Death of a Rising Star

Please join me in remembering a great icon of the entertainment
community.

The Pillsbury Doughboy died yesterday of a yeast infection and trauma complications from repeated pokes in the belly. He was 71.

Doughboy was buried in a lightly greased coffin.

Dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including Mrs. Butterworth, Hungry
Jack, the California Raisins, Betty Crocker, the Hostess Twinkies, and Captain Crunch. The grave site was piled high with flours.

Aunt Jemima delivered the eulogy and lovingly described Doughboy as a
man who never knew how much he was kneaded. Doughboy rose quickly in
show business, but his later life was filled with turnovers.

He was considered a very smart cookie, but wasted much of his dough on
half-baked schemes. Despite being a little flaky at times, he still was
a crusty old man and was considered a positive role model for
millions.

Doughboy is survived by his wife Play Dough, three children: John Dough,
Jane Dough and Dosey Dough, plus they had one in the oven. He is also
survived by his elderly father, Pop Tart.

The funeral is being held at 3:50 for about 20 minutes.

Please rise to the occasion and take time to pass this on and share a
smile with someone else who may be having a crumby day and kneads a
lift.

Liberation through Giving

A lot going down in Egypt’s Land – let my people go!

Reminds me of that great spiritual I weaned myself on matters freedom from Satchmo (Louis Armstrong) in my youth. He inspired me to take up the trumpet and I have been pretty much blowing it ever since….

However, with all that is going on in Tahrir Square, it reminded me of a beautiful Egyptian soul I had the great honour to meet and spend time with in Luxor some years ago and it is he that I write about today….

It is to be correct, more about the gift he gave me and the gift I returned him.

Guru Sam, a truly magnificent being

It illustrated for me the importance of giving.

How a simple action of loving kindness can change a whole life, a family, a dynasty as well as the sometime bloated, and over consumptive life of a photographer.

I was in Egypt for a week’s break from the heavy schedules of shoots back in the UK and across various continents. With a blessed fellow snapper, Irishman Jeremy, we decided to quit our respective London and Paris bolt holes and take time out in Egypt.

Arriving in Luxor we camped in the main hotel and ventured out to live amongst the locals. As photographers we both suffered from the same condition. We loathed being tourists and were more comfortable melting into the background. You get better photos that way.. ask Don McCullin or any other great photo-journalist… anyway….

This particular day we decided to eat as usual in the back street local restaurants that made up the spider’s web of streets in backtown Luxor. Alongside silver smiths, cobblers, seed traders and innumerable materials outfitters and dispensers, we would find and eat local fare.

Never once did we suffer any of the Cairo craps or upsets that marked most who stayed in 4 and 5 star hotels and were brought down by the salads cleaned in local water and bugs! This day we came to a little square, where all around a multitude of hawkers traders and inspiring local business brains wheeled, dealt and traded.

Amongst the throng was a gentleman behind a huge pot of steaming soup, freshly brewed and there for the take away. He was a picture. I fell in love with his huge smile he liberally gave out to all and sundry. A man after my own heart. Telling Jeremy I wanted his portrait I went over and slipped quietly down beside him. As quietly as a European face amongst a sea of Arab faces can….

Placing the camera in my lap I looked over to him and we beamed a silent welcome to each the other. I then asked him in English if it would be OK for me to take a picture of him with his soup pot. Bemused was not the half of it. He turned fully to me, gave me an intense look into my soul and spoke in better English than I was able to muster Arabic.

“Effendi, you may indeed take my picture by all means, as long as you share with me my soup.”

At that moment he raised his head slightly, emitted a laugh that coursed through me as a river in flood breaking the confines of the high Aswan and rushing down along the parched plains beyond.

His face opened, a smile of such warmth and kindness broke around his aged and cracked features and before I knew myself I had already gone into auto pilot with camera swept from my lap, the click of shutter embedded this image for posterity.

The moment was so smart, so sudden it passed as quickly as it arrived. Yet I had my image. He had a customer who became, in that instant, a friend for life and my gratitude flowed to him for this moment that would remain with me forever.

The soup was one of the best brews I have ever tasted on the circuit of life and having been boiled was purer than the foolish salad we inadvertently took the day before we left, at our hotel, which for the next week or so back home had me sitting on the throne eating my own words of caution about local starred hotel fare.

The image I was gifted was superb. It went to gain me many plaudits and work over the coming years. I was indeed grateful. So when some several years later I found myself back in Egypt with a group of us on a spiritual meditation and self discovery journey I vowed to take a beautiful large-sized print back to the square to seek out my soup seller and return the gift.

We arrived at the square, less busy than I remembered those years back. I sought him out, showing the photo around, as he was nowhere to be seen. Eventually one kind soul pointed me in the direction of a young man. I went over, showed the image of my soup seller and asked if he knew this man. “He is my father”, the young trader replied. “Please come with me and we can meet him.”

I was overjoyed and together we were guided, all 8 of us pilgrims, by his son, through the white single storey housed streets that comprised this particular quartier of Luxor. It was no more than seven or eight minutes later that we arrived at a long white abode we quickly understood to be the family home.

Our presence there had been heralded by a fleet-of-foot courier who had rushed back to forewarn the extended family of an onrush of foreigners shortly arriving. So that when we arrived at the house outside along the long white wall was an image of the complete extended family, grandparents, cousins, relations young and old all in black, all welcoming these strangers from another land. It was moving to say the least, but if I thought this was moving, I had experienced nothing of what awaited me.

