THE MIRACLE OF PURE SELFLESS HELPING HEART

Tess was a precocious eight year old when she heard her Mom and Dad talking about her little brother, Andrew. All she knew was that he was very sick and they were completely out of money. They were moving to an apartment complex next month because Daddy didn’t have the money for the doctor bills and our house.

Only a very costly surgery could save him now and it was looking like there was no-one to loan them the money. She heard Daddy say to her tearful Mother with whispered desperation, “Only a miracle can save him now.”

Tess went to her bedroom and pulled a glass jelly jar from its hiding place in the closet. She poured all the change out on the floor and counted it carefully. Three times, even. The total had to be exactly perfect. No chance here for mistakes.Carefully placing the coins back in the jar and twisting on the cap, she slipped out the back door and made her way 6 blocks to Rexall’s Drug Store with the big red Indian Chief sign above the door.

She waited patiently for the pharmacist to give her some attention but he was too busy at this moment. Tess twisted her feet to make a scuffing noise. Nothing. She cleared her throat with the most disgusting sound she could muster. No good.

Finally she took a quarter from her jar and banged it on the glass counter. That did it!

“And what do you want?” the pharmacist asked in an annoyed tone of voice. “I’m talking to my brother from Chicago whom I haven’t seen in ages,” he said without waiting for a reply to his question.

“Well, I want to talk to you about my brother,” Tess answered back in the same annoyed tone. “He’s really, really sick… and I want to buy a miracle.”

“I beg your pardon?” said the pharmacist.

“His name is Andrew and he has something bad growing inside his head and my Daddy says only a miracle can save him now. So how much does a miracle cost?”

“We don’t sell miracles here, little girl. I’m sorry but I can’t help you,” the pharmacist said, softening a little. “Listen, I have the money to pay for it. If it isn’t enough, I will get the rest. Just tell me how much it costs.”

The pharmacist’s brother was a well dressed man. He stooped down and asked the little girl, “What kind of a miracle does you brother need?”

“I don’t know,” Tess replied with her eyes welling up. “I just know he’s really sick and Mommy says he needs an operation. But my Daddy can’t pay for it, so I want to use my money.”

“How much do you have?” asked the man from Chicago. “One dollar and eleven cents,” Tess answered barely audibly. “And it’s all the money I have, but I can get some more if I need to.

“Well, what a coincidence,” smiled the man. “A dollar and eleven cents – the exact price of a miracle for little brothers.” He took her money in one hand and with the other hand he grasped her mitten and said, “Take me to where you live. I want to see your brother and meet your parents. Let’s see if I have the kind of miracle you need.”

That well dressed man was Dr. Carlton Armstrong, a surgeon, specialising in neuro-surgery. The operation was completed without charge and it wasn’t long until Andrew was home again and doing well. Mom and Dad were happily talking about the chain of events that had led them to this place.

“That surgery,” her Mom whispered. “was a real miracle. I wonder how much it would have cost?”

Tess smiled. She knew exactly how much a miracle cost… one dollar and eleven cents … plus the faith of a little child.

Your faith, your love, your beauty, your truth is a hundred times more powerful than doubt. Have faith in yourself and be kind hearted. It helps.

HAVING GOD IN OUR LIVES

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN YOUR EGO AND YOUR TRUE SELF

All this week, one word has been lingering at the forefront of my mind. That word is Ego.

Early this week, I finally polished up the first draft of my manuscript
What My Mother Never Taught Me - The 7 Things I Wished I Had Known About Finding Happiness and sent it off to a panel for review and comment.

I had thought that the prevailing emotion that I would feel was that of joy seeing that the manuscript is now finally complete and ready for public viewing. Instead, after I hit the 'Send' button on my email, I was filled with an emotion that I couldn't quite articulate. It was a mix between fear and anxiety. It was an emotion I didn't expect and wasn't prepared for.

That afternoon, I tried to distract myself by tucking into a Cathy Kelly volume at a local café but while my eyes were focused on the words on the page, all I could feel was the slight tremble in my hands and my knees, feeling the hollow and emptiness in my quivering heart. I will be honest in saying that I was scared shitless. It was a combination of feeling like I had stripped myself bare, standing stark naked in public for all eyes to see, and also an anxiety at how the public would react to what they have seen. When I finally gave up on my attempt at reading the Cathy Kelly book, I got up and walked home.

It was on my way home, walking down the quiet street lined with Victorian terraces that I started to talk to myself out loud (which I often do when I'm alone). It was one of the number of ways I use to find that voice in me that is my true self, separate from that part of me that is the ego—the false sense of self. In my head, both voices sounded the same. It was hard to distinguish the true self from the ego based on my internal monologue, so I had to do a dialogue with myself to get it out of my head into the open space.

