Staying Open

Karla's comment on Control Issues, Trust, and Being Open, stimulated two posts. Instead of waiting, and posting them on different days, I'm going to post them both today. Here's the first one, it's from ElsaJoy.com:

I'm sure you remember that old story about the monkey who came across some ripe berries in a glass jar. Not surprisingly, the monkey was elated about his find, and immediately plunged his hand inside the jar to grasp a fistful of berries. But when he tried to withdraw his hand, he found he was stuck: the neck of the jar was too small an opening for the monkey's clenched fist to negotiate. He had two choices: hold onto the treasure in his fist and remain imprisoned, or release the treasure and regain his hand.

The monkey was in agony, because he did not want to let go of the food.

The moral of that story, of course, is that letting go can be vital to your health. That concept is easy enough to read on paper; in real life, though, it is tougher to grasp. We've all been in the monkey's shoes, after all -- who hasn't tried to hold fast to something at some point, even when it was obviously a poor choice? Come on: we've all done it. Several times.

I once met someone who was holding on for dear life to a job he detested. He had been working hard at it for years, typically he would spend 10 to 14 hours a day slaving over his desk. If you asked him why he didn't look for something else, he would give a totally reasonable answer: "It's all I know."

Then one day, out of the blue, he discovered he had terminal cancer. He was shocked: he was still young, his body was in good shape, and it didn't seem remotely fair to him to be felled by cancer before he had gotten any fun out of life. The doctors told him he had a year left to live.

Stunned into unreasonableness, this fellow quit his job and decided to spend the year enjoying himself -- something he had never done before in his whole life. He had, you remember, held passionately tight to his profession, even though he hated it. But in the face of death, he lost all fear of leaving his job. He packed up a few clothes, cleaned out his bank account and took off for a trip around the world.

We didn't hear from him for several months; as the days slipped by, many of us became increasingly concerned about his wellbeing. Was he all alone in some obscure hotel in South America, getting weak and frail? There was no way to track him down; and we kept worrying about him at a distance.

Ten months later, one of our team got a phone call from the fellow. He was back in the U.S, hale and hearty, and bursting with ideas about starting a new business. The cancer? It had disappeared off the map -- the doctors could no longer see any remnant of it in the X-rays. The man was healed.

We couldn't believe our ears.

He stopped by to visit us a few days later, and indeed he looked happy, tanned, vigorous and full of excitement about his new career, which was in a vastly different direction from his previous one. We gathered around him in awe. "But how on earth did you get healed?" we all wanted to know. He said, "Well, my doctor thinks it was because I let go of the job I hated -- and then just dashed out and did all of the things I never let myself do before."

He's still healthy today, many years later. And he loves his work. We say he healed himself of cancer. He says cancer saved his life.

That same story about the monkey was told in a different way by the beloved American comedian Jack Benny. One of Benny's most famous comedy bits is the one in which a robber comes up to him on the street and demands, "Your money -- or your life!" Benny stares at the robber and then falls into one of his relentlessly long, silent pauses.

Exasperated, the robber repeats his ultimatum: "Your money -- or your life!"

And Benny says, "Don't rush me.......I'm thinking."

-oOo-

Elsa Bailey is a free lance writer who has created www.elsajoy.com as "a labor of love." If you are ready for inspiration, wisdom and spiritual connection, then visit Elsa's site.

More thoughts on control issues, trust, and being open

In reply to the last post on Control Issues, Trust, and Being Open, Karla had a great response. I started to just respond in the comment section, but it occured to me that this would make a good post (actually two posts) as it contains so much food for thought.

Karla said: Maybe it's important to remember that we don't always have to fly. The chicken could hop down on the ground and find a fascinating life there! Wherever we go when we leap off the roost, there are adventures to be had!

I love her point about the chicken... we are who we are. Being a chicken (if you are a chicken) can be adventurous and exciting and fulfilling. But, if you are, for example, a robin TRYING to be a chicken... well it's going to be stressful, and complicated, and unsuccessfull on many levels. A chicken, on the other hand, trying to be a robin is doomed to failure.



So, I like her point. I guess the question would be who am I? What is my own unique essential nature? And just begin to BE that.

She also said: The open hand DOES seem easier to do. The only thing is sometimes I find myself REACTING to events in a way that causes the hand to tighten up. Kind of an uncontrollable thing to regain control. Sounds funny, doesn't it? Is that self preservation or a lack of faith? How can we remember to let loose in that instant we want to form a fist? I KNOW I'm not in control but it's that knee jerk reaction in crisis, ya know?

