A State Of Mind Archives - Page 2 of 10

September 4, 2013November 7, 2014

for different reasons, these are the things I’m pondering this week

“To embrace the power of your Spirit, it’s up to you to support rather than attack your Spirit. Remember that Spirit is not an invader, an interloper, or a lesser god to be dismissed and ridiculed. Spirit is the holy essence with all the Divine breath of life that makes consciousness possible. Understanding that is the most intelligent and enlightened discovery you can make in life. To humble yourself to Spirit is to humble your mind to its true master – your Divine nature. In doing so, both mind and Spirit enter into the Sacred marriage of mind and heart, and profound personal peace begins.” – page 68, The Power of Your Spirit: A Guide To Joyful Living by Sonia Choquette”

“As human beings we are made to surpass ourselves and are truly ourselves only when transcending ourselves.” – Huston Smith

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” – Albert Einstein

“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds.” – Bob Marley

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@paulocoelho: When we least expect it, life tests our courage. Accept the #challenge

@BradWarner: Real cooperation means being true both to yourself and to those with whom you share a purpose. You share a purpose with everybody.

August 26, 2013August 26, 2013

www.soulseeds.com

It’s Monday! Ready for a fantastic week?
Here’s a tweet for us from www.soulseeds.com as we go along the day creating an outstanding Monday for ourselves and others: FEAR – False Evidence Appearing Real
And more: “Fear pretends its protecting you, when actually its preventing you.”

August 11, 2013September 14, 2014

Living in cuenca

July 2013 was a month of packing, and taking care of all the loose ends that come with a move. And it was a month of consciously remembering to stay calm and to trust myself. And it was a month of goodbyes, and not allowing myself to second guess my decision. I think that one of the most important things I had to do was to see this move as another experience in the game of life,
And so I tried and am now in Cuenca, Ecuador. The above photo is a view from my window.

Before moving here, I couldn’t quite zero in on what life would be like for a gringo in Ecuador. Reading and researching another person’s experience is like everything else in life. We bring ourselves, and we’re all different, and so our experiences will be unique to us. It makes me think of the book Wherever You Go There You Are by Jon Kabut-Zinn.

Sumi, thank you for agreeing to be a single working mom for a week as hubby Toshi departed with me to give assistance. It was twelve days ago that I left JFK with my son-in-law. The first stop was a night spent in Panama City, Panama at the lovely Riande Aeropuerto Hotel which is five minutes from Tocumen Airport. When we arrived, the night was still young, and we had a relaxing, tasty dinner surrounded by plants, palm trees, and other happy guests. Nearby the hotel’s large pool shimmered in the soft lights.

Early the next morning the hotel’s van took us to Tocumen Airport for a fairly short flight to Guayaquil, Ecuador. There we surveyed our options for the last leg of the journey – Cuenca. We decided that the four-hour bus ride would be scenic – as in up, up the mountain we would go. It was! We saw incredible views. Steep, steep it was though.

And though I was in Ecuador in 2004, I’ll say that at this moment I’m undergoing what’s called “culture shock” because . . . visiting a place and deciding to live there are two entirely different things.

I’ll close for now by saying thank you dear family of mine for all the love and support that came my way. I knew I could leave because you all know how to be happy, you’re all healthy, and you’re all a rather independent bunch.

And I love you all very much.

July 4, 2013May 20, 2014

trust

Much is written about the times when we feel overwhelmed by decisions having to be made, and we try to figure out the best course of action to get from one point to another. Through the years I’ve tried to follow the advice of the wise ones. For me the advice comes in the form of carefully chosen (intuition plays a part here) books, magazines, CDs, and DVDs. I’ve found that the advice of the wise ones actually works. But we have to implant in ourselves a huge dollop of trust since there’s no other way of knowing whether it will work until we put it into practice. And practice, they say, makes perfect.

The advice of the wise ones goes like this: Learn to listen to your intuition and trust yourself. Negativity has no purpose, in whatever form it takes; trust yourself. Do what has to be done, and then know that the best possible outcome is forthcoming. Then trust. They say that when we plant seeds, whether in the ground or in ourselves, if we keep digging them up to see what’s happening, nothing will happen. That makes perfect sense.

The next step for us is to relax and let go; we’ve played our part — time to trust.

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Tweets:

“@maritasteffe: A truly creative person rids him or herself of all self-imposed limitations. – Gerald Jampolsky

“@_NealeDWalsch: If you’re going to do something, do it with gusto. Hold nothing back. In life. Or love. Or anything at all.”

