Excerpts from Living LONG, Living Passionately by Karen Casey

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Excerpts from Living LONG, Living Passionately by Karen Casey

LIVING LONG, LIVING PASSIONATELY incorporates the 12 Steps of AA, A course in Miracles and a daily practice of meditation and prayer.

LIVING LONG, LIVING PASSIONATELY is a book of personal stories and essays that are imbued with Casey's own understanding of peaceful living as guided by her 12-step practice, A Course In Miracles and a daily practice of meditation and prayer. These 75 essays help us make room for everything in our peaceful, vibrant well-lived life. Each brief nugget invites contemplation and action as she helps us explore fear and love, resistance and acceptance, willpower and discernment. Each essay ends with additional questions and prompts for you to explore your own life. Savor each of the essays and practices and choose the ones that speak to you.

12/20/2025

Excerpts from Living LONG, Living Passionately by Karen Casey

23. DREAM LIST
If you had no fear, what would you be doing today? Diane Conway, a woman I met about twenty years ago, wrote a book based on her interviews with people. Her primary question was, "What would you do if you had no fear? The responses were amazing. What was even more amazing was the fact that some of those people formed a small support group to encourage each other to accomplish their dreams. The point of my mentioning this here is because I think we sell ourselves short. We get into a rut about our station in life and are too easily satisfied with standing still.
I'm of the opinion, after seventy-five years on this planet, that no dream visits us that can't be fulfilled. If it comes to us, we can do it. Perhaps not instantly. Perhaps we need to complete some preliminary steps before we are ready to tackle the dream, but the idea itself wouldn't occur to us if we didn't have the capability to achieve it.
But my point is this, if we think it, we can do it. There must be something each of us has tucked away, a dream that perhaps we have never dared share before.
What is your dream? Maybe you have two or more, in fact. Don't be reticent. List them in your journal.
What are the steps you need to take to prepare for fulfilling your dream?

12/13/2025

Excerpts from Living LONG, Living Passionately by Karen Casey

22. IMPROVE A LITTLE
See everything. Overlook a great deal. Improve a little.
- Pope John Paul II
This quote by Pope John Paul II is delicious in so many respects. It's humble. Realistic. Manageable. It embodies a touch of humor. It contains all the elements of living well. Perhaps not perfectly, but well. And for these words to have come from Pope John Paul's lips makes them all the more interesting as admonitions. They represent the perfect philosophy for those of us who want to live meaningfully as well as simply. Be careful observers, he says, but don't live to be critical. And better yourself where you can, but go easy throughout your day.
Each {of us} knows how to improve a little. But most may not be in the habit of overlooking a great deal.
________________________________________________________________
Let's assume that you have the rest of this day, after reading this short essay, to do whatever you would please you. What would that be?....Make a list in your journal of things that interest you. Include in the list some activities you have never tried but considered doing a long time ago.

12/06/2025

Excerpts from Living LONG, Living Passionately by Karen Casey
21. IMPACTING THOSE AROUND YOU
"Ask: What does this person (standing before me) need? Instead of thinking about what you want, practice asking what the other person needs. See how you can help." Leo Babauta
Living passionately, as the book title suggests, can happen in so many ways. It may involve travel, here in our country or abroad, or going back to college.
However, we can "stay in our own backyard," as the saying goes, and simply take notice of who is directly in front of us on the path we have chosen for now. My point is that we don't have to complicate the assignment. Look around you. Whoever is present is on assignment too.
Unfortunately, aging hasn't healed all the inner wound of the human community. For many, those wounds have been exacerbated, in fact, by the myriad trials of again.....if we can, through nothing more than simple kindnesses, bring a smile to the face of a wounded soul, we will have demonstrated how passion looks in this instance.
To live long and passionately is not beyond the realm of possibility for anyone in America.
It's time to make a short list of the obvious ways we can impact those who stand before us.
-Make a point of looking the first stranger you see (at the grocery store, the taxi stand, or the doctor's office) in the eye s and nodding or saying hello.
The point of this is that passion is a decision. And it's an attitude. We can feel inspired about anything at all.
People must give away what they have, to receive more of it. Let's each do our part. Now. Today.

