The Global Conversation

Blog

  • Lovingly Release the Old, Powerfully Invite the New

    Instead of answering a question this week, I thought I’d share a very powerful New Year’s ritual you may want to try to properly say goodbye to this significant year, and embrace the year ahead with open arms.  I often hear the phrases “good riddens” or “I’m so done with this year” at the end of each year, in people’s attempt to leave behind the old and start fresh.  What most people don’t realize, however, is that when you speak in such negative tones, you are actually creating more resistance around what you are trying to let go of and are basically inviting more of it into the next year.  So don’t do that!  Try the following instead 🙂 :

    On New Year’s Eve, set aside some alone time (or do this with someone you can easily share stuff like this with) to be with what has occurred in the last year, and tune into what you want to see in the next year.  Follow these steps:

    1.         Create your space.  Making this a ritualistic experience adds to the energy of what you are doing, and makes it more meaningful.  So light that candle, say a prayer, take deep breaths, burn incense, etc.

    2.         Properly say goodbye to 2012.  Take out a sheet of paper, and begin writing all that you are ready to say goodbye to from the last year and even prior to it, all of those things that you recognize have served their purpose and are no longer needed in your life.  I say “properly”, because in order to truly release something, it needs to be lovingly released.  In other words, rather than saying “I’m so done with that” with an edge of regret or disdain, shift your energy to being grateful for the presence of this thing in your life, and the acceptance that it was there for a reason and there was a gift in it.

    3.         Lovingly release.  In a safe way, burn the piece of paper, or tear it up, bury it whatever works for you, and as you do so give thanks to God, the Universe or whomever it is you appeal to with such things.

    4.         Celebrate!  When you are finished, it is so important to celebrate.  Not only does it lock in the experience, but it is an acknowledgment of this loving, important thing you just did for yourself.  Celebrating can happen in many different ways; maybe pouring a glass of champagne or eating some decadent chocolate, or perhaps taking a luxurious bubble bath or going out to celebrate with a loved one.

    5.         Powerfully invite the new.  On New Year’s Day, or as close to it as you can get, take some time to tune into and get clear on all that you’d like to invite into your life for 2013.  Again, create your space and take out a sheet of paper writing out all of those things you’d like to see show up, both physical and non-physical things within yourself you’d like to see emerge.  This can be done as a list, a letter to yourself, a drawing, etc.  When you’re finished, seal it in an envelope and keep it somewhere safe that you’ll remember to take it out and read it next December (it helps to mark a reminder on your calendar).

    6.         Act as if and walk your talk.  Don’t simply sit back and wait for these things to show up.  In the days, weeks and months that follow, consciously choose to think, speak and act in accordance with the things you wrote down for 2013.  Set some goals and milestones, hire a coach to inspire you and keep you on track, enlist a good friend to help hold you accountable.

    Wishing you happiness, joy, peace, love and fulfillment in the New Year, and in this process of becoming more of Who You Really Are.

    Nova

     

    (Nova Wightman is a CWG Life Coach, as well as the owner and operator of Go Within Life Coaching, www.gowithincoaching.com, specializing in helping individuals blend their spirituality with their humanity in a way that makes life more enjoyable, easy, and fulfilling.  She can be reached at Nova@theglobalconversation.com. )

    (If you would like a question considered for publication, please submit your request to: Advice@TheGlobalConversation.com, where our team is waiting to hear from you.)

  • There could hardly be
    a better time to have a
    Friendship with God

    NEALE: Many people think that God is their friend, but they don’t know how to use that friendship. They see it as a distant relationship, not a close one.

    GOD:  Many more people do not even think of Me as a friend at all. That’s the sad part of it. Many people think of Me as a parent, not a friend — and a harsh, cruel, demanding, angry parent at that. A Father who will tolerate absolutely no failure in certain areas — such as, for instance, how to worship Me.

    In the minds of these people, I not only demand your worship, I demand it in a specific way. It is not enough that you come to Me. You must come to Me by a particular path. Should you come to Me by another path — any other path — I will reject your love, ignore your entreaties, and, indeed, condemn you to hell.

    NEALE:  Even though my search for You was sincere, my intent pure, and my understandings the best I could reach.

     GOD: Even though. Yes, even though. In the minds of these people, I am a stringent parent who will accept nothing less than absolute correctness in your understandings of Who I Am.

