Inspiring Stories of Love, Healing, & Empowerment
Inspirations
February 2003
Issue Number 14
Welcome to Inspirations! Global Community For All sends out this e-zine filled with short, inspiring stories of love, healing, and empowerment once every three months. We share these wonderfully inspiring stories to encourage and inspire each other to be the best we can be each day of our lives. Thanks for joining us, and may these words inspire us to ever deepen our commitment to love, heal, and empower; to open to divine guidance; and to choose what's best for all.
Desperately Wanting Stillness–Nancy Smeltzer
"Be still and listen", I admonished myself, as I sat in a meditation circle. After all, to practice slowing down and being with the quiet of inner calmness had been my ambition on driving to the meeting. Such peace was not to be mine that night.
Being manic depressive, I was in a full blown ecstatic state. When so enchanted with my own brilliance, I often have little patience with dealing with myself, or other mere mortals. My thoughts race from one exciting idea to another, to another, and to another. Sometimes, I eventually get back to that first scintillating idea, and then repeat the same thought over and over. There was no way that I was going to be able to still my thoughts that night.
To add to the mental confusion, I was late in arriving. I came barging through the door into the serene, contemplative group in the middle of one of their meditation sessions. As I was incredibly embarrassed, I tried to silently pad to the other side of the room where I could find a low chair. "Not a good way to start off on peaceful pursuits", I thought.
I shut my eyes and quickly chose healing as the theme for my meditations that night. In the past, a lover had awakened me to the possibilities of using the infinity sign as a symbol of one's existence. For him, one loop is used for the inner self, and the other side for the outside world. For myself, I had adopted that internal motion before he had told me of his interpretation. I have used that sign with great success as a calming action as I mentally sway with the curves of the image. "Perhaps tonight might be another time to utilize that representation", I thought.
The first couple of times around the loops were as if I was racing a car around a track. I definitely needed to slow down, and I deliberately put on my mental breaks. With great concentration on my part, I let my inner momentum carry me up to the top of one loop. There I paused, just as a roller coaster does. I then plunged downwards, and then rushed up the opposite side. As I mentally went up the left side, I would say inwardly, "Heal myself". Then as the right circuit was starting, I would say "Heal the world". I repeated several cycles this way, and was almost able to still my thoughts enough that I could get beyond actually saying the words. What I wanted was to leave the words behind, and just feel the healing message.
Having lavished attention to my own well-being and that of the planet for what seemed like an appropriate time span, I then decided to direct my thoughts towards others. The worldly concern on the right side of the figure eight was replaced by my thoughts for others. To my surprise, colors began to appear on the mental screen behind my closed eyelids. As each person's name was replaced by another, the colors would change, too.
For the most part, a basic blue dominated the colors I saw. Some friends, however, had glimmers of light gold at the top of their images. Some of these brighter pictures also had hints of a bright white light, as if an intense sunlight was bathing the other colors with a glow.
At first, I was delighted with my pictures, as a child would be with a new toy. I soon, however, began to doubt my interpretations of my color choices. I began to imagine that the appearance of the different hues was heavily influenced by my perceptions of that person's well being. Disappointment quickly set in at the thought of my own mind creating the displays rather than from some message from the Universe.
So I settled in to enjoy the light show. I began to notice that as soon as I changed the focus of my attention, the image changed with each new person's name. While most were pretty much variations on the blue and light theme, there were a few exceptions. One man's name brought up flickers of red, as if a fire were leaping up to cover up some of the blue. I took the red to mean that that friend was angry about something. When I talked to him the next day about what had happened, he said that he had indeed been harboring resentment.
The most interesting picture appeared when I spoke the name of a lover. He is, without a doubt, the most truly loving man I have ever met. Before an action is taken, he tries to consider what is best for all involved. My mental depiction of him was mostly filled with an almost blinding light on the entire right side. Joyful is how I would describe the scene, just as the man is whose name invoked the picture.
After the meditation sessions were over, I mentioned to the leader my use of the infinity symbol to still my thoughts. He smiled and told me of his work with troubled youth. To help these boys quell some of their anger, they stretch their arms out in front of them with their two index fingers touching. Then, using big movements, they move their arms as they repeatedly form the infinity sign in the air.
I'm learning that the figure eight sign is appearing too much in my life to be just a coincidence. I know that when I inwardly sway as I round the curves, I am filled with great peace. For that reason, I've decided that I will continue to attain personal fulfillment by my kinesthetic meditation.
