Month: November 2021

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Gratitude: Magic Magnet For The Good Stuff

Today Is Thanksgiving Day 2021

Today is November 25…….Thanksgiving Day. The present form of this federal holiday of gratitude was enacted into law by Congress in 1885. It originally stemmed from a proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 in the midst of the Civil War. The proclamation called for a national day of thanksgiving, to be celebrated on the final Thursday of November. This proclamation set the precedent for America’s Thanksgiving Day. The date for the holiday was fixed by federal law in 1941 as the fourth Thursday in November.

In the midst of the calamity of the Civil War, with the unrelenting violence, death and destruction threatening to rip apart the nation, Lincoln instinctively felt it was necessary for everyone to just take a day off from dwelling on the negative effects and events of the war and simply dwell on those gifts received that would generate true gratitude to the Almighty.

In the manner of synchronicities, Sarah Josepha Hale, a 74 year old magazine editor wrote a letter that Lincoln received on September 28, 1863 urging him to have a national day of thanksgiving to permanently become an American custom and institution. President Lincoln responded to Mrs. Hale’s letter immediately and issued the proclamation of a Day of Thanksgiving to be held on the last Thursday of November 1863.

Of course, over the years, the societal controllers and manipulators of consumption have made every attempt to contort this holiday into an ode to eating food and buying stuff (think Black Friday sales). As is always the case, they only succeed to the extent that you allow them to succeed. OK, you say, what is so bad about having a good dinner with family and then saving some money on the purchase of Christmans gifts? Nothing, absolutely nothing at all, they are good things unless they distract you away from deeply experiencing the eternal magic of gratitude.

Filler Up With High Octane

Gratitude is the fuel that powers the engine of the cosmic delivery truck that delivers “the good stuff” to you. Just as your car won’t go anywhere if it does not have any fuel, the universe patiently waits for your gratitude fillup before the delivery truck of goodies can start on its way to you.

It all filters down to your current (as in right now) awareness of being. If you are truly feeling gratitude for something, you are simultaneously transmitting neural electro-magnetic impulses to the universe. The neural impulses of gratitude are received by Universal Intelligence. In alignment with how the universe was created by God, your electrical signal of giving thanks sets off a chain reaction that in turn starts sending “good stuff” your way in order to match the “feeling wave length” that you are transmitting. This is equivalent to a television signal that is sent out from the broadcasting tower.

When you direct the tv remote to the designated channel that you want to watch, your receive the program that is on that channel. That channel represents a specific wave frequency. That is why it is of paramount importance to you to always be thankful. Otherwise you turn off the flow. I will repeat that — if you turn off the gratitude, you turn off the flow. The flow is not turned off by God, or your spouse or girlfriend or your boss or co-workers. Not even Joe the barber. You do it, as in y-o-u.

Yeah, It Really Is a 7/24 Thing

You do not have to be thankful all the time, only when you are actively breathing. In First Thessalonians 5:18 it states, “In everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (KJV). This verse is a toughie when something bad has happened in your life. How do you give thanks for a negative event and more importantly, why would you?

In the midst of some minor or major negative event, that is the time when it is all the more important to find a way to generate thanksgiving for something…..anything. The reason being is that it sets into immediate motion the ongoing electrical impulses that will subsequently return to you in the form of something good happening for you as long as you keep the electric current turned on. Very easy in good times. Very hard in bad times but you have to find a way to do it.

I understand, better than you may think, that you may have zero desire to be thankful when bad things happen. You have to will yourself into gratitude mode. It is your way out of trouble and hardship. Dwell in God. Don’t you see? Your awareness of being “down and out” only anchors that condition to you. Choose (and it is your free will choice) to ignore circumstances and relentlessly send out electrical impulses of thankfulness to Universal Intelligence — Original Source. By doing that, you, yes you, start the process of overcoming that trouble or hardship no matter what it is.

And then stay thankful. Stay thankful, not to be some mindless moron who merely accepts bad stuff and then says, “Thank you sir may I have another” like the fraternity pledge in the movie Animal House. Stay thankful in order to use your God-given power to create your life circumstances and fashion a reality that you truly desire.

Feeling + Action = Power

When you combine your feeling of gratitude with some type of action that reflects your gratitude, that is what is termed a synergism. It is you “upping your game”. A thanksgiving action does not have to be something that is expensive or time consuming or showy.

Just what is a thanksgiving action you say? It is something that says “I am receiving…I have received…I will receive…good stuff and I want to demonstrate my appreciation. It can be something as so simple as a smile and a kind word to someone. Perhaps it is a silent prayer for someone who you think could use a prayer (God, I claim a rich blessing for this person today. Thank you. Amen.).

