Category: Blog

Effective Marketing Dollars

No matter what you’re doing, there’s a good chance you could increase your potential with a bit of effective marketing, and if you’re in business, you probably get bombarded by lots of invitations to “invest” your hard-earned money into clever marketing campaigns, promising unbelievable returns on your marketing investment.

The minute you buy a domain your email starts filling up with offers and promises of being rich and famous and you start getting emails and calls from strange email addresses and phone numbers with representatives from some of the best companies, like Google, Go Daddy, Facebook, and Microsoft, speaking broken English insisting you’re not using your technology correctly, but they can fix all your problems in exchange for your credit card information.

Hopefully, you become aware of the tech marketing scams that are out there before you get taken for a ride by these clever imposters.

The best way to get a handle on your marketing dollars is to remember who your target market is. If you haven’t already, create a person who represents the most people in your target market with all their idiosyncrasies and characteristics, assign a physical appearance to this person and give him or her a name. This is your customer avatar.

The identity of your customer avatar, let’s say his name is Corey, helps you stay on track when you’re approached with marketing schemes. You can ask, “What is the likelihood that Corey will be the recipient of this marketing campaign? If not, you can easily pass on the opportunity because it clearly does not reach your target market.

Community organizations and non-profits will approach you for support in exchange for exposure or endorsement. If you are able you should participate in some of these opportunities because they build good will in your community, but you should remember to ask yourself if their campaign is going to reach your Corey. If the answer is no, then pass on it, unless of course, it’s your nephew’s little league team.

Keep in mind that you are looking for a balance between what you spend and the promotional payoff that can be measured in additional sales, increase in business, or attracting new clients. As you manage different campaigns and closely monitor your results, you will find which programs benefit you in the best way, and you can have a sense of expenditure vs. benefit. Having this information gives you something to use in comparison. If a program does not fare well, stop it.

You need to consider three areas regarding a potential marketing effort, they are:

1 Will it reach your target market (Corey)?
2 Will it impact and benefit your position?
3 Will the investment compare to the projected results?

If the answers to 1, 2, and 3 are on track, the marketing plan is worth a go, if not, pass on it.

You need a marketing plan. If you don’t have one, you need one and you should set aside a certain percentage of your revenues (10 to 40%) to invest in marketing. If you do not have a marketing plan in place now (or soon) don’t be surprised when your revenues dwindle and you find them severely deteriorating over time. If you wait too long, the damage may not be repaired via marketing.

Whoever you are, whatever you’re doing: You need exposure to new people and potential markets. The new blood will help to sustain your continued success. No business succeeds in a vacuum.

What to Expect as You Awaken

Everyone’s individual awakening is separate from anyone else’s, so there is no need to compare the intricacies of the evolution of others – and keep in mind, this is not a competition – as your evolution is as individual as your DNA, probably more so. That said, there does appear to be similarities among those who are consciously allowing their evolution to take place.

Prior to awakening, a great deal of focus and energy is preoccupied with temporal things, the day to day frustrations and details of life as we find ourselves struggling to get by when our concerns are emotionally charged by the news and media as we worry about employment, interpersonal relationships, transportation, meal planning, home maintenance, raising the kids, caring for pets, and keeping up appearances.

1. Peaceful Perspective

As your awakening begins to expand and you begin to evolve, the immediacy and importance of day to day life decreases as your awareness is lifted to a higher perspective. Rather than seeing yourself lost to the struggle for survival, or a victim of life, you are able to find a sense of peace in an aerial perspective, seeing life as it is, and a more calm sense of awareness and allowance when you are able to view the big picture. From this vantage point you can see life as balanced and integrated as your life becomes more rich and fulfilling.

2. Tolerance

As you let go of things outside of your control and allow life to be as it is, without taking anything too personally, life takes on a different flavor. You don’t hold tight to personal expectations or rigid ideas of how things should be. Tolerance is the idea of allowing things to simply be. You have a growing sense that everyone has their own right to make their own way and see things from their own perspective, only expecting the same from others but understanding that few can accomplish this state of mind, and that’s okay, because after all aren’t we all only doing the best we can with what we have?

