SOUL SOOTHERS ONLINE - May 15, 2010 Edition

May 15, 2010 Edition __________________________

NOTICE Please take a few minutes to take our Mini Poll at the end of this issue? Thank you!

SPECIAL AWARENESS ZONE

Introduction

To Awareness Youngness Of Heart

We grow old only when we desert our ideals. While time may wrinkle our skin, giving up interest wrinkles our soul.

We are as young as our faith and as old as our doubt ... we are as young as our self-confidence and as old as our fear ... we are as young as our hope and trust and as old as our despair.

We will remain young as long as the recording chamber in the center of our heart receives messages of hope, courage, joy and love!

When our heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and only then will we have grown old ... and only then will we just fade away. ___________________________________

COURAGE Courage is not resistance to fear, nor absence of fear, but rather mastery of fear. Center of Light & Serenity

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONAL POEM Pray For Peace ~ Michael Bonamassa, Sr.

To keep us safe, Day and night, Our young stand in front And faithfully fight.

When we think we can't, Is when we really must. It is not in our soldiers, But in God we must trust.

Together, with this trust And with our love, We must pray for Peace To the heavens above.

With hope shining From our eyes, We must ask for this gift At each sunrise.

Finally, when our fears subside, The wars will cease. And one day soon, We will live in peace,

It is then that we will Come to understand and know That what we reap, Is what we sow. ___________________________

FEAR Choose what lies in the shadows rather than fear ... for it is a matter for discovery and adventure, and fear dissolves itself when confronted. ~ the Center of Light & Serenity

TODAY'S FEATURE ARTICLE Moving Outside Of Our Belief Systems by Michael Bonamassa, Sr.

Something that is not widely known or understood is that we can select ahead of time the moods, reactions, responses and experiences we are going to have in our tomorrows. Just as we can decide before sitting in a roller-coaster that “this is going to be fun,” so, too, can we decide in advance of what other experiences will be for us.

Yes, and we can choose these responses and reactions with such resolve that nothing can shake us from them. This is when we become not only the master of our destiny, but a master of life itself.

What’s ironic about all this is that we all know we can do this. There is not a one of us who has not done exactly this ... namely, decide ahead of time how we are going to feel about a thing ... and yet, for reasons that are not very clear, we refuse to apply this skill to the majority of the moments in our everyday life. Quite to the contrary, we choose and use this amazing skill rather sparingly, unconsciously using it almost daily in manifesting that which we don't want.

Such an observation leads to the question ... "What would happen if we employed this skill to manifest what we did want in life every hour of every day of every year ... all our lives?" The answer is, of course, that we would seldom, if ever, experience a moment of pain, a moment of anguish, a moment of bitterness, anger or frustration. Our lives would be in perfect order, and we would know it, because we would have created it to be so.

The events of our lives may not necessarily change, and conditions may not get any better, but our experience of those events would change forever. Ultimately, we would not repeat such moments at all, for we will have mastered them. We will have learned to welcome them ... to appreciate and show gratitude for them as the grandest gifts from the greatest creator ... gifts which allow us to be, express, experience and fulfill who we really are ... unlimited multi-dimensional beings of light and love.

The irony is that, having learned to welcome such moments of what we would formerly have called mayhem and negativism, they would go away, for there's a saying that what we resist persists, and what we look at disappears.

In this way, we will have recreated ourselves (and our experience of life) anew. So, what is this ability and how can we become conscious of it to use to our benefit ... every day? Very simply, it's called "belief" ... what we believe is what we experience. For example, for years now, I've held the common belief that whenever it rains, I will feel weakness and pain in my legs before the rain comes. And guess what, I did ... every time without fail.

Think about it and I'm sure that you'll think of some similar beliefs of your own that you've had or have that are similar. You see, it's an "unconscious" belief that we hold in our subconscious and it's the same with any other thing that we experience in life that are not necessarily for our greatest good ... many of which are part of the collective consciousness of others that is brought together as that which we refer to as the "mass consciousness'. For that matter, this is the only reason our memory starts to diminish, or we get old and wrinkled, or our eyesight begins to fail when we reach a certain age. It's because we've bought into such as part of our belief system. Or, we've really come to believe in our sub-conscious mind those things of the mass consciousness that we see on black birthday balloons or greeting cards like "we're over the hill".

