Unforgettable Love Story

I remember that I used to think everyone had it sorted out. It was just me that had to struggle and work so hard to keep up. It was too difficult trying to keep everyone happy. It seemed no matter what I did someone would be unhappy. Finally, only just a few short years ago really, I realized that just the opposite was true. That nearly everyone was struggling to maintain their own sense of self-esteem.

But if you think about it, who is it that has the authority to look at you, or anyone else, and pass judgment? Who is it to say you are worthy or not? There is no person. Not even one who has healthy self-esteem, not even one who is a master, not even a fully enlightened being and certainly not a government official or politician. No one can do this to you. They may try, but if you do not except it then it cannot be so.

So again we can see that right thinking is at the core of our self-esteem. Now remember we are not talking about morals when we talk about right thinking, not really. Right and wrong are very subjective. Oh, plenty of people think they know what is right and what is wrong but the firmer they are in their stances; the less likely it is that they really do know. When you are thinking or doing right, you will feel good. When you are thinking or doing wrong, you will feel bad. If you tune into your true feelings, and don’t lie to yourself, you will have the most perfect guidance you could ever dream of having. In this world with so many screwed up ideas about living, right thinking can be a bit confusing. But with time and practice you will find this tip about feelings to be absolutely infallible. Without right thinking you will only go in circles and live in constant frustration and confusion.

Once you have this clarity of mind, and enough of your habits line up with your values and with right thinking, then healthy self-esteem will come. And you will be well on your way to enlightenment and grander experiences of the Godliness that dwells with in you.

Love and blessings,
Michael Skowronski

P.S. My book Unforgettable is not just a romance and true story, but it shows the evolution of two people as they tackle these very issues and transform their lives and personalities. It was written to help people bridge the gap between an intellectual knowledge of spiritual principals and an experiential understanding, and to motivate them to try for themselves.

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Tags: enlightenment, self-esteem, Godliness

Popularity: 2% [?]

Feeling rejected, feeling less than, less important, less worthy, judgment of self or others, are all at the basis of low self-esteem.

Feeling strong, confident, secure and knowing that you are doing your best, loving others even though they are not perfect, lack of judgment, following your own moral values are the basis for healthy self-esteem.

Habits are at the center of our personality; they come from our subconscious. We have habits in our lives, some of them serve us and others do not. But how often do we question them and consciously reprogram them?

Correcting something you find that is “not so nice within yourself,” or others, is not about appreciating that it is there. That is a misunderstanding. Why is it there? Because somewhere along the track, somewhere in your past you created this habit of thought and action. Now it is for you to reprogram yourself such that balance is achieved and a new and empowering habit is formed.

When bad and painful things occur, when your judgments begin to come out, you can appreciate the situation because you have a chance to grow, you have a chance to see what needs correcting, which is more likely to be your judgment rather than the outer circumstance. You can appreciate and love the people involved, even if you do not love their behavior.

You love others; you love yourself, because God is inside. Jesus said, “What you do to the least of my brother you do to me.” That is because in reality we are all one being. The thoughts, the behaviors, may need to evolve, but you can still love anyway.

Are we being honest? If not, then there will be some sort of guilt, which erodes self-esteem.

Are we being loving? If not, then how do we expect to feel well with that unloving energy moving through us.

Are we in judgment? If so then we will judge ourselves too, because we are all one the reality is that we are judging ourselves.

Are we hiding, blaming others, manipulating, stealing, looking for approval, desperate, needy? All of these thought and behavior patterns will make it difficult, if not impossible to have healthy sense of self-esteem. There may be extenuating circumstances that a person with healthy self-esteem finds themselves in where they may have to hide or manipulate a situation for the better. But if you do not have a healthy sense of self-esteem, and this is your regular pattern, even if there are good reasons you need to behave in this way, your progress will be slow.

It is important that you work these issues out, even on the smallest level, or you will have some guilt that remains inside. If you are working on these issues, and making progress, and understanding how the changes are made, it will be much easier to relax and love yourself through the process.

Love and Blessings,
Michael Skowronski
Author of Unforgettable: A Love and Spiritual Growth Story

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Tags: personality development, confidence, security, habits

Popularity: 2% [?]

