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A smile increases your face value

I received that in a fortune cookie Sunday. Fortune cookies no longer tell fortunes; they seem to just have sayings in them. Sometimes the sayings can pack some meaning such as the one I received yesterday.

Think about it a minute.

Face value, what does that mean? A couple of things come to my mind.

It could be like property value. The value of you as a human has just increased. When you smile at some one that person feels better and automatically think better of you, increasing your value to them as a person.

Look at it from the opposite end. Think about the couple that always bickers. Their value to each other keeps going down until one wants a divorce. I have heard many stories and read enough self-help books that say if only one partner will start to smile and act kinder and more accepting, the other partner will soon follow suite and the marriage is saved.

Another way to look at face value is in a more literal way. Your face just looks better, prettier with a smile on it.

So put a smile on the next time you go out and increase your value.

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I often say that EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and MTT (Meridian Tapping Techniques) only remove the negative in our lives and leaves the positive because we are born with the fruits of the spirit and as we live our lives we collect negative baggage in the form of negative emotions. Often this negativity occurs from the day we are born and I think some would say from before that.

What exactly do I mean by the fruits of the spirit? According to Galatians 5:22-23, the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Let me take this apart and compare it to what emotions a newborn baby may come into this world with. I can see a baby being born with love and joy, but peace and patience or self-control? I just don’t see it. Let’s dig deeper.

Have you ever known a peaceful baby? I have. So the ones who are not peaceful may have had some contributing baggage already in their young life. It could have been as harsh as a drug abusing mother, or a physically abused mother or maybe something along the lines of a medical problem that cropped up for the baby or the mother while in the womb. I can see any of these leading to a restless, unhappy baby.

Some of these positive emotions are automatically compromised because we start out as helpless babies. Who would not lose patience and self-control when they can’t communicate what they need to those around them. So these positive emotions go out the door real fast.

This leaves goodness, faithfulness and gentleness. These qualities would be hard to see in a young baby. By the time the child is of an age to actually express these qualities in their life, family, friends, society and even TV have already influenced them. The child has had plenty of opportunity to learn the negative traits

What are your thoughts on this?
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What makes some people “great” and most of us mediocre?

I think it has to do with the spark of God (or Creator, Universal Power, whatever your choice is) in each of us. It is not that some have more than others; it is what we do with it.

The spark in each of us is infused with our true desires. Our desires are important, there is a reason they are there. Our desires can lead us to our best use in this life.

Sometimes because of circumstances or obligations or maybe society influences, we deny our “best use” and choose to do something else. It is those who do their true desires that accomplish much as it is in alignment with our purpose for being here.

Sometimes we think that our desires are thwarted. I have heard of women who had a true and overpowering desire to be a mother but were unable to have children. Maybe that desire was put there for them to mother others who did not have mothers, or those who had poor mothering. There is a reason for that strong desire.

You can rewrite your desire contract, but be careful, as there is a reason that desire is there. When I was young, I had a strong desire to learn to fly. In college I took a sample class where they take you up in a plane and show you some of the basics. But when I was out on my own and working, I just could not see how I could afford lessons and plane rental fees and I asked for the desire to be taken from me and it was. But guess what, not too many years later I fell in love with some one who had a plane and loved to fly! Now I enjoy going up with my flying husband but much to his chagrin I have no real desire to learn. It would have added another dimension to our marriage if I had a strong flying desire like my husband.

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You have heard the term “bad vibes”.

When we were looking for a house to buy, I would enter the house and check for any bad feelings or vibrations from the house. You may have done that yourself. Have you ever entered a place and felt you did not like it, or met a person who did not sit well with you even before they said anything.

I had a friend that purchased a house where an estranged husband had broken in and chased the woman down the road and killed her. When I visited this friend, I listened close to what the house was emitting and felt it was clean. I did not feel any bad vibrations; I guess they had followed the woman down the street.