11/15/2025

Excerpts from Living LONG, Living Passionately by Karen Casey

20. WRITING YOUR STORY
"Understand that any expression (words, actions, etc. ) that is not loving is a call for healing and help. Regardless of the form it takes. Respond to it with love. Always." (A paraphrased principle from A Course in Miracles)
We can't change the world. (How we wish we could.) We can't change anyone in the world. (No matter how hard we try.) But we can change how we will respond in the world of others. And every time we choose to be loving or accepting or understanding or forgiving of any person or situation that initially disturbed us, we are adding great benefit to the universe.
Close your eyes to the world for a minute right now so a memory or two of when you softened an encounter with some one else can bubble up. As soon as one comes, please write it down.
The importance of this suggestion is that it makes you and me fervently conscious of our impact on others. Each experience during which we respond with love is making our universe a kinder place for others to inhabit. It improves our condition too.
Now let's take a few moments to recall when we were less than loving. When we took issue with someone or reacted poorly in a situation. Close your eyes. Let it gently arise in your mind. Share what it was here.
If you could have a do-over, describe it. How does the do-over make you feel? Might you have amends to make?
Switching gears now...
Let's try our hand at story writing. Don't be afraid of the idea. No one among of us is incapable of creativity. And this story is yours, the one you want to live.
The story you just wrote can be your next real-life experience if you want it. The operable question is: do you? I've heard it said, and I fervently believe it to be true, that whatever we imagine ourselves doing can become our reality,
But doing to means planning our first steps.
Write in your journal about what you need to put in motion first. What would be the next stage of the dream?
If you are already living the best story ever written, then bravo! If not, decide to live a story that manifests your desires.

11/08/2025

Excerpts from Living LONG, Living Passionately by Karen Casey

19.NOW WE CAN REALLY LIVE
"Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this.....? Because you are having it." Eckhart Tolle
Everyone of our experiences is specific to us. Every single experience! Tolle knows this. So does the God of our understanding. ....It clearly means that there is no reason to question any experience.
Are you currently happy? I surely hope so. Your past has delivered you to this point, AN ENCOUNTER WITH ME, AS A MATTER OF FACT, THROUGH THE PAGES OF THIS BOOK, and it's my intent to help you squeeze understanding and joy from your past.
And if you aren't happy right now, perhaps it's because you are feeling anxiety about the undetermined future. If you have forgotten that every person, every past experience, every past moment was "wearing" your name, you just might be wallowing in doubt about all future moments. Couple all of those feelings with entering your sixties or seventies, and you may be fretting there is not much of the good life yet to live. But I say, ON THE CONTRARY. Now we can really live.
Before getting bogged down in doubt, suspend any disbelief you might have about the necessity for each of your life experiences for a moment, and begin a list in your journal of a few significant experiences that have occurred in the last twenty or so years of your life.
How do you want your remaining years to look? What comes first to mind when you envision them?What would please you the most about the remaining decades of your life if you could manifest your perfect picture of the future?

10/11/2025

Excerpts from Living LONG, Living Passionately by Karen Casey
17. SEEKING SOLITUDE
Seeking solitude as preparation for "changing our minds" opens the door to our future. Meditation is too little valued. "The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large," says Confucious. Without much effort, every one of us can have a positive impact on the world at large. It's as simple as choosing our thoughts with greater care.
But not one of us is forever free from the occasional dark thought or dismissive demeanor; and when the inevitable happens (and it always does), our job is to quickly acknowledge what we are harboring in our minds and seek, AT ONCE, to shift our perception, to change our mind, in order to be better stewards of the universal mind.
Before going one thought more, let's pause and consider what has transpired in our minds already since arising this morning.
What thought are you now uncomfortable with?
What thought do you wish you had coddled instead?
How fortunate that what we thought only a moment ago holds no sway of us AT THIS MOMENT, unless we allow it to...for the first four decades of my life. I so willingly gave my mind away, to whomever was nearby, sharing whatever opinion, pleasant or unpleasant was being expressed....I didn't even recognize how little I thought of myself.
But now I do. ..In past years, I was prone to politely, but swiftly, letting others know when I didn't share their political or religious views...I have gladly given up that idea... Now it's your turn
What thought or action can you let go of? And what can you replace it with?

