Let's get this party started!!

Let me just start by saying that I love summer and everything about it. I love the sunshine - it has such a magical power to make me happy. I love being in the water and going to the beach and warm, balmy evenings. I love not wearing shoes and walking in the grass and sand in bare feet. I also love seeing my kids participate in all the fun activities summer has to offer. We have already had so much fun at Disneyland and Wild Rivers. I haven't been to Wild Rivers since I worked there, oh...15 years ago! What a BLAST!! 

Trey is such an adventurer. He has no fear in the water and loves to experience it all. There is a little kiddie wave pool basically INSIDE the bigger wave pool made for boogie boarding. The waves wash over a concrete barrier and into the kiddie wave pool. Trey had such a great time just getting washed over by the walls of water.

There is a great waterfall that Trey just loved to walk and stand under. He was mesmerized by how the water looked as it fell and splashed.

Caleb is a little less adventurous, but still without fear in his activities of choice. He loves to go down the slides head first.

This is a frequent place for Trey - underwater. The first time we went, I put him in a non-descript navy bathing suit. I had such a hard time spotting him among groups of people, especially since he loves to go under water and hold his breath. The second time a red suit was a little more spottable.

We also were sooo lucky to hit up a new ride at Disneyland called Toy Story Mania. As passholders, we got a reservation to preview the ride before it opened to everybody else. This ride is the bomb!! If you love the Buzz Lightyear ride, multiply it by 10 and you've got this Toy Story Mania ride. It's 3-D with lots of interactive games and is waaay cool. We went on in 4 times within our reserved time slot, and it just wasn't enough.

MY New Earth

Some of you may recall me raving about this book in a previous post.

I've read the book through twice now, and I continue to be amazed at how revolutionary the ideas and perspectives taught in this book are. Especially since many of the ideas are basic and fundamental principles of the gospel, just presented in a more left-brained kinda way. I've been brought to such an awareness and enlightened state by this book, I can't keep it to myself. Although I feel that I understand the concepts taught in the book, I'm certainly not perfect in implementing them. I do know this, when I am successful in implementing the principles I've learned in this book, I'm able to recognize and become fully aware of the enormous happiness and peace in my life that was already there to begin with, I just closed my eyes to it. 

I understand that some of these principles may not make total sense without reading the book, but some of my favorite points include: 

