Latest Forum Topics

Giving Thanks

Gabreael — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:29:26 +0000

Someone anonymously invited me here which is strange, but thank you for inviting me.

Gabreael
www.gabreael.com
www.easternparanormal.com

A Dreadful Crime

Shortsleeves — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 18:55:17 +0000

I walked abroad in a snowy day;
I asked the soft snow for me to play.
She played and she melted in all her prime,
And the winter called it a dreadful crime.

The immortal William Blake wrote, Soft Snow at the turn of the 19th century. Blake was ignored most of his life, but a group of inspiring artists found his work right before his death in 1827, and they fell in love with it. The scope and depth of his work has been dissected, analyzed, and studied over the years, because he displayed his innate sense of expression in diverse ways. Soft Snow is not only brilliant rhyme; it’s enchanting mysticism. Blake treats each element as family, and as I read the verses they become my family as well. The ability to sense the snow being born as a unique consciousness is very obvious in the poem. Interacting in a moment with that consciousness is a gift, and a joyful experience. The Sheness of snow brings life in her flakes, and drenches the ground in her beauty. Nature applauds her arrival, but I treat her with mixed emotions.

Snow, like other natural forms of consciousness, tests my ability to connect with a self that wants to play and enjoy each experience. I treat her like a menace when she brings more play than I expect, and I’m annoyed when she doesn’t show up when and where she’s expected. I judge, curse and hate her for her indulgences, and miss her when she confines herself to the mountaintops. I yell at her when she turns to ice and praise and admire her when she becomes an iceberg. If she is too big I fear her, and when she’s aggressive I hide from her. I applaud her for melting, and ignore her as she does. I find my self creating a snow filled life, and don’t remember why I do. Perhaps I do it to watch her melt in her prime, because I continue to melt in the snow of my own prime. Some call this melting a dreadful crime, but in this reality it’s the nature of my own now time.

Hal Manogue
www.shortsleeves.net
http://halmanogue.blogspot.com/

Some Astrology News

lapauly — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 04:38:12 +0000

I've had my domain since Apr. 2007, it opened in late 2007.

It has personality profiles, forecasts and couples comparisons - ALL automated. Took over a year to fill in the database with original interpretations. I also wrote the daily forecasts by hand from a daily wheel for over a year.

Page has a TWO google rank, twitter account that goes with it has a Four google rating. Cost 15k in programming.

Point is - I'm pooped now and I'm not an internet marketing guru. But I did manage the above mentioned ratings and have over 300 subscribers.

I've opened up the site now from the Admin. side (included) now everything is FREE!

I'm offering the site for sale. Of course I don't expect to recoup the 15K, but I'm listening to those that are interested.

Site HAD a security certificate which has since expired, just needs to be renewed. Does not mean the log-in portion of the site is not safe to enter. You'll see what I mean when you click log-on or register. It's fine.

Take a gander, tell me what you think through the contact link. http://astrologybeat.com

Best to you all

Lee-Ann

How Can I Help You?

Debra Parmley — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:56:41 +0000

I've been trying to figure out my purpose here on Jason's Network.

It is said there are those who entertain and those who serve.

I've always been more in the those who entertain category, both as a professional belly dancer and as a published romance novelist and writer of various genres. So I guess my question needs to be....how does a person such as myself help others, while still remaining true to who I am (and figuring out who I am and my purpose here)?
What do I have to teach others? That question really leads me to this one....what would you like to learn?

Namaste

Debra

Magnificent Cloud

Shortsleeves — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:05:32 +0000

Things which rise from the darkness of silence, from the wilderness of the unconsciousness, do not belong to the realm of human reflection and deliberation. Hence the mystics are the lilies of the field and the grass of the field as well. They are beyond good and bad, they know no moral responsibilities, which are ascribable only when there is the consciousness of good and bad. If this is the religious life, it is the philosophy of anarchism or nihilism. But the conclusion we can draw from the mystics of two widely divergent teachings (Christianity and Buddhism) seems to point to this nihilistic smashing of all human moral standards.

