Previous to this month I had only ever written one Christmas song – a song recorded by the Jenny Burton Experience called Christmas In My Soul.  They say, in the music business, that the month of June is the month to write and begin one’s Christmas album, the preparation of such to be around 5-6 months.  Who can write Christmas songs in June?  What a silly notion.

This year the Missus has come up short in her search for the perfect Christmas song for her Christmas Day performance in church.  She had decided to employ a terrific Boston harpist and together with her organist, Bryan Ashley, keep it small and delicate in accordance with the spiritual implications of the morning.  Last year she used a brass quintet plus the church four manual pipe organ and blew the roof off, so this year she wanted to do something completely different.

But no song came to mind to fit the criteria.

While watching her go through her turmoil, I happened to mention one day several weeks ago that perhaps I could write one for her.  This was said in a fit of compassion for her plight while I was in the middle of the mad dash of the final throes of my own CD, Goin’ Home.

Seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, she grabbed at the offer and signed me up.  At first I thought, “Oh no, what have I gotten myself into?”  Where would I ever find the time to do this?

Then she came up with the notion that not only should I write it and arrange it for harp and keyboard, but that we should also record it and sell it for Christmas.  Then she came up with the idea that we should also do the sheet music for it and sell that too and let others use it in their churches for their Christmas services as well.  Then she came up with the idea that as long as we were going to do all that, she may as well use the song for her musical Christmas Presence lecture that she does around the country with lecturer, Chet Manchester.  This only moved the deadline for all this up by about 2 ½ weeks!  “Egads,” thought I.  “What have I done?”

So I did it.  In the next 3 days Julia will record the lead vocal to the orchestrated track, Craig Wagner, the designer, will design all the packaging, I’ll mix the song, the WFM staff will manufacture about a hundred singles to start with and by Thursday we’ll be selling this song that will receive it’s first performance in St. Louis on this coming Sunday.  Whew!

Will we make it?  With God’s help, we shall.

It’s a new world.  Things like this can be accomplished in a matter of weeks, a matter of days now.  The power of computers – the power of Mind.

The writing was fun and accomplished in a matter of 48 hours.  Once that was done, I knew we’d be OK.  The rest was just a matter of getting’ it done.

Julia directed me to the Bible for my text and chose the tried and true – think Handel.

“And his name shall be called Wonderful,
Counsellor,
The Mighty God,
The Everlasting Father,
The Prince of Peace
Yes his name shall be called Wonderful”

But I also wanted to shed some new light on the subject – not just rehash George Fredric.  Julia suggested that I combine the Bible text with some of the text of Mary Baker Eddy and her thoughts on the life of Jesus.  Julia and her big ideas!  Using text (non-lyrics) always makes good songwriting very difficult in that text is not metered and has a way of not particularly sounding very musical much less poetic.  On top of that the text of Mary Baker Eddy cannot be changed by even the alteration of a comma.

However the text she gave me was poetic to a certain extent so I thought I’d give it a go.  I had a great deal more content than I needed to begin with.  Julia can have her long-winded moments, so I had to do some clever editing.  Always easier to cut than to add.  While fooling around with several lyrical directions the line struck me like a lightening bolt — “And his name shall be called Wonderful,”

“What a great idea,” thought I.  Call the song Wonderful!

And so I did.

I was on my way…

Here is the finished lyric.  In another magical musical week you’ll be able to hear, sing, play, perform, buy and listen to the whole thing through the wonderful world of MIDI, LOGIC, the INTERNET and God’s gift of inspiration.

Hot off the presses!

Wonderful

Text by Mary Baker Eddy
Lyrics adapted from the Book of John
Music by Peter Link

The wakeful shepherd beholds
The first faint morning beams,
Ere cometh the full radiance
Of a risen day.

