Saturday, May 18, 2013

Our Inner Garden...

Seeds, there are many kinds of seeds, they mostly come from plant life, seeds that are good for food, medicine and beauty. There are also bad seeds, honestly in nature there are no "bad plants", only the ones we don't wish to reap, such as weeds, noxious plants, invasive plants, poisonous plants, thorny plants...

If you plant watermelon seeds, you expect to get a watermelon vine, hopefully with watermelon fruit, if you plant corn seeds, you expect to get corn stalks with corn growing on them... how silly would it be to plant okra and expect to see peas growing??? What if we plant weed seeds, or if we don't cultivate our little piece of ground to remove the weed seeds that blow in from neighboring fields?  Then the good seeds we plant may be choked out by the weeds. The good seeds and plants can be delicate, they need tender loving care to sprout, grow and produce fruit. The weeds are hearty, they don't require care, in fact many thrive on stony, uncultivated, dry, hardened, ignored ground, they will steal the sun, moisture and nutrients that should be going toward your good crops.

There are other kinds of seeds, the ones we sow with our minds, our thoughts, our intentions and words. Make no mistake, what you sow you WILL reap. What kinds of thoughts go through your mind on a daily basis? Are they negative in nature? Even if you don't speak the words or perform an action, negative thoughts are just like weed seeds, and if you allow it free run of your mind, then this is what you will reap. Negative thoughts breed negativity in life, what do you think when you see yourself in a mirror? Are you thinking "I'm fat", "I'm too skinny", "I'm ugly", "I'm stupid", "My nose is too big", you get the idea... these are seeds that you are planting in your mind, seeds that will grow and choke out the good that you have inside.

How about changing those thoughts to positive ones, good seeds, things that will nourish you and make you smile? You can start out easy if you wish, find something you like about yourself and concentrate on that, no one is ugly, God created you and His creations are beautiful, there are many ways you can focus on the positive things, and saying them, even in the privacy of your own mind, it WILL create a beautiful garden inside of you, once you have that going on, that beauty will show to the world.

You can plant seeds in other people as well, how to you talk to other people? Especially those who are the closest to you? Sometimes our words are painful to the ones we love, it's not that we intend to cause pain, but words can hurt or words can build someone up, which are you doing? Do your words make your mate (or child or friend) smile or shrink away?

One of the best things I learned from PB was how to be kind, being in a relationship isn't a competition, we are on the same team, on the same side, it's us against the world. He goes out of his way to compliment me on a daily basis, if the kitchen is a wreck and I clean the stove, when he comes in, he doesn't point out the dishes in the sink or the dirty towels on the floor, he points to the stove and tells me what a good job I did on cleaning that. Guess what that makes me want to do??? It makes me feel good about myself and makes me want to please him even more.

Meals are the same way, he ALWAYS compliments me on the meals I make, even the ones that flop, he finds SOMETHING good to say about it. This taught me the value of words, he taught me the power of words. It took me a little time, but I consciously began to compliment PB more and more, at first it felt funny, forced, I meant what I was saying but I wasn't used to saying it that often, but as time went by it became easier and more natural, seeing how it makes him feel is my reward, that in turn makes him want to please me more.

It becomes a cycle, he makes me feel good, I make him feel good, we both feel good, it makes both of us want to be on the same team together, us against the world. Don't wait for your mate (or child, or friend) to start either, YOU start it and continue doing it, planting one seed will not a garden make, especially if you are also spreading noxious weed seeds, you need to plant lots and lots of positive seeds by saying nice, gentle things, compliments and stop spreading the weed seeds in there, even if you think your mate is throwing weeds toward you, if you are persistent, the good seeds will kill out the negative ones, don't forget that after you plant these seeds of good, you need to nurture them, planting them then ignoring them doesn't work very well, you must give them TLC and love.

So look at your inner garden, what is planted, what is growing? Is it weedy? Do you need to plant some positive seeds? Do you need to cultivate the soil? Do you need to remove some weeds?

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Contentment

Where am I now?

contentment  
con·tent·ment [kuhn-tent-muhnt]
noun
1. the state of being contented; satisfaction; ease of mind.
2. Archaic. the act of making contentedly satisfied.
Origin: 1400–50; late Middle English contentment; Middle French.
Synonyms 1. See happiness.

World English Dictionary content 2 (kənˈtɛnt)  adj
1. mentally or emotionally satisfied with things as they are 
2. assenting to or willing to accept circumstances, a proposed course of action, etc — vb
3. ( tr ) to make (oneself or another person) content or satisfied: to content oneself with property — n
4. peace of mind; mental or emotional satisfaction

This is something I generally am, I know not the best grammar, but it's true, while we can't always control what is going on around us, we do have absolute control over HOW we react to things. Oh sure I can get angry, but my set point is contented, happy, calm... I can even get excited about things, being excited isn't necessarily a positive or negative thing, you can get excited and cause yourself damage (emotionally and physically) if you all it to rule your life. 