We were courteously ushered into the cool anti-room that comprised a large open living space with, in one corner, a concrete rectangular plinth housing what looked like a pile of blankets. As my eyes accustomed to the light level I saw under these there lay an elderly man.

“Please, my father,” the young man pointed to a figure in the corner that admittedly I would have been hard pressed to recognise as the same man as featured in my picture. His complexion sallow, sunken features where before the rosy smile had been, his eyes tired and exhausted from the deprivations of life and the endless giving he extended to all. His hour was near, that was apparent.

“He is ill and has stomach ailment,” his son explained as he gently took the photo from my astonished hands. Cancer was definitely the cause, I felt. Quietly he moved across the room to the side of his father. A man who I recognised, through the extended family’s presence, to be the patriarch of the family. His son gently lifted the sick man up into a semi sitting position, I could see was somewhat painful. The old man obliged as elders do when they recognise their incapacity to self-help. Resigned in loving arms, he adjusted himself as best he could to comfort.

My photo was placed before him and his eyes scanned with extraordinary alacrity and sparkled again with that old flame, giving out almost their entire fruitage, yet were brighter than Orion that hung in the diamond studded night skies above the ancient pyramids at Giza. I felt the dam burst within me, and made no attempt to staunch the flood, as the absence of dry eyes around my fellow travellers was witness.

“Father, this is the man who took this picture of you returned and wants you to have this.” The old man made what must have been huge exertion and tremendous effort, as he turned towards us and poignantly made attempt to view its messenger.

His eyesight would never have made out my features clearly enough to recognise me, yet he opened his mouth looked at his son and replied.

“Ah, yes the young man who shared soup with me.”

This was the final straw.  Emotionally I burst, moved inestimably by a memory of an incident all but transitory, now indelibly etched on my mental notebook for all time. Gently he was laid down and continued to hold in his frail fingers the image of a great man, the joy of a patriarch, the generosity of a trader, a soul who along the well-travelled dusty road of life, extended the gift of sharing to an oft forgetful photographer of countless faces and unnamed figures in life’s landscape.

I knew in that moment this photo would become a memorial to a figure, who for many had been the staunch, trusted, servant master of a household. A leader of many through years of experience. A true patriarch, father, son, brother and uncle to many. This photo would never have been acquired on their meagre incomes. This gift, that for me was merely an extension of so much I had, became a golden memory that would end up framed, pride of place, treasured and hung in honour of this great soul soon to depart some few days later.

In my heart I took away a lesson still with me as I write.

Give freely, give generously with all you have. Never imagine that even the gift of a kind word cannot transform into a diamond.The sharing of a moment together is in its simplicity, the sharing of eternity and sacred stillness. Whenever possible return the favour of a treasured encounter between two parts of a whole, with gratitude and loving kindness.

Guru Sam, as I affectionately call him, gave me experience of Love in action. I for my part was able to give an extended family and generations, a memory portrait that reflects this denison of light in a moment of laughter, joy and selflessness  infecting all who view his divine features.

May we all gift each other more and more from the treasure chest of our being so we all are left with something that touches the soul and liberates us into our true being within this one large global family.

Insha’Allah

One off  – unique print available of this image – at the Gallery online

Limited run prints ( smaller size and price) of all my work can be ordered individually. Please ask)

Same Old Same Old – or Something Completely Different

Are we doomed to always do, what we have always done and therefore get what we have always got?

When you hear the News, is there a feeling of “Oh!, God this is going to turn out rotten“, or “How am I/we going to cope/get by?“. Or is there the response – “Then if that is the case I am going to do this that or the other to make sure it does NOT impinge on me.”

One of those responses shows a resignation to an inevitable outside influence and the other shows an individual who is prepared to change something to make sure their life remains in balance, proportion and harmony in spite of whatever transpires around them.

Which do you feel you naturally gravitate towards?

Whichever approach you feel more familiar with is the present state of response you habitually take. This habit is like all habits – undo-able. The choice is yours, in spite of information or chit-chat that may indicate otherwise.

We are always, when we give ourselves permission to be, in control of our choices. Even with the choice to choose those choices…

So are we doomed to do what we always have done?

Yes – If we continue to think the way we always have done.

Yes – if we stay unconscious or unaware of the bad and irrational choices we continue to make

Yes – If we choose today unconsciously and use habitual responses from our past automatically.

Yes – continue to repeat choices past their sell-by date.

However….

No – When we make better choices

No – Update our personal maps

No – Break personal traits with new and accurate thinking

No – Rediscover and re-release our true potential and true self

It is nonsense to blame ‘it’ or other people and situations around us, on the way we feel, because these feelings are self-created from the beliefs we carry.
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“People start feeling long before they become aware of thinking” Dr Maxie Maultsby
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Over many decades in our lifetime we have seen insurmountable odds being defied and overcome. Many of us in our own lives have faced and continue to face odds that seem to stack up against us and demand a total resignation to the inevitable outcome.

Sometimes that approach has been accepted and the suffering, disempowerment and misery have almost Oracle-like proved the rightness of our self fulfilling perceptions we held.

However when we refused to buy into that outcome, things shifted, made us experience another reality, another outcome.

During the Vietnam War many individuals endured or were defeated by intense suffering. As in any war scenario events are horrendous,  outcomes seemingly impassable. In this particular war there is one man who was tested beyond what many of us are unlikely to experience.  Having been shot down on a secret mission, he ended up as a Vietcong prisoner for well over 5 years. As we have glimpsed the horrors of these situations with images from films such as The Deer Hunter, the reality of them goes way beyond that.

This man, Captain Charlie Plumb, relates his own story and how after all that time he survived to not only tell the tale but change his potential outcomes.

