“Joyful growth happens when the River of Joy from our heart center is aligned with the River of Life and saturated with Love of the Universe that fills our whole being and every particle and form of our existence. When the River of Joy flows freely and in alignment with the flow of this current lifetime and when our intentions serve the highest good in synch with the Universal Love, then with an amazing ease we experience the peace, joy, health and secure feeling of always being provided and cared for. In that state of existence our creative and vital forces join in harmony, propelling us into a bright and enjoyable presence.

No matter how small, every spark of Light you create and release flies out into the Universe creating and seeding change and healing that ripples through the fabric of the Universe.

Living your personal truth is one of the greatest contributions you can make to the world. Your personal truth – the real loving truth hiding in the corner of your heart – is the force that serves the greatest good with grace and gentleness, while carrying you across the path of your personal journey with ease and smooth flow along the banks of your River of Life.

Your personal truth, when aligned with your passions and your intentions, is a powerful force that creates vitality, growth, love and prosperity in everything and everyone it comes into contact with. It is a force that cannot be judged, but can only be observed, felt, experienced and known.

A wise teacher once said, “Be reminded that your life is not a linear existence. River of Joy is not linear and your flow of life is not linear either. You are a multidimensional being which is manifested even in this physical reality from where most of you evaluate your existence. No one is just a father, or just a mechanic, or just a doctor at any one point in time. All of you manifest many different dimensions of your being and multiple dimensions of your life. Those who get lost and disconnected from feeling their personal River of Joy and from living in alignment with their personal truth appear extremely powerful in one or two aspects, but completely lost and vulnerable in most others while failing to allow happiness to color their experiences.”

Jump-start the flow of Joy!

Listening to your heart can lead you back into the alignment with your personal truth and your River of Joy.

Rhythm of your heart’s song is speaking to you. Listen. Every day, dance to your heart’s song in many ways. Laugh!”

~ Daniela Sales, 2011 (Copyright © 2011 Daniela Sales. All rights reserved.)

To learn more about services we provide or to join one of upcoming classes visit us at http://bodyandmindstl.com

In Health,
Abundance, Love and Light,
Daniela Sales

daniela@bodyandmindstl.com

Urban Herbalist, Vol 1 - Lessons learned from the Plant Kingdom by Daniela Sales

COMING OUT IN 2012! 

http://theurbanherbalist.org

The Avokado Studio of Arts for Creative Living

http://bodyandmindstl.com

Online Live Interactive Classes: Making Herbal Formulas at Home ~ Meditation Skills for
Children ~ Urban Herbalist Class Series  http://bodyandmindstl.com/classes.php

The Path of Light – spirit, mind & body Expo

Enjoy a day of healing, learning and exploring!

http://bodyandmindstl.com/PathofLight.php

by

Hello,

Hope all is well with everyone, I’m still kicking. Learning to let go of the old and welcoming the new.

I have been asked on occasion basically if I Practice what I preach and I think I have made it clear before that unfortunately I do not always. These “something to think about’s” are not only meant for you they are for me also.

Thought I’d give us something to think about at this time. Of course I’m never really sure if anyone’s really out there or not.

Walk in Beauty,
Leo ‘Circling Bear’

In life, there appear to be those who do not know, and who do not know that they do not know. They are as children. Nurture them.

Then there appear to be those who do not know, and who know that they do not know. They are willing. Teach them.

Then there appear to be those who do not know, but who think that they know. They are dangerous. Avoid them.

Then there appear to be those who know, but who do not know that they know. They are asleep. Wake them.

Then there appear to be those who know, but who pretend that they do not know. They are actors. Enjoy them.

Then there appear to be those who know, and who know that they know. Do not follow them.

For if they know that they know, they would not have you follow them. Yet listen very carefully to what they have to say, for they will remind you of what you know.

Indeed, that is why they have been sent to you. That is why you have called them to you.

Remember if someone wants, needs, or will have you follow them, then you better be asking yourself why. 

Do not bow to false idles for they will not look the same when you stand back up,  grasshopper… smile. 

Mountains appear more lofty the nearer one approaches; great leaders resemble them also but not in that order????

