promise me....NOT

there is only one sacred promise - that is to tell and live your truth.

all other promises are forfeitures of freedom, and that can never be sacred. for freedom is WHO YOU ARE. if you forfeit freddom, you forfeit your SELF. And that is not a sacrament, that is a blasphemy.

Are You saying we should never make promises - that we should never promise anything to anyone?

as most of you are now living yourl ife, there is a lie built into every promise. the lie is that you can know now how you will feel about a thing, and what you will want to do about that thing, on any given tomorrow. only if you are living life as a creative being can your promise not contain a lie.

until you can create your future, you cannot predict your future. until you can predict your future, you cannot promise anything truthfully about it. yet even one who both creates and predicts her future has the authority and the right to change. Change is a fundamental right of all creatures.

since YOU ARE CHANGE - and since change is the only thing constant about you - you cannot truthfully promise to always be the same.

why is it difficult to keep a promise?

1) until you can predict your future, you cannot promise anything truthfully.
2) people find it difficult to keep promises is that they come into conflict with authenticity

what do you mean?

i mean that their evolving truth about a thing differs from what they said their truth would always be. and so, they are deeply conflicted. what to obey - my truth, or my promise?

advice?

betrayal of yourself in order not to betray another is betrayal nonetheless. it is the highest betrayal.

but this would lead to promises being broken all over the place! nobody's word on anything would matter. nobody could be counted on for anything!

oh, so you've been counting on others to keep their word, have you? no wonder you've been so miserable.

you mean i don't have a right to expect - or at least hope - that other people will keep their word?

why would you want such a right?
the only reason that another person would not keep their word to you would be because they didn't to - or they felt they couldn't, which is the same thing.

and if a person did not want to keep his word to you, or for some reason felt he just couldn't, why on earth would you want him to?

do you really want someone to keep an agreement she does not want to keep? do you really feel people should be forced to do things they don't feel they can do? why would you want to force anyone to do anything against his will?

well, try this for a reason: because to let them get away with not doing what they said they were going to do would hurt me - or my family.

so in order to avoid injury, you're willing to inflict injury.

i don't see how it injures another simply to ask him to keep his word.

yet he must see it as injurious, or he would keep it willingly.
when you give a person freedom, you remove danger, you don't increase it.
yes, letting someone "off the hook" on a promise or commitment made to you may look like it will hurt you in the short run, but it will never damage you in the long run, because when you give the other person their freedom, you give yourself freedom as well. and so now you are free of the agonies and the sorrows, the attacks on your dignity and your self-worth that inevitably follow when you force another person to keep a promise to you that she does not want to keep.

all things that proceed from you, retunr to you.

sevenfold. so there is no need to worry about what you are going to 'get back'. There is only a need to worry about what you are going to 'give out'. life is about creating the highest quality giving, not the highest quality getting.

you keep forgetting. But life is not "for getting". Life is "for giving", and in order to do that, you need to be forgiving to others - especially those who did not give you what you thought you were going to get!

Who you are is love.
what love is, is unlimited, eternal, and free.
therefore, that is what you are. that is the nature of Who You Are.
You are unlimited, eternal, and free, by nature.

excerpts from Neale's CwG book 3

the work by Byron Katie

The Work, consist of four questions that Katie invites you to ask yourself at any time that you are "hung up" on a particular thought or idea about yourself or another, or about any situation that is plaguing you. She claims the asking and the answering of these questions change help you "get off it," and can alter your experience of any unpleasant or unwelcome thought or emotion.

Here are the four questions that Byron Katie suggests you ask:
1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it's true?
3. How do you react when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?

The Work can be done either by oneself or with another person.

"First, one identifies a belief or thought related to a topic that causes anxiety or unhappiness. Initially one is encouraged to choose something which feels important, which annoys or troubles you, that someone else does or did: for example 'My mother never loved me,' or 'Tom shouldn't expect me to solve his problems.'
"One by one, the person doing The Work asks themselves, or is asked, each of the four questions listed above.

"After the four questions, the thought is literally turned around to its opposite. For example: 'My mother never loved me' turns around to 'My mother always loved me,' Then the person doing The Work sees if they can find ways that this new thought is equally true, or more true, than the original thought.

