femininity.   With that in mind, it is easy to see that men who are attracted to other men are unconsciously seeking to compensate for an imbalance in their masculine energy which is too feminine.   By the same token, women who are attracted to other women tend to be dominated by their masculine sides and are attracted to the energy they need to balance out in themselves; the feminine.

In heterosexual relationships, females have an innate need to feel safe, special and desired; whereas, males have a need to be respected and appreciated.   In actuality, this is true of all human relationships.   At any rate, when this balance is stuck, a female will automatically respect the male, and will not hesitate to show her appreciation for him.

The question that pops up is how to figure out how to get ones needs met in a relationship, regardless of gender.   The answer lies in figuring out (by asking or through observation) which of the following five modalities makes one’s lover feel loved.

(1) Quality time; (2) gifts or tokens of appreciation (cards, phone calls, flowers, etc); (3) acts of service; (4) words of encouragement (men really have a need for this one); and (5) physical touch (non-intimate as well as intimate).

For example, if you are giving your lover gifts and what he/she needs, in order to feel loved, is for you to spend more quality time with him/her while doing things that he/she wants to do, not just what you want to do, then that person will not feel loved.

Much suffering in society ensues when the masculine and feminine energies in males and females are out of balance or when one person in the relationship is not getting his/her needs met. For instance, if the father does not assume his natural role as protector and provider of the family, the mother suffers by being thrust out of her feminine role of nurturer and caretaker by assuming the masculine role of sole provider and protector.   By necessity, someone other than the mother then has to take care of the children while she works.   If she has no family members or close friends to lovingly care for the children in her absence, the children often wind up casualties of physical and/or emotional abuse or neglect.

Moreover, when the father is absent from the house and does not create or maintain a close, bonded relationship with his offspring, children end up with abandonment issues that create insecurity, feelings of unworthiness, or of not being loveable.   In addition, boys with absent fathers have no role model to teach them what it is to be a man, while girls get left without a model of what it is like to be protected and provided for by a man.

If the father or mother is present but are abusive or controlling, due to the out of balance masculine, children will often end up with trust issues around the gender of the parent who was abusive, creating problems later.   In many cases, children will imitate the abusive parent, viewing that parent’s behavior as a model for how to treat the opposite sex or the same sex, depending on the situation; or, they will attract the same abusive qualities in a mate.

Even though many women today can financially provide for themselves and take care of their young, almost all of these women still confess to preferring a male who is a real man, while most men profess to wanting women whose feminine energy is balanced.

Thus, the solution lies in balancing the masculine and feminine sides in both men and women.   If the correct balance was 50/50, men and women would be androgynous with no noticeable difference in their energies other than the obvious physical differences due to males having an XY chromosome and females a matching XX chromosome.   Since the male does have an X chromosome, which is the female half and all fetuses start off female, it stands to reason that for males the percentage to be balanced would be around 70/30 masculine/feminine and for a women, 30/70 masculine/feminine.   For men, this balance is tempered by the feminine so that the male energy will not become too aggressive, insensitive, domineering or disdainful of the feminine principle.   For women, it is important that they have 30% male energy in order for them not to become too dependent and to enable them to be able to initiate action and make decisions.   Ultimately, when either sex falls too far below this ideal balance, within a relationship, this imbalance will automatically trigger an imbalance in the other partner. Again, this is because nature always seeks to balance itself.

Women cannot balance this problem by themselves, neither can men.   Both have to take an honest look at themselves, then make a commitment to take care of their own needs and character deficits first.   One cannot expect others to do for them what they are unwilling to do for themselves.   In addition, two half people cannot come together expecting to create two whole people.   The result will still be two co-dependent half people instead of two inter-dependent wholes.   Both must come to a relationship whole and balanced if there is a chance to have a happy, fulfilling and loving relationship.

Thus, love of self dictates that individuals invest in their own emotional health and welfare first before coming into relationships expecting their partners to fix them or to make them whole.   Buy the same token, one cannot go into a relationship expecting to fix what is wrong in someone else; that is their job and theirs alone.   All we can do is provide loving support to those we love when they are working to heal themselves.   It is impossible to change anyone but ourselves and we’re not doing too good a job at that.

A willingness to come out of denial and work together within an authentic, honest and accepting relationship is required to make relationships work, combined with an unwillingness to settle for anything less.

It’s all about love, love of self first, which dictates that we deserve to be with someone who respects, honors and appreciates us and is fully capable of committing to and loving another completely.   Otherwise, leave such people to work on balancing their own masculine/feminine sides; each individual already has enough work just trying to get him/herself together.   When one fixes him/herself others will either: (1) react differently; (2) reflect it back, or (3) will not be able to handle the higher energy vibration, thereby dissolving that relationship to make room to attract a healthier relationship.

