MIRACLES, ESCAPES, & SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION
Self Help
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The Power of Now in Relationships
ARE RELATIONSHIPS DOOMED
But of all the powerful things found in the book, there was one paragraph in his chapter on Enlightened Relationships that stood out above all for me. He said:
“Unless and until you access the consciousness frequency of presence, all relationships, and particularly intimate relationships, are deeply flawed and ultimately dysfunctional.“
Tolle goes on to write, “they (relationships) might seem perfect for a while, such as when you first are in love, but invariably, that apparent perfection gets disrupted as arguments, conflicts, dissatisfaction, and emotional and even physical violence occur with increasing frequency. It seems that most love relationships become love/hate relationships before long. Love can then turn into savage attack, feelings of hostility, or complete withdrawal of affection at the flick of a switch.”
WOW, “This is considered normal”!
Tolle says most couples go back and forth between these two polarities of love and hate, giving the individuals both pleasure and pain. Many times the couple becomes addicted to these cycles. Over time, the balance between these two polarities is lost and the negative, more destructive cycles occur with increasing frequency and intensity, until eventually, the relationship finally collapses!
Now here is the scary part! You might assume that if you could just eliminate the negative, destructive part of the cycles, the relationship should be able to blossom. Yet Tolle says that is not possible! They are mutually interdependent. In other words, even the positive falling in love part is a piece of the dysfunction because that is what leads to the jealousy, addiction, and other negativity. You can’t have one without the other. The otherwise positive experience of falling in love often turns to neediness, clinginess and eventually, total dysfunction!
Now the question becomes; Is there a way out of this endless loop of positive and negative aspects of relationships that could lead to something other than dysfunction or total collapse of the relationship? Tolle says yes. He says you must change the relationship from an addictive relationship to an enlightened one. You’ll have to read the chapter on relationships in the book to get the full essence of his answer, but basically, you have to remain in the present moment. When you are not present, your thoughts or mind-stream is usually dominated by the past. This is where we have a tendency to blow up or exaggerate past mistakes and misdeeds of our partner, or at the very least, we relive the past in our minds over and over, so that the pain of the original misdeed haunts us again and again. Tolle says ” As humans have become increasingly identified with their mind/thoughts, most relationships are not rooted in Being (Presence) and so turn into an unending sources of pain.
He goes on to say, “Millions are now living alone or as single parents, unable to establish an intimate relationship, or unwilling to repeat the insane drama of past relationships. Others go from one relationship to another, from one pleasure/pain cycle to another, in search of the elusive goal of fulfillment through the union with the opposite energy polarity. Still others compromise and continue to be together in a dysfunctional relationships in which negativity prevails, for the sake of the children or security, through force of habit, fear of being alone, or even through the unconscious addition to the excitement of emotional drama and pain”.
However, if you can simply stop and remain present at the time that you start to feel some of that negativity, or an urge to argue, be jealous or defensive, that Presence can create a gap in the mind-stream from which true love can emerge. Tolle says true love is a state of being, deep within each of us, not dependent on some other body, or some external form. It is realization of oneness and has no need for reciprocity. It allows you to look beyond form and separation and feel the oneness of all. So if you can use this Presence in your relationship to overcome the dysfunction, you may be able to find true love there.
This book is truly genius. Be sure to Read It!
Black Men and Prostate Cancer
HOW ONE MAN HAD TO DEAL WITH PROSTATE CANCER
You may be wondering, what does this guy know about Prostate Cancer? Is he a Doctor? Does he have some type of degree in medicine? Well the answer to both of those question would be no! However, if had asked me if I had prostate cancer and have I had prostate cancer treatment, sadly, the answer to those two questions would be yes!
There is nothing I can say or describe, or write about how it feels when you first hear the doctor say; ‘Sir, we have your biopsy results back, and You have Cancer!” They are devastating words filled with dread, misunderstanding and fear. Somewhere in the back of your mind, there is a glimmer of hope that says you can beat it. Later, I was to learn that Prostate cancer has one of the best cancer survival rates. However, when you first hear that term “cancer” – your life changes forever!