So shone the pale star
To the prophet-shepherds;
Yet it traversed the night, and came
Where, in cradled obscurity, lay
The Bethlehem babe,
And his name shall be called Wonderful,
Wonderful

The people that walked in darkness
Have seen a very great light:
For unto us a child is born,
And a son is given:
And the government shall be upon his shoulder:

And his name shall be called Wonderful,
Counsellor,
The Mighty God,
The Everlasting Father,
The Prince of Peace
Yes his name shall be called Wonderful

Now the Son of man is glorified,
Yes and God is glorified in him.
Verily, he says unto you,
“He that believeth on me,
The works that I do shall he do also;
And greater works than these shall he do;

If ye love me, keep my commandments.
And I will pray the Father,
And he shall give you another Comforter”

The prophet of today
Beholds in the mental horizon
The signs of these times,
The reappearance of the Christianity
Which heals the sick
And destroys error,
And no other sign shall be given.

When a new spiritual idea is borne to earth,
The prophetic Scripture of Isaiah is renewedly fulfilled:
Saying “Unto us a child is born, . . .”
“Unto us a child is born, . . .”

And his name shall be called Wonderful.”
Counsellor,
The Mighty God,
The Everlasting Father,
The Prince of Peace
Yes his name shall be called Wonderful
Wonderful
Yes he is wonderful
Wonderful!

Even More Inspiration

• Even Now
• Love Is The Reason For Living
• The Decline of Lyrical Craftsmanship – Part 1
• Nothing
• You Must Remember This!
• My Body

This always works.  It works because I’m going back to the root of creativity – mind.  I’ve always said that my best work comes through me figuring that the best ideas come from God or a higher power or source, but the portal that the ideas come through is mind.  Perhaps they don’t originate in mind or brain, but they exist somewhere out there or ‘in there’ already and we’re just here to provide the portal.

Take the creation of the Internet for example.  The Internet was not invented by any one person, but rather by a group of men and women working together trying to find a better way to share information on defense research between involved universities and defense research facilities.  It exists today because man thought it up.  The idea existed also back in the 1940s before it came through mind’s portal and also existed 5000 years ago just as the ideas for the telephone, the computer and the airplane did.

Its time came because the mind of man thought it so, opened up his mind to the idea, considered it a possibility and thought so deeply about it that it came into being.

I think you could say the same thing about the atom.  No one’s ever seen an atom; it’s just there in thought, but we know it’s there so it’s there.  It exists because we think it so and atomic energy is the result of that thinking.  One could even say that all matter is a result of that thinking.

Now we’ve heard it said that matter is simply illusion.  So what is illusion?  The dictionary defines it as: “a. An erroneous perception of reality.  b. An erroneous concept or belief.”  Matter is an erroneous perception of reality that man thought of, but he was wrong.  And now quantum physics is proving just that – that matter does not exist.  It only exists in erroneous thought, so if you want to change matter, change thought.

This is the basis for all healing.  Do you want to heal your cancer or your AIDS or your heart disease or your financial problems or your marital problems or your amputated leg?  Change your thought!

Doubt if you like, but this was the whole basis for Jesus’ teachings. “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father. John 14:12

Jesus healed.  He walked on water.  He raised the dead.  He said we also could do these things and greater.  He didn’t say we could fly like birds, but that came to us as part of the ‘greater’.  He didn’t say that the world would communicate through cyberspace, but that also came as part of the greater.  He didn’t talk about splitting the atom or looking into other galaxies or digital music being comprised of a series of zeros and ones.  But he did know that thinking makes it so and so whatever we wanted to invent, to create, wherever we wanted to go, whatever crazy idea we came up with, we could put into effect because of the power of mind – the power of our thinking.

Let’s make no bones about it.  Our thinking is a God-given gift.  We develop it through schooling, experience, increased knowledge, but intelligence, or the ability to think is God-given.  Man did not invent thinking.  I believe that man just learns how to open mind’s portal a little wider and let in or let through ideas that already exist.  No space, no time – just God’s ideas laying un-thought of somewhere in God’s attic just waiting to be put into practice.  Imagine the grand ideas yet to come!

Let’s get thinking!

Even More Inspiration

• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• Valentine Thoughts
• Thoughts On Thinking or Thinking Makes It So
• What Is A Cantata?
• Spiritual Scientist
• Resisting Evil

So we create our world in our minds.  This goes for the physical world as well as our imaginative world.  And on second thought, this goes for each of us as well.

