Overview: A Fierce Landscape, expectations

THE FIERCE LANDSCAPE

You, each of you, have been placed in a "DESERT."
The DESERT is a solitary and fierce landscape that is unforgiving and rude.
You either respect the desert or it will punish you.
It can punish you severely.
Jail or prison is a kind of desert.
You survive by respecting the total environment.
Which is a solitary, fierce, unforgiving and rude landscape.

Here, you will either grow in spirit
or die in spirit. You choose.
Daily. Actually you choose minute by minute
by what you choose to focus on.
If you grow in spirit,
you will leave a better person.
If you die in spirit, you will leave more angry,
and in reality, less able to cope and survive in the real world.

One of the reasons you are here,
most of you, maybe not everyone one of you,
is because you have not respected others, the feelings & rights of others.

You were determined to do it Your Way. . .
Regardless of how others and loved ones and family-others felt.
You were headstrong, maybe even arrogant,
in claiming your needs were urgent, more important
than those of others.
For anyone to do this is to remain in a
stage of adolescent rebellion, fretting and pushing
against the way the world is, because it does not meet YOUR needs.

Now here is the paradox for each of you.
You are in a place where you will either learn and grow
OR
you shall become more bitter and self-centered.
It is a kind of fierce landscape.

You are in a spiritual desert --
You either face yourself and learn what you have neglected to learn up to now;
Or you continue downhill on the private easy road
which will cost you and your loved ones even more in the future.

Many men today are still emotionally adolescent,
stuck in a teen-age immaturity.
Are you one of these? Still a boy?
The desert forces us to choose.
You can keep to yourself, go along to get along,
get by, fake it, and reserve to yourself
your angry and bitter thoughts,
OR
You can begin facing yourself.
You can begin to pay attention to the feelings of others.
You can begin to grasp what kind of cage your life
up to now has kept you in by your blindness to others.

Funny strange, isn’t it?
One of the reasons you are here is that you have ignored
the feelings of others, and perhaps many others.
Now the only way you can grow and learn is
by learning to listen and pay attention to the feelings of
others around you. And by continual self study and self-examination.

A key question is whether you are still
a "boy" emotionally, i
n a man’s body, or
whether you have decided to grow up.
Many men are still "boys" inside.
Are you one of these?

Unless you use this opportunity,
face yourself and seek feedback from others,
you are sure of nothing. Nothing.
How will you know?
How open are you to feedback from others?
(This is one secret key to the Mystery of your life)"

Copyright © Paschal Baute, 2004

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