A Fresh Opinion

It's About Dancing...

I just couldn't pass this one up.

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Inspirational Quotes

I ran across a great selection of quotes at this site. Here are a few that I particularly enjoyed:

"The best way to cheer yourself up is to cheer someone else up." — Mark Twain

"Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." — Henry David Thoreau

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." — Albert Einstein

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The "Free Hugs" Campaign

I bumped into this video several months ago. At that time, it had been viewed just over a million times on YouTube. The video showed what one person could do to bring a bit of joy into people's lives. (I checked today and it has been viewed over 17 million times).

Make sure your speakers are turned on and then press the "play" button at the bottom left of the video screen.

Then a friend of mine told me of a Free Hugs "campaign" that was happening in Santa Monica. Here's a link to that video.

Then I found out there was one in South Korea, Amsterday, Hollywood, Israel, China and on and on.

One guy, Juan Mann, started this "phenomenon" of simply giving out "free hugs." Go here to see an interview with Juan that is definitely worth a couple of minutes. After viewing that video, give a click here and Juan will tell you what's happened in the two and a half years since he first started giving out free hugs.

If you head over to YouTube and type in "free hugs", you'll find a ton of videos on this incredible wave of friendship and affinity.

Juan Mann decided to brighten up the lives of passerbys in Sydney, Australia by giving them free hugs. A couple of years later, hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of "free" hugs have been dispensed by complete strangers!

You gotta love it!

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Have You Lived Before This Life...and Does It Matter?

More than half of this world's population believe they have lived before. In the U.S. and other western societies, this is not a commonly held belief. From time to time, I hear (or read) that very early Christian and Jewish texts discussed the subject of past lives. If this is true, one might wonder why this information has not moved forward into present time. I have some ideas on this, but we'll leave that for a future post.

For now, I simply want to put forward the notion that YOU may have lived before this life. And if this is true, then by simple logic, YOU will continue to exist after this current life. How you exist will be up to you to a large degree, but the quality of your life from this point forward can be significantly enhanced by considering this possibility.

YOU are not your body or even your mind. You have a body. You have a mind. But those two "things" are not YOU. You are a spiritual being with many, many previous lives and when your current body runs its course, YOU will still be alive, VERY MUCH alive. And as a spiritual being, YOU have tremendous capabilities. Scientology helps you tap these capabilities.

As a Scientologist, I don't "believe" in past lives. I know from personal experience that I've lived before. Through Scientology counseling, I've looked at certain events that occurred well before this lifetime and these events were significant because, in some way, they were having an adverse affect on me in present time. I wasn't looking at past life incidents for entertainment purposes, I was viewing them to help me resolve something I wanted to resolve in the present.

Most people have reality on the fact that things that happened to them in the past can have a negative effect on them in the present. As L. Ron Hubbard was developing the subjects of Dianetics and Scientology, he found that certain problems did not resolve until the individual located things that happened to them before this lifetime. I imagine Mr. Hubbard was very intrigued by this entire subject, but he made it very clear that his approach to the subject of past lives was solely to help an individual resolve unwanted conditions in the present.

When people did look at certain incidents in their past (prior to this lifetime) and were guided through this properly, then the present-time difficulties resolved. And they stayed resolved. That was really all that mattered. Not the excitement or entertainment value of what we were doing in the year 1805 or 500 B.C, but specifically what occurred at a certain point in time, that, when fully viewed, delivers tremendous relief AND allows us to be more able, more aware, and more understanding of ourselves and others.

That is a very good reason why it matters if we've lived before this life or not.

For more information on this subject, read Have You Lived Before This Life.

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Getting Rid of Pain

I brought my laptop to Barnes and Nobles with the intention of posting something new. I wasn't 100% sure what the subject matter would be until I saw a woman reading a book on "cancer." Of course I didn't know if she was reading because she knew someone who needed help, because she needed help herself, or if she was simply eager to know more about the subject. I sensed from looking at her that it was not the last possibility.

I've written earlier about how Scientology can help with pain and how Scientology can help with the loss of a loved one. Those are very helpful items.

When I think about how much pain I've experienced; when I think about the pain I've observed others experience; when I think about how many people on this planet are daily struggling with pain, well, it just staggers me the enormity of pain that exists. What staggers me almost as much is that the vast majority of this pain does NOT need to exist.

Yes, there is the physical pain of stubbing one's toe, the pain of burning your hand on the stove, the pain of bruising yourself from bumping into something. And yes, there is the pain of bones breaking and muscles cramping. These pains are all very real and understandable. But how about that pain in your toe a few months later, long after the stubbed toe healed? How about those unexplainable pains in the place where your arm was broken...fifteen years ago?

