It is fascinating how a new year begins.  It all begins when two hands of a clock meet on twelve.  The two hands are one; they are no longer two … and a new year presents itself to you.

The moment when two become one is also considered a moment of enlightenment; a moment when all separation ends and absolute wholeness begins.  A new year is an opportunity; it’s an opportunity for you to become one with your aspirations and aims – we call them New Years Resolutions.

What are you supposed to do when you bring in a new year?

Are you to close the door on the old year?

Are you to stop clinging to old ways, and begin living fresh and new?

Are you to enter the new year with empty hands?

In the old year, winning came and losing came … pleasure came and pain came; everything came upon you and retreated in a circular motion.

And where were you?

Were you not in the center of the circle, experiencing all of it?

With 2012 coming upon you, what are you to do with 2011?

Can you clutch to 2011, or does it simply drop out of your hands, leaving you standing, empty of its contents?

Kahil Gibran said that we are all like rivers, flowing toward the vast ocean … and in that moment when the river water flows into the vast water of the ocean, the rivers rich life of a thousand miles dissolves into nothingness. Will this happen to you when you flow into 2012?  Will your rich past dissolve into nothingness? Will your miserable past dissolve into nothingness.

If you do not allow 2011 to dissolve into nothingness, how can you enter the new year, alert and sharp, able to manifest your new resolutions?

Are you wonderfully obsessed with knowing the unknown that lies in the new year?  Is it more important to you than the known that you’d experienced in the old year?

You can’t go back, so why waste time looking behind you? Why not look ahead of you?  You will be marvelously surprised.

It’s always good advice to drop the old, to lighten the load, so you can jump on something new. This is what it takes to make one’s life an exciting adventure.

What will you do to jump on the new in 2012?

What will you let go of to make your New Years Resolutions come true?

When there is a choice, will you choose the unknown (the risky, the dangerous), or will you choose to do what you always do?

Please let me know what this blog brings up in you.

Happy New Year.

“Best Comment of the Week.” This weeks best comments come from Jeanette Melian and “SaltySailorMan.” Thank you both for your honest, heartfelt sharing. See their comments here.

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With the holiday season upon us, I would like to talk about God for a moment. Have you ever heard the account of when Ramakrishna and Vivekananda met? Do you know who they are? Google them if you don’t – okay?

Well these two enlightened men met at Rama’s abode. The conversation turned to God. Vive was a logical man; he only believed what he could use his intelligence and ‘reasoning skills’ to prove was true. He said, “There is no God. You cannot possibly prove it, and so I don’t believe it.”

Rama was not nearly as educated with books as was Vive, and he lived with his intuitive sense more than his reasoning mind. Rama said, “My intuitive sense says there is a God, and so … no matter what intellect you use to disprove the existence of God, I will still believe GOD IS.”

Rama went on to say, “My intuitive sense tells me that GOD IS, as surely as it tells me when I am hungry or I am tired. I trust my intuitive sense; I do not need to turn to intellectual debate to determine that food or sleep is needed.”

Vive felt discouraged with the conversation and began to frown. He said, “I’d hoped the conversation could go deeper than this.” Rama said, “Would you like me to show you God? Would that help you see my point of view?” Rama replied, “I’d love it; show me God.”

Rama got up and danced like a child, on and on for an hour. He did cartwheels and back flips in his joyous demonstration. At the end of his dance, which entranced Vive, Rama touched Vive, and Vive fell into a deep, quiet sleep.

Upon awakening, Vive experienced himself as a transformed man; he was in a state of absolute jubilation and sensed an ultimate well-being had overcome him … unlike anything he’d experienced before. He embraced Rama, and said, “YES, there is a GOD … GOD IS.”

This is what GOD IS … GOD IS this absolute state of jubilation, which is what you feel when you let go of erroneous notions and the subsequent drama these notions bring upon you.

GOD IS the ultimate sense of well-being that you feel when you allow the truth about your incredibleness to sink into the deepest part of your consciousness. This experience is God … and you only have it when you allow your naturally intuitive sense to guide you … and it can only guide you when you let go of all that hinders you from experiencing the supreme truth about you.

It is the Holiday Season.

Allow the real purpose of this season to touch you.

Give yourself as many opportunities as possible to Let Go and Let God.

Don’t look for outside authorities to help you.

Go within.

Allow the WHOLE of you to embrace you … if you do, you will intuitively find yourself dancing like Rama danced … you will find yourself feeling like Vive felt when he came out of the deep sleep.