D.T.Suzuki in his wrote those thoughts and they were included in a work published in 1969, which was three years after his death. The morality that exists above the umbrella of duplicity is always present, but I mix it in a concoction of associations, and the end result is a distorted expression of beliefs. One example of this watered-down morality is expressed by an early Christian mystic:

To affirm God is actually to reduce him. To say that God is good, just, intelligent, is to enclose him within a created conception which is applicable only to created things.

This sort of thinking is not what I have been taught to believe, but when I give my self the opportunity to actually hear the message, I find another self that not only understands the message innately, it is the message. Of course these messages are mystical babblings, which bear no resemblance to physical life as I live it. That fact confirms how separated I am from the self that expresses true morality. In order to affirm anything I must use what I know, and that knowing is rooted in duplicity. There is a silence, a wilderness of consciousness within me, which does not belong to human reflections and deliberations, but is fully aware of those creations. In order to sense this aspect of self, I can enter the space of no-thought where images dance across my mind’s eye. These images come from impulses sent from the silence within me. It is within these images that I sense my innate morality and a hint of the God within me.

My inner consciousness does not transcend intellectualism, it transforms it from a complex system of virtues and expectations, to a wilderness that smashes all egotistical moral standards, and reshapes them into the image of a free floating God; a magnificent cloud that permeates my being.

www.shortsleeves.net
http://halmanogue.blogspot.com/

Favorite Quote

Sumner — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:49:48 +0000

To you have a favorite quote that inspires you, motivates you and means alot to you?

Mine is:
“When you come to the edge of all the light that you know,
And you are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown,
Faith is knowing one of two things will happen:
There will be something solid to stand on or you will be taught how to fly.“
~(original author) Barbara J. Winter for Gibson Greetings~

Do you have one you would like to share with us?

What's your USP?

Sumner — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:46:31 +0000

Whether you are a solopreneur or a salesperson, service person, coach or counselor – you have one. Every successful business has one, so does every religion and spiritual organization.

For some people it is so unique it is instantly recognizable, for others it simply a “me too”.

Your USP = Your Unique Selling Proposition
Your Unique Service Position
Your Unique Selling or Service Personality

The key word and constant is “unique”. What sets you apart from everyone else in your same or remotely similar profession? It is this uniqueness that attracts people to you, makes people want to tell others why they should also know you and/or do business with you. It’s more than customer testimonials. It’s who you are, why you are doing what you do and what’s in it for your customer/client?

Social networks, custom and ning spin offs, are created everyday and invitations flood our email.

What is unique about JN? Here, I see JN and Jason with a USP of a founder that takes risks for the benefit of the group; a founder that puts people before profit; a founder that has a vision that is greater than one person; a founder that encourages the members of the group to play more with his constant involvement; and a network that supports each other unlike any other.

The more you understand your own USP, the greater other people will see it in you and repond to it as well.

What’s your USP. What do your friends in JN need to know about you, that is to “their benefit”?

The Upper Side of the Stream

Shortsleeves — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:54:07 +0000

Where do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight. But the Genius which, according to the old belief, stands on the door by which we enter, and gives us the lethe to drink, that we may tell no tales, mixed the cup too strongly, and we cannot shake off the lethargy now at noonday.

Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree. All things swim and glitter. Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. Ghost-like we glide through nature, that she was so sparing of her fire and so liberal of her earth, that it appears to us that we lack the affirmative principle, and though we have health and reason, yet we have no super-fluity of spirit for new creation? We have enough to live and bring the year about, but not an ounce to impart or to invest. All that our Genius were a little more of a Genius! We are like millers on the lower levels of the stream, when the factories above them have exhausted the water. We too fancy that the upper people must have raised their dams.