If you were to survey a group of seasoned medical professionals and ask them what percentage of the ailments they treat do they consider NOT physically generated, but rather coming from "the mind" — you might find the percentage exceptionally high.

A tremendous amount of the pain we experience comes from something that happened to us in the past. This fact is brought out in great detail in Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. If you would like to reduce the amount of pain in your life or the life of someone you know, this book will be very helpful.

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Creating Fear and Those Who Benefit...

Here's a great research project: Figure out what percentage of our day-to-day news ends up provoking fear in us. People in accidents, houses burning down, children being kidnapped, Iran and North Korea with nukes, spreading diseases, etc. I'm thinking the percentage of fear-provoking news we are pummelled with is exceptionally high.

Why is this?

My first impulse is to ask the simple question: who profits by a populace in fear?

When you consider the answer to that question, you certainly come up with some very interesting people. Unethical politicians can definitely profit by instilling fear in you and me. Oppressive governments maintain their very existence by ensuring its "citizens" are fearful of any kind of independent action. The intimate connection between fear and increased profits is not lost on those creating and selling the weapons of war.

What about the media? Many of them believe it's absolutely essential to broadcast every possible tragedy, at times in excruciating detail. After watching the news, are you just a little less certain about taking a walk at night? Are you more OR less confident about your child's safety?

I mentioned in another post that you might just see a resurgence in your mental well-being by simply staying away from all forms of news input for a week.

Is the world really as dangerous as we are led to believe? I for one do not think so. If you think about who profits by pushing fear and if you then separate out these influences from your life, even if just for a short period of time, you will find that you are less fearful, more alive, and indeed more willing to create the future for yourself, your family and mankind.

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The Pain of Losing a Loved One

When we lose someone very close to us, the pain can be enormous. The pain can also linger on for a long time, sometimes years and years. I know people who lost a parent or a spouse 10, 20 years ago and they are to this day still greatly affected by the loss.

Sometimes the loss is through a break-up of a relationship. These can also be very tough on us. A child losing one of the parents through a divorce is another example. The loss of a cherished pet can be very painful and a "replacement pet" does not always wash away the grief.

Some people grieve the loss of a loved one and can then return to their lives without the loss having a significant impact. Some of us, however, do not fully return to life. We feel there is a hole or gap in our world and this causes the quality of life to suffer. We are not as enthused about the same things; we are not as eager to do what we did before; we feel we can't shake this feeling of grief that seems almost always to be with us.

The subject of loss was researched in great depth by L. Ron Hubbard and if you (or someone you know) are still experiencing the pain of loss, I have some very, very good news for you. In a fairly short period of time, with the use of Dianetics, a person can experience TREMENDOUS RELIEF. Dianetics counseling is incredibly powerful and in a few sessions the grief associated with the loss of a loved one can be "taken out" of a person's life.

Some people believe they should always carry the grief with them and if they "lose the grief" they feel they will forever lose the loved one. I'm not here to argue that belief, but I will tell you that the loss of the grief itself does NOT cause any of the cherished memories to be lost. Quite to the contrary: the memories of the loved one often seem clearer and more accessible once the painful emotion connected with the loss is properly addressed.

I strongly recommend reading Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. There are over 20,000,000 copies of the book in dozens of different languages. Why? Because people read the book and find real answers to some of life's toughest problems. And one of the toughest things any of us has to deal with is the loss of a loved one.

Dianetics can help. Get a copy of the book (or one for your friend) and know that some well needed relief is not far away.

Note: Not too long ago, a DVD was produced to give a visual presentation of Dianetics and how it works. To find out more about this DVD, click here.

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Where Does All of The Irrational "Stuff" Come From?

Thirty four years ago, if someone came up to me and said the single source behind all irrationality had been located, I would've considered this person overly zealous, somewhat arrogant and well, perhaps a bit out of his mind. I was quite sure the world did not have its fingers on this kind of information.

And then I read: "Dianetics, The Modern Science of Mental Health." I didn't peruse or scan through the book. I didn't listen to what someone else said about the book. I didn't read the first few pages and decide I "knew" what it was all about. I read the book cover to cover. I then received some Dianetics counseling. Following that, I trained on Dianetics procedures and counseled others. From giving and receiving Dianetics counseling, I obtained a subjective and objective reality on the subject.

If someone asks me now if "the single source of all irrational behavior" has been located, I simply answer: "without the slightest doubt or reservation."

Before you click away from this blog thinking I'm overly zealous or perhaps a bit arrogant, let me give you an explanation of what Dianetics is, how it works and why it works.

I won't kid you. This is not a short post. In the "blog world," this may be one of the longer posts you'll see, but it's going to reveal information that could be extremely helpful to your survival and I decided it was better to give you more than a cursory understanding.