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LIGHTEN UP!
By: Sanderson Sims This week I was wrestling with an emotional problem. I thought I was on the short end of the stick and my ego voice was telling me all of the reasons I was right. I debated it in my mind, gave it a rest and debated some more. You know the drill. Finally, I simply asked for the right solution. So what happened? My head gave way to my heart and I got the message that I should “Lighten Up.” I realized that I did not have to be right in order to be happy. It seemed that letting the issue go gave me a lot…
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Harvesting The Magic of a Second Childhood
By: Sanderson Sims A dear friend of mine, a psychiatrist, once told me that she felt that the purpose of life is to accumulate experiences. No experience is necessarily better than another, just different. Failure, loss, rejection, addiction, guilt, betrayal — the list goes on — all serve a purpose. Lately, I have been thinking about the challenges that we face in making our way in this world. We were all once fledgling birds, pushed out of our comfortable nests and thrown to the wind. Magically we learned to navigate in this unpredictable adventure called life. Each journey includes ups and downs, dreams and disappointments, accomplishments and set backs. From…
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What Do You Know? I Got Myself a New Roadmap!
By Sanderson Sims Next month I will turn 80. Yes 80. Can’t really believe it. My jaw drops at just how fast I’ve gotten here: like waking up from anesthesia and wondering what the operation was like. Meaning that daily life, the routines and endeavors I engage in, seem to have been just one steady stream that launched slowly and then became a rocket ride. My body is older and slower, but my thinking and curiosity about the world I live in and what’s going on around me, still seems to be a constant. I am a kid at heart, still trying the limbo from time to time, but the bar…
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Connecting With Our Deceased Loved Ones
Written by: Susanne Sims This is an astonishing account of a woman who terminated a pregnancy only to be visited by the spirits of those souls later in life. The story takes place in 1996, on the Big Island of Hawaii, at a retreat center known as The New Millennium Institute. There a small group of 20 participants gathered for a week-long workshop with the well-known author and scholar Dr. Raymond Moody, who is best known for his ground-breaking work in the realm of near-death studies. Moody was the first to publish on this subject and in 1975, his seminal book Life After Life became an international best-seller. He went…
- Explorations in Consciousness, Journeys, Latest News/Trends, Metaphysical Musings, Mindfullness/Meditation
How My Refrigerator Taught Me to Be Mindful
Perhaps you’ve watched the popular Netflix series Grace and Frankie staring Jane Fonda as Grace, and Lily Tomlin as Frankie. In one scene, Frankie is in her kitchen doing battle with her refrigerator. She has just closed the refrigerator door but forgotten the butter, so she attempts to open it again. Using all of her strength, she finds that she cannot open the door because the refrigerator has a vacuum seal so tight, even Godzilla could not open it. Frustrated, Frankie forces herself to count from one to ten, until the prerequisite time has passed and the seal is released. It’s a comical scene and perhaps one that many of…
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The Very First Thing You Might Want to Manifest
By Sanderson Sims If you are young, you are facing a life of dynamic change the velocity and acceleration of which has never before been experienced. What’s coming next, and right after that? We are currently facing everything from a climate crisis, to a pandemic, school stops and starts, work uncertainty, political and racial chaos, and more. Add to that the personal changes taking place in each of our lives. The only certainty we may have is the speed at which change will continue to occur. Just to put this into perspective, it is said that an educated person in the 16th century was never exposed in their entire…
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There’s Always an Opportunity to Hit the RESET Button
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Inspired Service: What is Your Calling?