This is the continuation of Walk on the Wild Side

When you explore your dark side you find out what is true and right for you. You free up the energy that is suppressing a vital part of yourself and holding you back. You open up to your natural guidance system. There are many things in life that you just would not do. Not because someone made a rule, but because you are not inclined to do so. Also because of the unique individual that you are, there are things that you would do that someone else would not. And what if that other person or persons were the ones who made a rule against it? If you obey the rule, now you have a dark side. You have suppressed your natural desires.

Let me give you an example. Many years ago a very dear and trusted friend, I’ll call him Sam, told me he had something extremely personal to share with me and asked if I could keep a secret. I agreed and he told me his story. Sam is a gay man who had recently lost his partner to AIDS. Sam is a very spiritual person and very keen to grow and develop as a person. He is one of the kindest and gentlest people I know. Sam is the kind of person everyone seems to like.

It seems that Sam had always wanted to try S&M and his late partner was very much opposed to this. I did not know much about S&M but I could not believe anyone would want to try it, especially Sam. Because I had a deep love and respect for Sam I listened with an open mind. I don’t want to get into a full description of what Sam shared with me about S&M because that is not the point, but it has to do with dominance and submission and inflicting pain in a role-playing semi-sexual sort of way.

By the time Sam finished his story I was shocked…yet I trusted that he knew what he was doing. Many months passed and Sam gave me updates on what he was learning about himself and about controlling pain. Eventually Sam got what he needed out of his exploration and moved onto other things. It was at that time in Sam’s life that I noticed one of the most significant changes in him for the positive. His confidence grew, has awareness expanded and the wisdom he shared reflected the best things I was learning from my current teacher, who I had the utmost respect for.

I too have explored my dark side and found similar results. I found that the judgments that others had were theirs and had nothing to do with me. I found freedom to be who I am and confidence that the Universe will support me even when others will not. And in most cases I found that I could put away those desires forever, discovering for myself why they were not for me. Before that they were always in the back of my mind longing for fulfillment and draining my energy.

So I encourage you to get out the torch and bring light to the dark recess of your life. Do it boldly and with awareness. Challenge the “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” of your life and feel what is right for you and what is not. And while you are at it let go of what you think is right or wrong for others. Allow them to be the ones to decide on their path in life. The freedom and confidence that comes from these actions are worth it.

Love and Blessings,
Michael Skowronski
Author of Unforgettable: A Love and Spiritual Growth Story

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Popularity: 2% [?]

We all have a dark side; most of us have suppressed it. Often when I make such a statement, I get the following questions…”But shouldn’t we suppress it? Don’t we want to keep that part of ourselves buried so that no one will have to experience it?”

Suppressing a part of yourself is exactly what makes it a “dark side.” What is darkness? It is the absence of light. What do you think will happen if you explore it? Well you would need a light to do that and then…well, the darkness disappears.

Why do we have dark sides? Because of judgments and the rules our society has placed upon us. Fear is at the heart of this. Someone experienced something painful, decided the pain was due to a specific action, and then made a law that excludes that action from our lives.

But laws and rules do not work all of the time for all people! They cannot because everyone is different. If they always worked wouldn’t bad things stop happening? If they always worked wouldn’t our jails be empty?

We have a guidance system that is meant to protect us from harm. Our guidance system is our feelings. When we are feeling good we are on the right track. We are connected with our vast Inner-Being and going where it is guiding us to go. It is like we have a guy in a helicopter directing us where to turn so that we take the quickest route to our destination given the up to the minute conditions. And notice I said “OUR” destination, not the destination that the helicopter pilot wants to direct us to. This is not some great plan that God has for us; we are making the plans. God’s part in all of this is to experience life through us.

When we are feeling bad it is a natural and good thing. This is our protection from harm. Feeling bad is the result of closing ourselves off from our vast Inner-Being. It’s like we stopped listening to the guy in the helicopter and found ourselves stuck in a traffic jam. What is the solution? Stop, look and listen with your feelings. Choose a new path or activity that feels good.

