A SPIRITUAL MAKEOVER!
(My Thoughts About It All)
On occasion, I have watched the tv show where they conduct a “makeover” for someone. The “before” pictures show someone that has allowed themselves to settle for the look of being older and sedate. Some you can see that with the proper makeup or different attire, a more attractive person would emerge. Sure enough, after the new clothes and make up has been applied, we gasp when the “new” person walks onto the stage! I sometimes wonder, what would that person look like six months later? For you see…the makeover only effected the outward appearance not the inner person! The settling began on the inside, before it showed up on the outside.
50 years ago, I decided to join the Marines! I had always imagined myself as a Marine attired in the awesome looking “Dress Blues” seen on tv and billboards. Yet, the mindset that I arrived at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego with was not the mindset required to become the Marine responsible for protecting our country. I along with 70 other young men, had to unlearn many of the thoughts and concepts we had picked up over the years that could have prevented us from becoming the Marine we had glorified watching on television. In order to make this transformation work, the transformation must begin at the center of our beliefs. Every erroneous idea or belief we had about the Marine Corps had to be systematically eliminated. The act of catharsis begins with a willingness to set aside to give up these beliefs for something better. Yes…the uniform can be an incentive, but it must be deeper than just wearing “dress blues”. For you can be attired in Dress Blues and unable to run 50 steps without passing out. Or wearing the uniform unable to button your blouse due to being overweight. These outward appearances are just examples of thoughts of what is going on in the inside.
Life is all about being open. Flowing! Life is reciprocal. Not contained. Creation begins with allowing the art that is within to emerge from the depths of our heart and soul. Of course, this is also the place where our hurts and fears reside. So if we are to be the people we were created to be, we must not only learn how to get past the hurts and fears but be willing to bare ourselves in order that we may reconnect to the “real you”. And no where in life is this more important than in parenting. It is here that we are constantly required to teach, model and challenge others while we find ourselves lacking most of the time in the tools necessary to accomplish this task. So onward we trod. Trying to teach and model for our children all the things we would like them to learn so that they will have a better life than we did. Yet, one day we look up and we realize there was so much more we could have shared, but didn’t. Why didn’t we? We didn’t know. We were just too busy trying to be parents.
Such are the challenges of life. We assume that life is about doing. We do the best we can as children, students, husbands and wives, employees or employers. All the time spending so much time “being” that we lose sight of who we really are! So how do I reconnect to the “real” me? What are the benefits to reconnecting? Let’s consider that there was a mature Marine lurking on the inside of me waiting to be released. How was that imagined person become the physical, living, breathing individual necessary to fulfill the role needed by the United States Marine Corps?
Training! Bootcamp! Or perhaps it would be better to phrase it as “ReBoot camp”.
Chapter 1
Life is simple! That’s not to say that life cannot be difficult. Yet life is just that. Simple! It is simple because the rules of life are simple. I know you’ve heard this many time, but you get out of life just what you’ve put into it. No more no less! While at times it may seem that there is a lot of luck and accidents in life, but I assure you there are no such things as accidents or something called luck. The decisions you make today create actions that will occur tomorrow. So if I could put into a simple phrase just what life is all about it would be this: “If you want to go some place, if you want to be somebody, then you had better wake up and pay attention!” Those words came from the honorable and great Ms. Whoppi Goldberg. You might say that these words just came from a movie. Something that was not real. Yet, are the words any less meaningful?
Of course, these pages are filled with just my thoughts. But they are thoughts born of experience and observation. Just like so many others, I spent the majority of my life “sleepwalking”. Making decisions based upon what felt good at the moment. Any plans for the future were vague at best.