My World, My Voice

What is the value of one life? It's value is infinity. Our lives exist on several different levels. Certainly day to day it's about finding someone to love, feeling loved, looking good, feeling good, excelling at your work, but at the next level it's about experiencing yourself as the best version of you that you can be in all areas of living. At the next level above that, it's about knowing that you are all these things. On a religious level, it's about feeling separate from God and experiencing individual things, then opening your heart and letting God in... sharing your life with God, and finally seeing that God is in you and that you are a part of the everything and that God lives through you. In this respect, it's not what get out of life that is important, it's what you put into it. When you take in your final breath of air and meet your maker, it's not going to be important how fancy your car or your house was, but it will be important what yo

Nothing changes and nothing stays the same. This is a universal truth. It's all there for us, everything so it's always the same, but at the same time in each moment we have the chance to pick again. To choose another outcome. And so even though all those choices were always there, from day to day, moment to moment we experience a freshness out of them because we have chosen them in a different way. Every day for example I look at this blog of mine. It's my homepage, so I see it every single time I open my web browser. Why then has it taken me two months to add to it? It's been here for me every day, been a choice I could make and yet for the last two months I've consciously chosen something else to do with my time each of those many times. All in all for a while I felt like the basic things I needed to say to the world were spoken. That nothing else need be said. If that were true though, what would be the point for living one more moment? Truly if I had

I view life as a road. Each and every one of us are on a road. Our roads travel great distances, sometimes straight, sometimes curvey. At times our roads go through the mountains and it seems like our heads are in the clouds, and other times our roads dip low into the valleys. There are dry patches, and wet patches... muddy ones too. Our roads cross other roads, that is our lives cross others lives. Sometimes our roads parallel other roads. Often time these people we spend long periods with become our friends, our neighbors, our lovers. Then suddenly our road (or theirs) will curve away from ours. This is not to be veiwed as a bad thing. It simply is what it is. We each have our own life to lead and one will never be exactly identical to another. When the path of a friend or loved one veers off in a direction away from our own, we need to remember this and be happy for that person and for ourselves. We need to celebrate this diversity and be joyous that we will get to experi

I'm very dismayed today about the state of the world. People change lanes in traffic without using their turn signals. A Muslim raised pop star is spit on and called a whore and her life is threatened because she shows her face and belly when she performs. Young women are looked on as property as they are trafficked over the Mexican/American border and their bodies sold to men for sexual acts and torture. Our children are targeted online and preyed upon by perverts and child molesters, sometimes even being abducted and physically abused and murdered. A man goes within himself and chooses a different religion than he was born into and his peers seek his death. A French labor law is sought to be changed and so protesters take to the streets hurling rocks at authorities and setting cars on fire. ...And then in line at the grocery store today a woman was 47 cents short and another person in line gave her the money so that she would not have to put anything back. Can't we all

When we put aside the truths we hold close, sometimes the same truths come back and are reaffirmed to us. Sometimes it opens the door for something entirely different to enter and in that moment we grow as a human being . We all come at life with our own baggage. That baggage is the sum total of all our experiences to date. It's what gives us wisdom, what guides us when we are unsure, what creates the framework for our values and our beliefs. When something presents itself for us to act on, our past experiences guide us to make a decision about this new thing. Sometimes that decision achieves that which we set out to achieve and sometimes it does not. Almost in all cases however, the decision that we made at that moment was one that we judged as the "right" one based on the experience and baggage of our past. Our goal then is not to judge things as right or wrong, because that is merely opinion based on previous experience. But to be willing to lay down our baggage

William Shakespeare said it best, "To thine own self be true." What this means to me is that we must each walk our own path and we must each make our own decisions in life. Just like a flame in a fire, create your own destiny, dance your own dance, be your own self. So many times in this world people make decisions based on the truth of others. This is shown on every level from what you choose to eat to how our nations get along with one another. I have an aunt who didn't like peas or beans and at her house, she never ate or served those vegetables. Interestingly enough none of her children like peas or beans either. Do they not like these vegetables because they tried them and truly think they are awful or did they just take the experience of their mother and make it their own? A General tells his soldier that the other nation is their enemy. The soldier goes into battle and kills the soldier of the other nation. Was that person who died truly an enemy of our nat

The story of Adam and Eve can be looked at as a literal happening or a touching story, in either event it's message is designed to remind us why we are here. Adam and Eve had everything they could ever want in the Garden of Eden. The problem that they faced was that in having everything, they experienced nothing. For how special is the most perfect thing if you have it at all times. If you were able to drive down the street every day of your life and always have a green light, after a few days or weeks, having green lights all the time would not feel special, it would feel ordinary. In that example you have the perfect ride to your destination, but you can't appreciate it as the perfect ride in the absence of an imperfect ride. Without an occasional red light, you cannot fully appreciate all the green lights. This is what the Garden of Eden represents. It is everything we always wanted but without the experience of not having it, there is no way to fully appreciate it. T

I love art and the act of creating. Be it a song, a sculpture, a painting, a photograph or simply a unique presentation of spaghetti.... it is the act of creation, of making something new and personal that draws me to art and those who create it. Today I created this new header for my blog. I began with a predefined blog template thanks to Todd Dominey and I'm slowly tweaking it and making it my own. A day will come when it does not at all resemble what it started as and that will be a very special day for me personally because it will become something that is all mine. A representation of myself to the world at that moment. The photograph used in my new header is a photo I personally shot while visiting the domes in Milwaukee. I really love the origninal photo. So much that I feature it on my deviant art account. But to take something that I have captured and add to it to create a presence and a personality for my blog... that is creation at it's finest. I am pleased w

Let me say that again. You cannot have what you want, but you may experience whatever you have. Our experiences in the world are created by thought, word and deed. What I mean is that what you think about something, what you write about something and what you do about something creates your ultimate experience of that thing. This all begins with your very first thought. That thought that starts with "I". I want I have I am I must It is this first thought that begins the creation of your experience. Once you have a thought, the universe goes to work to bring the events and circumstances necessary to give you that experience. So when you say you want wealth... that is EXACTLY what you get. You get the experience of "WANTING wealth". Therefore you cannot have what you want, you can only have the experience of wanting it. To look at the second half of that statement, one's response might be, "doh!" Of course you can experience whatever you have!

