The Principle of a Light Load:

I landed in America with a suitcase of essentials. It was very light load, yet I also had a very lofty dream.

What a powerful combination that turned out to be ? A light load and a lofty dream.

This is a principle that one must live by if one is committed to a life of both fulfillment and ease.

We all have lofty dreams, yet we also carry heavy loads with us ? a backpack full of stuff from the past that is no longer relevant to who we are today. A bag full of shoes we wore in the past that squeeze our toes today.

Yet we carry this load everyday, even though we also are striving to manifest our lofty goals. Of course, carrying this load is a detriment to our dreams of effortless creation and momentum.

One's personal, individual ?load? usually has to do with:,

What didn't happen in the past, though we wanted it.

What happened that we feel shouldn't have occurred.

Everyone who we believe did something wrong to us.

Everyone who didn't respect us.

Everyone who didn't love us.

Regret and resentment are the two most onerous weights we carry. We regret the mishaps that occurred, and the good things that failed to materialize. We resent all those who we feel did us wrong, or withheld respect and love from us. We also regret everything we think we could have done and should have done differently in the past. And we also resent ourselves for not having done things as we now think they should have been done.

We hold on to regret and resentment towards others because we think they deserve to suffer. Yet we perpetuate our own suffering by holding on. We condemn ourselves to living with bitterness.

Regret and resentment, in essence, are poisons that we make circulate through our own blood.

The only way to keep such poison out of your system is to forgive. Forgive not only the challenges, circumstance, and people that you feel brought you to harm, also forgive yourself at the same time. In fact, the act of self-forgiveness is fundamental to your happiness. Self-forgiveness makes it infinitely easier, and more fulfilling, to forgive others. On the other hand, those who have challenges with forgiving themselves will always have challenges forgiving others.

Ironically, when you don't forgive others, the energy of that resentment makes you resent yourself in return. We are all connected on such deep levels that we inevitably reap what we sow.

We also seldom realize that we may have hurt others in precisely the same ways we feel they have hurt us. The ease with which we see other peoples? flaws and misdeeds should teach us that we probably have some of our own. Whenever you point a finger at someone, there are probably at least three other fingers pointing back at you. And even though one's ego may enjoy the act of pointing a finger, one's soul prefers the act of lending a hand instead. It is always wiser to feed your soul, and not your ego.

Every morning we get up and have a choice. We can empty our backpack and move on, experiencing our life with a lighter load, or we can carry the resentments and regrets of yesterday. The terrible trap involved is that the backpack of yesterday is connected to the backpack of the day before it, and that one is connected to the one from the previous day, and so forth. No wonder resentment and regret keep you away from your lofty goals!

Here is what will allow you to let go of this load: Your willingness to choose a life of ease instead of a life of struggle. A commitment to ease, then, is your prescription for realizing a lofty dream.