Spirituality Tips Guides

Have you ever known someone to carry a rabbit’s foot believing it gave them “good luck”? Maybe the foot wasn’t as lucky for the rabbit, but then again, how do we know? Maybe that particular rabbit lived a long and hoppy (er, happy) life. What about four-leaf clovers? You won’t find too many of them in any given clover field, and their very rarity seems to give them a special significance. Other beliefs can be found regarding the effect that breaking a mirror or walking under a ladder can have on your luck.

These traditions aren’t consistent around the world. Take the tradition of hanging a horseshoe on a door for example. In some places, it needs to be hung with the ends pointing upward, and in other places, the ends need to point down. In still other places, it doesn’t matter which way the points face as long as the shoe itself can be touched.

Superstitions are not limited to traditional folk beliefs passed down from generation to generation. We’ve all heard stories about modern sports fanatics who wear their “lucky shirt” to every game to maintain a winning streak. And if it isn’t a piece of clothing associated with winning, maybe it’s an action they do (or don’t do) before a game.

We can understand why some people believe the old superstitions because they’ve been handed down through the generations, but where do superstitions come from in the first place? Someone had to be the first to believe there was a connection between things like a rabbit’s foot and good luck.

To answer this question, we have to understand something about ourselves. You see, our brains are wired to make connections between things - it’s how we learn. Our ability to learn and adapt gave us an advantage over the other animals of the jungle, allowing us to create tools to help us do things better. However, it also predisposes us to make connections without any logical reason behind them.

A perfect example is an experience I’m having as I write this chapter. My laptop computer has developed a problem and frequently stalls during the startup process. To learn what the problem could be, I’ve tried several things, most of which hasn’t changed it’s startup behavior. At one time, I thought I found a clue when it seemed to start normally whenever I unplugged the network cable. After failing to start properly ten times in a row, I unplugged the network cable and my computer suddenly started right up. Plug the cable back in and it failed. Unplug the cable and it worked. Yep, that must have been the problem. The next time I turned my laptop on, I forgot about the cable and left it plugged in. My computer failed to start properly. I unplugged the cable and it started up fine. Confirmation again that I was right, despite there not being any apparent reason for it.

This morning, however, I unplugged the cable before I turned on my laptop and it failed to start up. Again and again I tried, but to no avail. The network cable was NOT the problem. But for a while, I began to believe it was.

Situations like this help us understand how superstitions get started. Someone notices that they have some minor accident after walking under a ladder. If it happens enough times, a belief is formed - walking under a ladder is ‘bad luck’. Then they share their insight with others and those who hear this start to wonder if it might happen to them, and the belief starts to spread like a virus and become a superstition.

Alan Tutt, author of Choose To Believe: A Practical Guide to Living Your Dreams, is one of the world’s leading experts in the Power of Belief and the Law of Attraction. Get a free excerpt from his new book at http://www.ChooseToBelieveBook.com.

Doubt is like a blemish in the fabric of mental consciousness created by external factors like fear and worry about tasks that have yet to be performed. If doubt persists, it may affect your mental ability to perform a task. Doubt often is the main cause of failure in your work, business, relationships, health and every other thing. You should know that brooding and worrying about anything affects your emotional state making you imagine things which may not be there. In such an emotional state you are unable to give one hundred percent effort to anything that you are doing.

When you are working to achieve something that you desire, you may come face to face with something entirely new, something that you have never experienced in the past. In such a situation it will be useful to take a look at the situation, ask questions and remove your doubts. Everything has an explanation that can be understood with reasonable effort. Work on your problem, examine your fears and doubts and, if necessary, look at the problem from a new angle. Your primary goal should be to focus on what you want. Don’t try to create a demon of fear by making wrong assumptions. Some people waste a lot of time fumbling about their ideas, trying to figure out what they want. They lose a lot of precious time and energy in doing this whereas the right thing to do is to stop doubting and worrying and to focus on the work at hand.

