🌟 🎶🌟 A New Year, A New You 2019 🌟🎶🌟

As we venture into a new year 🎉 resolve to be open to all possibilities. Welcome the greatness that is here for you. A vast treasure exists for you. Open your heart and let it  in.

Here is an exercise that came to me on 🌟angelic wings🌟 It can help you get clear about what you want and need. Often we confuse wants with needs and desires. You might want something so much that you believe it is a need. You might need something, but not be aware of what it is, because you are so filled with desires.

Resolve to be willing to give up confusion. Confusion is not your friend. Ask the angels to open the windows of your mind and let clarity in. Clarity opens doors and invites the light in.

Write down the following headings. You might find that you put the same sentences under more than one heading. That's fine. Just write what you feel. Feel what your body is telling. What your heart is saying. What your gut is telling. I made a list of three below each heading, just to get you started, but you can list as many as you need — or want 😋

Notice that I have left out the negatives — what you don't want or need. We're keeping it positive here. Positive encourages. Negative discourages.

🌟WHAT DO I WANT
I want …
I want …  
I want … 

🌟WHAT DO I NEED
I need …
I need …
I need …

🌟I WOULD LIKE
I would like …
I would like …
I would like …

🌟I MIGHT LIKE
I might like …
I might like …
I might like …

🌟I WOULD BE OPEN TO
I would be open to …
I would be open to …
I would be open to …

🌟I AM WILLING TO LET GO OF
I am willing to let go of …
I am willing to let go of …
I am willing to let go of …

🌟GOD, PLEASE HELP ME WILLING TO LET GO OF
Help me let go of …
Help me let go of …
Help me let go of …

🌟I SURRENDER 
I surrender …
I surrender …
I surrender …

Love

Love doesn't just sit there like a stone., it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. -Ursula K. Le Guin 1929-2018

MARCUS AURELIUS

MARCUS AURELIUS --  20 quotes from MEDITATIONS.
(All are signed, so feel free to share one or more.)

Death and life, success and failure, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, all these happen to good and bad alike, and they are neither noble nor shameful—and hence neither good nor bad. -Marcus Aurelius

What is divine deserves our respect because it is good; what is human deserves our affection because it is like us. - Marcus Aurelius

Even if you’re going to live three thousand more years, or ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one you’re losing. -Marcus Aurelius

The only thing that isn’t worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don't. -Marcus Aurelius

If it doesn’t hurt the individual elements to change continually into one another, why are people afraid of all of them changing and separating? It’s a natural thing. And nothing natural is evil. -Marcus Aurelius

Concentrate on this, your whole life long: for your mind to be in the right state—the state a rational, civic mind should be in. - Marcus Aurelius

Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. -Marcus Aurelius

Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. - Marcus Aurelius

Is it your reputation that’s bothering you? But look at how soon we’re all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of all those applauding hands. -Marcus Aurelius

Things have no hold on the soul. They stand there unmoving, outside it. Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions. - Marcus Aurelius

Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you’re alive and able—be good. - Marcus Aurelius

And then you might see what the life of the good man is like—someone content with what nature assigns him, and satisfied with being just and kind himself. -Marcus Aurelius

Note: If you're enjoying these quotes so far, then you should definitely check out The Meditations, which is where these quotes are pulled from.

When we describe things as “taking place,” we’re talking like builders, who say that blocks in a wall or a pyramid “take their place” in the structure, and fit together in a harmonious pattern. - Marcus Aurelius

If we limited “good” and “bad” to our own actions, we’d have no call to challenge God, or to treat other people as enemies. - Marcus Aurelius

To pass through this brief life as nature demands. To give it up without complaint. Like an olive that ripens and falls. Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on. -Marcus Aurelius

The whole is damaged if you cut away anything—anything at all—from its continuity and its coherence. Not only its parts, but its purposes. And that’s what you’re doing when you complain: hacking and destroying. -Marcus Aurelius

“To live with the gods.” And to do that is to show them that your soul accepts what it is given and does what the spirit requires—the spirit God gave each of us to lead and guide us, a fragment of himself. -Marcus Aurelius

Awaken; return to yourself. Now, no longer asleep, knowing they were only dreams, clear-headed again, treat everything around you as a dream. -Marcus Aurelius

It’s fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it—not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone. But not everyone could have remained unharmed by it. -Marcus Aurelius

To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it. -Marcus Aurelius

Take the shortest route, the one that nature planned—to speak and act in the healthiest way. Do that, and be free of pain and stress, free of all calculation and pretension. -Marcus Aurelius

How does it injure you anyway? You’ll find that none of the people you’re upset about has done anything that could do damage to your mind. But that’s all that “harm” or “injury” could mean. -Marcus Aurelius

It’s time you realized that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet. -Marcus Aurelius

If it isn’t ceasing to live that you’re afraid of but never beginning to live properly . . . then you’ll be worthy of the world that made you. No longer an alien in your own land. No longer shocked by everyday events—as if they were unheard-of aberrations. -Marcus Aurelius

Because to be drawn toward what is wrong and self-indulgent, toward anger and fear and pain, is to revolt against nature. And for the mind to complain about anything that happens is to desert its post. -Marcus Aurelius

Finding Peace

It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can’t control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible. -Epictetus

Keep the Season Holy

This Christmas and holiday season, you are offered a gentle reminder to spend your energy wisely. Respect yourself and your money. This means living within—or even better—below—your means, so that you do not place unnecessary burdens upon yourself or create debt.

If you find yourself feeling lonely or stressed, wanting to give gifts you can't afford, or receive gifts that are not coming your way, remind yourself, "Now is enough." When you experience any sense of lack, loss, fear, or limitation, tell yourself that now is enough.

There is no fear or limitation when you know that you are enough, that there is nothing that can be added to you that would make you more.
The only thing you have to share with anyone is your own state of being. Many people want to uplift the world, but live in such anxiety that this is what they end up sharing. We can uplift the world only to the extent that we live expansive uplifted lives.
   

Happiness as defined by the mind can lead only to unhappiness, because the mind can never be satisfied. As soon as one desire is achieved, the mind creates another.

    
This Christmas and holiday season remember that you are enough. So is every other human being, whether they know it or not.
    

Whatever You Celebrate

Keep the season Holy

A Gift Worth Giving:

 The Clear and Simple Way School.

Happiness is Contagious!

". . . researchers found that when an individual becomes happy, the network effect can be measured up to three degrees. One person's happiness triggers a chain reaction that benefits not only their friends, but their friends' friends, and their friends' friends' friends. The effect lasts for up to one year."