Oprah will be hosting a show about The Secret on February 8th for those of you who are interested. I know I will be watching it…
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Greg Hankerson 
Happiness, Enlightenment 
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Here’s an Excerpt from Dr. John Demartini’s latest book, Heart of Love.
Once Upon a Time, There Were Ten Relationship Myths
Every soul sings the song of love. You were created for love, which neither begins nor ends but simply is. Love shows no partiality and is its own reward. It can’t be possessed, nor does it possess. Love withholds nothing. With love, there’s no limit. Anything other than love is illusion. To understand true love is to embrace all. In some fairy tales, though, love becomes a beast. From the time we’re children, these stories and other misleading fantasies teach us what true love is “supposed” to be. Who hasn’t heard about “happily ever after”? Who doesn’t think it’s immature and simplistic? And who hasn’t come under its spell and believed, even just a little, that it signifies some truth about what love “ought” to be?
If you’re like most people, you probably buy into at least one of the common cultural myths-our modern-day fairy tales-that can mislead you in your most important relationships. If you continue to believe in any of these myths, they’ll interfere with your life, like some nasty old witch with a magic mirror and poisoned apple. They’ll shape your expectations and make you feel as if everyone else gets the fairy tale but you. You’ll be living in a monstrous falsehood, “suffering” from it, feeling and acting as if all this were true when it doesn’t have to be that way for you.
President John F. Kennedy once pointed out, “The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie-deliberate, contrived, and dishonest-but the myth-persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.” He went on to say that the way out of the woods is to stop enjoying “the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” Are you willing to shine light into the dark corners of your mind and confront myths head-on? If so, you’ll get to step out of unfulfilling fantasy and into something far more inspiring: true life, true relationships, true love.
Perhaps you don’t think you’re caught up in any false ideas. Please take a moment to consider whether you agree with any of the following statements:
1. A (new) relationship will make me happy.
2. When I find my soul mate, I’ll feel complete.
3. The right relationship will last forever.
4. Once we get past these rough waters, it’ll be smooth sailing.
5. A good relationship requires sacrifice.
6. Great sex happens only at the beginning of a relationship.
7. In the right relationship, I won’t have to work at it.
8. If I’m not involved with someone, I’ll be lonely.
9. Children complete a marriage.
10. Opposites attract.
Believe it or not, every one of these statements contains a fantasy, a falsehood. In my book, I’ll help you see how buying into these childish ideas stunts your personal growth and keeps you from fully experiencing the riches every relationship has to offer.
If only we’d stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.
–Edith Wharton
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This sounds like an interesting book! I’ve seen Demartini speak a couple times and the guy is truly amazing. I guess I’ll have to add this one to my list to read.
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A few days ago I added a page to this blog which maps where around the world my visitors are from. It’s a pretty cool plugin for Wordpress and you can see the page here: Visitor Map
It amazed me to find people from all over the United States and Canada. Then I saw somebody visited from Beijing, China. I thought they had limited access to the internet so it was nice to see they got through. I saw visitors from Germany, the UK, Venezuela and Isreal! And then Iraq, Beirut, Australia, Sweden, and more. This just tells me that people all over the world are looking for answers, not that I have them, but I am looking for them too. And this common thread bonds us all.
I hope to get some visitors from Africa, and eventually a visitor from every country on the planet. And I hope to visit every country on the planet.
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Wow, what a video! It’s pretty scary to think what children see and go through. After I watched this video on You Tube, I found another one which brought a tear to my eye. It’s a little sad, but it sheds some light on child abuse for those who don’t know much about it
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People are creatures of habit. We repeat our patterns over and over in everything we do. For instance, how I play racquetball is how I live my life. I used to get mad when I was losing and start talking smack, and maybe bang my racquet against something in anger. Well I did that in my life too. When life got difficult, I would lash out at others, and at myself. I often broke objects. And it felt good for a moment to release the anger, but I felt bad about it later on.