I was thinking about what she said, and looking at the image of the bird on the hand, and I couldn't help noticing that that little bird has what looks like a good grip on the finger it's sitting on. Which brought up a number of questions:

1. When you clench up, are you gripping on to your support system?
2. When something frightens you, do you hold tight to your beliefs, to your "source", to your "God", to balance, to home, to love?
3. Or do you clench up and cling to something different?
4. What?
5. Are you the bird on the hand?
6. A bird in a cage?
7. Or the monkey with his hand in the jar?

Control Issues, Trust, and Being Open

We seek to control our lives when we do not trust, when we do not love. Our ego, perceiving itself to be vulnerable and insecure, uses control in an effort to protect itself. At the root of our need to control, we find fear. It may be fear of the unknown. Fear of not coping. Fear of loss. Or possibly even fear of looking stupid. And as our efforts to control other people and events invariably fail, our fear increases.

“When I grip the wheel too tight, I find I lose control.”
~Steve Rapson

Trust, on the other hand, is a quality of the soul. While control is a tool of the mind, trust and faith are aspects of the heart. Trust comes with the deep knowing that we are spiritual beings in physical bodies. When we trust enough in life to give up our need to control, we can relax and open to the flow of energy in our lives. This brings peace of mind. ~from Higher Awareness

Here we have a perfect picture of trust and openness. I don't know which is more important for me to achieve - the open hand that speaks gently and quietly of allowing beauty, love, and whatever it is that I want - to come and go as it pleases; the open hand that says I don't have to cling to anything in order to "make" it stay.

OR

Is it important for me to know that I am in "good hands," that I can fly if and when I choose, and that there will always be a safe place to land, that I am free and unlimited in every way. What about you guys? What is important for you?

"The only real security in life lies in relishing life's insecurity."
~M. Scott Peck

Open to Money Magic

If you buy lottery tickets, use this spell. Every time you buy a ticket, think to yourself that you are doing it as an act of magic and power. Say to yourself:

I am open to wealth coming to me,
I am open to good fortune coming to me,
I am open to my luck.

Assemble a prosperity altar, and put the lottery tickets on it. Surround them with symbols of good luck — a four-leaf clover, rabbit’s foot, and so on. You might want to add a small container of cinnamon, or to burn cinnamon incense. Put any money you find on this altar as well—pennies you find on the street, change from vending machines, and so on. Like will attract like, and money will attract money.

~Magenta Griffith

The Hidden Harmony

Every moment everything is changing.You cannot stop the river - it flows! But because we like to stop things, to make them permanent, we create a hell around us. If you have a clinging and possessive mind you will miss the freshness, the unexpectedness of each moment. Celebration is possible if each moment brings you something new. Then life is excitement - without expectation. Nothing can frustrate you because in the first place you never expected that anything was going to be the same forever.

Live in readiness to be surprised, never taking things for granted. The moment you take anything for granted, something in you dies. Expect nothing but be ready for everything. Then small things become precious.

If you have eyes which are open and ready to be surprised, to wonder, and a heart ready to be in a state of awe, then everything is beautiful. You have found the hidden harmony. Life is a great dance, each moment is unique. Be thrilled with each and every moment whatever it may contain.

~from Discover Meditation by Pragito Dove

The Journey to Success

Sir Edmund Hillary, 1919-2008

While many of us have metaphorically climbed mountains and conquered peaks, Edmund Hillary was the first person to summit the highest peak in the world, Mt. Everest. He died earlier this month and has been lauded - and quite rightly so - in the press. You may already know a few of the details of the ascent:

• His background as a beekeeper in New Zealand - and how hauling around 80lb beehives helped build the strength that would help his climbing.
• His partnership with the sherpa, Tenzing Norgay - a friendship that would last all their lives.
• How he "cracked" the crucial move of the last part of the ascent, a 40-foot rock face later named the "Hillary Step."
• That Hillary and Tenzing spent only about 15 minutes at the summit.

Hillary took Tenzing's photo, Tenzing left chocolates in the snow as an offering, and Hillary left a cross that he had been given. Because Tenzing did not know how to use a camera, there are no pictures of Hillary there. (Sir Edmund said, ""As far as I knew, he had never taken a photograph before, and the summit of Everest was hardly the place to show him how.")

But here's what's inspiring for me:

Hillary and Tenzing didn't just start at base camp and stroll up Everest. They took it in stages. Many stages. In fact, over the course of 6 weeks, they did it in 45 stages, back and forth to Base Camp, back and forth to camps 1 through 9 - and then and only then the final push to the summit. And what's more - it was only a last minute decision that it would be Hillary and Tenzing that were to make the ones to go to the top. Up until then another climber had been expected to be the one - but was unable to cope with the final challenge.

So what do I take from this?