    If you are not correct in the understandings at which you have arrived, I will punish you. You can be as pure in your intent as possible; you can be so filled with love for Me that you overflow.  I will cast you into the fires of hell nonetheless, and you will suffer there forever, if you come to Me with the wrong name on your lips, the wrong ideas in your head.

    NEALE: It is sad that so many people see You that way. This is not how a friend would behave at all.

    GOD: No, it is not. And so the very idea of having a friendship with God, the kind of relationship you have with your best friend, who will accept anything given in love, forgive everything done in error — that kind of friendship — is unfathomable to them.

    Then, among those who do see Me as their friend, you are right; most of them hold Me at a great distance. They do not have a working friendship with Me. It is, rather, a very distant relationship that they hope they can count on if they should ever have to. But it is not the day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute friendship that it could be.

    NEALE:  And You were starting to tell me what it would take to have that kind of friendship with You.

    GOD:  A change of mind and a change of heart. That is what it would take. A change of mind and a change of heart.

    And courage.

    NEALE: Courage?

    GOD: Yes. The courage to reject every notion, every idea, every teaching of a God who would reject you.

    This will take enormous bravery, because the world has contrived to fill your head with those notions, ideas and teachings. You will have to adopt a New Thought about all of this, a thought that runs counter to virtually everything you’ve ever been told or heard about Me.

    That’ll be tough. For some, that’ll be very tough. But it will be necessary, because you can’t have a friendship — not a real, not a close, not a working, give-and-take friendship — with someone you fear.

    NEALE: So a big part of forging a friendship with God is forgetting our “fearship” with God.

    ========================================

    Editor’s Note: If you would like to COMMENT on the above excerpt, please scroll down to the end of the red ancillary copy that appears just below, which has been placed here for First Time Readers…

    If Conversations with God has touched your life in a positive way, you are one of millions of people around the world who have had such an experience. All of the readers of CWG have yearned to find a way to keep its healing messages alive in their life.

    One of the best ways to do that is to read and re-read the material over and over again — and we have made it convenient and easy for you to do so. Come here often and enjoy selected excerpts from the Conversations with God cosmology, changed on a regular basis, so you can “dip in” to the 3,000 pages of material quickly and easily. We hope you have enjoyed the excerpt above, from Friendship with God.

    Now, may we tell you about a very easy way that you can share these wonderful messages with others? Please keep reading…

    =====================

    About Book-On-A-Bench…

    If you believe that the messages in Conversations with God could inspire humanity to change its basic beliefs about God, about Life, and about Human Beings and their relationship to each other, leave those messages lying around.

    Simply “forget” or “misplace” a copy of Conversations with God on a bench somewhere. At a bus stop, or a train station, or an airport—or actually on the bus, train, or plane. At a hairstyling salon, a doctor’s office, a chiropractor’s office, a park bench, or even just a bench on the street. Just leave a book lying around.

    If everybody did this, the message of Conversations with God could “go viral” in a very short period of time.  So you are invited to participate in the Book-On-A-Bench program and spread ideas that could create a new cultural story far and wide.

    = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

    ABOUT the author of Conversations with God…

    Neale Donald Walsch is a modern day spiritual messenger whose words continue to touch the world in profound ways. With an early interest in religion and a deeply felt connection to spirituality, Neale spent the majority of his life thriving professionally, yet searching for spiritual meaning before experiencing his now famous conversation with God. His Conversations with God series of books has been translated into 37 languages, touching millions and inspiring important changes in their day-to-day lives.

    Neale was born in Milwaukee to a Roman Catholic family that encouraged his quest for spiritual truth. Serving as his first spiritual mentor, Neale’s mother taught him not to be afraid of God, as she believed in having a personal relationship with the divine — and she taught Neale to do the same.

    A nontraditional believer, Neale’s mother hardly ever went to church, and when he asked her why, she told Neale: “I don’t have to go to church — God comes to me. He’s with me and around me wherever I am.” This notion of God at an early age would later move Neale to transcend traditional views of organized religion.

    By his late teens Neale’s involvement with spiritually-based teachings led him to begin dipping into a variety of spiritual texts, including the Bible, the Rig Veda, the Upanishads and Divine revelation according to Sri Ramakrishna. He noticed that when people became involved in organized religion they sometimes seemed less joyful and more angry, occasionally exhibiting behaviors of prejudice and separateness. Neale concluded that humanity’s collective experience of theology was not as positive as it was meant to be. It seemed to him that there was something missing in standard theological teachings; that they might contain very good lessons, he concluded, but that they might not be complete.