09/27/2025

Excerpts from Living LONG, Living Passionately by Karen Casey

16. TEACHERS OF PERSPECTIVE
Perhaps you haven't thought much about the role perspective has played in your life prior to reading these essays. But it's been a big one, I assure you, and over the years you have honed either a positive perspective or a negative one to near perfection. Whichever one we most often grab in the heat of the moment painstakingly paints the perspective we have about life.
Let's pause a moment and think about the many people who show up on our path regularly. They are not showing up willy-nilly.....You might be looking at one of your most important teachers whose every action or word is nurturing your willingness to be more accepting, a decision that shifts you perspective from negative to positive.
On the other hand, maybe you are serving as their teacher, the one who can help them shift their negative perspective into one that is more genial. Demonstrating a new way of seeing may change everything that follows from this day forward in his or her life.
Because it's a worthy pursuit to make a list of our many teachers to date, list the primary ones in your journal, and acknowledge the specific gift that resulted from their presence on your path. And remember, not all gifts looked good when first received.
Now it's time to consider your teachers. The importance of this can't be overemphasized. Pick your primary teachers, regardless of

09/20/2025

Excerpts from Living LONG, Living Passionately by Karen Casey

15. ROSES RATHER THAN THORNS
"We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses." Abraham Lincoln
Actively, yet quietly, developing a peaceful perspective is the key, the one and only key I've discovered, to calm the running tapes in our minds, tapes that accelerate the chaos we feel within. Seeking to shift one's perspective away from the all too common turmoil, turmoil that generally isn't any concern of ours anyway, is a beginning.
Perhaps it seems that I am obsessively focused on living the peaceful life...No doubt there are other states of mind nearly as valuable as being at peace.
I think we are lucky, very lucky indeed, to be in charge of our state of mine, a state of mind that sees roses rather than thorns.....I know I don't want to have my present or my future in someone else's control ever again...For years I was trapped. Letting others have responsibility for my actions, opinions, and feelings took me off the hook.
But something did finally change. I still don't know what triggered it, but I did finally have a shift in perception.
To be more peaceful, I plan to.....

09/13/2025

14.THE PURPOSE OF LIFE IS TO BE HAPPY
"I believe that the very purpose of life is to be happy. From the very core of our being, we desire contentment. In my own limited experience I have found that the more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own send of well being."-- Dalai Lama
I surely couldn't have expressed any more clearly the sentiment shared by the Dalai Lama in the above quote. We too often think our purpose in life needs to be far grander that to just usher in a few happy moments in another person's life. If we can create, for just one person, an hour or a moment of genuine peace and well being, we will have lived a worthy life.
Don't misunderstand. We need the superstars too--the Bill Gateses and Warren Buffets. We need the Hillary Clintons and Bill O'Reillys. ....People who reach from afar into our lives and make us think they make us take a stand; they make us better people.
Assuredly, we can all remember being asked when we were youngsters, "What are you going to be when you grow up?" And had we answered, "Make someone happy," the questioners would likely have scoffed. That answer would not have demonstrated a lofty enough dream.
Perhaps you are thinking this is simply not doing enough for mankind. Perhaps you are wondering how an activity so simple, so common, can put food on the table and a roof over one's head. My point is not that work that draws a paycheck isn't valuable.....The Mother Teresas of the world measure worth by the smallest of deeds we do for one another.
Perhaps you are reading this and thinking there has do be more.....Any work we did, or continue to do, counted. But the smallest token of appreciation for another's presence on one's journey is what really matters, and that act requires little more than willingness.
When I look back on my life, what experiences or accomplishments please me the most?
If I had to defend my choices above, what would my defense be?

