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)

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.

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

Embraced By The Light

Embraced by the Light
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

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

Skidboot the Dog

A heart-warming segment from Texas Country Reporter, with Bob Phillips. For more information visit www.TexasCountryReporter.com or www.skidboot.com

Do What You Love and You Learn Your Power

One must desire something to be alive.
~Margaret Deland, American Novelist

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.
~Ella Fitzgerald, Jazz singer

Learning too soon our limitations, we never learn our powers.
~Mignon McLaughlin, Humorist

On Pain by Harold Kushner

…Yet pain is part of being alive, and we need to learn that. Pain does not last forever, nor is it necessarily unbearable, and we need to be taught that. Adolescents need to accept the fact that broken hearts, like broken bones, hurt dreadfully but ultimately they heal, and that there is life beyond the hurting.

People whose shameful secret is about to be revealed need to be assured that there is forgiveness as well as condemnation, that there are people in the world and a God in the world capable of forgiving and loving even the most flawed and imperfect of us.

The terminally ill need to be reassured that we will cherish them and spend time with them and take them as seriously as we did when they were healthy.

Most of all, we have to learn to trust our own capacities to endure pain. We can endure much more than we think we can; all human experience testifies to that. All we need to do is learn not to be afraid of pain.

Grit your teeth and let it hurt. Don’t deny it, don’t be overwhelmed by it. It will not last forever, One day, the pain will be gone and you will still be there.

~Harold S. Kushner

Loving What Is by Byron Katie

P 15 The Four Questions for any dilemma you may have:
1) Is it true?
2) Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
3) How do you react when you think that thought?
4) Who would you be without the thought?

P 22 Everyone is a mirror image of yourself--- Your own thinking coming back at you.

P 37 Each time he rejects you, if you still feel pain, you can realize that your Work’s not done. And he is the master. He will continue to reject you until you understand. You are responsible for not rejecting him or yourself. …it’s good that it hurts. Pain is the signal that you’re confused, that you’re in a lie…You are the solution to your problem – your apparent problem. No mother or son has ever done harm. We’re dealing with confusion here, that’s all. Through this Work we come to realize that.

P 141 “She’s meeting another man in Europe right now.” he said.
Oh. So she’s doing everything YOU wanted to do.
P 153 “You need to make decisions in life” – can you really know that that’s true?
Response: "It feels like I need to, but as you say it, I’m not sure."
It would have to feel that way, because you believe the thought and therefore you’re attached to it.

p 180 Everything happens FOR me, not TO me.

P 229 You move totally away from reality when you believe that there is a legitimate reason to suffer.

c. 2002 Harmony Books

Toxic Parents by Susan Forward

Most children can deal with an occasional outburst of anger as long as they have plenty of love and understanding to counter it.
p 17 At the core of every formerly mistreated adult...is a little child who feels powerless and afraid.
p 27 We transfer strong feelings from the appropriate person to an easier target.
p 65 ...the psychological umbilical cord reaches not only across continents but out of the grave.
p 81 Many adult children of alcoholics develop a high tolerance for accepting the unacceptable.
p 120 Many physically abused parents enter adulthood with tremendous emotional deficits and unmet needs. Emotionally, they are still children. They often look upon their own children as surrogate parents, to fulfill the emotional needs that their resal parents never fulfilled. The abuser becomes enraged when his child can't meet his needs. He lashes out. At that moment, the child is more of a surrogate parent than ever, because it is the abuser's parent at whom the abuser is truly enraged.........Recognizing a problem and seeking help is a sign not only of health but of courage.

c. 1989 Bantam Books
c. 2002 Revised Bantam Books

CONFIDENCE by Alan Loy McGinnis

p 22 Admiral Byrd, who was the first person to fly over the North and South Poles said:
"Few people come anywhere near exhausting the resources within them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used."
p 22 (re: suicidal people) "You have no right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to the universe."
p 32 How did Golda Meir overcome her inferiority feelings?
"I found what I wanted to do in life."
p 34 It is a sign of health to be able to accept the negative aspects of ourselves (Jung - "our shadow sides")...The only emotion that can hurt us is the unacknowledged emotion. To repress our shadow side is to give it the greatest power over us.
p 43 Life is not so much a matter of finding ourselves as it is a process of MAKING ourselves.
p 51 Self confidence causes you to want to accomplish all the more.
p 75 Facts make it all the more important that we pump as much positive material as possible into the young minds around us.
p 83 In order to succeed you must see yourself succeeding.
p 84 Norman Cousins once wrote "People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears and the expense of their dreams."
p 85 What you hold in your mind is what you move toward.
p 95 Those with strong self confidence have the courage to be different from those around them.
p 100 You can point to 200 souls who are boring because they try so hard not to offend anyone.
p 101 Each of us was created unique, and the discovery and expression of that uniqueness is one reason we are on this planet.
p 127 Being useful is more important than being noticed.
p 131 At some primal level, when we touch another we say "you are loveable still, you are valid, you are THERE."
p 140 Excessive guilt does not make you more guarded or more bent toward changing. Instead, it paralyzes you. If you feel bad enough about yourself you do not have to change -- you're not up to it.
p 141 Everyone has skeletons in the closet. The worst thing about them is the effect they have on us each time we walk down the corridor that passes the closet. Pulses quicken, breathing is tense and quick, and we want to race past the locked door. In psychotherapy we urge clients to unlock the closet and stare the skeleton down. The first time you try it, it will nearly do you in. The second time will not be quite so hard. And if you open the door enough times, you become so accustomed to its existence that you can walk down the hallway unaffected.
p 142 Catharsis..is like lancing an infection.
p 148 The secret of living successfully is to choose only the most important things to do and to leave the insignificant things undone.
p 160 Preogress comes when you are able to relax, stop begging for love, and begin loving.
p 173 Self denegration ought to be removed from ones vocabulary, and we should say nothing about ourselves that we do not wish to become true.
p 177 A reporter once asked Mother Theresa how she measured success and failure of her work. Her reply was that she did not think God used categories like success and failure. The measurement instead was this: "How much have you loved?".
p 181 The successful person leads a life that includes service to others, and he cares passionately for certain people who come across his path. Success and failure seem to come and go, but he does not take that too seriously either, for it is enough to serve God, to do the best he can with what he has, and to catch joy when it comes.

