Today has been a full day for me, a good day. This evening, I experienced anger at an email I received from the Wolf Conservation Center about Senate Joint Resolution 18 that allows various forms of inhumane killing of wolves and hibernating bears in order to improve game hunting opportunities for lazy ass hunters who want to make Nature fit into their vacation time tables.
Okay, I’m getting all worked up again, but I will say I will never again support the sponsoring Republican party — unless they show Heart-truth dominates their platform, deliberations, and decisions. This is a global world, including respect and responsibility towards all of Nature in all of this planet. I will also say that I had no intention of dealing with this tonight, but you may find my Facebook post on my wall about the wolves and S.J. Res. 18 interesting. (Just search Michael DePung on FB and you should see it). In the meantime, I am pleased to report that I have followed my own counsel in my ebook. I referred to it this morning, and I completed it this evening. I mentioned in the ebook, tentatively titled The Whole Ball of…Everything: The Grand Unified Theory of Humanity, how I am not a stickler for writing down everything I plan on doing every day. However, I said when I start missing my own short-term goals, I need to start getting it done. I took way longer on the ebook than I thought I would. The manuscript went to my editor and graphic designer tonight. Since I worked on this today and since I spent time on the legislative action this evening, I am going to share the section of my own book that jumped out at me as I read through it today. I hope it may be meaningful to you. _______________________________________________ 5. Goals If we want to be doers of the Mission, ones who get the work done, goals can help. In fact, they become the outward, physical expression of core Self, that Heart-Self who we have come to know and with whom we have co-created Purpose and Vision. When our Mission is clear, goals become clear. Many people have goals, but when I ask them about what they ultimately want to accomplish, they have a vague big picture. They can be really busy getting to nowhere in particular when they are not using the Heart operating system. However, when we live in Heart-energy, we will have a big picture, and goals take that picture from the mind of the artist and give it brush strokes to make it a reality, a work of beauty. I could make the analogy more exact, but I am emphasizing the point that I need, as do most people, some sort of practicality and reality to the soul-mind, emotional-mental Purpose, Vision, and Mission. We need to work them out through our body in one way or another. After all, we are a soul-mind-body complex, and Spirit, by coming with us to this realm in Heart, wishes to experience the physical. Goals signal our mind to tell our body to get moving. Goals may be broken down into short, medium, and long term. From these we may generate to-do lists. I’m not too fastidious about all this. Yes, I have goals, and they are categorized. Yes, sometimes I make a little to-do list, but my goals as a writer pretty much imply my daily to-do’s. I definitely am not that super-organizational, linear, step 1, 2, 3, and it’s finished. I don’t color code for categories and priorities. Whole books are written about how to create goals and actions. If that’s your thing, go for it. Like I said, I’m aware of some methods and use them as needed, especially when I end up not hitting my short term goals. We need to execute in order to see our creation, to physically manifest our creation. As we design our goals and actions, the innovation may be guided by making lists based on how we want to feel. The things we map out for ourselves should be things we want to emotionally experience every day; of course, that all generates from who we are as core Self. When we base our goals on emotions, we leave ourselves open to the magic and miracles of the Universe. Why? Emotions summon, attract life energies, and positive frequencies accelerate manifestation. This isn’t a natural, I-got-this reaction, but Heart will lead us as we continue our fellowship. I will never stop learning, nor should I. Expecting and channeling magic and miracles can be a direct result of goal-setting according to emotions. It’s an awesome way of life. To know it, we have to set the goals and execute the actions. Oh, and don’t forget to enjoy every single step you can. After all, that’s the point of all this life. I would want to reinforce what I have said already: there are no rights or wrongs. Just do things and fellowship with Heart and know the warm embrace of the Spirit of all, of the Universe itself. However detailed you are, the following questions could help you on your goal-setting adventure, one that reveals your beautiful Self in its Mission: 1.What emotions do you wish to experience when acting on your Mission? (Check all your goals and to-do actions against your answers to this question.) 2. What goals do you need to reach to fulfill your Mission? 3. How long will each goal take? (Think about breaking down by weeks (short term), two to four months (medium term), and then up to a year (longer term).) 4. What daily actions can you take to move forward on the goals? 5. Which short term goals allow you to make progress towards the longer term ones? 6. How are you feeling about the daily actions on your list? Go! _________________________________________________________ One goal for the rest of this week will be to continue my rewrite of my novel, The Fellowship of the Heart, spending at least two hours a day on it. Another will be to continue, for now, my daily writing. Blessings!
