One Hour of Righteous Darkness

“Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.”

Leonardo da Vinci

The people of United Earth demonstrated community March 28th at 8 PM in every time zone. The people were asked to participate in a voluntary black out for one hour. People were asked to turn off power not necessary to sustain human life.

From space, it appeared as if the lights were being dimmed one continent at the time as observers from the international space station looked down upon the beautiful garden world that is home to more than six billion citizens.
With the darkness came a still quietness and a slowing of human activity. For one moment of one hour, 60 minutes, 3600 seconds; the people of United Earth contemplated themselves, their thoughts of their lives, their loves, their families, the meaning of life.

Some enjoyed seductive moments to connect in the most intimate of ways like talking, seeing each other in candle light, enjoying great sex with the lights out; anything for the benefit of all humanity. Others stargazed, enjoyed favorite beverages and dreamed of a world at peace and prosperity where there is no war, no sex slave trade, no disease epidemics, no homelessness, no famine, and no illiteracy.

For one hour of righteous darkness, my wife Bonnie and I sat in a still calm quiet peace reflecting our 20 years together. We had sacrificed two of our favorite weekly sitcoms and the final minutes of he NCAA Tourney game between North Carolina and Louisville.

Our grandfather clock reminded us every time 15 minutes had passed and the hour seemed to be passing so quickly. We enjoyed the moment of shared thoughts of our travels, our children, and our grand children. We spoke of our yet unfolding dreams to be realized. The 30 minute and the 45 minute sound of the clock passed. We
breathed in the moment of shared temporal communion with all of Planet Earth. It felt good.

When the hour was becoming complete the calmest moment descended. The clock began it series of strikes to the hour; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. It was 9 PM. The shared moment was complete. We enjoyed this experience and plan to spend more time sharing of one hour of righteous darkness. What did you do in the shared moment of darkness?

After The Tears

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.

Charles Dickens

After the rain, the Earth is refreshed. Mother is calm, quiet, and still. The air is clear. It is time for peaceful reflection. It is a time of new beginning.

After the tears, the body is refreshed. Soul is calm, quiet, and still. Thoughts are clear. Focus is keen. It is time for peaceful reflection. Hope is reborn. It is a moment of new beginning.

Dreams like a Phoenix’s ashes come back to life. Goals are set. Plans are made. Life is going somewhere again.

The path to healing’s growth and development always involves pain. First, there is the admission and acceptance that our current miserable condition is unacceptable. Second, there is the pain of overcoming the familiar inertia that wants to keep us right where we are, miserable. Third, there is the pain of doing the work necessary to achieve personal healing. Healing is always personal because nothing is real until it is personal. Fourth, there is the pain to maintain your healing because the past will try to pull you back.

The path to healing always involves pain. Birth is a painful messy experience yielding great beauty that cannot adequately be described. When a new baby arrives crying, it is a moment of tears for mother, father, and child.

Mother and father are thankful. To the child, it is all new.

It will be the same with your healing. You have never been here before. It is all new. After your tears, your new life as a healed person will begin.

The Phoenix must burst into flame, die, and be reborn from its ashes; us too!
Questions

What will you do with your new life? It has been said the best time to plan for peace is during the time of war.

Will you wear new clothes?

Will you wear a new attitude?

How will you celebrate your healing?

How will you protect your healing?

Are you willing to give up who you are to become who you desire to be?

If your answer is yes, you are ready for your healing to begin.

The MISSION of 40 DAYS of HEALING is to provide you information that will help you get well and stay well physically and emotionally.

KEEP UP THE LOVE!

A Time To Cry

Tears are the silent language of grief.

Voltaire

It is probably is a good time to feel and experience the result of feeling. It is amazing how well humans have been designed. When our pain and our grief become too much to bear, we have a built safety valve to vent the weight of our souls looking for relief.

Pressure cookers were used where I grew up to can food to have on hand for winter. My mother would put quart jars inside the pressure cooker to seal in her investment. When the heat under the pressure cooker exceeded its capacity to hold heat inside, it would whistle and vent excess heat.

We, human beings, have internal sensors to accomplish the same thing. When our emotional pain has become more than we can bear, a valve opens and we cry. We cry tears unless our need to control is so excessive we do not allow ourselves the privilege.