1. You never know when your opportunity may come along. So even if you're not "in the lead" prepare and train as if you are - and see where that takes you.
2. No one gets to the summit in a single bound. Practically everyone who's an "overnight success" has taken years to get there. It takes stages, and with every stage your mind and body expands to be able to cope with where you are now and gets you ready for where you need to go next.

And now it's your turn:

• What's the Great Work you're striving for now?
• What's the next stage you need to reach?

-oOo-

Source: Michael Bungay Stanier, author of Get Unstuck & Get Going ...on the stuff that matters creator of Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun and The 5.75 Questions You've Been Avoiding.

Trust

"Ultimately, we must learn to trust ourselves. When we do this intimately and intelligently, the world opens full of meaning before us. We find that we ourselves are the doorway to a fathomless understanding of the source of life itself. We need only to learn to walk through it."

~James Thornton

More on saying: Yes!

That is the greatest secret there is - to say yes. Then things start immediately opening and there is contact.

Life ordinarily prepares us to only say no. Life goes on corrupting our minds and creating doubts. Because of those doubts and because of those no's and the negatives, one becomes enclosed, one lives in a kind of imprisonment, a China Wall surrounds one. That wall is invisible, transparent, so you don't know that it is there, but it is always there. Once you say yes, it starts disappearing.

To say yes is to be religious. Yes is the most sacred word. One Christian saint, a really significant man, Saint Francis of Sales, had only six words in his prayer, "Yes, Father, yes, and always yes." That was his whole prayer and I have never come across a better prayer. Nothing more can be added to it: "yes, Father, yes, and always yes." But my feeling is that this is a kind of repetition. One yes will do: why say "Yes, Father, yes, and always yes."? Yes means everything. It is always, it is forever. One single yes is enough. It should be intense, it should be total.

One yes is already too much. And if you understand me, and some day you will understand me, if you can say yes without even using the word 'yes' then it is the uttermost in prayer. One word is more than enough; no word is the ultimate. Just a yes attitude, a climate of yes... not a verbalisation but a heart full of yes. Not something in the head but in the very bones and the marrow.

When you can say a total yes, the being starts becoming a flame. The being immediately flashes into a flame. It is exactly as if you bring a small flame into oxygen and it flares up. The moment you say yes your being flares up and becomes a great flame.

~Osho

"YES!"

Settling for Less?

"The space for what you want is already filled with what you settle for instead."

I don't know where this quote came from, but it does seem to be true in my own experience. What about you guys? What do you need to clear out and clean up? What do you settle for? What do you close the door to because you're in too big of a hurry to wait? How much of what seems "blocked" and "stuck" in your life is caused by the clutter of accumulated "stuff" you've settled for because you didn't think you deserved better? Or because you didn't think you could have better? Or because you didn't think what you really wanted was even possible? Are there doors you don't open because you don't believe they are really there? Are there doors that won't open because too much "stuff" is in the way?

Meditation to Relate to Infinity

"No one wants to become limited, because each of us is infinite; the source of each of us is Infinity. Infinity has everything. When you relate to Infinity, Infinity gives you everything."

~Yogi Bhajan

Posture:
Sit in Easy pose (or in a chair) with the spine straight. Relax the arms down with the elbows bent by the sides. Draw the forearms in towards each other until the hands meet in front of the body, about one inch above the navel. Keep both palms facing up, and rest the right hand in the palm of the left hand. press the thumb tips together.

Eyes:
Eyes are one-tenth open and focused the tip of the nose

Chant:
Inhale deeply and continuously chant the following mantra in a low monotone voice, moving your lips to create the sound.

Sat naam - sat naam - sat naam
Sat naam - sat naam - sat naam
Waahay guroo.

Time: 11 - 31 minutes.

Why?

This meditation causes the heavy area of the vagus nerve to activate. This extends the brain – eventually to Infinity. The result for the person meditating is that s/he will blossom like a flower into his/her entire potential.

Janus - the God of Open Doors

Today is the full moon. It's also the first full moon of the year, and I thought it might be interesting and fun to do something magical to celebrate. When researching, and looking for ideas for posts, I came across this nifty little tidbit:

January is named after the Etruscan word janua which means door, and is dedicated to the Two-Headed God, Janus. In the days of the Caesars, Janus was known as the God stood at the beginning of the year, looking simultaneously to the past for understanding and into the future for manifestation. This is why Janus was usually depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions.

Janus was frequently used to symbolize change and transitions such as the progression of past to future, of one condition to another, of one vision to another, the growing up of young people, and of one universe to another. He was also known as the figure representing time because he could see into both the past and the future. Hence, Janus was worshipped at the beginnings of the harvest and planting times, as well as marriages, births and other beginnings.

Here we have a small ritual and a prayer to Janus.

