The sad thing is I didn’t quit soon enough — the damage was done. Today I have to be on oxygen at night and whenever I exert myself. In a week or so I have to do an open lung biopsy because my ability to breathe is getting worse and worse and we need to see what else is going on my lungs.

All I can say is just quit! There are so many helps now to assist you in making it happen. Be sure you meditate every day for a long as you feel you can. Rather than make excuses to yourself, remember the only person you’re kidding, and hurting, is yourself. Smoking will ruin your lungs — I am a walking testimony of that fact.

Just keep meditating — perhaps a good mantra for you to use while you meditate (and throughout every day) is “Yes, I Can!!”

I know it can be done — thousands of people are doing it every day. The first week is the hardest, and then it gets progressively easier every day after that.

No more excuses — Just do it — please!

Be well — be in peace,

Ron Rink

When you are on a journey, such as a journey to reach a goal or a dream, it is certainly helpful to know where you are going, or at least the general direction to move in order to reach your goal or achieve your dream.

But don’t forget, the only thing that is ultimately REAL about your journey is the step you are taking at this moment. That is all there ever is.

In life’s journey, you have an outer purpose and an inner purpose. Your outer purpose is to arrive at your goal or realize your dream. If the “chase” after the dream — the reaching into the future goal — become more important then the step you are taking in this moment, then you are missing your inner purpose, which has nothing to do with WHERE you are going, or WHAT you are doing, but has everything to do with HOW you get there. It isn’t the DOING that’s important –it’s the BEING.

Your outer journey (your chase), may contain a million steps; your inner journey has only one step — the step you are taking now. It is all there is at any given moment.

Peace….

An answer to this question is one of the ultimate cravings of humankind, and we crave it all the more for its elusiveness.

I think what’s really bugging us is the reality of our own impermanence. We crave a permanent place in the history of our world, and yet so few of us feel that we have attained it (when in fact we are attaining it with every action and word, which affect all beings in the web of interconnectedness — and in the same moment, we are still impermanent). What we are craving is for someone, anyone, to tell us that we are indeed as significant as we think we are.

That’s my two cents.

Despite my questions, Your post injects me with hope. I see clouds starting to drift and what was once silver lining about to reveal a glaring sun.

We have so many ways of identifying ourselves – as a wife, mother, associate, acquaintance, friend – but at the end of the day they are just words.

I am someone who clings! I have struggled with a transition but following your posts has been strengthening in a way you perhaps can’t imagine!

Thank you