12-21-2012 Just Another Day On The Calendar?

So as we are reading this we are well aware that the world did not end. I am sure this has been written, stated, and joked about a lot lately but is December 21, 2012 just another day on the calendar? Yes and No. For myself, I will go about my day like I would any other day. I have to run errands and take my kids to practice but to me today is definitely not just another day on the calendar. To me today is the beginning of something new and grand. It's a shift in my own personal awareness. It is sort of like a new year resolution except its more of a new consciousness resolution. I feel as thought in myself and in the world we are having a sort of awakening. Have you not noticed the intense life altering situations that have been happening in the world? Children being killed at school all over the world, kids taking guns to school more than ever before, people sort of doing things that are hurting us as a planet! Is it the media buffing things up? Have these things always happened and they are just amplified now. Probably, but I think it is because we are looking through new eyes and a new awareness. We are changing and it is for the better. As these horrific things take place on our planet we are finally standing up and doing something about it. As a planet we are evolving. It is inevitable. We can not stay the same forever. Just by you reading this and many other blogs and post similar to it is showing that we are thinking and speaking differently. For some all the drama may be annoying. You may be tired of reading about all the bad things and just want it to go away. Then make it go away! Shut the tv off and go outside! Take your kids to the park or on hike! Go through your closets, garages, and toy boxes and give all the things you do not need away to those in your own community who need it! Turn the media off and go about life by making a difference in your own and others. Today is just another day on the calendar but it can also be so very much more! You have a power that is more grand than you can imagine how are you going to use it? Are you going to be the one creating the horrific chaos in our world forcing others to change or are you going to be the one changing?! Today my consciousness shifts and I mark my calendar as the day I look at life in a more loving way. How about you?

Searching For Peace On Earth...

While searching for peace on Earth a new light has been shed. We aren't going to find it walking around our planet. If asked, "if you could make one wish" you will often hear peace on Earth. Is it possible? Maybe. In all likelihood though the reason our planet will not be a peaceful one in our lifetime is very simple. We live in a world where our minds have the freedom of perception.  You might think that perception isn't freedom. Most of us are conditioned in life and therefore perceive things due to our experiences. Perception is free though. If you have a thought or way of thinking that is not in alignment with what you wish all you have to do is change it. You can look at a picture one day and a year later it will look so very different, but it is also possible to look deep within that picture and recapture how you used to perceive it. Perception is free will. Free will is a great power. Free will is the greatest of responsibilities. So if we have the power of choosing how we perceive life and the world every person will always look at it differently. How is it possible to have a peaceful planet when each person has the power to look at it and therefore react to it in the way they choose? Some people believe that one day this planet will all be one consciousness, one perception. It has been said there are tribes who all share one consciousness, a collective consciousness. Is that what it will take for us to have peace on Earth? Probably. Is it likely? Probably not.

We live in a reality where there is darkness and light. The darkness represents evil, the devil, or demons and the light represents the god like energy, the divine, Jesus, or another religious God. If we have peace on Earth we will have reached the end. Once there is only light you will not see light because you have no darkness to define it. You can not have one without the other. This is why we will not have peace on Earth. We need the darkness to show us the light. We need evil to make us want good. We have lessons to learn that we will only learn by seeing the darkness. This is where the true meaning of compassion comes to play. Compassion means to have the deep awareness of the suffering of another without the need to relieve it, feeling total appreciation for its value; a state of non-judgement. We have to allow things to unfold as they do. We have to see the suffering and know it was needed. No one said compassion was easy. People think compassion is feeling the pain of others and needing to relieve it. That is not it at all. We do not need to feel the pain of others and we do not need to feel the pains of the Earth. If we are peaceful we can create peace in and all around us but we can not force it upon others because they have free will too and they have their own lessons to learn. We can only be the change we wish to see in the world. There is no wrong answers in life and there is no right answers. Things just are as they are.