“When passing by a mirror, notice the frame. . . “

“Failure is merely the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” ~Henry Ford

“A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is finished, no matter how brave its warriors or how strong their weapons.” ~Tsistsistas, Cheyenne

Learn More About Leo ‘Circling Bear’

by

It is time to give yourself the credit you deserve for being human. Through past actions and faith you are where you are today. You are always growing into something carrying with you the talents and gifts you have been given and learned. Acknowledging this allows you attain your highest goals on both a spiritual and physical level. But never forget to give thanks for all you have attained as well as congratulating yourself for a job well done. You are where you are through patience and perseverance, even though you may not realize it. 

Maybe you have not yet achieved the fruits of your labour. Just use all your resources, gifts and skills more fully. Keep the faith and be patient– success is on the way. There is so much for all us to accomplish in our lives, and it is all there, waiting for us, one step at a time.

Since things neither exist nor do not exist, are neither real nor unreal, are utterly beyond adopting and rejecting – one might as well burst out laughing. (Tibetan Nyingmapa master – Longchenpa Rabjampa – C14th)

How many of us are like Paddy?

Paddy was driving down the street in a sweat because he had an important meeting and couldn’t find a parking place. Looking up to heaven he said, “Lord take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I will go to Church every Sunday for the rest of me life and give up me Irish Whiskey!”  

Miraculously, a parking place appeared.  Paddy looked up again and said, “Never mind, Lord. I found one.”

Hmmm… 

Did you ever stop to think…

The moon is always full. We see the moon in all its phases but it is always the same.  There is a lunar moon and a solar moon. 

It is known that there are two important components to ancient magic:

 WORDS AND GESTURES 

The words must be both spoken and written:

spoken for the power of them,

written so they would last… 

As for magical tools; the greatest tool you have is YOUR MIND.

“Prayer is when you talk to God; Meditation is when you listen to God.”

“God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.”

Are you upset? Have you been lying awake worrying?  Well, don’t worry… I’m here.  The flood waters will reced, the famine will end, the sun will shine tomorrow, and I will always be here to take care of you.” ~Charlie Brown to Snoopy

Learn More About Leo ‘Circling Bear’

RELATED LINKS

If you’ve ever asked yourself the questions: “Why am I here?” or “What is the meaning of my life?”, you may want to check out the movie Soul Surfer.

Bethany and her family’s status as church-going Christians is established early on and bears on the outcome of the film – and the outcome of Bethany’s life. The story is known; it made headlines all over the world when it happened so the audience sits through the “kum-ba-ya” moments with edgy anticipation. Bethany is surfing with friends one day, a shark attacks her and bites off her arm. Skillfully, the filmmakers build suspense by putting the main character in the water so often that any moment could be “the” moment, and that’s all the audience is waiting for.

But the real movie and message gets underway after the shark attack. The shark is not the story. The story is how Bethany moves from a basically perfect life with a bright future possibly as a professional surfer to a girl with one arm who can’t even make a sandwich. We’ve all seen tons of movies about overcoming hardships, about athletes who lose limbs or suffer traumatic injuries and still come back to win the big game or something just as fulfilling. So why is Soul Surfer different that those other films?

Bethany doesn’t start out as an obviously flawed character in need of growth. In fact, the film portrays her as – and from all accounts I’ve read she actually was – a really nice kid, church-going, involved in Christian youth group, missionary volunteer, happy, friendly, all around good kid from a good family. We can often more easily accept when bad things happen to not-so-good people – clearly they have something to learn about life. But what about when bad things happen to really good people?

In a way it is our own judgments and prejudices that this film brings to life. And it is an eye opener to the fact that we don’t need a shark to bite off our arms to know that no matter how “good” we are, we can be better. We all have our handicap and we all have the excuse it gives us to do nothing and wallow in self pity. Or we can change our perspective on our own lives, choose to learn from even the most impossible of dilemmas and know that nothing can or should hold us back from our dreams.

I mean, Bethany wanted to be a surfer and then she lost an arm…what on earth is holding me back? The truth is that whatever is holding us back is just an excuse. Bethany can surf with one arm – in fact, she can do a lot more with one arm than she may have ever done with two.

“What now?” was a recurring question in Soul Surfer and I think it is a question each one of us has asked ourselves many times in our own lives. What now? The answer to that question is the meaning of your life.

Soul Surfer
Directed by:Sean McNamara
Featuring Carrie Underwood, Helen Hunt, AnnaSophia Robb, Lorraine Nicholson, Kevin Sorbo, Dennis Quaid
Release Date: April 2011

Highly Recommended Reading for Anyone Wanting to Create Magic in their Lives: Click: The Magic of Instant Connections by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman

Really, it’s all about “clicking” with someone or something that makes you better at whatever it is you’re doing. It’s easy to remember those moments because I think for most people as for me, they are relatively rare times.

