Sunday, January 6, 2013

Seek Stability But Love Change

Here is a story about stability. 

Susan's father was an alcoholic. her mother neglectful and she lived in the slums most of her very unstable life. Beautiful and intelligent, she was able to find work and graduate from the University. After a few years she found herself the mother of three and the wife of a man who had a hard time holding a job and was not physically or socially attractive. She had ample reasons to seek a divorce but never wavered in her devotion or love and commitment to her husband and children. She was a rock, a rock of stability. With an unstable past, a tumultuous present. and a hard future it is hard to explain why this woman and many like her can be the strength and stable grounding for their families. It is that focusing on others rather than self bring stability?

There is an important but almost totally overlooked dynamic that helps us unerstand how we exist. It is the relative strength of the spirit tot eh body at any moment in timöe. You can understand this by first noting that the body is constantly changing based on nutrition, energy, rest, stimulation, circumstance, training, etc. The body can be strong, weak, active, and passive while constantly changing. 

   It is less obvious but equally plausible that the mind and spirit may also have the same characteristics. If so, then what a person is at any moment is a complicated give and take interplay between a dynamic vacillating and changing body, mind, and spirit. They all act together, as a unity, to produce at each moment a person, a different person, and a unique person. 
  In life, we constantly try to find stability; fortunately there is stability. But, why are some people more stable than others and to what do you attribute stability? The answer must reflect the extent to which their biochemsitry, mind or spirit give them stability. 
To explain how some can be so stable and responsible while constantly being in a state of change, always moving forward, as an unfolding person, is to consider other sources of stability. 
                 
     Three possible sources of stability are:


   1.Being identified or responsible to other   
       2. Being connected to God
   3.Living according to your conscience

Remeber these three ways to be stable as they are related to information that will be discussed later. In the example above, Susan's stability was living in harmony with her conscience. Mmost likely her conscience would have directed her attention to what she needed to do for others rather than a focus on self. But, Susan may also be identified with her children and husband that she just could not be self-serving. 
  Next we will turn our direction to a new, but related direction in this discussion. 
   

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