Book of Sandra

Chapter 7

Thoughts are powerful. This is one of my favorite poems:

I hold it true that thoughts are things;
They're endowed with bodies and breath and wings;
And that we send them forth to fill
The world with good results, or ill.
That which we call our secret thought
Speeds forth to earth's remotest spot,
Leaving its blessings or its woes
Like tracks behind it as it goes.
We build our future thought by thought,
For good or ill, yet know it not.
Yet, so the universe was wrought.
Thought is another name for fate;
Choose, then, thy destiny and wait,
For love brings love and hate brings hate.

-- Henry Van Dyke

It seems that some of us are catching on and becoming consciously aware of the power of our thoughts. New books come out all the time touting that old knowledge suddenly became new. It tells us that our thoughts create our reality in different ways than we heard it before but it is far from new.

• Everything your eyes see was once a thought in some one's mind so thoughts create
  
  • Thoughts transform both our internal mental state and our external experience.
    
  • Thoughts can also be very destructive.
    
  • Thoughts are the first cause of all that is. Let there be is a powerful thought.
    

Do you control your thoughts or do your thoughts control you? Some believe that they are at the effect of things as if thinking is involuntary as breathing and caused by something outside of ourselves. As if they have no choice in reactions given a certain set of circumstances. A Course in Miracles says that an untrained mind can accomplish nothing. That implication is that we train our minds how to think.

From my own mind I know that I can condition my mind to see as I choose to see. The thought that "only love is real" is programming; once entered into any equations it transforms how I perceive events. Through consistent training we change how we see and relate to the world some call it brainwashing but when you are the architect of your own mind it is simply being in charge of how you perceive your world.

A few years ago the book "The Power of Intention" had people talking differently about how they related to mind activities. Setting intention is the same thing; it is a suggestive thought that changes or transforms experience. Set your intention and your insight is changed regardless of what your eyesight observes. If I believe or hold it as truth in my mind "that only love is real" my mind will search for ways given the current data to see love. "Whatever appears not to be love is a call for love" is a redirect formula that is transformative as well.

Try it. Amos of Famous Amos Cookies says that God always says yes to us. Now set your intention for the next week to recognizing in every moment that God always says yes, it'll change around what you think. You won't have the luxury of criticizing yourself because the moment you do God will agree and make it so. Your thought that you're a screw up is realized and you actually do screw everything up. Change your thought to I am a money magnet and God says yes to that as well. You'll quickly get in touch with all the background noise in your mind that may not fall in line with what you want to experience. If God says yes to me then what I'm experiencing is a matter of mind so let me make sure I'm being diligent about what is in my mind. You are not a victim of your mind unless you choose to be. Be the captain of your ship control your mind.

Book of Sandra

Chapter 4

Sometimes I can be pretty rigid. I'm not sure where all it came from, I was a rebellious teenager that bucked my parents and the system every chance I got. One of my closest girlfriends joking says that my middle initial stands for Defiance, I am that. I have never believed in just going along to get a long, it always seemed to me that I needed to live my truth whatever that was. For me living my truth is a matter of honor.

You may know that I'm a Trekky, The Next Generation was my show and Jean-Luc Picard and Lt. Worf my guys. I learned a lot about personal integrity, respect, and operating from a set of principles that orders my steps. I've already written my obituary thinking that if I know how I'd like to be remembered, it will direct how I live.

It seems that honor is missing in our society today, at least from my vantage point. There are some many people who live by the seat of their pants so to speak making decisions on the fly and not realizing the greater implications of those decisions. We have people who pander to the crowd going for what gets the reactions rather than what's right. Right is not always popular and we can misread reactions.

Whatever happened to your word being your bond? I confess that as I age my memory is not nearly as good as it use to be, so now I have to compensate by writing things down and sending myself reminders. I remember years ago a man asked me out that I was really attracted to. He asked me to meet him out for coffee and gave me a date and time. It was a week away. He was all that and a bag of chips by my estimation so he really couldn't be attracted to me. On the day of the meeting I kept thinking this is a joke, he's going to stand me up so I didn't go. It was over two years before I saw him again, I heard he had gotten married and was still doing really well. When he saw me he was with his wife but he stopped came over to me and as he hugged me he said "I waited over an hour for you and you never showed."

I didn't want to be that person whose words don't have meaning. Who does not do what she says she'll do. That lacks honor. I want to value your time and attention just I would my own. This is the golden rule; do onto others as you would have them do unto you. It's a matter of respect.

Whatever happened to respect? Where did we get this idea that respect is earned? My actions are based on my prime directive not anyone else's. How I operate comes from my value system and is not subject to change because of who I'm dealing with. When your actions are predicated by the actions of another it is them that is in control and not you. They push your buttons and cause you to react as they choose when that is the case, that makes you a puppet and them the puppeteer. Personal autonomy is necessary to have honor.

Wow, this keeps opening up so much for me. More to come. . . .

Book of Sandra

Chapter 3

I love the way life constantly provides fodder for thought or discussion. Feels like it did when I was doing radio, spirit knew it had a willing mouth piece and therefore gave me people and circumstances to talk about. Now don't get me wrong I'm not the type to get caught up talking about small minded ideas like material possessions or gossiping about people. I like to talk about archetypal themes that each of us have to go through to grow through.

In the introduction of A Course in Miracles (ACIM) it reads

"This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. . . "

When I first read that I thought what a lofty thought, how would the author ever know that I'd pick up this book? So required for whom? What most of us don't realize is that this life comes with its own curriculum. We're engaged in a course in miracles and cannot do otherwise. All its lessons are lessons that have been undertaken since man became conscious of his ability to choose. The particulars of each lesson vary from person to person but not the aim of it. Lessons are repeated until you get it right.