Last night I was watching the news with my five year old foster son and a segment came on about how a mother left her daughter at a caregivers on Thanksgiving and never came back and now the two year old daughter was dead. The man in the home stomped on her abdomen and she curled up and stayed that way and was dead by the next morning. My foster son was very disturbed by this and he told my partner what happened and she too was very disturbed by this. She said, "I love God and all but how could he let this happen?" I felt the pain for the child. I felt it deep. I wanted to cry and I wanted to cry that my foster son had to see it being he too was so young but I understand at a deeper level that it is all part of the divine plan. We have the freedom to perceive it as evil and horrible to do that to a defenseless child, but because the man who did it had the responsibility of free will, as we all do, he choose to use it in darkness. We saw his darkness and we prayed for light. We turned to the light. Everyone who heard about the horrible incident had their own perception of it. Some will choose to change others will choose to do the same. It is inevitable. In the state of consciousness our planet is in free will allows us to have the personal choice of peacefulness or not therefore peace on Earth can not happen until we are one collective consciousness and our world shifts to a level unfathomable by our current mind.

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UPDATE: This morning when I wrote this blog I had no idea only an hour prior to my post a gunman took the lives of many innocent children and adults at an elementary school in Connecticut  As hard as it may be take the anger toward the gunman and instead have compassion for what has happened and in turn use your energy for the good and send these families all the love you can possibly muster!!! They, and the children who witnessed this incident, have to move on after the unthinkable. These people need our love not our hatred! Instead of being angry we must have compassion and move forward in love! We must be the peacefulness we seek and we must shed this peace upon all those effected by this tragedy!

On Which Side Of The Umbrella Do You Leave Your Shoes?

Hmmm? Now that is truly a thought to ponder is it now? I'm sitting here looking for inspiration to write and then I am posed with this question, "On which side of the umbrella do you leave your shoes?". Well there has to be more to this than the title. I mean come on I picked a Osho transformational thought for the day didn't I? There is depth to this question!

On which side of your umbrella did you leave your shoes?
Do the small things of life with a relaxed awareness. When you are eating, eat totally--chew totally, taste totally, smell totally. Touch your bread, feel the texture. Smell the bread, smell the flavor. Chew it, let it dissolve into your being, and remain conscious--and you are meditating. And then meditation is not separate from life. 
Whenever meditation is separate from life, something is wrong. It becomes life-negative. Then one starts thinking of going to a monastery or to a Himalayan cave. Then one wants to escape from life, because life seems to be a distraction from meditation. 
Life is not a distraction, life is an occasion for meditation.
A disciple had come to see Ikkyu, his master. The disciple had been practicing for some time. It was raining, and as he went in, he left his shoes and umbrella outside.
After he paid his respects, the master asked him on which side of his shoes he had left his umbrella.
Now, what kind of question...? You don't expect masters to ask such nonsense questions--you expect them to ask about God, about kundalini rising, chakras opening, lights happening in your head. You ask about such great things--occult, esoteric. But Ikkyu asked a very ordinary question. No Christian saint would have asked it, no Jain monk would have asked it, no Hindu swami would have asked it. It can be done only by one who is really with the Buddha, in the Buddha--who is really a buddha himself.
The master asked him on which side of his shoes he had left his umbrella. Now, what do shoes and umbrellas have to do with spirituality? If the same question had been asked to you, you would have felt annoyed. What kind of question is this? But there is something immensely valuable in it. Had he asked about God, about your kundalini and chakras, that would have been nonsense, utterly meaningless. But this has meaning. The disciple could not remember--who bothers where you have put your shoes and on which side you have put your umbrella, to the right or to the left. Who bothers? Who pays so much attention to umbrellas? Who thinks of shoes? Who is so careful? But that was enough--the disciple was refused.
Ikkyu said, "Then go and meditate for seven years more."
"Seven years?" the disciple said. "Just for this small fault?"
Ikkyu said, "This is not a small fault. Faults are not small or big--you are just not yet living meditatively, that's all. Go back, meditate for seven years more, and come again."
This is the essential message:
Be careful, careful of everything. And don't make any distinction between things, that this is trivia and that is spiritual. It depends on you. Pay attention, be careful, and everything becomes spiritual. Don't pay attention, don't be careful, and everything becomes unspiritual.
Spirituality is imparted by you, it is your gift to the world.
When a master like Ikkyu touches his umbrella, the umbrella is as divine as anything can be. Meditative energy is alchemical. It transforms the base metal into gold; it goes on transforming the baser into the higher.
At the ultimate peak, everything is divine. This very world is the paradise, and this very body the buddha.