3. Abundance

When we are focused on struggle, all we can see is our competition for limited resources. As you awaken, you begin to realize resources are not as limited as we once believed. Once you start seeing things in life, circumstances, people, things and lifestyle as energy, you entertain the idea that by adjusting your energetic state or frequency, the details of life within your proximity simply match your personal vibration. You realize the better you feel, the better life goes for you. By finding the best feelings you raise your state to a frequency which attracts all the best things in life and you take an active role in manifesting your desires.

4. Love

As you awaken, love takes on a new paradigm that is unconditional. It takes time to move from the concept of the selfish type and style of love we learned to expect to unconditional love. It is an evolutionary process, moving from contractual expectations to a love that persists regardless of circumstance or the actions of anyone outside of you. You are becoming an unconditional lover, one who is compassionate and understanding of others, loving them regardless of the people (even those considered evildoers), their actions, beliefs or their imperfections. You have empathy for those who have yet to awaken, without requiring them to conform to any ideals you have.

5. Creativity

As you continue to do your own inner work, you will find an increase of intuition and creativity that allows you to pull ideas and make connections in ways that seem otherworldly. This is a natural aspect of allowing your connection to the source of all life to permeate your being, specifically your thoughts and feelings. You develop a sense of knowingness with an increased capacity to resolve uncomfortable situations, circumstances and challenges as they arise.

6. Everything Gets Better

You find a growing tendency to experience good luck and clever coincidences as more and more of life seems to be going your way. In fact, life is going your way because you are allowing yourself to flow with the current of life, rather than to fight or swim against it. You begin living the good life as onlookers think you are just lucky or living a charmed life, but you realize you are just finding your happiness within and avoiding negativity (including negative self thoughts), which brings your life a balanced goodness.

7. Wisdom

Your growing awareness of life, the laws that govern the universe and the specific role playing of the peoples who populate our planet, gives you an alternate perspective of life, its meaning and the condition of the world as it is. This awareness will have subtle, yet impactful affect on the growing consciousness of the world. You become a humble, yet powerful source of life and substance, often without saying a word (or very little, if anything at all). Your vibrational state affects the world around you in positive ways.

8. Nowness

You are seeing the value in the sense of nowness. You are less concerned about the things that went before as you increase your ability to live in and focus on the now. Less and less will you find yourself worrying about the past or hoping for a better future as you are increasingly living in the moment and enjoying all this life has to offer: Now.

You can start to allow your conscious evolution to take place now. Actually, now is all there is. Of course, much of these ideas will appear to be silly or inconsequential if you have not experienced it first-hand, and that’s okay.

May you experience all the good things in life that are waiting for you.

Ready to Meet Aliens from Outer Space?

I come across a lot of first-hand information from clients, some of which may be hard to believe, yet I get access to information that is so much bigger than I can believe. I cannot reveal information that couldn’t be obtained any other way due to the penitent privilege, which means that I must maintain the highest degree of confidence due to my clerical vows.

I can tell you this: When a client discloses an unbelievable story as they are conveying an intimate experience, I do not challenge them. I simply respond to them just as if every word they have spoken as truth, because I must assume this experience must have seemed very real to my client. My function is not to judge whether anything is true or not. My job is to help this person deal with the issues of their life that haunt them in an effort to regain control of their lives and get back on track.

After my work is done, I must admit that I query the big G (google) just to see if anyone has a similar story. You can only guess at the results – and you’re probably right – if the thought occurred to you that more often than not I am able to uncover corroborating data.

In some cases, I have been distracted from my mission by entertaining the compulsion to research some of these topics, and this has led me to ask the question, “Am I ready to meet aliens from outer space?” I also wonder if you are

Ready to Meet Aliens from Outer Space?

Even though I am unable to disclose specific information, I can confirm some of the craziest-sounding stories and theories that can be found on the Internet may not be falsified or a collection of rantings by less-than-sane individuals, though I am not taking a specific position on the matter. I am the first to admit that I do not know anything to be true or not true, because I am regularly instantly sobered by having access to new information, causing me to take time to reconsider my view on what is possible.

IF the information I have been privy to is accurate (note I am conceding a huge IF, because I am not an expert, nor do I feel compelled in any way to seek out this information personally, as this subject is contrary to my personal calling and message), it might be a good idea not to completely disregard the idea of there being aliens from outer space, and to consider that there is life on other planets.

