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HOW TO LIVE A LIFE WITHOUT REGRETS

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -Mark Twain

We have all met someone who came towards the end of their life and regretted not doing the things that they had always wanted and now they were too old to do it. In a sense they had missed the window of opportunity. You might say to yourself that it will never happen to you, that if you really wanted to do something you'd just go out and do it. That you'd be one of those rare specimens that lives for the moment without any regrets.

While indeed you would be rare, rarer are those who say they live without regrets and actually be right. The reality is that we all have wanted to do something but didn't because we convinced ourselves that it wasn't the right time, that you weren't ready or that you will do it one day. We are great at justifying why we don't follow our dreams, minimizing our dreams such that we expect less from ourselves and to dream small.

So if you think that you are doing everything you have always dreamed you would then you just aren't dreaming big enough for your life.

If you want to ensure that you won't be another soul that comes to the end of their life with a niggling regret then here are a few simple steps that you can do right now to make your life one without regrets.

Stop just meaninglessly living out your daily routine without questioning what you are doing. It's so easy for us to get caught up in our routine that we have come to take it for granted. Start questioning what it is you want out of life. You can start by taking an afternoon out from your normal routine and just find a quiet spot in a local park. Take out a notebook and pen and just start writing everything you want to do, experience or have in your lifetime. Keep writing and don't stop write as many as you can. But make sure you write them out as though failure is not possible, write out your wildest dreams you can think off.

Now that you have your dreams written down in your notebook, simply pick one or two and get started working towards them today. Take a little step everyday towards the achievement of that dream. For example if it is a travel related dream then maybe your little steps could be to get some brochures, research on what you need to do or bring, think about the money you need to save.

There is no reason why you cant be living your dreams everyday. Not only will it put some spark into your everyday routine but it also gives you something fun and exciting to work towards.

Mary the Ark of the Covenant

Catholics honor Mother Mary with one hundred and fifty titles in the Litany of Loreto. Other than these are numerous venerable titles accorded her that the faithful accept as a given. Most of our Separated Brethren in the Protestant world however find the ascribing superfluous and consider these accolades as preposterous if not downright blasphemous.

One must first understand that all the Fathers of the Reformation – Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin – remained devotees of Mary even after breaking away from Rome. Over the course of a few years following their lifetime the succeeding generations of Reformers jettisoned the Marian dimension from Protestant Christianity. Five hundred years hence, we find Christians not only ignorant of the Biblical basis for Marian devotion but inimical towards it as well.

Catholics view the entire Sacred Scriptures as one single fabric; Old Testament verses find meaning and purpose against the panorama of Salvation History. Jesus Christ himself said, “I did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it.” And the Early Church Fathers realized in their study of that fulfilment that just as Old Testament types prefigured Christ, so too were types that pointed to people and events associated with his salvific mission. This typological principle at interpreting the Bible led Augustine to conclude: “The Old Testament is revealed in the New and the New Testament is concealed in the Old.”

All honors accorded to the Blessed Mother that Protestants find offensive are actually Christo-centric and Scripture-based. These ensue from her singular privilege as being the Mother of the Eternal Word. Without Jesus, Mary would just have been another woman, but the fact that she bore the Redeemer makes her no ordinary woman. The Church Fathers recognized several Old Testament types prefiguring Mary: Sarah, Rachel, Miriam, Deborah, Jael, Judith, Esther and the Ark of the Covenant – this last one, we can best appreciate in the Jewish roots of the Faith.

The Old Testament people of God venerated the Ark of the Covenant, a box of acacia wood adorned with winged cherubim and gilded with gold trimmings, which Moses fashioned upon God’s command. Why would the Israelites venerate a fancy gilded box crafted by human hands? Would that not be a violation of the First Commandment? Not so; what made the Ark of the Covenant an object of veneration were its contents: God’s Word inscribed in stone tablets, a dish of manna and the staff of the high priest, Aaron. These made the box divinely sanctified and an object of veneration. Scripture attests that God’s holy presence, the Shekinah, hovered over the Ark like a cloud day and night

(Exodus 40:31-34) as protector of Israel. The Ark was kept in a makeshift tabernacle-tent during their forty-year journey in the desert, led the People of God across to the Promised Land as the waters of the Jordan parted before it for their crossing, and won victories for them in the conquest of Canaan. They were invincible in all their battles with the Ark borne aloft by priests at the frontlines of every encounter.

As time passed the Chosen People repeatedly lapsed into infidelity to their Covenant with God. His holy presence that had been their protection–overshadowing the Tent of meeting in their desert sojourn and the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem–was disregarded by the people, which brought on dire consequence of defeat, domination, and exile.

In 587 BC the Babylonians marched on to Jerusalem. The prophet Jeremiah took the Ark that was reposed in the Holy of Hollies and hid it in a secure place before the Kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonians and brought it to a place...