    After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, but academic life could not hold his interest and he dropped out of college after two years to follow an interest in radio broadcasting that eventually led to a full-time position at the age of 19 at a small radio station far from his Milwaukee home, in Annapolis, Maryland.

    Restless by nature and always seeking to expand his opportunities for self-expression, Neale in the years that followed became a radio station program director, a newspaper managing editor, public information officer for one of the nation’s largest public school systems, and, after moving to the West Coast, creator and owner of his own public relations and marketing firm. Moving from one career field to another, he could not seem to find occupational satisfaction, his relationship life was in constant turmoil, and his health was going rapidly downhill.

    He had relocated in Oregon as part of a change-of-scenery strategy to find his way, but Fate was to provide more than a change of location. It produced a change in his entire life. One day a car driven by an elderly gentleman made a left turn directly into his path. Neale emerged from the auto accident with a broken neck. He was lucky to escape with his life.

    Over a year of rehab threw him out of work. A failed marriage had already removed him from his home, and soon he couldn’t keep even the small apartment he’d rented. Within months he found himself on the street, homeless. It took him two weeks shy of a year to pull himself together and get back under shelter. He found a modest part-time job, once again in broadcasting, then worked his way into full time broadcasting, eventual landing a spot as a nationally syndicated radio talk show host.

    He had seen the bottom of life living outside, gathering beer and soft drink cans in a park to collect the return deposit, but now his life seemed to be on the mend. Yet, once more, Neale felt an emptiness inside that he could not define, and the daily difficulties that everyone faces continued.

    In 1992, following a period of deep despair, Neale awoke in the middle of a February night and wrote an anguished letter to God. “What does it take to make life work?” he angrily scratched across a yellow legal pad. “And what have I done to deserve a life of such continuing struggle?”

    What followed has been well chronicled and widely discussed around the world. Neale says his questioning letter received a Divine answer. He tells us that he heard a voice just over his right shoulder—soft and warm, kind and loving, as he describes it—that offered a reply. Awestruck and inspired, he quickly scribbled the response onto a yellow legal pad he’d found on a coffee table before him.

    More questions came, and as fast as they occurred to him, answers were given in the same gentle voice, which now seemed to have moved inside his head, but also seemed clearly beyond his normal thinking. Before he knew it, Neale found himself engaged in a two-way on-paper dialogue.

    He continued this first “conversation” for hours, and had many more in the weeks that followed, always awakening in the middle of the night and being drawn back to his legal pad. Neale’s handwritten notes would later become the best-selling Conversations with God books. He says the process was “exactly like taking dictation,” and that the dialogue that was created in this way was published without alteration or editing. He also says that God is talking to all of us, all the time, and that he has come to understand that this experience is not unusual, nor does it make him in any way a special person or a unique messenger.

    In addition to producing the With God series of books, Neale has published 18 other works, as well as many video and audio programs. Available throughout the world, seven of the Conversations with God books made the New York Times bestseller list, with Conversations with God: Book 1 occupying a place on that list for more than two-and-half years. Walsch’s books have sold more than 7.5 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 37 languages. Anecdotal evidence suggests that CWG is one of the most widely distributed hand-to-hand books ever published, with estimates that, on average, at least two people have read every copy purchased — meaning that something more than 15 million people worldwide have read the CWG messages.

    The With God series has redefined God and shifted spiritual paradigms around the globe. In order to deal with the enormous response to his writings, Neale has created several global outreach projects dedicated to inspiring the world to help itself move from violence to peace, from confusion to clarity, and from anger to love revolving around their core messages.

    The projects include: (1) the Conversations with God Foundation, an adult education outreach; (2) Humanity’s Team, a global spiritual activist outreach; (3) CWG for Parents, an outreach providing resources to those who wish to bring their children the messages of CWG; (4) the Changing Change Network, a CWG helping outreach to persons facing major life challenges; (5) The Global Conversation, an internet newspaper outreach relating the spiritual messages of CWG to the news of the day; and (6) CWG Connect, a multi-media communications outreach creating a worldwide CWG community featuring Video and Audio On-Demand services, together with ongoing personal interaction with the author of CWG. Access to all of these programs will be found at the gateway internet site: www.CWGPortal.com

    Neale’s work has taken him from the steps of Machu Picchu in Peru to the steps of the Shinto shrines of Japan, from Red Square in Moscow to St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City to Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

    Everywhere he has gone—from South Africa to Norway, Croatia to The Netherlands, the streets of Zurich to the streets of Seoul—Neale has found a hunger among the people to find a new way to live; a way to co-exist, at last, in peace and harmony, with a reverence for Life Itself in all its forms, and for each other. And he has sought to help them develop a new, expanded understanding of God, of life, and of themselves that allows them to create and experience this.

