Being Point

Tag: belief

  • What Would You Teach Your Children About Trusting?

    Headlines over the last few years have been saturated with stories about trust gone bad. Confidences broken, tales told, sacred commitments thrown away.

    Trust is a complex topic. Trust is faith and belief in the veracity of a human being or in a human organization. Knowing who to trust is among the most important decisions for anyone. Whom do you trust? And on what bases?

    The flagship British Petroleum gas station at the corner of Olympic and Robertson in Los Angeles – the one that was so futuristic with the big green and yellow flower BP logo (“beyond petroleum” – supposedly so “green”) – is now, suddenly, an Arco station.

    No BP signage anywhere. An interesting trust issue since BP owns Arco. It’s just a simple name change. Can’t say that it makes me trust BP any more – probably a little less trust in that its intent seems to be to deceive.

    Have you ever experienced an individual or a business trying to gain your trust – and then deceiving you? How do you make the decision about whom to trust? What would you teach your children about trusting?

  • “Trancendence Is A Never-Ending Climbing Process” ~ Sri Chinmoy

    Sometimes, we humans are able to transcend worry, yet we don’t quite know how or why. Much of the time, it’s because we’re able to create a positive vision of the future to live into rather than “fearing into the future.”

    Sri Chinmoy wrote: “Transcendence is a never-ending climbing process, a dynamic reality.”

    To “climb” out of worry requires forward vision and a realization that, as Chinmoy says, we are engaged in a never-ending, ever-changing process. Worry is often based on a belief – and a mostly vain hope – that if we handle what we’re currently worried about, we’ll somehow reach a state of no-worry and everything will finally be okay.

    Yet, experience teaches many of us that situations over which we could worry just keep on coming at us. Do you have a practice with which to meet difficulty that indulges very little in worry? If so, how reliable is it and what makes it work for you? If not, what is the likelihood that you have a pattern of worry in the face of life itself that you may want to work on?

  • “The only lost cause is one we give up before we enter the struggle.” ~ Vaclav Havel

    Loyalty to so-called “lost causes”? Who me? Who you? Most likely, each of us has at least one cause to which we remain loyal no matter what. It could be anything: a sports team, a family member, a political issue – a belief in something that you refuse to give up.

    Czech activist and the first President of post-Communist Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, said:

    “The only lost cause is one we give up before we enter the struggle.”

    Havel’s point was to remain loyal and not to give up on what we believe in. His struggle as a leader for Czech freedom is legendary – and, at the time, most would have said it was a lost cause.

    What is it that keeps you loyal to people and situations that seem to others to be lost causes? How can we explain our commitments? Is this blind or misplaced loyalty – or is it something deeper?