When your mind is full of fear, worry and doubt, it is advisable to quit what you are doing. This will put your mind into a neutral state. The more clearly your focus on what you desire, the easier they will come. You may not do anything to achieve your goal, but you will be in a better position to refocus your mind on your problem after some time. Maybe, you will discover something new which you had not thought of before.

Sometimes it may be best to stop worrying and leave all your troubles and cares to the Lord as He cares for you. He will solve all your problems in no time. In accordance with a research study made at Spindrift Foundation on the influence of prayer, a ‘thy will be done’ prayer gets more than double as many outcomes as a specific ‘give me this’ prayer. That’s why it is so necessary to finish your appeal for anything you desire with the words, ‘this or something better.’

If your start is not satisfactory, don’t worry about it. An unsatisfactory start is a common occurrence. If doubts and fears assail your mind, just sit back and relax. Think about what you can and should do and rather than about what you cannot do. Your focus should be on what you know and what you can do and leave the rest to God who is the supreme power in the universe. This attitude will put you in a state of blissful joy. Focus on the ‘here and now’ and try to learn from your mistakes instead of just worrying about them. This way you will be able to eliminate doubts to bring success closer.

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Don’t let the sun go down on today’s opportunity!!

How do you use memorial card poems for the deceased to help ease the grieving? When a loved one passes away, you need prayers and compassion. You hunger after seeing your precious friend or family member who is no longer with you. You desire to know how she is doing or where he is. The agony of missing his or her physical presence it is sometimes too painful to endure.

Losing a spouse, child or friend when death happens is a difficult time. When those special people, you have an empty feeling that nothing seems to fill. When death happens, you need a way to cope with the grief as you mourn. After reflecting upon the loss of my family members and what happens to them, I found a helpful way to understand their new way of life.

Grief is much easier to deal with when you have a faith-filled hope that a deceased loved one is connected to God and you in a relationship that may have changed, but has not ended. Funeral poems are used to help overcome shock right away. Memorial poems are becoming more and more popular to remember a deceased friend some time later after losing a loved one.

Do you think that modern magazines and TV shows show you a healthy picture of what happens when someone dies? I don’t think so. The trouble is that these publications focus on the negative - that things are getting worse. This is an outright lie - so don’t spend your time and money believing them. Just like when we are born. We leave the dark and dim home of our mother’s womb to discover a new home in a brighter, wider world. A new way to live. So we believe that there is a brighter and wider home beyond death - a new way and place to live after we die.

Those who follow Jesus Christ believe that He rose from the dead and now gives eternal life to all those who ask and follow Him. In the Gospel of John, Jesus told His friends that His Father’s house contained many rooms. Jesus promised His friends that He would go ahead and prepare room for them so that they could be with Him. Jesus’ promise is nearly twenty centuries or 2,000 years old.

Most people have disturbing thoughts after their loved ones die. Often, they ask the question, “When is my loved one coming home?” The trouble happens when they believe that their loved one is lost forever and will never, ever come back home.

The problem is that we just don’t realize that our loved ones may be right at home — home with God that is. And our hope, prayer and wish is that we want to join them again some day. After a loved one has died, using a poem for the deceased that helps us believe positive thoughts is priceless.

The new belief that can help us have peace is that death is like going through a door to enter a new home. That door opens into a brand new home, a new way of living forever with God and you. This is like moving into a new home that is more beautiful, bigger and happier. In any home, one of the best places to hang out and live is in the living room. So, if we think about our loved ones moving into God’s house after they die, we can imagine them spending time with God in God’s living room. They are still living, just in a newer and more beautiful place.

The love, faith and hope you have for your deceased loved ones grew throughout every day that you knew them. It will not stop now. And it doesn’t fall apart after death. No, as hard as it seems today, your connection gets stronger by including the unbreakable strand of God’s love. Your loved one is at home.