Light a cranberry-scented candle, and have some rose petals handy. As you light the candle, recite the following:

God of beginnings
Accept this offering of sweet-smelling cranberry to make you glad
Bless me on the beginning of this new year;
And bless my beginnings throughout the year.
God of the threshold,
Who opens up to a new year;
God of doors,
Who opens on to a new time;
Janus who looks both ways,

I offer these rose petals to you,
And ask you to look behind and ahead,
And guide me through the year that begins today.
A New Year is born from you
Praise, blessings and honours are due for this gift
Hear my words,
You who give birth to everything,
A new born year takes place among your wonders,
One more thing for which you might rightly be praised.

Sprinkle the rose petals, and leave the candle to burn down.

Note: The phrase "new year" can be changed to reflect whatever is new in your life, for example: new project, new ideas, new day, new adventures, new opportunities... etc. Find something that is appropriate for your experience and substitute the words.

The Doors Open

The doors open
Not just a crack, but fully open and wide
And the wind blows through
Drapes billow out in the fresh breeze

Opening, opening
One door after another, one window after another
The breeze is fresh and new
As it blows through

I feel the cleansing, blowing freshness
I am like one of the billowing curtains, sheer and diaphanous,
Beauty and love flowing and blowing
Clean and pure on the air

I stand now on the open plains
Where the breeze blows across the land
And the whole world is like a grassland unending
As far as the eye can see open, open
Open and unobstructed
All barriers down
All obstacles removed

My translucent hand reaches out and forms life from air
Air like clay that can be molded
Matter formed by my own translucent being
Air full of life and love

Yes, love,
Love is the clay

Love is the artist and the art itself
Love is the clay and the potter
Love is the hand that forms and the form that results
And the freedom that blows is a freedom to create

And here at the heart is my own beating heart
That beats in tune with your own
The coming and going of timeless time
The coming and going of formless form

We ask: Is it now?
Is it now to move, to form, to be in this wondrous opening?

And the answer flies back across the plains, as swift as that breeze,
No, no, swifter
As fast as the blink of an eye, it comes

Yes, yes

The time is now
The energy is here now
The open blowing moving forming of the formless into being
This is now
And the fresh air of being is now

Reach out your hand of love
Grab the freshening air and form it
The world is molded to your own thinking, being, intending hand

A light glows and comes toward you
See it fill the air
The moment is now for the forming
The moment is now for creation
The world is yours to shape and form

You are the light
You are the love
You are the artist, the creator

We are the light, we are the love
We are the creators

Blowing and open and new
I am
We are
Life is

~Carrie Hart

June 2007

Oops! A small snafu!

Looks like the eCard didn't embed properly when our last post went out via email.

Because I have no control over the feedburner email subscription posts, I'm just letting every one know that you will have to visit the site to view the card.

Sorry about that! Click here to go directly to that post.

A Manual for Conserving Paths

From Paulo Coehlo, author of The Alchemist, we have this cool eCard. Since we are working on opening doors, I thought it might be good to say a little bit about following the paths that might lead from those open doors.

(Run your mouse over the right hand corner of the card below, it will begin to curl, click on it to open the card and turn the pages. If it doesn't load properly, here's a direct link to the page where I found it.)

An Invitation To Open Your Mind

The following is from the DVD Ramtha: Create Your Day - An Invitation To Open Your Mind:

You know the moment you wake up, have you ever noticed that you don't know who you are. You wake up and you don't know who you are. Have you noticed how you look around the room to orient yourself, and what is really surprising is when you see the person next to you and for that split moment you don't know who they are?


I think you should contemplate that a lot. We spend the next moments before we ever get out of bed reorienting, rebounding with an identity that for a moment we didn't even have, and the identity is that (thing) we start to from when we take a look at the person next to us. And then we get up, and we start scratching our bodies... and then we get up and we go to the latrine and on the way we look at ourselves.

Why do you do that? Why do you stare at yourself? Because you are trying to remember who you are. It is still a mystery.

But if you have to remember who you are and remember the parameters of your acceptance and the fence of your doubt, if you have to go through the ritual every single day to remember who you are, what are the chances that your day is going to turn out unique?

Very slim indeed.

But what if ... before you tried to remember who you were ... you remembered what you wanted to be, and maybe that came first before you saw your mate, before you clawed yourself, before you staggered out of bed, scared the cat and saw yourself in the mirror. Before you did all of that, what if you remembered something:

"Before I bond to the ritual of my neuronet, I am going to create a day that is astounding, that will add to my neuronet, that will add to the experience of my life."

And you create your day - you create your day. That moment that you are not yet who you are is the most sublime moment in which in that moment you see the extraordinary, you can expect and accept the unordinary, you can accept a pay raise today. If you become yourself, your expectation of a pay raise greatly diminishes. You and I both know that. But in this one state of nonconclusiveness about your identity, you can create anyway.