"The turnaround also takes the form of turning the statement around to oneself: 'I never loved my mother,' or 'I never loved me.'

"Katie summarizes The Work as: 'Judge your neighbor, write it down. Ask four questions, turn it around.'

"Katie has applied this technique to exploring painful beliefs across many topics, including relationships, parenting, illness, death and trauma. She has facilitated The Work with audiences in widely varying situations, from ordinary people dealing with financial worries to prison inmates and survivors of armed conflict."

Let me see here if I can illustrate how The Work works...

...Let's say, for the sake of discussion, that you have just found out that you have been laid off, "downsized" out of your company. And let's say that you have a thought about it that sounds something like this:

"I am being betrayed and damaged by my company laying me off."

Now, let's do The Work. With regard to the above thought, let's ask the Four Questions:

1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it's true?
3. How do you react when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?

Then, let's do what Katie calls The Turn-around. Let's see if we can find a way to turn it around.

"I am not being betrayed and damaged by my company laying me off."

Can you think of any examples of how or why this Turn-around could be true? Think of one or two of those ways or reasons, and write them down.

Okay, now you've done The Work. The only question left is...which thoughts about this do you choose to believe, and to live out?

Katie says, Leave no thought unquestioned...

You see, Katie's point is that things happen to us and around us, and we can't control much of that. But we can control how we experience it by choosing what we think about it. Your entire experience of life, she says, is contained in your thoughts. The problem is that people tend to imagine that their thoughts are out of their control. Katie says that is not true -- and that most of the time the thoughts we are thinking are things that we are simply making up. They are not true. We do not and cannot know them to be true. We are simply conjuring ideas and then living into them, stepping into them, as if they were true. Thus, we create worry, anxiety, upset, even anger. We live unhappily in these moments -- and, alas, these moments are not few and far between, but, instead, rather frequent and constant in people's lives.
So Katie says, the moment you have an unwelcome or worrisome or angry thought, simply question it. Then look closely at how you might feel if you just changed your mind about that idea you are holding. Turn it around. See it from another perspective. Let your mind be the Master of your experience.

Now Katie is not suggesting simply "positive thinking" here. Her idea is that we can all love "what is," no matter what that happens to be, not simply by moving immediately to a more positive thought about it. This may do nothing but put a band-aid on it, "covering" your real thought with a cosmetic idea that you may or not may not be able to hold as your truth.
But if we deeply examine our thought about what is happening through the process of critical inquiry that Katie calls The Work, she believes that such inquiry will lead us logically and naturally to another way of viewing the data -- a view that we will be able to hold onto because it is soundly based in logic and reason, not just "wishful thinking." This new view, she says, has the power to alter our experience.
So, there you have it. What do you think about that? And, as you explore what you think about that, ask yourself...

1. Is it true?
2. Can I absolutely know that it's true?
3. How do I react when I believe that thought?
4. Who would I be without the thought?

what is love?

what is love?

love is unlimited.
love is that which is unlimited. there is no beginning and no end to it. no before and no after. love always was, always is, and always will be.

if love is unlimited, and always, then love is....free.
love is that which is perfectly free.

you are life expressing life, love expressing love, God expressing God.

all these words are therefore synonymous. thin of them as the same thing:
God
Life
Love
Unlimited
Eternal
Free

anything which is not one of these things is not any of these things.

true love is always free, and obligation cannot exist in the space of love.

bakit?

mahirap bang magparaya para sa taong mahal mo?

bakit mukhang mahirap ang maging masaya para sa iba?

bakit kailangang may condition ang pagmamahal?

di ba dapat wala naman?

ang tunay daw na pag-ibig

di humihingi ng kapalit

pero kadalasan may hinihinging kapalit

isa bang krimen ang maging totoo ka sa sarili mo?

bakit mahirap intindihin na di madaling manakit ng damdamin ng iba?

paano ba gawing madali ang paghihiwalay?

paano madaling mawala ang sakit?

sana......

