ATOMIC CONTRAST

ATOMIC CONTRAST

I was invited recently to present a seminar in Hiroshima, Japan, the city devastated by the atomic bomb in 1945. As I approached the Hiroshima train station via the bullet train, I felt uneasy, wondering if the psychic shadow of the holocaust would linger unto this day. To my surprise, Hiroshima Station felt light and airy, passersby friendly and upbeat. As my host drove me through Hiroshima’s streets, I was impressed by the comeliness of the area. Clean rivers wended beneath many bridges, banks highlighted by cherry blossom trees in full bloom. Families picnicked by the riverside as children laughed and played. Was this the same city instantly burned to a crisp by the world’s most dire single act of man-made destruction?

At the center of Hiroshima resides a lovely park dedicated to the intention that peace prevail on Earth. Manicured lawns form a soft backdrop to fountains and a waterfall. At one end burns an eternal flame set atop a simple altar where people from all over the world pray and leave flowers as a symbol of their wish for peace.

There my host told me that seers had explained that in the wake of such massive destruction through warfare, the desire for peace has grown to an extraordinary degree. Recently the Dalai Lama was joined by Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nobel peace laureate Betty Williams for a conference, ceremony, and declaration to further world peace.

Contrast teaches and ignites the desire for better. Negative events generate intense motivation for their opposite. When you get what you don’t want, you are more highly motivated to create what you do want. A bad marriage moves you to have a better one. Physical illness amplifies your intention for wellness. A business failure induces you to create more success. When you experience what clearly disturbs your soul, the next question is, “How can I create what I prefer instead?”

Life rushes to replace death and healing seeks to erase wounds. Human beings can do an act as heinous as dropping an atomic bomb on their brethren, and horrific as that act is, life will return with greater fervor for well-being. With the exception of one skeleton of a building now used as a tourist attraction, Hiroshima has been resurrected. Not just as a city, but as a city of determined peace.

You and I, too, have had our moments of pain, destruction, and perhaps even decimation. Yet those experiences always give way to life, and sometimes greater life. May we all learn from the contrast in our lives, individually and collectively, so that we may build parks of beauty over the ashes of war.


The holiest spot on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love.
- A Course in Miracles

Alan Cohen
web:alancohen.com

Riding Out Life's Tsunamis

Riding Out Life's Tsunamis

It has been over a month now since a powerful magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan. The confirmed death toll is over 13,000 and continues to rise. In the midst of all the horror stories are occasional heroic tales of survival and rescue. One of the most fascinating is that of Susumu Sugawara.


The 64-year-old Sugawara is the owner-operator of a small boat named "Sunflower." After the massive earthquake and in view of the tsunami warnings being broadcast, he had to make a quick decision. Should he head for high ground on his island of Oshima? Should he put his boat to sea and try to ride out the fury? His chose to launch his boat and head for deep water offshore.


"I knew if I didn't save my boat," he told a CNN reporter, "my island would be isolated and in trouble." So he ran to his 42-year-old craft that can hold about 20 people at a time and went full-throttle toward the deadly waves that would kill people whose names and faces he knew. Then he saw the wall of water.


Accustomed to waves ten to twelve feet high, this one was fully 50 to 60 feet high. Sugawara knew that he and his boat could easily wind up at the bottom of the sea. He drove straight for it - "climbing the wave like a mountain," as he put it. And the mountain seemed only to grow bigger and bigger. There was a huge crash of water over him. Only then could he see the horizon. He had survived!


Sugawara made his way back to his now-devastated Oshima. For the month since, he has been a lifeline by making hourly trips to the mainland to ferry people and supplies. If people can help pay for gasoline, he accepts money. If they have lost everything and can pay nothing, he still welcomes them aboard.


I'm no sailor or boat captain. I don't know if the Japanese captain made the reasonable and right decision on that fateful day. I can only report and rejoice at the outcome.

He lived through the ordeal and is helping others with a sense of sensitivity to their suffering the rest of us can only admire from a distance.


Here is the lesson from this story for me: Against my hesitation and fear, it makes more sense to ride into the teeth of life's challenges than to run away.


There is a cash-flow crisis. There is an unexpected problem with a product. A major supplier has failed, or a major customer has bailed. Some executives kick into denial mode or ball up in a fetal position. Their companies fail. Leaders steer right into the problem and act with integrity to name and face the problem.


Or maybe the problem is far more serious. A spouse says the marriage is over. The police or hospital calls with a parent's worst nightmare about an arrest or accident. Maybe you get a diagnosis that sounds like a death sentence. Do you run and hide? Self-medicate with drugs or alcohol? Or do you steer into the teeth of the storm and pray for courage you have never had to display before?