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay 1838 essay, Experience, is explaining how my beliefs restrict and limit my creativity. My Genius is never as good as the Genius I see in others, although the Genius I see in them is my Genius as well. I sell myself short and live in one segment of my belief structure, and call it my reality. I walk around in a wakeful sleep, dozing off into other realities but I call them fantasy. I do glide through nature unaware of my connection with the Genius within it, so I live as a fragment counting my blessings and asking for more. Emotionally immersed in the lethe of my own choices I concoct an image that suits my beliefs, and then bury that image in a box of convictions that sentence me to an afterlife, when there is no after life. There is only life.

Expanding my beliefs, as Emerson points out, is not the easiest task in physical life. Beliefs are wrapped around my ego consciousness like intestinal worms that crave more substance. I allow them to feed on my fragile emotions and I give them the gift of freedom which then buries me in the dirt of distortions. I believe, but never examine what I believe, and if I do, I use a judgmental spoon of fear to stir the brew, and then I drink it and create a character of sameness that looks for Genius in everything but my self.

Day after day I waddle through my own jagged perceptions wondering why I walk towards the edge of insanity looking for a touch of awareness. The path I take towards this measured awareness opens a door of unfamiliar choices, which I shy away from in order to logically condone the senselessness of my own creations. I do this by day, but at night I live without beliefs. I freeze one reality and enter another, but call it something else in order to appease my narrow mindedness.

But the Genius I am still expresses itself, even though I stuff it in a cosmetic case of illusions. The case is my contrast and cosmetics are my teachers. As I open the lid to perceive and perform each physical action, my Genius sprinkles me with the invisible dust of awareness. When I accept the dust and the genius, I live life like the miller on the upper side of the stream.

www.shortsleeves.net
http://halmanogue.blogspot.com/

How's it going so far?

Sumner — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 19:44:44 +0000

One more day until the end of the first month of the New Year.

How are you doing? Did you commit to, and keep forming, new habits, or did you choose to fall back into your old habits?

"The definition of Insanity is doing the same things and expecting different results." ~ Albert Einstein ~

"The successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn't like to do. ~Thomas Edison"

Each step of our journey gives us an opportunity to choose to adopt new ways or embrace the old. Either way is right, each path is unique to the individual. The energy, behaviors and results we exhibit to the world creates a ripple effect that reaches far beyond what we might see.

We are not on the planet alone, instead we serve the growth of everyone as we grow, (and even when we choose to keep old habits and attempt to not change.) We can all learn from and through each other.

How is 2010 going for you so far?
What new behaviors or habits have you committed to that are bring yo new results over last year?
And what actions have you, and are you taking that created your results, that you are willing to share so others can grow with you?

This is my wish for you all!

CarolynNZ — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:07:09 +0000

Comfort on difficult days,
Smiles when sadness intrudes,
Rainbows to follow the clouds,
Laughter to kiss your lips,
Hugs when spirits sag,
Sunsets to warm your heart,
Friendships to brighten your being,
Beauty for your eyes to see,
Faith so that you can believe,
Confidence for when you doubt,
Patience to accept the truth,
Courage to know yourself,
Love to complete your life.
~Anonymous
With love and blessings for an awesome year!
Carolyn
wisdomseekers.co.nz

Bullshit is Easy To Use

Shortsleeves — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 13:35:21 +0000

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted must sustained inquiry.

Since bullshit need not be false, it differs from lies in its misrepresentational intent. The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to.

Harry G. Frankfurt is a moral philosophy and the Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University. His 2005 best seller, On Bullshit, is a small book with a powerful awareness punch. There is an element of bullshit incorporated into my physical belief structure, and I use it in everyday communication. There are times when I use it more than other times. It’s one of those hidden belief birds that fly around my belief birdcage that helps create my perceptions and experiences. It’s easy to use, and I do an excellent job of camouflaging it, but it’s not hidden in the messages I send to other people. We all can pick up bullshit vibrations quickly. I tend not to believe answers from questions that I ask, because I believe there’s bullshit in those answers. After all, I know there is an element of bullshit in my answers. Beliefs and truths are flexible, so I pick fragments of truth out of an answer, and believe those fragments, while other elements of the answer are discounted and ignored and filed in my body consciousness as bullshit.