He relates how four major insights helped him to change.

They were – Prison thinking, Choice, How to approach Challenges and Support

On Prison thinking – prison thinking is where we feel sorry for ourselves and we blame everything on external causes and events. We  deny we have the power or where with all to change things. For Charlie it was not the eight feet between the walls he was incarcerated in and the outside world that separated and denied him, as he said in his own words….“…it turned out to be the eight inches between my ears.”

On Choices – Today it seems to many of us that so much of the adverse situations, the injustices perpetrated around us and the lies and deceits flooding our consciousness, make it seem we are all victims of circumstance and have little or no choice in the matter.

The blame game is rampant, the squeeze into rabbit like freeze scenario, be it in our interminable job or the lack of it, blame in the partner, wife, husband for our ills, our incapability of leading a happy and tranquil life. We see the imposition of more taxes, more control, more infringement of our liberties as a monolithic inevitability and travesty.

In truth we ABSOLUTELY have a choice. However it is not until we recognize this fact and take action on this that things are able to change, alter and allow us into the new game.

On Challenges – We all have our own individual challenges in life. In reality these are the honing stones of our character. It is up to us and us alone to determine whether we face those challenges or resign. Whether we go “where no (wo)man has gone before…” to quote Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek intro or break through the cries of others who say, “That is just impossible.”

When we have faced, made it through and succeeded with such challenges, we look back and using the lens of hindsight recognize all we needed was to have progressed just one step at a time, one day at a time. One choice at a time….

On Support – Charlie Plumb knew about support. He recognized it as a vital cord to connect to, in order  there was at least a hope of survival. He states that – “…the guys we lost in the prisons were generally the guys that could not communicate with anyone else and did not have the support group.”

He said that solitary was used a lot as a means of torture, breakdown process and yet even in these scenarios they always found a way to keep communications open on some level or other. To have someone else there, knowing they were believing in you, supporting you, thinking of you gave him and others the energy to keep on keeping on. It became the life blood of survival.

So it is for us that we manifest a support system that is positive, uplifting, engaging and with solution based responses encouraging us to move through any situation and emerge on the other side, stronger, more powerful and better equipped to live a full and healthy, sane life.

If we mix with nay sayers, even if and especially if they are family and prior close friends, if their lights are not willing to be turned on by information then we need to separate ourselves from them, distance ourselves and develop strength where it is nurtured and can flourish.

So what is the answer then, I hear a cry?

Within….. ask yourself what is true for you, what resonates so deeply it moves you to change. What actions and steps have you previously done that looked at from here, serve you still, no longer serve you or downright hinder your moving forward. When you are able to answer these initial questions you gain insight into where you need to be, what you need to do and where you need to go.

You can begin to use Hindsight, Insight and Foresight to redefine your personal map. To strengthen your emotional, structural, mental and spiritual armor for the challenges today and those that lie ahead.

The PROCESS tool of choice looks like this:

Perception Response and Observation of what has been, stimulates Hindsight

Challenging these to mobilize Insight

Envision Solutions and Start them rolling to stimulate Foresight

This then will help anyone develop the skills, mastery and implementation for a better life and the ability to begin something completely different.

Meet you on the journey, Heroes all…..

The Hero’s Journey – Part the First

“The Hero is the champion of things becoming; the dragon to be slain by the hero is the monster of the status quo. The hero’s task has always been to bring new life to an ailing culture.” Joseph Campbell – The Hero with a Thousand Faces

(note: for ease of comprehension the use of the masculine is in the terminology of human – without gender, merely the being)

The Hero finds himself at a point in time where knowing he is the hero is the furthest thing from his mind mind.

What is apparent is that there is deep dissatisfaction. This dissatisfaction festers and displays two paths for our hero. One which will eat away until there is rotten both on the outside and the inside or the other path that sets out to find the cure and healing.

On any path of life this junction is always crossed. Most of us have had some several junctions cross our path –  most of them have passed us by as if we wore an invisible cloak. The cloak of unconsciousness.

The first element on the Hero’s Journey is that of a wasteland, where the crops have failed to grow, sickness abounds, no new life is created. Alienation despair and a sense of hopelessness resides. There is little around that can be called life . Lack of money, where with all, little or no ambition is everywhere.

The next element is where the old ways of doing things, the creative impulse has gone rusty or worn thin. Its compass on our path, its ruling word  for so many years has collapsed or been surpassed. the way things worked are now at death’s door.

The landscape cries out for change, for something that will breathe new life into the world.

It is at this point our hero picks up the scent of something different, some great, inviting impulse and worthwhile challenge beckons. He sets out and on the journey, confronts those aspects within him  representing  the whole enfeebled state and discovers the treasure of the new paradigm, a way forward.

Next he returns with these new insights, knowledge and how to’s. Sharing them and paying it forward,  life changes for everyone.

Finally the harvest returns, fruitful and abundant. A veritable health, wealth and contentment returns to the kingdom as hope, joy, aliveness are everywhere.

As in life, so in Network Marketing and any venture of worth and depth.

Like our hero we are confronted with a situation too dangerous and life threatening to ignore. The dissatisfaction has to meet something so formidable that change is inevitable. However for that change to take place there needs to be a treasure of such worth envisioned and desired enough – for change to transpire.

Therein lies the secret. The secret of the Change Formula:

It is a formula demanding no Einstein to figure it out, however it does require the strength of Sampson combined with the wisdom of Solomon, in order to apply it. It is…..

