Do You Love Yourself?

(Lifted from a forwarded email.)

"At the heart of personality is the need to feel a sense of being lovable without having to qualify for that acceptance."
-- Dr. Paul Tournier

How do you see yourself as unlovable?

Take a few minutes to write down why you perceive yourself to be unlovable. Look at the list and see if you can identify where those characterizations originated. Can you pinpoint old messages from parents, teachers, and friends that led you to negative conclusions about yourself? Are those messages valid today?

The beliefs we adopt as children usually don't hold when we view them objectively as adults. Can you let them go? Can you begin to see yourself as a unique _expression of life, a genuine gift to the world?

"You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection."
-- Buddha
"Limitless like the ocean are your excellent qualities."
-- Dalai Lama

The Struggle Between Good and Evil

I started reading The Devil and Miss Prym of Paulo Coehlo. The Brazilian author never fails to mezmerize me with his beautiful storytelling of universal human experiences.

Eventually, page after page, I cannot but confront my own duality. I cannot deny the fact that within the cloak of good and evil, I have danced both sides; which leads to me ask in conclusion, "Am I a good or a bad person?"

The question of right versus wrong, good versus evil is a perennial basic question. Sometimes I even ask myself, what is the basis for right and wrong? Why is it important to side with good and deviate from evil? Aren't the two, as Paulo Coehlo has stated, "twin brothers" in the birth of the universe?

What is beyond good and evil? German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche died with a mental breakdown trying to decipher the essence of ethics. The Taoists say, that nature is endowed with dualities, the Yin and the Yang, the positive and the negative, the hot and the cold, the good and the evil. To live a happy life is to stay in the middle of these dualities as they dance around each other.

Going back to my question, am I good or evil? Or am I both?

Is God Relevant?

Is it our search for deeper meaning?

Or our fear of the unknown?

Is it the need for life direction?

Or a source for the notions of right and wrong?

Is it the desire for immortality?

Or the seduction of salvation?

Have You Ever?

Have you ever ran, fell, and shattered into a million pieces?

Have you ever tried to piece yourself back day by day, so you can get back on your feet and walk again?

Have you ever got back to your feet and realized that you can never go back where you started?

Have you ever lost your way, and tried making a new path for yourself?

Have you ever run out of dreams, and thought you can weave new ones?

Have you ever felt of just stopping and not know how to start again?

Have you ever?