The following article includes pertinent information that may cause you to reconsider what you thought you understood. The most important thing is to study with an open mind and be willing to revise your understanding if necessary.

What Really Matters.

We are here on this earth to learn acceptance. Acceptance of everything that life can throw at us, the good and the bad. One still needs to work at right livelihood and fight for truth and justice, but there will always remain many things we simply have no control over, and we must learn to accept this. We have no other choice but acceptance if we want to progress. Acceptance leads to forgiveness which leads to progression, but it is never easy. How does one accept the continued support and popularity of war criminals masquerading as leaders or child molesters.

To embrace acceptance is to become objective…about everything in this life and on this planet. By becoming objective we are able to disconnect from many of the attachments that bind us to servitude. In the ultimate scheme of things our lifelong tribulations are insignificant. We are here such a short time, and for most of us, our influence and ability to change anything for the better is limited or remote.

The path of least resistance for most unwary souls is to be caught up in the obligations pertaining to cycles of birth, family, children, and the roles we are taught or forced to assume. In this mode the freedom of disconnection alludes us. But it is through the gradual disconnection to our worldly attachments that allows us to realize how trivial jealousy, deceit, anger and acquisition are in relation to the big picture of existence which extends well beyond our occluded perceptions. True freedom comes when one is free of these distracting imperfections and can find forgiveness towards those who have wittingly or not caused us harm or pain.

The most difficult part is to forgive yourself, but this becomes available once you realize that most of the wrong decisions made, and hurts caused to others, were made from the immature vantage point you were in at the time. You didn’t have the tools or perspective you now have to realize that bad things happen to good people, that what you may have thought was important and worth the shortcuts, was in fact just a blind alley of glitter or delusion. If you can reach this level of awareness, to see that past decisions and actions were made by a less complete and understanding self, you will then be able to find compassion and eventually forgiveness of yourself for the harm you caused to yourself and to others as a result of your shortcomings.

Nobody said it was easy. That is why, in my view, most people continue to go round and round in their mental prisons, some eventually spiraling downwards, most doomed to instant replay, and only a few who find the doorway leading to salvation. Is deliverance available to everyone? I don’t know, in fact, I doubt it. So many with besmirched and sullied egos will inevitably follow their ill conceived prejudices to the grave. Or perhaps we all have epiphanies at one time or another and it is up to us whether this brief unanticipated opening into other domains should be acknowledged and pursued, or simply dismissed as a momentary slip of the gears as in a dream.

One thing that cannot be dismissed or ignored is the reality of life, death, corruption and beauty. Also intelligence, as it is apparent that this faculty, above all, has allowed our species the ability to comprehend these very notions, and through freewill, choose to manipulate them for better or worse. Most social manipulation via political, monarchal or religious constitution, served some evolutionary purpose but ultimately failed, because no man or demigod can impart spiritual epiphanies on another. Each individual soul must make a choice to see or not to see. On a collective scale, sooner or later any Emperor in any guise is observed to have no clothes, in fact never did, and becomes exposed.

We find ourselves at this time, in this hyped electro-techno modern world, either intellectually adrift from the old paradigm of institutional oppression and its attendant restraints and excesses, living in our own delusions, or blindly and fanatically grasping its slimy tentacles as evidenced in the Muslim world. Neither is sustainable, and more likely than not, to clash inducing further misery. Attachment to any belief, even if it’s a non belief, is sowing the seeds of eventual self-destruction. Only through disconnection from externally imposed belief or self-seeking illusion, and by acceptance and the fostering of forgiveness, can we hope to find redemption. Furthermore, this enlightenment can only be realized on an individual basis. The only exception where group fervor is benign is in the unfettered praise of the gift of life through gratitude and thanksgiving, as evidenced by the enhanced aura of such gatherings. The best we can do towards the edification of grace in this world is to help others by encouraging them to follow their own insights, to impartially lend a genuinely helping hand in practical and useful areas, or to communicate love through art and beauty if we are so gifted.

Sadly, scientific studies tell us that in the marketing world at least, only 2 percent of any given population can think for itself. The remaining overwhelming majority can only act when persuaded or cajoled by an external entity, which usually means political, religious or commercial coercion. And of course, foolishly allowing this majority to lend control of our lives to any of these interest groups has resulted in our collective consciousness being entangled in yet another fine mess. The best we can hope for now, as thinking individuals, is to be adept and agile enough to position ourselves as advantageously as we can, in circumstance and place, without sacrificing our hard gained spiritual insights to expediency especially at the expense of others. We must continue to disconnect while at the same time investing in pursuit of right livelihood, which usually means sharing the best of what is in us, not an easy feat. Writing this article is my humble attempt to add some clarity to the constant clamor of present day unconscionable self-aggrandizement, and the inevitable pervading disillusionment that will soon be swirling around us.