    Neale’s latest book, The Only Thing That Matters, was published in October, 2012. He lives in Ashland, Oregon and is married to the American poet Em Claire (www.emclairepoet.com).

  • If there was a way to make the Christmas Spirit last longer than just one blessed and relieving week, what, in your opinion, would that be?

  • Can we change the way Change changes us?

    Let’s have a conversation. Let’s have it be a conversation during which we will conduct an extraordinary investigation into how life works at the mental and spiritual level, out of which will emerge a surprising revelation about ways in which we can change our experience of change itself—which means, of course, our experience of life.

    All of life is nothing more than a process, and we call that process “change.”  The conversation we are about to have is designed to offer you a pathway to help and to peace if you are struggling right now with changes in your life.

    Are you going through massive changes right now? Or maybe just little ones? The truth is, there’s no such thing as a “little change,” in the sense of it being a change that doesn’t matter. All change in one’s life matters, because change is creation, and creation matters.

    So in this space over the weeks ahead, we are going to look at this experience of change — and at how it changes us. Is the way that Change changes us something that is within our control? Or are we consigned, after all is said and done, to do as Shakespeare put it: “Suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”?

    There could be no better time that right now to begin this discussion, as we make the change from 2012 to 2013 — and the bigger change from the Last Great Epoch to the Next Great Epoch, and a new 5,000+ year cycle as indicated by the Mayan calendar.

    We’ll get this exploration underway with this important observation: The changes in your life are not going to stop.

    If you’re thinking about riding things out for a while, waiting for things to settle down a bit, you may be in for a surprise.  There’s going to be no “settling down.” Things are going to be in a constant state of upheaval on this planet and in your own life for a good while now.  Actually… yes, well, I might as well tell you….actually, forever.

    Change is what is—and there is no way to change that.

    What can be changed is the way you deal with change, and the way you’re changed by change.

    That’s what the conversation in this corner is going to be all about.

    We are going to be talking here about how to deal with major change, not just minor change.  I mean change that emerges from collapse, calamity, and catastrophe—or at least what we label as these.

    So if your life is collapsing right now, if you’re in the midst of a calamity, if a catastrophe has occurred, what you’re going to find here could save your life.  I mean, emotionally.  But heck, you know what?  Maybe even physically.

    Here you will be given Nine Changes That Could Change Everything.  And that is where we will go in our next installment here. I hope you will plan to join us — and tell everyone you know about the exploration getting underway here. We’re going to fly into 2013 with some of the most important reading you could do.

    (Editor’s Note: The above article, and the series which follows, is based upon, and includes liberal portions of, the book When Everything Change, Change Everything, with additional observation and reflections from the author. Your commentary and input, as well as a description of your own personal experience, is invited below.)

     

  • BEYOND SURVIVAL

    That fabled year — 2012 — is behind us, with just a few hours of it left, and now comes the real task.

    The world was supposed to “end,” of course, on Dec. 21, but we notice that this did not happen. So now the question becomes, was the Mayan calendar indicating not the end of the world, but simply the end of an epoch, of a cycle? Of course it was. And the question now is: What happens Beyond Survival?

    Will life be any different? Will anything change at all? Do we even want or need anything to change in the way we “do life” on this planet? I can’t imagine that humanity is satisfied with the way things are. Surely there must be a desire, deep within the largest number of us, to seek a newer world, as Robert Kennedy challenged and invited us to do. All of which leads us to the thought:

    If we are going to make any kind of difference in our world in 2013 and beyond, we are going to have to do two things. (1) Enter the conversation about what needs to be accomplished and how to accomplish it; (2) Get about the business of creating change in the way we think, not in the things we do.

    There also needs to be a mechanism in place that make both the Proposing and the Implementation of change possible — and that, importantly, frames change within the only context that can give it impact, and make it last.