We constantly send out vibrations that others pick up on. I see that in my cats all the time. Cats are more sensitive to energies and are better at judging and reacting to them. I have a cat that sends out a vibration of fear and in doing that one of my other cats is always attacking or acting like she will attack. I think in sending this vibration out he is actually attracting what he fears back to him. I wish I could explain to him that his actions are attracting what he doesn’t want. I have another cat that Misty will also try and intimidate but he ignores her and she gives up and leaves him alone.

How much negativity are we attracting into our life by our vibrational frequency we are sending out. This is the law of attraction at work. You get more of what your emotions are sending out. If you don’t like what your vibration is attracting, change it. EFT and meridian tapping are great tools to easily change your vibration.

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Our pets are a major part of our lives. They can help us in so many ways if we let them. I am not talking just about working animals such as service dogs or sheep dogs but your normal house pet whether it is a snake or a horse (I guess this is more of a barn pet than a house pet) or something in between.

When I look at my pets, I mean really look, I see multi layers of relationships and I see a lot of symbolism.

I often think of my relationship with my cats as similar to God’s relationship with us. I am like God to my cats. I take care of them and take joy in them. I also sometimes wish I could make them understand what is going on and that there is no need to be fearful. I had a huge cat once that was real concerned with food. This cat was large boned and not fat and he required a lot of food. Whenever the food dish got low (in his eyes) he would come and complain to me until I did something about it. He was worried. The food was not out, just low. He did not understand that I would not let him go hungry.

I believe God would like for us to understand that we will be taken care of. If we are not so consumed by worry and fear we can see the opportunities around us and live a more abundant life. If we could just live in the joy of the moment we could live a happier life.

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I love listening to the Christmas songs on the radio this time of year.

I will often comment to my husband how I like a certain song and he will quickly point out that is not a Christmas song but a winter song. I have started listening closer to what is being played and he is right. Many of them are not really Christmas songs.
Where is the Christ in Christmas? In our efforts to be politically correct and trying not to offend any one are we losing site of what is important to so many?

In Fahrenheit 451, the whole book-burning attitude got started because they did not want to offend anyone. To keep from offending they just squelched any new idea or anything that did not include everyone.

Maybe we are trying to go the other way by creating new holidays during this time of year.

A few years ago a new/old holiday made itself known. This one was called Kwanzaa; it was geared to African Americans but welcomes all.

Now I have heard about another one called Festivus. This one originated from a Seinfeld episode in 1997. Quite a few people are actually taking this and running with it. I am not sure that airing your grievances and telling others how they have disappointed you in the last year is really a good way to further relationships.

Maybe creating new holidays are appropriate. I understand the reason December 25 was established for Christmas was to take over a Druid holiday, changing that holiday into a more “acceptable” Christian holiday. Now I understand Christ birth was probably in April. So maybe we should move Christmas.

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Maybe I am being morbid but stick with me one more day.

I have often heard that you can tell a lot about a society by the way they treat their dead. The society in the US tends to bury them and leave them there in peace for eons. Often the graves go neglected except for the caretakers at the cemetery. What does that say about the US society?

I understand Europe is different. I have an Cousin from Germany and she told me that the cemeteries are so full that you “rent” a plot for a certain number of years, then some one else gets the space. I did not ask what they did with the body when they were through with the plot. What does that say about the German society?

Me personally I would like to be cremated and my ashes scattered. I don’t like the idea of being buried and having children and grand children feeling obligated to come and “pay their respects”. I won’t be there so why go through such a ritual?

What are your ideas? How do you want to be treated when you pass on?

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Yesterdays post got me thinking about death. I know this is not usually thought about this time of year. In fact discussion of it at all is often put off until some one dies and even then it is often made light of. Why do we have such a repulsion of that topic?

When my dad was alive and I would visit, we would have many a discussion about death and what my dad wanted after he died. He even commented once that my older brothers would not listen to him when he tried to talk about such things and he was glad that I would.

