Tian Dayton

Do not forget about me today. Soul and I will not forget about you. Let us have our morning coffee together. Walk with me. When I speak, be in my words. When I think, shape my thoughts-act through me. Hold me steady throughout my day and keep me safe – safe from harm, safe from hate, safe from my own pettiness and blindness. Do not let me waste this day forgetting to be with you. I know that you are always present in the moment, waiting to be seen. Let me see you.

I will not forget that soul is with me.

In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead. In the nineteenth century inhumanity meant cruelty; in the twentieth century, it means
schizoid self-alienation. The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.
Erich Fromm

Today I understand that when I project my feelings outward and see them as belonging to other people and not to me, I postpone my own self-awareness. The only way I can deal with difficult feelings is first to claim them as my own. Sitting with anxiety, anger, rage and jealousy is not pleasant, but actually experiencing my own feelings is the only way to get through them.

I own my feelings and am willing to experience them.

One afternoon, when veteran American League baseball umpire Bill Guthrie was working behind the plate, the catcher for the visiting team repeatedly protested his calls. Guthrie endured this for three innings. In the fourth inning, Guthrie stopped him. “Son,” he said gently. “You’ve been a big help to me in calling the balls and strikes and I appreciate it. But I think I’ve got the hang of it now. So I’m going to ask you to go to the clubhouse and show whoever’s there how to take a shower.”
Dan McKinnon

I will be ready. When death comes, I will understand that she has come for me. I am no exception, nor should I be. Along with all who are living, my case is terminal. A philosophy of life without a philosophy of death is not real, is incomplete, is blind to what we live with every moment in our unconscious. So much of me even now lives beyond my body, lives in something called soul. Why should the end of my body be the end
of my soul? Why is it not just as logical to think my soul will go on forever? Both points of view are equally sane and equally mad. I will choose the one that best serves my living soul, my life today.

I choose life.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the people’s injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the contents of their character.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today I understand why detaching with love has been difficult for me. It has taken me a long time to understand truly that there are some things I can do absolutely nothing about. My past taught me to remain in the cycle of fixing and doing. It seemed less painful to be stuck in trying than to let go and risk the pain of loneliness. What I did not know was that in letting go I would feel enormous relief and a renewed sense of
energy with which to rebuild those areas of my life that needed attention. Detaching with love is not difficult when I accept my own limitations.

There are some people, things and situations that I can do nothing about.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.
Oscar Wilde

Creativity is central to my experience of soul. It helps me to see evidence of soul in funny little nooks and crannies of living. It allows me to risk my own expression of self. Every act that I undertake can be made more beautiful when I allow my own creativity to shine through, to be at work in the mundane. Creativity is what can make the ordinary transform into the extraordinary. It is both a way of doing and of seeing, of behaving and of being. Whatever I do today, I will bring along my creative self. I will use day-to-day circumstances and events as a vehicle through which I allow my creative energies to flow.

I will experiment with life as an artist experiments with color. I will paint my own day. Events are my palette. My soul is my brush.

I will let the artist within me express itself.

Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.
Anna Freud