What say Ye?

What can you add to this post to spread the holiday joy?

You have something valuable to say; please say it.

Blessings,

rob

“Best Comment of the Week.” This weeks best comments come from Irving the Vizier and Deeone Higgs. Thank you both for your honest, heartfelt sharing. See their comments here.

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Have you read Leo Tolstoy’s story about three saints that lived on an island in a lake that was in a remote part of Russia? These saints made the lake famous. People were very excited about the miracles these saints were performing. There was a buzz going around all of Russia. Thousands of folks were coming from all over, to see these saints.

Eventually the high priests of the Russian Orthodox Church became concerned about these ‘rumors of saints’ at the lake. They’d not been declared saints by the church, so who was giving them this title? How dare they!

The high priests sent a team of three priests to the lake to investigate the matter. The team of three priests had to take a rowboat to the small island where the so-called saints lived.

When they finally located the three saints, they saw three poor men in simple garbs, just sitting at the shore of the island. It was clear that they were poor, but indeed they were very happy. They were putting their toes in the lake water and delightfully giggling.

When the team of three priests approached them, the saints jumped up and bowed down to the priests in great admiration. One priest angrily said, “What are you doing here?” Another said, “Some people foolishly claim that you are saints.” The third priest said, “do you even know how to pray?”

The three saints looked at each other, and one said, “We are sorry, but we do not know the prayer of your church.” Another saint said, “However, we have a prayer of our own; may we demonstrate it?”

One of the priests angrily said, “Go ahead, what is this prayer that you say.”

One of the saints said, “We came to this prayer when we thought of God as a trinity – ‘God the father’ … God the son … and … God the holy ghost” Another saint said, “So we came up with this prayer.” Then all three saints chimed in, “GOD YOU ARE THREE, … AND SO ARE WE. HOW ABOUT IF WE THREE AND YOU THREE TEAM UP AND THEN THERE ARE SIX OF US WORKING TOGETHER.”

One of the priests became enraged. He shouted, “This is nonsense; it’s blasphemous; you are not saints; you are stupid fools!”

The saints said, “Please sir, then teach us the proper prayer so we may communicate with God.”

One priest immediately went into dialogue and spoke the official prayer of the Russian Orthodox Church. It was long. It was bombastic. It was filled with big words.

The three saints looked at each other. How could they possibly learn that? One saint asked, “Sir, will you repeat it again so we can try to learn it?”

A second priest repeated the dialogue with pomp and circumstance. There was a pause, and then one of the saints asked, “Please sir, just one more time.”

The team of three priests looked down with scorn at the three saints, and briskly walked back to their rowboat to travel to the mainland and tell the high priests that these three men were nothing more than stupid fools; they certainly were not saints.

As the priests rowed off … when in the middle of the lake, they could not believe their eyes. There were those three men, that they’d call stupid fools, running across the top of the water toward their boat; one of them shouting, “Please sirs, tell us the prayer one more time; we’ve not yet quite got it.”

The three priests fell to their knees in the boat and one said, “Please forgive us, for we know not what we do.” Another priest said, “You continue with your prayer.”

This story touches me. It tells me not to allow any organized religion, government, or social order to tell me how to think. Tolstoy did not believe in ready-made patterns of thought. If he did, he’d not have been the creative genius that he was.

When you speak to the infinite, speak as you want to speak. Go deep inside and say what your heart wants to say. Let no man tell you there is a programmed way to reach the almighty power of infinite intelligence.

Become your own genius. YOU ARE MARVELOUSLY MADE AND DESTINED TO WIN AT WHATEVER YOU SET YOUR MIND TO. Please set your mind to achieving the beautiful life you once dreamed of experiencing. Begin now, thinking this way this holiday season.

Please know that you are worthy of all that is good and beautiful. Please share this feeling … spread it around; help others to feel this way about themselves. Now that’s the spirit of true giving. What you give away, you get to keep.

Let me know how Tolstoy’s story has touched you. What does it bring to mind? What lesson can you glean from it? How might you interpret it?

Thank you & blessings

“Best Comment of the Week.” This weeks best comments come from OluwaRotimi Adesina & Sylvia. Thank you both for your honest, heartfelt sharing. See their comments here.

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I have learned over the past many years that life has its own logic. I’ve also learned that life moves on its merry way unfettered by man’s logic. And most importantly, I’ve learned that I have to learn life’s logic if I intend to float gently down the stream of life.

