Build Your Leaders

Postcard from Asheville

July 2014

What’s On My Mind

Are you on Facebook? I am. While some say it’s a huge time-suck (it is), I really enjoy the connections and re-connections I’ve made. About six month ago, I began posting occasional insights and inspirations. Here’s a sampling:

What's On My Mind: I've been thinking a lot about attachment...how I feel more in control when I am able to identify, define, or categorize, and how I tend to want to hold on to people, feelings, experiences, etc. Even as I write this, I can feel my body constrict. How much freer would my life be if I were not so attached, if I were to live life with more fluidity? A wise friend once told me that water and rock both are powerful in their own ways; but remember, water cuts through rock.

What's On My Mind: Recently, I've become friends with an Asheville-based breathwork coach, Bradley Williard. This morning, I ran into this beautiful suggestion from writer Paul Ferrini: "Breathing in, we accept what comes. Breathing out, we let it go. Acceptance and surrender are the engines of grace in this world.”

What's On My Mind: This morning I awoke feeling somewhat vulnerable and a bit frightened. I can't explain why. I poured a cup of coffee and sat with my fear a while. I located it in my body (just below my gut) and I observed it as it moved. Over time the fear dissolved. While I sat with fear, the sun was rising. The magnificent sunrisesoon replaced my fear with joy and gratitude. Now, I am sitting with that. How beautiful life is when I pause to be with whatever I am feeling at the time.

What’s On My Mind: I've been thinking about judgment a lot recently. I judge a fair amount, and I know that when I judge others, I am only judging a part of myself that I find too shameful or painful to accept. But what I didn't realize was this (from Gary Zukav's The Heart of the Soul): 'Judging is a preemptive attack against what you most want—intimacyand acceptance—that you launch before you can be rejected or refused intimacy.”

What’s On My Mind: Do you know how a message will start repeating itself until it gets your attention? Well, that’s been happening to me. Everywhere I turn, I seem to be getting the message: “See Your Own Beauty.”

Friends have told me that I’m handsome, smart, kind, and good, and I don’t believe them. I discount their words. “They are just trying to be nice,” I think. But now I’m imagining how wonderful it would be to believe them. To see myself as they see me.

Sure, there are parts of me that I like. I like my hair, and the fact that I have hair at my age. And I do think I have a pretty good head for business. But more often than not, I focus on those parts of myself that I don’t like. My stomach is not flat. I am lazy. The list can be endless.

Many of you know that I am a big fan of writer Paul Ferrini. In his book,The Ecstatic Moment, he writes: “Your happiness is not secondary. It is of primary importance. Abundance flows from your happiness. The gifts of God flow through your love and acceptance of yourself.”

Like all spiritual practices, loving and accepting ourselves begins and ends with awareness of what we are thinking and feeling. Observe your thoughts and feelings, suggests Ferrini, like waves on a beach.

In closing, I’d love to connect with you on Facebook. Here’s a link: https://www.facebook.com/randy.siegel

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