Loving Comparisons

My letting others love me as they are is my loving them as they are. It is the first cousin to loving myself as I am. Even people deeply in love, totally committed, never love equally one day to the next. One day I love more than the next or prior, and then the tables turn and I am loved more or less, day to day. It ain't a contest.   Comparisons that don't end in paradox tear people apart. Paradox ends in surrender to the noncontrolling nature.  Making the comfortable uncomfortable and vice-versa, yields to being honest, open and willing to embrace the unknown. No one learns from what they already know. Learning is always on the edge of mystery.  The purest learning occurs in a vacuum free of preconceptions.

Problems Fed by Solutions & the Mistaken Identity

There's no such thing as reality, there's only perception. Einstein believed the mind that created the problem could not free itself. but I believe that in the Surrendered life, if God allows it, then it serves a Higher Purpose. If I pray, for example, for God to remove my defects of character, but they remain, then the defects serve a Higher Purpose.  What I call a defect is, therefore, a mistaken identity.  

Sartre being a lover of paradox, said we are condemned to freedom. The irony of the non-paradoxical Problem/Solution matrix is that a solution requires the presence of a problem to solve. It's akin to forgiveness needing the presence of an offense to forgive. Corrie Ten Boom said we should forgive regardless of the temperature of our hearts.

The Dark Night of the Soul free one of the idea that idea matters. In the controlling mind, I'm in charge of what I say, you're in charge of what you hear; to the Surrendered heart and mind, it's all the same (an echo of divinity both in sender/receiver).

Dark Night Storm:  The cool thing is that after our lives blown up into little convoluted, chaotic pieces, all swirling in the tornado of deconstruction, when the storm passes and the pieces of US all descend in perfect, divine order, we come to believe that Beautiful Mystery can be trusted. Trust rises above the Age of Reason of the Problem/Solution dance.

The convenient thing about Dualistic Thinking is if it continues long enough, it eventually brings one from the bridge of reason to the shore of faith and trust. Perceived truth might set us free, but it also might piss us off first.  Freed Perception arises like the Phoenix.  How many times should we forgive others for their transgressions?  Seven times?  No, 7 X 70, Christ said.  But if we forgive ourselves both before and after the imagined offense, we return to the Garden of Eden and the snake of ego leaves the Vine.  There's more truth in a question than in an answer.

I Didn't Mean to Hurt Someone

The Alcoholic that was in my life drank herself to death. I had exited the relationship before she passed, as I felt directed to do so by my Higher Power.  

 

But before I ended the relationship, my Sponsor said she was holding onto the bottle, and it was pulling her down to drown in the abyss, and further said I was holding onto her 'to save her,' but that I too would drown if I did not let go of her.

 

Let Go and let God. If the person gets sober because of us, they'll never take accountability of their lives. A person cannot realize the meaning of Step One without experiencing Powerlessness. If we throw pillows under the alcoholic to keep them from falling too hard...WE KILL THEM. They have to hit concrete, unfortunately.

 

Powerlessness leads one to believe beyond the illusions that didn't work. Powerlessness clears denial.

 

We have to work our program. If a plane is going down, first take your oxygen mask and then pray for the next right thing to occur. If the prayer is answered, then take action. There is One who has ALL power...so ‘keep your prayers on’.  I would rather leave the house with no clothes on than without my prayers on.

 

This Too Shall Pass. Take care of 'you' so you'll be strong enough to provide service work from a place of wellness, rather than from pure grief or shock.

 

Euphoric Recall happens when we feel the love for the addict/alcoholic, but guess what? Love itself doesn't go far enough. The number One killer of children, for example, that dies in drunk driving tragedies, die at the hands of the one that loves them most (the parent drunk driver). Love doesn't save the children; loving ACTION does.

 

If you are healthy, you will not in a way that jeopardizes others.  "I didn't mean to hurt someone" is childish. You have to live ON PURPOSE.  If you love someone, you will not harm them on purpose.  If you love yourself, you will not place yourself in harm's way, either.  You have to mean NOT to harm someone or yourself, and consciousness is the essential condition leading to this end.