1. First: definition of the ego. Everybody has an ego, it is basically the power within you to cover up or mask the true happiness and joy that is within us all. It craves and creates conflict, suffering, anxiety, and unhappiness. It's purpose is selfish and limiting. It exists to make you feel sorry for yourself, create excuses, create fear of the future and hold on to pain of the past. It is basically walking through life with your eyes closed - in a state of unconsciousness. 
2. You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that's already within you and allowing that goodness to emerge.
3. Sometimes letting go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.
4. Resentment is the emotion that goes with complaining and the mental labeling of people and adds even more energy to the ego. Instead of overlooking unconsciousness in others, you make it into their identity.
5. Sometimes the "fault" you perceive in another isn't even there. It is a total misinterpretation - a projection by a mind conditioned to see enemies to make itself right or superior.
6. Nonreaction to the ego in others is one of the most effective ways of going beyond the ego in yourself.
7. Somebody becomes an enemy if you personalize the unconsciousness that is the ego. Nonreaction is not weakness, but strength. another word for nonreaction is forgiveness.
8. A grievance is a strong negative emotion connected to an event that is kept alive by compulsive thinking, by retelling the story in the head or aloud. While you think about and feel your grievance, it's negative emotional energy can distort your perception that is happening in the present or influence the way in which you speak or behave toward someone in the present.
9. Ego takes everything personally. The truth - in any case - needs no defense. The light or sound does not care about what you or anybody thinks. You are defending the illusion of yourself, or rather, the mind-made substitute.
10. All that is required to become free of the ego is to be aware of it, since awareness and ego are incompatible.
11. The underlying emotion that governs all the activity of the ego is fear. All it's activities are ultimately designed to eliminate fear, but the most the ego can ever do is to cover it up temporarily with an intimate relationship, a new possession, or winning at this or that. Illusion will never satisfy you - only the truth of who you are, if realized, can set you free.
12. Don't seek happiness. If you seek it, you won't find it. Freedom from unhappiness is attainable now, by facing what is rather than making up stories about it. Unhappiness covers up your natural state of well-being and inner Peace - the source of true happiness.
13. One of the ego's many erroneous assumptions is, " I should not have to suffer." Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness, and burning up of the ego. As long as you resist suffering, it is a slow process because the resistance creates more ego to burn up. When you accept suffering, however, there is an acceleration of that process that is brought about by the fact that you suffer consciously. 
14. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.
15. The ego cannot distinguish between a situation and it's interpretation of and reaction to that situation.
16. Unconscious thoughts that feed the feelings of discontent or resentment: "there is something that needs to happen in my life before I can be at peace, and I resent that it hasn't happened yet. Maybe my resentment will finally make it happen"
17. Often the unconscious beliefs are directed toward a person and so "happening" becomes "doing": "you should do this or that so that I can be at peace. And I resent that you haven't done it yet. Maybe my resentment will make you do it."
18. The extent of the ego's inability to recognize itself and see what it is doing is staggering. it will do exactly what it condemns others for and not see it. When it is pointed out, it will use angry denial, clever arguments, and self-justification to distort the facts.
19. The body cannot tell the difference between an actual situation and a thought.
20. "pain body" is an accumulation of old pain we carry with us.
21. Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now, and if the past cannot prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?
22. Your sense of who you are determines what you perceive as your needs and what matters to you in life - and whatever matters to you will have the power to upset and disturb you.
23. You may ask, What are the things that upset and disturb me? if small things have the power to disturb you, that who you think you are is exactly that - small.
24. You might say, 'peace is all I want", until the phone rings and BAD news comes. Something becomes more important to you now than inner peace. If peace mattered to you more than anything, and if you truly knew yourself to be spirit rather than little me, you would remain non-reactive and alert when confronted with challenging people or situations. You would immediately accept the situation and thus become one with it rather than separate yourself from it.
25. The more limited, the more egoic the view of yourself, the more you will see, focus on, and react to the egoic limitations, and the unconsciousness in others. 
26. Who you are requires no belief. It does not even require your realization since you already are who you are. But without realization, who you are does not shine forth into the world.
27. Acknowledging the good that is already in your life is the foundation for all abundance. Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.
28. Whatever you think people are withholding from you - give it to them. You don't have it? Act as if you had it and it will come. Soon after you start giving you will start receiving. You cannot receive what you don't give.
29. The decision to make the present moment into your friend is the end of the ego.
30. Nonresistance, nonjudgement, and non attachment are the 3 aspect of true freedom and enlightened living. They have deeper purpose: to make you aware of the fleetingness of every situation. When you become aware of the transience of forms, your attachment to them lessens, and you disidentify from them to some extent. Once you see and accept the transience of all things, you can enjoy the pleasures of the world while they last without fear of loss or anxiety about the future.
31. Whenever you are upset about an event, a person, or a situation, the real cause is NOT the event, person, or situation, but a loss of true perspective.
32. If you take credit for what you accomplished, the ego has returned.
33. Anxiety, stress, and negativity cut you off from the greatest power. The illusion that you are separate from the power that runs the universe returns. You feel alone, struggling against something or trying to achieve this or that. But why did anxiety, stress, or negativity arise? Because you turned away from the present moment. And why did you do that? You thought something else was more important.
34. The conventional notion of success is concerned with the outcome of what you do. Don't let  a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment. What is that? there is a sense of quality in what you do, even the most simple action. Quality implies care and attention, which comes with awareness. Quality requires your presence.
35. let's say that you are a businessperson and after 2 years you finally manage to come out with a product that sells well and makes money. Success? In conventional terms, yes. In reality, you spent 2 years polluting your body as well as the earth with negative energy, and made yourself and those around you miserable and affected many others you never even met. The unconscious assumption behind all that action is that success is a future event, and that the end justifies the means. But the end and the means are one. If the means did not contribute to happiness, neither will the end.
36. When you want to arrive at your goal more than you want to be doing what you're doing, you become stressed. When there is stress, it's usually a sign the ego has returned.