The great arises out of small things that are honored and cared for

Honor – To have and show high respect for, integrity, dignity.   

Care – kindness, maintenance, to attend to, to regard highly, to treat with respect. 

Both honoring and caring are actions that come from a certain state of mind. 

Meditation, prayer, and mindfulness-awareness deepen our relationship with our mind as well as our body and have the potential to strengthen us from the inside out.  This transformation only happens when we step in fully and take total responsibility for learning about ourselves. Without self awareness, we can tend to blame the world and others in our lives for our struggles. Freedom from suffering is an inside job. We are constantly offered  opportunities to learn more about ourselves, to wake up. Do we honor those opportunities?

We keep looking for, waiting for that place, that state of mind that will be what we have always been looking for. Quit looking and just see. Here, now, this is what it is. We accept that we are human and imperfect–that we have ups and downs. That our emotions take us for a ride, sometimes with joy or then with jagged feelings. That we feel bored or anxious or unsure. We can fully step into all of that, not with the attitude of putting up with, or being overcome with what is happening while waiting for something better, but with an acceptance of what is happening, while retaining our foundation of stability, curiosity, and a belief in our deeper spiritual essence. A connection with all life, not just what I want. It is all valuable and the essence of a full and wonderful life. Then we begin to unfold and appreciate life.

What do we honor and care for? We may dishonor our basic goodness, our spiritual essence, with a sense of not being worthy. Of needing something elusive which drives us to become subtly dishonest and manipulative in order to get what we want, even if  we are not quite sure what that is.  We may hide behind many masks. We doubt our true selves by choosing to engage the frustration of not being present and accepting of the here and now.

It seems almost too simple that what we need to do is to just feel, accept and engage in what is happening. Not engaging so that we are overcome by an emotion, but so that we can acknowledge and accept where we are.  

When we have difficult times, we can be so trapped in that emotion we do nothing but feel and project, verbally and physically, our confusion and pain, and inflict it on others. My addiction was the epitome of being trapped and acting in very harmful ways. I never thought to care for myself in a kind way–to honor that I was entrapped and needed help. I only wanted to continue destroying myself. Many pay the ultimate price for that. 

When we feel and accept, we are honoring ourselves and caring for ourselves and OTHERS.

What do I honor in my life that is healthy? I honor all of myself.  

Have a sense of always stepping into an honorable life, of not hiding.

It can be hard to not hide. We think we need to not show our humanness, that we need to constrain ourselves and project and protect some image. To honor who we are, right here right now, is to quit fighting and to care for our spiritual practice and awareness of how we act in the world, in all situations 

We do not need to “get anywhere, we need to be right here, right now. That is the big brass band, that is the prize we need to win; ourselves, just as we are. With a sense of honor, dignity and imperfection that we embrace, that we wrap our arms around and care for tenderly, and know we have arrived.

Those of us here and now, have the capacity, and know how essential it is, to honor and care for ourselves, and to honor and care for others – To do this in everyday life. Let us honor the terrible pain we have known and use that knowledge to embrace the fragile nature and precious quality of EVERYONE’S life. To Honor and Care for this life the best we can.

Some traumas will need time and perhaps counseling or an engagement in a program to address properly. Ask for help if you need to, listen to your heart, not your ego, and progress forward. Do not be satisfied with good enough, strive, aspire for better. Care about yourself. 

In doing so, you will also Care for yourself–assist yourself in opening up and seeing with both eyes. With your vision off the ground, you can look  forward to what your precious life holds.

Every day, every moment is fresh, and an opportunity to open up, or to close down. Your choice.

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Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up and the door of my heart could be left open, the door of compassion.

Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice…

Thich Nhat Hanh

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We dishonor ourselves and others by not extending KINDNESS, to ourselves and then to others.

How do you fill your bucket? One drop at a time

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step

The great arises out of small things that are honored and cared for

May you be well, may you be happy, may you find peace

Heart Of Recovery web site  –  fcheartofrecovery.com