 

Quit walking through life with sharp edges.  File off the sharp edges, Live and Let Live.  For me, Love is my Religion, and Action is my Gospel.

Don't Judge a Book by its Cover

When I was speaking for MADD on Saturday, a group of Veteran Bikers had a shindig at the Crowne Plaza. Someone told me after I spoke that they had "Nazi Paraphernalia" set up on the tables. I was honestly skeptical that a reputable hotel would allow such a thing, so instead of my staying clear from fear or anger based on his statement, I went to see for myself.

Sho'nuf, I carefully inspected each table of displayed items for sale and saw nary a swastika, or anything remotely related to Nazism. These were simply Vet Bikers as far as I could tell. They were respectful in their dialog, and while they looked a bit rough around the edges for the lily-white suburbanite who called them Nazis, these folks actually reminded me of some of us AA folks. Although we AA's don't always present the Norman Rockwell prototype of an American, most of us are pretty committed to making our world a safer place to live in.

The Nameless Poem

God, I notice I write a lot of poems with the word
God
in them.
Why do I do that?
Am I obsessed with unconditional love?
Am a needing the crutch of trust called beautiful surrender?
Am I so vagrant in my own answers, 
that my questions seem rich in Higher Coincidence?
~Maybe~
I get tired about talking of God in poetry,
because...words never say anything, anyway, about God.
How can a human be definitive about genius?
Is not genius comparative?
Is a genius a genius to oneself?
Can an idiot know genius?
That's ego.
EGO...Edging God Out.
Breaking the addiction to judgement...
cease eating from the tree of the knowledge of Good & Evil.
Don't worry, be happy.
That's Godly.
That's why I write about
God.

Fallacious: "That which does not kill us ​​​​​​​makes us stronger.”

Since Friedrich Nietzsche evidently had to wait until death to know if his belief was accurate or not, he can't exactly weigh in on the proposition now. But there have been a lot of people talking about life after death experiences who can weigh in, Dannion Brinkley being one of them.

I suspect it is true that that which kill us, also makes us stronger.

Life on Earth School is one small piece of eternity, one wave in-between many waves of the Great Continuum.  

 

Earning Trust

I know not everyone is into the God Stuff nor the Steps of Alcoholics’ Anonymous/Al-Anon, but I ask you indulge your patience.  Here you go:  LET GO, LET GOD, TRUST, SURRENDER. 

I don't have to trust people, nor need anyone "earn" my trust.  Taking my power back is to trust my Higher Power.  In other words, we intuitively know things which used to baffle us.  Trust of people, places, and things comes from this choice.  But a person can earn my distrust, not because distrust is right, but because I fall short of the ideal.  While Christ taught that we are to forgive 7 x 70 (490), he also said: "Cast not your pearls before the swine". 

The inconsistency that distrust offers is that the messages God allows through circumstances are missed.  Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is an apt description of what it means to see the Messages in EVERYTHING.  Even in my own shortcomings, am I going to call myself a 'swine' and distrust myself and therefore distrust God?  That is not to say I am The Almighty. 

Consider Step Six, which reads that we were completely ready to let God remove ALL of our defects of character.  If I have asked God to remove my defects and I still have them, then I trust that they serve a Higher Purpose.  Every day, I ask God to direct my thoughts, and then trust that my thoughts, even the mistaken ones, are covered. 

If a weed comes up in the Garden of Surrender, if we are smart, we won’t allow it to take root.  Instead, pull it, and trust the work of bending over at the very least worked a muscle. Or maybe paying attention to the weed/defect made you notice a bug crawling through the soil that had sunlight reflect from its shell in such a way that it caused you to sit still for a moment and bask in the of beauty beyond the idea of wrongness. 