Your sacred love flows into me.
My sacred love flows out to you.
Pickup in the Rain - Author unknown
One late night, an older African American woman was standing on the side of an Alabama highway trying to endure a lashing rain storm. Her car had broken down and she desperately needed a ride. Soaking wet, she decided to try to flag down a car. Eventually, a young white man stopped to help her–generally unheard of in those conflict-filled 1960s. The man took her to safety, helped her get assistance, and put her in a taxi cab. She seem to be in a big hurry! She wrote down his address, thanked him and drove away.
Seven days went by, and a knock came on the man's door. To his surprise, a giant console color TV was delivered to his home. A special note was attached. It read:
Thank you so much for assisting me on the highway the other night. The rain drenched not only my clothes, but my spirits. Then you came along. Because of you, I was able to make it to my dying husband's bedside just before he passed away. God bless you for helping me and unselfishly serving others.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Nat King Cole
May I inspire all beings
to open ever more to our shared divinity, to see the divine in all.
Transforming from Enemy to Friend–Fred Burks
When I went to China to teach English for two years in 1983, I was automatically assumed to be a spy. Back in those days China was very communist and very few Westerners had been allowed into the country for many decades. The communist propaganda machine had convinced virtually all Chinese that Americans were the enemy. We were seen as greedy, careless capitalists, never to be trusted. I'm sure they asked themselves why this young, vibrant American would want to spend two years volunteering to teach English in a little known city in central China? He's a spy, of course!
Communist China in those days was very rigidly structured. Every citizen belonged to a work unit which determined what they could or could not do in many aspects of their lives. The work unit provided a way for the communist leaders to control their citizens and to keep an eye on them to assure they weren't doing anything that might be considered "counter revolutionary."
The leaders at the college where I taught were truly happy to have a native English speaker come to help their teachers and students to learn English. At the same time, as I was outside of the work unit and obviously a spy, I needed close watching. Americans were still considered the enemy and worthy of caution and suspicion. A young, very intelligent teacher was assigned the responsibility of spying on me. He was to make sure I didn't get into anything I wasn't supposed. How do I know I was being spied on? Because after we became good friends, this man who had been assigned to spy on me told me so!
Shortly after arriving in China, I told my superiors that if at all possible I would like to live with my Chinese colleagues in the single male teachers dormitory. I was told this was not possible. Foreigners were generally isolated from locals whenever possible. No white person had ever been allowed to live in a Chinese dorm in this city of 5 million. Yet I badly wanted to live as the Chinese people do, and having the two-bedroom apartment they assigned me all to myself was literally unheard of by any standards in crowded China.
I was gentle, but persistent, about wanting to move. I particularly felt that it was totally unfair for me, a young, inexperienced lad of 25 years, to have better living accommodations than the college president. Being persistent, and being a warm and friendly guy well-liked by my students, eventually they decided to give me a concession by allowing me to have a Chinese friend, Chen Chungeng, as a roommate in the apartment I had been assigned.
Chen and I became best of friends in our months of living together. I taught him guitar; he helped me with my Mandarin; and we had lots of fun doing things like running to the nearby Yangtze River, singing together, and going out to movies with friends. As he came to realize that I wasn't a spy and was actually a great friend, he eventually revealed that he had been assigned to spy on me.
Though I knew the chances were slim, I continued to ask both Chen and my supervisors if I might be able to actually move into the dorm so that I could experience life fully with my Chinese friends.
After several months of living together, one day Chen surprised me by saying it was a good time to go and talk with the president of the college about moving into the dorms. He regularly reported to his superiors and the president about me, and he sensed the time was right. As we had become such good friends, Chen wanted to help me fulfill my dream of living a truly Chinese lifestyle.
Less than a month later, I found myself finally living my dream of sharing a fun dorm room with three other great Chinese friends in the male teachers dorm! Yea!!! We went on to have a most wonderful year together sharing countless stories and good times together. By the time I sadly parted company with all my wonderful Chinese friends, this American, who had once been seen as the enemy, had become a true friend.
May I inspire all to move from
fear to love and from victim to creator.
Thanks for sharing in these inspiring stories with us. We wish you lots of love, inspiration, and all the very best in the coming months.
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www.WantToKnow.info - Reliable, verifiable information on major cover-ups
www.weboflove.org - Strengthening the Web of Love that interconnects us all