I’ve always found this to be a pretty mind-boggling concept, but not really when one considers the world of our dreams.  When in that mental state, the world around us seems as real as the world around us in our waking state.  Then there’s the awakened state that most spiritual leaders often speak of – that which we are working to attain in this life on Planet Earth.  Three states of thinking: Dreams, Waking and Awakened.

“How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?” – Plato

This ancient thinker struggled with the same thoughts as we do this very moment.  It seems like we spend most of our time in this earthly experience floundering about in the second state.

“We are what we think.  All that we are arises with our thoughts.  With our thoughts, we make the world.” – Buddha

I’ve been looking for Jesus’ specific thoughts on thinking and coming up somewhat empty until I considered his demonstrations (some call them miracles, but I prefer ‘demonstrations’ – demonstrations of the truth of being).  He walked on water.  How did he do this?  He thought he could and so he did.  He raised the dead.  He understood the truth of death – that there is no death, and so changed the perceptions (thinking) of those around him.  Lazarus rose.  Jesus appeared after the crucifixion.

“Change your thoughts and you change your world.” – Norman Vincent Peale

“The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” — Albert Einstein

The demonstrations of Jesus were whoppers, way-showers to us in the waking state.  However, the higher thoughts of some of our greatest thinkers also show the way to living happier daily lives as well.

“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think.  When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.” — Buddha

“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” — The Bible from the Book of Proverbs chapter 23 verse 7

“The more man meditates upon good thoughts; the better will be his world and the world at large.” – Confucius

Many people place success at the top of life’s ladder.  For my money it’s happiness, though I’ll have to admit lately in my latter years of this visit I am more considering the word “awakening” as the top rung on the ladder.

But happiness, for me, has always been huge.  Living in the roller-coaster world of the entertainment business can be a rough ride for even the most successful, so I’ve learned not to make success the epitome.  I’m certainly happier having made this decision in life.

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.” – Marcus Aurelius

I wrote a song once called, “I Think; Therefore, I Am”.  Looking back on it, I find it to be rather sophomoric.  I think that I wrote it when I was too young.  I needed 20 years of seasoning before I tackled that one.

But thinking back on it, I came across this:

“’I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am’ — a philosophical Latin statement used by René Descartes, which became a fundamental element of Western philosophy. The simple meaning of the phrase is that if someone wonders whether or not he exists, that is, in and of itself, proof that he does exist (because, at the very least, there is an “I” who does the thinking).  It forms the bedrock for all knowledge, because, while all things can be questioned as to whether they are from the realm of reality or from some figment of imagination (a dream, influence of a demon, etc.), the very act of doubting one’s own existence serves as proof of the reality of one’s own existence.”  – From Wikipedia

Whether or not one chooses to debate the above, Mr. Wikipedia is right when he says, “It forms the bedrock for all knowledge…” This bedrock is thinking.  Thinking is the basis for all things.  Without thinking, there is nothing.  Take away thinking and matter does not exist.  Creativity does not exist.  Man does not exist.

“We are formed and molded by our thoughts.” — Buddha

Perhaps thinking is the action of God.  (A concept sure to be considered in a later blog post.)  If we are made in God’s image and likeness then we are a product of God’s thinking.  We are the results of his thoughts – or said in another less anthropomorphic way, we are a product of Thought. 

“Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force — that thoughts rule the world.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Even More Inspiration

• Spiritual Scientist
• Thinking And Creativity
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• The Atheist
• Words Of Wisdom
• Even Now

Christmas in Central Park

Christmas in NYC!  There’s nothing quite like it.  Truly beautiful, but sometimes a bit too much about Santa and not enough about Jesus.  Each year I go back to the same moment years ago when I first wrote this song to try to rediscover the essence of Christmas.