It could be tolerance and patience (when you don’t want to be tolerant or patient) when somebody makes a mistake. Maybe it is just stopping for a few moments and listening to someone who wishes to say something. It could be be doing something helpful for someone without the slightest expectation that they will ever even know about what you did for them. It could be a thousand and one simple little things that you could come up with that send a signal of gratitude to Universal Source.

You can try to ignore it. You can try to deny it. That doesn’t change anything – gratitude is absolutely vital to your personal well being. The thirteenth century theologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart, stated: “If the only prayer that you ever said during your entire life was ‘Thank You’, it would be enough.”

The Boil Down

When a chef “boils down” a sauce, stew, pudding or other dish, he decreases the water or other liquid in it — it evaporates in the steam rising from the pan. Cooks do this to make something thicker and more flavorful. Carrying over this phrase to outside of the cooking realm, when you boil down something, it means that you get down to its essence. When I read something, a book, an article, an essay, etc., in my mind I always try to do a “boil down” so that I will remember the essence of the book, article or essay.

I hope that you enjoyed reading this blog post. However, I hope that you do more than just read it. My hope even more is that you actively use it to make your life better. There is something inside me that desires, in these final years of my life, to spread the word about universal truths that I have learned about during my stay in this dimension. If you remember nothing else of this post, I will give you a “boil down” of just five easy words to remember — Be Thankful……..Get Good Stuff.

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Learn Something New — Re-Learn Something Old

It Never Fails To Give A Rush

In last week’s Veterans Day post, you read about the hapless World War I general, Luigi Cadorna. Tragically for him, much more so for the soldiers that he commanded, he was an abject failure as a general in World War I due to his pride and arrogance. They led him to disaster after disaster. He steadfastly refused to learn. He felt he knew everything that he needed to know. In his mind, his failures had to be the fault of someone else.

The day that you stop learning, is the day you start dying. It does not matter what it is that you learn. It could be something that appears small and insignifigant but you never know. What you learn could dovetail into something else, then something else, all creating steps on a ladder that leads you to someplace wonderful. Learning never fails to give me a rush. If I learn something new on the very last day of my life, it will be a successful day because learning is growth. If we are still growing, even on our last day on planet Earth, it bodes well for us in The Great Beyond.

A Reason Why You Are Here In The First Place

One of the reasons you feel good inside when you learn is because “to learn” is one of the reasons you are here on Earth in the first place. There are two primary ways to learn something. The first way is “the hard way”. From personal experience I do not recommend this method as it can be quite painful. The second way is “the easy way”. I like this way much better.

There are many avenues that you can travel in order to learn “the easy way”. One of those avenues is via the modern invention known as the internet. It probably numbers in the thousands, the number of times over the years that I have wondered about something then headed online to check it out. There are literally hundreds of online sites where you can learn something. Some are “pay for the information” and others are free. I am going to focus today on four free sites that I find myself visiting frequently: Reddit, YouTube, Quora and Wikipedia. What I like about these sites, besides their being free, is that through discernment, once you learn to ignore and sidestep the trolls, shills, psychos and simpletons, you can actually learn something solid about something that really interests you.

Reddit is a network of different communities where people can focus on what interests them. It is the social media platform where each of the Reddit communities is like visiting a forum where people have hands-on experience with something and they share their knowledge. Millions of people post, vote or comment in the various Reddit communities.

At one time or another, I think anybody who has gone online has visited YouTube. It cannot be beat for offering do-it-yourself videos when you’re stuck as to how to fix or repair something. Through YouTube I have discovered wonderful music, enjoyed movies and old television shows from a bygone era, learned to play a musical instrument, gained insights from listening to lectures and been introduced to different ways of seeing things through unique presentations, rare documentaries and enlightening tutorials.

Quora is a social media platform that operates on a question-and -answer system. It is a place where you can ask questions and get published answers from people who have specific knowledge about your specific question. Readers can make pertinent comments regarding a specific answer. Quora is a site where you can get insights and answers that may not be written down anywhere else. A fascinating place to visit.

Finally there is Wikipedia, the ubiquitous free online encyclopedia. I will never get tired of my complete set of 1960 World Book encyclopedias. They are with me for the duration. I still include them in my regular reading. Many times when I read something in them and I want to know more about that subject, the place I will go is Wikipedia. Many a time I start reading about something on Wikipedia and before I know it I then start going down that rabbit hole of those addictive blue links. Before I know it, a couple of hours have flown by. I may have started out learning about Turkish lokum candies and would up learning about the intrigues and controversies of seventeenth century Ottoman Empire. Wikipedia is a wonderful place of learning, it is free, and it is truly indispensable to lovers of encyclopedias.