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I’m debating doing something I haven’t done before. As a writer, sometimes I produce work because it’s all I have. I work with it, but the first introduction to my ebook just bothered me. I realized it’s the sort of thing I will probably include in another short ebook applying the Grand Unified Theory of Humanity to education. But it just wasn’t doing it for me, which is why I have dragged my feet — probably.
Then, this morning, as I meditated with this in mind, I came up with another intro. I like it, but I’m just not sure. Okay, I talked myself into it. First, the original to The Grand Unified Theory of Humanity (G.U.T.H.), which will probably be the subtitle. INTRO 1 I have some questions for you. See how many you can answer correctly. Will you score 100%? Let’s see! 1. Do you believe you matter to the Universe? 2. Do you believe you have a purpose within the Universe? 3. Do you believe you are personally known by the Universe, the great creator Spirit of all things, and that in fact you are co-creator with Spirit? 4. Do you know you came here to be significant? to love and be loved? to make a difference? 5. Do you know while doing those things you are supposed to have so much fun you have to share it? 6. Do you know your existence here changes and creates the whole history of humanity? Wow! These are some pretty big questions. Using my own scoring key, I made a 100%. See I happen to know all the answers are Yes. Every. Single. One. How did you do? As in education, many times being able to score a 100% on a test means virtually nothing. Let’s make these issues relevant. Look at these, personalized for you! 1. How do I matter to the Universe? 2. What is my purpose in the Universe, i.e., how can I be happy? 3. How am I personally known to the Spirit of all? 4. How can I be significant? How can I show and receive love? How can I make a difference? 5. How can I have fun and share that? 6. How do I create and change history? Embedded in, inherent to, and foundational to all of these are the two most important questions for every individual ever born: 1. Who am I, my true identity, my core Self with everything else stripped away? 2. Why am I on this planet, that is, what is my life Purpose? (Hint: You create it; you choose it; you get to live it!) For most people, these aren’t such easy questions to answer. See the difference between knowing stuff for a test and actually creating something with that knowledge?” ______________________________________________________________ Now, my new work this morning, which I only shared about three-fourths of earlier. INTRO 2 to something with The Grand Unified Theory of Humanity in the title! Superheroes rule — well, at least at the box office in recent years and in television ratings. It’s understandable. We want to be them, don’t we? I think so, but why would we? What makes us so preoccupied with heroes and superheroes? Why would we want to be one? The answer does not present much of a problem, does it? The world is fairly screwed up. Threats abound. Senseless, inhumane conditions exist around the globe: famines, homeless refugees, natural disasters, eco-destruction caused mainly by humans. Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could be just one person with superpowers and alleviate some pain or suffering or give some kind of hope and joy and deliverance to others? And that’s why I think the hero and superhero preoccupation and phenomena are so prevalent. Most of us are decent human beings when we see needs and wish we could do something about it. Many times, though, we feel helpless and hopeless ourselves. What if I told you that you can be a superhero? What if you didn’t have to have some genetic abnormality, extreme wealth, or super technological savvy? What if you have all the ingredients and knowledge dwelling in you as you read this sentence to be classified as a superhero? You do. I know it. You know it, at least the true You, your core Self, your Heart. How does your Heart know? Your Heart is eternal Spirit, but it’s personalized by everything else that is your being. You know what? I need you. In fact, this whole struggling world needs you. You have to step up and do your part, and your part is pretty damn appealing: Know yourself and Create your purpose, because without you doing that the rest of the superhero team is weakened. Oh, yes, we are a team. We have to be. The X-Men, Power Rangers, and all those guys — none of them could effect positive change on a large scale by themselves, and we can’t either. Why do you need to become a superhero right now? Because I bet within the last week or so, you have felt some degree of discomfort, disorientation, disappointment, or discontent with your job or your relationships, haven’t you? We can’t keep brushing aside our emotions and the dissonance of those searching questions of life and not suffer. When we sense any of these indicators that a gap exists between internal longing and external actions, that is the time to seriously consider the things I discuss in this little book. Be your own superhero, discover your greatness, and join the team of those awakened to their amazing powers. _____________________________________________________________ Opinions? Value? Blessings! 407 days in a row today for writing and publishing a daily (nightly) blog of approximately 600–1200 words. It has varied. A few have gone over that count. A few have fallen below it, most noticeably the day last December when I had a 103 ℉ fever but still squeezed out 169 words. Why would that be so important when I was the sickest I’d been for eleven years?