I’ll share it with you now:

Christmas In My Soul

Music and lyrics by Peter Link

It looks as though

There won’t be snow on Christmas

And the holly and the mistletoe

Were sold out long ago

The midtown rush was just a little too much

And this year Santa and his reindeer

Never left the pole

Suddenly it just don’t seem like Christmas

Suddenly it don’t seem so natural

Looking for Christmas

Looking for Christmas

Looking for Christmas

Trying to find a little Christmas in my soul

Takin’ my time

Trying to find a little Christmas in my soul

But somehow a church bell caught my ear

Somehow a little child caught my eye

Somehow an old man playing on his trumpet

Stopped that drummer in me

With a ty- rie -die-dee-i

Rie -die-dee-i

Rie -die-dee-i-i-i-i

And suddenly it all seemed very simple

And suddenly it all seemed so natural

Looking for Christmas

Looking for Christmas

Looking for Christmas

Trying to find a little Christmas in my soul

Somehow the whole affair almost slipped on by

I nearly lost the childhood dream

I plumb forgot the reason why

And all my Christmas longings

Were simply left behind

As I went running through the wrappings

And the ribbons and the rhyme

And rollin’ through December

Like a man against time

Rockefeller Center at Christmas

Looking for Christmas

Looking for Christmas

Looking for Christmas

Trying to find a little Christmas in my soul

Takin’ my time

Trying to find a little Christmas in my soul

Takin’ my time

Trying to find a little Christmas in my soul

As performed by The Jenny Burton Experience

Merry Christmas, everyone.

I hope you find your true Christmas spirit.

Even More Inspiration

• I Stood In The Wings… Part 3
• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• WFM Listening Room — Series II Opener
• WFM Learning Lab – Grand Opening!
• Wonderful
• Phoenix Rising

In the long run, what does it matter?  Christianity’s biggest split seems to me to be was he or wasn’t he.  Was Jesus God?  Just doesn’t make sense.  To me it seems like he was not.

Don’t mean to stir up a hornet’s nest here (or maybe I do), but I think a ton of people here got it wrong.

For my money, Jesus was the way-shower, the exemplar.  He was sent here to be an example for us on the subject of how to live our lives.  He was a human being just like us and that was the point.  He showed us our potential – what we could be if we knew what he knew and practiced what he practiced.

He taught us how to think, how to treat our fellow man, how to heal, how to live.

He said, “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons: freely ye have received, freely give.”  He was talking to his disciples and telling them to go and do what he had done, telling them that it was possible as human beings to perform miracles – to live their lives on a much higher level.

This is what all way-showers teach.  That’s why they need to be human to start with.  If they were Martians, we would discredit the possibility immediately because we weren’t really the same.

Jesus was a man.  That was the point.

I don’t want Jesus to be God.  I want him to be human and his many acts of humanity throughout the New Testament only prove that.  He had lost faith when he said to his own confused thinking, “Get thee behind me, Satan”.

He had lost his temper when he threw the moneychangers out of the temple.

He had lost focus when he went back to the desert for 40 days and 40 nights to get his act back together.

And he was just plain scared up there on the cross when he said, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”

Besides, if he was God, then just whom was he speaking to?  Clearly not himself.

This Easter I celebrate this amazing human being who taught us how to live, who taught us our potential as men and women, who taught us by being an example of the best of what we could be as human beings.

He also gave us great insight as to our spiritual identities, but that’s another story.  I like to differentiate between Jesus, the man, and the Christ – that which he taught and exemplified.  For now I’ll just defend the concept of Jesus, the human man, who brought us the truth revealed and who showed us by his human life a better way of living.

Did God forsake Jesus on the cross?  Not any more than He or It does when we have a cold or get divorced or have cancer or murder.  I believe that God is always right there, right here.  Sometimes, in our humanity, we just lose track of Him or It.  That doesn’t mean that God turns away from us.

A cloud covers the sun, but we know the sun is still up there.

God is ever-present.  What we human beings seek in life is presence – spiritual presence.  It’s what Jesus had mostly accomplished.  He too battled with his humanity, his mortality.  He too had his struggles, his enemies, his loss of faith, his confusions.

But through his living on this mortal plain of existence, he taught us how to handle it by his great example and accomplishments.

This Easter it’s not the scared human on the cross that we celebrate, but the man who overcame.  We celebrate the great mind of the man who triumphed over death and showed us each how we might overcome as well.

For more inspirational music, thoughts and ideas from Peter Link,
please visit Watchfire Music.

