An Empowered Life

I was walking home from work today, as I normally do, and thinking about how I approach life and how other people’s approach to life appears to me. All my life I have usually seen the events that have happened as being the result of something that I have chosen or done. Usually this works really well for me.

Some might think that this would lead to a lot of guilt tripping. I think anyone who has spent time with me might disagree with that. I rarely feel guilt about any choices that I make. To the extent that I do, I actively seek a means to release that guilt as soon as I’m ready. I like to think that I learned early on in my life to take responsibility for everything that happens to me.

This has not always worked though. Here is an instance that I perceive in my past that I think may provide a good example.

I have two older brothers, one 15 months older and one almost four years older. My father is a retired Methodist Minister. I also have two younger sisters. When we were small children we lived in a small ranch style house on the Far East Side of Youngstown, Ohio in a small township called Coitsville. Our house sat on two acres of land, much of which was wooded.

Though my oldest brother suffered from serious asthma, he loved to go outside and rip and run through the fields and the woods whenever he could. Having the usual case of older brother hero worship, I desired more than anything to run with him and spend as much time as possible with him. The problem was that being so much younger at the time, I could not keep up.

Now my brother is hyper competitive. He was fundamentally incapable of running at anything but full speed. My smaller legs just couldn’t keep up. At the time it never occurred to me that he was just running at his normal pace. I thought that he was running from me.

I however, did not get angry with him, nor did I blame him for this. I somehow felt that there was something wrong with me that he should not want me around. Now, I do not doubt that it was true that he did not want me around on some occasions. I am an older sibling too so I understand this. However, I believe that there were also times when he just wanted to run and he really would not have minded the company or even the competition. This was fun for him.

I never realized that it was possible that he was not running from me until just last year when I saw the movie “Ray”.

Ray and his younger brother ran everywhere as children and his brother was always lagging behind. He just wasn’t as fast because he was younger. Seeing the scenes with those two children and the desire in the younger to always be with the older touched something deep inside me. I then understood that my older brother might not have always been running from me.

Eventually, I gave up trying to keep up. I would go out into the field next to the house and climb this beautiful tree that stood in the field all alone. I guess it seemed like the tree and I had something in common, we both needed some companionship.

I never understood what I had done to drive my older brother away. Still I was determined to become the best person that I could be and though I could not compete with him physically, I knew there was always a place that I could go where I would be loved and accepted. It was that place inside of my own mind where I could become everything that I ever dreamed I could be.

My mind became the place where all the action took place. As I became older, I realized that if I could master my mind, I might be able to become more than what I perceived myself to be. So, I began to study everything that I could about self-improvement and mental mastery. I began to grasp the major threads of the teaching and one of these was the concept of personal responsibility.

Somehow I came to the conclusion that I did not want anyone to have control of my life but me. This, I assumed, was the key to true freedom. It seemed to me that anytime I blamed someone else for my problems, I was giving them the power to cause those problems. As much as I wanted someone to save me from my suffering, no one ever came to my rescue. If no one would rescue me, I decided that I had better rescue myself. If all of my problems were the result of my own choices and decisions, the only thing that I would need to do to achieve any goal would be to make the correct choices.

As with most simplistic solutions, there was some refinement required. One cannot make any choices without having a goal to drive those choices. Obviously, the choice of the goal is the most important of all. How do I know which goals are realistic? What am I actually capable of? Should I place some rules or moral standards on my goals? What if my goal ends up hurting someone else or, even worse, someone that I Love?

I suppose that in some ways, I am still seeking the answers to these questions. In this search I have found that there is a part of me that has those answers if I have the courage, patience and skill to listen. It is in this place that I find peace, joy, harmony and even bliss. Therefore, I have used this as my barometer and my guide. When the choice is correct, when the goal is true, my heart is filled with bliss. I experience a sense of harmony and joy. I feel as if Love is flowing through me and in the most sublime of these moments, I have a sudden flash of being connected with everything and everyone and the beauty of that vision is more profound than any that I have ever experienced.

I find that the ultimate power is the power to know my own happiness.