Integrity

Nathaniel Branden defines integrity as "the integration of ideals, convictions, standards, beliefs – and behavior." To simplify its when your actions are in line with what you say you value. Most of us were raised with values of some type or developed them on our own later by deciding who we want to be in the world. If you value life, honesty, reliability or respect what you do should be in alignment with what you think/value/believe. When you violate your own values, you feel diminished or lose face to in your own eyes.

Personal integrity is one that many of us struggle with because it is so vitally important to not only how others see & feel about us, but more importantly how we see & feel about ourselves. Most of our formative lessons are there to teach us who we are as part of group and then to develop independently of that group. We develop a sense of self, our likes and dislikes as well as our own personal values. Many of us adopt the values of those around us and never consider that those values may no longer fit the person we have become. The group will have you to think that there is only one way of thinking, the right way – their way. One such group "the family" expects that every child born to their group will continue with the same religion, live in the same area, and carry on the same basic family values. As we mature we make decisions as to whether the family values fit with our current values. Sometimes they do and other times they do not.

For example, if you were raised with basic Christian values you learned that sex outside of marriage is wrong. If as an adult you participated in sex outside of marriage, you would be violating a value that you hold and would likely have some type of emotional reaction each time you had sex outside of marriage. Acting against your values is self betrayal and can leave you feeling guilty, dirty or just plain wrong. Violation of your own self trust diminishes self worth, self esteem and causes you to hemorrhage personal power which unchecked could lead to a variety of perverse behaviors. You either have to change your actions or your values to stop the hemorrhaging of energy. When alignment is achieved you can begin to develop and strengthen your self-perception.

Carolyn Myss said "From a spiritual perspective, the entire physical world is nothing more than our classroom, but the challenge to each of us in this classroom is: Given your particular body, environment, and beliefs, will you make choices that enhance your spirit or those that drain your power into the physical illusion around you?

We are constantly presented with challenges that make us demonstrate whether our heads, hearts and actions agree. Something as simple as the clerk giving you the wrong change and how you address it can impact how you see yourselves. Do you act with honor? That information is for you more so than anyone else, you may be the only one who knows, but the results of your decisions shows up and out in your energy field. They determine whether you lose power or strengthen it. More on this in a future post.

I'm A Tree

We were in Seattle for a family reunion and I wanted to go to the famous market to see the salmon toss. My father said to his sister “Sandy doesn’t eat fresh salmon.” I was totally taken aback. I know it’s weird a memory to have but it had me thinking about exposure.



My father made an assumption about my culinary exposure. As a child I lived in a controlled enviroment. Our house, our yard had a fence around it, there was no internet or cable television back then. Up until a certain point in my life my father could say without equivocation what I had and had not been exposed to.



As we mature the things we are exposed increases. I live in Cleveland, Ohio which is part of the United States of America by accident of birth. Being an American holds no significant degree of pride for me. I love it because it is the home that I know. The same can be said for anyone’s home in any country in this world – we are all born where we are born by accident of birth and grow to love that place as home regardless of the culture until we choose differently.




I have traveled to different countries and have learned to appreciate them for how they are different. No thoughts of superiority or inferiority just different. I’ve walked on Egyptian sand it feels the same between my toes as Mexican sand and the United State's sand too. Air is air, sunshine is sunshine all over the world. There are some places I’ve been that if I could just stretch a little bit more I could grab a star, they seem closer. I’ve eaten live mussels in Italy, and swam nude in the Mediterranean Sea with friends I didn’t share a common language with. What we understood was laughter, good food and fun. We found commonality in spite of our geographical origins.



Today we are exposed more than ever to people that don't look, talk or think like us. It seems as if the world is shrinking as avenues of communicating expands. Basically we find that we are still just people, trying to live out what they’ve been told is the truth. We all want desperately to be right. To live in the right/best place, to have the right or chosen religion, to go to the right schools, to marry the right person and do the right thing.



From that gated yard to world citizen I know that my options are limitless. In college I was exposed to the idea of having “universal maxims,” ideas that I apply universally not what is politically expedient, popular or what I can get away with. My ideas or values remain consistent and are deeply rooted and remain unchanged. The basics:

• Everyone is good but they might not make good choices all the time.


• Everything is sacred and deserves respect.


• We’re all God’s children, even when we don’t know it or believe it.

We are each challenged to decide who we are and what we believe and live that consistently. As a nation we decided on a President and many have abdicated the philosophically grappling to him. Others have disengaged as I had during the Bush years unable to reconcile my values with our nation’s practices.

Under this new administration the question of torture arose and President Obama rightly stated that “that is not who we are as a nation,” it does not speak to the values upon which we were founded. Its an age old question: does the end justify the means? If the end is: we get the information, does it matter how we go about getting it? I say yes. If the end is: we get to feed hungry people, does it matter if the food was stolen from others to make it happen? Absolutely. A desirous ending is not justified by unjust means and therefore cannot be used as provocation. Ignoring either personal or collective values repeatedly is spiritually corrosive. America was choking from its own character crisis. We can not escape the consquences of our actions and inactions.

In A Course in Miracles the golden rule stated differently “as you see me you shall see yourself, as you treat me you shall treat yourself” . . .Never forget this because in me (your brother) you will find yourself or lose yourself. That so-called terrorist is your brother, who was doing what he thought was right based on the information he was given. That is not to condone anyone's actions I'm simply trying to point out human faces beyond our exposure.

What do you believe? Introspection:

• What are your core values or beliefs? (list top 5)


• What informs your choices? (religion, politics, books)


• What values do you apply universally and which arbitrarily?


• We are always teaching others who we are, what are you demonstrating?

I vow to be like a tree bowed maybe, but unbroken by the winds of change. If you ever find that the winds of your life start to blow and threaten to blow you off balance off center just reach out there are trees everywhere. Be one.