p 42 Human freedom is a precious thing and we react decisively against those who take it or restrict it from us. .. FREEDOM IS THE FUEL OF ROMANTIC FIRE....The word respect...is absolutely basic to all human relationships...The basic marital problem usually involves matters of respect which are often generated during instances of confrontation.
p 45 It is very difficult to love a person romantically and pity him or her at the same time.
p 55 Genuine love demands toughness in moments of crisis...Grown ups too..unconsciously perhaps, are asking the question: HOW MUCH COURAGE DO YOU HAVE? and DO YOU LOVE ME ENOUGH TO STOP ME FROM DOING THIS FOOLISH THING?
p 62 (If a person who is feeling smothered) there will be INSTANT relief if you make it clear that there are limits to what you can tolerate; this shows self-respect and confidence....Your purpose is to be tough but loving as well.
p 77 The confrontation may result in the sudden demise of the relationship. But without the crisis, there is a much higher probability of a lingering death...A blowout is better than a slow leak.
p 82 When one partner makes up his mind to act irresponsibly, he usually seeks to justify his behavior by magnifying the failures of his partner.....Rejection by the one you love, particularly, is the most powerful destroyer of self-esteem in the entire realm of humanity.
p 192 Don't marry the person you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can't live without.
c. 1984 c. 2004 Multnomah
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Monday, January 22, 2007
Heartfelt Blessing by Kate Nowak
There was once a wise woman traveling in the mountains who found a precious stone in a stream. The next day she met another traveler who was hungry, and she opened her bag to share her food. The hungry traveler saw the precious stone and asked if she might give it to him. She did so without hesitation.
The traveler left, rejoicing in his good fortune. He knew the stone was worth enough to give him security for a lifetime. But only a few days later he came back to return the stone to the woman who had given it to him.
"I've been thinking," he said, "I know how valuable the stone is, but I'm giving it back in the hope that you can give me something even more precious. I want you to give me what you have within you that enabled you to give me the stone."
The traveler left, rejoicing in his good fortune. He knew the stone was worth enough to give him security for a lifetime. But only a few days later he came back to return the stone to the woman who had given it to him.
"I've been thinking," he said, "I know how valuable the stone is, but I'm giving it back in the hope that you can give me something even more precious. I want you to give me what you have within you that enabled you to give me the stone."
Friday, December 22, 2006
Full Circle
Everything the Power of the World
does is done in a circle.
The sky is round and I have heard that the earth
is round like a ball and so are all the stars.
The wind, in its greatest power, whirls.
Birds make their nests in circles,
for theirs is the same religion as ours.
The sun comes forth and goes down
again in a circle. The moon does the
same and both are round. Even the
seasons form a great circle in their
changing and always come back again
to where they were. The life of a man
is a circle from childhood to childhood.
And so it is in everything where power moves.
Black Elk, Oglala Sioux (1863-1950)
does is done in a circle.
The sky is round and I have heard that the earth
is round like a ball and so are all the stars.
The wind, in its greatest power, whirls.
Birds make their nests in circles,
for theirs is the same religion as ours.
The sun comes forth and goes down
again in a circle. The moon does the
same and both are round. Even the
seasons form a great circle in their
changing and always come back again
to where they were. The life of a man
is a circle from childhood to childhood.
And so it is in everything where power moves.
Black Elk, Oglala Sioux (1863-1950)
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
ATTITUDE by Charles Swindoll
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company...a church...a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play the one string we have, and that is our attitude...I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you...we are in charge of our attitudes.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
On Relationships
On Relationships
by Various Authors
It is not the most lovable individuals who stand more in need of love, but the most unlovable.~Ashley Montague
You will always be attracted to something that is going to create change within you.
~Chris Grisiom
Let each person in relationship worry not about the other, but only about self...It doesn't matter what the other is being, doing, having, saying, wanting, demanding. It doesn't matter what the other is thinking, expecting, planning. It only matters what YOU are being in RELATIONSHIP to that.
~Neale Donald Walsch, 1996
From "Conversations With God"
A vision without a task is but a dream. A task without a vision is drudgery. A vision and a task is the hope of the world."
~ Inscription in an Essex England Church
All of us create our own destiny through our thoughts, words and deeds. Everything that happens to you is a consequence of a choice or decision you made in the past.
~ Unknown
"If God wanted us to have a president, He would have sent us a candidate."
~ Jerry Dreshfield
by Various Authors
It is not the most lovable individuals who stand more in need of love, but the most unlovable.~Ashley Montague
You will always be attracted to something that is going to create change within you.