Before I read Click: The Magic of Instant Connections by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman, I believed that those rare instant and powerful connections were based on luck, happenstance. Lucky I was in the right place at the right time to meet that person, learn that information, hook up with that group, etc. The idea that creating these clicks is possible for each one of us, every day on no special occasion, well that is revolutionary. But it is exactly what the Brafmans propose in Click – that we have the ability to create that instant intimacy…we can make the click!

This idea is monumental for me. A natural and cultivated introvert, I don’t make new connections easily. If I had a dime for every networking event I’ve attended and not made one significant connection, well you see my point. I’m just not a natural. But after reading Click: The Magic of Instant Connections, I feel a tremendous amount of hope. I’m determined to become a click creator, with Click: The Magic of Instant Connections as my guide book.

Click: The Magic of Instant Connections is a serious look at how human beings relate to each other and the tasks we perform. Ori and Rom Brafman give a variety of examples of how and why people click – and don’t click. Through these examples and noted research studies of human behavior, the Brafmans layout a clear and understandable plan for making “clicks” happen. Using their five “click accelerators” you can literally click with anyone you want! Some clicks happen naturally, others need a push. Click: The Magic of Instant Connections offers the leverage needed to set the process in motion.

Why is “clicking” so important? Personally, I believe we were meant to click with each other and the world around us a lot more than most of us do. Modern technology actually works against us in this regard. Computers and the Internet have all but eliminated the need for interpersonal connections. That loss is devastating our humanity, in my opinion. Believe me, I’m not pointing any fingers. I was the first one to hail the glory of email in lieu of face-to-fact contact. But I see how that sort of thing has pushed me further away from other people, and my life has lost a certain amount of richness because of it.

I see Click: The Magic of Instant Connections as my way back in. Are you ready to click magic into your life?

Note: Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman are also the authors of the bestseller, Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior.

The subtitle to Thomas Berry’s book is “Our Way Into The Future” and it is a sort of guide about how we need to go forward in this life on earth. But The Great Work is also a history book that timelines how we got to where we are: in environmental and moral peril.

Thomas Berry’s writing style is both lyrical and inspirational, making The Great Work: Our Way into the Future a wonderful book from a stylist point of view.  Yet the substance of the material is what will truly move any reader. Logical, practical, Berry describes a world that sounds unbelievable, yet it is indeed the world in which we live. Berry examines the roles played by the universities, the corporations, the economy and politicians.

Humankind has moved from a race of people who once lived in harmony, literally in tune with the earth, to a population at odds with the earth. We have put aside our respect for our natural Mother and instead now seemingly only seek to dominate her and her treasures. World societies have transformed into nothing more than exploitative enterprises, with wealth-attainment (for the few) at any cost the driving principle.

We clear cut forest, blow apart mountain tops and obliterate our brother and sister species with reckless abandon. Corporations have brain-washed society into thinking that all this is more than ok, because it is in the name of progress and more frighteningly with the attitude that this behavior is our right.

The Great Work: Our Way into the Future honestly and plainly points out all that as awesome as the earth is, its natural resources are not limitless. There will come day when all the oil fields are dried up, when the last tree has been timbered, when the final fish has been pulled from the sea – IF we continue on our current course. If we continue to allow the few to control the many.

Thomas Berry is not the only one advocating such change, there are many, more and more everyday that see there is only one way out of our dilemma: STOP.

But is such dramatic change even possible? Berry believes so, but then he is a philosopher. I’m not so sure our society is capable or even interested in such change.  We have been programmed so perfectly to want more and more possessions and offer less and less respect to each other and the world around us.

What catastrophe will have to occur to convince us? We’ve already experienced ravaging floods, some of history’s most powerful and devastating earthquakes, devastating tsunamis, tragic famines… But what we are becoming experts at is re-building. Just the way it was, as if nothing ever happened, regardless of the cost.

We rarely look at ourselves to ask what we may have done to provoke these so-called “natural” disasters. What can we change about the way we live in order to avoid such tragedies in the future? The Great Work: Our Way into the Future offers some answers. If you’ve started to ask yourself some of these questions, if you agree that we need to change and we need to start today, I suggest you read The Great Work: Our Way into the Future as a way to first understand where we are, how we got here and how we need to proceed. We ignore our present circumstances at the peril of our very lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren.

