Choice
A couple of months ago I was poking around the internet in a random sort of way when I was reintroduced to one of my all-time favorite quotes. It is from a wonderful and somewhat quirky book called Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins:
“There are only two mantras, yum and yuck, mine is yum.”
Mantra – a good definition of a mantra is a word or phrase that expresses someone’s basic beliefs.
Having a mantra of yum is not about being a Pollyanna and denying that there are bad things out there in the world. It’s not even about always looking at the world from a “glass half full” perspective. It is about facing what is real, and then making a deliberate choice about how to respond.
Everything depends on our choices.
- Do you choose to operate from a body perspective or a spiritual one?
- Do you choose to remember that you are a part of God, or do you choose to
forget? - Do you choose to respect space or invade space?
- Do you choose to take responsibility for your creations (ALL of them –
good, bad, indifferent, beautiful, and ugly) or do you embrace being a
victim?
Does choosing yum mean that you deny your “negative” feelings? Absolutely not; it just means that you make clear and deliberate choices about how you express and act on those feelings.
This is a planet that operates on dichotomies – opposite extremes. We come here to learn how to balance those extremes. We each do this internally with our personal lessons, but we also do this nationally and globally.
We all have the gift of choice, and now more than ever it is time to consider those choices. Choose joy or choose pain – either way, person or nation, you learn a lesson – sometimes even the same lesson.
Joy is a good example. There are two ways to learn about joy: have a horrible life full of pain and suffering with an epiphany at the end that it didn’t have to be that way, OR learn about joy through being joyful.
The energy on this planet is shifting and we are learning about light on a global level. Some are learning through a lack of light – pain, fear and hate. Others are learning through an abundance of light – compassion, love and kindness. Most of us land somewhere between the two. After all – balancing a dichotomy means understanding and balancing two extremes.
Ultimately, we must each review our options and the various related consequences, make our choice with deliberation, and then move forward.
You can go with yuck or you can go with yum, but I’m with Tom – I choose yum.