Man is not listening to life’s logic when he takes some erroneous notion (like the world is flat or the sun rotates around the earth), and turns it into his so-called ‘logical belief’. All so-called ‘logical beliefs’ (logical to man but not to life), eventually cause problems. I used to believe that cutting corners was a shortcut to success. I cannot begin to tell you how many problems this illogical belief caused me. Life is meant to be a joyous adventure. “It is either a joyous adventure or nothing,” said Helen Keller. She was a wise woman. In spite of the fact that life is meant to be a joyous adventure, life does not intend to give you all of its logic at once. After all, if life did that – there’d be no adventure!

Part of the wonderful surprise of life is journeying into the unknown. There would be no ‘unknown’ if everything made logical sense right from the start – right? If there is no unknown, there are no surprises … what kind of life is that? What if the cave man simply walked out of the cave with all of the logic and common sense he needed to invent machinery that gave him gas fired heating systems and electrically charged air conditioners and flat screen televisions, and the means to install dishwashers in his cave? It would all have happened in the first 100 years. What about the sense of triumphant victory that comes with years and years of hard work trying to simply figure out how to invent the wheel or work with fire?

The beautiful ‘fragrance of life’ that children smell, is their awareness of the incredible amount of things going on around them that make no logical sense to them. Children love going into the unchartered sea of life, don’t they. We’re all still children when it comes to making sense of all that life includes.

In the beginning, there is no logic to any of it. This is what makes the journey an exciting mystery. The intelligent person asks many questions, and listens for answers that work in life. The unintelligent person asks few questions, and settles for answers that he can lazily convert into beliefs. At one time, there were tribes that sacrificed virgins in order to satisfy the Volcano God. How’d that ‘illogical belief’ work out?

What illogical beliefs are you clinging to? In what domains of your life are you suffering because you refuse to let go of erroneous notions that you consider logical and true? Here is a sample of a notion that I had to let go of: I’d read books that convinced me that I could simply ‘think something into manifestation’? Do you believe this notion is logical and true? Many folks do. For example, how many folks spend hours on their computer building a virtual reality out of wishes and dreams; however, they never get out of the house and act on them, they never muster up the courage to DO what they have to do to make their dreams come true?

I’ve met many folks that believe ‘thinking is all it takes to succeed’. I still meet them; they’ve lost confidence in themselves because they believe it’s them that’s flawed, not the belief. These folks cling to the erroneous belief that The Law of Attraction will fulfill on their dreams if they wish and hope long and hard enough.

The folks that insist that The Law of Attraction should go into action without them taking personal action, no longer have the courage to travel into the unknown; they no longer dare go out into the world and DO what it takes to help The Law of Attraction fulfill on their dreams. They cling to an illogical string of beliefs that say, “What I hold in my mind will come true in my life”. Well, that just ain’t so, otherwise everyone would be millionaires, or live in mansions, or travel around the world to exotic ports, or discover the solution to cancer, or come up with a system to feed all of the hungry children in the world.

Do you feel upset in any way by this post? If you do, then there’s something in the post that is challenging one or more of yours beliefs. Dig deep. What might that be?

Self-rescue from illogical beliefs requires energy. You save valuable energy by not clinging to notions that are not part of life’s logic.

I’ve learned, over many years, the reason old lingering dreams and yearnings have not manifested in my life. It’s because of erroneous notions that I’d converted into hardened beliefs, and insisted were logical and true.

There was a time when I believed, “I cannot design my earthly destiny; I am not smart enough, I was born on the wrong side of the tracks, and I don’t deserve to do so.” I had to apply Real Knowledge to this ‘crisis thinking’ to break it. Real Knowledge is light … and light offers life’s logic … and life’s logic is what one needs to live the life one dreams of experiencing.

What say you to this?

What might you add?

What illogical belief might you once have been clinging to?

Have no doubts – life’s logic is always healing medicine!

Have you purchased a copy of my new book, Marvelous Denials …. yet? Nothing is more essential than to discover the truth about yourself. There is something in the book that applies directly to you.

 Blessings & Thank You

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“Best Comment of the Week.” This weeks best comments come from Kara and Jamey Burrell of Life as an Experiment. Thank you both for your honest, heartfelt sharing. See their comments here.

