“You wil not succeed in being partial hostage to the ego, for it keeps no bargains and would leave you nothing.  Nor can you be partial host to it.  You must choose between total freedom and total bondage, for there are no alternatives but these,” Course In Miracles.

Jack Carroll is no hostage to his ego.  The ego says poor boy he’s in a wheelchair with cerebral palsy.  Jack Carroll said “I turned my weakness into a strength.”  Jack Carroll chose total freedom.

How often do we choose to bind our minds, our creativity, our dreams, our goals with limiting thoughts such as these?  We may think if you had my problems you’d drink to.  If your child was a sick as mine you’d eat to.

If you had my debt you would act like this to.  Life is hard.  Life is unfair.  Life is complicated.  Life does not treat me well.  I have tried so hard and I’m still hurting.  This is not working for me.

If that is what we believe then that is what will be true for us.  We have a choice.  We can also choose to flip those thoughts.  Ever notice how people with much less on their plate or doing great work calmly and happily.

We can consider this and then say we can do this.  Our child is sick and the most healing gift we can offer is to be a happy, present and loving parent.  Our debt does not define who we are.  Showing up for life will keep us present for an opportunity that shutting down we will miss.  We can do this.  Life presents everyone with challenges and the people we admire most, use those challenges to grow.  If we are still hurting, have we asked for help?  Have we accepted that some losses in life just take time to heal from?  This is not working can be turned into this is working, or maybe we just need to ask more questions.

Most importantly we can look to be of service to someone else.  The quickest way to relieve ourselves from the bondage of self, is to help another.  Have we considered a small weekly or monthly commitment of volunteerism?  Have we considered how we can be of service to someone in need? Many of us spend far too much time up in our own heads, going through our own to do lists, feeling anger toward someone, reliving past events, plotting revenge, and all the while, those people we’ve targeted keep moving on with their life.  Often times people are unaware or unaffected by our negative state toward them.

We may manically recite our life schedules, problems, and pains and then we look to download them on other people and they revolt.  Then we get more angry at their reaction and attack them for it.  Who is really creating this chaos?  Who is living in a vicious cycle of unconscious behavior? If we don’t stop and ask ourselves these questions, if we are not taking personal inventory and looking at our part in these equations then it’s probably us!

Consider this “If we know someone that thinks they have arrived, then we may be wise not to follow them as they are surely very lost”.  Then we can apply this to ourselves, and when we lack humility remember that maybe it’s really us who needs to do the changing.

Happy people forgive, heal, let go, and move forward.  Bitter people hang on, regret, resent, attack and stay stuck in their ego bondage.  Those people can cause happy people temporary disturbance, but ultimately happy people will find a way to be happy because that is what they want.  The angry person just stays angry until they find another outlet for their rage, disappointment or resentment because that is what they want.

What would Jack Carroll do?  He made us laugh, maybe today you choose to help someone laugh.  Maybe today you choose to flip your weakness into a strength. What do you want?  If you had the power to create anything what would it be?  What makes you happy?  How do you combat those self defeating thoughts?