Small Powerful Words of Wisdom

"Your heart tells you where you need to go."

On the way home from school today, Madison said, "Mom, I thought of something today. Your heart tells you where you need to go."

I thought about it for a second and realized that her thought seemed to align up perfectly with what I'm reading in A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. This book has far outweighed the expectations of Oprah and Tolle. I was one of the people who tuned in Monday night for the first world-wide Internet class and I have to say that being able to hear so many different perspectives was a powerful thing. So many people are gaining more insight about themselves and yet there are others who are not convinced that Tolle's book is in alignment with their beliefs. My experience with the book is that it is a gift to myself and to all the relationships I have in my life. It has helped me better to see my negative qualities in a more constructive light and it has given me an inner motivation that I've never before witnessed in myself.

What I'm learning is that religion and spirituality are not the same thing. We are not our beliefs. We can believe many things that probably will differ from others, but we will never be truly defined by what we believe. For example, people can attend church every time the door is open. That act alone does not make them "spiritual." Many times the people I see/know at church are trying so hard to "act" like a Christian, but mostly their actions and words come across as judgment or superiority. I've attended several churches in my life of several different denominations and I've found this to be true of all of them as institutions. Their beliefs definitely do not align with their actions, thoughts, or words. To clarify, I do not mean that all people give off this energy, but many do.


In order to truly follow your heart, I believe that you have to find your peace. Yours is different than mine and mine different than the next persons. Someone asked me the other day: "How exactly do you find peace? Does it just come to you?"

I think if you continually seek it out, it will be harder to attain. Usually peace comes to you through some difficult time in your life. Here's one interpretation of being at peace: Being at peach with ourselves is not about denying or rejecting any part of ourselves. On the contrary, in order to be at peace we must be willing and able to hold ourselves, in all our complexity, in a full embrace that excludes nothing. This is perhaps the most difficult part for many of us, because we want so much to disown the negative aspects of our humanity.

My thought is that if people would follow their hearts, their souls, their peace, then they would be able to move through life (with life) and appreciate their moments, their relationships, their characteristics, their loved ones, their life, and themselves.