D+V+P>C

Dissatisfaction + Vision + Process > Change

The DISSATISFACTION with the current situation, married to a VISION of what is really sought, handled by the comprehensive weapon of PROCESS, a process that uses the elements of Hindsight, Insight and Foresight must ultimately be worth more, be so valuable as to be greater than the Cost of Change

When all these aspects conspire together, are zoned in and initiated, then change is inevitable and success most likely.

Are you the hero of your own story?

Make better choices in your life in order to LIVE a better life!

Rage Against The Machine

Down the corridors of Time The People have risen up and railed against injustice and imposition of Empire and Control.

But only after a goodly period of serfdom, suffering and acquiescent acceptance of their lot.

The pressure and burden of oppression, when finally confronted by  natural instincts for liberty and evolutionary development, unmasks its own self created fatal flaw, the hair line crack in its own Dam of Deception. Slowly  the weakness spreads, like a molecular mold, throughout the monolithic structures holding the Great Lie in place.

Today that Dam appears  to be strengthening daily.

Its false legitimacy sealing each block with an ever hardening reason for its obvious rightness. All those left behind its darkening structure buy into the fantasy of its existence, rejoicing its chimera of safety,  offering  itself to good and simple people.

The Greater Imposition is accepted meekly and without so much as a whimper. Its pink, puffy, sickly sweetness posing as  candyfloss dreams against the terrorism of false flag and fantastical assaults, promising protection from all sorts of excesses and  evils. Like all great shadow puppets dangled in front of us, the reality seems utterly plausible.

Compliance, an essential in the process, is sealed through  vain belief that our own survival mechanisms of distraction and busyness are sufficient and enforced. Back this  up with promises of  safe hands at the helm whose protection of public interest and safety is tantamount and whose stewardship guides us through promises,  sweet encouragement and assurances that it is all “… for our own good and in our best interests” and the scene is set for completion.

The duty and gut reaction of our  captive souls is making sure our own puddles of poverty do not somehow rise up and drown us in the stagnant pools of perception laid out in a daily diet of disaster, despair, economic lack and fear. Hopes of salvation from this cyclical battering of boom, bust, terror and futility, resides in the nurturing and untiring optimism that all will pass, God will protect, or at worst his designated servants and the state will deliver.

The ultimate deliverance joining laboratory, church and palaces of power extol  the ultimate Trinity of Transformation.

That Mammon lights the lantern illuminating this rosy path of faith, as we entrust our all to hollow promises of better things to come is the profanity to match all profanity.

Calls to endure the cleansing fires and austerities of subservience  and indoctrination, are imprecated on us that we may feel  it is a price worth paying. To top it all, it promises less pain than the heavy duty workload involved in raising  consciousness and evolutionary change.

Of course the hidden hand of such  benign generosity is Total Control. The imperative and imposition of delusional thought. The indoctrination of a state of frozen logic. The obliteration of  Critical Thinking as a rightful tool for seeing through the fog of obfuscation and deceit.

As the process of mechanized normalization of our mental faculties becomes an inured and important segment in the process of desensitization and demoralization, the creature for this panacea and cure all for our deepest fears is welcomed in its role of Great Reliever from such terrors and fears.

So what is this Great Reliever?

None other than the media – Television, Radio, Internet and the Movies.

Already a chained performing bear, the greater part of this creature has become a panoply of propaganda  for most its life been pruned, honed, trained and sequestered into such a slick form as to become, for deadened minds, the single clear organ of Information and Truth. Its fantasy has morphed, through technology and subliminal repetition, into an incredible self sustaining life form on its own and tool of the ruling elite.

However for those not trapped behind the Dam of Deception, the serpent headed Hydra that is this media, it has become the very battle ground for resistance, outing and education. Such is the dicotomy and subtle cross play these two sides wage against each other, that for the masses the unraveling of what is true, what is fact and what is downright specious disinformation is a confused minefield of itself.

So unsurprisingly, within all these serpent headed organizations there are awakening sleepers. Couched like benevolent saviors, some as planted allies, some spies and two faced deceptors, others mere innocent visionaries whose ideals and eloquent communications fall prey to the puppet masters sleight of hand.  The extraordinary power of confusion and disinformation is masterfully and psychopathically mobilized and manipulated.

The fog falls finally into place.

The apparent message of revolution creates an energy of anger, discontent and total confusion. A Tower of Energetic Babel in full broadcast, cunningly crippling real action is turned full on.

The rage of awakening souls, glimpsing  light of another reality outside the darkened domains behind the Dam add to this energy and growing demand for the Truth to OUT.

Mix in the docile and misguided approach of  spiritual movements proclaiming Peace, Love and non engagement with such dark forces and passivity grows where action is demanded. Mix in those conceived in  the procreation grounds of the original Summer of Love and finally enriching the soup  with only a few knowing right from wrong, truth from falsehood.

It becomes transparently clear, the battle is one that begins within. One  demanding a journey into the recesses of our deepest thoughts and fears, where resolution can birth. It is a journey commanding our being present on the bloody fields of engagement where long held beliefs, old paradigms of prejudice and hardened habitual responses make up and present an army set on retaining its rightness amidst all sorts of wrong and brute force.

Until we can openly, wholeheartedly and with all the courage demanded from a true hero, launch ourselves into this exploration then the rule of Lies will reign over us.

Thomas Jefferson’s  insight that “The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants“, is already taking place, so it is imperative the sharpening of individual minds, quivers full of arrows of our critical thinking, the eyes of intuitive insight and the longbows of our intention must be honed, focused and readied for the greatest single battle we are all gifted to be present at, witnessing and engaged in.

Winning is the only option…… and the only outcome.

