What Happens When You Share Your Abundance

Catherine M. Kasper, in her book, ANGELIC ABUNDANCE: TREASURE MAPS, suggests that September is the perfect month to focus on the abundance in your life. She proposes the following:

Share your abundance. If you feel moved to, from your heart, share your abundance, for everything you give out comes back to you in some way. Send something out into the Universe. Watch to see it come back to you in any one of a number of ways the energy of love can take form!



I wonder what would happen if you shared your abundance today by......

Thanking someone for making a difference in your life

Giving your waitress two or three times the average tip

Surprising a stranger with a bouquet of flowers

Telling someone you noticed their act of kindness

Making a donation to a charity

Leaving pennies in a store that has a "Need a penny, take a penny" dish

Baking cookies and taking a dozen to your neighbor

Paying for a stranger's cup of coffee or ice cream cone or sandwich .......

Please share your abundance today!

With Abundance, Love, and Light~~~

Jean

Prayer For New Life

Dear God,

May I be pregnant with the expression of a new being: someone more magnificent than I have been;

More powerful than I have been;

Healthier than I have been;

More alive than I have been;

More at cause than I have been;

More tender than I have been;

More compassionate and merciful than I have been;

More full of love than I have been;

More tolerant, less judgmental than I have been;

More at one with myself and with all others;

More close to You, dear Lord, than I have been.

Amen


~~~Marianne Williamson

Doing Well By Doing Good

Doing Well By Doing Good
William R. Brody

Excerpted from a speech delivered by Mr. Brody to the graduating class of John Hopkins University on May 26, 2005.

There is a man who I'd like to tell you about. His name is Sandy Greenberg. In his youth, Sandy was a very good student, but he came from a poor family. And so he went to Columbia University on a scholarship and there he met his roommate who also was receiving financial aid.

Now while he was a sophomore at Columbia University, Sandy contracted an eye disease that eventually proved to be glaucoma. But the trouble was, it wasn't detected early enough, and as a result he became legally blind. I ask you all to imagine for a moment having been sighted all your life, and then all of a sudden being faced, in a very competitive school, with losing so much sight you could no longer read. This is what happened to Sandy Greenberg.

But something else happened to Sandy that may surprise you. Sandy said that when he lost his sight, his roommate would read his textbooks to him, every night.

So I'm going to put you in that position, in a competitive school like Columbia, or Johns Hopkins. If your roommate had a serious disability, would you take the time to read textbooks to him every night, knowing the more you spend time reading textbooks to your roommate, perhaps the less well you might do with your other activities? That's not as easy a question as it first appears.

But luckily for Sandy, his roommate did. And as a result, Sandy went on to graduate with honors. He got a Fulbright Scholarship, and he went off to study at Oxford. He was still quite poor, but he said he had managed to save about five hundred dollars as he went along.

His roommate, meanwhile, also went on to graduate school. One day, Sandy got a call from him at Oxford. And his former roommate said, "Sandy I'm really unhappy. I really don't like being in graduate school, and I don't want to do this."

So Sandy asked, "Well what do you want to do?"

And his roommate told him, "Sandy, I really love to sing. I have a high school friend who plays the guitar. And we would really like to try our hand in the music business. But we need to make a promo record, and in order to do that I need $500."

So Sandy Greenberg told me he took all his life savings and sent it to his roommate. He told me, "You know, what else could I do? He made my life; I needed to help make his life."

So, I hope you'll remember the power of doing well by doing good. Each of you, in your own lives, will be faced with challenges, with roadblocks, with problems that you didn't anticipate or expect. How you are able to deal with adversity will be influenced, to no small extent, by how you deal with others along the way. What you get will depend a lot on what you give. And that's the end of the story of doing well, by doing good.

Ah! I almost forgot. You probably are wanting to know who Sandy's roommate was. I think you've heard of him. Sandy's roommate was a fellow by the name of Art Garfunkel, and he teamed up with another musician by the name of Paul Simon. That $500 helped them cut a record that eventually became "The Sounds of Silence." Recently, we had the pleasure of going to Sandy's daughter's wedding, and it was Art Garfunkel who sang as Sandy walked his daughter down the aisle.

When you get to be my age (which, for some of you, is really old, (though it doesn't seem so old to me anymore), you will find yourself beginning to ask, did my life make a difference?

That's the day of personal reckoning. And I think the only way to face it is to consider, every day of your life: How can I do something for somebody else? How can I give back to others? It may be teaching, it may be becoming a doctor, you may be successful in business - no matter what your career path, there will always be the opportunity to give back. The chance will present itself to be giving of your time, giving of your money, but mostly, to be giving of yourselves, of your own heart and soul.

My hope today, as you commence to new beginnings, is you will always keep your eyes open for those opportunities to give and embrace them as your best sure way of doing well.

An Empty Canvas

Life in itself is an empty canvas,
it becomes whatsoever you paint on it.
You can paint misery, you can paint bliss.
This freedom is your glory.

