digitalZENDO

I re-read "The Five Secrets You Must Learn Before You Die," yesterday by John Izzo. It's a very nice read. In a nice set of notes Sandy Carlson summarized it this way:

1. Be true to yourself by living with intention. Know your heart's desire and seek it.

2. Live with no regrets. Regrets, Izzo said, are most persons' biggest fear--not dying itself. So mend fences, make peace, and move your life into a place of peace. The best way to live without regret, Izzo says, is to take chances, pursue those dreams, and accept the failure that might be your way. Rather than be crushed by failure, learn from it.

3. Become love. Love is not an emotion but a choice, a way of being that involves seeing ourselves and others with kindness and compassion. That love creates the opportunities to follow your bliss, heal hurts in yourself and others, and to find peace despite challenges and hardships.

4. Live in the moment. Right here right. That's all.

5. Give more than you take. Izzo explores that wonderful idea of finding yourself and then losing yourself. Once you identify your heart's desire and live your life pursuing it, the chance of accumulating any regrets is reduced. Once you become love, kindness itself becomes part of your purpose, and each moment offers all the joy of a lifetime. This creates an abundance of resources in the forms of love, trust, hope, joy, kindness, compassion. Draw from this deep well and give it away. Leave the campsite better than you found it, as one wise elder put it.

Give it some time and some thought. It makes a lot of sense. Be the person that you are and not a ghost or a shadow of that person.

Namaste'

Jaye Morris, Curator
digitalZENDO