c. 2005 Augsburg Fortress Publishers

Leo Buscaglia on LOVE

p 27 That's what it's all about. In the end, you have only you.
p 39 The only reality is what is happening between you and me right now.
p 43 The opposite of love is not hate, it's apathy
p 46 Birds never sing in caves. Thoreau
p 82 The fear of aloneness and lack of love is so great in most of us that it's possible we can become slave to this fear.
p 97 For if one expects nothing and asks nothing, he can never be deceived or disappointed...The perfect love is one that gives all and expects nothing.
p 98 One loves because he wills it, because it gives him joy, because he knows that growth and discovery of oneself depends on it.
p 117 Just because the message may never be received does not mean it is not worth sending. ~Segaki
p 138 It's doubtful that one will realize all of his "self" in a lifetime even if his every moment were dedicated to it.
p 164 Love helps us to accept the fact that the other individual is behaving only as he is able to behave at the moment.
p 172 Man has not yet learned to work for the joy of work, learn for the sake of growth, create for the expression and the exaltation in the act, or to love simply for the pleasure of loving; he still requires a reward.

Seldom if ever do we think ourselves out of depression. Rather, we act ourselves out of it by taking other people's needs more seriously than our own.

c. 1972 Fawcett Crest

What You Think of Me Is None of My Business By Terri Cole Whittaker

p 11 Babies have a very high degree of consciousness at the moment of birth.
p 12 You are the captain of your own ship and the master of your own destiny.
p 13 You are complete and nothing is missing.
p 20 We as parents are more often concerned about what neighbors and relatives think of our merit as parents than about what our kids think.
p 22 You were the one who gave the power away. Try to understand that those who were controlling you were trying to fulfill their own needs, trying to gain a feeling of worthiness and fulfillment through you. ...You are in a natural state of magnificence. Others who hold you responsible for their failures are..using guilt as the weapon to hold you in their grasp.
p 24 You will know your own guilt when you know that you have tried to suppress another, tried to take away his/her aliveness, possessions, self-esteem, health, rights or your have tried in some way, to deny others their life....People who murder do so because they are trying to kill something in themselves.
p 29 Our parents become dependent upon us to provide the love they need and to fulfill the dreams that haven't come true for them..The more secure, whole, actualized, and self reliant a person is, them ore he or she is able to be sensitive and respond to the other person. True self reliance allows love to flow.
p 41 When you are in harmony with life and love, you always win, although you might not always get what you mistakenly think you ought to have.
p 51 Avoid risk and be run by fear, and you allow the world, the environment and other people to control you.
p 71 Suicidals want more of life, but don't know how to get it.
p 77 The fat person manifests a low self image, and people resist this because it reminds them of their own low self-image. The low self-image projected by the fat person creates fear in others who are afraid to look honestly at themselves.
p 97 The ideal relationship is one in which each partner says: "I support you for being who you are, who you are not, and who you can be. I support you in your goals and purpose in life. I support you in sharing all your thoughts, ideas, and feelings. I will not judge. I will not suppress. I am not going to bring up your sharing at some later time and use it as a weapon.
p 111 There can be no success unless you have communicated that they are responsible for their actions, that they are not the only ones who exist and that they will live all their lives in relationship to other people.
p 148 The universal law: What you give, you get back.
p 167 Most people, deep down in their hearts, are not trying to hurt others. They hurt out of a sense of self-preservation or in an attempt to keep from being hurt.
p 186 God doesn't make junk.
p 187 When others seek to dump their insecurities on you, what they are really saying is simply a reflection of where they are.
p 189 Your real self is totally perfect, complete, loving and powerful. You are responsible for your own life. What you believe is the way it's going to be.

c. 1988 Jove Publishers (reprint)