pag-ibig lang palagi ang mamayani sa puso

wala ng puwang ang galit sa puso

madaling lumimot

madaling maging masaya para sa kasiyahan ng iba

maikli ang buhay

maging masaya ka

dumangas sojourn (january 18, 2008) value trip

hay....sa kagustuhan na makatipid at makauwi ng ati-atihan in a budgeted way, rinor, my bro, and i took the roro from bacolod going to dumangas. wow! it was really that cheap. P50 and we had a night to remember for life. the moon was damn beautiful and i found the boat clean in fairness. rested just outside the boat so we can enjoy the starry and moony night.

thing was when we reached dumangas port, no tricycle to bring us to ceres terminal in tagbak, iloilo. choices: be a hitcher or ride in the van that purposely waits for some passengers taking a chance since people don't have a choice if they can't hitch. and so we ended up sitting there for it seemed like eternity waiting for the next boat to arrive to fill up the van. they won't even tell us how much would it cost. so anyway, when they dropped us off to ceres terminal, that's when i knew it was a whooping P75 per head! Wow! as in i really asked 'what?!"

something to remember: never take a ride without asking for the price

so next time if you are on a budget and wants to get on to iloilo, and you don't have your own car to drive, take the not so unholy hour trip so there will be a queue of tricycles that can bring you to your destination cheaper. tricycle would only costs you P12 to bring you to jeepney terminal in dumangas proper and the jeepney going to iloilo city would costs only about P20. So with only a hundred bucks, you are in a different island.

this herstory

Let the Histories change, then.

If a Red sea was ever truly parted

then let the same value of a miracle

perform Itself, Here.

Let the Histories change, then.

Every unrequited Love, shall be requited.

Every broken wing, made whole.
A History begins Itself, Now.

And You, are a Maker Of It.

You, are neither brick nor bauble
but a Dreamer of What's Next.

This World, may not even need

foundation. Or decoration.

Or oceans to manage.
Let's not even decide on a Name.

But let This History change, Now

all the same.

(This History - m. claire - copyright 2007 - all rights reserved)

no thing matters

Nothing matters!
What an amazing message.
Nothing matters?

If nothing matters intrinsically, then I am free to declare what I choose to have matter to me. But if something matters intrinsically...that is to say, if something matters to someone other than me, to someone else—shall we say God...then I had darned well better figure out what that is, I had better figure out what matters so much to God. Because if I don’t figure out what it is I will be the thing called "condemned;" or, at the very least, "unenlightened."
But God said, "nothing matters.” Therefore, you are free to make matter what you choose to make matter in your life. And I mean that in two ways: not only to "make matter," but to make something into matter, to cause a thing to become matter. That is, to "make it matter" in your life, to manifest in physical reality something that is pure matter out of physical energy, out of invisible physical energy. To turn energy into matter.
You know you are enlightened when you can’t even articulate what your thoughts are. Either that or you’re totally crazy, one or the other. Wouldn’t it be funny if enlightenment and craziness were one and the same?

if you simply love without expectation, without requirement, without needing anything in return, you have done a good job.

Enlightenment, when it is all said and done, has nothing to do with what you do with your body or your mind. It has to do with what you do with your soul. If you simply love everyone whose life you touch endlessly unconditionally with nothing needed or wanted in return, you have become enlightened and you have shown everyone whose life you touch how they may be enlightened as well, as fast as with any other system that exists, (snapping a finger) like that.

And if you learn to love yourself unconditionally, as well as everyone else, you can heal your entire body without lifting a finger.

excerpt from Neale's blog

changing our minds about who/what god is

Many people have asked me through the years what it takes to bring joy to life; to be happy. One of the things I often say in reply is: Life Purpose.

If we have a Life Purpose our journey will take us to extraordinary places and experiences. And our life, however short or long, will have meant something. Not to others. To ourself. I invite every person I come in contact with to look deeply at their life's purpose. What are they "up to" here on the earth? Just trying to get by, just trying to make life work?
I always say, "Are you just trying to make life work, or are you trying to make life better?"

And for whom would you seek to make it better? For yourself, or for another? Or, perhaps, for all others? Can you imagine such a thing as your own life purpose?
I am reminded of John Wesley's "rule." As you know, Mr. Wesley is credited with being the founder of the Methodist Church. And here is a "rule" that he invited people to follow in their lives...

Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, for all the people you can, in every place you can, at all the times you can, with all the zeal you can, as long as ever you can.

I love that. I just adore that injunction, and I have tried very hard to live my life by it. These days my own life purpose is simple, it can be stated in six words: Change the world's mind about God. That's it. Plain and simple. I just want to change the world's mind about God. Why? Because I know that if the world changed its mind about God, the world itself would change, over night. And in ways that could bring about peace on earth, goodwill to humans everywhere, at last. Yes, I believe this can happen. I believe this can occur. I believe human beings are capable of creating such a life, of creating such a society. But first we must change our minds about Who is In Charge, and What He Wants, and Why He Wants It, and How All of Life Works. We must decide again about Life, what it is and how it functions and the reason and purpose behind it all. We must create a new Cultural Story about all of this, out of which will emerge a new idea about ourselves individually, and a new thought about ourselves in relationship to each other. We must alter our perspective, seeing things from a new place and therefore in a new way.

Perspective creates perception, perception creates belief, belief creates behavior, behavior creates experience, experience creates reality -- and our reality creates our perspective.

If we want to change our reality, we need to change our perspective. We need to see things in a New Way. This New Way is what I call the New Spirituality. It is a way of honoring our natural impulse toward the Divine without making others wrong for the way in which they are doing it. It is a way of holding the experience and the reality of God, without fearing God. The day that we stop fearing God will be the day that we stop fearing each other. The day that we understand our true relationship with God will be the day that we understand our true relationship with each other. Then we will treat each other as God would treats us -- with compassion, with understanding, with forgiveness, with a love that is unconditional -- rather than treating each other as we imagine that God treats us: with judgment, anger, condemnation, and violence upon our person if we do not do What God Wants.

We treat each other the way we do on this planet with impunity, for we are using an angry, violent, and vindictive God as our moral compass and our moral authority. Yet if God is not angry, violent, and vindictive, where, then, will we find our justification for acting as we do? Our entire legal system is based upon our ideas of "right" and "wrong," and that, in turn, is based upon our Cultural Story of a God -- a Divine Being, a Deity, a Creator, who has His ideas of Right and Wrong, and punishes us for ignoring them. Our concept of "justice" is foundationed in our understanding of Retribution as a function of God. Yet what if God seeks no retribution for anything at all? Then what of our system of justice? And what of our very way of life? I believe that everything would be altered. For the better. Even our criminal justice system -- which human beings agree must have some place in our affairs, would be improved remarkably. That is why I want to change the world's mind about God.

Right now we are doing an awful lot of killing in God's name. Surely that can't be what GOd intended.

reprinted from Neale's blog

happiness is.....

Happiness really is just a thought away but at times it sure doesn't seem that way.

It is so easy to get caught up in the illusion we call reality and forget our true nature.

Happiness is our birthright and as we clear out our filter system (which is composed of our beliefs, agreements, assumptions, and thoughts) we can learn to be happy no matter what is happening in our life.

Give yourself that gift - do whatever it takes to lovingly retrain your mind and begin living your life based on love and the guidance of your spirit rather than the dictates of your mind.
We think we are seeing reality when what we are really seeing is the reflection of our filter system.

Our minds would much rather be right than be happy -

What limiting beliefs are you still arguing for?
What are your beliefs about the world? Is it a safe place?
Is life hard or easy and full of joy?
Is money easy to come by?
Do you have more than enough of everything?
How do you see yourself?
How do you think the Great Spirit, God, Goddess, all there is see you?
What could you do right now to improve the quality of your life?
How do you define happiness?

Writing is one of the most powerful tools.

when we talk about an issue or think about it we can get caught in endless thought loops but when we take the time to write about it clarity is sure to follow.

Take some time - answer the questions - begin your book of freedom.

Five years from now if you embrace these concepts your life will be totally transformed - it will take time, effort, discipline, and dedication - but you will be free of your limitations.

If you do nothing your life will be pretty much the same and you will just be five years older. Imagine it is five years from now - which choice do you wish you had made?

Make it now!