Why do we as a society tend to ignore death until it hits us over the head. Maybe our aversion comes from the fear that once gone always gone, or maybe it is because we truly don’t believe in an afterlife or maybe the afterlife we think we are going to is going to be horrendous.

I was brought up with the Hell, Fire and Brimstone mentality. The religious figures around me tried to present as fact that God was judgmental and we all deserved hell. For some reason this just did not resonate as true to me. Why would God have created us if He were going to hate us so? My God was a loving God. He always was and always will be. It wasn’t until later that I realized that the “Fear of God” was just mans way of controlling the masses, trying to get them to do what the ones in power (the religious order) thought was right.

Fear has always been a tool for control. God who is all-powerful has no need for control tools. Can what we do here in this earthly plan really cause any of these negative man made emotions to come out in an all powerful, all knowing God?

What kind of God do you have?

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The holiday season is a time for visiting relatives. This is what we did one day last week. One of our relations took us out to eat and then drove us around town to show us the sites. But guess where we ended up. Visiting our long gone relatives in the cemetery.

It just struck me as odd. Here we were trying to visit with two of my husband’s relatives and we end up in a graveyard. Those that have past on are not really there.

Graveyards can be interesting. I saw a grave of a one day old (a come and see); saw many who had been in the military. It is just that I think the time would be better spent talking to the living and if they want to reminisce and tell stories of the departed, that is fine. But walking around a cold graveyard just does not strike me as quality visiting especially when your time is limited.

I know the “Day of the Dead” is real big in some cultures and that makes more sense as that day is specially set aside and every one knows they will be at the cemetery to honor those who passed on and also to tell their children stories about their relatives.

But when I visit the living, I want to find out what is going on in their life, how they are doing. Tromping around a cold cemetery seems like a strange use of limited time, we know these people are dead and they are buried there so why do we need to go and see the grave. It is not like they are hanging around there waiting to commune with us. Oh well, maybe it is to get in touch with our mortality. These relations are getting older and they may be thinking of the day they will be joining those in the graveyard.

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There have always been influences in society. I don’t think our culture in the US is the only one that experience mass influences. Many through the years remember some TV shows and movies. In this remembering, a group consciousness develops. Sometimes it is just an episode that stays with the society in their memory.
One such episode that sticks in every one’s mind that has seen it is the Twilight Zone: The Complete Definitive Collection
episode of the bookworm. You know which one I am talking about don’t you. It has so pervaded our minds that it is like a group consciousness. The official title is “Time Enough at Last”.
Why would such a show stick in so many minds?
If this same show was shown in a different culture, would it stick in their minds also?
If it made such an impression on so many individuals, would it make an impression on the society as a whole? It does seem to follow that if such a large group of individuals have stored away in their minds the same images or ideas, that culture would be influenced in some way.
Lets look back at this particular episode where a man who loves books is prevented from reading them due to job and other obligations. He finds an escape in the bank vault where he can read undisturbed for a time. When he comes out of the vault, an ‘end of the world’ holocaust has occurred. But this man quickly realizes that this frees him from all obligations and he can now read to his hearts content. He collects books in piles and organizes them as to when he will read what and then the worst happens, he breaks his glasses.
Maybe this speaks to so many because there is so much we would rather do than what we are obligated to do. Just like this man we are lonely in a world full of people because we are not doing what we love. As soon as we are allowed the opportunity to pursue our dreams, does that loneliness disappear? (You can be alone but not lonely.)
Sometimes in the pursuit of our dreams our hopes are dashed to pieces. A long time ago, I found my dream job but soon realized it was not what I had expected. I was not thrilled with it. My dreams were dashed. It takes a while to recover from dashed dreams and to come up with a new one. You are afraid to pursue something new, as the dream now appears better than actually obtaining the dream. You don’t want to be disillusioned again. But it is the dream and the pursuit of happiness that this country is built on. As a human being we have to have a dream even if it is never obtained.
However if the dream is obtained, even if we are pleased with it, we still need a new dream. We always need something to strive for.

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