Tag Archives: Spirituality

He Says, She Says…

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Greetings, dear reader!

We watched ‘Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone‘ again on TV last night, and although we’ve seen it (several times) before, what always intrigues us is Harry’s transformation from the world of the mundane to the world of the magical, and even more that these two worlds co-exist.  Both Marcia and Mike have had many ‘magical’ experiences in their lives, and so this week we thought we’d talk about living a ‘magical life’.

Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View.

Mike’s Writings VIII

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Hi There:

Please click this link first.  I’ll wait.

Welcome back.  I’ve recently received several more ‘Future Me‘ posts from last year, so I’m going to continue on from my last writings post…

Love,
Mike. Continue Reading →

Poetry Corner – Description as Mood Food

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Hello Dear Ones!

Last week on Poetry Corner I wrote about each of us being the poem in our everyday lives. Expressing our individuality through our uniqueness. Taking pride in all that makes us special, allowing us to stand out in a crowd – even if only a crowd of one – ourselves.

I also touched briefly on my pleasure at reading quality description – stand alone paragraphs, phrases and poems that ignite the reader’s senses to flare into action. A well written piece can actually activate a physical response as though the body itself was experiencing the event first hand. Craftily complied phrases about food should have the mouth juices flowing. Expressions of tactile origin can have you scratching an itch or brushing an invisible spider from your shoulder or rubbing your fingers and thumb together as though that rose petal truly lay between them. Continue Reading →

Mike’s Writings VI

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Hi There:

Please click this link first.  I’ll wait.

I haven’t posted any of my writings for some time now; no reason except a lack of time, and as the saying goes, there are 168 hours in the week – what you do with them is up to you!  Anyway, I’m going to add some more of my archived writings for the reason mentioned above, but I think there’s some good stuff in there.  Before I do I wanted to add one comment.  I used to do a fair number of talks on spirituality and other things, and before I began my talks I always mentioned two things.  First, I asked the people in the audience to put away their pens, paper, computers, etc. and just listen, because if your brain can’t do two jobs at the same time.  If you’re trying to write and listen at the same time, one or both are going to lose out.  Second, I told everyone not to believe a single word I said… at least not until they each took the time to absorb the information and decide for themselves, “This much I like, this I can agree with.  This part I’m not sure about; I’m going to have to think about this for a bit.  This part isn’t for me, at least not for now.  I’m going to set this part aside.”  I think it’s vital that each of us do that with everything we experience.  It’s very easy to accept something as true because someone said it or you read it in a book or saw it on the ‘net or the late movies, but what’s more important, at least to me, is to decide how this information resonates within you.  Seth said:

“You must realize that any idea you accept as truth is a belief that you hold. You must, then, take the next step and say, ‘It is not necessarily true even though I believe it.’ You will, I hope, learn to disregard all beliefs that imply basic limitations.” ~ The Nature of Personal Reality, session 614.

Of course, you’re welcome to disagree with both of us!

Love,
Mike.

Here’s a look at my writings: Continue Reading →

Poetry Corner – Poem or Poet?

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Hello Dear Ones!

What do you think of when someone mentions poetry? Love? Longing? Beauty? Pain? Maybe even humour – particularly if you think of limericks:

There once was a man from Tumeric
Who liked his stew spicy and very thick
He sprinkled in some hot pepper, then more
Took a swallow, then swore
What he said can’t be used in a limerick.

The use of words is the storyteller’s and the poet’s craft. The tools of the trade are a writing instrument and a source on which to write. No expensive purchases or overhead costs are needed. The heart, the brain and a goodly skilled ability to utilize language is fundamentally all that is required. That’s it.

A storyteller uses his or her skills to weave a tale that captures the reader/listener and hold them spellbound till the final word. Description and storyline are essential. Believable characters are mandatory. Dialogue is optional. There is a beginning, most often a climax and then an ending to each story.

A poet has two options: to tell a brief story using the same structure as the storyteller, but in fewer words; or to take one descriptive element – what would be a paragraph to a storyteller – and grant it the grace of standing alone. Continue Reading →

Marcia’s Meanderings – Light & Joy

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Hello Dear Ones! Glad you stopped by…

The past two posts: Poetry Corner and He Says/She Says have focused on the topics of Light & Joy and Being the Light. This mind of mine was enjoying the energy from these inspirational topics. As a result my meanderings today are still being directed to the subject. Perusing my book shelf for something solid to consider and discuss had me opening texts at random. Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth was the hands down winner.