A friend of mine, who has since passed, proposed,

“If there’s life on other planets, then I’m sure that He must know. And He’s been there once already and has died to save their souls.” ~ Larry Norman

Some people insist that solely based on mathematics, other life is highly probable within our galaxy. Intelligent life, similar to those of us who make up earth’s human population, is less likely within the Milky Way. On the other hand, when you factor in all the other galaxies, the existence of intelligent life is not only probably, it is a mathematical certainty.

Of all those other intelligent life forms existing elsewhere, is there a more advanced civilization who may have mastered the idea of interstellar travel? Probably.

If you were able to remove all the limitations that have been all but hard-wired into your mind, conditioning you think the idea of intelligent alien life is nothing short of science fiction and were able to process the information, like a computer (which was not inhibited by being pre-programmed with similar limitations), you would conclude,

1. There is life on other planets.
2. One or more advanced life forms outside our galaxy have mastered interstellar travel.
3. Aliens visited planet earth prior to our appearance.
4. Aliens have visited our planet periodically since our arrival.
5. While we may well be the most advanced life forms in the Milky Way, we are primitive in comparison to other more advanced life forms outside our galaxy.

The question remains, are we

Ready to Meet Aliens from Outer Space?

I am not totally committed to any belief one way or the other. My position is simply

It is what it is.

Regardless of whether there is life on other planets or not, it does not concern me. I don’t need t believe one way or the other and I do not feel compelled to rationalize any conclusion either way.

If it turns out that I am able to meet aliens from outer space (or if it turns out that I already have), I will process the data as it becomes available.

In the meantime, if there is going to be an space alien introduction, I will be hoping the result will be peaceful and enlightening.

I am okay either way.

How about you?

Vulnerable and Honest Director’s Cut

Up ’til now, you’ve seen the theatrical version of your life. Maybe it’s time for another look at this work for the new expanded, vulnerable and honest director’s cut.

If you desire to grow and expand into the best version of you, you need to take a look at what lies beneath the surface. Like a tree, the condition of your soil, the vastness of your root system and vital nutrients (fertilizer) all contribute to what is realized topside. Beneath the surface is the dirty work of self improvement, exposing our vulnerabilities.

Tracing our hidden root system with honesty and transparency can be frightening, looking the ghosts and demons of our past in the eye, studying our less than honorable moments and connections, opening old wounds, administering healing is the deep work.

Let’s face it, no one’s perfect, especially me. But this digging deep, working with the fragile infrastructure of my life, helps me to take out the trash and preserve, honor and cherish the antiquities that I treasure, more precious than diamonds. Left buried and un-treated these hidden wounds fester, leading to disease, deterioration and death. Tending to them openly and honestly, risking the sensitivities or our most vulnerable self allows us to turn them into energetic nutrients encouraging massive new growth, expansion and the juiciest fruit you’ve ever imagined.

This no-holds-barred approach to the deep work helps us find the beauty in what we may have discarded or buried as trash, while maximizing the nutritional elements of each buried experience that otherwise promotes rot and decay. This work allows us to look back at less than favorable moments in our lives with gratitude and joy.

We all are imperfect; yet hold ourselves to unbelievable levels of perfection, often punishing ourselves for missteps and failures. An honest review, looking at our darkest moments, broken dreams, betrayals, denials, punishments (of ourselves or others), denials, sacrifices, suffering and despair can be the most difficult work, but little else is so effective. On the other side of this work is an embracing of life as it is, with all of its jagged pieces, which if held in the light of love, sparkles like diamonds in the sky.

We live in a world with a forced set of parameters that are all imaginary. We are raised and forced to believe we are restricted by limitations imposed by nothing more than invisible self-policed thought processes, effectively imprisoning our experience in this life. These life restraints are challenged and the chains broken as we are set free to explore our untethered possibilities.

When you are able to break open all those tender wounds and face your demons with vulnerability, you can endure the entire process and look back with a sense of frivolity. After all, from an alternate high perspective, someone, somewhere, our higher self or God is looking at all this from a completely different point of view. And from this perspective, we are able to see things as they are and even laugh at ourselves as if watching a slapstick comedy.