New Year

This is a very special time of year because it is the Time of New Beginnings. For me, January signifies the wonder and the excitement and the liberation of “starting over.” The Old Year is behind me and the New Year has just begun; the blackboard has been erased, I’ve got a clean slate.
There’s something metaphysical about all that; there’s a message in the folds of that experience that comes directly from God. The message is: no matter how badly things may have gone, no matter how bad I may have been, that was ‘Then’ and this is ‘Now.’ A New Day has dawned, a New Moment has arrived. It is the Golden Moment of Now, wherein which all things are possible, all things are forgiven, all things are made new.

They say that February is the Month of Love. If so, then for me January is the Month of Hope. Hope is the first step on the road to Mastery. There are three in all. They are: Hoping, Believing, Knowing.
Hoping starts the process, and January starts the year. Hoping begins the cycle and so does January. The cycle completes itself in December with the ultimate conclusion: the finding within each of us of the Eternal Flame of Chanukah—the light of God that can never and will never be extinguished, because it is Who We Are. The Knowing of this, and thus, the birthing of the Christ within every human soul.

This cycle from Hoping to Knowing can complete itself in one year, in one lifetime, or in one moment. It is really all the same to God, who knows nothing of Time because God is Timeless, as is Life, except within our imagination.

And so we are born and we die and we are born again, all in the self-same instant, the Holy Instant, the glorious and ever present Moment of Now, which we stretch out across...
......the breadth of our perception in order that we might expand the Now and thus expand Ourselves, thus to know more of both.

This is the incredible, indescribable miracle of Life, and we have come to mutual agreement in fairly large numbers that January shall be called the endlessly recurring new beginning of this ever present, forever ongoing Process.

So, welcome to January, the Time of Hope. In case you have lost yourself in the drama of it all and have forgotten Who You Are; in case you have come through the last cycle and missed its ultimate conclusion; in case you have made a turn into a corner where it is dark; take heed! The Time of the Light has arrived.
The Eternal Flame has been placed within you. It is you. The Christed One has been born again as you. It is you. And the New Year offers you another chance, another beginning, another start on the journey to self-realization.
I like to use January as a Time of Forgiveness, too. For me it is a Time of Cleansing, when I try as hard as I can to forgive myself my trespasses, even as I forgive those who trespass against me. I am not always successful with that first part. I can forgive others, and believe that I sincerely do. I am not so good at forgiving myself. It seems indulgent somehow; it feels self-serving. And so I have to let go of my thought that it is not okay to serve myself.
It is self-serving to forgive oneself. There’s no question about that. The question is not whether it’s self-serving, but whether it is okay to be so self-serving. God says that the answer is yes.
You must serve yourself to know yourself. Indeed, you cannot know anything without serving it. Service is the experience of Knowing, in action. This is how we come to Know God.
It is how we come to Know Life.
It is how we come, at last, to Know the Self.
Serving God is, of course, Self-service. And this is what we ultimately come to Know. Through the process of serving God, we come to know that we are serving the Self. Through the process of serving the Self, we come to know that we are serving God. And through the wondrous process of serving others, we come to know that we are serving both. The circle completes itself, and we see that the circle has always been, and will always be. There is nothing but the Circle, there is nothing but the Cycle, and it is only a question of where we are, now, on that never-ending revolution of the soul.
We are revolving, and as we experience each revolution we see more clearly that it is a Spiritual Revolution, producing a Spiritual Evolution. We are doing much more than simply “going around in circles” here. For the soul, revolution is evolution.
The Cycle is Eternal, but that does not mean it is getting nowhere. Ever upward the Cycle goes, and one day we see that the Circle is not a circle at all, but a Spiral.
Looked at one way, from a place of perception that sees with no depth, but only on the surface of things, it looks for all the world like a circle. Only when we see into the depth of things, only as our perception grows deeper, do we see that the circle is a spiral.

