live in present.. :)

Are you living in the past, present or future?

Many of us are burdened, if not caught up with our past. More than the consequences of our past actions, we let the memory of the past drag us down. We like to hit the rewind button in our memory and lick the wounds of long ago. We open up one painful memory and then a sudden flood of other unpleasant memories comes rushing in. And downward spiral we go.

We spend most of our time entertaining our bitterness, pains and disappointments of yesterday. We even spend countless hours just imagining the day we will get our vindication or even vengeance from past hurts. As we waste our time dwelling in our past, our present is wasted as well. And the sad thing is that our today is our tomorrow’s yesterday. Wasting the present now is just adding up to our wasted past. And the vicious cycle continues.

Many of us are also so anxious about our future. While our bodies reside in the present moment, our mind has time traveled years from now. We spend much time being worried and gloomy to things that has not happened yet. We are so absorbed in the “What Ifs” that we forget the “What nows?”

Our present also affects our future very much. To have a better tomorrow is to have a better today. Our actions today will greatly affect our future, good or bad. To waste your time today being anxious about tomorrow is to waste the opportunity to improve your tomorrow.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Mt 6:34

To live life is to live in the present moment. The past is dead and the future is yet unborn. The key to healing the past and having a hopeful future lies to what you will decide to do NOW. Now is the only thing we really got. If you waste the present moment by dwelling in the past or being anxious about the future, you end up loosing everything.

The past belongs to God’s mercy, the future to His Providence and the present to His Love. To live in the present moment is to accept and experience God’s love here and now.

Today is your tomorrow’s past.

The way you live today will make your tomorrow better or bitter.

Today is where you are.

Are you there?

life..what is it?

Have you ever wondered what life really is all about? Have you ever questioned if there is a deeper kind of life than the one you are living?

Most of us seldom ask these questions when life is easy and going our way. We are preoccupied in enjoying ourselves with what we have and we never bother to really meditate about life’s meaning. When everything is all well, we have a tendency to focus on pleasuring ourselves. We have a lot to distract us from asking the big questions in life, like “What is it all about?”

These are where trials can help us.

Trials can be shock therapy to wake us from our self-absorption. When we are stripped of our pleasures and distractions, we are forced to look at life in a different way.

A rich person can fall to the trap of Materialism. His life meaning becomes accumulating objects instead of loving people. Since he has the money to fund his materialism, he can continue to distract himself and live a shallow life till the end of his days. Sometimes loosing his riches is the best remedy for him.

For an addict to be sober he must be cut off from his drugs. It is also true with us. We also need to be separated with the things that feed our disordered desires to achieve sobriety.

If a person thinks that life is all about wealth, and he loses his wealth, he is now forced to look life differently. He is now forced to learn to live life without his precious wealth. Now he is strained to move out from his narrow world and live in the real world. He now starts to search life’s meaning beyond what he always knew.

And those who seek shall find.

If you are experiencing trials maybe God permitted it to wake you up from your false view of life. Maybe it is God’s way to bring back sobriety in your life by cutting of all your distractions.

Many great people have found life’s meaning at their lowest point in life, maybe you are one of them.

Don’t waste your trials. Use them as opportunity to go deeper in life.

life.......

Are you one of the many who are dazed and confused?

A lot of people I know now suffer from deep confusion. Sometimes they are so confused that they don’t have a clue what they are confused about. In most cases the source of confusion is the lack of direction in their lives.

Life seems to be a big blur.

One thing I have observed with people who are confused is their life is not centered. They are filled with mixed up and even contradicting ideas and philosophies which they try to build their life on.

I think we can learn a bit of life in photography. In photography, if you don’t calibrate and focus the center of the camera properly the whole picture will be blurred. No amount of shots taken will make the picture clear until the center is focused.

Most of our confusion in life comes from not seeing a clear picture of who we are and what our life suppose to be. Most of us take random shots in life hoping “to get the picture.”

How can we find our focus or center?

To find our deep center is to find a deep Person. Jesus. He is supposed to be the center of our life. If our center is not Jesus, we end up un-centered, unfocused and blurred.

We must keep our eyes focused on Jesus, for He is the only One who can bring back the focus in our lives.

Pope John Paul II said that Jesus reveals humanity to himself. Jesus is the Logos. He is the image of the living God. He is the image that we are supposed to look like.

God made man in His image and likeness.

We must see ourselves the way God sees us. We must see God’s vision for our humanity. And that is we are fully alive. Jesus Himself said, “I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly.” In Christ our broken humanity can be once again restored. He alone can give clarity to our blurry life.

Now do you get the big picture?

To love or to lust????

Love is one of the misused words in our vocabulary. In effect its real meaning has become vague. Saying “I love you” and “I love pizza” seems to be same to many.

Could it be that we treat people as pizzas?

To love, real love or agape is to give oneself to the other for the sake of the other. To lust is to treat people like pizzas. To lust is to use people for your own selfish desire for pleasure. What do you do when pizza satisfies your craving? It becomes a leftover. And sooner or later it gets thrown away.

Many people feel that way.

Thrown away.

Lust uses people for selfish reasons and desires. After the reasons or desires are met, the person is discarded. And sadly we live in a culture that promotes using each other, just look at the advertising industry.

Love, the real thing is on the opposite side of lust. Love wants what is the good of the other. It does not use the other to benefit oneself. Love looks at the eyes of the beloved. Lust is trapped in his own ego, thinking how to use the other person.