So I tell my students, before you get up and remember who you are, create your day. Then after you create your day, your routine will change. You will be a slightly different person staring at the urinal, looking in the mirror. There will be something different about you, and that will be a wonderful thing.

Praying With Open Arms

Here is an excerpt from "Stories of God" by Maria Rainer Rilke, I am curious to know what your thoughts are on his ideas about God, and particularly I would like to encourage every one to try praying with wide open arms and see what happens. Here's what he says:

"You know," I began again, "in olden times people prayed like this -" and I spread my arms out wide, involuntarily feeling my breast expand at the gesture. "in those days God would cast himself into all these human abysses, full of despair and darkness, and only reluctantly did he return into his heavens, which, unnoticed, he drew down ever closer over the earth.

But a new faith began. As it could not make men understand wherein its new God differed from their old one (for as soon as they began to praise him, men promptly recognized the one old God here too), the promulgator of the new commandment changed the manner of praying. He taught the folding of hands and declared: "See, thus does our God wish to be implored, so he must be another God from the one whom heretofore you have thought to receive into your arms." The people saw this, and the gesture of open arms became a despicable and dreadful one, and later it was fastened to the cross that all might see in it a symbol of agony and death.

Now when God next looked down upon the earth, he was frightened. Besides the many folded hands, many Gothic cathedrals had been built, and so the hands and the roofs, alike steep and sharp, stretched pointing towards him like the weapons of an enemy. With God there is a different bravery. He turned back into his heavens, and when he saw that the steeples and the new prayers were growing in pursuit of him, he departed out of his domain at the other side and thus eluded the chase.

He was himself astonished to find, out beyond his radiant home, a beginning darkness that received him silently, and with a curious feeling he went on and on in this dusk that reminded him of the hearts of men. Then for the first time it occurred to him that the heads of men are lucid, but their hearts full of a similar darkness; and a longing came over him to dwell in the hearts of men and no longer move through the clear, cold wakefulness of their thinking.

Well, God has continued on his way. Ever denser grows the darkness around him, and the night through which he presses on has something of the fragrant warmth of fecund clods of earth. And in a little while the roots will reach out towards him with the old beautiful gesture of wide prayer. There is nothing wiser than the circle. The God who has fled from us out of the heavens, out of the earth will he come to us again. And, who knows, perhaps you yourself will some day dig free the door..."

Conscious Intention

Here's an exercise for us all to try. Today, every time you open something say to yourself "I too am opening."

Here are some examples:

• When you open your car door, "I too am open to movement in my life."
• Upon opening a container of food, "I am open to nourishment."
• Using a can opener, "Whatever it takes, I will be open to life."
• Turning a faucet, "Prosperity flows through me, freely and unrestricted."
• Opening the door to a room, "Moving forward in life can be this easy."
• When you open your check book or wallet, "I am open to the free flow of money as a never ending stream."
• Unbuttoning, or unzipping a jacket, "Being open can be as easy as this."

It doesn't really matter what words you use, and of course, it will be easy to forget about this as you get busy with your daily activities, and that's alright too. Just having the intention that the things you open in the physical world reflect what is opening within your self, is powerful in and of itself. Stating that intention consciously, gives it an extra boost.

Here's a nice picture to get you inspired. It's large enough to be downloaded and used as your desktop wallpaper. Just click on the image, this will pull up the page at Slide.com. Once there, right click on the image and chose "save target as," and save it to your "my pictures" folder. From there you can set it as desktop wallpaper. If you are "technically challenged" and need help, let me know and I'll walk you through it in a more detailed way.

Quotes for today

Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open. ~John Barrymore

-oOo-

When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us. ~Alexander Graham Bell

-oOo-


If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. ~Milton Berle

-oOo-


You can do anything you think you can. This knowledge is literally the gift of the gods, for through it you can solve every human problem. It should make of you an incurable optimist. It is the open door. ~Robert Collier

The Winds of Change

Prepare For CHANGE - With this delicious hypnosis meditation!

Before change is fully here and manifest, we must expect it, await it, want it, desire it and make us ready to receive the new to come - The Winds of Change is the change we make in our expectations BEFORE the real changes can come to pass.

Too many people equate "change" with chaos or loss and actively resist it, even subconsciously - let the Winds of Change tell you about the possibilities to come, of the splendours of the future, riches and wealth of experience of the future and help you rise to the occasion!

So, get comfortable in your chair, turn the volume up a little, shut the door, and click this link to play the meditation (it does take a while to load, so be patient): Winds of Change

(for the technically challenged, see explanation below)

-oOo-

When you click the link you should get a pop up box that asks if you want to "open" or "save" the file. Choose "open" to play it right now, and choose "save" to download it and play it at your leisure. The second option is the best option if you have a slow internet connection.