And so January, the start of a new Cycle, is a time to expand our consciousness, to grow our awareness, to move from Hoping to Believing to Knowing.
When I find myself reading articles such as this (much less writing them), I find myself, at first, hoping they are true. Hoping that maybe, just maybe, I have chanced upon something that is quite true and quite remarkable and quite helpful and quite different from anything that I understood before, and, therefore, quite valuable to my own growth and expansion and evolution.
Yes, I hope this. I see the words here, and I hope.
Then at some point in time I move into believing. I believe they are true. I believe that this is How It Is. I may not be absolutely certain beyond a shadow of a doubt, but I believe that this is How It Is.
Finally, as I continue on my journey, I come to a place of pure certainty. The Hope which became Belief has become Knowing. I suddenly Know—simply KNOW—that this is How It Is. I know it, because the IT that IS this, I Am. The Perceiver and the Perception have become One.
The Creator and the Created have merged. Unification has occurred. We are, I am, All of It is, ONE.
Do you understand what I’m saying here? I sounds like I’m on drugs, right? That’s the problem with spiritual clarity. It can be very difficult to share your thoughts with others because you start to sound crazy. People will think you’re hopped up. Heck, I look at what I just wrote and I think I’m hopped up.
Yet maybe it’s time for just that. Maybe it’s time for all of us to hop up to a New Level. To take the next step, to make the next leap—a quantum leap into new understanding, new awareness, a new experience of ourselves and of what it means to be human. Maybe this will be the year in which we do that. And maybe enough of us can do that to make this next 12 months the year that the world itself changed forever. Or at least began to.
What do you say? Want to make this the YEAR of the New Beginning? In the larger cycle, want to make this the time when we first saw, really saw, the Spiral? Okay, then let’s begin. Let’s start now.
Let’s use this onset of the New Year as the onset of the New Self. Let’s forget everything we think we know about ourselves, let’s forgive everything we think we’ve done that is “bad,” and let’s start over, this time recreating ourselves anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are—as a species, as an individual, and as an Aspect of Divinity expressing That Which Is.
Remember today that you are not your Yesterdays. Remember today that you are not your weaknesses, not your foibles, not your offenses, not your failures. Remember today Who You Really Are, and claim that.
Happy New Year, everyone. Happy New YOU.

Love always,
Neale.

daily habit for happiness

Use this simple little formula and you will start off every day with a mindset that will change what occurs in the hours that follow. This is important to understand. What you experience in your life is a direct result of the energy you call in.

try to do something like this each morning:

...read or write something sacred and holy. Something meaningful and important. Something soft and warm and wonderful. Something about God and Life and Love, and how to experience all three at the highest level ever.

Then put down reading or writing and take a moment to quietly forgive. forgive everybody for everything. And include yourself in that forgiveness circle.

here is a five step formula for opening each day:

1. Gratitude

2. Song

3. Smile

4. Sacred Nourishment

5. Forgiveness

Not necessarily in that order. But touch all five if you can. If you do, I dare you to walk out of the bedroom in a dark space or a bad mood or in a grumpy state of mind. Dare you, dare you, double dare you! You can't! You won't! It's impossible!

Now I want you to do two more things and your relationship with your Significant Other will become once again the territory for bliss and growth and love abounding that it was at the beginning and was meant to be always.

1. Think of your Beloved Other, whoever is closest to you right now, and prepare a present for that person in your heart and mind, offering it to him/her before the day is out. One every day.

2. Close each day with a recital to your Beloved: "What I am grateful to you for this day...", and offer a verbal list of those items, describing each in detail.

Now I want you to do three final things each day and your whole life will change, not just your morning or your relationship.

1. Move through your day knowing that you walk with God and that God walks with you, and that another human being is going to be coming to you this day for whom you will have a gift in your hands. You do not know what that gift is right now, but it doesn’t matter. You will know when God brings that person to you.

2. Do something courageous and outrageous in the next 12 hours, and do one courageous/outrageous thing every day. Then reach out and get whatever life has to offer this day. Take it with gusto, for it is your gift from life!

3. Be good to yourself this evening. Give yourself some small treat, whatever it may be, and pamper yourself in this way, saying “thanks” to you and to God for the wonderful experience of living fully this day.

This is Ten Step Method for Achieving Daily Happiness. use Gratitude, Giving, Getting, and God – the Four G’s – as pathway to fulfillment and joy, and it will take you there every time.

Let 2008 be a year-long of blessings and joy!