Being able to find the humorous moments in the tragedy of our life can be as easy as changing the soundtrack. The background music can change most any scene from dark drama to lighthearted comedy. When you are able to look back on those moments, with respect, honor and a smile (if not a full on laugh), you are finding joy in a life that is. This is the key to true and lasting happiness.

Lightening up and loosening our restrains, allows us to find the joy via our newfound lighthearted approach to life. There is no need to make life so hard.

Aren’t we all in this together? We are all just actors playing parts in each other’s life teleplay.

Though some are born with an innate ability to play out their parts, most actors have trained and honed their skills, to learn how to take a fall without hurting themselves. It takes the same skills of agility and strength to be a death-defying stuntman/stuntwoman or a physical comedian. The soundtrack determines whether we gasp in fear, or laugh our ass off, watching the scene play out.

You’ll be surprised how much valuable story line was left on the cutting room floor. You can re-edit the theatrical version by filling in between the lines, enjoying new camera angles and changing the soundtrack in your Director’s Cut of your life.

Get ready to approach life with a new sense of vigor for all the fun that lies ahead on your enlightened journey.

Be A Game Changer

I work with movers and shakers, people who have an intention to make a contribution to the world. They don’t just talk about it. They are willing to take massive action and do things that make a difference. If you’re one of these people you can be a game changer and make the world a better place.

People who engage and execute an intention to make a contribution leave a mark on the landscape of the world we live in and some of them have names that ring a bell in our conscious mind. There is a familiarity when we hear their names and we feel good about them when we hear them, names like Marie Curie, Johannes Gutenberg, Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, Albert Schweitzer, Leonardo da Vinci, Oskar Schindler, Maria Montessori, Tenzin Gyatso – the 14th Dalai Lama and Henry Dunant.

These are the kinds of people who don’t just talk about making the world a better place, they take action to make the world a better place. Sure, they each thought about making a difference, maybe even talked about it, but at some point they found the reason to move to action (even if it was outside the constraints of their personality type or style).

Your reason – why you want to see something happen or change – can motivate you enough to take action, even if it is counter-intuitive to your base personality type. If your why is strong enough, you are more motivated to do something about it.

Think about the names of people who had such a powerful why, that they would let nothing stand in their way or prevent them from taking action, even if against the odds. Names that come to mind are Thomas Edison, Diana, Princess of Wales, Paul the Apostle, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, Nikola Tesla, Helen Keller, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander the Great.

Criminal Game Changing

Making a significant impact, being willing to make a stand and passionately do whatever it takes to see your results come to life, is criminal. Though it may not be a crime, you will need the basic components necessary to be found guilty of committing a crime: means, motive, and opportunity.

Means: You have the ability to do it.

Motive: You have the desire to do it (why).

Opportunity: There is a chance (circumstances that allow you to take action) you could do it.

People who have had the means, motive, and opportunity and actually take action are not necessarily successful, but they have taken the chance. They seized the opportunity, regardless of what obstacles were in the way. Did they risk failure? Certainly; and many of them did fail on their first (and/or subsequent) attempts, but their why (motive) was strong enough to push them through the tough times.

There has never been more opportunity for you to take action on that thing that you want to see come to fruition. Every day, we see someone with a computer or cell phone impact the world by taking a chance when the opportunity presents itself. People take action every day, but only the chance taken at the right time ad place goes viral. Even so, it would have never happened had someone not taken the chance.

If you can take action when you have the means, motive, and opportunity, you could be among the people who have become the heroes who inspire us to also make a difference.

You can be a game changer, like Abraham Lincoln, Mother Teresa, Louis Pasteur, Martin Luther King, Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, Oprah Winfrey, or (INSERT YOUR NAME HERE).

Isn’t now the time for you to take action?

You can do it. You want it.

You can do it. Do it.

True Conspiracies

When we first hear someone ranting about some conspiracy theory, our initial reaction is to toss such an idea aside as rubbish, because to even consider such an idea would be preposterous. In most cases, if the conspiracy were actually true, it would shake the very foundation of ideal which have been firmly planted as the foundation on which many of the things we believe are built.