This comes from the Prostate Cancer Foundation from 2012, the latest year that data is available:
“Of the more than 242,000 American men who will be diagnosed with prostate cancer and the 28,000 who will die as a result of it this year, a disproportionate number of African-American men will be represented in each group. The disparity is eye-opening: African-American men are nearly 1.6 times more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than Caucasian men and 2.4 times more likely to die from the disease.” See Full Article here:
That is not a pretty picture for African-American men. So I wanted to share my experience with this process in hopes of helping those of you who may be facing prostate questions in your life now. The technology to treat Prostate Cancer is changing and upgrading quickly. So I don’t claim to know the best treatment. Nor can I tell you what you should do if you find yourself in this same position. But what I want to do here is to take you through my journey from detection through life after treatment, so that you will at least have an idea of what to expect!
Beginning in April, I will post three articles on my prostate treatment journey:
1. The Buildup
This could also be called the Detection/preliminaries. I’ll take you from my first PSA test that showed that there might be a problem, all the way through the biopsy, which was far and away the worst part of the ordeal for me!
2. The Treatment
Here I’ll take you through the process I used to choose the right treatment, Then we’ll discuss the surgery I included in my treatment to implant seeds in the Prostate. Finally, I’ll cover the countless Radiation Treatments that were included !
3. The Aftermath
The last article will focus on Life after treatment – the good and the bad and how I have handled it.
This is a must read for all Afro-American men. I hope you will join me and pass along your comments!
See Below a book by Patrick Walsh on Surviving Prostate Cancer. Walsh is well-known for his work on nerve sparing surgery that revolutionized Prostate surgery. Although I am not the biggest proponent of surgery for prostate removal, the book covers all aspects of prostate treatment, so pick it up if you would like more information!
Conversations with God – Book One
DOES GOD TALK TO YOU!
“Do you really want an answer to these questions or are you just venting? ” And from that one question grew 3+ books worth of Conversations with God!
Even as I write this, it sounds pretty incredible or weird, especially for someone like me that prides himself in being a fairly intelligent, logical thinking human being — yet I was intrigued.
Do you ever think about why we take the words of the Bible as being sacred and true? Why do we automatically accept that Moses and the other writers of the books of the Bible had direct access to God? Weren’t these words really coming to them in their minds also? What about the prophets? How do we know that their words came direct from God, or were they just making them up?? The early Catholic Church looked at all the old sacred writings and it was the church that decided which would go into the Bible and which did not – How do we know that they had a direct access to God to make that choice? Doesn’t that take a bit of a leap of faith?
At any rate, I decided to read on. Even the author challenges God about these same things. How could he know that the ideas and concepts in the book are not just made up or figments of his own imagination. God’s answer was to take the ideas and concepts and apply them to your life. If they work for you, what does it matter how you got to them?
Some of the concepts that I found worked for me are as follows:
1. Feelings are the language of the Soul! If you want to know what’s true for you about something, look to how you are feeling about it!
2. God is the observer – not the creator. It is not God’s function to create or un-create the conditions and circumstances of your life. You create them through the Power God has given you through your thoughts. Thoughts are creative! And God stands to assist you in the Power he has given you!
This is of great importance for minorities. Could the thoughts we have about our situation be the main reason it is so difficult to pull ourselves out of it? Can we change our conditions by changing our thoughts and attitudes toward our lives?
3. There are two base emotions or energies:
a. Fear is the energy that contracts closes down, draws in, runs hides, hoards, harms.
b. Love is the energy which expands, opens up, sends out,, stays, shares, heals.
Are you making your decisions out of Love or Fear! Every action taken by human beings is based in love or fear.
4. God’s purpose in creating human beings is to know himself as God. There is no way for him to do that except through us (Humans). We are made of the same stuff as God (spirit) with all the same properties and abilities. (Isn’t that what Jesus said?)
5. Upon entering the physical universe, you relinquish your remembrance of yourself (as spirit). Your job on earth is not to learn but to re-member who you are. (Could that be why we look for answers to spiritual questions as we grow older).
6. Pain from an outer situation results from the judgement you have made about it. Remove the judgement and you remove the pain!
7. Hell is not a place that God sends you. “Yet there is an experience of the soul that is so unhappy, so incomplete, so less that whole, so separated from God’s greatest joy, that to our soul, it would feel like hell.”
