happiness

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Saturday Posts . . .

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Saturday Posts . . .

As only one example of how this may be true, I’d like to remind everyone about the story of how my current wife and I met.  I had moved into my mother’s home in Pratt, Kansas, because I fled St. Louis, Missouri after my 8 month engagement to a woman I passionately loved fell apart.  It collapsed because I caught her cheating on me, and then she chose the other guy over me.  I was heartbroken, and struggling to get my feet back on solid ground. My current wife was a librarian at the local community college, where I’d enrolled in a few arts classes.

We became friends, and hung out frequently.  But, until she made it clear that she wanted more out of our relationship, I had not even considered the possibility.  Her actions made me take a hard look at the situation.  I realized that I had 2 choices – the first being that I could ignore her interest and continue to harbor my wounded pride over the loss of the prior engagement.  The second choice was to take a chance on possibly being happy with someone who obviously wanted to be with me, despite the baggage I brought to the relationship.  I had to spend several days considering those options.

In the end, I took a chance on being happy with her.  It has proved to be one of the smartest decisions of my life.

5 Minutes of Magic . . .

When I got this newest LOA book (newest in my collection, at least), I started very quickly with looking at how I could use my daily affirmations more effectively.  One of the ideas I hit on was to make my own mind movies – just as Natalie did in her book.  Problem was, I didn’t actually have any software for doing that.

So, I went online and found a freeware program called Ice Cream Slideshow Maker (I kid you not!) that looked to be capable of doing what I needed.  It was easy and quick to learn, too.  Oh, did you hear the “BUT” coming?  Sorry.

But, when I copied the folder of images I have to the slideshow I encountered a limitation I hadn’t anticipated.  My folder had 168 images in it – things that invoked feelings of health, strength, abundance, spiritual enlightenment, joy, peace – well, you get the idea.  The freeware version of Ice Cream Slideshow Maker (ICSM) would only let me use 20 images in my slideshows.

Well, I made one slideshow that complied with their limits, and I liked the results, but it wasn’t REALLY what I wanted.  I wanted to be able to use all 168 images – plus anything new that I might add to the folder in the future.  Hmmmm….

Yesterday, part of the solution dropped into my lap, quite literally.  Several years ago, I heard about a spiritual practice out of Hawaii that you might simplistically call “Responsibility Meditation”.  I won’t even try to put the real name here – because I couldn’t pronounce it and I think the name just gets in the way of applying it.  I think you have to have 3 tongues to get all the inflections in right (that’s a joke).  I tried back then to learn more about this practice, but using the internet I could only learn the name of one practitioner, and no contact information on him.  So, I shelved the idea.

What happened yesterday was that I was watching an interview with Marci Shimoff where she mentioned using this technique – and told the exact steps and phrases that she uses!  It’s so simple it floored me!  Now, I just needed to find a way to apply it to my meditation.

Today when I opened up my image folder, I noticed among the folder control tabs was one labeled “Slideshow”.  So, I opened it up, and looked.  The slideshow function gave me the ability to use the ENTIRE CONTENTS of the folder, and adjust the playback within 3 different speeds, and even randomize the playback.  OKAY!  Now I have everything I needed.

Oh, and FYI – those simple directions for the “Responsibility Meditation” practice are here:

Spend just 5 minutes a day, every day, meditating on whatever you want to fix.  During your meditation, visualize the situation, as completely and vividly as you can, then repeat the following phrases to that visualisation, over and over:

I’m Sorry.

Please Forgive Me.

Thank You.

I LOVE YOU.