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Know
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THIS WEEK'S ISSUE From the Inside Out...
BE the World If
we fall asleep every night counting and acknowledging our blessings
— we 'give permission' for The Universe to keep bringing
them. When we show appreciation and give thanks for those blessings,
we invite more of the same into our personal world.
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From the Inside Out
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"Improve
Your Life With Thankfulness" Meaningful Life Answers & Encouragement 
#2:
MORE JOY LESS STRESS |
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Deciding whether or not we choose to speak our truth needs to come from our own honesty with ourselves about why we are speaking the truth. Truth can enhance or destroy a relationship, depending upon the intent. There are times when telling your "truth" is unloving. For example, you might not be wild about what your friend is wearing, but if your friend is giving an important presentation and asks you how she (or he) looks, it would not be in anyone's highest good to give your opinion. Opinions are generally judgments and rarely contribute to the good of a relationship. It is therefore very important to distinguish between opinions and truth. Too often, just because we think something is true, we assume that it is true. However, truth is a fact, not a opinion. If I am hungry, that is a fact, but how you look is my opinion. There are times when someone might be having a hard time, and it is not fun to be around them. For example, your friend has lost a beloved person to death, and your friend is in mourning. It is not fun for you to be around the grief and stress, yet telling your friend that it doesn't feel good to be around him or her would not be loving or supportive of your friend. It is very important, when telling our truth, to distinguish between being loving to ourselves and others — having our own highest good and the other's highest good at heart — and making another responsible for our feelings. Telling another that, "I'm upset because you're tense and it doesn't feel good to be around you," may indicate a lack of empathy and making the other responsible for your feelings. Therefore, the important thing in telling the truth is to be honest with yourself about your own intent in telling your truth. Are you truly being loving to yourself and others, or are you using your truth to control another and make him or her responsible for you? Are you speaking your truth to enhance the relationship, or to get the other to change? However, there are many times when speaking your truth is in your highest good and the highest good of others. Yet many of us have much difficulty speaking our truth to others, especially to important others such as parents, siblings, close friends, coworkers and mates. We are afraid the other person will be angry or hurt by our truth, even when we state it without judgment or blame. So we say yes when we mean no, say things are okay when they aren't, avoid difficult topics of conversation, pretend to enjoy something — food, sex, a movie, the topic of conversation, the way we are spending time — to avoid upsetting another. We may continue to tolerate things that are intolerable to us to avoid a conflict. Withholding our truth can be a form of control, just as telling our truth can be a form of control. We may want to control how another feels about us and treats us. We want to make sure we don't get attacked or rejected. Often I hear my clients say, when I encourage them to tell the truth, "I can't say that. He (or she) will get mad." Yes, he or she might get hurt or mad. Yet courage may mean the willingness to speak your truth anyway and learn to deal with the other person's response. This is part of developing the loving Adult - learning to not take the other person's behavior personally, learning to stay solid in our truth and allow the other person to go through whatever he or she has to go in response to our truths without taking responsibility for the other's feelings. Avoiding the other's hurt and anger is only one part of the challenge. The other part is that we may be unwilling to know the truth regarding whether or not that other person cares about what is important to us. If, for example, you tell your mate that you are unhappy with a particular aspect of your sex life, and your mate gets hurt or angry instead of wanting to understand, you might feel even worse. It feels awful to speak our truth and receive an uncaring response. The deeper feeling is one of gut-wrenching loneliness. It is deeply lonely to share something that is important to us and receive an uncaring response. So, not only are we often afraid of dealing with another's anger, but we may be even more afraid of the lonely feeling of being uncared for. Until we are willing to know the truth of whether or not the other person really does care about what is important to us, we may avoid speaking our truth. However, when we withhold our truth to avoid conflict and avoid feeling uncared for by another, the consequence is that we feel alone and maybe depressed because we are not caring about ourselves. When we don't stand up for ourselves, we end up feeling unimportant, regardless of how others treat us. We cannot ignore ourselves and feel good inside. The question we need to ask ourselves is, "Are we willing to give ourselves up to avoid losing others, or are we willing to lose others rather than lose ourselves?" I have found that losing myself is never worth it. If I lose others as a result of speaking my truth, then I have to accept the truth that those people never had my highest good at heart anyway. People who care about my highest good applaud me when I speak the truth that supports my highest good. People who care about me support me in living my truth. Those who just want to use me in some way will get angry or hurt at my truth, and that lets me know the truth about their intent. Therefore, we have to be willing to know another's truth regarding whether or not that person really cares about us in order to tell our heartfelt truth. Let's say that you say to your partner, "It is not tolerable for me to be around you when you are drinking. I feel shut out and disconnected from you when you drink. It is just too lonely to be with you when you are drinking." If alcohol is more important to your partner than you are, then the response is likely to be, "That's your problem, not mine. Stop blaming me for your feelings. Stop trying to control me!" If you are more important to your partner than alcohol, then your partner will address the issue and get some help with the problem. The question is, do you want to know the reality of the situation? Are you prepared to take loving action for yourself if you discover that your partner really doesn't care about the effect his or her behavior is having on you? You will have the courage to speak your truth when you have the courage to know the truth about any given relationship. What if you say to your best friend, "I often feel judged by you and it doesn't feel good," and your best friend gets defensive and tells you it's all your problem. What are you going to do if your best friend consistently responds in an uncaring way? Are you willing to lose someone who you have believe was your best friend, or are you going to avoid telling the truth to avoid knowing the truth? Are you willing to feel the loneliness if you find out that someone you thought cared really doesn't, or do you want to go on pretending that real caring exists? It take great courage to tell the truth and discover the truth. We often kid ourselves into thinking that avoiding others anger and hurt is a loving thing to do. We justify our behavior by telling ourselves that it's just that we don't want to hurt or upset others, or that we just don't want to deal with another's hurt or anger. Yet avoidance may not be loving to ourselves or others. Are you willing to sacrificing your own integrity to avoid the pain of conflict and loneliness? To me, nothing is worth a loss of integrity, not even the loss of another. When you really tune into how you feel when you withhold your truth to protect yourself from conflict and loneliness, you will discover that honoring yourself by telling your truth, without blame or judgment, is deeply empowering. You will feel on top of the world when you finally have the courage to speak your heartfelt truth when your intent is to support your own and others highest good. ~By
Dr. Margaret Paul, Inner Bonding Educational Technologies, Inc.