~Chris Grisiom
Let each person in relationship worry not about the other, but only about self...It doesn't matter what the other is being, doing, having, saying, wanting, demanding. It doesn't matter what the other is thinking, expecting, planning. It only matters what YOU are being in RELATIONSHIP to that.
~Neale Donald Walsch, 1996
From "Conversations With God"
A vision without a task is but a dream. A task without a vision is drudgery. A vision and a task is the hope of the world."
~ Inscription in an Essex England Church
All of us create our own destiny through our thoughts, words and deeds. Everything that happens to you is a consequence of a choice or decision you made in the past.
~ Unknown
"If God wanted us to have a president, He would have sent us a candidate."
~ Jerry Dreshfield
Monday, December 11, 2006
Embraced By The Light
Embraced by the Light
by Betty Eadie
by Betty Eadie
This is a part of the author's account of what happened when they lost her on the operating table -- where she went, what she experienced and what she was told:
" The heavens scrolled back again, and I saw the sphere of earth rotating in space. I saw many lights shooting up from earth like beacons. Some were very broad and charged into Heaven like laser beams. Others resembled small pen lights, and some were sparks... I was told that these beams of power were the prayers of people on earth... I saw angels rushing to answer the prayers.. They literally flew from prayer to prayer and were filled with love and joy by their work. ...They always responded to the brighter, larger prayers first, then each prayer in turn, until all of them were answered...."
Home WIth God
Home With God In a Life That Never Ends
by Neale Donald Walsch
p 10 (Death) IS a doorway, but it is a magic doorway, because the energy with which you walk through that doorway DETERMINES WHAT'S ON THE OTHER SIDE.
p 22 No matter which way you go, YOU CANNOT FAIL TO GET HOME...Some paths are less arduous.
p 25 Please do not confuse what is in your heart with what is in your mind. What is in your mind has been put there by others. What is in your heart is what you carry with you of me.
p 27 (Robert Frost) The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.
p 41 If you look upon yourself as a victim, you will see yourself as one. if you look upon yourself as a villain, you will see yourself as one. If you look upon yourself as a co-creator in a collaborative process, that is how you will see yourself.
p 57 If you think that you are a victim, say that you are a victim, and act as if you are a victim, YOU WILL EXPERIENCE YOURSELF AS A VICTIM in spite of the fact that you are not......If you think that another is a victim, say that another is a victim, and act as if another is a victim, you WILL EXPERIENCE THAT OTHER PERSON AS A VICTIM in spite of the fact that he or she is not....It is impossible to be a victim of circumstances you create.
p 64 It is the PURPOSE of physical life to provide you with a context within which you may experience what you choose, in the spiritual realm, to experience. And so by leaving physical life you will escape nothing but will just place yourself right back INTO physical life, and into the situation you were seeking to escape...except now you will be back at the beginning again.
p 69 Euthanasia cannot be equated with suicide. People who are contemplating suicide in the middle of an otherwise active and reasonably healthy life are making a very particular kind of decision. People who end a life that is a very short time away from ending anyway, with every medical evidence indicating that, are making an entirely different kind of decision.
p 78 (You are the cause of your own experience although it may not appear to be that way). It will not appear that way until you change your perspective. Nothing will appear that you cannot see.
p 94 ...But if I changed the way I looked at certain things, then all the drama would go away.....Ah, now we're getting to it.
p 115 Hope is the doorway to belief, belief is the doorway to knowing, knowing is the doorway to creation, and creation is the dorway to experience. Experience is the doorway to expression, expression is the doorway to becoming, becoming is the activity of all Life and the only function of God.What you hope, you will eventually believe, what you believe, you will eventually know, what you know, you will eventually create, what you create you will eventually experience, what you experience, you will eventually express, what you express you will eventually become. This is the formula for all of life. It is as simple as that.
p 119 (re: the possibility of suffering in Heaven) You would experience suffering... except you would not.... In the moment anything occurs that the soul experiences as not desirable, the very thought that it is not desirable causes the inner experience of the soul to be instantly altered. And so there is no suffering. Not even for the person who powerfully imagines that he or she SHOULD be punished.
p 129 Don Quixote, the Man of La Mancha, in which one man sees the world through different eyes...And he made it all up. What, then, is your destiny? How will you live your life? How will you see the people, places and events in it? And how will it all turn out?...It will depend on how you look at it.
p 141 As you move through this tunnel... time is not passing, YOU are passing through TIME. .. Time is not going anywhere. Time is "in place" right NOW. It is static, stable, stationary. It is always there, right where it is. Wherever you are in time, it is always NOW.
p 145 How you experience what you come to know depends on how you leave Center. If you release your issues and leave them at the Core, then you will feel "centered" because you have not taken your "core issues" with you.If you do not release them, if you just do not want to let them go, you will take whatever core issues you have not fully released to the "other side", where you will confront them again and have a chance to deal with them there.
p 181 The death of every person always serves the agenda of every other person who is aware of it. THAT IS WHY WE ARE AWARE OF IT. Therefore, no death (and no life) is ever "wasted". No one ever dies "in vain."
p 213 You can say that you've heard all of this before--but you are not ACTING LIKE IT.... (What would it look like if I were acting like it?)