Found at Dragon Rising.

Each moment

Each moment is an open door you can walk through. But at the same time, there is no need for regret, for the next moment is an open door as well, and even though you will not have exactly the same opportunity, you will have another, one that is perfect in its own moment.


Allow yourself to live with zest and vibrancy, jumping in to enjoy this life, right now. But when the moment is over, when one phase of your life completes, let it go. Keep facing forward as you move along the path of life, letting the fresh wind of opportunity blow in.

~Found at Spirit Library, you can read the whole post here

The door is round and open...

The breeze of dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep
People are going back and forth
across the doors where
the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.

~Rumi

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Here's something from Live a Rich Life:

Say yes with your total heart, go deeper and deeper into yes. Say yes to each and every thing. Say yes to good and bad, to day and night, to summer and winter. Say yes to success and to failure. Say yes to life and to death. Just remember one word: YES!

When and Where:
Anytime, anywhere, whenever you remember. And particularly when something happens that you do not like or did not want to happen.

Benefits:
If you can say yes with your total heart, you are in celebration. If you can say yes to existence, you have arrived. It can transform your whole being, it can become a radical change, a revolution.

Try it!

Man is not an island.

Raise your hands, close your eyes and feel like a tree, become a tree... It is sunny and windy and the tree is delighted. Whatsoever the tree feels to do, allow: if the tree sways in the wind it is ok...

It is better to become a tree sometimes, to become an animal sometimes, to become a bird and sometimes even to become a rock in the sun, because we have passed all these stages and something of those stages still remains inside us, it is part of our being.

Man is not an island, he is not separate from existence. Man is involved in existence, in all its dimensions. The rock contains the man; he is its future. Man contains the rock; it is man's past. We are joined together. If you can start feeling like a rock you will have a totally different reality, a different vision, the way the rocks looks at trees and the sun and the star. One can get into that kind of attunement. Let this be your meditation; sometimes become a tree and forget humanity. You will feel fresh, young and rejuvenated. You will have the silence of the tree, the joy of the tree, the earthiness of the tree. Sometimes become a bird. Close your eyes and go as far away in the sky as possible. Whisper with the clouds...

All this is possible because we have been these things; it is our past, it is our inheritance. Deeper in you than man is the animal. Man is very superficial, just the last coating. Deeper than that is the animal, deeper than that is the tree, even deeper than that is the rock. The rock is our foundation, our very roots are there and we are spread all over existence on many levels, in many dimensions. Man is not so small as he looks. He is infinite, he contains all. So let this be your meditation...

-Osho

Open Door Meditation Revisited

The inspiration for our current project came from the Osho Open Door Meditation, which was posted sometime last month as part of The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire. This meditation had a very powerful effect on me, and I'm thinking that it can serve as a cornerstone or foundation for what we are working to accomplish right now.

Here is a modified version of the Open Door Meditation. This is what works best for me, and you all are certainly encouraged to take a look at the original post (here) and figure out what works best for you.

Every night before you go to sleep, curl yourself into a tight little ball. Totally close yourself in. Close your eyes, your mouth, your ears, close your heart, your hands, your mind. Everything will begin to feel very dark and close. Your body will become tense and stiff. Maybe you will begin to have uncomfortable feelings of loss and loneliness.

When feel that you couldn't get any more closed up, when you begin to feel anxious, when you just can't stand it any more, slowly begin to open up. Uncurl your body, open your hands, open your heart, your mind, your hands... breathe... open yourself like a flower to the sunshine. Relax...relax the whole body and the whole feeling. Expand. Feel that you are filling the whole room. Feel that your energy is streaming out of the door, out the windows, into every nook and cranny of your home, expanding out into your yard or garden, out into your neighborhood. Let the energy go out and out. And as that energy flows onward and out ward, notice how it enfolds everything that is encountered. Notice how "out there" is now made welcome "in here".

Imagine that you are pulling the whole wide world into your heart in one large hug, one welcoming smile... Now, go to sleep.

Opening Up - Our New Project

Welcome to our next project. For the next 30 days we will be exploring ways to open the doors to success, to abundance, to riches even. The idea being that if we open our doors to new ideas and new ways of looking at things, we allow a powerful current of psychic energy into our lives. This psychic energy invigorates and electrifies every aspect of who we are - in the boardroom, the bedroom, and beyond….

If you don't think being open is important, consider this: If your bank account is closed, nothing can be automatically deposited, not even pay checks that you've earned. If your electricity is turned off, you won't be able to watch television even if you have a brand new flat screen HDTV. It's pretty hard to buy food in a store after hours. Open is important when working to achieve prosperity.