Because it made me feel better. It was no different than taking ibuprofen for the fever. If I wrote, I would feel better. All in the head? Mental? No. Spiritual. The things I write and speak about are not hobbies to me. They are not theories. They are my reality, my truth. When I say I co-created Purpose with Heart and the Spirit of all things, it means that my Purpose of helping others discover Self through communication arts is what I do, every day. It also means my current Vision is that of publishing my ebook and finishing and publishing my novel, as well as these daily writings. That could change. I do not cling to that. I do not cling to my Purpose either; I don’t need to because it is part of my being. So, when others suggest, as I have heard, that I need not continue this work, they have no idea. What would that be like? Like me saying “I am so exhausted from all this breathing. I need to take a break. Not to mention this heart beating — so tiresome. Yeah I like breathing and the beating of my heart, but I need a vacation for a few days, maybe weeks.” I was going to add blinking to this, but then I thought most people do take a break from blinking every time they sleep. Except I don’t. My eyes drift open when I sleep. They blink. When I was a boy and slept on the sofa in the living room, which was my bedroom, it would freak my mom and sister out if they happened to come in while I was sleeping. A couple times I woke up with my mom speaking to me. I would be such a grouch to her and demand to know why she woke me up. She thought I was awake because my eyes were open so wide! Therefore, when I use the analogy of not blinking while sleeping, it’s not entirely true of me. Just like I blink while I sleep, I also write while I sleep, ideas and words fermenting in the subconscious only to appear in those moments just coming to consciousness. And thus my point — writing, communication arts are part of my essence because I created it with Heart, made it so. So, no vacation necessary from my daily writing, not without negative consequences for me. I definitely feel no sense of urgency or, as I said, clinging.You see, thirteen months ago, I had no idea I would have published every day, nor did I know I would establish an Instagram account and work social media as I have. I didn’t know I would have the number of followers I have and how many folks a day would read my posts. I also have no idea of what the next year holds. I am going to publish, and in the meantime, I will watch for the magic and miracles I have experienced this past year and adjust if needed. Of course, I don’t always know when magic and miracles are happening to me. Sometimes, we don’t know till we look back how great and numerous they are. Working my Vision this week, I will be getting my part of the ebook finalized and continue The Fellowship of the Heart. I will be checking for magic and miracles, too, especially those that come through others in the fellowship of the Heart — those living it with me, not just writing it! Blessings for this new week! No one lives in isolation; each one of us by our actions affects more people than we will ever be fully aware of. And this is exactly why we need to, at all costs, including the almighty dollar, become self-aware.
If we do that, then we can know that the life energies we emit will be ones of honesty, and that can only be positive, having the best effect possible on others, ripples originating as each one of us spread across this existence and wash over others, one way or another. When John Donne said “No man is an island entire of itself” and that “any man’s death diminishes me,” it was the negative position of loss. When one dies, the richness of that life is gone, whatever qualities, characteristics, or personality that one had to offer in Donne’s evaluation. He isn’t saying that the contributions or life energy are lost, and he makes the point that we are a unity: when one dies, it’s our death. Ripples. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. examines the positive position of the effects we have on one another in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” In fact, he develops the sort of concept I wrote of this morning, especially regarding the pursuit of Happiness that is Ego pursuit and legitimized through legislation or stupid judicial rulings — the Indian Removal Act, Plessy v. Ferguson, and even the Constitution that treated slaves as less than a person for taxation census, plus too many more legalized injustices to mention here. King’s keen mind and keener Heart understood it: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Ripples. I referred to the fact that Ego substitutes it’s own happiness that can be very close to Heart-happiness pursuits. However, Ego pursuits have characteristics that do not hold up to Heart characteristics. King speaks of this idea when he delineates the difference between just laws, which should be obeyed, and unjust laws, which call for abolition: “Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. … An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal.” Ripples. But these ripples are the ones exerting serious consequences, ones that build into a group dynamic that, if they are generated by Ego, will result in the sorts of churlish government activity we see in America today, decisions and decrees that sound noble and a significant percentage of people claim as being their pursuit of happiness. If those pursuits are Ego pursuits and degrades others in legalized actions — Native Americans and the string of broken treaties and immigrants and their treatment and just too many others — then social injustice becomes a reality. Those pursuits of selfish happiness at the cost of others, especially when alternatives exist — “We want jobs and we want cheap oil. We don’t trust those ‘others.’ We buy our own health insurance, so they can, too, but they’re just lazy, freeloaders.” — become a slap in the face to the words of the Declaration of Independence itself: “…Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” We need pursuit of Heart-happiness to produce Heart-ripples. Ripples generated by those who know core Self and pursue Heart-happiness have a different effect. I love Robert Kennedy’s quote in his 1966 South Africa address: “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” Heart-ripples. Yes, if we want to start those sorts of ripples, the first step is to acknowledge Heart and put Ego in its place. Heart conversations need to occur in order to create Purpose and live Heart-truth. The degree of injustice in the world today reveals why this is so damn important, this self-awakening. When we get to know core Self, we will find ourselves pretty lovable. When we love ourselves with Heart-love, then we are going to love others. An awful lot of problems could be solved this way — ripples of love. Blessings of love to you! St. Patrick! I find the myth around the man intriguing and fun, but I read the words of Patrick and find him inspiring. Oh, not because I believe what he believed in the way he did. No, he’s inspiring to me because he knew his personal truth, lived in devotion to it, and was content with his work.