“@DesmondTutuPF: If we have loved well while we were alive our love will go on for generations.”

“@LouiseHay: Remember, they are only thoughts, and thoughts can be changed. The point of power is always in the present moment.”

June 17, 2013June 17, 2013

gratitude

Thank you to all the authentic spiritual teachers who are trying to get the message out to all of us that gratitude, along with the power of love (for ourselves and all living beings), is something we don’t want to live without. A softly uttered thank you, a loving thank you shout from a hilltop, or dancing to our own movements in our own space to the words of thank you, thank you first thing in the morning and last thing at night guides, guards, protects, directs our day in a way we can’t imagine. Let’s go for it.

Ready for an amazing day? I am.

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“Long will you wander in a wilderness of confusion and distress until you come home . . . to a higher consciousness.” ANO ANO THE SEED by Kristin Zambucka

April 19, 2013June 26, 2013

shin-ichiro terayama

The following is part of a story I read in Alan Cohen’s entertaining book, Enough Already. www.alancohen.com In his gentle, authentic, and persuasive writing he tells us stories of his personal and professional life, and those of his friends, and people in his seminars in order to help us transform our lives. I love stories with happy endings, and this one story about his friend, Shin-ichiro Terayama has a great ending. Shin was a physicist when he was diagnosed with cancer 25 years ago, and his doctor gave him a much shorter life expectancy than he wanted. I’m not sure what I would have done 25 years ago if those words had been addressed to me. But Shin-ichiro Terayama went to a Japanese garden “to meditate on the purpose of his life. There he decided to dedicate his life to appreciation and celebration. . . .”

And this is the ending of Alan Cohen’s story:
“. . . He began to say “thank you” for everything, including his cancer as a wake-up call. A few months later Shin was pronounced cancer free. That was 25 years ago. Now Shin teaches the power of appreciation. He is like a light bulb, always smiling and shining, teaching by radiance more than word.”

Of course this kind of healing doesn’t just apply to cancer. It’s written that whatever disturbs – whether it be feelings of limitation, finances, lack of love, anger, negativity of any kind – you name it, unconditional love and gratitude can turn it around and banish it.

I wanted to see the radiant face Alan Cohen wrote about, so I googled the name Shin-ichiro Terayama, and it’s true, he’s glowing in all the pictures taken of him.

Now, that’s a good story, right?

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“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.”
– Nikola Tesla

“Love is the Master Key that opens the gates of happiness.” – Oliver Wendall Holmes,
19th Century Dean of Harvard Medical School

“Meditation is the closest process to quantum leaping that we know.” – Esther Hicks

April 15, 2013October 18, 2014

Marilyn Tam, Robert Holden, and Happiness

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny and warm kind of day that makes people very happy. And today looks promising.

I think, and maybe you do, too, that even the spelling of the word happy looks, well, happy, and I’ve noticed that lately a lot of people are giving that word a great deal of attention. For instance, next to me is a happiness book, and the way it came to me was via my daughter Emi. She recently visited Philly – she arrived with a bag looking like it weighed more than her, and in that bag was a book called the HAPPINESS CHOICE by Marilyn Tam.www.marilyntam.com She had bought it at the well-loved by many, Strand Book Store in NYC at 12th Street and Broadway. www.strandbooks.com And when Emi left to catch a Bolt Bus back to NY, the book was somehow left behind, so I got to read it

It seemed like a light-weight, and fast read, but it’s not a book that wants to be read in quite that way. One wouldn’t think that someone who came from a background of abuse, and devoid of any real nurturing, would eventually write the HAPPINESS CHOICE. But it appears that Marilyn Tam came into the world with the ability to understand, to forgive and forget, and to go on to create an extraordinary personal and professional life.

The following is from the HAPPINESS CHOICE by the happiness guru, Robert Holden:

Your Heart’s Prayer
Before you dedicate your life
to a person, a marriage, a family;
to a corporation, a political party, a peace campaign;
to a religion, a revolution, a spiritual path;
make one other dedication first.
First dedicate yourself to LOVE.
Decide to let Love be your intention, your purpose and
your point.
And then let Love inspire you,
support you, and guide you
in every other dedication
you make thereafter.

Make sure you have a happy day!

April 10, 2013April 10, 2013

joel osteen

Did you read about the preposterous spam: “Joel Osteen Hoax: Man Allegedly Behind Ploy To Discredit Leader Wants Televangelist To Change His Message”? It had Joel Osteen abandoning his faith, and fleeing his congregation. And I ask myself, does the spammer have nothing else to do than to waste that amount of time doing what he did by sending biting words – supposedly from Joel Osteen’s mouth, along with pictures seeming to agree with the words – around the online world?