Click here for More Books by Thomas Berry

We Are Perceivers

We are luminous beings.

We are perceivers.

We are awareness.

We are not objects.

We have no solidity.

We are boundless.

The world of objects and solidity is a way of making our passage on earth convenient.

It is only a description that was created to help us.

We or rather our reasons, forget that the description is only a description and thus we entrap the totality of ourselves in a vicious circle from which we rarely emerge in a lifetime.

We are perceivers.

The world that we perceive through is an illusion.

It was created by a description that was told to us since the moment we were born.

~Don Juan

Books

• The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge ~Carlos Castaneda 
• Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan ~Carlos Castaneda
• The Power of Silence: Further Lessons of Don Juan ~Carlos Castaneda
• A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan ~Carlos Castaneda
• The Art of Dreaming ~Carlos Castaneda
• Tales of Power ~Carlos Castaneda
• The Wheel Of Time: The Shamans Of Mexico Their Thoughts About Life Death And The Universe ~Carlos Castaneda
• Active Side of Infinity: The Definitive and Revealing Overview of Carlos Castaneda’s Experiences with Don Juan ~Carlos Castaneda

A Samurai became very interested in the meaning of life, and in time he consulted a Zen master.

“I’ve come to you with my question because no one else has been able to answer it.  They say you are the wisest man in the country.  Please tell me, what is the difference between heaven and hell?”

Upon hearing this, the old man’s face broke into a smile, and then he began to laugh.

“You, a Samurai, a man who earns his living by killing people? You want to know the difference between heaven and hell?  Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?”

As the old man spoke, the Samurai became furious.  Finally, drawing his sword and holding it in striking position above the old man’s head, the Samurai growled, “I’ve heard enough! Prepare to die, monk.”

Instantly the old man stopped laughing and looked intently at the Samurai’s rage-contorted face. “That,” he said, “is hell.”

As the Samurai looked within and saw the violence and turmoil there, his jaw dropped open in amazement.  As the old man’s meaning dawned upon him, he slowly lowered his sword.

“And that,” continued the old man, “is heaven”.

Source: Miller, E. (1997). Deep Healing:  The Essence of Mind/Body Medicine. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.

Learn more about Deep Healing: The Essence of Mind/Body Medicine by Emmett E. Miller, M.D.

If a child lives with Criticism,
He learns to Condemn.

If a child lives with Hostility,
He learns to Fight.

If a child lives with Ridicule,
He learns to be Shy.
If a child lives with Shame,
He learns to feel Guilty.

If a child lives with Tolerance,
He learns to be Patient.
If a child lives with Encouragement,
He learns Confidence.

If a child lives with Praise,
He learns to Appreciate.

If a child lives with Fairness,
He learns Justice.
If a child lives with Security,
He learns to have Faith.

If a child lives with Approval,
He learns to Like Himself.

If a child lives with Acceptance and Friendship,
He learns to find Love in the World.

~Author Unknown

Source: Miller, E. (1997). Deep Healing:  The Essence of Mind/Body Medicine. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.

Learn more about Deep Healing: The Essence of Mind/Body Medicine by Emmett E. Miller, M.D.

Love Your Neighbor

Here are some quotes that demonstrate that the sacred texts of the world’s primary religions present the same fundamental truths.

“Love thy neighbor as thyself. Do unto others as you would have others do onto you.” -The Bible, the Golden Rule

“This is the sum of duty; Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done unto you.” -Hindu, Mahabbarata

“Surely it is the maxim of loving-kindness: Do not unto others that you would not have them do unto you.” -Confucianism, Analects

“No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.” – Islam, Sunnah

“What is hateful to you, do not to your fellowmen. That is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.” -Judaism, Talmud

Living according to these principles will provide many awakenings. It will bring about the realization that when we begin to accept ourselves just as we are, we automatically begin to allow others increased freedom to be who they really are.

When we start seeing ourselves and others for who we and they really are, we begin to understand how our self-image shapes our relationship with them. This will make us able to stop wasting energy criticizing or complaining about other people and learn to live comfortably with them understanding that they are exactly as they are. True understanding and loving communication is the end result.

Source: Miller, E. (1997). Deep Healing:  The Essence of Mind/Body Medicine. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.

Learn more about Deep Healing: The Essence of Mind/Body Medicine by Emmett E. Miller, M.D.