The day will come when you can use something you read about here for beneficial impact. Then you’ll be glad you took the time to learn more about actualizing acceptance.

Henry Ramsey is a writer and renewable energy systems designer who now rides an Ebike and is webmaster of several New Paradigm Internet Marketing sites including MyEbikes.com MyEbikes.com and HappyThoughtLifestyles.com HappyThoughtLifestyles.com.

Let’s talk about boat design. In New England, where there is lots of deep, rough water. Boats designed and built for use there have narrow, deep draft fixed keels; they also have high sides (freeboard) that will withstand the big waves. Examples: the beautiful dory fishing boats and fast schooners cod fishermen used on the rough seas of the Grand Banks. In short, these boats are built to withstand the local conditions and be safe and seaworthy at all times.

From the New Jersey coast south to Florida, the condition of the shallow water is often described as “thin.” Therefore, boats designed for use in those waters are mostly flat-bottomed, shallow draft and with a very short distance from the deck of the boat to the water (called freeboard). Examples are boats such as the sailing sneakbox, and hunter’s duck boats, the 22 foot racing scows and powered Garveys with their flat bottoms and wedge-like front ends (bows) that only take a few inches of water to float.

Then, if we move our attention across the nation to the rivers of the Rocky Mountains, and on then to the turbulent coast of the Pacific Northwest with the fast moving rivers that rush down the mountains into the ocean, the boats designed for use out there are much different. They are rugged, stoutly built, with very narrow width (beam) high sides (freeboard). All are features designed to make them seaworthy and safe to use in those always-turbulent waters
of that rough and rugged part of the USA. Now, think about this: God knew the water and weather conditions that were in Noah’s future when he designed and commanded Noah to build the ark. As we know, rain, big storms and worldwide flooding were destined to be in Noah’s future on the ark.

Of course, Noah did not have a clue. Why? Because he had never even seen rain let alone: floods or rough seas. But on faith, he said to God: “Yes Lord.” Then he simply followed orders. He built the Ark the way God told him to build it. He simply did what God told him to do. Of course, the ark Noah built was exactly what the designer, God, knew was needed to provide safety and comfort for all on board. It was a boat designed to be comfortable and safe in spite of the bad weather and rough seas they were soon to encounter in the days ahead.
Now, think about this:

Everything you need to know about life, you can learn from Noah’s Ark.

1. Don’t miss the boat.

2. Remember that we are all in the same boat.

3. Plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark.

4. Stay fit. When you’re 600 years old, someone may ask you to do something really big.

5. Don’t listen to critics. Just get on with the job that needs to be done.

6. Build your future on high ground.

7: For safety’s sake, travel in pairs.

8. Speed isn’t always an advantage. The snails were on the ark with the cheetahs.

9. When you’re stressed, float a while.

10. Remember, amateurs built the Ark and the Titanic by professionals.

11. No matter the storm, when you are with God there’s always a rainbow waiting.

Finally, remember this, God designed you and me in the same way he designed the ark. A design he knew would prepare us for the conditions he knew we would face in our individual lifetime journeys here on earth. He provided us with all the equipment needed: heart, wisdom, love and faith in him to overcome the obstacles he knew we would face day after day, year after year.

In fact, we might say God designed us like Noah’s ark. He gave each of us a “hull” of worldly wisdom, and many “planks” of solid trust in him. All of us are built on a “keel”, a foundation, of His steadfast love.

In short, we could say we also voyage through this life much as Noah did in a vessel, an ark, (our bodies) designed by God. I suggest a good name for our God designed “arks” would be – FAITH!

Terry Weber 7/16/06

Website: yrret.stirsite.com/ yrret.stirsite.com

Website: crafty-ones.com/web/viewproduct.asp?prodID=1244

Terry Weber is a retired advertising/direct mail sales letter copywriter and
inventor of several useful items. Terry and his wife Doris are Habitat For
Humanity, RV Care-A- Vanners who, for the past eight years have volunteered to
help build more than 39 houses all over the USA. They travel to and from the 2-
week long builds in their RV. The money they make on their Crafty-Ones website
helps them pay their expenses to and from those volunteer Habitat builds.

P.S. Due to the high cost of gasoline we can no longer afford to drive the RV to
Habitat builds. The RV is parked until gasoline prices come down.

