Undaunted Confident Security Now

“The moments of our life are not expendable,
And the [possible] circumstances of death are beyond
imagination.

If you do not achieve an undaunted confident security now,
What point is there in your being alive…………”

pg 9 The Tibetan Book of the Dead

I just wrote the other day how being insecure in my understanding of reality was the one thing that pushed me to truly question whether life was worth living at all. You can find my trail of thinking if you follow the link below.

Loss of Faith Now What? http://thoughtfulwanderings.com/2011/02/15/loss-of-faith-now-what/

When I was at my lowest point what it came down to was my family.  My children and Ben are the ones that I couldn’t live with out.  I know it’s not healthy in a way but that is the way it is.   They tether my feet to the ground and they give life–color and meaning.  My connection to them is deeper than that really.  I’m not sure how to put it into words.

I want to be strong for them and for me.  It may sound flattering to be the one that is holding a person on the earth but I think it’s a huge weight to carry.

I had a boyfriend tell me once that I didn’t have confidence in myself.  He literally pulled me aside in one of the hallways in college and looked me straight in the face to tell me the news. It felt as if he had ripped a layer of my skin off and left me naked.  I could see clearly for a moment the one major thing that was holding me back from everything.

Undaunted confident security-how much better life would be with that.

My lack of confidence in myself and my lack of trust that everything will work out finds its root in my ability to torture myself with thousands of random catastrophic thoughts of what may happen in any given situation.

I was reading in Stephen King’s “Danse Macabre” last Monday.   He talked about how imaginative people live in a lot of fear because they can imagine many ways for things to go wrong.  This is me in a nutshell. I’ve never put a label of imagination on the never ending trails of terror that my mind travels down for just about every aspect of my life.  This is probably why if I don’t write or access some sort of creative outlet I’m not in a good place at all.

“…the circumstances of death are beyond imagination.”  All outcomes are beyond my imagination.  Doesn’t mean I can’t imagine them but I need to stop taking what I imagine so seriously?

So I suppose what I want is to be able to boldly live life.  Now I need to figure out how to do this.  How powerful are thoughts? What would happen if I were to turn my mind down another path, one not so filled with terror?  Would it hurt to try, to let go of the fears that grip my insides like a vise.  Just as an experiment.  Temporary.  I could always go back to torturing myself  tomorrow if I need to.

“How needing of compassion are those who are skill-less,

Those who are tortured by ignorance and past actions,

Those who indulge in actions conducive to suffering-

Even though they desire happiness!”

pg 10

Maybe the start of a more positive outlook on life comes from compassion, especially  for ourselves.  We all do things that brings us unhappiness and stress.  I think too when we show compassion for other people we are taking a giant step in helping them see how they can be more loving with themselves.  Then maybe instead of living in viscous circles of pain our compassionate actions will stop the negative cycle and spread joy like wild fire   from one human connection to the next.