First, you would never entertain negative thoughts in your mind again.
Second, if a negative thought DID happen to slip in, you would get it out of your mind immediately. You would think of something else, deliberately. You would simply CHANGE YOUR MIND ABOUT THAT.
Third, you would begin to not only understand Who You Really Are, but to honor and demonstrate that. That is, you would move from what you Know to what you Experience as the measure of your own evolution.
Fourth, you would love yourself fully, just as you are.
Fifth, you would love everyone else fully, just as they are.
Sixth, you would love life fully, just as it is.
Seventh, you would forgive everyone everything.
Eighth, you would never deliberatly hurt another human being again---emotionally or physically. least of all would you ever do this in the name of God.
Ninth, you would never mourn the death of another again, not even for a moment. You might mourn your loss, but not their death.
Tenth, You would never fear or mourn your own death, not even for a moment.
Eleventh, you would be aware that everything is vibration. EVERYTHING. And so you would pay much more attention to the vibration of everything that you eat, of everything that you wear, or everything that you watch, read, or listen to, and most important, of everything that you think, say and do.
Twelfth, You would do whatever it takes to adjust the vibration of your own energy and the life energy that you are creating around you if you find that it is not resonance with the highest knowing you have about Who You Are, and the greatest experience of this that you can possibly imagine.
p 215 It is just a matter of focus. Most human beings are focused most of the time on things that do not really matter. yet if they were to take a few moments each day to focus on what does, they could change their whole lives.Your body is a magnificent instrument of highly sensitive energy receptors. believe it or not, you can run your hand six inches over the food in a buffet line and, without touching it, feel whether it is of benefit to you to eat that right now. You can do the same thing with clothing that you are picking out of a closet to wear for the day, or that you are thinking of buying in a store.When you are with another person, if you will stop listening to what you are thinking and begin listening to what you are feeling, the quality of your communication with that person will skyrocket -- as will the quality of the relationship itself.
p 235 The three stages of death are designed to move you, gently and as rapidly as you wish to move, through the process of reidentification. In the second stage of death you still identify with your mind, and so your experience is dictate by what is IN your mind. Your beliefs create your experience. Once you drop this identity, your experience is created not by what you believe, but by what you desire. This is the beginning of your experience called "heaven". You may experience these three stages of death that I have now several times described even while you are alive.
c. 2006 Atria Publishers
by Neale Donald Walsch
p 10 (Death) IS a doorway, but it is a magic doorway, because the energy with which you walk through that doorway DETERMINES WHAT'S ON THE OTHER SIDE.
p 22 No matter which way you go, YOU CANNOT FAIL TO GET HOME...Some paths are less arduous.
p 25 Please do not confuse what is in your heart with what is in your mind. What is in your mind has been put there by others. What is in your heart is what you carry with you of me.
p 27 (Robert Frost) The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.
p 41 If you look upon yourself as a victim, you will see yourself as one. if you look upon yourself as a villain, you will see yourself as one. If you look upon yourself as a co-creator in a collaborative process, that is how you will see yourself.
p 57 If you think that you are a victim, say that you are a victim, and act as if you are a victim, YOU WILL EXPERIENCE YOURSELF AS A VICTIM in spite of the fact that you are not......If you think that another is a victim, say that another is a victim, and act as if another is a victim, you WILL EXPERIENCE THAT OTHER PERSON AS A VICTIM in spite of the fact that he or she is not....It is impossible to be a victim of circumstances you create.
p 64 It is the PURPOSE of physical life to provide you with a context within which you may experience what you choose, in the spiritual realm, to experience. And so by leaving physical life you will escape nothing but will just place yourself right back INTO physical life, and into the situation you were seeking to escape...except now you will be back at the beginning again.
p 69 Euthanasia cannot be equated with suicide. People who are contemplating suicide in the middle of an otherwise active and reasonably healthy life are making a very particular kind of decision. People who end a life that is a very short time away from ending anyway, with every medical evidence indicating that, are making an entirely different kind of decision.