Have you ever noticed what can happen if you just met a friend in the street and shared a cab? You are both in the cab, all is fine, you plan to attend a social function and suddenly your cab gets involved in an accident. The police comes and you are a witness in an unforeseen event. Per chance? Not quite. There might be an explanation.
All people have vibrations emanating from their bodies. Some people have much stronger vibrations than others (as evident in the human aura) while others have energies very focused at a certain point in the human system (physical, mental or spiritual) and of greater strength than most. Such people are instrumental in attracting to themselves events of a positive or negative nature. As in the case of an earthquake that has an epicenter. I term such people as catalysts because that’s what they are.

In history we find examples of positive catalysts like Gandhi, a peace maker and negative catalysts like Hitler, Mussolini or Rasputin who brought down the Romanoff Dynasty by his negative vibrations.

We must never underestimate the influence of such catalysts upon people whose energies are not as focused. You would say “where?”

The concentration of energies may be on money. The result will be extreme events in financial matters. Mr. Greenspan, the Chairman of the Fed can create reverberations in the financial markets of the world by increasing the prime interest rate by 0.25%.

When a catalyst’s energies are focused on the physical plane like sex, the events of a sexual nature in form of sexual perversion may manifest. They may not be evident to the friends or relatives of the person concerned.

The negative catalysts create milestones in the history of the human race. Karl Marx created quite a stir with his theory of Communism and his ideology remains a milestone among the Eastern and Western cultures because his energies were focused on the idea of a government. Karl Marx with Friedrich Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848 that changed the system of governments in the East and West.

Generally speaking, there are people among us, who are stronger than the rest and create profound events in the lives of those around them. Look at any leader. What we see is that lives change for the better or worse of all people connected with a leader. Such changes do not become apparent instantly but they do occur.

There are people who carry with them an aura of fatality or of a positive event. A little observation will make it quite clear. Stay with such a person and watch the events taking place. Not every person is a catalyst. Most people have their energies quite scattered and they make up the work force of a nation.

Association with right people can make the difference between success and failure in life.

The Titanic disaster attracted more than 800 people to it. So great was its pull. There are smaller catalysts, too. Such people are the cause of an event. Nothing happens without action. An event is merely a reaction to an action performed consciously or unconsciously by a person.

When we become aware of two types of catalysts in our lives, we can then save ourselves from many negative events in our lives by dissociating ourselves from extreme people.

Ostaro is the Producer of “Cobra’s Wish”, a digital movie ( cobraswish.com cobraswish.com). He is a veteran media personality and has appeared hundreds of times on television,
radio and in print media. He frequently appears on radio nationally.
He is the host/producer of the Ostaro Show (Time Warner and RCN Cable TV every other Fri and Sun in NYC) featuring the best in celebrity horoscopes. Listed in Who’s Who in America, he is a positive thinker and the author of the “Art & Craft of Success: 10 Steps” published by Svarg Syndicate Inc, NYC. Mr. Ostaro is a Premier Hindu Astrologer of New York City, and is a Kentucky Colonel.

ostaro.com ostaro.com; mailto:ostaro@ostaro.com ostaro@ostaro.com

I don’t believe in magic, of course. Hardly anybody does, but we all live by it. It permeates our lives every day, and we wouldn’t give it up for all the science on earth. Most of us can’t. We can’t because we aren’t aware of how completely we live within its thrall. Who can break a bond they don’t know exists?

My first magical lesson came when I was five. I was playing with the crippled girl who lived down the street. We didn’t like each other much, but being the only children in the neighborhood, we made do with each other in a grudging, bickering way. At one point in our play she took two bananas off the kitchen counter and told me to pick the one I wanted. I wanted the bigger one. I knew I shouldn’t take the big banana. To take it from a crippled girl would be especially bad. But I wanted it. So I took it.

At this point, in defense of myself, I’d like to mention that I was cross-eyed. I’m not saying that cross-eyed trumps crippled, and to be completely truthful, it wasn’t much of a factor in my case — morally speaking, I mean — because I didn’t know I was cross-eyed. No one had mentioned it, and I wasn’t an observant child.

I might have forgotten about the bananas by now except that mine had a big brown soft spot in it that ran all the way down the side. About two inches of my banana was edible. Her banana was perfect, and she ate it while I watched. If I had been generous, she would have been eating the rotten banana.

I knew what this meant. Somebody was watching, keeping score. It was God maybe. Who it was didn’t matter. What mattered was that I got the message. I never have taken the big banana again. I’ve never taken the biggest piece of chicken or the last scoop of mashed potatoes or the cookie with the most chocolate chips. I’ve never pushed anybody aside at the bargain table. I say to myself that I don’t care as much about such things. I don’t want them as much as other people do, but that’s not the truth. The truth is that I am still ruled by the bad magic of the big banana.