I am not into zen stuff, but if I were, I think I'd make a great zen person, instead I'm zen for God. :) I know things happen, sometimes good, sometimes not so good, but it's all for the betterment of ourselves. Yes, even the seemingly negatives that pop up in our lives, these tests, these roadblocks, I feel like everything happens for a reason, and even that seemingly negative experience is a growing and learning experience for me.

For example, you are on your way to work, you are running late, everything is slowing you down, you are working on your "excuse" you will give your boss, it's starting to rain, oh great... then you have a flat tire, ughhhhhh! You have to stop, hopefully you know how to change a tire, have all the necessary tools or you might have to call for help, either way, now you are really late for work... you could be thinking to yourself, wondering why it ALWAYS happens to you? 

So, now you are back on the road, you've called in to work to let them know why you aren't there yet, then as you come around the corner on the freeway, there is a huge backup of traffic, there has been a major wreck... soooo if you hadn't had that flat tire, you would have been speeding through there in a tizzy right at the time of the wreck. So all of those things that were blocking you from getting to work on time, probably just saved your life, or at the very least saved you from a wrecked car and possibly a wrecked life.

I can tell you that sort of thing has happened to me more than once, there was a time when I was looking at getting a pretty huge financial settlement, for 3 years this went back and forth with lawyers, meetings and such... eventually it all came down to one thing and that wasn't in my favor, it wasn't right, it should have been in my favor, but God did me a favor by not allowing me to "win" that settlement... I guarantee you that if I had won that settlement and gotten even a percentage of what I was expecting, I wouldn't be where I am now, I would be living quite a different life and I don't think it would have been nearly as good as I have it now.  

I enjoy my life, I am happy, more importantly I am content, what about you? If not, what would it take to get you into that state?

The Good, The Bad and The Overrated

I watched an interesting documentary a few hours ago, it's called

Angels, Aliens & UFOs

This is basically a show about seeing things through video cameras that the naked eye cannot see, things such as lights, orbs, shapes, shadows and such. At first I wasn't very impressed, the images and videos tended to be blurry and quite frankly I couldn't see what they said they were seeing, but it did get better as it went on.

Here is a preview of the show
Some of the things I saw in the video were pretty close to the things I see, the shadow on the building, some of the lights going across the sky, I also liked that the host of the show referred to scripture, it wasn't all "new age" or full of "let's meet our alien brothers"...

I watched this on NetFlix, I am enjoying a free month of use then I'll most likely cancel my membership, or I might keep it for a while like I did before, at least until I run out of shows I want to watch, this is my second free month they have offered to me.

I'd say if you aren't a NetFlix subscriber, it would be worth getting the free month just to watch this show.

I noticed it didn't have good reviews, I gave it a 5 star rating, for what it was it was pretty good, much better than the ghost hunting shows on TV nowdays. 

I have pretty much stopped watching the ghost hunting shows, I used to enjoy watching Ghost Hunters, especially the first few seasons, they seemed to be pretty genuine back then, they actually had shows where they found nothing, or they found normal explanations for what was thought to be paranormal activity.

Then, slowly over time, they would find something paranormal in each and every show, maybe their target audience didn't like seeing them find nothing, maybe they quit showing the investigations where they found nothing or found normal answers... I don't know what happened but it got to be very predictable and quite frankly boring... I still catch the show every now and again, but I make no special effort to watch it.

I couldn't stand all the other ghost hunting shows that cropped up after Ghost Hunters, I would watch then a time or two, most of them were a joke, filled with bad night vision distorted face cams of screaming investigators running away when anything so called "paranormal" happened... 

I had all but given up on those kinds of shows, I didn't bother even looking at the more strange ones, there's one out now about southern hicks hunting ghosts, and yet another about swampland rednecks hunting ghosts, another that combines ghost hunting with gold mining... I am glad there is enough interest in this subject to warrant people trying to make these really bad shows... I just can't watch them though...

Until a couple of weeks ago, I was at my neighbor's house doing some laundry, I turned on the TV and on one of the channels was a show called Haunted Collector, I had heard about it but really thought it would be just too far out for me, I watched one segment and part of another, I couldn't believe it, but I found myself wanting to see the rest of the show, so I found it online and watched it. Today I was doing laundry there again and they were having a marathon of this show, I watched a couple of the episodes and so far I like it, they don't run screaming every time something happens, they seem to do quite a bit of research on the location they are working, and they seem to be pretty normal people with real feelings, they don't come across as fake, they also don't jump to conclusions.

I'll be investigating this show more closely.