The last stitches of their life on earth have been sewn and the tapestry of their human life is finished. It is a marvelous picture that is now hanging the living room of God’s house. Your loved one is safe in God’s presence. Right now, you need to remember this and find a practical way, using memorial card poems for the deceased, to find hope and joy.

To find one inspirational poem for the deceased that can help you remember your deceased loved one at home with God in the tapestry of life,

The ragged wretches who banged on the door of the Polo family manor had learned to behave as like lepers, to avoid contact over the thousands of miles as they saw was the requirement of the moment.

Bandits controlled central Asia then, and as today perhaps. Only those who seemed diseased and too ragged were bypassed, left untouched in fear of contact with the plague.

In the middle of 1200 to be a western trader going into the wilds of central Asia carried their trade packets east in hopes of returning alive with diamonds and gemstones and riches seemed a simple formula.

So forward went the Polo three in their trade mission and see what they would find, and answer each band of brigands, why were they there? To have some adventure and make some money. How will they achieve that? By working our way into the central heart of their system, show we have much to offer as well as receive, and work to any strong hand we sense as it arises.

They thought this, did not disclose this to the occasional brigands, who they simply clawed and begged to and tried to touch with their long fingernails and possibly disease filled body; get away. And so they traveled more thousands of miles east, and then west, and changed the west forever. Soon gunpowder, iron, fire works and silk, spices and riches for our furs.

They were warned to always avoid conflict. The mighty Khan who would as soon behead you as listen, if he senses he is in the presence of a fool. Make your first sentences simple and clear, show great homage to his might and your simple desire to serve.The mighty Khan received the Polo family well.

He admitted he knew of the Pope, and of the Jesus story who was the western Prince of Peace. The mighty Khan informed Marco and his father and uncle that he would welcome one hundred scholars of the Christian faith. Upon his return, Marco made a special trip to Rome and delivered this message to the new Pope.

The letter asked the Pope to teach Christian values and thoughts to his people of China, who chafed under a Mongol ruler. Please send one hundred scholars of Christ.It never happened.

So, instead of returning with a note that the pope took action on, Marco had to be satisfied that he had enriched himself with diamonds and gemstones, riches from the fabled Orient. He knew the great globe, the land mass from Europe through Asia, better other than any man. He would spread his beads and gemstones, gather his diamonds and return to Venice: rich but well known as mad. He was as mad as a Himalayan fox.

History has long admired Marco Polo: the horrors and terrors of the long walk, the vastness of the area to cover,the eerie majesty of the Court of mighty Khan. This missed offer to the West for 100 Christian scholars to teach his people about Jesus is one of the missed opportunities of history.

But China did accept one hundred scholars of Buddha, and have been happy with that, and the recent revival. Marco brought rags to China and returned with vast riches. It may be they think it is their turn now.

Derek Dashwood loves the combining of science into the humanities to measure happiness and bliss.Love and showing it is central as you know, and can see here at
Diamonds and Gemstones

Antique religion books tell us Confucius felt there was no after life. Jesus and Buddha did. Since 1949, China has been a nation that is officially of no religion.

Yet modern China now is experiencing a rebirth of interest of a deeper sense of meaning in life. And this is happening in the more sophisticated cities on the coast where the new more wealthy people with more education and learning are incorporating Buddhism into their lives.

While the officially Communist government now ensures that a member of state corporations is a partner with each foreign corporation, thus taking the known ways of capitalism directly into their system. And soon automobiles that look very identical to a name brand American car is being sold for less with a cute twist on the American name model.

And the people that work in the factories and the people building new factories and power plants every week are working hard and earning more than they might ever have thought possible a decade or two ago.

And a fascinating series of events are occurring and the government and the system seem relaxed about this, in contrast to their previous persecution of a dreaded meditative group they saw as a danger.

Now the China that persecuted followers of Christ but began to accept followers of Buddha around the time of Christ,is seeing Buddha being discovered again. Many on the richer coast have security and steady jobs.

They also have more freedom and time to reflect. And many are finding they feel empty somehow, and are finding the meditative nature of Buddha as a calming way to feel at peace.