Making a Difference

If you have ever wanted to make a difference in your life and in your world you may understand how high these mountain can be at times to climb.

Many try a couple of times and end up relapsing into the same old, same old. Now that is one way to proceed, yet never a fruitful one from the change perspective.

Change and difference are synonymous. There can never be one without the other.

This whole subject is a vast one. Therefore I am going to take a small example that hopefully you may see can affect the whole gamut of scenarios.

Change, be it for good or bad, better or worse affects us all. Thus when going for change it is imperative to recognize its ultimate effect, even if we cannot predict it. To give you an example. An individual back in the mists of time got frustrated at having to drag a wooden construction behind him upon which was the day’s kill and meal. Throughout long nights of reflection, discussion with his fellows a rounded stone was attached to the wooden chassis. The wheel was born. Its effect on this guy and fellows was immediately felt.

Today we also see the repercussions in its multifaceted forms, millenia later. Albeit historically flowery the point is made. Everything makes a difference and has an impact, eventually global.

There is at present, in circles of awareness in these matters, huge frustration around the erosion of personal and collective freedom. Be it at airport security ‘à la TSA’, demonstration against government policies, undemocratic wars in our name, public subsidies, education and all manner of other grievances. The hijacking of long-held rights in the name of ‘our safety and interests’ incurs on one hand rightful anger and fury and on the other the raison d’être for imposition of multiple chains and restrictions.

Where these things are accepted for reasons we are fed, they are met with meek acceptance and renunciation of anything resembling critical thought.

I am not interested in fanning the uncritical thinking pool. It is over stimulated by the powers that be.

I am more interested in those wishing to question, change and make a difference to the status quo. It is this area that will affect change more than any other area. Yet how it will is the real $65,000 question (I suppose this figure ought to be raised in line with inflation!)

One major way that superficially does not seem to effect the whole is carrying a lightness of being. Humor by any other name.

How can this have any real effect on a disaster, crisis or abuse?

Precisely because the heaviness with which it is imposed, recalled or implicated needs its opposite if it is to become deflated. The success of any terror is that it incurs even more terror by association. If that is staunched at birth. its life blood is starved.

So the ability to lighten up, see the bright side – that side unaffected by the darker side, will help create that for us far quicker than dwelling on the terror.

Let us take the example of global terrorism. The words themselves are specifically tailored to instill terror in us. The fear that some invisible, unseen entity is set to inflict a global injustice by way of death, maiming or other interference. The reality may be that some few individuals are set to disrupt by whatever means at their disposal the lives of others. However much of what we are persuaded to believe is global terrorism is either a false flag (created by the very powers we trust to keep us safe) or other entities using it as a useful demon to impose further restrictive measures that disempower us.

Lies, disinformation, misleading events, images, accounts and stories all help to make us feel we are powerless, unable to make a difference. Never able to really change. All this is the great lie. Never in our time or any other time has it been possible to halt change, to nullify making a difference.

The only thing that has ever given us that illusion has been our own belief, thoughts and assumptions. Inaction in the face of belief that something or someone else, other than ourselves is stronger more powerful, more able to create our individual futures, is accepting defeat and throwing in the towel of challenge.

Until such time as we become critical thinkers in action rather than couch potatoes to subservient acceptance, we shall subsume power to those elements we like to rant and rave about, complain over and who we secretly or openly place as blame for our turpitude.

Next time you find yourself feeling uncomfortably nervous, terrified or another form of disempowerment – STOP – Remember who you really are. Look at the situation, be it in front of you , on TV, radio or wherever and laugh heartily at that idiotic part of you that saw this as real, unstoppable and the prisoner of your life.

Join hands with your family. go to the local community center, call for the bar or pub community to gather and determine to say – NOT IN OUR NAME, EVER AGAIN.

Begin to create the change you want to see, feel and live fully. The Mexican Emotional Wave you create will eventually, like the ripples out rolling from the pebble thrown into still waters, reach out and touch the very edges of the planet. Change will have become inevitable. A difference would have been made the moment the intention was set upon.

That is the glory of life. That is also the Law of Universal Reciprocity.

When one says impossible, another says absolutely possible. The choice is yours to follow the path you wish for.

That will bring you to the outcome you have chosen, through the change you plummeted for and the difference you have made within the parameters of your choosing.

Make a difference? Absolutely

When? NOW!

When the Going Gets Tough the Mettle Shines Through

Ever had one of those days when you just want to give up?

I have.

In fact it was one of those days back when I was 17 years old, I just gave up and died.

Fortunately for me, the other person around in an up-to-the-neck bog I found myself in the middle of nowhere, decided it was not my time to go. However, apart from etching persistence, resistance and a life long desire for never again giving up, it is not what I want to share with you this first day of January 2011.

What I want to share is another story. A story we can all relate to from the point of view of being asked the question – do I really want to carry on living?

Now, the circumstances probably are a far cry from any experience you may have had, however they are in their essence absolutely related. This particular story also illustrates something truly awesome, magical and shows there can never be a point where we are privy to all the facts –  around how we decide, who looks after our interests and the greater reason for getting to know who we really are.

Some years ago, when I was married to my ex  – who today is still is a great friend –  she found herself taking back into the family home, her then wayward teenage daughter. The young, beautiful girl had a history of not having decided to make a decent stab at life on several occasions and following a particular rough patch, came back to the hearth and wisdom of her mother. She spilled her troubled beans over her life up to that point and this particular morning was invited by her mother to go into town, visit a psychic who made regular visits to a particular shop there and be afforded the counsel of this psychic’s channel.

