Over the weekend I found myself glancing through some of the books on the shelf that I haven’t gotten too yet and came to a dead stop on page 43 of “the Gift of Change” by Marianne Williamson.  I read and re-read the following 5 short paragraphs and knew immediately that I must share them here.  Read, read again… enjoy and snap out of yourself.

You cannot find yourself by only looking to yourself, because an essence that is not where you are. The real you is an expanded self, literally one with the entire world.  And so we find ourselves in relationship to the whole. We cannot be happy unless we are wishing everyone the same.

            One day I was indulging some ego-based concerns about my life, worried that this or that wasn’t happening; I remember I was specifically worried that I wasn’t achieving enough in my career. The conversation in my head was all about me (mistake number one) and focused on what I perceived to be lacking (mistake number two). I did realize my thinking wasn’t miracle-minded, and finally I told myself to snap out of it.

            I was packing to leave a hotel room at the time, and shortly afterwards the bellman arrived to retrieve my bags. I started asking him about his life. Questioning others about their lives rather than rambling on about our own is a surefire way to direct our minds away from the ego. I asked him what time he came to work each morning, what else he did with his life, and so on.

            And then he said to me, “Excuse me, are you Marianne Williamson?” He proceeded to tell me that he and his used to attend my lectures regularly in Los Angeles, that his wife listens to my tapes every day, and about how important my work has been to them. And in so doing, he perfectly assuaged the concerns I had been focused on an hour before; his comments shifted my thinking and thus my feelings. But if I had simply stayed with my self-involved line of thought, without redirection my mind to focus on another, then I would never have received the miracle.  There would have been this person ready to offer me a healing, but I wouldn’t have been available to receive it. By with-holding friendship from the bellman, I would have been withholding healing from myself.

            Generosity, in that sense, is an act of self-interest. And I have seen it too many times to doubt it; as long as I remember that the love I seek can only be found as I extend my love to others, the peace comes fairly easily.  It’s when we forget that that all hell breaks loose. Love extended is the key to happiness; love withheld is the key to pain.

The gift of change could be just a snap away… If we can just snap out of ourselves and our self focused thinking.

Kirk Out

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 at 10:26 pm and is filed under T4D. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.