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Jax
Two years ago I read something that completely changed my thinking. It’s from a book called The Energy of Money by Maria Nemeth, Ph.D. This can be applied to your Jedi path and the rest of your life, like determining a career path for the future.
Your Standards of Integrity
Your heart recognizes and is drawn to people who possess qualities you admire. You cherish or delight in these attributes because you know what they are. They reflect your own potential. When you see these qualities in others, you experience joy, inspiration, and gratitude. That’s the signal that your heart is responding to them.
Take a moment and think about someone whom you admire. What qualities do you prize in them? Below the surface of physical attributes or possessions, which traits reflect their basic goodness? Do you admire their courage, loyalty, or creativity? Do you honor their love, compassion, or truthfulness? Even as you are thinking about the person, do you notice a certain warmth in your heart?
Your heart warms in response to these qualities because they are inside you. You can’t appreciate a trait unless you’ve experience it – whether or not you are currently experiencing it. In order to value loyalty, for example, you must know what loyalty is. You must sense what it means to be dependable, steady, faithful, and dedicated – and you must also know the pain of disloyalty. This is true for any other attribute to which your heart responds. To use a physiological metaphor, if you respond to the trait you must have a receptor site for it, a location in your heart that recognizes and reacts to the quality when you see it in others. To be moved by a trait in another person, you must have that quality inside yourself as a possibility.
Remember the old saying that you don’t like certain people because they have some traits that you dislike in yourself? What if the opposite were true as well, that you value traits in others that you also possess? It always interests me when we discuss this in the You and Money Course, because I see how quick we are to admit the first saying, and how reluctant we are to own up to the second.
You possess the possibility for a host of attributes or characteristics that you consider to be special and admirable. When you see them in others, your heart lights. When you, yourself, act in accordance with these qualities, you feel a sense of well-being, wholeness and completeness. You are acting with integrity. The qualities that you are demonstrating are the standards that are most important to you; the standards that, finally, express who you are.
Magdelene Nashira
That’s really interesting and I’ve heard something similar to that before that we are drawn to people who can do things we wish we could do and that sometimes it is a step toward realizing something about ourself. Like I think one thing that drew me to want to study under Streen was his painting. Those are really impressive and I have always wanted to be a painter, but I really don’t have the gift. My mind can think out all kind of great scenarios but my hands will simply not do the work. If I try to draw it just doesn’t fly. When I was younger I tried taking a class and that helped some, but the teacher kind of did a lot of it for me. Left completely to myself it just isn’t there. But when I heard this idea, the article I read suggested that if we notice this about ourselves it can tell us what we may feel is lacking in ourselves and we may be able to fill this in other ways. Like with drawing, it is creativity. I may not be able to draw, but I can think of other ways to use creativity and I could always take another drawing class some day. Which I may do, but the main thing was that I learned I needed to allow myself creative outlets. Whether that be writing or just creatively thinking about how to arrange my car or whatever. Then I had to learn to do this with only the goal of my own inner peace at mind. No judging my performance. The story I’m writing I am writing with absolutely no intention of ever trying to get it published. That way it leaves me entirely creatively free to do any dorky thing I want to without the issue of “is this good enough” coming to mind to stop me. Thus the purpose is not to create a thing, necessarily, but just to get used to the idea of using my own creativity, which has always been discouraged by those around me.
Definitely! Creativity is crucially important. It allows our souls to express in ways that we can’t in other ways. I found playing with play-do can be quite fun, along with being cheap.
Good luck with your exploring creativity, it’s always worthwhile!
Hey! Play do! I never would have thought of that. That’s a good idea. I’ll look into that next time I’m at the store. :yoda
Oh, and crayons and colored pencils and all that are super on sale right now, so perhaps a quick trip to walmart is in order.
Kai-An
I never really thought about it like that, but it makes a lot of sense. The things I value in my friends tend to be qualities I value in myself, loyalty, open-mindedness, being slow to anger.
Magdelene, personally my favorites are pastels. Being able to mold color with my fingers is so wonderful. And rather reminiscent of finger painting.
They sell fairly cheap boxes of pastels at art stores, or places like Michaels.Much love,
Kai-AnYeah, another thing I saw on a TV show today was a line this character, who was an artist, said. She was talking about some type of painting. I think she said impressionist. Anyway, with this type of painting it doesn’t have to be anything or look like anything. You just paint what you feel and can be very therapudic. This was kind of a neat idea to me because being broke at this point, the idea of just picking up a pencil and letting it scrawl wherever I want to might be a good thing for me as I have some things I’m dealing with that I don’t think I know my full mind on yet.
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