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Far Horizons ULURU/AYERS
ROCK
Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, is a large sandstone rock formation in central Australia, in the Northern Territory. It is located in Uluru-Kata Tjura National Park, 440 km southwest of Alice Springs. Uluru is sacred to the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara, the Aboriginal people of the area. It has many springs, waterholes, rock caves and ancient paintings. Uluru is listed as a World Heritage Site for its natural and man-made attributes. In October 1872 the explorer Ernest Giles was the first non-indigenous person to sight the rock formation. He saw it from a considerable distance, and was prevented by Lake Amadeus from approaching closer. He described it as “the remarkable pebble”. On 19 July 1873, the surveyor William Gosse visited the rock and named it Ayers Rock in honor of the then Chief Secretary of South Australia, Sir Henry Ayers. The Aboriginal name was first recorded by the Wills expedition in 1903. Since then, both names have been used, although Ayers Rock was the most common name used by outsiders until recently. In 1993, a dual naming policy was adopted that allowed official names that consist of both the traditional Aboriginal name and the English name. “Uluru/Ayers Rock” became the first officially dual named feature in the Northern Territory. The
beginning of human settlement in the Uluru region has not been
determined, but archaeological findings to the east and west indicate
a date more than 10,000 years ago. On 26 October 1985, the Australian
government returned ownership of Uluru to the local Pitjantjatjara
Aborigines. Around Mount Uluru there are many examples of ancestral
sites. The Anangu explanations of these sites and of the
formation of Mount Uluru itself derive from the Tjukurpa.
Most of these explanations are in the realm of secret information
and are not disclosed to Piranypa, the non-Aborigines.
In order to understand the religion of the Aborigines, one must
have a basic understanding of the organization of the tribes.
All men and women belong to small groups, called clans. Each clan
posses a distinct body of spiritual properties, or sacred sites
and has a totem. Totemism is a view of nature and life, of the
universe and man, which colors and influences the Aborigines'
social groupings and mythologies, inspires their rituals and links
them to the past. It unites them with nature's activities and
species in a bond of mutual life-giving, and imparts confidence
amidst the vicissitudes of life.
SEE
MORE TRAVEL ARTICLES:
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In
the Spotlight MARRUM, Netherlands (Associated Press) Rescuers in the Netherlands have lured a stranded herd of about 100 horses off a mud-soaked knoll where they had been stranded for three days after storms struck the area around Marrum, 145km (90 miles) northeast of Amsterdam. However, before they could be saved, 19 horses drowned or died of exposure from the days and nights on a mound that turned into an island during the storm. The horses were neck deep at times and had to swim at some spots, especially the foals, But they began to canter as they neared the edge of the brackish water, and burst into a gallop once they reached solid land, apparently relieved at being able to stretch their legs. The nearest land was only a few hundred meters away but there were fears that submerged barbed wire might hurt the horses if they tried to swim to safety. Animal welfare officers and firefighters waded through the waters to map out an escape route. Four young women on horseback - riders from the town's Cavalry Club —- guided the remaining animals about 650 yards to higher ground. All but one horse followed them without hesitation. "It worked, and it went off almost perfectly," Jacob Prins, a firefighter from the nearby town of Hallum who helped in the operation, said. The remaining horse was led back later, escorted by firefighters on foot. They needed to attach a rope to its hindquarters to compel it to walk the final stretch. It collapsed after reaching shore, and was covered by blankets and attended by veterinarians. Prins said the horse that collapsed was taken to a warm stall, where it was expected to make a full recovery. The Dutch Agriculture Ministry ordered an investigation into whether either the horses' owners or the managers of the nature preserve where they were roaming should be held responsible for neglect or abuse. Marianne Thieme, leader of the Netherlands' Party for the Animals, said it was clear something went badly wrong, since the country's weather service had warned of possible flooding as early as Tuesday morning. "The most terrible thing is that the death and suffering of all these horses could have been prevented. When autumn comes, you know that if you keep animals outside the dikes you put them at great risk," she said. The storm had lifted the North Sea waters as much as 13 feet above normal. Three days later it was less than a 3 feet deep in most flooded fields, with pits up to 6 feet deep where they are crisscrossed with drainage channels. The channels, along with submerged barbed-wire fences, were difficult to see. Before the rescue mission, a veterinarian examined the horses and rescue workers gave them hay and fresh water to drink to raise their strength. Their rescue capped several days of drama. Dutch television and newspapers showed dramatic images of the horses huddled together, their backs to the wind whipping up small waves in water surrounding their isolated island. Marrum's fire department floated or ferried around 20 horses, including the smallest foals, to safety with the help of small boats on Wednesday. The Dutch army also tried to rescue the animals, but called off the operation when water levels began to recede, grounding pontoon boats. You can see the amazing video by going HERE — allow video to download fully once, for smooth viewing the second time.
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