So, we cast it away, regarding it as some lunatic ranting some crazy ideas and continue to forge ahead with our lives, believing that such things could not possibly be true.

Then there are the conspiracies we once thought were preposterous, with new information and time to consider the cover story. Now the cover story doesn’t seem to line up with the facts, and the conspiracy theory was far closer to the truth, if not completely spot on.

Then what?

If we look back at some of the conspiracy ideas we once thought to be ridiculous, that now appear to be more factual than we once thought, we find that things are not always as they appear, or how they were presented to us and may be unbelievable truths.

For instance, the idea that President Roosevelt had any knowledge about the Pearl Harbor attack in advance and actually allowed it to happen, when we had the full capability to prevent the attack would be enough to shake the very foundation of everything we believe. There is simply no way to entertain such a thought about a country to which we pledge our allegiance. Yet, today, more people believe the conspiracy is true, and fewer people are likely to believe the cover story as documented in the history books.

Likewise, fewer Americans are confident that the assassination of JFK was truthfully documented and now are more likely to believe that the truth was covered up.

Other government conspiracies are also beginning to be unable to withstand the test of time, even though they continue to print the cover stories in history books, and teach our youngsters in our schools what should be believed, favoring myth over truth. After all, all you naysayers aren’t going to outlive our youth, and these young ones are far more likely to think their elders are a little kooky, or a bit off.

Our youth might even feel sympathy for their elders who believe in silly conspiracy theories, much like we did, when we were younger. And over time, I think, the system hopes to outlast most, if not all, of the accusations of conspiracy.

If enough time has passed, there is simply no way to prove or disprove something, as there is not enough information to come to a logical conclusion, like the pyramids being built by aliens. While more and more people believe that being built by preindustrial man is highly unlikely, there is not enough evidence to accurately conclude they were built by otherworldly means. But there are a growing number of people who think the alien conspiracy is more likely a scenario than what we are expected to believe.

As time marches on, more and more Americans are starting to ask questions. Questions which are not being answered sufficiently enough only breeds more question, doubt, lack of faith and a tendency to believe that something sinister is afoot.

Since many of the cover stories were presented to us by our government, it can help but make us wonder if the government really has our best interests at heart.

For instance, we are now realizing that the government created Lyme disease, allows the pharmaceutical companies to keep us ill for profit, is protecting top secret technology at Area 51, which may be alien technology as the government continues to “debunk” any indication and continue to cover up any ideas that there might be life on other planets.

Then there are other conspiracies that are seeming to be more true than that which we are expected to believe, like alternative free energy technologies being suppressed, chemtrails being sprayed overhead for some nefarious reason and the truth about 9/11, just to name a few.

Maybe we are living in a world where we desire to know the truth and nothing but the truth, where truth does not exist.

I know there are many things I believed to be true, that I no longer believe, including information regarded as conspiracy theories. I know that I believe things to be true for me today, but I cannot speak for tomorrow, for this thing I do know:

I know a great many things, though I really only am doing the best I can with what I have now. The next moment may be a completely different world on which I stand.

I live each moment in anticipation of new information, which may bring confusion or clarity. I realize that just as I am doing the best I can with what I have, so is my neighbor, my government and all the power it wields.

Who knows? If I were in charge of trying to manage 325 million people in America, I might follow the same path of logic in an effort to prevent chaos, and I might even resort to employing fear tactics to accomplish a sense of confidence and trust in my country to keep them safe and secure.

It is what it is, so I will find time to embrace the idea that everything is connected, relax, love, and enjoy the show.

My wish is that you, too, may find peace in the chaos.

So it is.

Every Thought Is Real

Every thought you think is real. Even your wildest imaginings have already happened somewhere, sometime. Your original thoughts are like memories from vastness of all that was, has been and ever will be.

Think about this: Every thought, hope, dream or fear, anything you have or could ever possibly imagine is not a fantasy but has happened or will happen and you are only tapping into the consciousness of it because you and I, all of us, are connected to the matrix which holds all information of the past, the present and the future, all without the limitation of our minds or time and space.