Why would we ignore our guidance? Because for many years we have had people with loud voices and big sticks telling us things like “Shut up and stop crying.” Or “Push forward in the face of adversity.” Or “In order to get ahead in life you have to work hard and ignore the stress that comes with that.” And we were given rules to live by to replace our guidance system. Needless to say, most of the planet is attempting to move through life following a static, and outdated, road map rather than an infinitely wise guidance system. No wonder we run into roadblocks and ditches. Life is not static! It is always changing. There is no rule that works in all situations.

This blog is continued in Take a Walk on the Wild Side - Part II

Love and Blessings,
Michael Skowronski
Author of Unforgettable: A Love and Spiritual Growth Story

image from sxc.hu

Tags: feelings, judgement, self-exploration, self development

Popularity: 2% [?]

I have experienced more than one healing miracle in my own physical body as well as witnessing healing miracles that have occurred in others. I have also been a channel (as in God does the real work), catalyst (as in the instigator offering myself in assistance), to the healing of others. I have been in better health in my 40s than I ever was in my 30s because I finally came to understand the spirit - mind - body connection and put it into practice for a lifestyle that is healthy.

There is a secret to this power. It does not matter if you are a Christian, a Buddhist, a Jew, or a Hindu. It does not matter which version or flavor of God you worship, or if you even worship God. What matters is that you love and that you open up to allowing a fuller, more complete energy to flow through you and to others. Now most people who have evolved to such a state are usually aware of God and his/her presence in their life. They already have a very intimate relationship with God.

This is why healing is seen to be such a spiritual thing, because it involves bringing in the Spirit of Life that we all dwell within. Health comes from being fully connected to this source, and aware of how our thoughts and actions affect our connection. But most people are not connected, and that is just as true for those “devout” religious followers as it is for the non-religious of people. Illness is the result. It is like the junk food we eat; slowly it poisons our bodies and makes us ill. The junk thoughts, and the actions that spring from them, slowly choke off the life force energy that nurtures us.

The most powerful determiner of health is not what we eat or do physically to the body, but what we think. For all action springs from the mind, even poor diet and habits. This is why Love is so powerful as a healing device, it instantly opens one to the Source of Life. If we intend to help another, if we focus our attention on that endeavor through prayer, visualization, Reiki or other healing modality, then that person has the greatest chance of a recovery.

Why is it that some people are not healed by prayer or other techniques that often work for others? Because that person is not yet complete with the experience their soul intended to have when they began this journey of illness. I have also had enough experience with illness, both my own, and that of others, to know for a fact the truth of this statement. There is nothing that is happening in life that is by accident, nothing that is happening that we have not created on some level of our being.

This is a very large topic of conversation which I explore on a regular basis with others in search of Truth. If you wish to join us, the dialogs and workshops I offer are free, please contact me through my profile.

What I would like to say in closing, especially to the skeptics of you out there, there is much more to life than this mundane physical experience. There is something more that you can experience right here and now in your every day physical life. But you need the skills to get there. It is merely a matter of practice and how much effort you put into your practice.

Best wishes for health, wealth and wellbeing,
Michael Skowronski
Author of Unforgettable: A Love and Spiritual Growth Story

P.S. If you have a miracle that you want to share please do leave a comment about it here. I would love to read about it.

Tags: miracle, healing, spiritual wisdom

Popularity: 2% [?]

Here is the first part of this revelation about Karma and Cosmology

The word karma is often used to explain why bad things happen, saying it is due to something bad one did in a prior lifetime or even earlier in this one. But karma is much more than that. As we spend time in this physical dimension of Life we develop our personalities. Our subconscious mind is formed by this development and causes the automatic reactions we have to certain events and ideas. Our karma is intimately linked to our personality and subconscious mind. Karma is our point of attraction based on the energy caused by the shape of our personality and thought patterns held in our subconscious mind.

It works like this, if you hold a lot of judgment in your mind, then your karma will attract people and situations for you to judge. If you are focused on money, making it, saving it, investing it, putting it to work, then opportunities to work with money in these ways are sure to be in your face all of the time. If you are focused on how beautiful life is, how grateful you are to have such abundance, how everything seems to work out in perfect timing then life will happen that way for you.

In terms of the lifespan of a single ego-being, what keeps you here is your karma. If you, your soul, is not finished with this physical experience then it sticks around. If your soul is finished with its desires for this lifetime, or gone as far as your present personality is capable of going it will orchestrate your death. It may even be that your soul needs to experience an early death, an accident or being murdered. Evolved beings know when their time is near, or even desire or long to pass on. Often they are capable of leaving consciously, without a disease or accident to make it happen.