Fertilizer For Your Bumper Crop

Growth means life. Something that is dead cannot grow. When you learn, you grow. Thus, learning is a fertilizer that facilitates your growth, which in turn facilitates the enhancement of your life experience.

Scripture states “Ask and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find.” If you sincerely search to learn about the metaphysical truths of how to manifest your desires, you will ultimately find those truths. Truths, which if put into practice with faith, will be the rich fertilizer that helps beautiful manifestations to spring forth. The fertile ground of your imagination and belief will bear you a bumper crop in due time. In due time. I confess that I want things now, not “in due time”. It is human nature to want what we want right now. In a certain way however, we do receive right now what we want but it is in the dimension of imagination. In that dimension, your manifestation is as real as real can get. For different reasons, some known, some unknown, there has always been a time lag of varying degrees concerning my own manifestations. Belief and pure faith are vital. In the book of James it clearly states “But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like the wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.“

The more that you learn about the truths behind manifesting your desires, and then put into practice what you learn, the sooner you will experience the rich fullness of life in the manner that was intended for you from the very beginning.

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Luigi Cadorna…..The Worst General of World War I

Today Is November 11 —– Veterans Day

November 11 is designated a federal holiday to remember and appreciate those Americans who have honorably served in the US Armed Forces. This holiday was originally named Armistice Day. It falls on November 11 because that was the day in 1918 that all the participants in World War I ceased fighting. The primary treaty that officially ended the war, The Treaty of Versailles, was signed on June 28, 1919. Originally, World War I was simply called “The World War” and was nicknamed “The War To End All Wars”. Oh how very wrong they were about that!

One can easily make a case that World War I did not end until the conclusion of World War II in 1945. World War I resulted in twenty-four million deaths and twenty-one million wounded. This includes eleven million deaths of military personnel and a civilian death toll of thirteen million. Wounded on both sides was estimated at twenty-one million. Forty-five million human lives ended prematurely or negatively affected as a result of a very preventable and needless world war. This number does not even include the lives of the family members of those killed or wounded who were likewise negatively impacted.

Eleven Straight Times And He Still Didn’t Learn

There were no shortage of incompetent generals in World War I. The British had Douglas Haig, the French Joseph Joffe, the Russians had Aleksei Evert, the Austrians had Conrad von Hotzendorf and the Turks/Ottoman Empire had Enver Pasha, who lost half of an army of 120,000 in the one battle where he commanded the Ottoman army. The prize for the very worst general of World War I however goes to the commander of the Italian forces, Luigi Cadorna, seen in the image above.

General Luigi Cadorna was a bitter, arrogant and callous man with a cruel authoritarian streak and a profound conviction that all his mistakes were always somebody else’s fault. Cadorna was a firm believer that the morale of an army was of utmost importance. His method of fostering high morale among his troops was to impose draconian discipline for the slightest infraction. Between 1915 and 1917 he sacked 217 generals under his command and the 750 soldiers that he had executed was by far the highest of any of the armies that were participants in the war. It was not surprising that Cadorna’s philosophy of “the beatings will continue until morale improves” lowered morale drastically.

Cadorna was a general who launched the same doomed battle, in the same way, in the same place (along the Isonzo River), against the same opponent, achieving nothing every single time except more dead and wounded soldiers and yet he continued to do it over and over and over again, eleven times in a row. He learned nothing from his repeated failures. The twelfth time he tried it at the Battle of Caporetto in late 1917, it resulted in a complete rout of the Italian forces by the Austrians and the Germans. Out of a force of 1,800,000 troops that Cadorna was in charge of, there were approximately 800,000 in dead, wounded, captured (many voluntarily surrendered), and missing soldiers. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The British and French sent reinforcements to prevent the Austrians and Germans from bursting through to Venice but they insisted that Cadorna had to go and he was finally relieved of his command. After he was sacked, the Italian defense line held at the Battle of the Piave River and eventually achieved victory over the Austrians at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto.

A True Military Hero — General Smedley Butler

General Smedley Butler served for thirty-one years in the United States Marine Corps. He was wounded in combat and was the recipient of two Congressional Medals Of Honor. His courage in action is well documented. After he retired in 1931, he spoke out against the various behind the scenes interests that pulled the strings leading to wars. He gave speeches to veterans groups. He even wrote a book titled, “War Is A Racket”. An amazing statement for one of the most decorated veterans in American history. Something to ponder.