Even More Inspiration

• The Atheist
• Spiritual Scientist
• Phoenix Rising
• Inspirational Music
• Thinking And Creativity
• Valentine Thoughts

Einstein

I’ve always been fascinated with this wonderful little man with the big mind.  He turned the world’s perception of ‘things’ inside out on so many levels.  I have read or struggled to read many of the books about him over my lifetime and though I nearly always get my mind blown by some historic revelation that he had, most of the time I’m frustrated because I can’t keep up with the mathematics.

But this one idea has always stuck with me — that what we perceive to be true about matter is, in fact, false.  It’s not that we see something because it’s there, but rather, it’s there because we see it.

So we’re each making this all up, this material existence.  This revelation by one of our foremost thinkers and physicists has been supported in so many ways by other great thinkers like Guatama Buddha, Lao-Tsu and Jesus over the centuries and now the discoveries in quantum physics also support the idea that we are living this life experience in an illusion that is being made up in our mortal minds.

I love to contemplate this stunning consideration and laugh at its consequences.  I am making this all up – all that I experience through the five physical senses.  What I see, what I hear, what I taste, what I smell, what I feel with my hands and body.  How does one even get out of bed in the morning?  What are we to do with this?

When Jesus healed the man with the withered hand, he saw the perfect hand with such understanding of the unreality of material law, that the true reality came to the forefront, even in this material space.  He knew the perfect hand; he saw so clearly the perfect design and correct idea and therefore because of the power and elevation of his mind, it was so.  Here is the science of this ‘miraculous’ healing, taking the miraculous-ness out of the moment, and instead, using the science of Einstein’s idea, “we see it and so it is there.”

Jesus walked on the water because he knew that the material laws of this planet Earth were simply illusions, laws made to be broken because they were not the truth.  In these ‘miraculous’ moments Jesus simply stated the truth of ‘the way it really is’ by example.  He overruled material law.  We call him the Way Shower because he showed us the way to the true reality of being.  He showed us the way it really is.

Then there’s the great old story of the fraternity hazing gone wrong.  The older boys blindfolded the frightened freshman convincing him that they were going to cut his wrists.  Tying him to a chair, they pretended to slice his wrists by quickly drawing an ice cube across his wrists and then pouring warm water down his hand into a bowl on the floor.  The freshman was so convinced that the older boys were really doing this to him that he died.  A later autopsy revealed that the freshman had died from loss of blood.

The freshman, in his all-consuming fear, only knew one thing:  He was bleeding to death.  And so he did.  The body responded on all levels to loss of blood even though no cut had been made.  The way he saw it, he was dying.  And so he did.

“We see it and so it is there.”  This wasn’t Einstein’s idea.  He just put it in different words – just the way all the great prophets put the great truths of existence into different words with different languages that later on received different translations.  But make no bones about it; truth is truth.  The basic laws of existence are true whether we understand them, like them, believe them, or agree with them.  There’s nothing we can do about it except try to stay open and learn, not get stuck in the falsehoods of past misconceptions.  We’re just visitors here; not lawmakers.  Besides, the laws are already made.  We just need to learn them.

When you get right down to it, it’s really just like lookin’ down the railroad tracks.  The tracks coming together in the perspective distance suggest that the train will crash, but there is a law, higher than the illusion, that governs the safety of the train, that is in disagreement with one of the 5 physical senses: Seeing.

The truth will out.

Even More Inspiration

• Wonderful
• Thinking And Creativity
• The Road To Inspiration — Peter Link and Julia Wade
• The Ira Awards Part 1
• Top 10 Things We Take For Granted
• Grieving In Silence

One fall afternoon this 11-year-old boy was out playing flag football.  Now in flag football each player wears two foot long pieces of cloth or rag stuck in his belt on either side of his waist.  A “tackle” occurs when you’re running with the ball and a player on the opposition simply pulls the “flag” out of your belt.  A lot less injuries that way.  Or so they hope.

So here I was running pell mell around right end heading for a touchdown.  An older boy, faster than me, not only caught up to me but somehow decided at the last second to tackle me, rather than simply pull my flag.  Off balance, I wasn’t expecting the tackle and fell forward awkwardly holding the football out in front of me rather than tucking it in to prevent a fumble.