Those files remain in my consciousness, and I use them to answer a question that I know nothing about, or may only know a little about. That routine continues as I communicate my thoughts, and I add more bullshit to those thoughts from other thoughts, and then I become a skeptic. I am skeptical of my self, but transfer that skepticism to others and call them what I am, a bullshitter. Others may accept that transfer or send it back to me in the form of an argument; skeptical messages vibrate back to me in the form of a verbal or non-verbal conflict. I create my own arguments because the little belief bird called bullshit is affecting my core beliefs in some way. It’s easy to recognize bullshit, especially my own, because bullshit is energy, which expresses itself in a cycle that continues to multiply in a variety of forms.

Bullshit is not false to me; it is a belief, and I use it to fool my self. It’s a basic condition I experience in separation. It’s a tool of awareness that helps close the gap of separation when I sense what I’m creating. Bullshit, like other belief birds, can be expanded and become forms of energy that help me become aware of the belief birds that make my life difficult. In that sense bullshit is my ally; it creates different elements of duplicity, and from that duplicity I find other qualities of my essence that stimulate me, so I feel my own multiplicity without the need for bullshit.

Why Was Haiti Hit So Hard?

Cherokee — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:34:05 +0000

So many people are asking why the country of Haiti was so devastated by an earthquake on January 12, 2010. We are always questioning these acts of nature and many people wonder how there can be a God who allows so much destruction, death, and unhappiness. I went into deep meditation over this because so many people have been asking this question and here is what I have received.

It gives people an opportunity to show their true humanitarianism by giving freely of their money, time and energy to such an impoverished country. Throughout the beginning of mankind the message has been to show love and kindness to everyone you meet. Yet, we go about our lives forgetting this message on a daily basis. Perhaps we are angry with the driver who cut us off on the freeway, family, spouse, children or friends. We do not stop to take the time to realize that they are going through their own personal traumas and we forget about showing little acts of kindness.

So to remind us that we are to be kind and compassionate God allows something huge to happen to wake us up to the fact that we all inhabit this planet, and we all breathe the same air, and we all love our children. People have been feeling more emotions this past week than they had in quite some time. Continue your prayers for the people of Haiti who are suffering and just needing the bare necessities.

Those that perished in the Earthquake are free from the concerns of our world and are now living in the presence of the Divine Light of God. The problem is for those left behind; it is hard for them to deal with the death of a loved one or friend and to see their country destroyed. Right now they are just concerned about getting food and water. It takes you to the very foundation of our existence (survival) when you are faced with such a calamity. They’re not concerned about work, status or what they are going to do for entertainment. This is what brings out your humanity. You realize this could happen to you. If we could live in this aware state constantly we could change the world into a different place then it is right now.

Many times as a spiritual advisor I have delivered the message that we should show love in just simple acts such as a smile to a stranger. You have no idea what that person maybe going through in that moment and your smile could mean a great deal and change the way they feel.

Look around in your own city and you will see there are many impoverished people who are living in their cars or on the streets. Think of ways you can help those in your immediate area. They are crying out in silent desperation. Let us open our spirits and souls to be able to hear these silent cries. When you can hear the silent cries you are closer to The Divine than ever before.

So remember the acts of nature that come about are God’s ways of making us more humane. Practice your humanity with every person you meet daily. Truly look into their faces and see what may be hiding behind them and to send a silent prayer for those you do not know as you pass them in the supermarket, shopping malls or on the streets.

Put action to your prayers and do what you can to help your fellow human passing through your life.

God bless and help all the people in Haiti right now. Thank you Heavenly Father, Amen.

5 Elements - Water (Winter)

zen17 — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:05:22 +0000

5 Elements Training – Water

Water represents the flow of energy through the universe. In the body, the sacred point of Water is the upper dan tien (3rd eye center). Water is the element of retraction. It is intuitive and moves to the place of least resistance. Balanced Water energy is expressive, persuasive and provides willpower and flexibility. Unbalanced Water energy brings fear, depression and boredom.