If there is only One God, One Righteous Judge, then even while one might be doing the WHY ME thing (we all do that from time to time, I think), you can also do the, THY will be done THING.  'Why have you forsaken me' is an idea of utter powerlessness that we should celebrate. 

Celebrate every drunk, every relapse, every insult, every transgression, every moment of life, no matter how painful it might be.  Celebrate, forgive, live with your God Filters on, TRUSTING that experiencing powerlessness is the gateway to the rest of the Steps. 

The FULL Serenity Prayer has some dimensions worthy of contemplation, as does the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi.   If St. Francis was full of love and light, why would he need to forgive?  If we are already full of serenity, why would we need a Serenity Prayer?  Acceptance of this dualism is not to support it, but to help us let go of the Monkey Mind Syndrome which focuses on the illusion that anything can be wrong in our lives.  If God allows it, it serves a purpose.  If there is a Satan, this fact above all must piss him off the most, that no matter what he does, a miracle grows from a place deeper than the illusion. 

Paul in the Bible asked why he does the thing he would not do, and grieved.  When I wanna do it the least is when I need to do it the most.  Paul let the grief become his personal wall of hell, but had he LOVED his defects, they would have grown weaker.  Hating out shortcomings keeps them strong.  Recognizing a shortcoming and loving it anyway opens the door to spiritual growth.  Celebrate the offense, forgive it.  The forgiveness is more powerful than the offense that required its forgiving.

Strength through vulnerability.  Tears are Holy Water.  Sun shines through the rain.

I Feel, Therefore, I Think I Am (Sentio Cogito Ergo Sum)

Two poems changed my life: The More Loving One, by W.H. Auden, and Since Feeling is First (SFIF), by ee cummings.

SFIF fits 'Sentio Cogito Ergo Sum' perfectly; it feeds & leads my consciousness accordingly.

"Cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore, I am" penned by René Descartes, doesn't go far enough. Closer to the truth is: 'dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum' ("I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am" - Antoine Léonard Thomas).

Doubt is only 50% closer to the truth at best, because doubt CAN come from intuition, but it can come from fear, too. Fear & Intuition are both feelings, but one is based on illusion and the other, from the Interior Castle of Discernment (for me).

Sentio CogitoErgo Sum exists before physical birth and we take it with us when we go. WE KNOW IN OUR HEARTS which way to go if we learn to listen in surrender. This existence precedes the words, at best an echo of the Divine, that I write at this time. Follow the White Rabbit! There is no spoon.

Continue...ummmmmm? Egopocrisy: I'm Spiritual, Not Anti-religious.

The evolution of words and the wordlessness that create them are not 'at ease, soldier' nor in conflict. The phrase Screw Guilt fell out of favor and the new guilt is Shame. Definitions shift. People get divorced. The party of Lincoln used to be liberal and is now conservative.

The Patriarchy evolved from Matriarchy and vice-versa. Dualism is a not so fun little game that the masculine imposes on the feminine. Outside-in (masculine) rules and inside-out (feminine) rules. There is no outside or inside of God for God is eternal, as is everything Created. Love is therefore without beginning or end, unconditional, as well (God never changes and God is Love).

Change is an illusion and Satan can only point from a thing that does not exist to a thing that does not exist: Dualism. Ritual serves a purpose, yes, but it's still perception as to which way the circle rotates in its scientific or religious (rigid) course of, "This is how we have always done it" Ancient Origins stuff, is spiritual. If after all of our thinking is done, if we have not arrived at paradox, we've not arrived at the balance of truth.

We are the Placebo and the inner observer sees paradoxically from both in/out at the same time. I should probably work harder to explain this, but since impatience is the religion of the American Psyche, why bother? I, too, am cool with not knowing. It's easier than knowing and living in the questions is fun and free. Answers are containers that murder questions before they get out of the box, kind of like mass media keeping the hoards under control of the illusion. But nothing is wasted, so it's all nothing.