Now if you do not believe in Buddha I commend you for reading this far. Most people think "Oh Buddha, that's not God", and then stop reading. In reality the point of this blog has absolutely nothing to do with Buddha or God. It has to do with what side of the umbrella you lay your shoes. When Ikkyu asked the question he was merely trying to say if you do not live in totality you will miss many things. You grow up in life constant being told pay attention, pay attention to your surroundings, pay attention to detail, stop and smell the roses. It's life's way of literally getting you to stop and be aware of everything. When you live in totality you miss nothing. You are always aware. How many of you can say when you drove from home to work that you remember the whole drive? I bet a lot of you will admit to not remembering sections of the drive and sort of blanking out. You were in automatic mode and you missed out on a lot!
I can not say that I live in totality just yet. I keep getting the message to do each and every thing in total awareness and one step at a time, but really I think while I was searching for inspiration I got a friendly wake up call from the universe. I have many things going on in life right now. I have my head over here, and over there, and way up in the clouds part of the time. Its just an escape! Get your head out of the clouds! Yes, literally GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE CLOUDS and be aware of what is happening around you and be an active part in it. Tonight I will not multi-task! I will move one step at a time giving each moment my total awareness! Why? Because some old Buddha man told me to? No, because life has ways of sending us messages and this is not the first time I have heard it. If I keep hearing it it must need to be addressed. Hey, and who knows! Maybe this message was meant for you as well!

www.DivineEmissary.com

The passage in this post was taken from www.osho.com

The Power of Giving Can Heal and Create Miracles!

The holiday season is upon us and the healthiest way to look at it is "The Giving Season" anything else misses the point completely. Economically our nation is not in the best of times but if that is your focus when you hear the word "give" again your missing the point. Giving has nothing to do with money give is a powerful gift that has been given too us all! When we use the power of giving to another we can heal and even create miracles! Last time I check a hug was free. A hug can make a lonely person smile during the holiday season. Suicide is at its all time high during the winter months. People miss their families, wish they had a significant other to lay by the fire with, or remember the loss of a loved one. In these case hugs are worth millions!
Maybe you are not really the huggy type. That is ok. Did you know that you can give something you don't need anymore to someone who has nothing and have the power to change their faith in humanity?! People are so used to be stomped on and looked down upon that the kindness of another person giving and sharing things with them is big! If you haven't heard already, a by passer walking through the streets of New York video recorded a police officer approaching a homeless man laying in front of a store. The by passer videoed because they thought something bad was going to happen but instead the police officer gave the man a pair of boots! The video has gone viral. Why? Because the power of giving is big! People love the feeling of seeing other people do good in the world. Its sad to say but witnessing goodness is often a rare thing. Or is it? Maybe we aren't looking close enough. Maybe our thoughts are tainted and we are attracting negativity to us. In reality good happens all the time. People are constantly giving to others. Goodness is all around us! All you have to do is open your heart, mind, and eyes to see it. When was the last time you stopped in a busy place and looked for the good things? If you look for it you will find it! And if you see the opposite that is your perfect time to change the situation and be the good part! Maybe you just need to change the equation a bit. Change your thoughts and you heal the world! Give a little and love a lot! Love and little and give a lot! They go hand in hand!
So this holiday season find a way to give more! Do not worry what your are going to get, you can't take it with you anyway! Worry about how you can give to someone in need. Smile more! Hug more! Open your eyes and see the good in others more! Remember in the darkest of things there is light buried underneath. Sometimes it takes the kind heart of another person to shine their light and help guide the others out of the darkness!
Tis the season friends! Give, give, give!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!