    That mechanism does exist. It is called Humanity’s Team. Its primary focus is spiritual, but in a practical way, with meaningful real-world application. And in days and weeks ahead, we will explore the opportunities that this global organization places before us for real and worthwhile action within an exciting context.

    That context is the Spiritual Aspect of our earthly experience. Human history has shown (not surprisingly) that any decision or choice made from a place that does not include (to say nothing of being totally outside of) the Spiritual Aspect of our lives will be either not implementable or not sustainable.

    In simple terms, if we don’t believe in it, we’re not going to do it. Belief is the bedrock of change. When we truly believe in something at the core of our being, embracing and implementing what we believe and turning into action becomes a fairly simple matter.

    And if our belief — the things we hold to be sacred and true — is foundationed in spirituality (that is, a sense of who and what we are that transcends what is physically or visibly apparent), that belief holds the highest place in our internal value system, history has also shown.

    THIS ARTICLE IS PART OF AN ONGOING SERIES:
    LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR TOMORROW

    So the question going into 2013 is: What is the state of humanity’s spirituality? Is the portion of our sense of who and what we are that transcends physicality alive and healthy, vibrant, awake, and aware? Or is it dormant, inert, quiescent, barely alive within us?

    Those of us who believe that Who We Are is more than simply a body, more than merely a chemical biological being, have much work to do if we wish to lay the groundwork for the building of a New Human in the days and weeks, months and years ahead. This is a first of a continuing series of articles on that subject. We invite you to join in commenting, or even writing a Guest Column of your own, as we march into 2013.

    The question again: Where is humanity with its spirituality? We have we been, where are we now, and where do we wish to go in our future?

    Is this an idle inquiry? We don’t think so. We think that it deserves humanity’s highest attention. We think it should be part of The Conversation of the Century.

  • So You Want To Change The World? Series Part Two

    Part Two: Joy to the World (and We Mean It)

    Within the holiday season, it becomes very, very easy to be focused on everything but being happy. Much of the time and energy spent this time of the year is fixated on guilt about spending too little or too much, worry about future parties and plans, and relief only when the busyness season has come and gone. The only change we seem to want, is a change of pace. But is that all we really want?

    When we look to change our world, we first need to change our basic ideas about the holidays, and in turn, life and time itself. As noted in Conversations With God For Teens, the Three Way Path includes the extraordinary choice to Spread Joy. No matter how busy the moment, how rushed the event, we can easily find joy in it, and let it be known to the world. Regardless of what faith, culture, religion, or traditions that have been adopted, we can enJOY the holidays. By simply being happy, during Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Years, and every holiday in between, we can be joyful – and be merry.

    In the classic movie, Miracle on 34th Street, we are reminded that “Christmas isn’t just a day…it’s a state of mind”. I will go along further and say that the holidays are a state of being – one that we CHOOSE to embody and embellish.  We choose to embody joy, and so we choose to live in a state of blissful euphoria. By living in this state of joy, we live in the highest state of ourselves. As we become the pure manifestation of unconditional happiness, we love everything – and everyone – for who they are and what they choose to be. So why save it for only ourselves?

    Just as in Frank Capra’s motion picture It’s A Wonderful Life, sometimes we forget how often and how deeply we affect the lives of everyone around us. When we spread joy, the energy of the feeling ebbs and flows through the incredibly intricate patterns of our relationships. As we send out this feeling, it is received warmly by our friends, our family, and the universe itself. Whether we confirm our experiences with laws of physics or the ways of karma, we know that what we put into the world will be what we receive, and what the world will receive. When we share our giving and receiving, joy becomes a never-ending cycle, with no beginning and no end, that only circulates in the upmost elation of life itself. Sounds like a great gift for any generation.  

    In the remainder of the holidays, 2012 will come to pass. We are all set to make our New Year’s resolutions, and this year we will truly decide to change our world, and change ourselves. So for 2013, I will spread joy – I will be the grandest version of the greatest vision I ever held about how happy I truly am. And if we ALL spread that message, it will bring joy to every teen, across the nation and across the globe. In the new year and the new season, spread joy – because it’s contagious!   

    (Lauren is a Feature Editor of The Global Conversation. She lives in Wood Dale, IL, and can be reached at Lauren@TheGlobalConversation.com)

  • Are we bigger than our bodies?

    Pope Benedict XVI said, no, we are not in his annual Christmas message to the world, one of his most important speeches of the year, where he once again proclaimed that same-sex marriage is destroying “the essence of humanity.”