There is a field in between rightdoing and wrongdoing, said Rumi. We can't meet where we already are until the head gets smacked and SATORI!

Militant Atheists need a God to not believe in and Religionists needs a Satan to protect Adherents from.  I only hope to confront the false appearance of virtue or goodness, while concealing real character or inclinations in the phrase, "I'm spiritual, not religious" (btw, I've said it, but now see it as folly). Everyday hypocrisy or maybe better stated, Egopocrisy. I'm OK with both words (spiritual/religious=same thing).

Words mean nothing. Who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly love you. I would rather live a poem than write one, but when they merge, it's beyond words. Living the poem is writing it upon the tablet of one's heart. Separation Consciousness is the hell of creationism. Unity is heaven. One person's hell is another's heaven. Higher Power is a Flying Cloud swirling beneath my feet.

Rename Your Pain?

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Rename your pain. Love it. See what happens. We all need love, right? If you're going to feed the Dark Side, feed it Love. See its Beauty. Your life belongs to God, not you, though we have the choice to think otherwise. There's no such thing as reality; there's only perception.

'You can run, but you can't hide' from yourself. Looking on history as I do, I pause to believe that only a few Great Souls knew what they were doing, as they were so connected to Spirit that they could raise up others.  Most of us, maybe none of us, know what the F we are doing, but we still make choices in the midst of mystery. I've come to believe that MYSTERY is a beautiful place because it allows for complete Trust.

Goethe pointed out that the most secure prison is the one we create for ourselves and don't know we are in.  For me, prisons were my Monastery.   I saw miracles both there and in the so-called Free World. I've heard credible reports that miracles occur for both rich and poor, the free and the slave, for every race of human and for animals.  It is written, in the Household of Christ, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female..."  No one gets to be special or degraded; all distinctions are done away, as either helping or hindering.  But freeing one's mind from the addiction to judgment of others or self is tricky.  But I say, SCREW GUILT.  FORGIVE EVERYONE FOR EVERYTHING.

Choice never changes. Choices seem limited to the limited mind, only. Emily Dickinson said, "Dwell in possibility." I doubt her life was a bed of roses and if it was, maybe she was allergic to roses.

"I was framed" is a song many prisoners sing after pleading guilty to an offense.  It's not a useless victim mentality, for everything, including our bad choices, is part of our sacred path.  We have all fallen short of what we want to do or be.  Any idea that ends with a question mark reveals the true essence of freedom for growth.  What has happened to us in life matters not so much as what we do with it, right?  

 

 

"One Thing We Can All Agree On" Blog Radio Interview

http://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-v6ykc-6a537c#.WQklF0AN3fw.facebook

I have not listened to this interview yet from "The One Thing We Can Agree On" yet, by Interviewer Anne Carlson, and am nervous to do so. We covered a lot of ground and discussed some events I've never revealed in an interview before.

While I don't personally feel like I was broken by the system (that which does not kill us makes us stronger), living through it was certainly a heartbreaking experience.

To see what humans are capable of doing astounded me in prison, and I remember frequently wondering why God allowed me to learn about the darker traits of humanity, especially of those running the system. I sensed there was some deeper reason for my discoveries. I knew inmates were sick and expected it, but I never guessed the staff was as sick if not sicker than prisoners. In my limited mind, law enforcement and correctional staff were 'supposed to know better.' At the end of the day, we are all just human.  We all need love and compassion to transcend our pain. A lack of forgiveness does nothing but keep us stuck in selfish rage or self-pity.

There's some good in the worst of us and some ‘bad in the best’ of us; paradoxically, many of us "settle" for good. But, the good is often the enemy of the best, the lesser of two evils. Chew on that truth for a while.

Today, I realize that 'in God's Economy, nothing is wasted.' I feel like the Universe surrounded me with protection in those darkest hours.  I was never truly alone, even though I sometimes felt like I was. Now I use these stories to generate forgiveness and bring deeper love to our world. Together we can heal this mess we've created, and it's imperative we get busy in the business of love before it's too late. No excuses..."LOVE ONE ANOTHER".  Remember, the road to hell is paved with Principled Apathy.  