p 78 (You are the cause of your own experience although it may not appear to be that way). It will not appear that way until you change your perspective. Nothing will appear that you cannot see.
p 94 ...But if I changed the way I looked at certain things, then all the drama would go away.....Ah, now we're getting to it.
p 115 Hope is the doorway to belief, belief is the doorway to knowing, knowing is the doorway to creation, and creation is the dorway to experience. Experience is the doorway to expression, expression is the doorway to becoming, becoming is the activity of all Life and the only function of God.What you hope, you will eventually believe, what you believe, you will eventually know, what you know, you will eventually create, what you create you will eventually experience, what you experience, you will eventually express, what you express you will eventually become. This is the formula for all of life. It is as simple as that.
p 119 (re: the possibility of suffering in Heaven) You would experience suffering... except you would not.... In the moment anything occurs that the soul experiences as not desirable, the very thought that it is not desirable causes the inner experience of the soul to be instantly altered. And so there is no suffering. Not even for the person who powerfully imagines that he or she SHOULD be punished.
p 129 Don Quixote, the Man of La Mancha, in which one man sees the world through different eyes...And he made it all up. What, then, is your destiny? How will you live your life? How will you see the people, places and events in it? And how will it all turn out?...It will depend on how you look at it.
p 141 As you move through this tunnel... time is not passing, YOU are passing through TIME. .. Time is not going anywhere. Time is "in place" right NOW. It is static, stable, stationary. It is always there, right where it is. Wherever you are in time, it is always NOW.
p 145 How you experience what you come to know depends on how you leave Center. If you release your issues and leave them at the Core, then you will feel "centered" because you have not taken your "core issues" with you.If you do not release them, if you just do not want to let them go, you will take whatever core issues you have not fully released to the "other side", where you will confront them again and have a chance to deal with them there.
p 181 The death of every person always serves the agenda of every other person who is aware of it. THAT IS WHY WE ARE AWARE OF IT. Therefore, no death (and no life) is ever "wasted". No one ever dies "in vain."
p 213 You can say that you've heard all of this before--but you are not ACTING LIKE IT.... (What would it look like if I were acting like it?)
First, you would never entertain negative thoughts in your mind again.
Second, if a negative thought DID happen to slip in, you would get it out of your mind immediately. You would think of something else, deliberately. You would simply CHANGE YOUR MIND ABOUT THAT.
Third, you would begin to not only understand Who You Really Are, but to honor and demonstrate that. That is, you would move from what you Know to what you Experience as the measure of your own evolution.
Fourth, you would love yourself fully, just as you are.
Fifth, you would love everyone else fully, just as they are.
Sixth, you would love life fully, just as it is.
Seventh, you would forgive everyone everything.
Eighth, you would never deliberatly hurt another human being again---emotionally or physically. least of all would you ever do this in the name of God.
Ninth, you would never mourn the death of another again, not even for a moment. You might mourn your loss, but not their death.
Tenth, You would never fear or mourn your own death, not even for a moment.
Eleventh, you would be aware that everything is vibration. EVERYTHING. And so you would pay much more attention to the vibration of everything that you eat, of everything that you wear, or everything that you watch, read, or listen to, and most important, of everything that you think, say and do.
Twelfth, You would do whatever it takes to adjust the vibration of your own energy and the life energy that you are creating around you if you find that it is not resonance with the highest knowing you have about Who You Are, and the greatest experience of this that you can possibly imagine.
p 215 It is just a matter of focus. Most human beings are focused most of the time on things that do not really matter. yet if they were to take a few moments each day to focus on what does, they could change their whole lives.Your body is a magnificent instrument of highly sensitive energy receptors. believe it or not, you can run your hand six inches over the food in a buffet line and, without touching it, feel whether it is of benefit to you to eat that right now. You can do the same thing with clothing that you are picking out of a closet to wear for the day, or that you are thinking of buying in a store.When you are with another person, if you will stop listening to what you are thinking and begin listening to what you are feeling, the quality of your communication with that person will skyrocket -- as will the quality of the relationship itself.
p 235 The three stages of death are designed to move you, gently and as rapidly as you wish to move, through the process of reidentification. In the second stage of death you still identify with your mind, and so your experience is dictate by what is IN your mind. Your beliefs create your experience. Once you drop this identity, your experience is created not by what you believe, but by what you desire. This is the beginning of your experience called "heaven". You may experience these three stages of death that I have now several times described even while you are alive.
c. 2006 Atria Publishers
Saturday, December 9, 2006
The Five Rituals of Wealth by Tod Barnhart
Far better is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even thought checkered by failure, than take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. ~Theodore Roosevelt
p 7 If I were your fairy godmother, which of these two wishes would you rather I grant you:
A million dollars cash right now, or a magic penny that doubles itself every day?...
