The beauty in life far outweighs the pain…..

 

I could talk all day on the subject of pain and fear – because unfortunately I’ve become intimately aware of the former and often found myself fighting against the latter.  Fear and Hate and Anger and the resulting pain is very pervasive in the world we live in.  If you turn on the TV, you are inundated by negative stories that could put even Gandhi in a bad mood.  Despite all that negativity, I DO see beauty wherever I look.  Even when a terrible thing happens, I still see love in it’s wake. I thank GOD for that perspective.  After the Boston Marathon Bomb – passers by were the first to help & comfort the hurt and dying.   EMT’s rushed in to stabilize victims and hospital personnel practically killed themselves working non-stop shifts just to save people’s lives.  Often when something bad happens, people come together to help one another displaying incredible selflessness. And even in humanity’s darkest moments….there is still GOOD in the world.

Fear & negativity don’t get you anywhere, by the way.  I admit that there are many negative things in life that can induce fear – the ideas of death, destitution, hunger,anger, rejection, unrequited love, failure, loss, separation, pain and illness are enough to turn anyone into a Scrooge.  Yes life can deliver some awful things – and most of those things are scary as hell.  For that reason I want to focus on the things that heal and mend and lift us up a little bit each day.

A few years ago I was working on the “V-Chip”project and was contacted by the office of the Vice President (which at the time was Al Gore).  They wanted me and my father (an incredible entrepreneur & inventor named Andrew Andros) to demonstrate a product we had been working on that would give parents the ability to control the amount of violent and perverse TV shows that their children had access to  (something we take for granted now, but there actually was a time when this wasn’t an option).  My father later testified about Violence in the Media before the Senate Commerce Committee.  At that time people were starting to wonder if children were being influenced by violent images in the media.  To bring our product to market (the “TV Guardian”) I did a great deal of research on the subject and found that the images we see DO influence our bodies in very much the same way as the food we ingest.  Think of it this way….if you wake in the morning and eat a bag of salty corn chips….and did the same for lunch and then for dinner…..How do you think you’d feel?  How healthy would you be?  The things we eat  influence how healthy we are.  BUT do the things we SEE influence how we feel and think?  Unless you’re a sociopath I’m sure the last scary movie you saw scared the hell out of you.  When the body senses fear a whole series of chemicals are released in the body to prepare us for fight or flight.  OF COURSE if you consistently ingest negative images (scenes of hurt and anger and fear and greed)you are going to influence your own body chemistry in the same way.  There’s a great deal of research out there that talks about how stress affects the human body.  There are also studies that support the idea that what we THINK influences what we are and how we feel.  If you don’t believe me, read my blog posting called “Messages from water & beyond“. With that in mind try to take some extra time each day to look for the beauty and joy in life…..heal your heart by stopping to smell a flower or snuggling with and loving your children or pets.  Think about the people out there that volunteer to help the homeless or people who sacrifice their lives caring for the sick and helpless.  Love and hope and joy ARE out there.  Surround yourself with beautiful art, music, laughter, joyous people and all the things in life that heal us.

I want to remind your heart….your inner child…about something.  I think we all had a sort of wisdom about truth when we were younger and as life goes on that truth gets fainter and fainter each day.  We forget where we came from and as the world loads us up with all the reasons to be afraid, we have to make a point to reach up….to look up and seek the hand of God and rediscover that we’re not alone.  We have to remember that the glue that holds the whole big universe together is love; and nothing is more important than love.

I don’t understand any more than anyone why bad things happen to good people, but I do believe with all my heart that there IS a creative designer and that He sent us here to live these human lives to learn something – to seek and rediscover love in all its different forms.  God does exist and there’s more to life than the years between our physical birth and death.  Jesus promised us this and science is discovering proof of this more and more each day.  Knowing that death is not the end helps us to trudge through the muck. Knowing that we will some day be reunited with those we’ve loved and lost and knowing that we’ll reunite with the one central love of GOD, puts all the pain in perspective.  Think about it – if you KNEW for sure that there was life after death and that “death” wasn’t really the end…..but rather some incredible, beautiful, enlightened and brilliant new beginning…a gateway into the divine…..then that would help us to put death into a different light.  It doesn’t do a whole lot for the suffering part, but the death part really becomes way more tolerable.  That’s why I thank God for the perspective He gave me…..it’s a great gift just to be able to see the beauty (but that doesn’t mean you can’t develop that skill, either).  I realize this is a stretch but it does remind me of all the highly over publicized court cases that are beaten to a pulp in the media.  People are frequently bitching because “so and so wasn’t convicted of that crime.” And then the media finally releases one last little tid bit of information that makes sense out of everything…..and we all collectively say “OH well why didn’t they just tell us that?”

For some reason GOD has veiled our minds and hearts from the truth about death.  Yes, He’s thrown us a bone here and there, but He’s essentially mandated that we live our lives in a sort of amnesia.  He’s set things up so that we live our lives blinded from the truth for the most part, in a sort of “life long test” to see if “unaided” we can find love & truth.  I still believe (with all my heart) that someday the veil will be lifted and we’ll all collectively say “OH, well why didn’t You just tell us that?” (but by then we’ll be so thrilled that we’re enveloped in the love of God that we’ll most likely be speechless and in awe of God and completely unable and unwilling to bitch about anything at all).

Meanwhile…..we live and laugh and cry….and we seek and love and listen and we do what we can to uncover the truth from the heap of “life” that truth is hidden under.  I hope that just thinking about….and knowing that the good is out there helps you to find it in your own life.   I may not know you but I know you’re out there…..and I’m sending love your way.

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If you find anything of interest here, won’t you please feel free to talk to me about it?  I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than talk to YOU about what you think.

Our forgotton connection with the animal world…..

I’ve read hundreds and hundreds of stories about near death experiences and nearly all of them describe a “life review” of all the bad and good things we’ve done in our lives.  I’ve heard it’s like a 3-d movie in the most incredible detail…like you’re actually there seeing what you do and to whom.  However, it was only recently that I read about an NDE that described a life review where the person involved was shown not only the kind and unkind things he had done to other humans, but also the kind and unkind things he had done to animals.  It does make me stop and think.

Please check out this short story about a humpback whale that was caught in a nylon net off the coast of Baja California and some people who came along to save it.  Watch them soak up the love that the whale shows them after they spent over an hour trying to release the whale from captivity.  Then consider how you interact with animals and what influence they have in your life.  (btw not sure why this isn’t appearing as a video here but it’s just a link to You Tube).