I sent this out to a number of people by e-mail yesterday; thought I’d share it here as well…

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Follow this link and play the video, but listen first, without looking at the video or trying to interpret what you hear:

If you were among those who have visited our blog in the past few days, you will have found that it was ‘red flagged’  for distributing ‘malware’.  Rather than attempting to rail against the folks at Google for marking our site ‘unsafe’, we should instead be grateful [...]]]>

Hi Folks:

If you were among those who have visited our blog in the past few days, you will have found that it was ‘red flagged’  for distributing ‘malware’.  Rather than attempting to rail against the folks at Google for marking our site ‘unsafe’, we should instead be grateful that such action alerted us to the code that had been installed on our blog.  There is a saying in the corporate world that there are two kinds of companies – those who know they have been hacked and those who don’t.  However, when it comes to a site where one invests as much of one’s self as Marcia and I do here, having someone hack into it is equivalent to having someone break into one’s home.  There is a certain senselessness to it.  It may be more benign to talk of ‘spamming robots’ as autonomic devices, but the truth is that there is a person behind all such actions.  We can’t begin to understand their motivations, but we can imagine that it stems from a search for ‘power’ based on a perceived feeling of inadequacy.  Our wish is for that person to come to see and celebrate his/ her own magnificence instead.

So, Dear Reader, if you’ve come by our blog recently and been put off by the ‘red flag’ status, we apologize.  It’s not the first time this has happened, and may or may not be the last.  We trust you’ve found something of benefit here, and we invite you to return.  And to whomever has been adding malicious code to our site, we offer you only love.  May you come to see yourself as we do – a truly wonderful Being!  We don’t invite or encourage such attacks, but we don’t do much to defend against them either.  Doing so only escalates the feelings of negativity, and there is already far too much of that in the world.  We wish you peace.

Love,
Marcia and Mike.

P.S. Special thanks to our son Nick for all you do every day to keep our site running so beautifully!

In a world where possibility and probability have become buzz words, where potential is highly praised yet expectation remains in question, where receiving product just on time rather than ahead of schedule is the norm ~ wouldn’t it be delicious to make room for: Most Definitely! [...]]]>

Hello Dear Ones!

In a world where possibility and probability have become buzz words, where potential is highly praised yet expectation remains in question, where receiving product just on time rather than ahead of schedule is the norm ~ wouldn’t it be delicious to make room for: Most Definitely! Why Certainly! Absolutely!

Rather than building in contingencies for problems, limitations, setbacks and just-in-case scenarios ~ resulting in a greater probability of encountering them by the very matching of that same energy ~ how be we grow, develop and come to expect the very best of everyone, the power of teamwork, and the perfection of an idea, a dream ~ and live into its fulfillment by choice and by design!

In Light and Laughter,

Marcia

It’s now closing in on the end of January, so if you’re still maintaining your New Year’s resolutions, my congratulations to you!  It may be sheer coincidence that Remembrance Day and New Year’s Day fall so closely together on the calendar but our memories of the past [...]]]>

Hi Folks:

It’s now closing in on the end of January, so if you’re still maintaining your New Year’s resolutions, my congratulations to you!  It may be sheer coincidence that Remembrance Day and New Year’s Day fall so closely together on the calendar but our memories of the past and our dreams of the future always seem bound together.  It may be true that (as espoused by George Santayana), “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  It’s also true that much of how we see ourselves today is based on and built out of who we have believed ourselves to be and that person no longer exists.  It’s not just that your body is continuously refreshing itself – building new cells and removing old ones.  Our thoughts, ideas, understandings – in some ways the essence of who we are – is also different… unless of course we hang on tight to the past memories of who we used to be.  Memories can be pleasant or painful and there are varying degrees of both, but there’s one thing memories rarely are, and that’s an accurate recollection of the past as it happened.  My grandmother was a very wise woman with a Grade 5 education, and one of her sayings was, “No matter how thin the paper, there are two sides to every page.”  In some cases there are many more than two sides to an issue, more than two sides to a memory, but the point is made.