When I fell, I fell chest first on to the top of the ball and the force of my unexpected fall and the weird positioning of my hands on the ball knocked both of my thumbs out of joint.

Ouch!

When I got up from the ground in extreme pain and looked down at my shaking and already swelling hands, the base of each thumb was about an inch closer to my wrist and both hands were extremely disfigured and terrifying to look at.  The skin was not broken but there were two large lumps where there shouldn’t have been any, and each of my thumbs basically pointed in the wrong direction.

As any tough 11 year old would do in that situation, I began to scream and cry with fear, pain and sudden shock.  As the other kids swiftly gathered around to witness the spectacle, the neighborhood bully, Ronnie Throckmorton, stepped boldly forward.  “Ahhh, yer thumbs are jus’ outta joint.  Here!”  And with that, he grabbed my left thumb and wrist with both his hands and gave my damaged thumb a yank and popped it back into its rightful place.

The pain of that second displacement (or rather placement) shot up my arm like a thunderbolt.  I screamed in shock at this second affront to my person within a matter of terrifying moments and, crying and screaming, took off running for home.

By the time I got home, both hands had swelled beyond recognition.  I’m sure my mom heard me coming down the block and was already prepared for the worst.  Actually, she was simply prepared.

When I came in the door she took one look at my hands, one with the thumb still out of joint and the other now twice as swollen having gone through two traumas, and then she took over as only a Mom would do.

“Go upstairs, get in bed and go to sleep.  Do not look at your hands again, Peter.  Put them behind your back and keep them there” she ordered.  Still whimpering in pain, shock and confusion, I complied totally with her wishes.  Perhaps not totally.  Of course, I had to take one more look.  I shouldn’t have, for the picture was not promising.  Both hands were swollen beyond recognition and already the black and blue had started.  It was the last time I looked.

Probably in shock, I finally did as I was told.  I went to bed and thankfully went immediately to sleep.  I remember nothing of the night.  I only remember waking up the next morning with no pain.  Remembering Mom’s orders, but being a boy, I stole a look anyway at… my perfect hands – both thumbs now in place, no swelling, no discoloration, no nothing, except my hands as I knew them – two perfect hands.

While I slept, Mom had gone to work.  By ordering me to put my hands behind me and keep them there, she had taken steps to dispel my fears. “Get thee behind me, Satan.”  Then she corrected her own thought to see only the perfect child of God that she knew and loved – the perfect child with the perfect hands.  She did essentially what Jesus did when he healed the man with the withered hand.  Jesus saw the perfect hand and saw it so clearly and held it in his mind so powerfully that his thought changed the illusion of distortion back into its true and perfect idea.

Mom put God in control of our lives.  She was taught Jesus’ words, “he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do”.  Mom simply believed this and demonstrated this.  She healed as Jesus taught us to do.  She considered this natural, normal, not miraculous, but simply the result of her good thinking, study of the Bible and its higher truths, and the natural application of those truths to everyday life.  Jesus did it.  Why couldn’t she?  And so she did.

I was the recipient of such thinking.  This was not a case where in six weeks or six days or probably even in six hours my hands got better.  This was a case of instantaneous healing.

I imagine that at some time during that night, when Mom got on top of her own fears and was fully able to maintain in her thought my perfect hands, then they were, in that moment, perfect.  Matter did not have to grow or shrink, turn color, or evolve in some way.  Mom’s thought, like Jesus’ thought, was so determined, powerful and clear that her thought, now aligned with the goodness and perfection of God’s perfect idea, simply came under the control of God and nothing else.  At that moment the healing took place.  She did not work to heal my hands; rather she worked to heal the incorrect thought.   At that moment, while the child slept, the perfect image was restored in thought, and so perfect thought dominated reality once more.

There was no recuperation time whatsoever.  I was out playing again that very morning.  The healing was complete and instantaneous.  It was a lesson and a model I shall never forget.  I saw, in this simple mother’s act, the power of God’s law and God’s love in action and manifested in a mother’s love for her boy.

No material remedies were used in this process.  The remedy was prayer and the correction of thought alone.  First fear was dispelled.  Then the incorrect image was replaced in continuity with the correct image.  I went to sleep virtually ignoring the incorrect image and woke up to the correct image.