Thanks to our quantum physicists whose research have proven that our thoughts are energy, even the medical profession is changing as a result of it. For example, experience has shown that when doctors have provided diagnoses that the a patient is terminally ill, had a certain amount of time to live, and the patient bought into it (believed it), they have succumbed to it, and doctors are now being more mindful of this. You see, basically, experiencing our beliefs is a form of self-hypnotism ... and as I said ... an "unconscious" self-hypnotism. Then, if we want to use it to select ahead of time the moods, reactions, responses and experiences we are going to have in our tomorrows, all we have to do is do the same thing in a "state of consciousness" instead.

Do you realize what I'm saying here? I'm saying that we can create a life without pain and suffering. That's how powerful we really are, but we just don't realize and know it ... and if we do, we just don't "believe" it. But, we can know it by experiencing it ... just as we've experienced all the things we didn't want ... the aches and pains driven by beliefs that were taught to us at an age when we were most vulnerable or that are held in the collective (mass) consciousness in our world.

It's not something that can be taught us, but rather an inner ability or knowingness of our higher-Self (soul) that we all have that must be practiced day-in and day-out. Very simply, our thoughts and perceptions come from our beliefs ... some that we're consciously aware of as well as some false beliefs (beliefs that we didn't consciously select but that came from influential surroundings or the mass consciousness into our subconscious mind. So, when we change the way we think, that which we experience in life will also change. I guarantee it ... better yet, the Universe guarantees it!

Practice this on a day-to-day basis and become the master of your life. Who knows, you may even reach that point where you can walk through that "solid wall" that is nothing but an illusion .... mere energy consisting of atoms and molecules that our belief tells us is solid.

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DANCE OF LIFE To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe ... to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it ... is a wonder beyond words. ~ the Center of Light & Serenity

ON THE PATH ... with the Center of Light & Serenity The Beauty Of The Present Moment

We live in a world that teaches us the way to get what we want is through struggle, hard work and much effort. We measure our success in life by our bank account, the home we live in and the position we hold at our job. We tend to cling to the old, the familiar, the past and the future ... never fully knowing the beauty of the *present moment*.

Multiply such stress over time and it leads to exhaustion. That bright light inside us known as our Spirit becomes a distant memory. We lose touch with that deep part of ourselves that shines brightly. We create a void within ourselves that we spend a lifetime trying to fill.

We one day realize that there's a missing piece in our lives, a hole in our hearts. That missing piece is a deep longing for connection ... with ourselves. We feel a longing in our heart for unconditional love and acceptance and the person we want it most from is ourself. We feel a deep longing to re-connect with our spirit.

When we've reached this point of awareness we begin to feel our pain with a keener sense. And it may feel like we're reaching rock bottom. However, the good news is we're more alive at this point than ever before ... we are really awakening ... and opening to true healing.

We're opening to spirit. The ego begins to surrender and gently lets go of tightly held convictions. We begin to sense the truth from the place of our heart and it feels FREE. The truth is that our spirit longs to live in the now and calls us to know unconditional love. Our spirit guides us to embrace joy rather than sorrow, to express our greatness rather than dwell in our weaknesses, to experience pain as a great teacher guiding us to our truth and real purpose in life rather than clinging to the pain and harboring it in our hearts only to weigh us down.

For you see, the very essence of our spirit is unconditional love. So to deny ourselves this wonderful gift is to deny ourselves life itself. No wonder so many people feel half-alive with hearts empty.

It's the empty heart that leads people to reach for the all too familiar substances that serve to numb our pain and prolong our misery.

It's time to wake up, to heighten our awareness and to re-connect with our Spirit. It's time to Live Life ... and it's a lot simpler than you think!

So, I invite you to take a journey with me to the essence of your spirit ... a journey into your essence where you will come to know the unconditional love of your heart. Come, fall in Love with the greatest person on earth ... YOU! ______________________________

LOVE Just as a flower gives out its fragrance to whomsoever approaches or uses it, so love from within us radiates towards everybody and manifests as spontaneous service. -the Center of Light & Serenity