When I would return the ball, I would try to hit it hard without much thought as to where it was going, or just try to get it to the wall so I didn’t lose the point. I later wondered, why don’t I hit an unreturnable shot? In my life, why do I coast through it, why don’t I go for victory in every moment? So one day I decided my game was going to be perfect. I hit everyball pretty much perfectly and unreturnable. My aim was nearly flawless. I decided I had endless energy and ran my heart out the entire 4 games. My opponent and friend quickly learned that he cannot hit the ball to me anymore. He has to hit an unreturnable shot or I will. And he stepped his game up to a new level.
I have a pretty good hard serve. When I faulted the serve, I would usually hit it softly so I didn’t double fault. I see tennis players hit it softer on TV all the time. Why am I doing this? In my life, when the pressure is on, I tend to lose my confidence. Not too many people do well under pressure. So I imagined, three times, hitting an ace on the second shot and getting the point. And I hit the ball, even harder than my first shot and got the ace! So now, I hit my second serves harder than the first! And the pressure is now on my competition.
What I am getting at, is everything I do during my day is how I live my life on a miniature scale. For example, how I cut the lawn, wash my hands, take a shower, clean my room, work on the computer, take out the trash, drive in traffic, etc. Now when I do these tasks, or play a game like racquetball, I ask myself over and over, in what way am I doing this which mirrors my life? When I do this I have constant epiphanies, or ah-ha moments. I discover what I am doing and change it right there. If I can change the way I mow the lawn, which is half-assed, maybe I can learn to not live my life half-assed. I can self-discover all day long, everyday, until I am one with the universe. Everything I discovered about me today left me feeling wonderful inside.
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The other day I was listening to the radio. A lady was talking about being diagnosed with breast cancer and what it was like to tell people about her ordeal. This reminded me of mine. I was diagnosed with having a brain tumor when I was around 19. But I had forgotten what it was like to tell people what I had, and the look they would give me. I never volunteered the information, but somehow the conversation would lead up to it and I would tell them I had a brain tumor. I didn’t like saying this because I usually got the same look, like they were thinking I was going to die, and their feelings of pity, I am sooo sorry Greg. I didn’t want people feeling sorry for me, because I wasn’t going to die, I was going to get through it one way or another.
But anyways, this radio program brought back that emotion and then I realized how lucky I was. My legs were paralyzed for almost a week after the operation to remove the tumor. But fortunately control of my legs began to come back on the 5th day which was one of the happiest days of my life. I was in tears when one of my toes moved! And today I was driving my truck with a friend to Oak Flats to ride my motorcycle. That ride was epic!
The whole experience with the brain tumor was a turning point in my life. I consider it to be a near-death-experience. I was virtually dead inside before that happened. But from the moment I found out, I had a new lease on life. I knew my days may be numbered. My quality of life had suffered enough during those 3 years that I decided to have the operation and take my chances. And I came out on top. I have a small deficiency in my left leg, it works maybe 80-90% as well, but that doesn’t slow me down. I believe I owe this to the book I read by Bernie Siegel, M.D., called Love Life And Miracles. It talked about the power of the mind in healing which I had never heard about before. I recommend any of his books for those suffering from severe and terminal illnesses. Maybe you will learn that there is no such thing if you believe?
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After rereading my post on Forgiveness and Karma, I realized that some of my outlooks on the subject have evolved. In the past I thought of karma as something similar to revenge. Those wrongdoers will get what they deserve. I still believe in karma, but maybe more in the sense of how we attract things. I attracted these so called wrongdoings, because I hadn’t learned the lesson they had for me. These wrongdoings happen over and over until I learn their lesson. So these wrongdoings aren’t really negative or even wrong, they are valuable life lessons.
After doing some research on the internet on the subject of forgiveness, I realized how important it truly is. There are many forgiveness research projects which I didn’t know. They explain how not forgiving people can lead to serious physical and mental illnesses. It can destroy lives and entire nations.
The subject of forgiveness keeps popping up everyday in my life so obviously there is a lesson in there for me to learn. I don’t feel the need to forgive anybody, because I feel I have not been wronged. I am no longer a victim. I haven’t found the lesson yet, but I am exploring it. Although my exploration has touched other’s lives, so maybe my understanding of this is the lesson?