God and Mom did the rest.

Even More Inspiration

• Thinking And Creativity
• Even Now
• Valentine Thoughts
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• What Is A Cantata?
• Gift From Mom

I can’t opt in to the “be a good boy and when you die, you’ll go to heaven and live with the angels” concept. It’s just a little too human-fairytale an explanation for me in this digital age. I’m more for the “we have our own opportunity to make our own heaven here on earth and it’s up to us to work our way up the ladder (proverbial) back to our original (and ever-present) state of grace.” Whew!

I believe in a God of pure goodness, not a punishing God. I believe in a God of love and the Bible supports that when John says, “God is Love”.  So I figure if God is love, He, She or It is just that, love.  So I tap into that source whenever I can.

And if we are, in fact, made in God’s image (I don’t take that literally because I don’t really believe in an anthropomorphic God) or are God’s reflection, and God is all good and God is love, then I am good and at my best when living in love. I believe this because I’ve seen it demonstrated in my life over and over again. The proof is in demonstration.

Yeah, I know, I’m getting’ kinda heady here, but why not? Sometimes you just gotta deal with it. The juggling of the human with the divine or the material vs. the immortal or the material vs. the spiritual is a constant mental battle for me. The lure of materiality is great, but the rewards of spirituality are what I know in my heart and mind to be what I’m after. It’s just that sometimes I get lazy or better, I lose my good sense of direction, and grab the nearest mortal plum.

Cut to the chase, Pete. The best explanation I’ve heard so far is this one:

This particular earthly life experience is just like the dream I had last night. It’s the same thing, a dream, an illusion. In the dream I had last night, it all seemed very real and I did not know I was dreaming and yet then I woke up and realized it was all a dream. Similarly, in this dream I live today called life, it all seems very real and I do not know that I am dreaming (or living in an illusion) and I will awake some day to the fact that this life experience was all a dream.

Sometimes at night I have dreams of “the know”, in dream study that’s what they’re called, dreams where you suddenly know you are dreaming. I have these experiences sometimes and am able to step in and out of the dream – I, in the dream, think, “Oh, I’m dreaming”, but then the dream becomes too interesting and I’m right back into the center of the dream experience having once again lost my secondary “knowing” awareness.

This too runs parallel with life. Here I sit having a moment of life of “the know” (I’m seeing myself as God’s spiritually perfect man), but then, when I finish writing, I’ll get up and eat my breakfast and plunge right back into life with little awareness of my spiritual self. This must be why the gurus go off to the mountain tops or the caves or why Jesus went to the desert for 40 days and 40 nights – to live fully in their life of “the know” experience and prepare themselves for this rather confusing duality of life on earth.

And yes, I could go on and on…

But the Sao Paulo sun has come up and today I get to once more visit the sky on a material level and come back down in Cape Town, South Africa.  So I’ll sign off for now with this song I wrote a number of years ago which got me started on this whole line of thought to begin with.

This Is All I Ask (click to listen)

I am a quiet man
A gentle man
Oh yes I’ve tried to live
By God’s own plan
Seeking the open sky
Giving me room to fly
On my own

And this is all I ask
For all I’ve known
Here on this tired earth
This rolling stone
Keeps me from rising up
From filling my rightful cup
On my own

So in my solitaire
My dark despair
I long for Thee
To take me there
Into the quiet sky
The open air
My liberty
This is all I ask of Thee
Yes this is all I ask

And when the time has come
When man shall stand
Each one and every one
As God’s own man
Then will my soul have flown
Then will I roll the stone
On my own

And when the sky rolls back
And opens wide
And I can touch the other side
And when the soul of man
Is one again
Forever free
This is where I long to be
This is all I ask
Forever free
Yes this is all I ask

You can listen to a sample or purchase this song at Watchfiremusic.com

Or, click here for This Is All I Ask Sheet Music

Even More Inspiration

• Thinking And Creativity
• Thoughts On Thinking or Thinking Makes It So
• Forsaken Or Just Plain Scared?
• Wonderful
• Even Now
• Gettin’ It Done