Author Steven Furtick calls it, "Sharing your bucket."
The act of taking what you have and allowing others to feed off it. The picture he sketches is the outline of a petting zoo. Kids quickly locate the bubble gum looking quarter machine, drop in a coin, fill their hands with green pellets then recklessly wrestle their way back to a bunch of fuzzy noses grasping at anything to shove into their assumed empty bellies.
Outside those gates, life ain't so open with the giveaways! No wait...the people's in the receiving department aren't gathering glory points either.
I felt incredibly guilty Monday night when escaping a McDonald's...a rusty faced man of homelessness stood next to the tattered shore of good meeting bad decisions holding a sign: I'm hungry.
We offered a hot fresh dinner. He didn't accept. I tried to explain my addiction to spending cash and having nothing in my pocket was normal, "But I'll buy you anything off the menu using a card."
The misconception we've allowed to grow forward is the belief that money cures emptiness. A growling stomach doesn't always signal hunger. We've all been in those embarrassing positions when the core of your soul gurgles louder than an AC/DC concert. The next step isn't into a kitchen but outside to repaint the sky.
Yesterday I lightly touched on one of the five steps of Mindfulness training: Being aware of the suffering caused by destruction. The willingness to cultivate compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people and other living things.
My bucket is full of this mental protein! For me to hold onto it for selfish greedy reasons is what I did in my twenty's and early thirties. I was the King of my Radio World and it didn't matter how crappy my first marriage was; I had the secret witches brew to locate healing stew!
If winning in life was that easy more losers would do it...
Mindfulness is awareness. Learning to cultivate kindness while practicing generosity requests resources not found on the shelves of Wal-Mart and Best Buy. Time being a hard to locate precious metal carries tremendous value in a part time business world oversaturated with too many complicated unmet demands.
Cultivating kindness is the physical releasing of time, energy and material resources.
Yeah right...how much of that is available to toss into the cherry pie? Especially when the daily workday adventure is caked with other people's demands so tall barely a mountain has the strength to expose their snow capped peaks.
Through Mindfulness the determination should be to not steal and or possess anything that should belong to others.
Think about that for a moment. To not steal or possess anything that belongs to others. They aren't talking about the neighbors hammer, shovel and salt pepper shaker.
Time, energy and material resources...
How much of someone's time do you dig into only to expose an ugly side when the same is expected of you? (click) dial tone...
Energy isn't Red Bull and Monster. I'm convinced "Energy" carries the same design as Stocks and Mutual Funds. It's a good, great or otherwise investment with or without a payoff and too often what's been stepped on can't recover from the recessed impression. Like time...there are two sides to the face. What's often borrowed comes from the presence of left and right.
Being aware or practicing Mindfulness invites peace to the parade.
Material resources are exactly that. But how often do you make a profit using other people's materials? Holy God this one needs clarification! Materialistic value is the American Fad and the moment anything steps near a borderline the inner dogs begin to bark like wild ass cats.
Let me give you an example and by no means does this scream, "He's in a bad mood." If I don't bare my crosses and teach from what I've learned how then can I find the strength to carry my bucket?
Being one that creates commercial campaigns without personal gain is my fault because I knew what Radio was when I picked it up. To creatively play out methods of wordplay that inspire, influence and invite people to move toward bettering their current lifestyle is an art no different than fancy chefs from famous restaurants, store managers that constantly take apart shelves to refuel a clients eyes or a school teacher that endlessly turns hit songs on the radio into versus that introduce students to the alphabet, Presidents names or the 12 months of the year.
Being aware of how you step on the path of your best friend or coworker doesn't have to be an invisible crime. To bluntly stick out my foot and trip a rip off artist instantly makes the original injury now the aggressor. It's illegal in America to tell someone they have wronged you. The best way around it is to practice lesson number two in Mindfulness.
Cultivate kindness. It's an outstanding decision to hold the bucket out there for a billion hairy noses to suck out the ingredients but be aware of the possibilities of you doing the same. How you feel when the bucket becomes empty is usually multiplied by 100 with those you've taken from.
Friendships end through bad decisions assumed ok for the taking.
Then again maybe we weren't meant to be so friendly. Isn't the golden rule we entered this world with nothing and will leave the same?
I will always believe in you first...
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