A Brief Examination of Victim/Offender Mentalities in Relation to Restorative Justice

Like recovery from diseases of perception requires the honesty to admit a condition exists, the Restoration of Justice must recognize that justice needs repair.  But where does one start restoring justice?  Start anywhere, but just start.  Is justice ‘broken’? 

In the Justice System, we usually have the elements of the victim/offender adversarial dynamics with which to contend, but we need to break this down into manageable chunks for the productive exchange of ideas.

Liker racism, the construction of victimhood involves instruments of inclusion and exclusion, creating “us/them” dichotomies. Communes of victimhood and vicarious victimhood gangs with retaliation or prerequisites for revenge at their center are embedded and endlessly strengthened until they deconstruct their freedom for self-governing. 

Fudging of free agency and reality are not unique to group identities, but inherently reinforces groups' tendencies of self-sustaining myth-making and irresponsibility.

Among victimhood’s more harmful effects, vicarious victimhood obscures the realities of power and forecloses meaningful culpability to those outside the group. It is arguable that every perpetrator started out as a victim, which sets in place trains of misfortune, vicious cycles, whereby the group ensconces stubborn incentives to harm others in the name of self-protection—and thereby kills itself by staying stuck in unforgiveness.

Self-injurious systems only strengthen the group's self-anointed status as a victim: as always done by, but never doing to.  “I’m the victim here” is the war-cry of every person or patriot hell-bent on destroying the free agency of “them.”  How does take one’s power back?  Maybe Restorative Justice can help.

Restorative Justice identifies the marginality of injustice, strips the paradox of power down to its core components to avoid the victimhood/offender narrative, and replaces it with a mediated Healing Circle of material respect between victims and offenders.  Everyone gets to be real, but no one gets to be mean.  Truth without compassion is cruelty.  Victims expound upon the effects of any given offense, as do the perpetrators.  But victims and offenders have names, not labels, and dialogs move along lines without blamethrowers.  Say what you mean, mean what you say, but don’t say it mean.  Vulnerability and strength are in requisite balance, and accountability is a mutually determined in a Healing Circle.  After everyone talks about how the offense impacted their lives and what lead up to it, both sides agree upon a proposed ‘sentence.' 

Then, a judge renders the judgment based upon the work done in a Healing Circle, ‘justice served.'

Bertrand Russell said, "To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead."

"To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead."  Bertrand Russell

Live and Learn.

Love is never wrong. But what we do for love is sometimes crazy. Me, I would rather love than WORRY about being duped, fooled, or otherwise, find myself in a WHAT/IF quandary, wondering WTF WERE YOU THINKING? In other words, live, and then figure it out later.

QUOTE CITY:  Soren Kierkegaard had a few ideas that might be of service here: “Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forwards.  Once you label me you negate me.  Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.  Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays. People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. Face the facts of being what you are, for that, is what changes what you are.”  Lastly, Sartre said, “We are condemned to be free.” 

Intellectuals live in their minds, overthinking everything, and contaminate any chance love might have of completely enveloping their experience. The mind is to serve the heart, for love is the central commandment of all scripture.  "Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.” ee cummings, and Satan asked us to eat from the tree of KNOWLEDGE of good and evil (judgment).

 

But back to this world.  I used to have a serious problem. I could walk into a room of 500 women and fall in love with the sickest one in the room. THAT one is exciting, smart, sexy, artistic, poetic, and I would feel drawn like a moth to a light.  After several “bad” experiences, someone told me my "Picker" was broken (you can pick 'em, Timothy). But our spirit knows what we need intuitively, even if logically it seems totally stupid and bound for failure. We empathically connect to the Messengers we need in life.  In God’s Economy, nothing is wasted.

I would rather crash and burn in Innocent Ecstasy than end up living a life in fear, which is a living death, really.