Memories can also be extremely powerful. Seth once said:

“… the first important step is to realize that your beliefs about reality are just that – beliefs about reality and not necessarily attributes of reality. You must make a clear distinction between you and your beliefs. You must then realize that your beliefs are physically materialized. What you believe to be true in your experience is true.” ~ The Nature of Personal Reality, session 621.

I’ve invested a lot of time over the past several decades looking at my beliefs in every way I could conceive, and each of them has taught me more about myself.  They’ve also taught me, as quoted above, that my beliefs are not ‘me’ but are tools that I use to express my understandings of myself.  In my continuing search to understand my own Being and my continuing expansion of my awareness of my self, I’ve also come to terms with aspects of ‘me’ that no longer fit.  I’ve been reminded (often) of the scene in the movie ‘The Mission‘ where Robert De Niro (as Rodrigo Mendoza, a former mercenary and slave trader) struggles to carry/drag (as penance) a huge bag of his weapons and armour all the way from the city near the sea up the cliffs and through the jungle to the remote Native village the Jesuits are seeking to visit.  When one of his companions cuts the rope attaching him to the bag, Mendoza goes back down the cliff, knots the rope and continues.  Only when he reaches the top does he find forgiveness and allows the rope to be cut.  How many of us continue to carry such a huge burden ourselves? Regrets, ‘if-only’ moments, guilt and more.  And if someone was to release us from the bonds of those ropes, how many would, as Mendoza did, retrieve the bag, retie the ropes and struggle on?  I know I did, for a very long time.

I came across a Tut quote recently that read:

“Often, having what you want is a function of letting go of what you have.

If you know what I mean.

    The Universe

Odd, huh, the stuff people cling to?”

It can be a challenging decision to make, to put down that bag and walk away from it.  For me much of that challenge was in letting go of what it said about me and who I believed I was.  In letting go, even of ‘myself’, what would I have left? Who would I be?  Freedom, complete freedom can have a wonderful taste; it can also be daunting.  We each have our own ways and our own reasons for continuing to hang on to the past, but I have received a couple of interesting thoughts regarding this from those who guide me.  One was, “You don’t have to forget the past. Knowing that, can you let it go?” Coupled with that was something seemingly innocuous.  I do all of my personal writing in a notebook with a fountain pen, and as such I have to clean the pen nib periodically. As I was standing over the sink flushing the ink from my pen I watched the tendrils of ink wash out of the nib and disappear into the stream of water coming from the tap.  As I’ve often seen the movement of time as being like a flowing stream, I saw for the first time how it wasn’t necessary for me to release these old ideas, beliefs and aspects of myself as much as to release them into the past.  There was a time in my life when they did have relevance, and as such they helped to form who I am today.  As Richard Bach wrote in the book ‘Illusions: Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah‘, “I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it?”  For me, it is.

So, bold adventurer, as we move forward into this new day, into this new year, are you willing to surrender the past to the past? To honour what you have been and celebrate who you are today?  Every moment is a new beginning, complete within itself, borrowing nothing from the future and owing nothing to the past. Live Now.

Hugs,
Mike.

P.S. In my most recent interchange with those who guide me, the strongest message I remember is that in continuing to heal myself it’s important for me to heal not what I think as much as how I think.  In healing how I think I change my patterns of perception, how I see myself and the world around me.  What we think is important, but perhaps more important is what we think about what we think, and how we feel about what we think. “Discover the feeling of ‘New Beginnings’ rather than ‘starting over’.  To an explorer, every step is a new beginning.” ~ MNP

So far as I know, Facebook was the first to introduce the concept of the ‘Like’ button to user posts and comments, and it’s such a good idea that it’s been adopted by others as well.  Google+ uses the ‘+1′ button instead, but it’s the same idea.  [...]]]>

Hi Folks:

So far as I know, Facebook was the first to introduce the concept of the ‘Like’ button to user posts and comments, and it’s such a good idea that it’s been adopted by others as well.  Google+ uses the ‘+1′ button instead, but it’s the same idea.  The folks at TED.com used to give users the ability to up vote or down vote another user’s comments, but they changed that policy so that only up votes are possible.  The people at 50opx.com have both ‘Like’ and ‘Dislike’ buttons on the images displayed there; I suggested to them that they remove the ‘Dislike’ button but the choice is of course theirs.