When we experience what might seem like a random thought, it is a memory from this massive matrix construct which is not limited by time and space. Often in our efforts to rationalize the thought, we color it, shape it, look at it from different angles, and use our imagination to fill in the blanks, such as faces and places that seem familiar to us.

Sometimes something appears in our thoughts to be so real, yet is simply an image from the vast matrix of everything that has been, is or will be and some of us are most sensitive to the thoughts and images that appear from the matrix.

What do Moses, John the Baptist, Muhammad, Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce and Gene Roddenberry have in common? They all shared a sensitivity to the unlimited resources provided via the matrix and were able to interpret the information with a certain degree of accuracy.

Invariably, someone will raise their hand at this moment and ask, “What about Stephen King?” As strange as it may sound, if you follow this train of thought, all those horrible images, monsters and stories, were, are or will be real, somewhere.

What about fairies, unicorns and fairy tales? All real.

Also following this idea is the concept of other galaxies and dimensions which are also connected to the same grid. So someone who sees something that is so far removed from any concept we might have restricted to our timeline and proximity of our planet, could be completely feasible and accurate in another dimension, planet, or time period in the future.

Yet, we are all connected to this intergalactic grid and can access all its knowledge if we only allow ourselves to entertain such an idea and access these unlimited resources using the power of our imagination.

Then, if all of this wasn’t already as fascinating as thoughtfully possible, quantum mechanics throws alternate timelines, worlds and universes into the mix. We have Schrödinger’s cat to thank for it’s not both alive and dead when not observed, but rather one version of it ceases to exist, while another lives on in an alternative timeline.

Any event which could have two or more outcomes could cause such a splinter in time and space.

For instance, a year ago, I potentially was part of a fatal single auto accident. One version of me died last February while the version of me writing these words was spared the accident altogether.

All these realities and alternate realities and multi-verses are all connected via an unfathomable array of possibilities where anything and everything exists simultaneously and some of us tap into these alternate realities and see a vision of such in our mind’s eye.

Not only is anything possible… everything is.

Of course, many of us, disregard such possibilities as science fiction, yet there is no doubt that some individuals have left their mark in this very plane of existence in the timeline you are experiencing right now, who have clearly seen things that were preposterous at the time, which now we know to be true.

How could they have so accurately depicted these things?

Sure, it could have been due to fanciful imagination, fairy tales, hypothesis, or logical projection, but could it also have been a tapping into the infinite matrix?

What if you create your world?

Unforgiveness or Forgiveness

What do you have the tendency to hold inside, a state of unforgiveness or forgiveness?

What if someone assaulted you either physically, verbally or emotionally? What if someone you trusted betrayed you? What if someone stole something that belonged to you or otherwise wronged you in some way? What do you do?

Unforgiveness or forgiveness? Which side of the bars are you on?

Forgive them

The idea of forgiving someone for doing something to hurt us, our feelings, or otherwise negatively impact our lives sounds ludicrous. We have been programmed to do anything but forgive. When we have been wronged, we want revenge or justice, and we want it now. Not dissimilar to Alice in Wonderland’s Red Queen asserting, “Off with is head!”

We get all righteous and indignant insisting that our basic moral code reads, “An eye for an eye,” indicating that retaliation is warranted and honorable.

When you have suffered an injustice you have one of two things you can do, either harbor unforgiveness, or to embrace the idea of forgiveness and let it go.

The idea of forgiveness is crazy-making for most of us, because retribution seems much more satisfying. If someone does something to harm someone else, they must be severely punished. It is this positioning that has our prisons filled to maximum capacity.

As we pass more and more laws to penalize more and more Americans the rate of incarceration increases exponentially. In fact, is we keep creating new laws and arresting more and more wrongdoers, in the next three decades you will either be imprisoned or work for the judicial system.

And where does all this incarceration get us? It fills us with negative emotions, keeps us in a virtual state of fear and causes us to harbor hatred. Think about how much you hold onto negative emotions about being victimized by someone else. You can hold a grudge for a lifetime, and feel as though it’s warranted and justified.

What does holding fast to these negative emotions do to you? It causes you to spin a whirlpool of negative emotions, causing premature aging and deterioration of all of you; your mind, body and soul.

