​​I was talking with a colleague yesterday who works with people who were given a terminal diagnosis. No one wants to hear that they have perhaps months or less than a year to live. It is devastating for the person who receives the diagnosis and for their families. It is her job to help everyone cope with such news, and offer support to the patient and family. What is a person to do when such news is given to them? The answer to this question is the subject of this blog post.
 
When you stop to think about it we are all terminal. From the moment of our conception, we start the process of dying.  We just don’t know exactly when that will be. For the person who receives a diagnosis, that unknown becomes a bit more certain. I say ‘bit’ because even medical science as advanced and as all knowing it appears to be is still wrong. I think nearly everyone knows of or has heard of someone who has beaten the odds, or lived longer than ever expected.

The key is a person’s response to the news itself. A person can react in a positive or negative way. A negative response is a person reacting with fear, anger, and depression. A person who reacts in this manner needs to examine a few things. First, did they worry about the diagnosis before it was given? Why would they? They did not know the condition even existed (even though it existed in them before a formal diagnosis.) The only thing that changed is now they have a diagnosis. They can choose to be worried depressed or angry about it, but even if they are does it do any good? Does it change the reality of their situation? What kind of an effect do those emotions have on the body anyway? If you ever experienced any one of these emotions you already know. When you live with those emotions in the forefront of your awareness, life isn’t going to feel so good. I am not saying that there is anything wrong with feeling anxiety, anger and depression in light of such a diagnosis, it is when these feelings become so prominent in a person’s everyday life and attention it becomes unhealthy.

So Live. Live with the knowledge that we are as humans permanently impermanent. This body mind is on loan and will at some point be turned back into its rightful owner, the Creator of all that is. Let the freedom of not knowing when your last day is, allow you more latitude in your life to live without fear anger and depression. You won’t look back on your life and say things like I wish I had started that business, or I wish I had spent less time worrying about my finances or living situation. People who have experienced near death experiences overwhelmingly report such insights to their families and friends. Use these insights for your life right now and feel the joy that comes with them.
© 2018 Michael S Morris, MA LLP
Totality, LLC

​It was a warm day. I was standing on the playground. Out of nowhere and for reasons that I do not know Craig started pounding on me. My parents taught me that it is wrong to hit someone. Punch after punch landed on me. Pain. I remember feeling pain. In my attempt to do no harm in return, I somehow managed to maneuver him into a headlock. When this finally happened, I was so relieved that I wasn’t being punched anymore. He tried to escape from my grasp. I squeezed tighter. Every time he flinched or gave the slightest movement, I squeezed tighter. He stopped moving. I just stood there focused on the relief.  He was tight in my unrelenting grasp with his head protruding out from underneath my right arm for what felt like forever.  No pain from the punches, a silence and a stillness that was such a relief for me to experience. I was a young child, who had no concept of strangulation, or if I had perhaps squeezed so hard that I would or could have broken his neck. To this day, I don’t know why, for some reason that I can’t explain I let him go. The moment I did his fist connected with my mouth and I felt immediate pain and the warmth of blood rushing in to my mouth.  He ran away.
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So what is in this for me? What do I get to see from this memory in my life? The physical body is just that. He could hurt my physical self but he cannot destroy, hurt, mutilate, or touch the eternal part of me that cannot be hurt or destroyed. A physical body is what it is… a limited thing with a finite existence. Letting him go from my grasp shows me that at a very early age I understood this idea. I can feel all the emotions of that painful day and still be here to BE HERE. I can take pleasure and feel good in the knowing that I possessed that wisdom from a very early age.  This is something that I need to allow myself to know and remember always.  More importantly, I need to allow myself to BE this daily and in each and every moment of my life.

What is this idea of relaxing into the truth anyway? Relaxing into what?? What is the truth that I am relaxing into? What is progressive about this journey into truth?
 
As human beings we are taught that we have an identity.  We have to make plans on what we are going to do with our lives and set goals.  We have very real lives that need very real attention.  We then get caught up in knowing where we are heading, predicting our futures and making all kinds of plans based off of our calculations.  Things better go as planned, or we can have good reason to become angry, scared and depressed or all of the above.

After 56 years of my life I am starting to see is the truth of my life.  The truth is I DON’T know.   I have no answers.  I can say with a great deal of certainty that I am relaxing into something that I can’t define with words.  I am relaxing into something that has no existence outside of me and yet is not separate from me in any way.  It is a realization and a growing comfort of settling into something that cannot be defined, quantified, or contacted through human senses.  It seems to defy logic and cannot be comprehended by my puny intellect.

At the outset of this journey I would experience a great deal of fear and anger. Really?? NOT knowing?  You’ve got to be kidding me. Lots of fear comes up around this idea because as functional human beings we are not supposed to not know. The truth is, I don’t know who I am. The truth is I don’t know exactly where I am going. The truth is I am not absolutely in control of my life.  These are and can be very scary propositions, hard pills for human beings to swallow.   All I can really say is that I can fight these ideas all I want, get as angry as humanly possible, and it never really changes anything.  All it does is leave me angry and afraid.  Exhausted and hung out to dry, never moving off some imaginary starting line, I would continue to fight over and over again only to end up in the same place.  I was on a spiritual treadmill that leads to nowhere.