Why is this so important?  Well, in a pre-internet world (yes, I’m old enough to remember such a time), personal interactions were less frequent and more intimate.  People waited days, weeks, even months sometimes to hear from a friend or loved one, and as such contacts were treasured.  People exchanged long notes, thank you cards and more. Today we live in a much different world. Long letters are hardly ever written, thank you cards are almost forgotten, and even e-mail has become passé, especially among the younger generation.  We’re swamped with ever more information, almost all of it short and almost all of it impersonal.  The internet is largely considered anonymous and while on one hand that gives people the freedom to express their ‘true’ feelings behind that mask of anonymity it also distances the connections we have with those who are close to us in different ways.  Internet friendships can be as strong as any ‘personal’ relationship, but without being face to face we lack inflection, touch and more.  Apparently studies have shown that people are more likely to ‘trust’ links that their friends have ‘liked’, but I think it’s much more than that.

As bloggers, Marcia and I face this anonymity every day.  Every comment on our posts is appreciated; in addition we check our page statistics every day or two.  While we don’t know 99.9% of the individuals who come to our site, we can see trends in terms of someone from a place in India or the Czech Republic or _____ who visits frequently.  We see (sometimes) whether they’ve come from another site, and what pages/posts of ours they’ve viewed.  We feel connected to them in some way.

On one of the spiritual forums of which I am a member there’s a facility to ‘Like’ people’s posts and comments.  I use the feature ubiquitously.  Frequently.  Even often.  I do the same on Google+ and other sites, although I’m there less frequently.  I only ‘Like’ posts I truly appreciate, but I cast a pretty wide net with that.  And in return I’ve received a number of messages from people thanking me for ‘Liking’ their posts.  They feel connected, supported, appreciated… and more.  To me, that’s what it’s really all about.  So, the next time you’re scrolling through your favourite sites, take a second with the mouse to offer an up vote, a +1, a Like.  It’ll make you feel better, and you’ll never know how much such a small action will be appreciated by others.  We might even start a new trend!!

Hugs,
Mike.

Happy Holidays, Everyone! There are a lot of different celebrations this time of year, but they all share the same general ideas… so whether you prefer Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Saturnalia, Solstice or something more personal (the Muslim celebration of Eid al-Fitr is on a different, lunar calendar), we [...]]]>

Happy Holidays, Everyone! There are a lot of different celebrations this time of year, but they all share the same general ideas… so whether you prefer Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Saturnalia, Solstice or something more personal (the Muslim celebration of Eid al-Fitr is on a different, lunar calendar), we wanted to wish you a safe and happy Holiday Season and a New Year filled with as much love, joy, peace, adventure, contentment, prosperity and excitement as you can handle!

As a gift, we’d love to share this with you: TEDxSF – Louie Schwartzberg – Gratitude

Thanks so much for dropping by our little corner of the ‘net!

Hugs,
M&M

(P.S.  Thanks to John for the idea for the image at the top!)

]]> http://www.wolfnowl.com/2011/12/happy-holidays/feed/ 0 http://www.wolfnowl.com/2011/11/understanding-criticism/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=understanding-criticism http://www.wolfnowl.com/2011/11/understanding-criticism/#comments Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:49:36 +0000 Mike Nelson Pedde http://www.wolfnowl.com/?p=5601 Hi Folks:

This is going to be a very short (for me) post, and is really just a pointer to some excellent articles written by someone else.  Photographer Alain Briot recently wrote a series of three articles for the Luminous Landscape, and while they’re primarily written for the understanding [...]]]>

Hi Folks:

This is going to be a very short (for me) post, and is really just a pointer to some excellent articles written by someone else.  Photographer Alain Briot recently wrote a series of three articles for the Luminous Landscape, and while they’re primarily written for the understanding of photographers, I think the points Alain makes have a broader reference to the criticisms we all deal with in our daily life.

You can find them here:

Understanding Criticism, Part 1: The Many Faces of Criticism
Understanding Criticism, Part 2: Responding to Criticism
Understanding Criticism, Part 3: A few words on perseverance

Okay, that’s it for now!

Hugs,
Mike.