Whether one has any faith in these things is neither here nor there. The facts speak for themselves and as with much of these things, they are simply signposts and helpful to the individuals involved. What each get out of these things is for each to ascertain and utilize.

However the events were as follows:

Our house was about 3 miles away from the town centre. The journey on an ordinary day would have been around 10 minutes door to door. This morning they set out together at just after 9.45 am, knowing they would have 5 minutes grace to get into the meeting room.

Pulling out onto the main road from the village they were talking and her daughter had mentioned she had doubts as to whether she really wanted to carry on living. As they maintained a steady 30 mph along the road, suddenly out of a side road roared a car. It was so near to them that even with the dramatic maneuvering her mother was miraculously able to achieve, they somehow managed to avoid a head on crash. As they brushed with disaster, her daughter yelled out “I don’t want to die yet, Mum!”

They were thoroughly shaken up and had to take a few minutes pulled into a lay-by to recover. Both were utterly shaken and her mother was unable to understand how such a close shave could have avoided what ought to have been a full on crash. Something did not add up. After a good few minutes rest they decided they needed to hurry into the appointment in town.

As happens with thinking about being late, every traffic signal on their way was on red. It was therefore quite some time beyond the expected ten minutes journey time, they arrived outside the shop. Flustered, they both went in and up to the reception room. Our friend who owned the shop, concerned as she saw their features riven with a not insignificant amount of stress, sat them down.

The girl’s mother apologized profusely for being so late for their 10 am appointment and wondered if it was still on. Our friend asked what she meant by being late. It was still only two minutes to 10.

Both mother and daughter looked up at the clock amazed. They not only had been a few minutes late leaving home and cut the 15 minutes to 12, but with the accident, recovery in the lay-by and incessant red lights, they presumed it had added at least another 10 to 15 minutes  to their journey time.

At that moment the door opened and they were ushered into the session. The mother was invited to sit and have her session first. As she sat down the psychic, a charming and unassuming young man took his usual few moments to allow the channel, a disincarnate doctor  to ‘come in’. From our previous sessions with him, his accuracy and advice had always been first class, practical and very helpful.

The conversation went like this:

V: “Doctor C, on our way to see you this morning something very strange happened….” the mother opened the conversation with.

Dr C: “Ah!, you mean the accident with the other car, or should I say the apparent accident.”

V: ” Apparent accident? It was a very real near miss we encountered.”

Dr C: “Yes it seemed to both of you very real and that is how it was meant to appear. You see we needed to know for sure that your daughter really wanted to still carry on living, so by setting this whole affair up, we were able to ascertain it is her wish to carry on living.”

V: “You mean you set this all up…. our nearly killing the both of us?”

Dr C: “Well, you were neither of you in danger of being killed as the accident did not actually happen!”

V: “Did not happen? We witnessed it as real as we are talking here now.”

Dr C: ” Of course you did and that is precisely what we needed you to experience. Because without the real life situation where you daughter had to absolutely decide where she wanted to be, we would not have been able to help. You see as always in life, each of us individually has to decide where we want to be. What we want to do…. your daughter finally made a positive decision to live. Now we can, having her permission, help her forward.”

V: ” So how do you explain, not only the accident that did not happen but the time it took to get here which seems to have defied time and space. ”

Dr C: ” Well, let us just say all that is apparent your end is, maybe, not all that there is. Time and space are mere structures we are able to have at our disposal, in order to help, allow and sometimes as in this case… manipulate. You see what you ‘saw’ was not the absolute reality. That ‘other car’ had some few minutes before turned out of that side road and happily gone on his way, albeit at some speed. You both had left home and were coming into town as if the incident never happened. We brought both those two separate events together, allowed you to take evasive action and for your daughter to say the magic words.”

V: “I am following you more in trust than understanding.”

Dr C: “Good, because there are more things Horatio in heaven and earth…. but let me explain further. You see by being able to manipulate these two different events. make them seem to occur at the same time, we engineered a scenario that got the result your daughter truly wanted. Her soul spoke rather than her emotional self. She has, by the way, got some very important work still to do here, and a lot of it, and although we would have liked her to agree to her existing contract, she always had, as you all do, the choice to renege, cancel or otherwise change the plot. She chose the very best one. We shall be always there to help her forward. So I can quite correctly say that the accident never happened. The time difference was never really in your time and space ever elongated. The fact that the traffic lights seemed against you was all part of the bubble of appearance we placed you in. We needed you to experience the full apparent event. When you arrived you had taken the usual 10 minute or so trip as you originally calculated. All is very, very well and worked out for the best. We have both yours and your daughter’s best interests at heart.”

For me this story and these events show several things. One, we never really know what is going on. However what is going on is for our very best. The appearance of things may seem to be stacked up against us, even to the degree that life is threatened. This may or may not be true, or should I say actual. It is incumbent on each of us to make sure we clearly state exactly what we want. It is imperative, no matter how it may seem to be against our own choices, to remember we always have the final choice in whatever we do or find ourselves confronted with. Even if at any stage it looks like we had little or no say in where we are, somewhere down that line we had a choice. Being far behind in a scale of events, we may have allowed that choice to have been more unconscious than conscious. We still had that moment to make a decision.

So always remember, whatever the moment is and whilst you have consciousness to make critical thinking your byword and choice your right, do so, act as if your life depended on it.

Because it does, always. Every last choice reflects and has import on others. The reverberations of decisions affect the whole, whether we know it or not.

By the way the daughter now is doing incredible work, invaluable and helping a huge number of others develop their own life skills and gifts. Her mother continues to do likewise.