    “People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given to them by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being,” he said at the Vatican. “They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves.”

    He further went on to say, “When freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God.”

    Could it be, as Pope Benedict suggests, that life truly is a shallow existence of “what you get is what you get”?

    What would the Pope tell a child born a hermaphrodite, a condition in which someone is born with both female and male sex organs – a body given to him by God, by the way? Too bad? You deserve no one? Or perhaps the contrary: “Lucky you, you can have a relationship with whoever you want”?

    And what about the Pope himself who has been “defined” by God as a male, given a penis, and yet chooses not to fall in line with that “identity” and chooses not to express romantic love to a female and chooses not to enter into intimate relationships? According to his own definition, is he not “denying” his own “nature” that God intended for him to share in intimacy with a woman and to reproduce? Is he not participating in his own freedom and creativity in an effort to self-define who he is and what he believes about why he is here?

    Aren’t we ALL doing that very same thing?

    Why are we being told to feel bound to our physicality when it comes to S-E-X, but celebrated when we demonstrate our capacity for greatness beyond our bodies in other ways?

    My friend, Mark, whose body is partially paralyzed and riddled with unrelenting pain – again, the body given to him by God — climbed 108 floors of the Sears Tower in Chicago…and plans to do it again this year. I imagine it would be quite difficult to find anyone who would say Mark has “stripped himself of his dignity” by creating a new definition of himself that expanded far beyond his physicality.

    But again, I get it. We are talking about the unspeakable, the shameful, the only-talked-about-in-a-whisper topic of S-E-X.

    However, the Pope’s declaration of “Gay marriage, like abortion and euthanasia, is a threat to world peace” appears to be falling upon deaf ears as the Constitutional Court in largely Roman Catholic Spain upheld the law legalizing gay marriage last month, the British government announced it will introduce a bill next year legalizing gay marriage, and in France, President Francois Hollande has said he would enact his “Marriage for Everyone” plan within a year of taking office last May.

    These are the visionaries, the writers of our New Cultural Story, the mold-shatterers and rule-breakers who do not believe in a God that makes mistakes. They are not buying into the twisted idea that God would create something so extraordinary and then make it wrong.

    What these New Cultural Story global authors do believe in is Love. They do not believe same-sex marriage is destroying the essence of humanity, but rather that it IS the essence of humanity. They believe that love transcends everything and is denied to no one, that Love that has no rules and is certainly not reserved for only a select few to be experienced in a select way, and that the biggest continuing threat to world peace is not found, as Pope Benedict suggested, within the loving union of a same-sex partnership, but rather in a belief system that embraces and promotes a vengeful and judgmental God.

    (Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team atwww.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

  • Families and New Year’s — I mean New Day’s Resolutions

    Living a conscious life is interesting!  Because you are more aware of life as it unfolds, you get the opportunity to really know yourself, your life partner, your children and the other family members around you.  It can also be a little bit of a contradiction of terms because while you notice more about your surroundings and the actions of others, you may, at the same time, choose not to react to those things in the typical fashion.  For instance, you may consciously decide to take fewer things personally, let the more trivial things go (like toothpaste dripped on the counter, laundry that doesn’t make it into the hamper, and coats that do not make it onto the hook), and work harder to find the positives in difficult situations.  In other words, if you are living in the moment, you may make New Day’s Resolutions every day, so New Year’s Resolutions might seem silly to you.  Instead, let’s talk about making New Day’s Resolutions.

    How can this be applied to parenting? In the past few years, I began a silent, private practice. I re-resolve every morning to be grateful; to be patient, kind and loving to the people I encounter, especially to my husband and child. I re-commit myself every morning to be consistent with Who I Really Am.  I wonder if helping your child to feel these gifts of yourself, and to develop the ability to roll with the changes of life, may be the biggest gifts you can give.

    Would you like a small example of this in action?  The next time you are about to walk out the door and your child spills the proverbial glass of milk, you can respond with a smile and say, “Oh, sweetie, I know you must really feel sorry that you spilled it, and I am sorry that you did as well, but you know we don’t get upset about spills in this house.  We just clean them up, together!  Now let’s get to work so we can get on our way!”  Not only will you illustrate compassion and respect, but sharing the clean-up responsibility helps your children know that you are always there for them, even when the day is rough.  These types of gentle interactions can be applied in any situation, at any time, if only you take a moment and breathe before you speak.  Think before you react.

