Flash Forgiveness

Road Rage* (Photo credit: PDXdj)

Has this every happened to you? Someone cuts you off on the road and almost causes an accident. You get so outraged, you drive up next to this idiot and try to give them the “stink eye,” but they ignore you. You are so upset that you don’t see the car in front of you and almost cause an accident because you weren’t watching the road.

It happens to me all the time. I get so indignant when someone puts my life and the lives of my sons in danger. And why shouldn’t I? They are in the wrong. I am just minding my own business, and some maniac swoops in front me like a bat out of hell. “How dare they? Don’t they know who I am?”

The irony is that I put my life and the lives of my sons’ in danger by trying to seek justice for this violation. The real question I should be asking myself is “who am I to get so upset about something I am often guilty of myself?”

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Tweet: “I’m meditating with Jon Kabat-Zinn”

Spring came early in the form of a week of incredible growth. In the past 7 days, I had three incredible experiences that I wish to share with you with a serendipitous surprise that could generate huge waves of Peace.

Day-long workshop with Jeff Foster

If you don’t know who Jeff Foster is, today is your lucky day. In a small church room surrounded by windows, about 40 disciples sat around an unassuming bearded man giving a sermon. Here are excerpts of the Gospel shared that day.

“Your life is suppose to be imperfect/a mess.” 

Thought Ninja

I was having a bad dream in the middle of the night when my 3 year old son woke me up screaming, “No, Daddy.” We were sleeping forehead to forehead as usual. I assumed that I had woken him up by screaming or flinching in my dream, but I quickly realized that he was still sleeping. “No, Daddy, no,” he mumbled.

At 6 am the next morning, I awoke before my son, and laying in bed, I recounted an argument I had the day before with my step-father. I was thinking about talking to my brother and sister-in-law to get them on my side to see what they thought, when my son cried out, “No, Daddy, no.” Again, he was still asleep.

After I snuck out of the bedroom, I checked my blog for comments. Alia from 13th Paradigm had commented on a comment I made on heartflow2013’s inspiring post Israel and Iran: A love story? B4Peace.

“Each person who writes a post, sends their energy of peace into the Quantum Field. The energy travels omni-directionally, eternally, forever. It touches everyone it encounters and impacts all peacefully. Now, multiply this effect by every reader that reads the piece. Then further multiply that by the energy that those readers carry into their world.”

Practice Peace

My 5 year old son just started playing YMCA basketball. He is one of the younger players on the team and a bit intimidated. I almost let him quit. One day he asked me, “Daddy, are the games we play practice games?” I told him that every game he will EVER play is a practice game, unless he makes the pros like Jeremy Lin. But even professional games are practice games. Just because you play for money doesn’t make it any more substantial.

“I do not judge success based on championships; rather, I judge it on how close we came to realizing our potential.”–John Wooden

If you believe, like I do, that “we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience,” then our whole human existence is a practice game. We are already Gods, Buddhas, and Peace; we just need to re-member ourselves to the Truth.

A Split Second to Peace

It happens in an instant–love and acceptance snap to anger and unrest. I’ve seen/felt it a hundred times each day on battlefields, street corners, at dinner tables, but, most importantly, in my own mind. This is where peace starts and ends, and we have the power to choose.

Surrender to Peace

“The greatness of a man’s power is the measure of his surrender.”–William Booth

As an American, surrendering is never an option. I was raised with mottos like “give me liberty or give me death”; “remember the Alamo”; or “I’d rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.” We have been taught to “never give up.”

The image above comes from the reality television show, The Great Race. What is most remarkable is not that this contestant survived the accident, but that her partner urged her to keep trying after she wiped the blood off her face, so they could win the race.

Maybe Americans have it wrong. Maybe surrender should be our first option.

Feeling My Way to Peace

“To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears…”–Jimmy Valvano

Last week, I took my wife to see Les Miserable, and Anne Hathaway  brought me to tears. (Quick review: Hathaway=Oscar; Jackman and Crowe sounded off key at times, and I’m tone deaf; Tom Hooper revolutionized filmmaking with his skin-tight close-ups) By the end of the film, however, my wife was sobbing, and I was just enjoying the music.

This is not the first time this had happened to me. In college, I took my girlfriend to see Platoon and she almost had to be removed from the theater because she was crying inconsolably during the My Lai-like massacre scene. My response, like everyone else in the theater, was “calm down; it’s just a movie.”

Cancer as a Guru: 5 Life Lessons from a Remarkable Guest

A few days ago, I received the best Christmas gift I have ever gotten. Tracy’s post “What makes Christmas exciting” on FEC-THis made me appreciate Christmas, fatherhood, and life in a way I’ve never experienced before. I wanted to share this post with everyone, but rather than creating a link or a re-blog, I realized that it wasn’t so much the post that I wanted to share, but Tracy herself.

Smile Bigger

Scott Graham Photography

Smile Bigger, Hug Longer, Love Stronger

The other day, I was passing a cute older couple crossing the street, so I smiled. The older woman smiled back like only older people can–with wrinkles of joy. I was so delighted that I tried to smile bigger. By the time we passed each other, my face was sore from trying to make the edges of my lips touch my ears.

A Knock Upside the Head by Mindfulness

Mindfulness is moment by moment practice. Sometimes we forget to be mindful and something will knock us upside the head to remind us.