I was smart enough not to tell anybody in my family about it. If I had, they would have given me the horselaugh and brayed, “Taught you a lesson, huh?” I didn’t call this experience magical even to myself, but it clearly was, just as magical as that bad witch who wasn’t invited to the party and got so mad that she cursed poor little Sleeping Beauty.

It was a curse for sure. Luckily the big banana curse was a minor, manageable spell, evoked by my behavior and not by a capricious universe. The behavior it evoked dovetailed well with my Christian upbringing. But the lesson of the banana was deeper even than Christian teachings because it didn’t have to be taught. It had been experienced, and it seemed to affirm something basic in the fabric of reality. It didn’t, of course. But it seemed to.

Life went on. My eye got fixed, sort of. The doctors call it satisfactory. It turns outward a little instead of inward a lot. It hasn’t been much of a handicap, as far as I know, and it has helped me
some. I understand outsiders in a way that not everybody does. Or I try to. Not because I’m smarter or more sensitive, but I know how it feels to be among those who can be summed up with one word of physical attribute. There are lots of them — cross-eyed, fat, crippled, bald, weak-chinned, spastic, crazy — and knowing what that feels like makes me listen harder. Or try to. If I wanted to make it a joke, I’d say I look at the world askance. Nobody who knows me would disagree with that.

I grew up. I became a big-city newspaper reporter, which is not a hopeful or fanciful or magical profession. If anybody had asked me two years ago to describe the age we live in, I’d have painted a picture right in line with what the world’s wise thinkers expected of me, except that it would be utterly dismal.

I’d have said science is our true God. I’d have said that we live in a world of marvels gone stale, adrift in an empty cosmos. We hear no voices but our own. We believe no omens, listen to no oracles. If otherworldly visions come to us, we close our eyes. And we never, ever think that we might have some great task, noble destiny, or grand calling. Such thoughts are generally believed to indicate a need for medication.

That’s how lots of people would describe life, but if an extraterrestrial were to watch these nonbelievers as they go about their lives, it would become quite clear that they do believe in much more than a material, soulless world. I first began to know about these hidden beliefs because I wrote a book on Lily Dale, a western New York community of Spiritualists where people have been talking to the dead for five generations. I wrote the book because I thought people with such extravagant ideas were rare, an oddity, something strange that would excite wonder. What a chucklehead.

Whether the dead talk back is a matter of contention, of course. I was careful about that, not wanting to be branded a crazy. But it didn’t matter. In writing the book, I’d been transformed. I’d become a person who could be told things. People all over the country started coming up to me in bookstores, at meetings, during parties to tell me stories they didn’t usually share with strangers.

They’d often start by glancing to each side. They would shrug as if they weren’t to be held responsible for what was coming. Then they’d say, “I don’t know what this means,” or, “I’m just going to tell you what happened.” One by one they came, butchers and bakers and candlestick makers. Few would have described themselves as believers in magic.

Once, for instance, I was in a Bible Belt state with a group of women who raise charitable funds for children’s hospitals. I talked about my book on the town that talks to the dead. When the talk turned to spirituality, heads nodded about the room as several women attested to their strong belief in Jesus Christ as their own personal, living savior and to their complete reliance on the Bible as the direct word of God, suitable for any occasion. I thought, Oh, boy. I hope they don’t go to praying and try to save me. I hadn’t needed to worry. They finished dessert, and then they lined up to tell me things.

“My mother read tea leaves all her life. If a relative was about to die, she always knew it,” said one. Another told me that her husband had second sight. His whole family had witnessed it.

The eighty-year-old former president of the group reached into her bosom to pull out a silver cross with a little charm next to it.

“Know what this is?” she asked.

“It’s the evil eye,” I said. According to magical theory, the eye on her charm would stare down the evil eye if it were directed toward her.

“Evil eye. That’s right. I’m Greek. All the Greeks wear them. Even the children.”

A blond woman of middle years asked, “Have you ever known anyone who had the evil eye put on them?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, someone put it on my daughter,” she said.

The daughter was about eighteen months old. She and her family were strolling along a New Jersey beachfront boardwalk when a man approached them. He was an actor from a fun house and was dressed in a monk’s robe. He had a rope around his waist. From it hung a cross, which he was twirling.

“Oh, what a beautiful child,” he said, looking intently at their daughter. Then he began to follow the family, continuing to stare at the little girl.

