Day-Words Make Your Day

MAGNIFCANT - MONDAY
TERRIFIC - TUESDAY
WINNING - WEDNESDAY

THRILLING - THURSDAY
FANTASTIC - FRIDAY

SENSATIONAL - SATURDAY
SPLENDID - SUNDAY

From the forthcoming book

Downloading The Creator: Bits and Bytes

Yep

There’s a lot to be said for “yep.” It implies a simpler time when we were more prone than not to give the other guy a nod regardless of his opinion. There didn’t seem to be a need to be on first in order to make ourselves look better by putting someone down or arguing the point all the way to a bloodbath. How are we ever going to qualify for first place if we don’t get own acts together and learn how to say “yep” with a nod and mean it.

Stuck Energy

We toss out the word "forgiving" as if it's easy to do or necessary if we want to be "good" about the whole thing. But it doesn't quite work that way. Forgiving as some very insightful person said once, is "for giving up." That means whatever happened is no longer attached to us any more than a movie is when we leave the theater.

A guest on Oprah said it best, "Feelings are time travelers." When we can't put a hurtful incident to rest it follows us, it shapes us, and it pains us. Unfortunately, we even take it with us into another lifetime.

Evil

Evil would not exist if we didn't participate.

True or False?

"I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive." Henry Miller, a controversial author and painter, December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980.

A Perfect New Year's Wish

Today is January 3, 2008, the beginning of a new year. This thought from Alan Watts is a perfect idea for every parent on earth. If put into practice, it would change the world.

He said, "The Book I would pass to my children would contain no sermons, no shoulds and oughts. Genuine love comes from knowledge, not from a sense of duty or guilt."
Author and philosopher - Alan Watts 1915 - 1973

Christmas Magic

Today is Monday December 24, 2007. And although my posts on this blog cover inspirational thoughts over many years, a touching story happened yesterday that is worthy of sharing.

I arrived early at Sunday’s service so I could sit on the front row a mere foot from a towering and beautifully decorated Christmas tree. There are only five seats on this row but when I arrived, two were already taken—the isle seat and the second seat next to it.

Excusing myself as I passed the two men sitting there, the young man in the second seat gestured with a slight hand movement for me to take the empty third seat. Since sitting under this massive and magic Christmas tree is personal, I nodded with a thank you opting to sit in the forth seat leaving an empty seat on both sides.

His brief gesture allowed me to observe a twenty-something angelic face that quite honestly resembled what Jesus may have looked like at his age although his clothes betrayed his personal presence. They resembling those of a homeless person more so than a spiritual power, a thought I quickly dismissed. It’s wrong to “judge a book by it’s cover.”

The first row is also first to receive the collection plate. But when the young man passed the velvet-covered collection basket to me, I couldn’t help but notice his angelic smile and the quarter he had carefully placed there. His gratitude was over-flowing and obvious, far greater than mine. It was a Christmas lesson leaving me to wonder who was he really?

Evil and Death

Just as fame, power, money, monarchy, gender, age and race are unknown to God, so is evil. When cruel, corrupt, and evil people die their secondary energy, which had accumulated around them to influence their evil acts, is sucked back into the vortex.

This adds to the repository of every disgusting, violent act and thought since the beginning of time. It is the same destructive force that temporarily comes alive in us, from somewhat benign picky self-talk to violent, demonic manifestations borrowing its, so called, power from the Law of God.

My 16,777,216 Grandparents

Pomp can easily become a smug happening when based on miniscule facts. Take ancestors for instance. Lots of people get very pomp about theirs. I wonder if they ever thought about how many direct descendants are bouncing around in their DNA? We all have two parents, which give us four sets of grandparents and eight sets of great grandparents. The math is simple and if everyone will agree that each generation is usually calculated in 20-year increments, then there are five generations in 100 years. Now if that’s so, I have 1,048,576 direct linage grandparents who were getting smitten around 1608. Drop another 100 years and I have 16,777,216 grandparents who were roaming around in 1508 when the world’s population is estimated to have been only 800 million—that’s 2 percent of the population!

Lessons in Tiny Packages

Downloading the Creator comes with big lessons in tiny, if not invisible, packages. I had a car rattle that annoyed me and everyone else for months. It sounded like a screw rattling around inside the glove department or, worse yet the dash, but no one could pinpoint the problem including the car dealer. One day the rattle suddenly stopped when I reached for my water bottle sitting in the cup holder. Surprised, I released the cap and the rattle started up. Mystery solved. It was that small band attached to the cap that breaks lose when the bottle is opened. It sits unnoticed with just enough slack to rattle becoming an imperceptible irritant. Sometimes thoughts are like that.

A Lesson In Manipulation

Mother was more than a mother; she could well have been the first life coach although the idea of a life coach was yet to emerge as a profession. Children are natural masters of manipulation. At age five, I was no exception and remember quite well how I fell in love with a beautiful doll in the Sears Christmas Catalog.