Are uphill battles, unexpected obstacles and/or financial upsets familiar companions? Weary of entertaining ungracious, ungrateful and unwelcomed guests?   Feel blown about by the winds of fate; doomed by being born under a bad moon, or simply unclear about how to heal relationship issues with parents, significant others or oneself? The key to calming this inner chaos is connected to thinking outside of the conceptual frameworks absorbed in our unconscious during conception, birth and childhood.

More specifically, the solution lies in setting right relationships with ones original caretakers, who, in the eyes of children, are all powerful gods and goddesses whom they totally depended upon for their very existence.   More importantly, there can be no lasting happiness, peace of mind, or satisfaction in the lives of adult children who fail to find gratitude for their original caretakers who nurtured them when they were helpless infants.

Granted, asking an adult child, who has been emotionally and/or physically abused or abandoned by a parental figure to be grateful for such a parent, is asking a lot and can be equated to self betrayal.   In reality, it is not.   Think of it this way: grace is a gift and gratitude is the gateway to receiving grace. The amazing benefit of grace is that once we allow it to enter our lives, grace will fill us with the satisfaction and peace of mind we have been seeking through addictive behavior such as over eating, over working, drug and alcohol addiction, thrill seeking, sexual addiction, addiction to drama, craziness and chaos, or loneliness, alienation and estrangement from others.

Naturally, if we find it difficult to be grateful toward others for small favors or little lessons that can transform our lives in big ways, it is equally difficult to be generous toward ourselves or grateful for the opportunities inherent in adversity.   The irony of adversity is that it can be our greatest teacher when we humble ourselves enough to be willing to learn from it and accept that, from adolescence onward, we played a role in allowing friends, loved ones, or business associates to take advantage of us.   Granted, the lessons of adversity are difficult ones to learn when we are experiencing the pain of betrayal from an ungrateful individual who has repaid our loyalty with disloyalty, dishonesty or inauthenticity.

However, if we stop for a moment to feel the slap in the face we experience when others respond to our kindness or generosity with ungratefuness, or by taking us for granted, it becomes easier to grasp the fact that, even an imperfect parent or an abusive one, becomes more so when confronted with an ungrateful attitude toward what they are able to give. Ingratitude inspires anger and resentment, not generosity of spirit; it fact, it repels it; whereas, gratitude automatically inspires a desire to give or do more.

Essentially, it becomes easier to embrace gratitude when we give up our sense of entitlement by realizing that no one, not even our parents HAS TO DO ANYTHING for us and NO ONE OWES US.   Thus, any act of generosity or kindness extended toward us truly is a gift and gifts that are appreciated do, in fact, multiply.   The problem with common sense concepts is that common sense is not so very common and we love to indulge and/or excuse foolish behavior in ourselves and others.

The other block to finding or maintaining an attitude of gratitude is the ego. Regardless of how wrong we are, the ego compels us to be right at all costs, when we could just as easily choose to be at peace.   Thus, if we are to become the masters of our fates and captains of our souls, it would behoove us to familiarize ourselves with the following six games the ego compels us to play: (1) dominating others; (2) avoiding domination by others; (3) being right; (4) making others wrong; (5) covering up mistakes; or (6) throwing guilt and/or catching it.   With the foregoing in mind, once we become mindful enough to observe ourselves engaging in any of the six ego games, we can then choose not to participate. And, after disengaging from the game, it then becomes easy to recognize when others are trying to bait us back into it.   At that point, it’s a matter of making a conscious choice not to take the bait by not reacting negatively to any form of accusation or attack.   That’s the beginning of awakening from The Matrix.

The process of liberating ourselves from the ego is also aided by recognizing that the ego loves to elicit empathy, pity or compassion from others by wearing its pain or victim-hood as a badge of courage. “Misery” does, indeed, “love company.” When we operate from the ego, there is a disconnect between emotions, objectivity and logic resulting in a failure to use common sense or to listen to intuition, which is right 99.9% of the time.   In effect, the ego prefers commiserating with other ego driven individuals who are also disconnected, thus, explaining why millions end up living lives of quiet desperation, chaos, or perpetual drama.

It is also healing to be willing to sit with one’s pain or the pain of others in order to hear its story and learn from it.   The ego lives in denial, avoids truth at all costs and will run from the ring of fire or the heart of pain.   Who can blame it, really? Pain is not for the weak or faint of heart and is certainly no picnic in the park. Unfortunately, refusing to face, work through, or learn from pain contributes to diminished self esteem, incapacity to love, or inability to trust again.   Moreover, the ego tends to take everything personally and is quick to jump to conclusions without gathering all of the facts or evidence. As a result, the ego will make assumptions based on only one side of the story: usually the ego’s side, which has little or nothing to do with facts or reality. This is how the ego ends up with an attitude against someone who has only wronged it in the ego’s mind or imagination.

In that the ego is hell bent on keeping us separate us from each other, our godselves, and the cosmos, while wreaking havoc on us and the very earth that sustains us, it is time to consider that we are at a point in the evolution of human consciousness where it is imperative that we confront the ego and end its hold on us, if the human race is to survive.