If you love someone, you will not hurt them, at least not on purpose. If you love yourself, you will not place yourself in harm's way, either. Life is all about love or it's nothing real at all because the only thing REAL is LOVE.

There are two poems that changed my life: Since Feeling is First, by ee cummings https://youtu.be/GdrM5u5e_UM, and The More Loving One, by WH Auden. https://youtu.be/RhtrXdirXk4

So, listen to your heart. Trust it and she/he will lead you well. Doubt it and you'll live in a semi-dark corner spelling checking carbon copies, a life where we never make mistakes and learn from them.

As long as we are pure of heart, we'll be free of the thinking hell that so many are self-contaminated by. CS Lewis said, "The door to hell is only opened from the inside."

Show me your friends and I'll show you your future. I used to go to romance movies ALONE, just me and my popcorn. Couples would come in and occasionally a woman would look at me quizzically, wondering what a man was doing there alone, I guess. I did it to enjoy love alone as much as I did when I was in a relationship. Embrace each moment sweetly, even the painful ones, for they will purify your heart if you let it.

So live. Pray. Seek wisdom. Dance. Quit walking with the enemy. Forgive yourself and everyone else, too.

"A ton of head ain't worth an ounce of heart".  Earnie Larsen

https://youtu.be/RNQqTvvSUw4

 

 

Drug Dealers & Doctors; Trust and Reason. Procuring Freedom through Inner Dialog.

I have a strong tendency to default into skepticism or suspicion when I see commercials, YouTube videos, or hear about someone selling some product that 'supposedly' has health benefits.  Why the suspicion? Is someone 'selling' their own product a cause for putting them in a line-up?  I quickly suspend my judgment and listen for the information, then research it myself to see if it has substance.  

Doctors and dentists, pharmacists, nurses, nursing assistants, orderlies, clerks, nursing homes, medical record departments, ambulance drivers, police, and others people involved in health matters...drum roll...get paid (sell their services)!

Dr. Joel Wallach is in his 70's now, I do believe, and he sells a line of health products. He looks pretty healthy, but looks can be deceiving.  I don't sell his products, so I have no interest in making money off of you. I DO care about people generally so I would hope people would listen to everyone with an open mind. Being teachable is an effective trait for learning new information. The intelligent student asks questions and conclusions are forthcoming as a temporary password to future questions to bridge the shore of reason to the path of faith.  Suspicion, in other words, is a lack of faith.  

With Surrendered Thinking, I don't have to trust anyone or anything, because I trust that my life is aligned in the perfect place for the greatest good at all times and in all places.  My relationship to any given message in space and time is a choice I call "mine".  I am free, therefore, I can accept everything in my life is there for a purpose, right down to the smallest circumstances which most people have desensitized themselves to even notice.  These smallest circumstances, when focused upon, are just holograms of the bigger picture, and vice-versa.  If my reaction is free of assumption, then I am free to act.

The Prayer Effect, AKA the Placebo Effect, is as true for "Modern Medicine" as it is for Ancient Medicine.  Faith works, even if faith without works is dead.  The Placebo Prayer administered to the unbeliever is as effective as it is to the Believer.  But the Believers who had the Prayer Effect administered are more likely to heal than the Believers who are given a Prayer Placebo.  

One Man's Breakthrough & the Wounded Healer

Today's speeches went well. After the MADD Impact Panel, a man (let's call him "Tim") and I talked for a while. He said he just prayed for an answer to a deep dilemma (being an Atheist for years, praying was not typical for him) and in my speech he found exactly the answer he was just asking about, that of loving and forgiving oneself.  I believe I am in charge of what I say, but others are in charge of what they hear.  But when our thinking and hearing, seeing, feeling, etc, is surrendered, it changes everything.  No one holds a universal skeleton key which can free the mind from itself.  As Einstein pointed out, the mind which created the problem can't remedy the problem.  I don't buy that idea, but entertaining the idea leads one closer to release of the restrictions of belief.

