Category Archives: Positivity, Optimism
God is in the Roses
God is in the roses
The petals and the thorns
God is in the Roses
Rosanne Cash
I’ve recently become a fan of Rosanne Cash. In fact I can pinpoint the time. I was driving to work about a year and a half ago when Sea of Heartbreak came on WEHM, really the only station that I listen too when driving. I’ve discovered more new artists there and if you like your music eclectic, I don’t think there’s a finer station to listen too. After hearing that one song I found someone new to follow.
The lyrics God is in the Roses is from Rosanne’s CD Black Cadillac. I have a hugely eclectic taste in music.
From Ozzy to Black Sabbath to AC DC.
From Bad Company to Pat Benetar To Kenny Chesney.
From Kansas to The Moody Blues to Elton John.
Well, you get the picture. It’s like with my choice in books. I read anything and everything that catches my attention.
I’ve heard God is in the Roses often and when I heard it again the other day I zeroed in on the send two lines:
The petals and the thorns
Storms out on the oceans
God is everywhere and it appears that Ms. Cash realizes this as well.
God isn’t just in the joy as in rose petals.
He is also in the challenges as in the thorns and the storms in the ocean.
It is sometimes more difficult to find God in the thorns and the storms, but if you REALLY look you can find him anywhere. It’s like I wrote recently with my column Sick and Blessed. God was in my sickness by pointing out how blessed I was to be surrounded by loving friends and family. When you’re faced with a challenge and you’re not sure how to cope, there is always one who is there. All you have to do is reach out.
HE will guide you to safe shores.
HE will remove the thorn. This line reminds me of Aesop’s Fable:
Androcles and the Lion.
There is a storm in this story as well as a literal thorn. The storm BEING the thorn in the lion’s paw. As you see, however, God shines through the storm in the end here as well.
God will ALWAYS come through!
God doesn’t punish!
God is Freedom as is told by Aesop’s story.
We simply have to remember this. Will you remember?
Be Happy! Be Well! Be Positive!
Blessings to you.
–
Chris
Stop Focusing On Your Challenges
In other words, when you focus upon the problems of others, you diminish your ability to help them. People believe that you’ve got to focus upon the problem in order to find a solution. And we say, no solution ever comes forth – it’s never inspired; you never recognize it, and you are never able to facilitate or achieve it – from your place of focusing on the problem. They are two entirely different vibrations. If you have someone who has many things going wrong and one thing going right, beat the drum of what’s going right, and let that be your point of attraction. If you focus upon their problems, you achieve vibrational harmony with something other than the Source that gives you solution.
— Abraham
Excerpted from the workshop in San Diego, CA on Saturday, August 23rd, 2003 # 349
Our Love,
Jerry and Esther
Abraham-Hicks
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
I have one challenge with the quote above. There is a negative word that I have removed from my lexicon. Can you identify it? If you know ANYTHING at all about me and if you’ve been following my blog for even a short time, the word should pop.
I haven’t given this quote, this notion any thought. What I have given thought to is the opposite, what Abraham says here:
People believe that you’ve got to focus upon the problem in order to find a solution.
Weird how we all get conditioned at an early age to believe a certain way. Now, however, as I’ve grown spiritually and emotionally I understand this to be true. I know there are people in the world who think:
Holy ______ (you fill in the blank.) This can’t be true. The ONLY way to resolve a problem IS to focus on it.
I used to believe that too. But no longer. You don’t need any more negative energy in your life then you already have.
–Why is it that you when you’re surrounded by negative people you decide to move away from them?
It’s because on SOME level you understand this is true. Why else would you understand that you have to remove negativity from your life by removing the negative people from your life? Now if you can extrapolate this message to other aspects of your life, wouldn’t it make sense that this can also be true of EVERY other part of your life?
I know! I know! You’re still thinking this is all new age mumbo jumbo. Ya know what though? This new age stuff is now in the mainstream. As I’ve said here multiple times, go into any bookstore and you’ll see whole sections devoted to Law of Attraction. Watch television. Go to the movies and you’ll see and hear lines of dialog that relate to Law of Attraction. Listen to music and you’ll here it. Go to the search box and type:
Two and Half Men
and
Melissa Etheridge into the search box in my blog and you’ll see some examples of this.