(See, I told you it was going to be short… )

Happy 2nd birthday to our blog!  Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the US, it seemed appropriate to offer some thanks here as well.  After all, we have a lot to be thankful for.  So, in no particular order:

We Give Thanks for You: While [...]]]>

Hi Folks:

Happy 2^nd birthday to our blog!  Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the US, it seemed appropriate to offer some thanks here as well.  After all, we have a lot to be thankful for.  So, in no particular order:

We Give Thanks for You: While this little corner of the ‘net is our own window on the wider world, it wouldn’t mean much without you, our readers.  You’re really the reason we’re here!  Both of us are writers, but a writer without an audience speaks only to himself, or herself as the case may be.  According to Google Analytics, in the past 2 years we’ve had nearly 40,000 page views from over 15,000 different people.  That may be small by some standards, but we’re both amazed and delighted by your continued presence!

We Give Thanks for Family: Together we have the usual number of parents and an ever-increasing number of relations, from sisters and brothers to nieces, nephews and beyond.  We have two wonderful sons, and two wonderful nieces who are like daughters.  We also have two grandsons and one great-nephew who counts as a grandson too.  The little ones bring such joy to our lives!  There’s a saying that one can choose one’s friends but not one’s family; even if we could we’d stick with the ones we have!  Special thanks goes out to our son Nick, not only because starting this blog was his idea to begin with, but because he continues to do a lot of the ‘behind the scenes’ technical support for us.

We Give Thanks for ‘Family’:  Ever since the invention of Facebook, the words ‘Friend’ and ‘Like’ will never be the same again.  Nonetheless, our connection to others around the world through Twitter, Google+ and several forums has opened doors for us that would be possible in no other way.  Because of that we’ve made ‘friends’ with some remarkable people!  We give thanks for your presence in our lives!

We Give Thanks for Each Other: A few days ago we celebrated our 225^th Monthaversary of the day we met.  Earlier this month we celebrated our 17^th Anniversary of being a couple, and last month we celebrated our 9^th Anniversary of being married.  In truth, we celebrate every day together.  We are both truly blessed to have each other, and we acknowledge it in every way we can.  In the movie ’50 First Dates’, Drew Barrymore plays a woman who is incapable of making new memories, and Adam Sandler plays a man who devotes himself to having her fall in love with him every day.  We treasure all of the memories we have, but it’s easy to say we fall in love with each other every day.

And with that, we thank you for coming by; we’re serving (virtual) coffee and cake (two candles ¡¡ ) in the living room!!

Hugs,
M&M

A few months back I wrote a post called ‘Little Wisdoms‘ because I often get these short insights – sometimes when I awake in the morning and sometimes during the day.  Most of them are pretty short and almost all of them get posted on Twitter, but [...]]]>

Hi Folks:

A few months back I wrote a post called ‘Little Wisdoms‘ because I often get these short insights – sometimes when I awake in the morning and sometimes during the day.  Most of them are pretty short and almost all of them get posted on Twitter, but I’ve started making a collection in a Word file as well.  I’ve accumulated another stack of them so I thought I’d share them here.

Hugs,
Mike.

“Choice denotes preference, not judgment.  The secret lies in understanding the difference.”

“Learn to live from the inside out…”

“There is no ‘we’ in infinite.”

“Once I had many… Now they have all gone. The wind has carried them away.
Excuses…”

(and a response from Marcia)

“I once had few. Limited by surrounding darkness. The sun rose to brighten my days and lighten my life.
Choices.”

“The candle doesn’t send out its light; the candle IS the light that flows out from itself.
You are the candle.”

“The mistake is in believing that you create in the physical.  You create the physical.”

“I am awake and alive in a sea of divine intelligence.”

“Rather than seeking to create the perfect future, imagine living in the perfect present.”

“I always thought of time as moving from the past through the present to the future.  It isn’t; the present is continually unfolding, an ever-changing kaleidoscope.”

“Never try to explain wonder.”

“Perspective changes more than what I see; it changes what I am.”

“Enlightenment is the place where you realize you have always been.”

“When something you asked for a long time ago shows up in your life it’s not because it took a long time to manifest but because you’re now in a place of allowing it.”