An important step in freeing ourselves from the ego, is to acknowledge the wisdom of the analogy Nelson Mandela shared regarding the fact that when we hate (which is separation from others) we are drinking poison and expecting it to kill the person who caused our pain.   In reality, the poison of being a resentful ingrate stems from ego identification which creates stress that ages us, makes us sick and causes premature death. The irony is that the person we are holding resentment against is usually not losing any sleep over us. The reasons are tri fold: (1) most people act out of self interest and do what they do primarily because they consider it in their best interest; (2) many believe that they are acting in the best interest of those they hurt; and, (3) everyone does the best they can, given their level of education, information, knowledge, skills or lack thereof.

Thus, it is foolish to hold an individual, particularly one with arrested emotional development, to the standard of behavior we would someone who is operating from a level of emotional maturity.

Another powerful death blow to the ego is acknowledging that we do not truly know another.   In fact, we do not even know ourselves, nor do we fully understand the underlying reasons why we do what we do.   So how can we expect to truly know another? On top of that, it is impossible to change others.   Just look at the uphill battle inherent in trying to change ourselves?   Further, we lie to ourselves, so what makes us think that others won’t lie to us?   When we take into consideration that most people suffer from low self esteem, it is easy to acknowledge that much of what they tell us about themselves has been fabricated to make themselves look good or to get us to accept them. Ultimately, we have no way of getting inside of other people’s experiences or pain that might be motivating them to act from a limited paradigm or world view, and we tend to judge others based on how we would have behaved in a given situation, which is a logical fallacy in that, even siblings who are raised in the same household, do not behave the same under similar conditions.

The other reason to let got of judgment and embrace accepting others just the way they are is because what we resist persists in our lives and what we dwell upon the most or what we fear the most or dislike the most, we will manifest in our lives through the law of attraction.   So if we wan to attract positive people or things we have to look for the positive in others and dwell on that in ourselves and in the world in order to attract that into our lives, which will automatically repel the negative.

  The best method to attract good into our lives is through an attitude of gratitude, which invalidates the ego while helping to heal the world of its old wound of separation from others.   We are each a part of the human heart and anything we do to others we are, in effect, doing to ourselves, good or bad.   So it makes sense to give out as much good as we can since it comes back on us anyway. This includes having the courage to tell others the truth and not allowing them to take advantage of us or to violate our boundaries, which is a gift in that it helps them grow and allows them to learn the lesson that negative behavior does not pay off with you.

What are other benefits of a grateful heart versus the hazards of a hard heart filled with ego generated resentment and ingratitude?

Well, resentment and lack of gratitude toward our mothers attracts unexpected obstacles that prevent us from fully reaping the benefits of our labor.   It also creates perpetual struggle in our lives, which is why we should rush to forgive our mothers for every wrong we think they committed against us.   Moreover, a man who resents his mother will never experience a truly intimate, loving relationship with a woman, just as sure as a man who has not individuated or separated from his mother cannot have a healthy relationship with a woman.

Gratitude toward our fathers is essential for financial security, career success and for making our money work for, instead of against, us. Enough said, unless we like working and having our cash disappear as soon as the check is deposited.

Resentment toward ones father also causes women to have difficult intimate relationships with the men in their lives as well as adversarial or non existent relationships with God since patriarchy created God in the image of man. In that the role of the male is to protect and provide, an unhealed father relationship engenders feelings of insecurity, vulnerability, and lack of faith in the benevolence of others and the universe, as well as alienation and estrangement.

  A grateful heart is also essential for finding and maintaining true peace of mind, a sense of well being, and a feeling of security in our homes, community, the world, and the cosmos.   Not only will one feel lighter, after letting go of the emotional pain and resentment of the past that the ego loves to cling to, but one will also experience an added bonus of excess weight loss, associated with letting go of the emotional baggage connected to holding on to resentment, as one moves into the warm waters of acceptance, peace and compassion.

In summary, an humble and grateful heart toward our original caretakers, irregardless of what they failed to give us or the harm they intentionally or unintentionally caused, is all that’s required to remove unexpected, ego generated obstacles or blocks from our paths; for manifesting and keeping money; or for attracting loving, supportive relationships. And it’s easy to come up with just one act of kindness; one lesson we learned from another that has made us a better person or has added value to our lives (even if the lesson is not to be like that person); or, one act of generosity given to us when we needed it.   After we find one thing to be grateful for and hold on to it, the gift of grace can enter our hearts and do the healing for us. All we have to do is find a quite space to meditate, invoke the presence of grace, and ask it to fill our hearts with gratitude and healing.   That is the meaning of “ask and ye shall receive.”   At this point in time, grace cannot enter a closed mind or ungrateful heart on its own due to free will. We must humble ourselves, open our hearts and ask for it.   The choice is easy: continue to wallow in misery or call on the gift of grace for profound healing to take place in our lives.