So, today, let's take some inventory. Awareness is the first step on the road to change.

• If your life, or your career, or your checking account was a house... what would it look like?
• Is it big or is it little?
• Does it look inviting? or scary? well kept? or is it going down in flames?
• Which doors to are open?
• Which are closed, nailed shut?
• Which doors do we sit beside, carefully monitoring what comes in?
• When opportunity comes knocking, do you fling the door open wide? Or do you peer suspiciously through a crack in the curtains?

Let's do some "home" work, and come up with some goals, intentions, aspirations, and/or ideas about what you'd like to accomplish in the next 30 days.

What is the Prosperity Project?

The Prosperity Project is the brain child of Shirley Gibson and Daniel Knirs. We were both working the night shift at the same place, and going through some extreme financial difficulties, when one night it occurred to us that we knew a heck of a lot of prosperity techniques, but we weren't really "doing" any of them. One idea lead to another, and by the time morning rolled around, the Prosperity Project was born and the blog was up and running.

The participants in our project are a widely diverse group. Some of us believe in the principles and practices we try, some of us do not, and many of us are ambivalent. One of the things we are curious about is whether or not belief in the process is a requirement for it to work. We track our progress based on how well our goals for the 30 days have been met.

Does it work? Yes. Absolutely! Even if the various projects in and of themselves fall short of our expectations, we can say beyond doubt that our lives have been transformed by the this project. Part of the success (in my opinion) lies in the commitment to working on prosperity every day, and part of the success is directly attributable to the support we give each other.

Can anyone join? Again, absolutely yes! Feel free to jump in at any time. The simplest way to join is to subscribe. Comments and active participation are encouraged and deeply appreciated, but not mandatory. We are delighted to share this journey with you. Don't be afraid to add yourself to our guest book, and if you'd like to participate in our Southpark Album, leave a comment and I'll let you know where to send your image so that it can be included.

Technically challenged? Not sure how to leave a comment? Feeling insecure about "blogging" or not sure how to get the most out of our site? We have a great little visual how-to which can be found by clicking the following link: Our Tutorial.

A Tutorial for Newbies

Here we have an in depth and detailed tutorial for blogging newbies complete with pictures. How cool is that?

So, this is your "landing page" this is what the page might look like (this is what it looks like today anyway) when you come to the website. You will notice that the content above the dividing line with the date on it doesn't change often if at all. The content below it changes every time something new is published (or posted). On the right is a long column of links to various pages within The Prosperity Project, as well as links to other sites, and some interesting stuff to explore. The content in the right hand column is subject to changes and rearrangment as I am constantly working to add cool new stuff and delete what is old and outdated.



Currently, you will see that if you scroll down, our "front" page has 5 articles. And if you are looking for something older than that you can check the "previous posts" list, or if you are interested in something specific you can explore the "labels" links. I may add a "search this site" box later on this week.

To join the project, you can subscribe. The subscription box looks like this: It's located in the right hand column.


This is where you would type in your email address to receive the Prosperity Project via email. You will not get spammed. The subscriptions are handled through Feedburner and are never shared with anyone. It's free and it's easy... so hey, why not do it now?

As you scroll down the page, you will see, at the bottom of each post, and before the next one starts, a number of links. It looks like this:



If you click on the "comments" link, a box will pop up that allows you to leave comments. This is a screen shot of the box that will pop up.



(On your computer, the colors might be different.) If you click on "comments"; and your computer asks you if you want to allow a pop up, go ahead and say yes. If you have an older computer, or are running windows 95, or if you don't have java or other scripting enabled, your comment box may look completely different. If that's the case, and you cannot figure out how to comment, send me an email and let me know. I'll see if I can figure out how to do a work around.

If the box pops up like it's supposed to, simply type your comment in the box provided. Again, the colors might be different, but it should look something like this:



After you have written your comment, and under that box, you will find these three options. It's called "Choose an identity".



I am assuming that you are a blogging newbie and do not have a blogger (or other) account. So, we're going to ignore that option. What you will want to do is select the option that says "nickname" and type your name there. It can be a nickname, a screen name, or your real name. That's entirely up to you.

There is also a space for a website URL. If you have a website, or a MySpace page, or any other web address that you are affiliated with, type in that address. This is also optional. The purpose for it is so that other people commenting and reading your comments can get to know you a little better, see what you are up to, find out what you are interested in, etc. If you do put your website address in, be sure to include all of it, including the http:// part of it.



Once you have the comment written, and you have "signed in" either as a "blogger" or with a nickname, you can choose the option to "preview" your post.

The preview (as you can see below) will show up in a yellow box, your post, as you can see, is still in the box, and if you see anything you'd like to change, go ahead and change it now.