By: Paula Mantel Education is very dear to my heart. I have always felt moved by the Latin origin of the word, educare, which means to draw out. Life has taught me that learning is fulfilling when it is interest-centered and enlivening to oneself, family, community, and global society. I did not enter the teaching field with a degree in education. Instead, I fell in love with teaching when I volunteered as a grassroots leader with The Hunger Project. This global, nonprofit organization was founded in 1977 and is committed to the sustainable end of world hunger. The suffering of millions who die daily of chronic, persistent hunger concerned me greatly. Thus, with conviction…
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There’s Always an Opportunity to Hit the RESET Button
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The Art of Recognizing Manifestation
I recently wrote about my experiences with Peter Caddy, a co-founder of the Findhorn Spiritual Community in Scotland. The concept discussed was conscious manifestation: how by focusing on what we want to see happen in our lives, believing that it will, then allowing things to develop, we become more powerful architects. Many of us are truly unaware of how we create our own reality. One of the main issues keeping us from this awareness is recognition. We may not recognize our thoughts nor be attuned into what is actually taking place on the material plane. Recognition is so difficult that often, when something does occur, we don’t believe or…
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One Reason Art is So Highly Important
Years ago while on a trip through Hong Kong two meaningful events occurred. The first happened while I was walking down a crowded street. A lovely lady breezed by, leaving me stunned by the fragrance of her perfume. I should have turned back to ask her what the intoxicating scent was. But I didn’t. Some 40 years later, I can still vividly recall the compelling bouquet and wished I had found out what it was. Had I done so, I am sure I would have brought it into my life in some meaningful way for years to come. On that same trip, I was staying in a high rise hotel.…
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The Magic of Manifestation
Years ago, I read a wonderful book by Paul Hawken called The Magic of Findhorn. It was about an eco-village located in Findhorn, Scotland. The community was co-founded by Peter Caddy, a retired military officer and hotelier, his wife Eileen, and their co-worker and friend Dorothy Maclean. Findhorn had gained world-wide notoriety for such phenomena as growing forty pound cabbages in poor soil conditions, and roses that would blossom in the snow. Having finished the book, I reflected on how much I really (and I mean really) wanted to personally meet Peter. We both had once held similar jobs in the military. He had been…
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Sometimes You Just Gotta Scream!
No matter where we look today, there appears to be nothing but chaos and breakdown. This is true in almost all fields: be it economics, politics, social justice, the battle between science versus religion, the torrid pace of technological development, climate change, education, healthcare, and so on. We may feel inadequate and not at all up to the task of solving these complex issues. Perhaps we lack the energy, or motivation. It happens to all of us from time to time. Or, we might find ourselves shrinking away from responsibility and finding refuge in denial, entertainment, tribalism or religion. Many of us may simply throw our hands up in resignation saying:…
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There’s Always an Opportunity to Hit the RESET Button
The Corona virus, economic chaos, and climate change have turned everything upside down and on its head. As I reflect on life, I think about how different the world was some 50 years ago. Now, as an elder, I ask myself if there is any advice I could possibly offer someone young, or someone who is working to make a fresh start, that could help amidst all of this chaos. With mandates to remain sheltered at home, many of us may be experiencing an abundance of time. There was an old axiom that said, “time is money.” But with technology moving so fast, the new paradigm is “money is time.”…
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An Optimist and a Prepper Find Common Ground
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Namaste Spiritual Community in Ajijic, Mexico
I came to Ajijic, Mexico for all the right reasons. I was looking for a place to retire that was affordable, had a great climate, access to good healthcare, and a nearby international airport. I also wanted to find a thriving ex-pat community that is actively involved with the host culture. The small village of Ajijic (pronounced a-he-heek) located on Lake Chapala just south of Guadalajara, met all of these criteria. What I did not know, and was delighted to find out, is that Ajijic is also a Mecca for those who are interested in finding a spiritual community of kindred spirits. Paramhansa Yogananda, the highly regarded Indian teacher of…
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A Transcendent Journey
As I have written before, part of our ever changing challenge in life is to pay attention to intuition and synchronicities. The former gives us direction and the latter confirmation. It is this conscious practice that makes the uncertain more certain, and allows us to live in the present, with assurances that we are on our right path. Years ago a good friend of mine was a passenger on the last round-the-world flight of the Concorde supersonic airplane. They went luxuriously to the great wonders of both the man-made and natural world. I asked him to reveal the greatest highlight of his journey. He responded with a…
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Why are We Drawn to Danger?
I was in Cape Town a few years ago, an exquisitely beautiful city on the tip of Africa. During that trip we ventured out to a wildlife reserve. Aside from riding around in a partially open vehicle through areas with lions, elephants, buffalo, and rhino you could, for an extra fee, spend time with the cheetahs. I learned that cheetahs are capable of being domesticated and they were the cats of royalty. Yet, they are wild animals with an instinct to kill for survival built into their DNA. On one hand I was attracted to this experience, and on the other, I realized that within a nano-second this animal…
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Shaving Off The Sharp Edges
One of the most important goals in life is how to smooth out the ride, or as stated above, learning “shave off the sharp edges”. An essential clue we get, over and over again, is that we tend to experience what we put out there. If we are in a positive and receptive state, we experience more of those qualities. Likewise, if we tend be negative and to treat people poorly, we find that we receive our share of those same experiences. The challenge is being aware and believing that our behavior really does result in these conditions. What happens to us is just not the way it is, written…
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There’s Always an Opportunity to Hit the RESET Button