I knew that unsettling feeling came from the ego because it ultimately led back to the underlying need to please, the need for other people's approval. I had sent off the manuscript for critique as part of the process to improve it, not realizing that underneath it lay the tacit need for external validation. That was why I was fearful—I was fearful that the manuscript wasn't good enough, and because it was an extension of me, I was fearful that I wasn't good enough.

In the first week of Oprah's Life Class, Eckhart Tolle had talked about the ego—the false sense of self being what the mind accepts as its identity based on other people's perception and expectations. He had cited a number of Asian countries like China, Japan and South Korea where young people commit suicide because of the pressure and the need to meet parents' and elders' expectations as an example of the ego at work.

Hearing him say that struck a chord within me. Growing up in an Asian household where children are constantly being compared against others and told that they need to do better all the time, I know exactly what it feels like to constantly have to do and achieve before I would be considered 'good enough'. There was a reward tied to meeting my parents' expectations and there was also punishment tied to not meeting my parents' expectations. It is under these conditioning that I often feel that what I was worth was contingent upon how other people view me. Even after I had that awareness that all that was just fiction, there were still moments when I was dominated by my ego.

Eckhart Tolle talked about the two modalities of ego. The first being the need to use other people to increase our worth, an example being trophy wives (or husbands) who use their spouse's image to increase their own worth. The second being the feeling that someone else's success or happiness takes something away from us, in other words, the feeling of envy.

The need to use others and the feeling of envy are both the ego—the false sense of self—at work. The ego operates on the basis that our worth is determined by external perception—the clothes that we wear, the size of our house, the number of digits on our pay cheques etc. While enjoying these things are fine, being dependent on them for our self-worth is not. Having been through my own suffering for a number of years, being completely lost and confused about who I was, I have personally experienced that all that 'stuff' means nothing when it comes to asserting my self-worth.

Oprah gave very sage advice when it came to identifying the voice of the ego. She said that the voice of the ego often comes in the form of the question—What do you think? It's when we are unsure of who we are and what we are doing that we often ask others, “What do you think I should do?” hoping that their answers would satisfy us. It gave me a different perspective on what I have always believed to be true—that all the answers to my questions are already inside me, I just need to peel away all the layers that are masking them. These layers could be past programming, old conditioning, beliefs and expectations—both my own and others.

I'm not saying that the ego is my enemy, what I'm saying is that not being aware of the ego and not controlling the ego is my enemy.

One of the most important things that I value in life is my right to be my authentic self. I truly believe that distinguishing who I am authentically and naturally from who I think people expect me to be is the real key to uncovering my purpose in life.

Ultimately the most important question is this — Are you happy? Are you truly happy with your life? If you are, it would be safe to say that you are living in your true self, because your true self knows that you matter, that you are here on purpose. Your true self knows that exactly who you are is good enough.

BENEFITS OF STRUGGLING

 A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared, he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole.

Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no farther. Then the man decided to help the butterfly, so he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily.

But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time.

Neither happened!

In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings.

It never was able to fly.

What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been.

And we could never fly.

~DANCE LIKE NO ONE'S WATCHING~

We convince ourselves that life will be better after we get married,
have a baby, then another. Then we are frustrated that the kids aren't old enough
and we'll be more content when they are.

After that we're frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with, we will certainly be happy
when they are out of that stage.

We tell ourselves that our life will be complete when our spouse gets his or her act together,
when we get a nicer car, are able to go on a nice vacation, when we retire. The truth is there's no better time to be happy than right now. If not now, when?

Your life will always be filled with challenges. It's best to admit this to yourself
and decide to be happy anyway. One of my favorite quotes comes  from

Alfred D Souza.

He said, "For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin -real life.
But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first,
some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin.
At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life."

This perspective has helped me to see that there is no way to happiness.
Happiness is the way, so, treasure every moment that you have. And treasure it more because you shared it with someone special, special enough to spend your time... and remember that time waits for no one.

So stop waiting until you finish school,
until you go back to school,
until you lose ten pounds,
until you gain ten pounds,
until you have kids,
until your kids leave the house,
until you start work,
until you retire,
until you get married,
until you get divorced,
until Friday night,
until Sunday morning,
until you get a new car or home,
until your car or home is paid off,
until spring, until summer,
until fall, until winter,
until you are off welfare,
until the first or fifteenth,
until your song comes on,
until you've had a drink,
until you've sobered up,
until you die, until you are born again
to decide that there is no better time
than right now to be happy...
Happiness is a journey, not a destination.

So, Work like you don't need money.
Love like you've never been hurt and
Dance Like no one's watching.