The man’s focus was so strange and his tone so eerie that the father turned the child’s stroller around and began pushing it away from the man, faster and faster until the family was practically running to escape. That night the child fell ill. She had a high fever and began throwing up. The next day she was still sick and crying constantly. A child who had always loved men, now she wouldn’t go to any of the men in the family. The mother’s sister had been on the boardwalk when the actor approached, and she was troubled by his actions. She called their aunt, who was of Polish heritage.

“He’s put the evil eye on her,” the aunt said. “You’ll have to remove it.” The mother’s sister was to take four straws from a broom and throw them over her shoulder into the corners of the room as she said a litany of Polish words. She was then to take a fifth straw, burn it with a wooden match, and drop it into a glass of water. They were to give the baby a spoonful of water from the glass.

“Make sure you do exactly what I told you,” she said, “and don’t let anyone who doesn’t believe be in the room when you do this.”

The mother, who didn’t know Polish, was so frightened that she would foul up and kill her daughter that she couldn’t do the spell. So her sister did it. The baby fell asleep immediately and slept four hours. When she awoke, the fever was gone and so was her fear of men.

“Are you telling me the truth?” I demanded. But I knew she was. She was as wholesome as Thanksgiving dinner and probably sat in the front pew of the Baptist church every Sunday.

Kids upchucking in the night and then getting better the next day isn’t all that unusual, but I didn’t say so because she knew that already and my saying it would have missed the point. The point of the story was that evil is alive, and good can defeat it in magical ways. It’s a good story, and the last part makes it better. No one told the little girl about that night, and she was too young to remember, but for the rest of her childhood she feared men in monk’s robes and would cry whenever she saw them.

As I heard a hundred tales and more, I also began to see magic everywhere, planted deep in the stuff of everyday life and flourishing. Britney Spears appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly wearing a red Kabbalah cord on her wrist. Paris Hilton had one, and so did Madonna, who adopted the name Esther to go along with her new faith in Jewish mysticism. The cords, which deflect the evil eye, were so popular that the Kabbalah Centre, where the stars go for instruction, tried to patent the string, sold for $26 to $36. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office declined that application.

Go into any large bookstore in America and you’ll find several books on regional ghosts and haunted places. Ghost hunters and ghost busters work all over the country. E- Bay sells haunted dolls and teddy bears. One week’s auction offered a haunted tuning fork, a haunted milking stool, a haunted gravestone rubbing, a haunted blanket, and a haunted bathtub.

Magic also penetrates our lives in ways that are quite mundane. It’s at the car repair shop when the engine stops pinging as soon as the mechanic appears and begins to ping again only when you pull out onto the street. It’s in the beauty salons when hair that spikes about your head like a scarecrow’s coiffure turns supple and silky on the day of the appointment. It’s at the restaurant when diners arrive only after the waiter sits down with his own plate and smokers’ food comes only after they’ve lit up.

You’ve heard of voodoo economics perhaps? Money magic is the most pervasive of all. Of course it would be, since money itself is the ultimate magic, a piece of paper that can do everything. Everyone wants good money magic, a way to win the lottery, gambling luck, an unexpected check in the mail, but the money magic of everyday life is more often bad. Win some money, get a bonus, have a little inheritance, and a major appliance will go out, the kid will get sick, a tire will go flat. Once you’re as poor as you were before the money arrived, life returns to normal. It’s as though there’s some kind of balance sheet that makes sure we stay at exactly the same level of prosperity all the time.

These are matters of life’s proceeding that hardly need to be commented on. They’re so common that they show up in jokes, and no one looks bewildered or wonders what’s being talked about. Trot out all the scientists you want, arm them with a million statistics. It won’t do any good. We know these things.

I often heard people talking about inanimate objects as though they were alive and powerful. This can opener never works for me, someone might say, or the bus always comes early when I’m running late. Or I always have to kick the machine before it will start. Or this computer only works for Mark — it hates the rest of us. Or it never rains when you’ve got an umbrella. No one is serious, you say? Maybe not, or maybe they’re whistling in the dark. It doesn’t matter which because language creates reality. What we name is what we notice, and that’s another argument for the inherent strength of magic. We’ve been programmed to ignore as much of it as we can, and still it pops up.

Excerpt: The above an excerpt from the book “Not In Kansas Anymore”
by Christine Wicker

Published by HarperSanFrancisco; September 2006; $13.95US/$17.95CAN; 0-06-074115-5

Copyright © 2006 Christine Wicker

Christine Wicker is the author of the highly acclaimed national bestseller Lily Dale: The Town That Talks to the Dead. She is a former religion reporter for the Dallas Morning News and has won numerous awards for her journalism. Visit the author online at christinewicker.com christinewicker.com