08/30/2025

Excerpts from Living LONG, Living Passionately by Karen Casey

13. AN INVENTORY
It is said that if we don't learn from our history, we will repeat it. This is true on the world stage and for us as individuals, I think. Let's take an inventory of our lives and check this out.
Probably everyone reading this essay has made a lot of mistakes over the years. Life isn't always pretty, at least mine wasn't. It's not expected to be, in fact, but far too many of us never quit blaming ourselves for mistakes of the past.
I know I let folks down in the past, my parent in particular. And even though I made amends, both verbally and by changing my behavior quite dramatically, I still have moments of remorse for the embarrassment I caused them. I think this is partly due to my age now.
Whatever your age right now, it's time to move on.
Perhaps we should begin here making a list of those things we know we have learned and need no reminders about. Let me name a few so you can get the idea.
1. I have learned that fear wears many faces and one of them is anger.
2. I have learned that letting other people be in charge of their own journey through life is the only way to ensure my peace of mind....
Now it's your turn. What do you know to be true?....

08/09/2025

Excerpts from Living LONG, Living Passionately by Karen Casey

12. I CAN CHOOSE PEACE INSTEAD OF THIS
I've mentioned in other essays how important A COURSE OF MIRACLES has been to my spiritual development. Because the Course complements the twelve steps of AA and Al-Anon, I feel many moments of actual joy nearly every day, a payoff I had never expected. These three pathways have grounded me.
Perhaps some of you can relate. A book such as this probably wouldn't have drawn you in if you had never traveled the rocky roads of life.
The title of this essay is "I can choose peace instead of this..." You might be wondering what that means. Here's my take: no one is in charge of my thoughts but me. NO ONE! No one is in charge of my actions either...Knowing that we have the power, the total power, to decide who we will be every instant, makes choosing to be peaceful, rather than controlled by the ugliness of others, a delicious choice.
When I choose to sit on the sidelines, watching a drama rather than trying to manage it, particularly one that doesn't concern me, my heart isn't elevated. My mind doesn't race. I experience a sense of warm, loving detachment and know immediately that I want more of that feeling. And now I know where to get it.
Enough about my feelings, my choices, and my development. It's time to explore who you are, what you feel, how you choose what you will do or say or think or feel in the myriad circumstances that fly in your direction.
Is there anything we have talked about here that you'd like to share with a spouse or a friend? I hope so.,,,,write a note to a loved one about what you have learned from this particular essay.
What do you do when you take a time out from the activities that call to you. Do you meditate?
1. What's the most recent time you felt agitation? Can you honestly assess whether you were sticking your nose into something that didn't concern you? If yes, let's revisit this scenario in your mind and choose another response to the situation.

08/02/2025

11. REMEMBRANCES
"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there." RAY BRADBURY
I have lost a number of very good friends over the past couple of years. And I have mementos from three of the women in my study. A rock from one friend, a book from another, and a pin from the third.
i think of these women, and my mother too, as the angels who however around my shoulders at good times, as wells as at difficult time. Actually, I have very few difficult times anymore.
Arriving at the threshold of seventy-five, nearly takes my breath away. How could the years have passed so quickly? Death may well be twenty years from now, and I hope it is (if my health holds), but most of my life has already been lived
All things have their end, in one respect. Experiences. People. Sometimes relationships too. I don't mean for this essay to be maudlin. On the contrary, I think that what lies ahead in this life, or the next will be greater than my heart or mind can currently imagine.
What are your thoughts about dying or the dead who have passed already?
Whom do you remember clearly? And why?
And whom do you hope will keep your spirit alive? What?

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