Water energy flow is facilitated through the kidneys. The kidneys are the yin organs which gather, store and dispense water and fluid throughout the body. The kidneys are responsible for the generation and circulation of energy throughout the body. The bladder is the yang organ that balances the kidneys and receives, stores, and excretes urine.

The season of Water is winter. Winter is the time of turning inward. It is a time of hibernation, conservation and rest. The retracting power of Water provides us with the courage and willingness to be who we truly are. Connecting to Water energy helps to build a strong life-force.

During winter it is good to cultivate Water energy. This is done by slowing your outward expression and becoming more introspective. Winter is a time for replenishment. Seek warmth from within and allow your spiritual energy to be rejuvenated.

want to learn more?

www.artofzenyoga.com

What Is Your Motivation?

rodgerbailey — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:02:18 +0000

In my recent blog post, I talk about McClelland's motivation concepts of power, affiliation, and achievement.

What motivates you? How does your motivation show up in your marketing styles?

What motivates your customers? How do you address that in your marketing approaches?

The Birds and the Bird Cage

Shortsleeves — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 17:22:10 +0000

We live forwards but we understand backwards

Soren Kierkegaard, born in 1813, was a Danish philosopher who certainly understood something about truth and beliefs.

William James explains it this way:

The true is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as the right is only expedient in the way of our behaving. For what meets expediently in all the experiences in sight won’t necessarily meet all farther equally satisfactorily.

So what I believe to be true now may not be true tomorrow. What I believe about the past is what I tend to believe about the future. I think truth and beliefs extend into tomorrow and stretch into my past, so my foundation for now is a deep rooted belief system. But all my beliefs do have flexibility and expansion built into them if I’m willing to emotionally open my self to now, not yesterday or tomorrow, but now. By focusing on how I use my emotions to communicate, I can alter my beliefs and other truths appear.

James continues:

Ptolemaic astronomy, Euclidean space, Aristotelian logic, scholastic metaphysics were expedient for centuries, but human experience has boiled over those limits and we now call these things only relatively true or true within those borders of experience.

Experiences and awareness create truths. That means I create truth by my beliefs. That process has been going on since spirits chose to be human. Experiences show me that a truth is relative to the believer of that truth, so all physical truth is valid to the perceiver within a chosen personal reality. Physical truths, like beliefs, are in a constant state of mutation and expansion. It’s my choice to believe backwards and carry it forward; my consciousness continues to expand in its own awareness, so each experience is the emotional expression of a truth created by my beliefs.

What does all of that mean to me? It means that everything is true to the believer and that those beliefs will continue to mutate as the consciousness of each believer continues to express and experience the essence of being physical. In that process, beliefs continue to be flexible and expedient to the believer. When I accept all experiences as true, even the experiences that I call wrong or invalid, which is my voice of preference expressing an association, I find an assortment of beliefs that influence my reality hidden behind other beliefs.

Basic beliefs like religion, science, perception, the senses, duplicity, physical creation, truth and relationships create my reality; there are like a birdcage that holds birds or influences, which can be called sub-beliefs. The birds or influences within the birdcage are expressed as beliefs about ethics, politics, wars, drama, marriage, drug use, laws, taxes etc, and they create other truths that I consider my reality. When I focus on these birds or influences, I discover there are other birds hiding behind the birds I recognize. They also play a part in creating what I experience. These hidden birds, or influences, also create my physical truth and then I experience my created personal reality.

Each human experience is based on personal beliefs and those beliefs are intertwined with other beliefs, so each individual experiences reality in their own awareness. If I begin to focus on the birdcage, as well as the birds, I can change my reality and can experience awareness in other ways. The task, if there is one, is to accept my current beliefs and then expand them as I become aware of how they influence my reality. Most of us forget about the birds and the birdcage, but their songs are never silent in our collective reality.

www.shortsleeves.net

http://halmanogue.blogspot.com/