What happens to a pressure cooker that can’t vent its excess heat? It explodes? What happens to a person who refuses the release of pain through crying tears?

First, they suffer the indignity of violent angry external outbursts, explosions, as it were at others who usually have nothing to do with their personal pain. Second, they suffer the unnecessary internal explosion of implosion. The pent up emotional energy is going somewhere. In either of these contexts, it is not in the interest of the person in pain.

It is believed that one of the attributes of the woman’s beauty is in the ability to cry easily. I honor the ability to accomplish the feat. In crying, the shedding of tears, a peaceful internal comfort is derived with the release of the pain.

I have learned over these many years that when my emotional pain becomes too great, I need to be smart enough to allow my system to do what it needs to do, to cleanse.

We can get well. We can heal but not without passing the way of tears.
Questions

Are you ready to be free of your emotional pain?

Do you need to cry away a lifetime’s pent up pain?

Have you ever noticed how much freer you breathe after a good cry?

Have you ever read poetry created in the bath of tears?

Are you ready to write some?

Are you ready to cry?

KEEP UP THE LOVE!

Help Comes When You Call

There is no love which does not become help.

Paul Tillich

Why is it that when people are drowning they have no problem calling out for help? They scream loud. HELP! HELP! There is no thought for who knows or who is looking.

Why is it when some of us need help we are too proud to ask for it? Is pride or the image of pride so important we had rather maintain our sickness or sick conditions than get the help we desperately need?

The man who is being beat up regularly by his wife or girlfriend may be too ashamed to let anyone know. The depressed person seldom calls out for help. The addicted seldom call out for help. The lonely seldom call out for help.

Is it that people (we) really enjoy suffering so much or is it that we are too afraid to expose our inadequacies thinking others will think less of us when we do? Or, are we so connected to our problems that we are unwilling to give them up? Is it possible our identities are so tied to our problems we wouldn’t know who we are without them?

If you could choose right now to experience total healing from the conditions that cause you suffering and make you miserable, would you? Could you step beyond your pride, fear, and shame enough to get better? If it were that easy you would probably have already taken action on your own.

Your desire for healing is a very necessary first step. Asking for help is next. Difficult steps follow. Disclosure is not optional. What you can do in the meantime is talk to someone you trust. It will be necessary to tell someone your concern.

Talk to someone. Talk to them now. Get the emotional weight off yourself. You were never meant to carry it alone. Let someone love you enough to help.
Questions

Are you now ready to totally disclose to another person the nature of your concern?

Are you ready to begin your healing by building the foundation of the person you desire to become?

Are you ready to allow someone else to help you carry your load?

Are you ready to love yourself to health?

The MISSION of Inspirations for HEALING is to provide you information that will help you get well and stay well physically and emotionally.

KEEP UP THE LOVE!

Accept Your Need To Heal

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Denial does not liberate, it oppresses.

C. G. Jung

Slavery is a deplorable condition that is unacceptable. It is still around even in the 21st Century. It lives on in the exploitation of women and children as sex slaves. It lives on as forced labor in some developing nations where it is yet acceptable to own other human beings and force them to serve against their will. It lives on in the victimization of the poor and elderly by people who mistreat them. Most civilized people regard this behavior as intolerably criminal.

What people living out enslaved experiences hope for above all is the privilege to be free, self - directing, and self – determining. Others amongst us live out the experience of slaves.

The woman who is regularly beaten by her husband or lover who does not recognize she has a choice lives out the life of a slave. Men, women, and children who live out lives of addiction may not have the personal power to make the choice to be free. Others are enslaved to debt, toxic relationships, poverty, sickness and disease. All live out their lives as slaves.

What conditions are you living in slavery to? What do you want to be free from? You can be free. Believe it!

Merriam – Webster’s Online Dictionary defines acceptance as the ability to recognize as true and take responsibility for. What condition do you need to recognize as true or accept personal responsibility for to be free to become the person you desire to be?

Do you need help to find the courage to deal with your demons that torture and enslave you? You can be free. Believe it!