"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face," said Eleanor Roosevelt. "You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next one that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

Rubel Shelly

Rubel Shelly is a Preacher and Professor of Religion and Philosophy located in Rochester Hills, Michigan. In addition to church and academic responsibilities, he has worked actively with such community projects as Habitat for Humanity, American Red Cross, From Nashville With Love, Metro (Nashville) Public Schools, Faith Family Medical Clinic, and Operation Andrew Ministries.

The Power of Gratitude

The Power of Gratitude

Realize the Power of Gratitude is very tied to the Power of intention in that both of these actions help to activate the Law of Attraction and energize your thoughts to stay grounded in the positive light. This Power of Gratitude as but one important aspect of creating the happiness and Abundance you deserve.

Through quantum physics we now know that everything there is, is vibrational matter. All matter is energy made up of sub-atomic particles and atoms. Through this unified energy field, our thoughts resonate and project. Based on our feelings, emotions and thoughts, this determines our vibration frequency that is broadcast from us out into the universe. This is our own unique, vibrational signal. It is the personal signature that we resonate that is answered and returned to us. This is how the Law of Attraction works, plain and simple.

Imagine we are magnets that are attracting to us Gratitude, sadness, happiness, grief, confusion, clarity, wealth and scarcity. We attract to us what we feel, think about, dwell upon, focus on and get emotional about. When we are not centered, we are scattered. When we are scattered, we send out a lot of mixed signals that become confused. If your life right now is confusing, look to see if you are centered in positive thought and actions.

What we send out, broadcast, is a frequency pattern that is matched, then returned to us by this Law that we all have. This is why it is so important for us to raise our vibrational frequencies and stay there, to bring more happiness, wealth and prosperity into our lives.

When we are using the Power of Gratitude , we are engaging the Universal Law s to work more for our well being. By becoming truly grateful, we begin to uplift our energy so it will resonate higher into a level of true peace and happiness; so then, this is what we begin attracting to us.

When you are expressing Gratitude , you are reinforcing the higher frequencies and keeping them up there. When you are not expressing, you are resisting. By not being grateful, you are creating resistance. Resistance will lower your vibrational frequency. Then you are experiencing life in disharmony again. Resistance places the focus on what you do not wish to experience rather than letting things go.

Real Gratitude is based on accepting the way things are then moving on. Grief is a real thing, yet when we do not begin excepting the way things are, we can't move on passed this until we except this loss in our lives, then we are able to move on. Moving past the resistance is to begin being grateful for what you have.
The Power of Gratitude is a blessing for us. It can be cultivated and nurtured until it becomes who we are. Gratefulness is more than just a state of mind, it is a state of being we are all capable of reaching and becoming.

The state of resistance has us living in the past and afraid of the future. The Power of Gratitude allows us to live in the now, the present. This is a state of grace. The past is gone and the future, some of us live in fear from has not arrived. Isn't life a lot easier, realizing that right now you can be grateful about letting go if this resistance you created and being at peace right now?

It is our perceptions that can either make, or break our life. Would you rather experience heaven, or hell? This should not be a choice, yet it is one that many people make every moment of the day.

Realize that you are the author of your life and you create you very own reality. Everything unfolds around you, the way you perceive it to be. If you are living in darkness, fear and scarcity; then you are dragging the past into this moment with you.

Develop Gratitude by practicing it. Letting go of behavior patterns and ways you respond to life can seem like an insurmountable obstacle to do, but it isn't. When you begin to fall into old resistant patterns, it helps to stop yourself and begin thinking of anything you are truly grateful for, then giving thanks to that. Think of something else to be grateful for and give thanks to that. Make a list of things you are grateful for and keep it with you to pull out when resistant seems to pull you down.

Developing a Power of Gratitude within you will allow you to maintain a higher vibrational frequency and attract a well meaning life. It is not enough to want this; you have to make it happen. This is the only way to use the Law of Attraction with intent as a regular part of your life to expand it.

Joseph Rettig

The Law of Attraction - It's About Frequency

The Law of Attraction - It's About Frequency

Many of us have heard of the Law of Attraction – that like attracts like. However, many are confused about what this really means.

In my experience, like attracts like means that like frequency attracts like frequency. My high frequency attracts the things I want and my low frequency attracts the things I don’t want.

The question then becomes, what raises or lowers frequency?

What Lowers Frequency?

Anything that makes you feel down lowers your frequency. Here is a list of what I have found lowers frequency:

• Intent to control - When your desire is to control your feelings, as well as others and outcomes, you are operating out of your wounded self, which lowers your frequency. Even positive thoughts can lower your frequency when your intent is to control rather than be loving to yourself and others.