He was wondering if he should give up, feeling utterly worthless and unloved by himself (before the Panel). He reported feeling a newfound hope (the light in his eye evidenced his sincerity) and had a breakthrough. But he wanted to know the process I used to accept the love of myself.

I explained the Mirror Therapy exercise that I did for 8 years, and how I experienced self-healing. I proposed that we spend a lifetime repeating messages which either free us or that keep us trapped, resulting in the hypnotic maintenance of a trapped, self-made condition.

But the hypnogogic condition is not itself only problematic, but rather serves as the way out, too. If we convinced ourselves that we are not innocent, then we can convince ourselves that we are innocent.  It's another way of viewing "Recovery".  We recover what we were before the "Fall" if you will.  

Repetition is the mother of all learning. Repeat a new message, and eventually, we hypnotize ourselves and recover the image we were born to be.

It's related to the limited scientific idea which Joe Dispenza talks about: "Neurons which fire together, wire together." But thought precedes the brain's firing of electricity and are visible as neural pathways and networks are observable, while thought from the mind is non-energetic and therefore invisible. Maybe it's the space or nothingness between molecular structures, holding everything in place.  

Guy Finley teaches about the folly of thinking about things we don't want or don't like because it leads to obtaining what we don't want or like. Oddly enough, even if we have every beautiful thing in the world, if we are thinking of something else, then we get the 'something else' in our consciousness and the visible becomes irrelevant.  Rich people who seem to have every benefit have committed suicide.  What they had didn't kill them, but what they thought, did.

There's no such thing as reality; there's only perception. Maybe perception is just so-called knowledge and even creates the condition we desire to evade.

So we covered these ideas and more, and he walked away with gratitude lighting his path.  

Prayer is the Distant Mental or Spiritual Influence that exists in all times and places.

Snippet of Forgiveness

Life, like self-forgiveness, is not about 'self' in my world. I took a life and I'll spend the rest of my life doing something about it. If I continued to endure the deep, intense remorse as I did for the first 8 years of speaking, I would have committed suicide. The problem with that is, if I'm dead, I can't help anyone. It's wayyyyy harder to live than die after killing someone if you have a heart, that is. Dying would be the easy way out. It takes courage and support to endure. When someone wants to get well, we gotta let them. That's what a MADD Mother taught me. "If they ask for help, we give it", she said. In 1977, as I approached two pedestrian women and a baby in his stroller, I said a prayer, "God, please don't let me hit them." But the prayer came too late. A minute later, one mother injured and one baby, in her arms, dead. The mother's sister ran out of the way of the car that I drove under the influence of alcohol (3 1/2 beers), but the memories are lasting. So many people say, "I'm so glad I never killed anyone when I drove drunk." I would rather hear them say, 'I'm sop glad I never drove drunk'. If we keep reaching out to offenders and shift their hearts, we can beat this thing. People forget what you said or did, but they remember how you made them feel. Forgive them, they know not what they do, but don't fail to raise the warning flag.

Blog Interview

I've gone to great trouble to erase unwillingness to listen to all points of view. Agreeing is not the point, but finding peace in the midst of any given proposition is an imperative in my life. I OCCASIONALLY actually succeed in my goal! LOL! Quick to listen, slow to speak.

Suspend judgment, listen, think and once in a while, speak. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I pray before I think and pray before I pray.  That is, I ask that my prayers be directed, then trust that every thought in prayer thereafter is blessed, because I surrendered my thinking.  My HP God answers prayers.  When I give it up, God shows up.  Ain't no three-day waiting period, either.  

I did an interview yesterday with a Blog Radio Show Hostess with the Mostest, Anne Carlson. http://onethingwecanagreeon.podbean.com/ I'll post it when she finishes the editing process. It covered a lot of areas in my life that I rarely talk about, like prison staff having inmates killed. But mostly, I talk about healing and love.