To the best of my knowledge, Patrick did not know all that would accrue to his name. As I read his Confessions, he didn’t need any of that to know his happiness. He was so convinced of his own truth that he didn’t need anyone else’s approval. In fact, he was blasted by his own church who wanted, for some odd reason, to disenfranchise him for things he had done thirty years previously, things that he had made fully known before his ordination as a deacon. It was all good, though. In addition to that, he lived in a hostile world where Picts and Gaels looked to slaughter docile christians. He reamed them for that in a letter to the murdering army. He makes it clear that he trusts God and gives all credit to God and Jesus Christ for everything. His everything was just going around preaching and encouraging and caring for souls. Yes, I think he limited himself through his own beliefs, but it does not detract from his own wholeness of the life he lived. He kept it tight around his personal truth, and in the 5th century of poverty and violence and superstition, he knew happiness in his Purpose. He chose it. He lived it. He was keenly self-aware, and that is where it all starts. Beyond the strict boundaries and bonds of organized religion, it’s even more important. People are responsible for self, for knowing our own soul-mind-body complex comes with Ego as the default operating system; however, we need to awaken to that part of us that does not stop speaking to us: Heart. That is the second operating system we must choose, as Patrick chose christian beliefs (which in some ways was his Heart working). That choice determines how we live out Spirit in the mortal body. Spirit gets imprinted with our whole being; in a way, instead of us inheriting Sprit, Spirit inherits us in the form we have taken on arrival in time and space. Spirit gets to experience physical life through us. How do we live out Spirit? By knowing what this whole complex of 60 trillion or so cells holds as truth, what enthuses, moves, drives, delights, and makes us feel the reality that we are Spirit at core. This is our personal truth, and our response to that should be to live that truth, no matter what Ego says or objects to with fair-sounding rationalizations. Patrick knew the workings of Ego and what living his Heart truth meant. At one point, it made Ego-sense to go back to Britain: “I could wish to leave them (the Irish) to go to Britain…to visit my home country and my parents” (Confessions of Patrick). He knew his Heart and wouldn’t go. Ego lost. Ego works so strongly that most people resign themselves, whether consciously or not, to despair — no hope of living their dreams, especially when faced with serious opposition. Sometimes those dreams themselves are Ego-generated. We must look deep into Self and see and hear Heart as we gaze into the mirror, know Our truth, and then be faithful to it. That’s Wholeness, when all this soul-mind-body and the two operating systems are in their proper place, when we wake up knowing our Purpose and diving into it, when we know happiness because we are being true to Self. Wholeness, the whole Self, must include conscious connection with Heart, eternal Spirit within. Patrick would have understood the concept. He may not have agreed with it, but I didn’t get to have a conversation with him about it. I’m pretty sure he would have, though. He was a man of love. Love of Self, others, and living Purpose marks those who know their own truth through their fellowship with their own Heart. It’s a good thought for today. Love and live that Love. Happy St. Patrick’s Day! |
Questions to consider:How many times have you asked yourself or simply thought about the following questions?
Who am I, really? What is my truth? How do my actions reveal what I really feel and believe? What would I do with my life if I could do anything? What is my passion? Why am I here? How can I discover answers to any of these questions? If you have considered any of these questions, I hope that my experiences and writing will give you some guidance. Please read my blog and comment and share your thoughts. I would love to hear from you! Archives
December 2019
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