What good is it to seek revenge, when you could just let it go and live a better, happier life? You could let someone’s negative words of deeds overpower you and cause you to wither away and ultimately put you in an early grave, or live a better life, you best life and make the world a better place. How? By

Forgiving

Many people would state, “I cannot forgive,” him or her because what he or she, “did was unforgiveable.”

What you fail to understand is every moment you hold tight to your lack of forgiveness, you bolster the very thing that hurt you or caused you harm, and you allow someone else (the person who committed the action against you) to have power over you. Every minute you ruminate about this person or what they did to disrespect or otherwise harm you, you reward them with control over you. How much more power does this individual need to have over you?

We take it personal because we feel someone has done something to us, when in fact the thing that happened to you to hurt you or your feelings actually had little or nothing to do with you. You were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time because if it didn’t happen to you, it would have happened to someone else.

If you think about it, God selected you to be the recipient of the wrongdoing because you could handle it (‘ere the phrase, “God will not give you anything you can’t handle). Which implies, Yes. God thinks you are a superhero because no one else was uniquely qualified to deal with this injustice.

Unforgiveness is your own prison. Your only hope for escape is to enact your prison break with forgiveness.

Remember, forgiveness is not for the wrongdoer. Forgiveness is for you. Forgiveness does not condone any sin against you, it simply releases you from your prison, allowing karma, God, the local jurisdictions, state or federal agencies to deal with the offender in any what they choose.

If you’ve forgiven, you walk away, retaining the education you received from this incident or circumstance as you keep moving forward. You needn’t forget the incident, but you must find a way to forgive in such a manner as to be able to think or talk about the event without experiencing any emotional distress.

After all, the best revenge is to live a successful life filled with happiness and abundance in spite of any transgression that has visited you.

Let’s Get Married

Today, I will be participating in my friend’s wedding ceremony. This time, I will not be officiating the ceremony. I will be in the wedding party.

When you participate in important events, like this, you can’t help spending time inside your head and your heart, reviewing your feelings about love and marriage, and what meaning it has for you.

I have officiated many weddings, and of those relationships, about half of them survived the matrimony. There’s a part of me that thought they would all work out, and the bride and groom would live happily ever after.

I have been married before, and when I made those promises on the altar, I meant every word, but it takes two. And it’s not all about integrity. I used to think that if the bride or groom could not keep their promises made on that day, in the presence of family and friends, then either one, or both, of them simply lacked integrity.

But I realize, now, that things are not always as they seem, and we (all of us, people residing on planet earth) are only doing the best we can with what we have.

When we look around at the people we know and care about who have been married and subsequently divorced, it can’t help but make an impact on you. Some of my friends have vowed never to marry because of the tragic effect it has on the couple as well as the damages suffered by family and friends.

If we haven’t been through it in the first person, we all can relate to having seen others go through this tragedy, maybe even being directly affected by our proximity to the failed relationship.

But, if you have witnessed a failed marriage or relationship that ended poorly, does that mean you should not try.

Having been divorced, I often feared that my children might struggle with the idea of going the chapel and tying the knot, but, thankfully, they all were able to grasp the idea and they are all happily married. This endears my heart, because I am the hopeless romantic.

I believe in love. I believe it to be the most powerful force in the world. Yes, I believe love conquers all, if you only allow it to grow freely, uninhibited by what I think I might know.

Those who know me well, know that I have a propensity to study a particular topic with a scientific veracity that is more than one might expect from the guy next door (unless you’re living next door to a quantum physicist). So, it will be no surprise to you that prior to my marrying someone, I might expend a great deal of time in research, inner work, and meditation in an effort to ensure the most positive result.

Hey, I’m not the only one. I have a couple of friends who do the same thing, and all of us make the same face when our perspective mate tells us that he or she doesn’t have the same level of compulsion to investigate and study this idea of getting married, what it means, and what it might take to have a successful (hopefully lifelong) marriage. And in that moment, we all wonder if the other person is taking this whole thing seriously? Nonetheless, we do the best we can and move forward in the relationship.

What’s the answer? Many books have been written about love, romance and marriage and you can find them being written from every possible perspective.