Rather than attempting to paraphrase Tolle’s work, I thought to inspire you from the master himself. (Please note the italics are mine.)

When you say, I enjoy doing this or that, it is really a misperception. It makes it appear that the joy comes from what you do, but that is not the case. Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you. The misperception that joy comes from what you do is normal, and it is also dangerous, because it creates the belief that joy is something that can be derived from something else, such as an activity or thing. You then look to the world to bring you joy, happiness. But it cannot do that. This is why many people live in constant frustration. The world is not giving them what they think they need.

Then what is the relationship between something that you do and the state of joy? You will enjoy any activity in which you are fully present, any activity that is not just a means to an end. It isn’t the action you perform that you really enjoy, but the deep sense of aliveness that flows into it. That aliveness is one with who you are. This means that when you enjoy doing something, you are really experiencing the joy of Being in its dynamic aspect. That’s why anything you enjoy doing connects you with the power behind all creation.

The majority of my days and the hours within those days are filled to overflowing with joy in all I do, those with whom I interact and in all encounters wherever I am in any and every given moment. It is exciting, then, when I see Tolle describing the feelings I have, that the joy is coming from within me – rather than me looking to find joy from those around me and the things that I do. It explains so much. Source fills me with the gift of joy, the light of my being radiates out, touched with the joy of Source and illuminates me, those I interact with, and the chosen corner of this physical world we are experiencing. Rather than looking to find joy outside of myself and to soak it into me as a sponge would draw in water, the joy comes from inside of me – and it is unlimited. A sponge is limited in its ability to absorb. Excess dribbles out ineffectually. Joy radiating out from within is unlimited and reaches out to all within its scope. The gift of knowing the joy within, of watching the effect it has on those with whom I connect, fills me to overflowing with the greatest and deepest sense of rightness. The more I live my life in this fashion, the deeper the sense of joy – the richer the gift that I and those around me are blessed to experience.

Selfish? Not entirely – though there is that aspect to it. The more joy I allow in, the greater the joy I feel. The greater the joy I feel, the more I am able to share. The more I share, the happier I am and the richer my relationships and life experiences. It becomes a cyclical spiral of energy feeding in upon itself and moving the spiral upwards, higher and higher into the furtherence of more and more joy.

I stated above that the majority of my days and the hours within those days are lived from this place of joy lived outward into my reality. I’m not perfect at it. Better and stronger and more at ease with the connection to this way of being, yet not perfect. It is now easier and easier, though, to recognize those moments when I am not living life from a place of joy – of concious choice to be happy and to fill myself up from within with the power of Source – God, the Universe, All That Is. I get a gnawing feeling within my being – it feels like fear – that antsy, restless, nervous sensation that something’s not right. I get this odd churning near my solar plexus that is trying to convince me that I should be afraid of something. When I look at it, I realize there is no logical reasoning for such an emotion to be filling me up with trepidation. There is no anger inside me. Anger, for me, is a misguided response to the deeper and truer emotion of fear. It is almost as though I’m a little girl and I have an angry parent near me. Not knowing what I may have done wrong to cause them to be angry, I have a sense that I am about to be spanked or punished for something in which I took no part. It is the frightened little girl feeling that tells me that I am not connected to Source, not living from a place of joy.

Holding on to this feeling only feeds the feeling and leaves me weak and vulnerable and of no use to myself, let alone anyone outside of me. I get jittery, begin to question whatever I’m doing in the moment and have even second guessed myself to the point of immobility. It has taken many years of trial and error, questioning and listening to myself, and my Self, to help me to be aware of this feeling and to know what it is I can do to let it go.

What is it that works for me? I smile. I smile at myself. I smile at my Self. Knowing myself to be a perfect child of the Universe – not a human child with baggage carried into adulthood – is what has me remembering that I am a being of light. My inner light – like the light of a single candle – is perfect in its unique beauty. My inner light, like that of a candle, dances and flickers with its own personal response to the world around it. Put two or more candles together in the same room and none of them responds the same way as the others. Each dances and undulates and flickers to a beat, a flow, a reality of its own. So too does the light within each of us. We dance our own joyous dances moved by the music, the flow of the Source of Universal energy bubbling up from within us as we allow it to fill us and to radiate out to the world.