So remember we each are important and necessary parts of the whole. Never lose sight of that. Never think you are anything other than a huge gift to the whole and develop yourself accordingly.

Have an incredibly wondrous New Year, one and all…..

The Secret Diaries of a Serial Psychopath

Dear Diary
(31st December 2010)
(It’s a great comfort to have you to share my deepest inner ruminations
as not too many out there believe we are for real)

Today is a really special day. I got up this morning knowing this year is over. Phew!
A lot of unwelcome noise from those Truth Seekers – evil ants

That is a relief as 2011 is OUR YEAR!

So first off, collected all my Frequent Liar Miles and cashed them in.

I am off to Wonderland. It’s just Extraordinary, Rendition still keeps me high, so looking forward to a whole two weeks of waterboarding. Seems we wanna break the 15 second record…..

Note to self – take your certificate of excellence given by Bushey – that’ll show the bastards!

Can’t wait to get through security and get my special Pat Down and Uber Interference 5 minutes alone with those three sickos – what a start to the vacation.

Bliss even before the false flag is planted on the sandcastle.

Janet N did whisper into my ear before I left the office that the new Zionist Zapper the TSA had been forced to install will curdle my gonads and spike any hope of offspring – who cares… there are so many orphans in SE Asia and Africa to adopt for lab work, it becomes academic.

Now some of you may be feeling a tad queasy at my diary entry, then hey! become a serial psycho – we have no feelings…

So what can I look forward to?

First off, there will be the special forces training where I will be guest Taser Demonstrator. Can’t wait to practice on some of those immigrants who are playing targets for cash.Keep the borders open I say, we need the target practice.

Excited to see Google Trends have been getting our presence out there.
and oh! That little child Assange, so puerile, patsy and malable. Must see if I can get him renditioned to Wonderland.
Love to leak all over his Wikis…..

So gotta rush, get the Internet shut down before midnight,
so our shenanigans can carry on in peaceful terror.

See you in 2011…if not, we have people out there to report you
and where you are so……

………WE WILL SEE YOU! ……You can bet on it

We always bear you in Mind as your mind is all we have….. thanks to the media……

Becoming a Leader

“The greatest day in your life and mine is when
we take total responsibility for our attitudes.
That’s the day we truly grow up.” – John Maxwell
———————
In a world that portrays confusion, chaos and corruption, those of us who have not decided to lead look vainly round for leaders.

Those we voted into office (or didn’t) are definitively NOT the role models for leadership. They are part of a system whose very foundations are built on us not demanding or asserting our own leadership.

Rule by another is by its very description an abrogation of our responsibility in becoming our own leader. To accept the pretext that I need to follow someone else and their rule before even determining or setting down my own rules of engagement is moral and ethical suicide.

We must think for ourselves.

We must determine precisely what we want from ourselves and life

We have to become brave, independent and develop our own heroic being.

Before we become leaders these are essential to have in place, or at least a goodly way into development.

We must also develop a discrimination in knowing when to overrule the say-so of  anyone else who dictates it as law.

Voltaire’s attitude towards another viewpoint has always held a special place for me.

“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”

We must always determine whose freedom is being cultivated or curtailed and to what end before accepting any participation in a group that mobilizes for their own good or that of the greater good.

It is important to recognize every single technological tool from the spoken and written word, visual image, action taken and all subsequent technological communicating aids associated with these things are weapons to be used for better or worse.

Knowing their potency and implementing it defines the outcome and also our objectives.

Through right implementation we define our goals.

Through the recognition as to how others use these also help us define and understand theirs.

Never assume anyone has your best interests at heart unless you are joined at the hip and heart. Even then trust in God but still tie up your camel….

A leader is one that sees, evaluates and advances proactively into landscapes investigated by them yet knowing their unknown is their greater part. A leader is one who is determined to evolve and grow the individual and group as well as accepting their own growth through such leadership.

A leader is one that through example knows the journey set on is ultimately developing the individual. Aware also that each one following must by design become their own leader gaining the very freedoms that come through knowledge, experience, discrimination, right judgment and selfless sacrifice.

———————
“Those who develop the process of good thinking can rule themselves –
even while under an oppressive ruler or in other difficult circumstances.
In short, good thinkers are successful.” – John Maxwell
———————

Nothing becomes, but thinking makes it so.

To understand how our thoughts truly make or break us is the very core in developing freedom. The freedom of being, of action, of having, doing and creating what we truly desire and deserve.

We all too often short change ourselves. Many of us fall into bankrupting ourselves morally and spiritually because we allow others’ thoughts, ideas and rules to hold dominion over us. Economic poverty is merely the reflection of our own poverty within. Where external circumstances are allowed to control our own destiny, it is the relationship between how much we cede to these circumstances that will determine their control over us. Ultimately it is easy to say that we are powerless against economic depression, because that allows us to renege responsibility for our own well being and wealth.

Herein lies our own Road to Perdition or to Paradise

Listen. Once and for all. NO-ONE CONTROLS OUR LIVES, OUR THOUGHTS AND OUR ACTIONS – EXCEPT OURSELVES

You want to become a leader?

Then begin with yourself. Lead yourself out of the illusion that someone or something else will look after you, has control over you, takes the power to determine your own future. Develop a passion, a desire and a fire in your belly allowing yourself to not rest until you have totally committed your whole being to your own personal freedom.

Unstitch every preconception developed, owned and allowed existence in your life. Examine each and every one and test its validity.

Ask whether it serves you and most importantly why.

Whose end is it serving?

Does it grow and feed others as well as yourself, in a way that liberates.