Valentine's Day is a day we think of our loved ones. We often buy them gifts, send them cards, take them out to dinner. It is a day of celebration for the strongest, most heart-felt emotion a being can experience or share. Today I have decided to share a slightly different, but much more fulfilling outlook on what love is. This is quoted directly out of one of my favorite books, "Conversations With God" by Neale Donald Walsch. All human actions are motivated at their deeepest level by one of two emotions - fear or love. In truth there are only two emotions - only two words in the language of the soul. These are the opposite ends of the great polarity which God created when He produced the universe, and your world, as you know it today. These are the two points - the Alpha and the Omega - which allow the system you call "relativity" to be. Without these two points, without these two ideas about things, no other idea could exist. Every human thought, and eve

Matt... this is especially for you. I'm the sort of person that would rather find a natural cure for something over a chemical one whenever possible. This remedy is the thing that probably more than anything planted that mindset into me. When I was 13, one particular day I had a pounding headache but there was nothing in the medicine cabinet. So I sat in the bathroom trying to find another way to get rid of my headache and ease the suffering. What I came up with was a remedy that has served me for more than 22 years now. Since that day I've only taken medicine for a headache one time. All other headaches I've experienced in my life have been knocked out with my remedy which I'm about to share with you. The most important element for success using this process is a firm belief that it will work. If you don't truly believe in your mind that it's going to work then it never will. However I have taught this remedy to many of my friends and everyone who has

I read my friend Jason's Blog post a bit ago about his mother and her passing from that dreaded thing called cancer. It reminded me of last year and my own mother's fight against cancer and it also made me think about death. The first time I was introduced to the concept of death I was a very small child. About 6 years old. Someone my parents and I knew passed away, though I have no recollection who that was any more. I do remember vividly asking my mother why all the people were sad. She kneeled down beside me and explained that our friend had passed away and that the people were sad because they would not be able to see this person again or talk to them until they went to heaven. This made me sad and start to cry and my mother told me that it was okay to be sad, but I could also be happy because our friend was no longer suffering. They had moved on to be with God and they were in heaven now experiencing all the best things. I thought about the words my mother had spoken

Life is your opportunity to create the best version of your self and then experience what you have created in relation to others. Every choice you make (or don't make) shapes who you are in relation to the rest of the world. That is the act of creation and our purpose in life. We live each day so that we can create who we are in relation to the rest of the world. Relationships are our way of experiencing our creations. We can only give meaning to the choices we have made by having others to compare them to. Relationships with others allow us to hold our choices up against choice combinations others have assembled and let us see how we like the person we have created in comparasin to that. How can we use this information to improve our lives? Simply look at your choices each day and chooose the ones that are the the highest or most loving. Take care of yourself, love yourself and be the best version of you that you can. When you succeed in doing this, you will find that your

When I was about 12 years old I decided it was time to make up my own mind about the existance of a supreme being or not. The conversation in my head went something like this: Choices : Yes there is a God. No there isn't a God. Possible Scenarios : God exists but he has no preference of one religion over another. God exists and there is one right religion. God does not exist and nothing matters. Further look at each possible scenario : If God exists but he has no preference over religions then I'm safe as long as I pick one and follow it to the best of my ability. And Whoopie! I could get into heaven! If God exists and there is only one right religion then I have about a one in 20 (that's all the religious groups I could think of at the time) chance of picking the right one and being saved. If I picked well, I'll see those shining pearly gates and if I picked wrong I'll at least be warm. If God does not exist, then life and death are all that is and I don't have

I'm 5 yrs old and my brother is about to be born. I'm staying at my aunt and uncle's house that I hardly know at this point in my life (because my mother had to go to a hospital that could handle my brother's preemy birth and other complications). When I go home with mom, dad and baby bro, I have this vivid memory of sitting in a restaurant around a round table with my aunt and uncle, my mom and dad and another person I don't know. I have a chicken sandwich and some potato chips on my plate and I'm happily eating them. My uncle spots a potato chip on my plate that has a green spot and he says to me, "Trish don't eat that potato chip with the green in it. It's actually a spoiled piece of potato that didn't get cut out." "Okay," I say, "Thanks for the tip." Now I've had this memory firmly planted in my mind from that day on. I've told my mom, my dad, and my brother countless times over the years that the green on t

This is a truth in the absolute. One cannot know and experience a state of peace unless there is an opposite of peace to compare it to. Peace does not mean anything without war, it cannot. One of my friends often asks me what I want and my reply is always, "Peace, love and happiness." The other day he told me that I cannot have peace unless I'm willing to declare war on all humankind and force them to come together against a greater evil than themselves. At first this idea upset me. How can one think that the only way to peace is through an act of war. Upon further thought I decided that, in the realm of the absolute, he is 100% correct. People cannot know of peace, desire peace, choose peace unless they witness it's opposite and give it context. Therefore we must have war if there is ever going to be peace. Here is where my beliefs change direction though. In this world, we have witnessed war. We know how war brings suffering and loss, pain and despair to th

Love is all there is.