The following was Joel Osteen’s response to this pretend headline: “I’m really not angry; I don’t feel like a victim. I feel too blessed; life is too short to let things like this get you down.” Now that’s a perfectly simple response – one that we might want to memorize, and say with gusto, whenever we feel like a victim. Because we, in the modern world, tend to get offended rather easily.

When all was said and done, it was reported that the spammer said: “Joel doesn’t talk enough about the environment and poverty. He’s just too positive and smiley.” You gotta laugh; what else is there to do? Though the question that comes to mind for the spammer is: Why did you spend so much time doing what you did when there’s a call for ALL OF US to do our share, in whatever way works for us, to fix what’s been called, “our broken down” world.

Upon hearing the words: “he’s just too positive and smiley,” I thought, and what a different world it would be if we were all “just too positive and smiley.” Maybe we could all give it a try just to see what would happen.

When I had a TV, I enjoyed seeing Joel Osteen’s contagious smile and listening to him, because he has a talent for getting his message across with stories and laughter. What’s not to like?

I suppose the spammer thinks Joel Osteen came into this world just as he is. Think again, he’s had an interesting development, and chances are he continues to expand on it. Oh, yes.
www.joelosteen.com
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“Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9% of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself, and there isn’t one.” Wei Wu Wei

“Joy is not in things. It is in you. – Richard Wagner

“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world . . . as in being able to remake ourselves.” – Mohandas K. Gandhi

“We choose our joys and sorrows before we experience them.” – Kahlil Gibran

March 27, 2013October 23, 2014

your soul’s plan by robert schwartz

It was rather late last night when I clicked on to www.afterlifetv.com and found a video in which Bob Olson is interviewing Robert Schwartz, the writer of Your Soul’s Plan. There are two videos, and it may be wise to listen to the first one first. I saw the title of the book, and read what Bob Olson wrote about its author’s biography, and thought, why not? After that, it didn’t take long before I was nicely settled in and glued to the screen watching, listening, learning – the concept of pre-birth planning is hardly new. Though when Robert Schwartz began digging for the answers to questions that wouldn’t let him rest, he wasn’t expecting the kind of answers that his tireless delving uncovered. Listening to him talk about pre-birth planning seemed natural, and a part of me understood, and was in complete agreement about what he was saying from the get-go. Last night I went to sleep with a big smile covering my entire body. Oh, yes.

It’s fair to say that many of us have many questions about life on earth. The thing is that I haven’t heard life on earth explained in quite this way before. The answers to the questions asked by Bob Olson of Robert Schwartz don’t necessarily veer from what we know; they just seem to profoundly enhance what we know. And it all makes perfect sense. Now, there are a number of very good self-improvement and spiritual books, and videos that, when read or listened to, have you thinking, yes, yes, I understand now. And then a week later you barely remember any of it.

I feel this is different. I could give you a synopsis of the video, but it’s so much better to hear Robert Schwartz’s own words. He speaks articulately, and he has a desire to help us understand so that we can help ourselves, and others, heal and evolve. There’s no need for me to try to explain what he does so beautifully. The following is his website, enjoy. www.yoursoulsplan.com

I hope you thoroughly enjoy it.

Have a wonderful day!

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“If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
From the book: Enough Already by Alan Cohen

“I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know, most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly.”
– Buckminster Fuller
From the book: Enough Already by Alan Cohen

January 2, 2013November 28, 2014

Welcome To 2013!

Happy New Year friends & visitors. I hope you are as excited about 2013 as I am! There is something incredibly special about entering a new year and it is important to remember that the possibilities for change are endless. It’s up to you, so what’s it going to be? How is this going to be your best year ever?!

As far as favorito.com we are gearing up for what will be a year of growth and change… New writers added, a new look and awesome video and pictorial content are on the horizon. We would also love love love to hear from you our readers. Have something to share? A written piece? A photo or video? A cool link? We will be adding contact forms for submissions and suggestions.

Lastly I would like to thank all of you who have visited and supported favorito.com through the years. We are grateful and humbled by the amount of traffic favorito.com has received since starting out. We can’t wait to blow you away in 2013 as we continue this fun interactive journey together.

Cheers

Michael

P.S. I love finding cool and interesting sites online. What could you come up with to make some $$$ in the next 24 hours? eh?