• Negative thinking, Resentment, Judgment and Self-Judgment - The lies you tell yourself from your ego wounded self lower your frequency. Feelings of fear, anxiety, depression, anger, guilt, shame, jealousy, and envy all have a low frequency, so any thought that comes from false beliefs and that creates these feelings lowers your frequency.

• Resistance - The fear of being controlled by others, by God, or even by yourself, creates resistance, which lowers the frequency

• Alcohol – While people might convince themselves that they raise their frequency when drinking, this is not true. Just because it may lower your stress, doesn’t mean it raises your frequency.

• Prescription drugs – Since prescription drugs are alien to the body, the body has to work to deal with them, which causes a lowering of frequency.

• Recreational drugs – A few recreational drugs – the kinds of drugs that indigenous people used infrequently to connect with Spirit – can raise your frequency for a short period of time. But frequent use has the opposite effect.

• Food – Fresh, whole organic food has a high frequency, but processed foods have a low frequency and lower the frequency of your body.

• Lack of exercise – Our bodies are meant to move; not moving lowers your frequency.

• Lack of sleep – It is hard to have a high frequency when you don’t get enough sleep.

• Lack of water – Dehydration creates huge stress on the body, which lowers the frequency.

• Negative environment – It is often hard to maintain a positive attitude when in a negative environment. We are affected both positively and negatively by others’ frequency.

What Raises Frequency?

• Intent to learn – Our free will to choose our intent in any given moment is the most powerful choice we have. Choosing to learn about loving ourselves and others, rather than choosing to protect/avoid/control is the major way we have of raising our frequency. This is why, when we think positively from an intent to control, in an attempt to manifest what we want, we are often not successful, as anything done from the intent to control – even positive thinking – lowers the frequency.

• Positive thinking – This might seem like a contradiction to the statement above, but it is about intent. When your intent in thinking positively is to be loving to yourself and support your highest good, this raises your frequency. When your intent in positive thinking is to control others and outcomes, then it lowers your frequency.

• Food – Fresh whole foods that are in alignment with your metabolism and that support your health, raise your frequency.

• Exercise – Exercise that you love and that makes you feel alive raises your frequency. Forcing yourself to do exercise that you don’t like lowers your frequency.

• Getting enough sleep – Sleep is vital for feeling good enough to be open to and connected with yourself, others and your spiritual Guidance. Being disconnected from ourselves lowers our frequency.

• Drinking enough water – Being fully hydrated is vital to keeping your frequency high.

• Being in a peaceful environment – Being in nature, listening to music, and being around loving and accepting people raises your frequency.

• Love – Love and peace are the highest frequency feelings, so being loving to yourself and others, which creates inner peace, raises your frequency.

Like does attract like, so focus on keeping your frequency high and you will manifest your dreams!

Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

Learned helplessness

Learned helplessness

The American psychologist Martin Seligman’s foundational experiments and theory of learned helplessness began at University of Pennsylvania in 1967, as an extension of his interest in depression.

A person should be able to walk away from an abusive relationship, for example, or voluntarily quit a stressful job.
A psychological condition known as learned helplessness, however, can cause a person to feel completely powerless to change his or her circumstances for the better.
The result of learned helplessness is often severe depression and extremely low self-esteem.

Learned helplessness can be seen as a mechanism some people employ in order to survive difficult or abusive circumstances.
An abused child or spouse may eventually learn to remain passive and compliant at the hands of his or her abuser, since efforts to fight back or escape appear futile.

Learned helplessness results from being trained to be locked into a system. The system may be a family, a community, a culture, a tradition, a profession or an institution.

Initially, a system develops for a specific purpose. But as a system evolves, it increasingly tends to organize around beliefs, perspectives, activities and taboos that serve the continuation of the system. Awareness of the original purpose fades and the system starts to function automatically. It calcifies.

Some experts suggest learned helplessness can be passed on through observation, as in the case of a daughter watching her abused mother passively obey her husband’s commands.
The daughter may begin to associate passivity and low self-esteem with the “normal” demands of married life, leading to a perpetuation of the learned helplessness cycle.

Child abuse by neglect can be a manifestation of learned helplessness: when parents believe they are incapable of stopping an infant’s crying, they may simply give up trying to do anything for the child.

Another example of learned helplessness in social settings involves loneliness and shyness. Those who are extremely shy, passive, anxious and depressed may learn helplessness to offer stable explanations for unpleasant social experiences.

A third example is aging, with the elderly learning to be helpless and concluding that they have no control over losing their friends and family members, losing their jobs and incomes, getting old, weak and so on.

Paulo Coelho

http://paulocoelhoblog.com/