Given the choice, most people would opt for the million dollars. And that wouldn't necessarily be a bad decision. After all, a million dollars is a million dollars! But the far wiser choice is the magic penny that doubles itself every day. Let's look at what would happen to its value over time.
Day 2: .02
Day 3: .04
Day 4: .08
Here's where it gets interesting:
Day 28: $1,342.177.00
Day 29: over $2.6 million
Day 38: Just over $1 billion - that's BILLION with a B
Day 45: well over $1 trillion -- that's twelve zeros!
p 31 According to the Social Security Administration, of those Americans who reach the retirement age of sixty-five:
1) 45 percent are dependent on relatives
2) 30 percent must live on charity
3) 23 percent are still working
4) only 2 percent are totally self-sustaining
p 32 Allow me to share with you a few more startling statistics:
Fact: 85 percent of men in the US at age sixty-five don't have $250 set aside for retirement.
Fact: Fewer men are worth $100 at age sixty-eight than at age eighteen.
Fact: 95 percent of all self-proclaimed financial failures claimed they lacked a plan for their finances.
p 38 Donald Trump tells a humorous story that really puts things in perspective. At one point he was worth billions and owned a colossal amount of real estate, primarily in New York City. As he tells it, he was waling down the street after he'd been put on a budget by some of the banking insitituions to which he owed millions, when he came across a homeless person digging through the trash. This person was obviously worth nothing financially and Trump's initial reaction was to look down on him. But after a moment's thought, he said "This man is my superior in financial terms." Someone asked, "How can that be, he's worth nothing." Trump responded, "He's worth nothing, but I'm worth negative several hundred million."
p 38 A few years ago a newspaper reported that Elvis Presley died with a net worth of $5 million. Now, I don't know how many millions Elvis earned in his career, but for a man who once spent $38,000 on Christmas present, $5 million in net worth seems like next to nothing.....it can be more difficult at a higher income if good habits haven't already been formed. The habits are still there, and the expenses and problems have gotten a whole lot bigger.
c. 1995 Harper Collins
p 7 If I were your fairy godmother, which of these two wishes would you rather I grant you:
A million dollars cash right now, or a magic penny that doubles itself every day?...
Given the choice, most people would opt for the million dollars. And that wouldn't necessarily be a bad decision. After all, a million dollars is a million dollars! But the far wiser choice is the magic penny that doubles itself every day. Let's look at what would happen to its value over time.
Day 2: .02
Day 3: .04
Day 4: .08
Here's where it gets interesting:
Day 28: $1,342.177.00
Day 29: over $2.6 million
Day 38: Just over $1 billion - that's BILLION with a B
Day 45: well over $1 trillion -- that's twelve zeros!
p 31 According to the Social Security Administration, of those Americans who reach the retirement age of sixty-five:
1) 45 percent are dependent on relatives
2) 30 percent must live on charity
3) 23 percent are still working
4) only 2 percent are totally self-sustaining
p 32 Allow me to share with you a few more startling statistics:
Fact: 85 percent of men in the US at age sixty-five don't have $250 set aside for retirement.
Fact: Fewer men are worth $100 at age sixty-eight than at age eighteen.
Fact: 95 percent of all self-proclaimed financial failures claimed they lacked a plan for their finances.
p 38 Donald Trump tells a humorous story that really puts things in perspective. At one point he was worth billions and owned a colossal amount of real estate, primarily in New York City. As he tells it, he was waling down the street after he'd been put on a budget by some of the banking insitituions to which he owed millions, when he came across a homeless person digging through the trash. This person was obviously worth nothing financially and Trump's initial reaction was to look down on him. But after a moment's thought, he said "This man is my superior in financial terms." Someone asked, "How can that be, he's worth nothing." Trump responded, "He's worth nothing, but I'm worth negative several hundred million."
p 38 A few years ago a newspaper reported that Elvis Presley died with a net worth of $5 million. Now, I don't know how many millions Elvis earned in his career, but for a man who once spent $38,000 on Christmas present, $5 million in net worth seems like next to nothing.....it can be more difficult at a higher income if good habits haven't already been formed. The habits are still there, and the expenses and problems have gotten a whole lot bigger.
c. 1995 Harper Collins
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