    Teaching your children to treat others in the same way will help them remember Who They Really Are.  Adopting a morning practice of introspection and setting your individual intentions for the day may be beneficial.  At first you may want to do it as a family, taking a moment in the morning as you wake up together.  You can talk about what each of you wish to commit to for that day, whether it is treating others with love or respect or gratitude…eventually your children may wish to do their own practice.  Whether you continue together or on your own, I think you will find daily “New Day’s Resolutions” to be much more effective, and more long-lasting, than any New Year’s Resolution.

    Wishing you peace, love and joy in the coming year!

    (Emily A. Filmore is the Creative Co-Director of www.cwgforparents.com. She is also the author/illustrator of the “With My Child” Series of books about bonding with your child through everyday activities.  Her books are available at www.withmychildseries.com. To contact Emily, please email her at Emily@cwgforparents.com.)

  • Meanderings of a Wayward Spirit: Lyrics in the Rough

    Some of our most significant breakthroughs and remembrances in life are experienced in the midst of those less-warm and less-fuzzy moments we find ourselves presented with. I’m sure most of us could come up with a time or two in our life when the light of hope and love pierced through walls of darkness.

    Laura Jean Pringle’s collection of unique and spiritually edgy poems in “Meanderings of a Wayward Spirit: Lyrics in the Rough” takes you on a twist-and-turn, up-and-down journey through some of life’s most colorful and sometimes challenging occurrences, offering a fresh and “color outside the lines” perspective from the author’s own life experiences.

    Laura’s poetry paints with a brush dipped in her own personal truth how it feels to stretch and bend around the curves and hairpin turns in our Soul Journey and how exhilarating and cleansing it can feel to express authentically through confusion and frustration, how to push through the illusion of fear and experience that love is at the root of everything.

    And that is the theme and message carried through the pages of her heartfelt and raw sharings, which happens to also be the underlying message held within the New Spirituality:

    Love is all there is.

    Laura Jean Pringle’s poetry book “Meanderings of a Wayward Spirit:  Lyrics in the Rough” can be purchased here on Amazon.com.

    (Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team atwww.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

    (If there is a book, movie, music CD, etc. that you would like to recommend to our worldwide audience, please submit it to our Managing Editor, Lisa McCormack, for possible publication in this space. Not all submissions can be published, due to the number of submissions and sometimes because of other content considerations, but all are encouraged. Send submissions to Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com. Please label the topic: “Review”)

  • I discovered Christmas in the airport

    This year Christmas did not arrive for me wrapped up in pretty packages with shiny bows, I did not feel the essence of Christmas by getting that front-row parking space at the mall on the busiest shopping day of the year, and I did not experience Christmas by savoring all the extraordinary food and festivities that plentifully show up this time of year.

    I experienced Christmas in the airport.

    As we joyfully awaited the arrival of my son’s plane near the gate, I noticed the people gathered around:  little children in their pajamas, parents poised with video cameras, families hugging, laughing, crying, some people sleeping on the floor, men with flowers, women with gifts, all anticipating the return of someone special.

    The realization was palpable.

    You could see Christmas.

    You could hear Christmas.

    You could smell Christmas.

    You could FEEL Christmas.

    But it had nothing to do with trinkets or doo-dads, shopping malls or Christmas sweaters, cookies or egg nog, churches or Santa Claus.

    It had everything to do with our relationship with each other.

    Christmas serves as a reminder of our presence in each other’s lives.  And on this particular day, in the wee hours of the morning, I experienced the significance of being in that Holy Space, witnessing and feeling the significance of who we are to each other.  And while I was especially tuned in to the long-awaited reunion with my beloved son, I became keenly aware of the larger picture, that this night was an opportunity to experience unity with all those gathered together; that what I became a part of  was no coincidence, but rather an invitation to carry forward what I was experiencing beyond the walls of the international airport, out into the world, and into the lives of others.

    And not only to carry this experience forward simply through Christmas Day, but to extend the appreciation of and gratitude for who we are in relation to each other in every moment of my life…even in the moments when we must physically part once again with a loved one.  In two weeks, when I find myself at the international airport again, but this time to say goodbye, I will enter the space with those gathered around with intention and compassion, knowing that we are all in that Holy Space not only with each other, but for each other…and that we are ALL each other’s loved one.

    And I will once again discover Christmas in the airport.

    (Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation.  She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team atwww.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)