Thought for the Week = just be a little kinder

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The Dalai Lama claims that his religion is kindness. And he goes on to say that, ‘on a simple, practical level, kindness creates a sense of warmth and openness that allows us to communicate much more easily with other people’.
 Kindness can seem a little soft and old-fashioned today – something for a gentler, less hurried age – a time less caught up with efficiency and maximising profit.
The truth is that kindness is one of the most powerful, transformational forces we have and can solve many  problems. It has no downside -and  it costs nothing – it is not age or class specific….we can all do it…
And we need to exercise our kindness not just to others but to ourselves too- Shakespeare tell us..’Self love  is not so great a sin as self neglect’.   And also to other creatures living on our planet..
Let us try this week to be just a little kinder to ourselves and to one another and make our world a warmer, nicer place to live.
Aldous Huxley, the English author and philosopher, spent his life working on how to develop human potential – he tried yoga, meditation techniques, dance, taking drugs of all sorts, hypnotic trance and Zen.
In one of the last lectures he gave towards the end of his life he was asked, what was the most effective technique for transforming life.   “It is a little embarrassing” he said, that after years and years of research and experimentation, I have to say that the best answer is  – “just be a little kinder.”
Murroe Website EditorThought for the Week = just be a little kinder
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Thought for the Week – Disconnected from Source 

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The issue of self-esteem is not new. Freud attributed the difference between a low mood and depression to self-esteem. He argued that low self esteem triggers depression.
Today we are surrounded by self-esteem concerns. David Tacey claims that the issue has grown because we look to the ego to supply our sense of self worth when the source is elsewhere – in the soul. Since we don’t talk about the soul anymore we can’t  come to terms with self-esteem. He says, “our ego based society cannot understand it because something other than the ego gives us our deep and secure sense of worth”. And we are out of touch, disconnected from this source. He goes on to suggest that this why so many young people are harming themselves, engaging in glue sniffing or attempting suicide. The problem is that they don’t know who they are – they are cut off disconnected from source.
Jung describes this as a ‘loss of soul’ and this disconnection undermines people’s lives makings them anxious and confused. This loss leads to a crippling emptiness which is expressed as anxiety, addictions and even suicidal feelings. We may look fine on the surface but underneath there is turmoil. We need to reconnect with our souls.
Murroe Website EditorThought for the Week – Disconnected from Source 
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Thought for the Week – Darkness v Light

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As we enter this darkening time of the year I find myself drawn downwards into my own darkness. And I am frightened to go there.
Growing up we were taught to avoid the darkness, to fear it and treat it as dangerous territory. Most of my spiritual training has also taught me to ignore this darkness and focus on the more accessible bright half of my being.  And our culture avoids the dark – light is everywhere – we never get time off to rest in the dark. We are always on.
We have witnessed the destruction that ignored darkness has spawned and the consequent disillusionment with the church.
The truth is that we are hybrid creatures, made up of dark and light and we must take both these parts seriously and we all have our own version of these.
Murroe Website EditorThought for the Week – Darkness v Light
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Thought for the Week – The Easy Option

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We all love stories – the story behind the Apple Mac Command Key has remained with me as a warning as to how I can get lazy in what I do and in the decisions I make. It stays with me.  Here is the story.

The Development team tasked with developing the early Mac computers came up with the idea of adding a command key to a standard keyboard. This key if used  in combination with other keys provides a shortcut to an array of menu commands.

They needed a symbol for the key and the team understandably defaulted to the now famous Apple logo.When Steve Jobs saw it he was frustrated – he felt the design team had become lazy and that the Apple icon was being overused.

He would not accept their proposal and sent them back to the drawing board – to come up with something better – something more original. The job fell to the graphic designer on the team called Susan Kare.

She searched through countless books of international symbols and then she came across an obscure sign found on campsites in Sweden and other parts of Scandanavia.  It is a square with looping corners – like a Bowen knot. It was the symbol used on information boards to indicate a cultural centre or a ‘place of interest’, such as a waterfall or other natural phenomenon.

Steve Jobs was very taken with this idea of a symbol directing users to ‘places of interest’ on the computer keyboard. He accepted the symbol and it has remained a unique feature of Apple keyboards.

Murroe Website EditorThought for the Week – The Easy Option
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