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The Miami International Book Fair has come and gone. Mind Adventure Inc. hosted a tent at the fair, and invited Jk Allen (Hustlers Notebook) to come as our guest. Nick (Mind Adventure’s resident artist), and I had great plans for what we would achieve with Jk in Miami. (See all images here.)

The beauty of introducing two new books (my third book and Jk’s first book), was filled with fantasies of an adventure of newness, freshness and flow.

Everything was in order; hotel rooms reserved right across from the ocean, flights coordinated so everyone would merge and mingle at the airport at the same time, Books sent ahead of time to the hotel. And then … life has so many surprises that it is never boring, is it?

I scratched my eye, a few days before the weekend. I needed to have my eyeball stitched (I didn’t know they could do such a thing), and had to wear a contact lens as a bandage, to protect the scratch from infection. I had to put drops in my eye several times a day. Thank God for modern science! I also had to visit the ophthalmologists daily to cleanse my eye and change the contact lens. AH, the trauma … I never wore a contact lens before; I don’t wear glasses!

The beauty of facing unexpected events, unprepared … is profound. Intelligence is limber; it is flexible when relating to reality. Unexpected events give life a whole new hue; they open the world to brand new interpretations, new meanings. One never quite knows, ahead of time, what lessons life intends to teach.

I went from a state of knowing what was going to happen at the Miami Book Fair, to a state of no-knowledge. This is why children learn so beautifully; they remain in a state of no-knowledge during the incredible years of learning to walk, talk, read and write. The child’s mind is as fresh as dewdrops every morning.

I felt like a child once again. I was eager to hear how Nick and Jk were doing at the book fair without me. I would call and get an accounting of what was happening, and I made it a point to enjoy the conversations like a fresh breeze. It certainly was very different from what I’d fantasized would happen (with me there!).

The fact that the ‘book fair weekend’ wasn’t happening as I planned, gave me a wonderful sense of humor about my organized plans and positive affirmations. My sense of humor allowed me to become aware of the beauties and treasure found in circumstances that were far from what I’d anticipated. I owed it to myself to have a deep penetrating look at what I was experiencing.

There is divine poetry in life, always. The sun rises and shines on every circumstance equally. Trees blossom and flamingos dance in Florida, while I have my scratched eye cleansed and sit in pouring rain up North – the marvel, the mystery of all of it.

I realized that I need not go anywhere but INSIDE MYSELF to find how this scratched eye serves me. It became apparent to me that organized planning is just the surface of our being; it occurs at the conscious level of the mind. Insights come from intuition, they occur at deep level thinking, from the center of our being.

From this ‘missing the book fair’, I realized that problems arise only from misunderstandings, and there was something greater coming out of this loss (if I allowed it). The true purpose of missing the book fair is that that there are going to be some marvelous changes occurring in the Mind Adventure mission, and it will reflect in the website; changes that will take Mind Adventure’s intent to the next level. This dawning would not have occurred if I’d not been sitting at home nursing my eye.

A STORY: A frustrated person heard of a place called celestial heaven. Everyone there was self-fulfilled; they experienced abundance of every nature … and that is because they gave themselves over entirely to ideas that came from their center. This person gathered all of his treasured belongings, and ventured to the gates of celestial heaven. The entrance was narrow. He heard a voice from deep within. This voice said that he must leave all of his treasured belongings behind if he was to enter: “To enter the new, you must first abandon those treasured beliefs and opinions, and false ideas that hamper you.”

(1) Would you like to work with us?

(2) Would you like to participate in a Great Awakening about yourself?

(3) Would you like to participate in the joy and happiness that comes with eliminating your personality of self-limiting beliefs, opinions and ideas?

Are you interested in entering the new? Are you ready to let the higher part of you call the lower part back from its life of wandering? What say thee to this? Would you like to join our elite inner-circle club?

Might I suggest that you consider purchasing a copy of the pre-publication edition of my new book, Marvelous Denials & Wonderful Obsessions; there is something in this book that will help you turn deep within and seek earnestly to know your purpose for being here on this planet. When you know your raison d’etre … you will know what it means to knock … and a fabulous life shall be opened to you.

Consider leaving a comment that allows others to see you as you truly see you. What would you say if you simply allowed your true spirit to flow through? Every comment is perfect. Do not allow fear of judgment to hamper you.

blessings

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“Best Comment of the Week.” This weeks best comments come from Elena Patrice of WebSitesGiveBack and Jamey Burrell of Life as an Experiment. Thank you both for your honest, heartfelt sharing. See their comments here.

Illustrations by Nick