This is good news as the natural peaceful natures of Jesus Christ and Gautama Buddha were both recognized as far back as the Mighty Khan. Mighty Khan had given a scroll for the Pope to Marco Polo. Marco knew the wish of the Khan was to have the Pope send one hundred missionaries.

Mighty Khan had heard that this holy man Jesus was known as the Prince of Peace. His people were restive under a Mongol ruler and needed a calming, passive religion that would allow them to put their faith in an after life so they could get on with their duties in this life with less complaint.

Alas, the old Pope was dying, it took the new Pope time to consider. His advise was to strike a committee, which they did: they met annually, for several years. Until news came that the Mighty Khan had tired of waiting and instead receive one hundred missionaries of Buddha, who the Khan knew also promised a passive faith.

And now this simmering faith that shows thin Buddha of India as a emperor sized belly who is fully of China. What matters is that those who find this inner spiritual process of meditation are less likely to take up arms, for now.

That must be a comfort for those inside the Forbidden Palace: so far no people of Buddha have taken up the sword to force others to their faith or slay them, as other faiths have done.

History has an amazing capacity to allow events to unfold in ways that Marco Polo would fully understand.

Derek Dashwood enjoys antique religion books that can show how small acts can lead to great or small changes we later take for granted. Now antique religion has prove to show which ways were helpful, and which were most vital, and we talk about it further at
http://www.antiquereligionbooks.com

Rare Religious Books

Three things will last forever -faith, hope, and love - and the greatest of these is love (1st Cor. 13:13 NLT)

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Baby” I sang as I entered the house carrying a balloon tied to a box of candy. My husband grinned up at me from his hospital bed. I placed the box of candy and the balloon on the bed table. Then I tapped the balloon. A tinny rendition of You’re the One began to play. “You’re the one who makes me sing and shout, you’re the one I dream about. We’re still having fun, and you’re still the one”.

His grin widen into a smile that filled his whole countenance. His eyes brimmed with love and a little of that love spilled over and down his cheeks. “I will always love you,” I said. “Me too” he croaked. It is hard for him to speak, his lung capacity has decreased and it takes a lot of effort for him to push enough air over his vocal cords to make them vibrate. His tongue and cheek muscles have also fallen prey to ALS (Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis) and he has difficulty enunciating his words clearly. But our desire to live each moment that we are granted has led us to make the decision that “I’m gonna live, live, live until I die”. It has been this decision that has kept us going through the long difficult years of living with ALS rather than dying from it. It has been this decision that has led us to praise God in the midst of the most difficult circumstances we have ever faced. It is this decision that keeps us celebrating holidays, birthdays, and yes, even Valentine’s Day.

The singing balloon is now attached to the side rail of my husband’s hospital bed. A couple of times a day as I am doing things for him I will tap the balloon. The balloon and I do a duet to which I dance. He always gets a big grin on his face. His eyes become dazzling spotlights of intense love. In that transcendent moment we know and share a passionate love that fills a lifetime and beyond, a love that rises above all things, a love that even death cannot diminish. In that moment I know that I will always have his love with me. It won’t matter where his physical presence has moved; his love will be in my heart, mind, and spirit. His love will guide me in my decisions. I will hear him in my heart cautioning me to think before I act, questioning is this really what you want to do, or telling me “You can do this”.

For the dying, death is the doorway to Heaven. For those of us who are left behind, death is the doorway that challenges us to go on living in a new and different way. It is not easy to think about living alone, but I believe the best way to honor the man I love, my beloved husband who has always challenged me to be the best I can be, is to live life as fully as I possibly can. I know this is true because he told me so.

Three things will last forever, faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love (1st Cor. 13:13 NLT)

Ann E. Van Dyke holds a Masters degree in psychology and is a licensed addictions counselor.
Mourning Glory, A Devotional for Grieving is a book for those struggling through a loss and looking for support and comfort. http://www.amourningdevotional.com