I can picture in my imagination an image of two aliens going over their reconnaisance mission concerning their plans to conquer the planet Earth. One says to the other, “Zog, these humans are not very intelligent but boy do they ever know how to kill each other. They’re bloody experts at it.” The other alien answers, “Yes, Dax, we won’t even have to waste our resources to conquer them. We can just sit back and watch them kill each other through their endless wars. I can’t even keep up with all of them. Every time I get ready to submit my report to fearless leader, another war on Earth pops up.” The first then says, “Ah don’t worry about it, in no time at all they’ll wipe each other out and then we can just swoop in and take over. Come on, it’s still happy hour at the Milky Way Lounge. Let’s go get a brew.”

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Reincarnation……….What Do You Think ?

One In Three

In a survey conducted in December of 2017 by the respected, non-partisan Pew Research Center, their survey revealed that 33 percent of adults in the United States believe in reincarnation. One in three. That is a sizeable percentage.

I was a child that grew up in the Eisenhower-Kennedy fifties and sixties. I was raised in a Protestant denomination where it was a universal belief in a life that was “one-and-done, you’re either goin’ to heaven or hell for eternity when your one-and-done is done”. Any talk of a belief in reincarnation would have been branded blasphemy and you would be branded as a weirdo.

The purpose of this week’s blog post is not to get into a long, philosophical discussion on all the various permutations of reincarnation beliefs in all the various religions of the world. The purpose of this blog post is to get you thinking about this topic and how it concerns you personally in your efforts in the world of manifesting.

Reincarnation ……. What Is It?

So just what is this reincarnation thing that one in three Americans believe in?

Reincarnation is a concept that is loosely defined as your non-physical core essence (your soul or spirit) begining a new lifetime in a different body at some point after physical death. In different forms, it is a central tenet of Eastern religions – Hinduism, Buddism, Jainism, Sikhism and of the Druze. The majority of denominations within Christianity and Islam, as well as mainstream Judaism, do not accept that individuals reincarnate. Of those who believe in reincarnation there are those that state that reincarnation is an involuntary thing while others state that it is a voluntary decision.

Two Views From The West

My in-depth knowledge of the various interpretations of reincarnation among the Eastern religions is far too lacking to even begin a conversation about them. I will put forth two views, two concepts, of reincarnation that my reading has come across that seem to represent the two primary Western prevailing viewpoints on reincarnation. My interest in the subject came about as a result of observations that I have made during the course of my lifetime as well as questions that arose regarding the traditionalist “one-and-done” viewpoint. In between a hundred and one other time grabbers, I have done a certain amount of research into the matter. I heartily invite you to do the same.

Have you ever asked yourself why there is such a huge difference between the lot of one human being and another? Why are some people in the world so fortunate in their lives, while others endure prolonged suffering? Why should this be if God is loving and just and all-powerful?

Those who believe in reincarnation would answer that the life you are currently living today is not the only one. Their answer would continue that you have lived before, many times. One view put forth is that the circumstances that you were born into were a result of how things went in your previous lifetimes. In other words, either good or bad karma. The second viewpoint, somewhat in opposition to the first, is that you plan your life birth circumstances beforehand with the goal of achieving certain life purposes that contribute to your soul’s growth. For example, a soul may choose to be born with Down’s Syndrome in order to be a teacher about love, and compassion and empathy. Thus, in this second viewpoint, the person born into a degree of difficulties or challenges has purposely and meticulously chosen that lot to advance the growth of their soul.

Reincarnation And Manifesting

So just what does the subject of reincarnation have to do with the manifesting of something you desire in your life? Where’s the connection? Well, let’s say that you are a person who has come to lean toward reincarnation being a real thing. Whichever of the two Western views that you would subscribe to (karma driven or soul growth driven), it is critical for you to manifest whatever it is you came here to do. If your purpose was to come here to bring God’s love or compassion or truth or power into experience, then be those things. If you came here to be an artist, then put everything you are into being an artist. If you came here to fix things and be a mechanic, then put everything you are into that. Refrain from sleepwalking through life, merely working to survive and to grab some occasional moments of sunshine. Manifest your life as you intensely desire it to be because that true intense desire is a true “compass needle” indicator of your life’s purpose here. The exception to this would be if your intense desire is to harm anyone, including yourself. If that is the case, you are “off track” and need to manifest a new desire. Go within to the Kingdom of God and dwell there. If you do so, you will get to experience true joy, both before as well as after you “die”, and you will marvel at the growth of your soul.