“We ask you to accept, not a different reality, but a new way of living.”

“Everything in your life right now was once a thought, a fear, an idea, a dream…”

“If where you are won’t allow you to get where you want, change who you perceive yourself to be.”

“I need not find my place in the world; the world wraps itself beautifully around me.”

“My consciousness extends beyond my body, but what extends beyond my consciousness?”

“Fear doesn’t tether you to the ground; you tether yourself. Fear is the rope you hold onto.”

“The same rain waters all the flowers…”

“Enjoy preference without judgment.  Both are reflections of you.”

“Throughout my life I have planted seeds of inspiration inside my soul. As I grow within myself, these sprout and blossom.”

“Expectation IS intention.”

“To create change: rather than being determined, be joyful.”

“Creativity does not originate in the non-physical and then get translated into the physical.  Creativity IS, and in Being expresses itself in all dimensions.”

“Rather than trying to change what is, allow what you desire to replace it.”

“Can you see the beauty of you being the sun that gives light and life to the rest of your world?”

“Isn’t it the most wondrous feeling to accept your own perfection?”

“Live your answers.”

“Acceptance and letting go make each other possible.”

“Beliefs are choices made without awareness.”

“One principal difference between children and adults is that as adults we tend to forget we’re pretending.”

“What is the role of a healer in a place that doesn’t need healing?”  The answer, of course, is “To maintain the balance.”

“Reality creation is a Self portrait.”

“Each moment is complete within itself, owing nothing to the ‘past’, nor borrowing from the ‘future’

“Ideas are not ‘dead weight’, flat and inactive, but alive within the context of their own experience.  Allow them to open and blossom for you, inhale their scents and allow them to enrich your experience.”

“Ignore the mirror; what do you SEE?”

“Embrace that which you most fear.”

“The only imperfection is an imperfect view of the perfect, which is perfect in itself.”

“We’re not growing in strength, power or ability; we’re infinite.  We’re growing in awareness.”

“I used to think that for an idea to be expressed in physical reality, a way had to be found for it to be presented that would make sense.  It’s actually the opposite.  We’re aware of experiences in our lives BECAUSE they make sense.  Other valid experiences are not perceived simply because they lie beyond our perceptual abilities in the moment.

The process then is not one of finding a way that makes sense, but in having the idea, accepting that it does.”

“Some people act as if the value of their praise diminishes with use.  Be generous!!”

“The Sun can’t be the Moon, even if it tries…”

“You accepted without question for many, many years that all experience was outside of you, with no more reason than that it has been the commonly accepted belief.  Can you equally accept the opposite?”

“Physical reality exists to provide sensory experience.  Period.”

“I think of all my dreams and wonder, “How I can I ask for so much?” The answer comes, “Can you only ask for so little?””

“If you believe the world is flat and set off to find the edge, on returning to the beginning you can either accept the world as a sphere or tell yourself you sailed in a circle…”

“Every time I think, “I should intend _____”, I already have.”

“Physical reality is merely a perspective of the non-physical to which you have applied certain beliefs.”

“In looking for limits and discovering none do you accept it and change or keep looking?”

“You are always first, even when you think you put yourself second; it is Your choice to do so.”

“The mind is how the body thinks.”

“YOU are the model from which everything you create is made.”

“The freedom you seek has always been yours; it is the essence of that which you ARE. You need only bestow it upon yourself.”

“Make judicious use of your thoughts.”

“I am infinite Being.  Therefore, what I ‘have’ is only that part I allow myself to see…”

“As a multidimensional being it’s impossible to express all of myself in this reality.  However, knowing that, asking myself how limited I am or how to deal with that sense of limitation are the wrong questions.  How best to express the physical aspect of my infinity is the right question.”

“The ultimate irony? We seek ‘grounding’ by surrounding ourselves with objects that have no essential solidity.”

“Celebrate the uniqueness of today.”

“Which is more important: what you do, or what you accomplish?”