I found some very interesting reading from a sermon by Vann Knight, Parish Minister, and below is a quote:
What is the relationship between forgiveness and karma? In other words, does forgiveness cancel the consequences of destructive attitudes, words and deeds? The answer is “no.” Though it may not appear so at the times even when we are forgiven, we still reap the consequences of our actions. For instance, the person from whom money was stolen may forgive the thief and cancel the debt, but the thief will in some way experience the consequences of stealing. The consequences are inextricably bound to the action. Once the arrow has left the bow, you can’t call it back. Forgiveness and karma work something like this: If you destroy another person’s hand by holding it in the fire, you may be forgiven by that person and you may be able to forgive yourself, and you may come to know the forgiveness of God, but the burned person will live the rest of their life with a physical scar, and you will live the rest of your life with a spiritual scar. Here’s a spiritual hypothesis that I believe to be true: to whatever degree I inflict injury of any kind on another, I inflict an equal injury of some kind on myself. Forgiveness does not cancel consequences, but forgiveness does mean that I experience those consequences in the context of grace.
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I am almost done with a book called Embraced By The Light which is about a woman’s amazing near-death experience. A person who studied 1,000 near-death experiences wrote that it was the “most profound and complete” that she had ever come across, so I bought the book.
The author claimed to have met God after she died and one of the things she learned was that fear was Satan’s greatest tool. She saw how men and women in authority had become prey to negative energy and had taught belief in God through fear. “Because of their own fears, they were using fear to control others.” I know growing up Catholic, I remember the fear. God was supposed to be vengeful. The term “wrath of God” was used occasionally. So I am to live my life according to the book, or I will be punished for all of eternity.
Now I have seen fear based control in other circumstances. Many cultures live this way and it’s normal. Dictators rule this way. The tradition male role often includes fear and intimidation. Some people train animals like dogs in this way. Beat the dog if it poops on the carpet so it won’t do it again. Smack the wife if she doesn’t do something right and she’ll learn her lesson.
It seems the more I learn about myself, the less I am prone to violence. I heard that violence is the voice of the inarticulate which makes sense. So why would many religions teach in this matter? Why would God rule with fear? It doesn’t make sense to me for a fully enlightened being to act in this manner. Fear seems to oppress people. According to this book, fear prevents us from really loving God. It is the opposite of love. “Since I feared God, I could not truly love him, and in not loving him, I couldn’t love myself or others purely.” This makes sense to me.
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Below is an extended dialogue from Richard Bach and his inner child in the book Running From Safety.
“The world’s not a sphere, Dickie, it’s a big floating pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid is the lowest life form you can imagine, hateful, vicious, destroying for destruction’s sake, devoid of empathy, one step above consciousness so savage it self-destructs the instant it’s born. There’s room for that kind of consciousness, lots of room, right here on our triangular planet.”
“What’s at the top of the pyramid?”
“At the top is consciousness so refined it barely recognizes anything but light. Beings who live for their loves, for their highest right, creatures of perfect perspective, who die with a loving smile upon whatever monster would strike them down for the fun of watching someone die. Whales are like that, I think. Most dolphins. Some people, the human beings among us.”
“In between are the rest of us,” he said.
“You and me, kid.”
“Can’t we change the world?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “We can change our world any way we want.”
“Not our world. The World. Can’t we make it better?”
“Better for me and you,” I said, “is not better for everybody.”
“Peace is better than war.”
“The ones near the top of the pyramid would probably agree. Peace would make them happier.”
And the ones near the bottom…”
“…love battle! There’s always a reason to fight. With luck it’s a burning cause; this war we fight for God, this war’s to save the Homeland, this one to cleanse the Race, to expand the Empire, to get the tin and tungsten. We fight because the pay’s good, because it’s more exciting destroying lives than building them, because war beats work for a living, because everybody else is fighting, because it’ll show I’m a man, because I like to kill.”
“Terrible,” he said.
“Not terrible,” I said, “predictable. When one planet makes room for so wide a spectrum of mind, we expect a lot of conflict. Is that okay with you?”
He frowned. “No.”
“Next time pick a narrow planet.”
“What if there is no next-time?” he said. “What if you’re wrong about other lives than this?”
“Doesn’t make any difference,” I said. “We build our personal world calm or wild according to what we want to live. We can weave utter peace in the midst of chaos. We can destroy in the midst of paradise. Depends on how we shape our spirit.”
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Here is an excerpt from The Secret:
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