Dear Pope,

What I understand is that you are about power, control and strength of will and what you have done is simply chosen to align your will with that of Christ Jesus, the savior so that when you wield your will, you give the appearance of wielding the will of the Christ savior. It is easy to see because Jesus was about unconditional love. Any instruction that does not align with that must come from another source than the will of the Christ savior.

Christ Jesus the Savior did not come from a place of needing to simply control people. He had a better way and all he did was live his life in a way that expressed that knowledge. Many saw that and chose to follow. Many also saw that and chose not to follow. Jesus may have wept for those who chose other paths but he knew and understood that each of us has our own path and the one he chose was fraught with thorns and rocks and may not have been for everyone.

Since the way Jesus took was attracting a lot of followers, those who were about power and control felt afraid for their ways of life. They destroyed Jesus but it was too late to stop the tide that he began. It took several hundred years but those in power and control finally determined that if they gave the appearance of aligning their will to the path Jesus taught, they could regain control of the people. This worked for a very long time.

The will of those with power and control as their driving force has slowly diverged from the the path that Jesus showed us and the people are feeling the pain and awaking; beginning to see that they have been duped. Jesus is returning but not as one individual. He is returning in the form of a movement; a community of people around the world who have a common path that they are living and demonstrating and drawing others to as the others determine for themselves what the benefits are.

The power and control beast seems to feel the people slipping through it's fingers. They are tightening the grip in order to stem the escape but all this does is force more out through the cracks and it does not have the energy to sustain this grip for ever. It will cause pain for many who attempt to escape to show those who remain what it can do to those who do not comply with it's rule but as the people wake up they will realize that it does not have the energy or resources to do to everyone what they can do to a few and the flood gates will open and the beast will be consumed by it.

Dear Pope, the oven is heating up.

Oblivious: Lacking conscious awareness; unmindful.

I don't understand why I seem to be noticing it more lately that more and more people seem to be more and more oblivious to everything that is going on around them.

There are people who are plenty aware but the bulk of people? I have learned that everything I see is a reflection of something in me, a characteristic of my self that god is trying to show me. The things that I don't like, I am presented the oportunity to fix. I not impressed with this obliviousness so what am I being oblivious to?

I was in a room full of people the other day. There seemed to be a lot of pain. People seemed to be suffering from wounds they received when they were kids. Again, if this is all a reflection, what am I seeing?

Is all this pain and suffering that I see, something that is in me that I need to heal? It must be or else why would it be showing up? Something that I have been oblivious to?

I am supposed to be on a path of awakening. Awakening is becoming more aware, also less oblivious. I am supposed to be awakening to a deeper realization of how things really really are for me and the more awake I am, the deeper the hidden shit has to come from.

The more awake I feel that I become, the more asleep I see that others seem to be. I want to run around and scream at them to wake up and get going. Shake the living shit out of them. They don't want to wake up, they grumble at me through sleepy eyes and yell at ME to go the fuck back to sleep.

So waking up to the deeper pain that is held in check. Waking up to the knowledge that it is possible to heal it and move on from it. To use it as a tool to build strength rather than an excuse to lay down and croak. Then as the pain lessens, I begin to feel freer to make the descisions that move me to wake up even more. To become less oblivious and question who is it that is becoming so?
Lots of love.

What is work?

What the heck is work? How about, some form of effort we exert that returns something that we desire. Some where in our systems we have developed an attitude of conservation of effort. It probably comes frome survival mode thinking. Perhaps the more effort we exert, the more likely we are to not survive in the physical form. So we use our effort judiciously so we we are sure to be able to have it to use when we 'really' need it. Like to run from the teeth of a sabre tooth toger. In order to have more, we have to exert more. Plain simple law of cause and effect. Some folks seem to acquire a mentality of the opposite. They will exert more, when they get more. I used to think like that and all of the poeple that tried to tell me about how things really worked were just trying to take advantage of me. I have observed in my life, that it is more fun when I put forth some effort to find or make the fun. If I just sit on the couch and wait for fun to find me, it doesn't seem to. If I get up and get a ball and start bouncinging it, I start to have fun. Admittedly that doesn't last for too long but hopefuly it demonstrates the idea. The more effort that I put out, the more comes back to me. I have also noticed that in order to receive, other people must be involved. Some how, the energy flow requires human interaction to complete. The way electricity requires a complete circuit, the energy flow we think of as money must involve humans. So that means, a greater return on effort is achieved if the effort that I put out helps someone else. Some how, in helping others more comes my way. That is largely due to the grattitude of of the people that I have helped. People who have developed this knowledge already help me in some way by their efforts but when I help them, they return much more. Much, much more. The abundance they have acheived flows back to me. I have also noticed that the more people we can help with the same expenditure of effort, the greater even the rewards are. They call this leveraging and it is primarily how those who have the most have acquired what they have. They have developed systems where they have be able to help a great number of other people through the effort they have exerted. So work is effort that I have exerted. Period. Nothing comes to me. I move towards it through effort. So in order to have something, I must work for it.

Tell me who YOU are.

I had some interestings times at work this week. It seemed like the pendulum swing was going the wrong way. I think that all of my skills as a manager and a human were called to test. I am not ready to share the details of that but a bit of about how I dealt with it.

I am signed up to take a course at the end of the month. This course is to help me to help others get an idea of the real person that they are. The process involves being curious as to who is the one who is experiencing or going through what ever is going on at the moment.

The course material seems to try to teach us to use all of our experiences to trigger the question "Who is the one experiencing this right now?" Instead of trying to supress or wallow in them, just inquires as stated. The experiences are certainly no less profound but the emotional impact seems different.

After the inquiry, the process indicates contemplation. Sometimes the moment doesn't really allow for it but if so, go with the flow. Also the process indicates sharing what arises from the contemplation and unless you are with a willing partner, that is a trick if you are by yourself. Of course there is "the blog".

So I made it through the week and as the week progressed my experiences with (from now on I will refer to the process of personal development as "the Work") the work, deepened. They us that the great mystery (or whatever you would like refer to God as) leads us where it needs us to be. When we make a descision to do someting like enroll in a course, the learning begins from that moment. The lead up to the beginning of the course is going to be very interesting indeed.

Marketing and free stuff

Most business practices involve selling something for more than you paid for it. In order to do that, you need to let people know that you have the said something.  Generally, if you tell enough people, no matter how much money you ask, you will find someone willing to pay that amount for said something. Here in lies the trick.

How do you tell enough people? Marketing and advertising. You can buy space in a publication. You can paint a sign and mount it where it will be seen. You can simply walk up to people and tell them. You can get their address and send them a letter. Or e-mail address and send them an e letter.

For people who are involved in selling something for more than they pay, getting the message out is one of the most important activities they can perform next to actually taking money and handing over the goods.  So they collect names and build a contact list. Next to their inventory, their contact list is their most valuable asset.

Nowadays, people are blitzed by other people who want to sell them stuff. Once a marketer gets your contact information, look out! You will get contacted. An easy way for marketing people to get your contact information is to offer a benefit for providing  your valuable information. You sell your contact information for something. The least costly to the marketer is a free draw. Another option is to provide something of little monetary value. Say a laminated card. It is ok to provide your information, just know, nothing is ever "free" and as long as you are happy to pay the price, go ahead and spend.