You have chosen to remember. Imagine, if you will, perfect love once again choosing the human experience. A baby is born. As this baby grows into a young child, he never thinks to question what truth is. He might sometimes disagree with what he is being told to do, and when he does, he is punished. The punishment can take many forms. The young child soon learns that there are ways to do things, and ways not to do things. If the child does what his family wants, he will be safe. If the child challenges them, he will not be safe. Like children, we are rewarded for doing things one way, and not the other. Our parents’ belief systems, the armor parents wear to defend themselves in this world, slowly becomes our armor. We learn that as long as we don’t rock the boat we will be safe. Slowly we take on the belief systems of our parents, and this becomes our armor, our truth.
As the child continues to grow into a teenager, his peers become more important to him and again he is rewarded for doing things a certain way and for acting a certain way. Slowly the child learns he can be rewarded or punished by his peers. His peers, who have come with their different sets of armor, reward him for being like them. And so he picks up more armor. The child’s peers and his family’s armor become his armor and their truths becomes his truth. All along, he watches and listens to different messages society offers, and picks and chooses the beliefs that are acceptable to his family, friends and society. Many times, the belief systems of the child’s family and friends differ and clash with his. This creates confusion and sometimes chaos, but the child is told that “this is just the way life is.” As a result, this mixture of beliefs becomes the armor that he uses to defend himself against the world and against all those who attack “his beliefs.” The child does not yet realize that his beliefs are not really his own, but a compilation of ideas that were offered and he accepted.
– James Blanchard Cisneros, Author of You Have Chosen to Remember: A
Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 39-40
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The boy sat next to me, and immediately started talking. Of course the first thing he mentioned was that he gets sick on planes. “Just wonderful,” I thought. So I psychologically started convincing him that the plane was safe by telling him that I fly this route all the time, that the ride was always smooth and that he would be perfectly fine on the flight. He seemed to be content with my past experiences and prediction so he then began to share his life story. Thank God he was only eight! In general, the kid seemed to be pretty cool. He would share some of his views about life with me, then would turn to the lady on the other side of him and share his views with her as well. He was a very considerate young man, I thought.
It must have been cold and flu season because there were many sneezes on the way to Miami. On average, I am not someone who notices or cares about people sneezing on the plane, but today I had the “God Bless You” missionary sitting next to me. Yes, every time someone sneezed, regardless of where in the plane he or she was sitting, the kid responded with the words “God Bless You.” Now I’m not sure if the Green Berets trained this kid, or if he simply had bionic ears, for regardless of where a person was on the plane, if they sneezed, this boy could hear it! Not only that, but the farther he perceived an individual to be, the louder he would bless them. After the first few “God Bless Yous” the people on the plane, regardless of their location, answered him with “thank you.” This created a comfortable and friendly feeling on the plane.
– James Blanchard Cisneros, Author of You Have Chosen to Remember: A
Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 114-115
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“We have not inherited the earth from our fathers but are borrowing it from our children.”
– Native American Proverb.
Cited in You Have Chosen to Remember, p. 250
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Carl Sandburg once wrote, “A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.” Bringing a child into the world is one of the greatest gifts that God can offer us and one of the greatest gifts we can offer humanity.
I have not lived long, but I have lived long enough to understand that raising a child with love is the most important job in the world. I have walked the streets of my country long enough to know that this is so. I have talked to children who are loved, children who are lost, children who are happy and healthy, children who are sad and sick, children with beautiful homes and those who are homeless.
– James Blanchard Cisneros, Author of You Have Chosen to Remember: A
Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 250
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Your children are not your children
They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to
make them like you,
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as
living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows might go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
So He loves also the bow that is stable. 35
– Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet.
Cited in You Have Chosen to Remember, p. 251-252
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Footnotes / Acknowledgments
Every effort has been made to provide accurate source attribution. Should any attribution be found to be incorrect, the author welcomes written documentation supporting correction for subsequent printings. For material not in the public domain, selection was made according to generally accepted fair-use standards and practices.
35. Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, Copyright 1923 (Knopf), p. 17.
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