Unknown until God gathers his people together again and shows his mercy. And then the Lord will disclose these things, and the glory of the Lord and the cloud will appear as they were shown in the case of Moses and as Solomon asked that the place be consecrated (2 Macc 2:5-8).

The temple was rebuilt on the return of the Jews from exile but there was no Ark in the Holy of Holies. It had been missing for six hundred years following the fall and exile. Missing until the proper time for disclosure of God’s mercy. Then came the day when Archangel Gabriel was sent to a lovely young maiden at Nazareth and the Divine Presence that had hovered over the Ark of the Covenant now overshadowed her.

No mortal was ever greeted by an Archangel in such a manner (Lk 1:35); incontrovertible proof from the Scriptures of Mary’s purity. And whereas the Old Testament Ark of the Covenant was simply an elaborate holy crate, the New Testament Ark that it had prefigured was the Immaculate Virgin Mother from whom Jesus, the Eternal Word, Eucharistic Manna, and Eternal High Priest took on flesh. The Word through whom all things were made as attested in John’s Gospel and professed in the Nicene Creed, created His Mother free from imperfection and stain of sin. Her womb the holiest place on earth to form His humanity, the first tabernacle, preserved virginally pure and undefiled – nobody desecrated the Ark of the Lord.

Through, with, and in Christ, the entire Old Testament is fulfilled. Mary, his Immaculate Mother is the true Ark of the Covenant. John in his vision of the heavenly liturgy while on exile at the Isle of Patmos first sees the Ark of the Covenant that had been missing since the Babylonian captivity and immediately thereafter a Woman wearing a crown of twelve stars appears (Rev 11:19-12:1). The Church Fathers identity this Woman as the Woman in Gen 3:15, the same Woman at Cana and at the foot of the Cross. Twelve stars represent the Apostles gathered around her in the upper room at Pentecost metaphoric of the Twelve Tribes encamped around the Ark of the Covenant.

Christians would do well to be devoted to Mary, remembering that as the Old Testament People of God were invincible against all their foes with the Ark of the Covenant leading the way in battle, all the more will they be victorious in the daily spiritual warfare against the forces of Hell with Mary showing the way.

“Ark of the Covenant, pray for us.”

THE FLOW OF SILENCE

At the end of the day, bathing in the soft light of a candle, lying still on your favorite easy chair, surrender to the silence, and you will find within it, music to disappear in.

Understood the flow of silence, the eloquence that follows from an immersion into nothingness, the transcendence that slips behind suspended action like a shadow.

A famous writer once wrote: "You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet."

In the Bible, in Psalm 24, it has been said, "Be still, and know that I am God."

When you enter the silence, you enter the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High, and all fear, trembling, and doubt ceases. Your restless feet no longer trouble the earth and the mountains of your troubles are carried into the depths of the sea of oblivion.

There is a river in the silence that will carry you into a power that is your very own. When you enter the silence, by learning how to rest and be still, you enter a new place, a virgin territory, where all that is discordant and broken in your life cannot come with you.

Usually, in the first half-hour nothing much happens. Your mind starts to unwind, like a weary warrior dismounting from a spirited horse. You set your shield down, lower your sword, and rest your aching limbs.

Then, in the next half-hour, you gradually descend into a place that becomes increasingly unfamiliar, where thoughts and feelings float by your amazed inner gaze with an alien majesty.

The convulsions of your life, the earthquake that throws the mountains into the sea, the roaring of the waves, the cataclysm of the tidal wave - these phenomena as well as any commotions and revolutions in your world need not shake the one who trusts in silence. Silence is a proven refuge.

Albert Einstein knew about the power of silence and changed the world by what he discovered in it.

Einstein borrowed the idea of the Gedankenexperiment, a thought experiment, from Ernst Mach, the German philosopher, and used it to see what would happen to light beams and gravity when viewed from different imaginary scenarios. He made his paradigm-shattering discoveries by immersing himself in silence and allowing his thoughts to travel where no human thought had ever gone before.

Strange things happen in silence. When the mind-body slows to an even, relaxed pace, thoughts attain a slow rhythm, and intuition arises to resolve paradoxes and invite resolutions and sort out juxtapositions in a unique and exhilarating way.

There is much evidence to show that at alpha and theta brainwaves, which happen in stillness and silence, new thoughts, new discoveries, and remarkable insights await.

Whether you are looking for the God of the mystics or the intuitive hunch that leads to ideas that can change your world, there is only one place you will find it: within. When you discover a resting place free of sound and distraction, you also discover yourself.

There is a world within deeper than an ocean, where archetypes roam and parallel lines do meet at infinity. It is the place where a single whisper can change your life entirely.

Silence is flow; it is music to disappear in; and it has a momentum to it that adds grace to your days and poetry to your life. Pursue it diligently and in your most frantic hour, it will rescue you like the brush of an angel's wing.