You CANNOT focus on the challenge for long without it entering your ENTIRE being, your ENTIRE soul. Why do you think that many times, when you stop focusing on what’s troubling you, that the answer arrives? It’s because all the effort is on fixing the challenge when you should be focusing elswhere.
Think about it. I bet you’ll understand this. I bet you’ve had the same experience. Haven’t you? The challenge becomes recognizing this is the solution and remembering to do so again the next time. Can do that? Remember:
…No solution ever comes forth – it’s never inspired; you never recognize it, and you are never able to facilitate or achieve it – from your place of focusing on the problem. They are two entirely different vibrations.
Be Happy! Be Positive! Be Well!
Blessings to you.
–
Chris
Setbacks–How Do You Deal With Them
Yup! Another SeededBuzz column today. And another from Bonita Kay Summers Intuitive Perspective. When You Don’t Get What You Want is a bit different as it is a video blog from Bonita. It’s the first time I’ve linked to a video here. I like her message as it is truly what I believe. One of the things that resonated deeply with me is what she said about The Universe knowing that we don’t need what we want when we seek it. God/Source/The Universe whatever entity you put your trust in knows beyond doubt what is best for us. As I’ve maintained here at my own blog since its inception is the fact that we have a predetermined set of circumstances that we simply cannot change, as in predestination. I truly believe this and if you look back at that link I just inserted with the word predestination I think you’ll come to see the value in understanding exactly what that term means to me and quite possibly to you as well. Another example in her video column that spoke deeply to me is where Bonita discusses about Messages, warnings and events. I have some really good friends who owned a business in the town I live in and for the longest time they kept the business open long past when they should have.
They’d been getting subtle messages from the universe that it was time to move on. They ignored those messages. Warnings came next. Then the event happened where the business was taken away from them. If they had heeded the messages then the event would not have occurred as it did.
Fortunately, as is ALWAYS the case, my friends are now in a much better place then they were when they owned the business. That’s another thing we all have to remember, that no matter what the challenge that arises in our lives, the challenge always makes room for something better.
Bonita also uses a phrase I’m fond of:
When a door closes, a window opens. We have to be cognizant of looking for that opened window.
We have to make a habit of looking for the window. Many of us are unaware that this even happens. We automatically think that when something we deem destructive occurs in our lives, that life as we know it has ended and there is no way out of the current sent of circumstances we happen to find ourselves in.
That can’t be further from the truth! God/Source only wants what’s best for us and what’s best for us may be a clearing away of the old to make room for the new. When something of a challenge arises we must be prepared to find the blessing. For there is always a blessing. As Bonita said in her blog:
When you don’t get what you want, trust that you’re on the right path. Trust that the universe knows better than you.
The Universe always has your best interest at heart.
I LOVE her quote where she says:
So often when we’re trying to make things happen and they don’t it may be a message that our lives are supposed to take a different direction.
If we can ONLY remember this and not only remember it, but put it into practice in our daily lives, can you imagine how much stronger we can be? How much better we can be? How much healthier we can be?
Let’s see if we can start down a new path where we recognize when a door closes and find that opened window.
Let’s see if we can start down a new path and recognize when something we want so badly that doesn’t occur and see if we can realize that something better is waiting around the next corner.
Can we do that? If so our lives will markedly improve.
Let’s make a resolution right here and right now that we will.
Be Happy! Be Well! Be Positive!
Blessings to you.
–
Chris
Following The Feet
Walking “in his steps.” The title of her column immediately turned me back to my own column called: Footprints in the Sand. After reading the column that Cecilia refers to called: In His Steps, I realize there are similar traits to my Footprints column and Elle Alice’s In His Steps.
Both columns discuss how footprints can be a metaphor for faith. In my column, the footprints are that of Jesus. In Elle Alice’s they are literally a metaphor for Jesus. Ell Alice writes:
Then I saw them: boot prints. Large boot prints of someone with sturdy steps in the snow. I stepped into the much-larger boot prints and was able to walk up the steep driveway by following the steps of my unknown hero with the big boots. I made it up to my studio and realized, Isn’t this the life of the disciple of Jesus? To follow in His steps?