~~~Osho, Indian Spiritual Teacher

"LOVE..."

Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it.
Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.
Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.

---Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Who Has Seen The Wind?

Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow their heads,
The wind is passing by.

---Christina Rossetti

The Force of God

Rosemary Altea writes:

It is true that we cannot see the wind except when the leaves rustle on the trees, or when fields of long grasses dance, or tall poplars bend their backs. In other words, we can see the wind when it touches something. The force of God, the force of the universe, and the spirit world, is much the same. Sometimes it winds its way gently, softly, into our lives. Sometimes the force of it is so strong that it blows its way into our lives like a full gale-force tornado, knocking us off our feet and in a moment forever changing our way of being and thinking.

---You Own the Power

Catch and Release

Good Sunday morning to all! I was presented with several difficult challenges over the past couple of weeks which brought temporary discomfort and several empowering spiritual life lessons. I allowed myself to become entangled in the nets of others and, as a result, I felt trapped and restricted---Not a good feeling!

How many times in our lives do we allow the biting words and cutting actions (nets) of others to capture us and limit us? Is it as easy to remove ourselves from the nets as it is to allow ourselves to be captured by them? Actually, I discovered it was much more difficult for me to swim out of the nets than it was to swim in and proceed to entangle myself.

I struggled and strained. My human aspect was caught in the web of deception. It exclaimed, “Fight! Tug! Pull!” And, do you know what happened? It got worse. The moment I quelled my human-self and tuned in with my spiritual-self was the point when things began to improve. My spiritual aspect cried out, “This doesn’t make sense. You got yourself entangled! You know how to untangle yourself! It’s not that hard! Why are you making it so difficult?” Still, for a while I kept flailing and fighting. The saying “The more you struggle, the tighter it gets!” certainly applied.

“So, Jean, what did you do?” You ask.

I stopped.

I prayed. I meditated. I asked God to help me because I was so stuck that I couldn’t figure out how to release myself. The tangles were so tight that I could not loosen them. What a predicament! I needed help! I had temporarily fallen back to relying on my human understanding, rather than relying on God and His understanding.

I was directed to ask others to lift me up in prayer. And so, I emailed family and friends and asked them to pray on my behalf. The response was immediate! I was amazed as I saw email after email flood back to me, expressing love and support. Tears filled my eyes as my body, mind, and spirit felt the loving embrace of so many beautiful people….EARTH ANGELS. They gently whispered to me, “Let go, Jean. Let go. We have you. Let us help you.”

And so…..I let go.

And…..The nets fell away.

And…..I was released.

Allow me to offer up, as a heartfelt thank you to my prayer warriors, the story of a whale and its CATCH AND RELEASE. Consider yourselves nudged!

Thank you, my dear friends. May God Bless You!

With Gratitude, Light, and Love,

Jean

The True Story Of A Grateful Whale

If you read the front page story of the San Francisco Chronicle on Thursday, Dec 15, 2005, you would have read about a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines.

The fifty-foot whale was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her her tail, her torso and a line tugging in her mouth.