But if you ask me, my response would go something, like this:

Love yourself first. Love everything about who you are and find comfort in your own company. Then, if someone appears on your horizon that loves his/her self and is comfortable in his/her skin and you achieve a certain vibrational harmony. Take a chance, and let your love overflow out of you, allowing it to spill over onto him/her. If he/she can return their love overflow in kind, then this is relationship bliss.

Will it mean that everything goes smoothly? Probably not – because life is complicated – it is impossible to be prepared for anything that might present itself while the two of you forge forward hand in hand.

Can relationships survive the marriage event? Yes. Many do survive. Though I wouldn’t go rushing to them for advice, because I believe in a higher degree of possibility and love than the stories the people who have managed to stay together after marriage can tell.

If they are honest, they relate stories, in many cases, that describe a sacrificial state that is anything short of martyrdom. I believe there is a higher plane of marital existence that is possible to attain.

Have I done it? Not yet. But still I believe.

Is it a fanciful fairy tale image that I hold dear? In some ways, yes – in some ways, no – I believe that if I wait for someone who is travelling on their own similar life path, headed in the same direction, which has a healthy degree of self-love, has integrity and a desire to see what the future holds with all its possibilities for growth and expansion, then maybe.

In any case, nothing makes me happier than seeing two people take the plunge, disregarding all the horror stories that prevail in our society and throw the dice, come what may. This is a courageous leap of faith and love which is by far, the best anyone could hope for.

I am blessed, having friends who believe, and wish for them all the best this life has to offer as the let their love light shine. And shine, it does.

Love, love, love. Love is all there is.

 

Stockholm Syndrome

Ever attach yourself to some idea, person, place or thing that is clearly not in your best interest? We see it every day, in all sorts of life circumstances, in business and romance. You might witness or experience someone’s dedication and commitment to something or someone which seems inconsistent with what logic might dictate. When someone feels so attached to something, when it is clearly not serving the person involved, may even be abusive or life-threatening, still the victim has such an affinity for the idea or person, that they defend it, maybe even willing to lay down their life in an effort to preserve the very thing that is causing them deterioration or grief.

We refer to this kind of behavior as Stockholm syndrome.

While we often hear about Stockholm syndrome, it’s a good idea to review where the idea came from. The idea of Stockholm syndrome came from an incident that took place in Stockholm, Sweden in the early seventies, when machine-gun-blazing criminals overtook a bank and took four people hostage; one man and three women. The hostages were restrained and adorned with explosives as they feared for their lives for over five days. A harrowing experience one could hardly imagine.

Following the rescue, the media reported news of the captors’ behavior that would seem inconsistent with being held captive and fearing for their lives for 131 hours. It became apparent the hostages had sided with their captors, viewed their rescue as an act of violence, feared the outcome that might result from the incident for the bank robbers, actively defending the perpetrators and bonding with them. As a result one of the victims spearheaded a legal campaign in their defense and another became engaged to marry one of the criminals.

While the scenario played out in the news and media the idea was nothing new to the professional psychological community. This otherwise odd behavior came to be referred to as Stockholm syndrome after the location of the event.

We see Stockholm syndrome playing out every day all around us, and we might even be suffering from it ourselves. It is commonly referred to as describing partners in abusive romantic relationships, where a wife who is in an abusive relationship refuses to seek help and defends her husband often insisting to the people who might be able to help her escape the abuse that they simply do not understand the relationship and pledges her undying love and affection for her husband. Even though maintaining the relationship might be not only counter-productive, but possibly life-threatening.

We also see this behavior exemplified in all kinds of relationships among military personnel, religious affiliations, abused children, women who are battered or abused as well as politicians, public servants. protesters, employees, citizenry, prisoners and hostages.

When someone is suffering from Stockholm syndrome, they display an inability (or refusal) to see things they way they are, and cling to the idea that their undying love for the very thing that is clearly destructive is justified, as they insist on only seeing the good attributes of it.

In order to make sense of their support, victims often create vast justifications in their minds following a pattern of faux logic which doesn’t make sense to anyone else, and they are willing to take extreme measures to defend their abusers.

Business owners can also find themselves victims of Stockholm syndrome throwing good money after bad and exerting all their efforts, sleepless nights and malnutrition rise as their health deteriorates and they continue to fight the good fight in an effort to defend their failing business.