We are both saying the same thing but we’re getting there differently, Elle Alice says the way to reach God is to follow Jesus, follow in his steps. When we can’t follow him, when we are in a downturn, when we feel as if the world is weighing us down, when we feel like giving up, that’s where my column can lift you up. You simply have to reach out, ask for help; that’s when you’ll be cared for, when you’ll be carried. In the poem Footprints, when the young man looks back over course of his life he sees that at his lowest points the there is only one set of footprints That’s because as the poem suggests:
when you see only one set of footprints,
it was then that I carried you.
If you can remember to always trust in the Divine, in God, in Source and follow in his footsteps as best you can and when you can’t walk another step to reach out and ask for help, you’ll be cared for during your entire time.
Don’t fret!
Don’t worry!
Reach out!
Follow the feet and all will be fine.
After I re-read what I’ve written here thus far, I’m reminded of a quote by Sir Isaac Newton:
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Let’s imagine for a moment that the dreamer in the poem Footprints, REALLY was carried by Jesus and he KNEW he was being carried. Who is a bigger giant then Jesus? I understand that I’m taking Newton’s comment out of context, but imagine just how far you COULD see if you were indeed given the opportunity to stand on the shoulders of Jesus? What WOULD you see? I wonder.
Your future?
Your past?
Would you want to see?
Could you change anything?
And if you could change something, would you want to?
All esoteric questions I know. But they’re questions worth considering. I’ll return to the initial topic here and leave you with this final thought once more:
When things look bleak, remember to follow the feet and reach out when you can no longer walk on your own. God/Source/The Divine is ALWAYS there!
Be Happy! Be Well! Be Positive!
Blessings to you.
–
Chris
Books as Inspiration
Bonita Kay Summers writes a blog called The Intuitive Perspective; and she recently posted a column Books for Practical Enlightenment. Seeing as I’m such a vociferous reader myself, I jumped all over the column and wanted to offer my view on using books not just to better ourselves but also as inspiration for my own blog.
I’ve blogged previously bout some of these books, but as with everything It can sometimes be helpful to revisit some of our old friends. As most of you who have been following me for sometime are aware, since I began writing this blog, my spirituality has become stronger and I look to more faith based books now then I have in the past.
I think one of my favorite authors in this field now is:
Timothy Keller
Having now read a few of his books I found him very refreshing. One of the things I look for when reading books in this genre is someone who doesn’t preach to you, someone who when you read you don’t feel like rolling your eyes and feeling uncomfortable, like they are invoking God in a way that some televangelists do. Don’t quite know if you understand what I’m getting at, but I DO know that you understand it when you see or hear it. Timothy Keller doesn’t do this. His books are spiritual without being religious. If you want to check him out, I recommend:
The Prodigal God
and
King’s Cross
Another author I discovered and the one book that left a huge impression on me last year was:
Rob Bell
His book:
Inspiration For My Blog:
I use several books as “Get Me Started” vehicles when I need quotes to move my blog forward. These resources have yet to let me down. Those who have been here awhile will recognize the titles but will not have seen them collected in a list:
1. Letting Everything Become Your Teacher
2. Change Your Life! A Little Book of Big Ideas
3. God Always Has A Plan B
4. A Book Of Bliss, Thoughts To Make You Smile
5. Inspiration For A Lifetime
Okay. So what do all of these books have in common? They all have short quotes, thoughts to inspire, thoughts to help you move forward. I come to these books when I want to find something to write about. I naturally have many resources I use for my blog but books still are at the top of my list. Seeing that my day job is at my local library this should come as no surprise.
Other Books That Inspire:
The Ultimate Gift
My Name is Memory
Siddhartha
The Alchemist
Way of the Peaceful Warrior
Tunnel Vision
As you see, books inspire me in many ways. They’ve always been an important part of my life and I read everything. I’ve said it here before and it bears repeating:
I’m so fortunate to have been able to bring my love of books and reading into my career and I can only thank the Divine/God for guiding me to the career I so wanted.
Be Happy! Be Well! Be Positive!
Blessings to you.
–
Chris
