Me Peonies!

Just had to share these before they are done (unfortunately, they don’t last long). The color is so vivid.

Another Good Post from Entheos…

Sharing another one I’ve been saving and reading over every so often in the past months; http://www.entheos.com/ideas/guy-finley/1254/7-ways-to-increase-your-spiritual-strength)…

(Entheos is a great online newsletter you can sign up for; they send you several daily articles/essays (? I’m not sure it’s that regular, but sometimes it seems I get them everyday) written by people who teach classes or put on virtual conferences they offer, which they also describe. I enjoy reading the ideas presented and the quotes they choose, find them to be inspirational and thought-provoking.)

7 Ways to Increase Your Spiritual Strength

Posted: June 6, 2012 @ 8:36 PM | By: Guy Finley

Categories:

Meditation, Mindfulness & Spirituality

What is spiritual strength? To put it simply, it’s knowing you don’t have to compromise yourself in any way — with anyone, over anything — in order to be content, confident, and secure in life.

Here are seven proven ways to increase this special kind of strength. Study them with the wish to uncover their secrets. Practice at least one every day. You’ll discover that by disconnecting yourself from the fears and doubts that compromise your life, you are re-connecting yourself to a new kind of power that never abandons you in your hour of need.

1. Refuse to revisit your own past for a way out of any present problem.
2. Say no to anyone or anything that you fear saying no to.
3. Never explain yourself to anyone out of fear they may misjudge you.
4. Learn to see your own defensiveness toward others as an offense against your own right to be fearless.
5. Whenever possible, realize that the person you are about to argue with is in as much pain as you are.
6. Never accept any negative reaction within yourself as the only possible answer to your present challenge.
7. Remember that everything you resist in life increases its weight by the magnitude of thought spent in not wanting it, so accept all that you can and quietly drop the rest.

Persist with these spiritual practices, and you will see old doubts turn into new certainties, and dark fears replaced with a bright fearlessness.

Something Good for Me (All of Us) to Remember

What follows (from www.entheos.com/profiles/steve/posts/9283) is a great thing for me to remember–as an author who hates self-promotion, but who’s writing something that I think will help a certain niche of people/kids/girls (thank you, Steve Chandler and Entheos! Too good not to share): 

Steve Chandler on Feb 18, 2014 4:11am

 

 

 

 

“When self-promotion is done right, it’s help.
Help everyone.”

~ Peter Shankman

There is a village and you are its newest resident. You have just moved to this village.

You are a doctor.

You don’t tell anyone you are a doctor because you don’t want to come across as looking superior to the other villagers. So you settle into your small home in the village. The neighbors like you because you are humble and self-effacing.

One night you hear a disturbance in the cottage next to yours. Human voices. Some yells, then silence. You look out your window. All seems quiet. All seems okay.

The next morning you see an ambulance pull away from their door. You step outside and ask what happened. A little girl died last night. She had a seizure and no one knew what to do. The nearest hospital is 100 miles away. She died.

You could have saved her life. Rather easily. But they didn’t know you were a doctor.

Self-promote? I’d rather die. Or let other people die.

It is a service for people to know who you are and what you do. It is not bragging. Stay focused on whether something is a service. Not on whether you will be “liked” or not.