Who doesn't have questions about the Truths of Life, right? While I don't have all of the answers in a 10-minute podcast, I discuss some basic principles about what I've come to appreciate as “Truths” about life. They don't always match up with what I was taught growing up. I also compare some of these newly-realized truths against some very difficult times, when “truth” or meaning to life seemed far away. I refer to some passages from Victor Frankl's work “Mans Search for Meaning.”
“Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress. We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
And, according to Frankl, we can live deliberately:
“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life, he can only respond by being responsible.”
Frankl, Victor E. Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy. Beacon Press, 2006.
And these are some of the “truths of life” espoused by Mike Dooley:
– Life is beautiful, fair, rich, abundant, and filled with meaning.
– We are here to experience love to learn, to adventure, and to become consistently wiser, greater, and happier.
– Spirituality can simply be an understanding that there’s more to life than our physical senses can perceive and that there is a Higher Power that is greater and more loving than we’ve been taught— not male or female, but a divine intelligence.
– This Higher Power adores you, unconditionally, no matter what mistakes you’ve made.
– Hell and evil exist only in our minds, and enter our lives when we become massively confused.
– Redemption and forgiveness are guaranteed from this Higher Power, whether or not we even ask, yet if we ask, especially when it concerns other people, we free ourselves from the past.
– Everyone goes to “heaven.”
– Magic enters our lives daily, through so-called coincidences, “accidents,” and serendipities.
– People have good intentions, they mean well, and are each doing their best considering what they know.
– Everyone can be successful. Our successes do not have to come at the expense of others, but can enrich others.
Dooley, Mike. Infinite Possibilities: The Art of Living Your Dreams. New York: Atria Books, 2009.
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