Solstice

Today is officially solstice. Last night was solstice eve. My wife and I have been celebrating solstice eve for the last three or four years. It is a very special and holy time for us.

For us, it is almost like a New Years celebration. I really don’t understand why New Years is when it is. I suppose I could look it up, but I don’t really care that much. Anyway, for us it is like New Years. We light a fire in the fireplace, if we are home, and we sit in silence for a little while. Then we each write on a piece of paper the things we want to give up in ourselves and the things we want to take up. This is sort of like New Years resolutions.

When we are done, we fold the paper and seal it with candle wax. When the paper is sealed, we throw it into the fire. We each sit with our “resolutions” for a time in silence. Some years we share what we wrote and others, like this one, we don’t.

The Celts used to say that winter solstice was one of the “thin times”. What this meant was that it was a time when the veil between this life and the next is thin and those on each side can see into the other dimension. I don’t know about that, but it is a very holy time for us.

I don’t think it needs to be on winter solstice, it can be any time at all, but I encourage you to take a time like this. It seems much more that simply saying “next year will be better.” Develop your own little ceremony and look to the next year.

Namaste!

P.S. Tell me about your ceremonies or rituals. Let me know what you do to deepen your walk!

It is my hope that this site will become much more active and useful in the very near future. Your input will help to make it so. Don’t hesitate to give me your thoughts and wishes!

Now there is nothing wrong with any of those things, on the surface. Being overweight is bad for your health, of course, but there are lots of people who are over weight. There is nothing wrong with working in a fast food place, but not as your life’s career. There’s nothing wrong with living in a trailer park, and the family is nice, as far as I know, but most young couples look forward to owning their own home.

My point to all of this is that it breaks my heart when I see people like this, especially young people, who have no dreams, no goals. They want to just maintain what they have, put out as little effort as possible, and try for nothing better. They told me themselves that they have no dreams and no goals.

We are created to be reflections of the Infinite Source. We have the potential to do so much, to be great, and yet so many refuse to dream. How our world suffers because of this!

I have heard some people say that if everyone grew to their full potential that there would not be enough room for all of us to do such great things. The sad part is, I doubt we will ever have to worry about it. So many like this young couple have no desire and do not care to find out.

What about you? Do you have the desire to be better than you are? Do you have the desire to be all you can be?

Steve

Now, am I suggesting that you are all there is in the Universe? That you are God and there is no other God besides you? No, I am not suggesting anything of the sort. What I am suggesting is that the first step in finding the Divine is to recognize that the Divine resides in you.

So many times we wait for God to move this or pull the strings of that. It is like we believe God, the Infinite, to be some sort of cosmic puppet master. If that is your view, I suggest you take the words of Jesus, Buddha, or whomever it is you look up to as a spiritual guide and listen. They all said they basic same thing. God lives within you.

Let’s say that you want something to occur in your life, something that will bring about the sort of life you want to live. You pray for it and then you patiently wait for the Divine to grant your request. It doesn’t happen in the first day or two and so you pray again, wondering if perhaps, among all the thousand, millions of prayers, yours got misplaced. You wait a couple of weeks and nothing happens. You say to yourself, “it must not be God’s will,” and you give up.

Look at the stories in scripture! The people in those stories did something. They walked into the desert or they built a city, whatever it was, they felt the call of the Infinite, The Divine, to do something or other and they went out and started working on it.

Don’t sit around waiting for God to move. You move! You get out there and start working on whatever it is you want to have happen, knowing that the Divine is there to aid you, not do it for you. Find the Divine within and move out!

Have you ever needed to really clean your desk at home or at work? Papers were all over and you could hardly see the top of the desk! Maybe it was your workshop, or the kitchen. Whatever it was, it was a mess and you could hardly find anything. That’s how your mind gets!

Your mind has thousands of thoughts every hour of the day! No computer on earth could handle the constant overload that your mind does. However, it does need time to sort things our and clear the decks!

Would you like to have a clearer mind; a mind that is more inclined to the life you would like to have? Would you like to feel more in control, to make your life better? Spend some time each day in mediation!

Now I don’t mean that you have to sit on the floor like a pretzel and chant to the stars. You can meditate by just sitting quietly with a cup of coffee or tea. You can sit outside and listen to the wind. Meditation can take any form you like as long as you are quite and letting you mind calm down. Some people get very meditative while running or walking. Some are there while doing the dishes.

It doesn’t matter how you take this time, only that you do. The results will be a clearer, more focused mind. That will result in a better, more desirable life!

Steve

One of my Principles is that hardships happen, but I always have a choice. Sometimes it may seem as if the choice isn’t there, but it is. If nothing else, you can choose how you will react and think about any circumstance that comes into your life.

Let’s say that you are barely making it financially and the car just broke down. You can pay for the repairs, but it will leave you really short and there may be bills that don’t get paid on time. Now, I don’t know your situation, but I would guess that there isn’t much you can do to immediately increase your income. The money flowing in is pretty much static. Let’s look at the choices.

You can get down and let your thinking go in the direction of “poor me.” You begin to think that there is no way out, that your life is going down the tubes and you will probably have to walk the fifteen miles to work, your kids will have to give up their school activities, your house will be repossessed and your mate will leave you; this all in the same day! Your thinking just gets lower and lower and soon you can hardly move you are so depressed.

Or, you can decide that this is not going to get you down. You will look at your bills and see where you might shuffle things around. You can see if there is any overtime you might work to bring in some extra cash. You talk to your mechanic and see if he can let you make payments. If none of those things come about, you can just decide that this will not beat you, those things that your mind wanted to say would happen won’t happen and you will live through this.

Part of making the change to a better life is taking responsibility for your life and making choices that move you forward. If you want a more prosperous, successful life, you must look for it, you must attract it into your life. The law of attraction says that what you think about, you attract. If you think all those horrid things are going to happen, they start to become true. If you think that things will work out somehow, they start working out. It is as simple as that!

The next time life slaps you in the face, instead of crying in your beer, or milk for those who are health conscious, choose to look for the answers. Let the situation be motivational for you to change instead of tearing you down. Choose to look at how you can make things better and how you can learn from the situation. What does it have to tech you about yourself and the world around you. Your life will only improve when you decide that it will. Until then, you are at the mercy of the situation!

Steve

A Common Path

Don’t you wish that changing your thinking was as easy as changing your pants? Why you’d just have to go into your bedroom, decide which thinking you would like to put on, take off the old thinking, put on the new and away you go. Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy.

Most of our thoughts, I mean the thoughts that control how we live, are conditioned into us. They have become our governing thoughts with much conditioning and experience. Our subconscious mind is most active with these thoughts. Our conscious mind hardly notices them; it’s busy deciding about pants.

To change our thoughts, we need to replace the old thoughts with new. To do that either takes much experience, or pretend experience. Pretend experience? Most people call this envisioning. You put your mind to work thinking about the way you want to be, or the things you want to attract in your life. As your mind thinks about these things, you want to try to bring some emotion into it. Taste, smell, feel whatever it is you are envisioning. The more you think about these things and the more emotion you put into them, the more your subconscious mind believes these thoughts to be real experiences. The more real it believes them to be, the more they become your governing thoughts.

This sounds easy, but it takes some work and some real effort. The question is, do you think changing your thinking is worth the effort to do this? Would you really like to attract a different kind of life or are you willing to settle for what you have? I don’t know about you, but I am all for attracting the best life I possibly can!