And yet when I actually ALLOW myself to experience the possibility that I in fact don’t know who I am,  that I don’t need to control every aspect of my life, that there is nothing I need to defend myself, either for or against anyone or anything, something begins to open up inside me. Instead of fighting, I can begin to relax. My struggle against my not knowing-ness allowed me to see that the struggle itself was painful and allowed me to finally relinquish the fight.  The analogy is how long do you beat your head into the wall before you finally realize that it hurts and you don’t want to do that anymore.
 
I am not saying that goals are wasteful, or that it is wrong to try to accomplish things in your life that you want to achieve. I am suggesting that if you can allow yourself to not know or need to control every microscopic detail of your life, it could be a good start.  Detours in plans are often what make life interesting and exciting. Being flexible can be fun.  Are there things about you that you don’t understand?  If so, and I am sure there are, be open to the idea that you don’t know everything about yourself.  Allow yourself to be open to the idea that you don’t know every fact about what you see happening in life.  Take a moment to let yourself realize that things are often not what they appear to be.  Allow yourself the possibility that you might be wrong about something you think you know.   All of these ideas will permit you to settle into the idea that it is possible to live your life without struggle. See what happens when you no longer have to fight with everything that gets presented to you.  You will be pleasantly surprised.
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©2018 Michael S. Morris, MA LLP
Totality, LLC

​​Lack is an interesting word. The dictionary defines Lack as the state of being without or not having enough of something.  Lack can be present in our lives in so many ways, Time, Money, Power, just to name a few ways lack can show itself to us in our lives. When we feel a sense of lack it can have a profound effect on our psyche leading us to feel depressed, angry, powerless, and anxious.
Is lack real?  If so what can we do with it to change its ‘power over our psyche’.
So let’s examine Lack by the following example:

The Atlantic Ocean is an abundant source of water.  If you bring a container such as a thimble, and you scoop up the water you will get nothing more than a thimble full of water, any excess that may try to collect in the thimble will simply run off and find its way back to the ocean.  Bring a cup and you will get nothing more than a cup full.  Bring a bucket and get only that much. Bring a tanker and only get as much as the tanker can hold.  The point is that you will only get as much water as your vessel and hold.  Human beings are sometimes referred to as vessels or a container capable of being filled with blessings and abundance. Being a vessel how much can we hold? When our vessel is full (full of ego) are we in a position to receive or feel abundance? Egoic feelings such as anxiety, anger, and depression are filling our vessel, preventing us from experiencing the ever present abundance here now. Furthermore if we are full of fear, depression, and anger we will act in accordance with these feelings. The result? a growing and deeper feeling of lack. If a person (vessel) is full of ego does this mean that they are not abundant, or cannot be abundant? No. Plenty of people are full of ego and have abundance. What would be interesting to asses in such people is how happy or unhappy they are in the midst of their abundance.
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Is the universe abundant? YES.  It is set up that way. If I were to walk next to you and breathe heavily, would you feel threatened, fearful that I would use up all of your air?? No. You realize that there is plenty of air and do not need to be concerned. You don’t formulate a story in your mind that air is lacking. Arguably you could, but feel the implications of such a belief.  How would it feel to believe that lack of air is real? Ego in its preoccupation with the future operates under the premise that there is never enough. Lack is an illusion, only as real as you would believe it to be. The invitation is to allow yourself to let ego be ego and open up to the possibility of becoming an empty vessel. Realize that in this moment everything that is needed is present and here now. Experience the feelings and sensations that this idea brings. You will be pleasantly surprised.
© 2018 Michael S Morris, MA LLP
Totality, LLC

​My inner victim thinks that it knows everything. What I need, what I want, what must happen what must never happen. Really?? Why yes, of course it does. Just ask it. It knows what is best for me. It knows what I want. It calls the shots in my life. My inner victim thinks it has everything under control. My inner victim thinks it knows the meaning of everything that happens happened and ever will happen to me. My inner victim compensates for its own insecurity with a feigned sense of security designed to make me feel safe. When I rest my consciousness into that I feel alright for a few moments only to go back to feeling awful.
 
At this point I have a choice. I can keep my attention on my inner victim or I can keep my attention on God. I, like everyone, am a child of God. It’s funny; I have less of a sense of “security” when my attention is with God. However, this lack of security is somehow pleasantly different.  When I reflect on my life, I can see that what I thought was right for me actually wasn’t. I am where I am in my life and can see that while it isn’t anything like I would have imagined, I can see that it I am far better off than if I were ‘calling the shots.’ Something has been running my life far better than I ever could. That something is God. As a child of the creator of all that is, I have access to God’s higher wisdom, provided that I can see past my inner victim long enough to gain access to it. I can allow myself to not feel so pressured that everything in life is all up to me and only me. I have a co-creator who has always had my back and continues to have my back, even if I don’t think so. When I live with this realization, I feel a sense of peace far greater than what my inner victim could ever offer. When I forget this idea, I panic. I have lived long enough with panic, so I will choose God and the peace that comes with it.
©2018 Michael Morris, MA LLP
Totality, LLC