Role Playing

Role Playing: The Many Faces of Ego by Eckhart Tolle

"You become most powerful in whatever you do if the action is performed for its own sake rather than as a means to protect, enhance, or conform your role identity." Eckhart Tolle

While there are circumstances in which we may wear different hats, Tolle looks at how we become identified with the roles we play, which very often has nothing to do with who we are and is not authentic. Are you your self around everyone in every circumstance or do you play different roles? Have you ever noticed the way in which you interact with different people in different ways? For example you may feel more at ease and comfortable around your family and certain friends so you may be comfortable just being your authentic, fun, talkative animated funky self - yet you may notice that when you are around other friends, people of authority, children you act in a different manner and perhaps remain very quiet and demure or shy. If so, you are playing a role, or to put it in another way, you are pretending to be someone you are not. Therefore, it is important to learn how to be an open, fluid critical thinker and a unique individual.

Did you buy that new sofa or new boat because you need it, to "keep up with the Jones'" or to enhance your sense of "self" and ego. Do you really enjoy spending time with your investment banker or are you role playing and pretending to enjoy her company so that you will eventually "gain" and "get something" out of it. There are many ways in which people play roles designed to protect, enhance and conform to what they believe will serve them selves (ego). The act of "giving" is a great example: If you "give" and "help" and engage in acts of kindness do it because you hold yourself to a certain standard and not for any other reason - otherwise it is not authentic and you are playing a role to serve your self(ego). Do you do "good" things because you think you will look "good" in the eyes of others, or because you think that if you do you will receive a hefty tax write-off, win an award or go to heaven? If you do, then ask yourself if you are doing it to serve your Self and enhance your ego or if you are true in your intention and heart. Become aware of the energy of your true intentions in any given situation and learn how to unravel yourself from playing roles.

Do something that scares you every day

"When you come to the edge of all the light
that you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is
knowing one of two things will happen: there will be something solid to stand on,
or you will be taught how to fly." Barbara J. Winter

Be Positive

Attracting Success

"People unknowingly sabotage their own work when they withhold help or information from others or try to undermine them lest they become more successful or get more credit than "me." Cooperation is alien to the ego, except when there is a secondary motive. The ego doesn't know that the more you include others, the more smoothly things flow and the more easily things come to you. When you give little or no help to others or put obstacles in their path, the universe -- in the form of people and circumstances -- gives little or no help to you because you have cut yourself off from the whole. The ego's unconscious core feeling of "not enough" causes it to react to someone else's success as if that success had taken something away from "me." It doesn't know that your resentment of another person's success curtails your own chances of success. In order to attract success, you need to welcome it wherever you see it." Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth

What is Real Love? By Martha Beck

Brilliant author Martha Beck offers some very handy succinct advice when it comes to love and how to know when it's Real love or just clingy attachment. Beck presents the question, '"Is it love, or a mutual strangulation society? Martha Beck shows you five ways to get a real grip on the real thing. In a folktale that has been retold for centuries in many variations (one of which is Shakespeare's King Lear), an elderly king asks his three daughters how much they love him. The two older sisters deliver flowery speeches of filial adoration, but the youngest says only "I love you as meat loves salt." The king, insulted by this homely simile, banishes the youngest daughter and divides his kingdom between the older two, who promptly kick him out on his royal heinie. He seeks refuge in the very house where his third daughter is working as a scullery maid. Recognizing her father, the daughter asks the cook to prepare his meal without salt. The king eats a few tasteless mouthfuls, then bursts into tears. "All along," he cries, "it was my youngest daughter who really loved me!" The daughter reveals herself and all ends happily (except in King Lear, where pretty much everybody dies).

This story survived throughout Europe for a very long time because it is highly instructive: It reminds listeners that in matters of love, choosing style over substance is disastrous. It also helps us know when we're making that mistake. Salt is unique in that its taste doesn't cover up the food it seasons but enhances whatever flavor was there to begin with. Real love, real commitment, does the same thing.

Each of the following five statements is the polar opposite of what most Americans see as loving commitment. But these are "meat loves salt" commitments, as necessary as they are unconventional. Only if you and your beloved can honestly say them to each other is your relationship likely to thrive."'

Continue reading the 5 ways to tell if it's Real Love. Copy and paste the link below.

http://www.oprah.com/relationships/How-to-Know-Its-Real-Love-Advice-from-Martha-Beck/1