Once I heard that as long as two people are in the agreement in using each other, it is alright. But it does not change the fact that you are being used and you are using another person. And people were not made to be used; we were made to be loved.

To live a life of lust is to live a life of emptiness. Only real love can truly satisfy us.

Love and lust cannot exist with each other for the reason that love cannot wait to give while lust cannot wait to take.

How does this agape looks like?

Look at Jesus on the Cross. He emptied Himself for our sake. There is no selfishness in the Crucified Christ. Jesus gave Himself totally to us.

So what is your choice? To love or to lust?

Live as much u can.... :)

How are we living? Do we have more stuff than we need? Are we spending more money than we are supposed to?

It is funny how to one generation to the next the standards of living are getting higher and higher. What our grandparents would consider luxury, we consider as a basic need. I believe that is why we have so much ungratefulness going around. Everybody feels deprived!

Most of what we consider needs are actually are just wants.

Living simply helps us to be sober. We need learn to control our desires and live only what we actually need. In doing so, we are able to enjoy life more. The less time we spend pursuing stuffs, the more time we have to slow down and experience life.

Living simply, simply means getting our priorities right. We give priority to what is really important, like friends, family and God and not stuffs. Stuffs are just means for us to love better and not as an ultimate goal itself.

To be caught up in this materialistic culture is to be caught up in a life of shallowness and emptiness. We can never fill your heart with stuffs, only love can fill it.

We also want to live simply so others may live. Living simply gives us an opportunity to give more to those who are in need. Our lives become bigger than we are. We are stewards of what we have and not owners. God created it and owns it. We have an obligation to share to others what we have after our needs are met.

Why live simply?

Because we really want to live.

attitude matters :)

All of us want success. Nobody wants to fail inhis/her task. But the difference between success and failure of an individual is due to the person's thinking. If you are optimistic towards your goal in my view you can proceed to have it more smoothly than the one who is not sure bout the result. Being optimistic towards the success of a task removes much of unwanted pressure of you. :) Let me give example of a small story which i went through recently,

In order to better understand people's views of the world, a researcher once placed two children, one a pessimist and the other an optimist, alone in separate rooms. The pessimist was placed in a colorful room full of all kinds of imaginative toys...the optimist was put in a room filled with horse manure. The first child played in the room for a little while, but soon came to the door asking to leave because the toys were boring and because they broke too easily. Likewise, the young optimist soon came to the door...but rather than asking to leave, she asked for a shovel. Of course, the researcher asked the child why she wanted a shovel. She replied, "With all this manure around, I know that there must be a pony in here somewhere."

One day when i was returning back from my tuition I stopped to watch a local little League Cricket game that was being played in a park near my home. As I sat down behind the bench on the boundary line, I asked one of the boys what the score was.

"We have given off 156 runs in 15 overs and 5 are yet to be bowled," he answered with a smile.

"Really," I said. "I have to say you don't look very discouraged."

"Discouraged?" the boy asked with a puzzled look on his face. "Why should we be discouraged? We haven't been up to bat yet."

And I was amazed to hear the answer of that little boy. If even being so little, even seeing his team has rare chances to win that match, if that boy can be optimistic, why cant we???

happiness :)

Decide to be happy today, to live with what is yours - your family, your business, your job, your luck. If you can't have what you like, maybe you can like what you have.

Just for today, be kind, cheerful, agreeable, responsive, caring, and understanding. Be your best, dress your best, talk softly, and look for the bright side of things. Praise people for what they do and do not criticize them for what they cannot do. If someone does something stupid, forgive and forget. After all, it's just for one day.

Who knows, it might turn out to be a nice day.

joy

We live in a consumerist world where more is merrier and big is better. We believe happiness is all about the glimmer and the glamour, the excitement and the thrills.

People seem to jump from one sensation to the next in search of joy. From shopping to clubbing, parties and vacations, we seem to never get enough of them. (By the way it is amazing that people who take vacation these days need another vacation to recover from their so called vacation.)

But are we happy with what we have? Have our activities brought us joy or just plain fatigue?

The problem of looking joy in these things is, like getting drunk, the feelings are all gone the next day we wake up. And like a drunk, we start to go again in a spree. And the futile cycle goes on and on.

We all know that worldly things can never give us lasting happiness, but we all want to prove it ourselves.

And so we waste our time.

In the end, we waste our life.

So where can we find joy?

we can find that in our soul.. our inner sensation

So how did Divine Joy entered our world?

He did not enter the world in wealth, power and privilege. He entered poorly and humbly. The shepherd and the wise men did not found joy in the castle of Herod, but in a cave out of nowhere. They did not saw Joy wrapped in gold but in swaddling clothes. Joy is found where you least expect it.

Real joy does not come from stuff-ing yourself, nor going from one high to the next. You could have traveled around the world and only have fatigue to show. Real joy is much simpler, much closer. It is close as your neighbor. Joy is found where you least expect it.

Joy is found in doing the simplest act of love. Joy is to feed a hungry child, to visit the old and abandoned or to comfort the sick. The most joyful people I know are those who have chosen to dedicate their lives to the forgotten and powerless. Their life did not revolved in satisfying themselves but bring joy to those they serve. And amidst all the poverty and suffering they deal with everyday, they have found joy. And it is a joy that the world cannot give. Joy is found where you least expect it.

Joy is found not when you “take em’ all” but when you “give em’ all”. The more you grab joy for yourself, the more you lose it, the more you give it away, the more it comes to you.

So find joy in love and love with joy. :)

source(Daxx Bondoc)