8. “All that is required is to know this. For you are the creator of your reality, and life can show up in no other way for you than in the way in which you think it will. You think it into being, This is the first step in creation. God the father is thought, Your thought is the parent which gives birth to all things.
This is a very powerful book with very powerful concepts. I would encourage all who are so inclined and think about spiritual things and ideas to read it!
Think and Grow Rich – A Black Choice
Think and Grow Rich – A Black Choice, is a book by Dennis Kimbro and Napoleon Hill. It turns out that when Napoleon Hill, the famous author of the original “Think and Grow Rich” passed away, he left a manuscript aimed at the specific economic problems of Black Americans. The Napoleon Hill Foundation selected Dennis Kimbro to complete it.
The book covers many of the Laws and ideas covered in Napoleon Hill’s earlier classic works, Think and Grow Rich and The Laws of Success. The story goes that Hill received these Laws from some of the greatest and most successful industrial titans of the 20th century. Early in his career as a novice reporter, Hill was able to set up an interview with the great multimillionaire steel magnate, Andrew Carnegie. At the end of the interview, Carnegie asked Hill if he would be willing to give 20 years of his life interviewing the most accomplished and wealthiest Men and women of the day to probe for the secrets of their success. Hill said that he would, and Carnegie used his immense standing in the world to arrange interviews for Hill with great industrialists like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, Alexander Graham Bell, F.W. Woolworth, and the list goes on and on. From these interviews, certain characteristics of successful people appeared over and over. It was these Laws that Hill wrote about in his classic works and in Think and Grow Rich – A Black Choice!
Some of the Laws covered in the book include:
- Law of Thought
What you think about grows in your experience. The more you think about the bad things in your experience, the more likely they are to continue appearing in your experience. If you want to change your life experience, you have to change your thoughts to more positive things. Kimbro says you must figure out what your Major Definite Purpose is in life and Concentrate your positive thoughts on that. Good fortune nurtures good fortune. It is the starting point of all achievement!
2. Law of Cause and Effect
Thoughts are causes. The conditions in your life are effects. Never forget that. Kimbro quotes the scriptures and says Whatever you send out into the world in word, thought, or deed, will sooner or later return to you. All truly successful people know this!
3. Law of Use it or Lose it!
Practice makes perfect! Kimbro says there is simply no achievement without practice, practice and more practice. To achieve any standard of excellence, to accomplish anything extraordinary, you must aim high and be disciplined and willing to devote long hours to the task at hand. Intelligent practice is the price of proficiency and the secret to attainment!
4. Law of Correspondence
Your External World is only a mirror or a refection of your internal world. This means that even if things are not going so well for you, you must pretend that they are because if you feel bad inside, that is what will show up in your physical world outside. This means that we are not powerless to our circumstances. We can improve them just by changing the internal mood we bring to the world. In other words, you must bring a success consciousness to everything you do!
5. Law of Substitution
The only way to rid yourself of a negative thought is to substitute another one for it. It is very difficult not to think of something that has entered your consciousness. That is because your conscious mind can only hold one thought at a time. So you can’t say to your self that I am not going to think about this anymore. You must substitute a more positive thought for the negative one!
6. Law of Belief
I have always been amazed by the idea of confidence. Why is it that just because you think you can do something better, you actually can? Everyone has felt this! Kimbro writes that The Law of Belief states that anything you believe with feeling will become real in your life, whether it be a positive belief, such as a goal or specific desire, or a negative belief, such as a self-limiting idea. Belief is the key to the basic mind power that turns dreams into realities and the mental into the physical. Make sure all your beliefs are positive and moving you in the direction of your goals!
7. Law of Attraction
Your thoughts are magnetic. Like attracts Like. If you are always moody, negative, judgemental, etc., you will also draw those types of people into your life. On the other hand, if you are nice, successful, kind, and generous, you will draw those kinds of people in your life. Success breeds Success. Remember that!
8. Law of Compensation
Although it may take time, you are rewarded for your good and punished for the bad. That is how it works! As you give, so shall you receive! Give willingly, without thought of what you will receive in return. And your life will be better for it!
These Laws boil down to one idea – Change your thoughts and change your life. Think of yourself as a human magnet and draw the ideas, circumstances and people you need to be successful to your doorstep!
Here are Napoleon Hills other Success books you might want to look at or purchase:
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