Autobiography in 5 Chapters

1) I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk

I fall in.

I am lost...I am hopeless.

It isn't my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out.

2) I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk

I pretend I dont see it.

I fall in again.

I cant believe I am in the same place .

But it isn't my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out.

3) I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk

I see it is there.

I still fall in....its a habit

My eyes are open

I know where I am

It is my fault.

I get out immediately.

4) I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk

I walk around it.

5) I walk down another street.

By Portia Nelson

Its a life truth this above - the street with the deep hole represents each of our problems and obstacles that we face while living our lives, and the journey out of the deep hole on the street represents our journey to overcome our problems and pass the obstacles in our way.

Who we actually are ?

I read the most amazing book called The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying written by Sogyal Rinpoche. He explains an essential truth I believe so I added it to my book of essential truths !!

I plan to post my favorite parts from this book now and then - heres the first one with my understandings an notes below

"So like an amnesia patient 'we' (our souls) have lost their ability to remember or experience who we actually are - and in desperation of 'forgetting' there is this instinctive grasping and self preservation. Grasping is a desperation to find an identity to replace the one we cant seem to find.

Therefore we replace it with our physical and mental identities bot are not our real identities and we know it and that is why we grasp and cannot let go and try by any means to preserve our 'selves' our of fear of the truth [and because we have no identity to put in place of our so called 'selves' because we do not know it or recognize it] which is unknown and unexperienced by us at present as we have forgotten.

Frantically and in real dread we cast around and improvise another identity, one we clutch onto with all the desperation of someone falling continuously into an abyss. This false and ignorantly assumed identity is ego. So ego then is the abscense of true knowledge of who we really are, together with its result : a doomed clutching on at all costs, to a cobbled together makeshift image of ourselves, an inevitable chameleon, charlatan self that keeps changing and has to, to keep alive the fiction of its existence...."

Sogyal Rinpoche

Heaven

We all long for Heaven where God is, but

we have it in our power to be in heaven with

him at this very moment. BUT being HAPPY

WITH HIM NOW means :

LOVING AS HE LOVES

HELPING AS HE HELPS

GIVING AS HE GIVES

SERVING AS HE SERVES

RECUEING AS HE RESCUES

Being with him twenty fours, touching him in his distressing disguise.

By Mother Teresa

This is one of the sayings from my sayings book that always moves me to understand how to act in life. We all do love (others, things, actions) but at our convenience as is emotionally and mentally comfortable for ourselves - thats not loving the way god loves each of us. We are loved by God despite all our shortcomings and flaws, we are accepted and loved just the way we are without stipulations or conditions and thats how we also truly love when we actually do.

The same goes for help, giving and serving another . Think about it. In such a small verse Mother Teresa has revealed a secret of the universe.