After you click "publish" the comment box will reload and tell you that your comment has been saved. (See the screenshot below).

If you clicked publish, and you didn't get this message at the top, scroll down and look for a reason. It should be written in red.



To close the comment box, simply click on this link (circled in red) and the box will close.



The comment box can be moved out of the way so that you can refer to the post if you need (or want) to. Move your mouse to the top of the box, see where the red arrow is?



Now left click and hold... that means don't click and let go, click and hold down as you drag the box to where you'd like for it to be.

What if you "lose" your comment box? One moment it's there, and the next moment it's gone. If you are sure that you didn't accidentally close it, look down at the bottom of your screen. As you can see in this screen shot, the comment box has been minimized. To bring it back up, all you have to do is click on it.



If you would like to read the comments but not necessarily leave a comment, you can click on the title to the post. See where the red arrow is?



The page will reload, and only that post will be shown. Now, if you scroll down to the bottom of the post, you will see that all the comments are now showing. The bottom of the page will look something like this:



And at the very bottom of the post it will look like this:



Do you see the link that says "home"? Clicking on that link will bring up the "landing page" or the first page of The Prosperity Project. Do you see the link that says "older posts"? That link will take you to the previous post. And also, as you can see, there is a link that says "Post a comment". If you click on that link, the Comment Box will pop up.

Another feature that we have is the ability to email posts to friends and colleagues. If you click on that little envelope icon at the bottom of each post, you will open a page that allows you to send the link to the post to someone via email. If you hover your mouse over that little green "snapshots"; icon, you will see a preview of the page that will come up, like this:



And as you can see, we have another option for emailing a post provided through Feedburner. Here's a preview of how that looks:



So what is that SnapShots thingy anyway? What you are seeing is a preview of the site. This allows you to look before you leap (so to speak). Our site is enhanced with SnapShots. A post about it can be found here. If you hover your mouse over that cute little icon next to active links, this preview box will pop up.



If you preview a site and you get something that looks like the screenshot below, and says RSS, this just means that that you are seeing are the current posts instead of a preview of what the site actually looks like.



If you'd rather see what the site looks like, you can click on that little blue box up at the top on the left side of the snapshots box. It's right next to the orange button. Below is a preview of that same site, but with the image enabled instead of the "feed" (orange button).



Be aware that the previews from snapshot are based on the last time Google actually indexed that site, and the pages may be outdated.

You will also notice that when your mouse moves over an image, the snapshots preview will pop up.



In this case, the image in question is hosted at Zooomr and the zoomr page has previewed. And all the shots in this tutorial might possibly preview at Flickr. I tried, but was unable to configure snapshots to ignore images. Personally, I think this is the only confusing part of the SnapShots plug in. And my advice is to just ignore it unless the photo page looks interesting and you want to go exploring.

You might also notice that if you hover your mouse over a link, a box that looks like this might pop up. This is because we have enabled an Amazon Text widget - I did that as a simple way to "monetize" the blog (possibly bring in some extra income) and also as a convenience. This way, I don't have to go to Amazon and find links to all the books and subjects we cover and neither do you.



Sometimes, as you can see, their choice of subject matter in this case is way off the mark... but often it is right on and appropriate.

And so this concludes a mega long tutorial about the features available here at The Prosperity Project. I really hope that this makes every thing more clear instead of more complicated. And if you read it all the way through... not only am I impressed, I'm pleased and appreciative. Thank you.

Our Next Project

Our next project is scheduled to begin on Monday. In the interim, I will be writing several posts to wrap up our most recent project, and I will also be tying up loose ends on other projects we did during 2007. Also, for blogging newbies, I will post an indepth tutorial on how to leave comments.

It is also my intention to create a "new look" for our blog. So, if you log in and everything looks totally different and/or not quite right, that's me, experimenting. It may take some time to find the right look, and then to tweak it so that it works well for us.

Our next project will focus on being open and receptive to our good. Giving us plenty of tools to open doors that have long been closed within us. As a preliminary to this project, it might be a good idea to sit down and think about those areas in our lives that seem either closed off within us - or closed to us. Here are some questions to get you started:

• What doors do you want to open?
• What locks do you want to pick?
• What is it that you have invited in but never actually opened up to?
• What is missing?
• Is there anything that has showed up and you can't get it to just go away?
• Could it be that you've locked it in?
• How would it feel to open every door?
• How would it feel to open all the windows?
• How would it feel to open your arms wide?
• How would it feel to have an open heart?
• Is your mind open?
• What about your eyes?
• Where do you hide out?
• Would you open Pandora's Box?

Blessings!

I'm running a little behind schedule this week.

And I wish you all the very best in this coming year.