Begin by accepting that your condition is real. Decide you are and will be responsible to getting the help you need to be free.

You are not alone. There are many who would offer you the loving encouragement you need to be successful in becoming free.

Your healing begins the moment you decide you are no longer willing to suffer. You can be free. You can begin your healing. Believe it. Start to make it happen!

Questions

Are you miserable because of conditions that make you feel powerless?

What conditions are you a slave to?

Are you ready to take the first step to freedom?

Do you love yourself enough to go for healing?

Let The Healing Begin, NOW!

For me, singing sad songs often has a way of healing a situation. It gets the hurt out in the open into the light, out of the darkness.

Reba McEntire

Merriam – Webster’s Online Dictionary reveals the word heal means to restore to original condition of health; physical and emotional. To heal is to care for, to doctor or minister to. It is to become healthy and strong again after illness or weakness, to recover from sickness, disease or injury, even those of the heart. To heal is to cure.

The words cancer, aids, leukemia, diabetes, kidney failure, liver or heart disease are dreaded when they are received as a personal diagnosis or the diagnosis of a close loved one. To many who hear the words, they sound like a death sentence while others take the words as a challenge to engage life to the fullest as never before.

Heartbreak, disappointment, anger issues, addictions, or painful experiences of abuse are the only conditions many know. Millions live with their pain for a life time without ever getting the healing help needed. Many never admit they need help. Living in denial is believed to be easier than bringing problems out in the open and getting help.

We all have scars on our personalities from personal pain we have experienced at the hands of people who said they loved us. What your/our fathers, mothers, siblings, friends, lovers or spouses did to you/us may indeed have caused extreme pain, physical and emotional. The question that must be answered in the present is how long we will allow past events dictate our present behavior and self – esteem in negative self – destructive ways not in our interests.

Wouldn’t NOW be a good time to mark the moment you are no longer willing to live with conditions and behavior that are killing you or persons close to your heart? Wouldn’t NOW be a good time to say no more, never again? Wouldn’t NOW be the time and the place to declare to the universe AND ONE PERSON your intent to heal?
If NOW is the time and you have declared your intent to the universe and one other person, then take the first step toward your new life. Know that you’re not alone. There are many of us walking towards healing. WE can do it, together. Let’s do it together. Come on! Let the healing begin, NOW!

Tin Cup Walks for The Cure

Cancer still kills and people still band together to demonstrate their faith the time comes when this insidious and indiscriminate disease will no longer be a threat to human life. Until that time comes, people walk, pray, fund, and lend their hopes to the discovery of a cure.

Two days ago, on February 23, 2008, hundreds trekked up South Mountain in Phoenix, Arizona celebrating 25 years of The American Cancer Society Annual Walk for The Cure. The walk was like a scene from Sly and The Family Stone’s Classic, “Everyday People.” There were long ones, short ones, big ones, small one, rounds one, black ones, white ones; they came all to demonstrate their love and care for friends and family lost to cancer and for friends and family affected NOW!

One of my colleagues, Tin Cup, not his real name, walked very early on Saturday before we met at the office for a few hours. I know why Tin Cup Walks. This is very real and personal for him.

Tin Cup’s Mother - in - Law passed away from Cancer last year. Her daughter Tin Cup’s wife is currently waging battle. She is affected, too.

Cancer still kills and yet its presence brings with it incredible moments of love and beauty. Tin Cup’s grand daughter knows more about Cancer than little ones might know. She recently saw a program on television that talked about people giving their hair for hair pieces that people who have lost their hair as a result of Cancer treatments can have hair. She talked it over with her mother, Tin Cup’s daughter who has lost a close friend to Cancer. She consulted with her grand father and her grand mother who blessed this little one’s heart of love. As a child, she was not only willing to talk about giving to others her down her back hair, she did it.

The American Cancer Society celebrated 25 years of the walk this year. When walkers returned from their experience, they were tagged with stickers that read, “I MADE IT TO THE TOP.”

Cancer still kills but not as many people as it used to. There is a strong spirit alive of HOPE in the many that have been affected by this condition of disease. Their indomitable spirit joined with friends and supporters are making a difference. You can too. Support The American Cancer Society. Together, we all make a difference.