A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farallone Islands (outside the Golden Gate) and radioed an environmental group for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her - a very dangerous proposition. One slap of the tail could kill a rescuer.

They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her. When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed them gently around - she thanked them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives.

The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth says her eye was following him the whole time, and he will never be the same. May you, and all those you love, be so blessed and fortunate in the New Year- to be surrounded by people who will help you get untangled from the things that are binding you. And, may you always know the joy of giving and receiving gratitude.

Blessed Are They That Mourn

Today is September 1, 2008. One year ago today my dear friend’s daughter died…the day after she celebrated her birthday. Three times this morning, the angels directed me to the same quote in three different sources:

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

---Matthew 5:4

The following inspirational passage is an excerpt from a beautiful book, written by a mother who lost her child. BLESSED ARE THEY THAT MOURN; COMFORT IN THE ARMS OF THE ANGELS by Brenda Schmidt enables you to feel the loving embrace of God and the angels as your heart is held with healing compassion, light, and love. Brenda celebrates her ability to communicate with her son after his passing. She shares the joy of realizing her son continues to live on in spirit and celebrates the moments when she feels him and hears him. Yes, their relationship continues!

As a spiritual advisor and healer, I know that when we die our lives continue, just in a different form. Many of you have had experiences where you have felt, heard, smelled, and/or seen Spirit. Perhaps you just don’t tell others, preferring to keep it to yourself. Maybe you are afraid others will think you are really “out there” and fear being rejected. I encourage you to own your experiences and to give thanks for those precious gifts.

Grief changes us. It deconstructs, challenges, tempers, strips, hurts, breaks, and destroys.

And then,……and then, we emerge, after the ravages of grief with our broken hearts crying out to make sense of the unreal. There is new life. There are new beginnings. There is the dawn of the new day. We are forever changed.

May Brenda’s excerpt give you peace that passes all understanding and may you find comfort in the arms of the angels.

Holding Your Heart With Love and Light,

Jeanne

Brenda writes:

As a bereaved parent, I am on my own journey through grief. I give thanks daily for all the comfort I have received from God, his Angels, all my loved ones on both sides of the veil, my fellow bereaved friends, spiritual mentors and thousands of authors. Collectively, they have pushed me out of the black hole that is grief and into a new, whole and happy of life of peace and understanding.

I have learned that you do not “get over” the physical loss of your child or a special loved one, but you can develop a new, deeper, spiritual, visual---even physical relationship, that may seem impossible to anyone who has not pursued it.

To accomplish this, it takes time, millions of tears, sorrow, blackness, an unbelievable amount of pain and suffering, hard work, study, patience, understanding, compassion toward others and much prayer and assistance from above. This is “grief work.” Do it and the outcome can be astounding.

I will not say that I am no longer in grief or that I will ever be finished grieving the loss of my son. But the horrible emptiness has been filled with love and I am a new person. I develop and grow daily. The bad days are rare. The good days are better than ever. Life seems so different, so filled with love and so worthwhile. I know after seeing the darkest night, the light of life shines so much brighter.

It is my hope that each of you will also eventually find a level of happiness; although different from your life before grief; still rewarding in ways that are as yet, unimaginable.

In the last three years I have spoken with hundreds of people walking the path through grief and my heart aches as I absorb and understand a bit of the pain each one is living with. Each day I learn of tragedies more intense than my own. I am truly amazed at the capacity of the human spirit. There are too many people experiencing the excruciating pain of grief. Each individual has a special relationship to the one they have lost and each is unique in their suffering. We must find our own way out of these depths of sorrow. The climb is not easy, but with perseverance and help, anyone can survive the worst loss---which is their own.

My love and prayers from the bottom of my heart and soul go out to all of you that suffer the seeming endlessness of grief. There is hope. There is relief. There is peace. There is happiness. I hope that with these thoughts and exercises we can push you a little farther down the path---out of darkness and into the light.

Peace be with you,

Brenda Schmidt