I showed the picture to mother but didn’t get the response I wanted. All she did was agree with me that the doll was indeed beautiful. I then decided pity might work better and carefully curled up in an overstuffed chair. Holding the picture close to my chest, I produced tears that softly streamed down my cheeks. And just to make sure she heard me, loudly sniffed and sighed a few times.

She not only heard me, she immediately appeared in front of the chair and gently explained she knew how much I loved the doll. It was, however, unbecoming to pout, cry and pretend to make her feel as though she had to buy that doll to make me happy. If she did buy the doll, it would because she wanted to. “You mustn’t do something like this again. It isn’t nice and it isn’t thoughtful of the other person,” she said.

Flase Identity

False identity is paying people to make it appear as if they admire us. When the New York Times reported that Bill Zanker, president of the Learning Annex paid people to line up for a book signing for his and Donald Trump’s co-authored book, I wondered how much these men should allow when they wake up on the other side of dead with empty wallets?

Rebirth

We who watch death in every form are the ones who suffer. It is painful to say goodbye to our spouses, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, friends and most of all, to our children. Our life, like theirs, changes. Our life, unlike theirs, is still focused here. The person who made the transition was part of our habit, our identity, and our relationship with the world around us. When the person no longer exists in that capacity, we suffer a loss of identity. They don’t. We do.

Recognizing My Part

We all hit speed bumps and yesterday was mine. Feeling overwhelmed, it came to me "If it's not part of God, it's not part of me!"

Death Is a Colossal Birthday Party

When you turned twenty-one, are you the ten-year old you were once? Of course you are but you neither dwell on or are attached to having been a ten-year old at one time, although you can remember age ten when you are twenty-one. The memory of this life feels like that, like a moment in time or a movie you saw. You will recall it with complete detachment. In your earthly life, any age is only one stage of an overall lifetime. Each age has allowed you to gather enough experience to easily move on to the next age and is usually marked by a birthday party. Death, on the other hand, is one colossal birthday celebration!

We Die Daily

We die every night to the day that just passed. We die to the day because it no longer exists except in a memory cell. One day we will die to this life altogether. For most, the first thing we notice is a burst of beauty and a loving feeling. This impartial all-enveloping light, love and spiritual knowingness doesn’t adequately translate into any language because our recognition of It is a non-language.

Its light and love are indescribable; you just are and you know it! You and the Self are indivisible yet individual. Fame, power, money, monarchy, gender, age, race are unknown giving rise to the question, are the renowned world and religious leaders, the famous, my mother and your mother still the same persona now that they have stepped from human sight?


Yes and no. You will be the essence of you with an added experience, one that incorporates your immediate past life in the same way that you incorporated the experiences of your life at incremental stages.

Three Responses Are All You Need

It’s taken me an entire lifetime to learn I only need three responses if something doesn’t set right with me.

1) To the pompous: Listen and when they are done say, “La-tee-da.”
2) To the fix-it or nosey busy body: Let ‘em ramble on and when they are done say, “Yes ma’am,” or it could be a “sir” but usually it’s a female. This isn't the old world polite "Yes ma'am," it's the tongue-in-cheek kind.
3) To escape the control freak and manipulator: Say, “I don’t know anything about that.”

Death

Throughout recorded history and from every corner of the earth, we have made death the ultimate human tragedy using it as a central theme in an endless stream of real life headlines, operas, movies, television, and books. Because it is a painful experience to say good-bye to those we love, we have created ceremony upon ceremony in the hope it will ease if not erase our pain.

Eventually, though, the natural grieving process gives way to letting us move on; while death caused by accidents, massacres, murders and deviate acts leaves life-altering chasms in our hearts. Sometimes our hearts heal and sometimes they don’t. Not even the passing of eons seems to erase the pain caused by acts of cruelty and terror.

We are still reminded of the Christians who were eaten alive by Lions and of those who have been bludgeoned, buried alive or burned at the stake over thousands of years. There are still many among us who were imprisoned in Hitler’s camps of terror and still awaken each day to the memory of a human sea of living death.

And who was more terrified on that day of horror September 11, 2001? Was it the four pilots who could see what was happening, the passengers who were gripped with fear, or the thousands of people who blinked on one side of reality and awakened on the other? Where did these people go? For those of us who are left behind, how do we stop crying? Does not this give voice to yet another reason why it is important to put a new face on death altogether?

Old Is Not On My Wish List

James Poniewozik, Time Magazine, January 17, 2000 wrote “…remember that you will die, that everything ends, and that happiness comes not in denying this but in living with it.”

Old is not on my wish list, of course, but dead isn’t either! Happiness though, like Poniewozik points out, is accepting the inevitable outcome of life is death. Once we do this, an emotional shift of sorts takes place. “Have to” shackles seem less important and many simply disappear.

Day by Day

The Power is in the decision.