Last Friday Marcia and I were at the Cornerstone Café for their ‘Open Stage’ night, and it was wonderful to see this continuing parade of people get up in front of the microphone – this person singing and picking a guitar, this person doing some very loving [...]]]>

Hi Folks:

Last Friday Marcia and I were at the Cornerstone Café for their ‘Open Stage’ night, and it was wonderful to see this continuing parade of people get up in front of the microphone – this person singing and picking a guitar, this person doing some very loving slam poetry, the next person reading what they’ve written, and so on.  And sitting there in the audience, it occurred to me that if you saw these people on the street or in the elevator you’d never know that she loves opera or that he’s working on a novel or…

It got me thinking about a few different things.  The first was John Prine’s song, ‘Hello in There‘.  It’s a song he wrote mostly for seniors, and about the song he said:

“I wrote Hello In There on the mail route.

I’d heard the John Lennon song Across The Universe, and he had a lot of reverb on his voice. I was thinking about hollering into a hollow log, trying to get through to somebody – Hello in there. That was the beginning thought; then it went to old people. I’ve always had an affinity to old people. I used to help a buddy with his newspaper route and I’d deliver to a Baptist old people’s home where you’d have to go room -to-room and some of the patients would kind of pretend that you were a grandchild or nephew that had come to visit instead of the guy delivering papers.

That always stuck n my head. It was all that stuff together, along with that pretty melody. I don’t think I’ve done a show without singing Hello In There, nothing in it wears on me.” ~John Prine

The lyrics are:

Hello In There
©John Prine

We had an apartment in the city,
Me and Loretta liked living there.
Well, it’d been years since the kids had grown,
A life of their own left us alone.
John and Linda live in Omaha,
And Joe is somewhere on the road.
We lost Davy in the Korean war,
And I still don’t know what for, don’t matter anymore.

Chorus:
Ya’ know that old trees just grow stronger,
And old rivers grow wilder ev’ry day.
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in there, hello.”

Me and Loretta, we don’t talk much more,
She sits and stares through the back door screen.
And all the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream that we’ve both seen.
Someday I’ll go and call up Rudy,
We worked together at the factory.
But what could I say if asks “What’s new?”
“Nothing, what’s with you? Nothing much to do.”

Repeat Chorus:

So if you’re walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes,
Please don’t just pass ‘em by and stare
As if you didn’t care, say, “Hello in there, hello.”

The second thing I thought of was a photography project that Leonard Nimoy did a few years back.  Called ‘Secret Selves‘, essentially he asked people to come to his studio dressed as they perceived themselves to be, allowing their inner ‘secret selves’ a chance to be seen.

And, as thoughts in my head tend to ping-pong from one to another, the next thing I thought of was of a project I worked on several years ago.  I invested some sixteen years working on wildlife rabies research in southern Ontario with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources.  One aspect of that project involved setting live traps in an area of Toronto to capture striped skunks and raccoons, whereupon we’d vaccinate them against rabies (similar to taking your dog to the vet, except we provided ‘house calls’) and release them again.  One of the other people on the crew was setting up his traps one day when he was approached by two women, one of whom had a cat on her shoulder.  The woman with the cat asked what he was doing, and he explained the project, the aims and goals, etc.  The second woman didn’t say a word, but, since we baited the traps with sardines, the woman with the cat asked what would happen if her cat was caught in one of the traps.  It was a fair question; we’ve captured everything from Norway rats to squirrels, rabbits and groundhogs over the years.  My coworker explained that was no problem and showed her how to open the trap.

The next day the woman with the cat came back and found my friend again.  She came, she said to thank him for all the information he had provided because as it happened her cat did get caught in one of the traps and she was relieved at being able to rescue him.  “Oh by the way,” she continued. “The woman who was with me yesterday?  She’s the wife of the Deputy Minister.”  I had a similar conversation once with an executive from the Toronto Humane Society – a fact he mentioned at the end of our conversation.

So… I don’t know if there’s a point to all of this, other than when you meet someone for the first time you have no idea who they are, and that if you treat everyone with openness and respect, it really doesn’t matter.  And the next time you glance at someone on your morning bus ride, or in the lineup at the bank or wherever, take a moment to look him or her in the eyes and say, “Hello in There”.  Find out who they really are, inside.  And if you’re like Rita Chand (or us for that matter), you might ask them to give you a hug as well.

Hugs,
M&M