Knowing how amazingly wonderful I feel when I am connected to Source, how could I possibly want to return to the feelings of human weakness of fear and insecurity? Yet it does happen – the return to those yucky feelings. Oddly it can sometimes take hours for me to recognize that I’ve returned to this place of emptiness and restless lacking. Though I seldom go back to my past  in thought – it may be helpful now in the sharing to tell you it used to take me months to get beyond this feeling of fear and restlessness. There was even a time when I spent years living in this zombie-like state. I shudder at the remembered life before this one.

Today, the joy I feel in the knowing that I now have it within my ability to release that restricting series of limiting emotions adds to the joy of my days and the minutes and hours of those days! The source of that power, that ability is not mine. It is in drawing the joy, the light and the love of Source, of God, of the universal love of All That Is up from within myself and allowing it to first fill me and then to radiate out through my eyes, my words, my actions.

Light and Joy. What a way to live!

In Light and Laughter and Love,

Marcia

He Says, She Says…

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Greetings:

A long time ago Marcia and Mike lived in a world where they both believed there were positive and negative forces in the Universe.  In that world it was common to practice (and to teach others) than when doing any meditative or astral work one should create a bubble of white light around him or herself in order to protect the meditator from those dark forces.  This idea came into focus for them one night at a talk given by a very interesting gentleman.  His talk had all of the right words, but the underlying energy behind them was really not good.  Mike’s response to this was to create a circle of loving energy surrounding all those present; although he had his eyes closed at the time, Marcia saw the speaker’s response to this was to step outside of the circle, remove some herbs from his bag, and with  few words…well, you get the idea.  When Marcia and Mike went home that night everything was fine, but the next day Mike woke up with a high fever, delerious.  He couldn’t walk, could barely stand, and he spent the next few days in bed while Marcia ministered to him.

It was shortly after this event that Marcia and Mike received some teaching on a New Way of Being.  Rather than surrounding themselves with a loving white light, or drawing it in from above or below as others had suggested, they were told simply to imagine a candle in the center of their bodies.  They were to simply allow the light of this candle to flow out from them, gently, in all directions.  They were then to allow this loving light to grow and spread until they literally ‘became’ the candle, and this loving light was flowing out from their entire being.  A candle doesn’t reach out to touch others with its light, it simply is itself, and in being itself its light spreads and illuminates.  In this way the light comes from within, not from without, and rather than being a bubble of protection to keep away those dark energies, it simply transforms them into that same loving light.  As the saying goes, “All of the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of one small candle.”

Well, time went by, their knowledge grew and their understandings of the nature of All That Is changed, and they began to see the world and the universe in which they lived as much bigger, more open and more dynamic than they had once imagined.  As a part of this process they were able both to see the role they had once played in the event above and how their own beliefs had created it.  Furthermore they were able to surrender their beliefs in those negative forces.  As such, the idea of ‘being the candle’ no longer held the same significance for them.

Until one day, several years later, they came up with a different idea about ‘Being the Candle’.

Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View

Poetry Corner – Being the Light

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This week Mike and I have been discussing the subject of being the light – radiating our own inner light out to the world around us. It may, or may not, become a topic for our next He Says/She Says post … yet it sparked my search for poetry related to light and joy in life. I was quickly successful when I picked up a recent ‘find’ at my very favourite Victoria book store – Russell Books.

From Gifts from a Course in Miracles:

Light and Joy

You are the light of the world.

The light is in you.
Darkness can cover it,
but cannot put it out.

Why wait for Heaven?
Those who seek the light
are merely covering their eyes.
The light is in them now.
Enlightenment is but a recognition,
not a change at all.

There is no difference
between love and joy.

Joy has no cost.
It is your sacred right.

You can exchange all suffering
for joy this very day.
Practice in earnest,
and the gift is yours.

In Light and Laughter,

Marcia

Mike’s Writings V

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Hi There:

Please click this link first.  I’ll wait.

Welcome back.  I’ve had several new ideas come to me lately, but I haven’t yet taken the time to write them down.  I wanted to add in some more information from last year because often when I read stuff from ‘Future Me‘ I find that what I’m writing about now is very similar to things I wrote a year ago.  Sometimes I get upset at that because I feel that I’m still going over the same ground over and over again and not getting anywhere, but other times I figure that I’m now looking at these issues from an entirely new perspective.  As Tom Brown Jr. says, it’s important not to get caught in the rut of ‘the same old thing’.  So, in my recent writings I’ve been writing a lot about joy and experiencing life as joy, and when I look back a year I see that I was writing about joy then too.  Each time I approach this it seems like a new discovery.  Maybe it is…

Love,
Mike.
Continue Reading →