Road Map to Paradise

God doesn't give a road map to paradise to those who aren't going anywhere! If you're stuck in your life, not growing, not learning from your mistakes, nothing's going to get any better. Perfect practice makes perfect, just practicing doesn't. If you practice the clarinet & make a mistake on the same passage every time, you learn to slow yourself down until you can get it right. Then you practice getting it right at that slow pace. Then you get a little faster & practice getting it right. You do that, increasing your speed until you get to the pace you're supposed to be keeping. If you speed up too quickly, you have to slow yourself down again & practice getting it right at that speed before you increase again. If you practice making the same mistake without doing the work to learn & get it right, you only ingrain the mistake & make it inevitable. And if you only practice getting one piece perfect, you only know one piece. Practicing the same thing over & over & never moving on to something new is not the same thing as working on learning new stuff. You can have 10 years of experience practicing the same thing & learn it perfectly but that's hardly equal to 10 years of experience. True experience involves taking on multiple areas of learning.

There actually isn't a road map to paradise, yet paradise exists & we can find it. There are clear road signs, but you have to actually be moving along the road to find them. You don't find them by looking back at the way you came. There's some value in doing that if you haven't entirely learned the lessons of the past or released the things & people from your past. Part of growth is dealing with those things, forgiving yourself & whoever else you need to forgive, & letting go. To truly forgive you have to understand & accept both yourself & others as flawed humans. Then you have to let go. You can't move forward while dragging the past behind you, & you can't move forward until you've resolved the past. Until you resolve the past & let go, you continue to be in the grips of it & make the same mistakes. You repeat the heartaches with every new person or situation you encounter. You stay stuck in the same old patterns. You don't grow as a person because you haven't truly faced yourself or taken responsibility for your part in the things that have happened in your life. If you've been a victim, then you haven't taken responsibility for changing that pattern as an adult. Victims especially need to look at themselves & the choices they make in their lives. If you're truly helpless, a child or invalid for example, & are victimized that's one thing. If you're a capable adult, look to yourself because you're setting yourself up for it. Usually its because you don't feel you deserve better than that or don't believe in your capabilities. Women especially, get into situations where they're victims of their spouses or boyfriends. For whatever reason they lack a clear & healthy sense of self & are desperate enough to fall for abusive men. Most abusive men start out seeming very charming & powerful & women who don't know their own power are attracted to that. Once you get out of a relationship like that, you have to totally learn your worth or you'll do it again. You have to take the time to discover why you got into the relationship in the first place, & correct whatever led you to it. Once you deal with your own issues & strengthen your sense of self, only then are you ready for a new relationship. If you find yourself lonely or feeling vulnerable, longing for what you "lost" in the past relationship or immediately eager for a new relationship, you aren't ready. You're only ready when you feel whole within yourself & no longer feel the need. Now, want & need are different. You can want loving attention & still be ready, as long as it's not felt as a need, an ache. Chances are if you feel like there's really something missing in your life, you need to find a way to fill that need yourself rather than seeking a relationship to fill it.

Paradise truly isn't found in relationship with another. There's just no such thing as a perfect relationship because there are no perfect people. There's no perfect person out there for you because perfection doesn't exist on earth. There is no "happily ever after." If you ask people who have been married 50 years, they'll tell you that. I adjusted my beliefs about romance & marriage between my first & second marriages, & went too far in the other direction. I loved my second husband unconditionally & blindly, took all his outrageous behaviors in stride & accommodated him & them. Nobody's perfect, no relationship is perfect - I took that way too far. So the only thing I can tell you about how to have a successful marriage is that it has to be between 2 people who know & love themselves & are honest with themselves. That's also part of how you find paradise on earth. You have to know yourself, love yourself. You have to accept yourself & the universe as is but be willing to change the things that need changing. When it comes to changing, you have to be totally in touch with yourself & only acting on what you know to be true for yourself. No one else should be trying to tell you how to change or what to change. It has to come from within. You have to know yourself & be true to yourself. I believe we find paradise on earth when we're in touch with & in love with ourselves, when we're learning & growing. We then start to feel at one with others & life & nature & the universe. I greet most days here by thanking God for another day in paradise, & that song (by Sting?) plays in my head. "It's Just Another Day for You & Me in Paradise" is either the title or a line from it. A few months ago I so wanted to get out of this house & away from this place, could only see the problems here. I was still mired in the breakdown of my marriage & the unhappiness. I've grown & learned so much since then, mostly about myself. I've also worked to change my life & make it what I need it to be. Now I carry peace, contentment, & love within, so I'm creating my own paradise. Paradise is simply a matter of perception, so to find it, you have to go within. You have to find self love & all the beauty within yourself & then offer it unconditionally to yourself & all creation. Once you do that you'll find all you ever truly need, within yourself. The depths of your love, peace, wholeness, & sense of wellbeing will astound you!