Look, examine each action you take.
Who am I doing this for?
Why?

What and whose end am I serving with this?

Become razor-sharp at catching your thoughts.
What old patterning am I keeping alive?
Whose rules am I obeying with these thoughts?
How long have these thoughts passed their sell by date?
Does this thought cultivate positive creation or negative creation?

Be very sharp. Never let a thought overrule your inspection. Habits are the hardest nuts to crack.

Bad habits are, by their familiarity, the most difficult to handle. Their feigned comfortable closeness will make them seem acceptable. This is their defense of choice and cloak of disguise. It is also where the sword of truth needs to be wielded without mercy.

——————————–
“If we’re growing, we’re always going to be out of our comfort zone.” John Maxwell
——————————–

As we grow our comfort zone, we grow stagnation. It is said that familiarity breeds contempt. In respect to our comfort zone this can be a very good bell weather for recognizing the need to move forward, tread new ground and enter the unknown with courage, open eyes and an open mind.

If we all agree that life is the most exciting adventure we have been gifted, then why do we lock it away in the cupboard of “One Day”.

One day I will do that – One day I ought to change – One day my prince/princess will come – One day I will be rich – One day it will be better – One day my luck will change – One day I will not need to be trodden on – One day….One day…..!

There is only NOW.

Yesterday is DEAD….. Tomorrow does not exist, it is a dream

Today, this moment is the only reality..…. Make it your living reality….. Rise up and become the leader you always have been yet only now are discovering exists.

Do it…Be it… Celebrate it….. and be grateful for it all.

The Secret – Rampant Marketing Tool or Life Changing Motivator

In the annals of Personal Development, a small chapter is devoted to a short story that transformed itself into a whole new life movement.

It was initiated by an Australian named Rhonda Byrne, whose prescient actions took her from Australia to the USA and meetings with many of today’s expert movers and shakers in the personal development and motivational movement.

The progression from idea to rampant viral success has become a legend in its own lunch hour. The contents of this story and subsequent erudition by many great speakers has undoubtedly helped many begin a journey of introspection, self inquiry and for some the taste of freedom – that is always laudable.

How people have interpreted the content and messages has itself spawned a whole new industry of self-help advisors, counselors and gurus.

Money is and always has been a powerful magnet of the law of attraction when it comes to searching for ways to better one’s lot in life.

For many they see it as a way to financial freedom and the money represents the nub of goal seeking.

When individuals offer high cost seminars and specialized self advancement courses, many assume that paying this money gets you into the mindset and habits of these gurus of abundance and thus enables you to emulate and become as rich and as carefree as they profess to be.

Yes and No….. it is true that if you emulate the every step that someone has taken towards their own success then you will get the same result.

Problem comes when a small divergence occurs  and the degree of change leads to  vast chasms along the journey and away from the cited goal.

Human nature is such that knowing better than someone who shares their secrets, is often the road most traveled. Therein lie the potholes of disaster.

So what are we to make of all this? One way it is a rigid path of adherence, the other a veering off onto a path unknown yet markedly risky towards a successful outcome. One thing is for sure, it ain’t easy…..

But then let’s look at our life before. Was it that easy? Probably not, if we are to be truthful, so why expect the roads to growth to be the primrose paths to happiness. We must wake up and realize that pain is the one thing that sharpens us to the present, focuses our mind on what is in the here and now and allows us just enough space between the distraction from that pain to glimpse a way through.

This is a part of our journey that we must, in fact have to, own for ourselves and take total responsibility for, if we are to break through.

Any guru of standing, been-there-done it master or motivational giant will tell you that is par for the course. What they will also share, if they can look you in the eye, is that the cure is not in the amount of dollars and cents you dispense on a remedy. It is the impetus, desire, will and passion you have and devote to the drive for personal change.

So, in itself The Secret may inspire but it definitively does not give the template to success, fulfillment or contentment. Certainly from the law suits that Ms Byrne has been fielding since the success of the original, it seems that walking the talk is a rocky path and one well stumbled on.

That aside it has become a terrific marketing vehicle for all those left in the final production cut, though it has to be said that those famously cut from the final edit, have felt the hand of kind destiny, shine on their progress.

The Secret does reveal how bite sized we all seem to want our redemption, conversion and eventual sainthood to be delivered. There is a paucity of need for anything in-depth to get our minds and hearts around. The texting culture does not allow for full and grammatically correct expression to interfere with the sound bite nature of self-improvement.

So sad as this just molds us into sound bite personalities, devoid for the most part of any background referencing or knowledge of where it all began. The multi-dimensional being becomes a mere gray two-dimensional caricature.

So does The Secret offer the best answer to moving forward in life?

In a word NO. It stirs a process that can define enormous change. It is mightily inspirational, yet even its teachers featured therein cannot possibly hold the answer to life the universe and all that jazz…..

It is however a hugely successful marketing vehicle that everyone and their dog has used to promote and justify what is marketed by personal growth.

That is really where it needs to be judged from. A short step on a long, challenging and ultimately hugely exciting path called life.

As Byrne recounts, the discovery of the little slim green book by Wallace Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich, spurred her out of a suicide and into what ultimately became rich beds of roses. How many thorns were also formed we shall see.

Her story touched many. The Wattles SGR volume is undoubtedly a masterpiece that has indeed helped many, many people to find their life riches, so it can be said that since the results are attainable, it merely leaves the individual to seek deep within the right intention for progressing.

Be true to oneself above all – is the best advice – and if an idea will then go on to help others big time, get to it today without delay.

Let’s face it we need all the help we can find, if this present world is to mature further…..