You need to come to a perspective that you are not just this body, this ego-being, that you experience in this limited life experience. You are this ongoing life that has already been eternally at it and will continue to be at it forever more. When you adopt this perspective then it will be much easier for you to handle the little disappointments of life that seem so big in the moment they are occurring. You will remember that now is the only moment that matters so you must make the best of it. You will also be able to see how your karma and personality and subconscious are all shaped by the choices you make and the thoughts you think thus defining what you are attracting and capable of responding to in your future moments.

When you die, you simply leave this body behind. The personality remains exactly where it has always been, in the eternal bosom of God. Your awareness does not change. If you were unaware, then you remain unaware in the afterlife until your next incarnation where you have the chance to evolve some more. In such a case you will be in a heaven or hell of your own making. If you were a nice person, but unaware, you will continue to experience a nice life. If you were a miserable person, but unaware, you will continue to experience a miserable life. Once we evolve in the physical dimension far enough to have some conscious control over our psychic (emotional) and noetic (mental) bodies then we will also have that same control once we leave our bodies. And then our personalities can also evolve while in the afterlife experience.

This is really a rather simplistic description of a very complex topic. I could go on but these are the essentials that explain why it is so important to be proactive about reprogramming your personality. Your personality is the only thing that you carry with you from life to life. This is what Jesus meant when he cautioned us against storing up our treasures on earth, where dust and rust and moth corrupt. Where time and thieves can steal your wealth. Instead store up your treasures in heaven, in the Kingdom of God, which is your personality.

Love and Blessings,
Michael Skowronski
Author of Unforgettable: A Love and Spiritual Growth Story

image from sxc.hu

Tags: karma, cosmology, psychic, afterlife

Popularity: 2% [?]

When you look at the original teachers that are behind the religions you will find very great beings. If you look at what those great beings taught, you will find many things in common. You will also find conflicting information as well.

Imagine if you had four people describing the world, each one of them living in a different part; one living in the frozen north of Russia, one in the blazing hot Sahara desert, one living in Santa Monica California, and the last living in Columbia. Wouldn’t these people describe the world in a very different way? Heck two people living in the same house would describe the world in very different ways.

This is how it is trying to describe spirituality. Even the most masterful people I have read says Life cannot be fully understood from our limited perspective. We do not even have the words in our languages to accurately and fully describe the intricate nature of Life and the spiritual causes behind it all. But when I took all of these different teaching and assimilated them into my life I found together they painted a three dimensional picture of reality.

It is important that we do not take one single story as the ultimate truth. But this is what most religions do. They are only stories meant to give us a clue and stimulate an inner memory. A different story from a different culture is no less meaningful than the one that comes from your culture. So now I am going to paint my own picture of the larger nature of our spiritual existence. Although I do have some experience in the spiritual dimensions that extend beyond the physical, it is limited. Thus much of this comes from all that I have read and my inner guidance which has helped me piece it all together.

God is all that is. There is nothing outside of God. Thus we exist within God. Our breath, our life, our very being is God…every single one of us. We are all God separated out into individually focused entities. Each entity experiencing creation from a different perspective. Each entity able to interact with God via the other entities.

There is a collective reality and individual realities too. The collective reality has persistence, and from our perspective it is seemingly evolving. However from the eternal perspective of God all of it is happening at once and is complete. This does not mean there is not freedom of choice for us as ego-beings, or that our destiny is predetermined. What it does mean is that reality is much bigger than we can comprehend, and that all possible realities exist, including the choices that you do not make.

Our lives are much longer than one might imagine. We enter the “Idea of Man” as Daskalos (a Greek mystic) puts it, and from that point on we embark on a series of physical incarnations, one of which you are experiencing now. It is at that beginning point that we are all the same, but from that point forward we forever differ one from another. The difference is due to the different choices and experiences we all have.

To be continued…

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A Course in Miracles says that God does not condemn because there is nothing to forgive. To arrive at this conclusion however will require a different perspective than the one from which pain and suffering occur on. It will also require practice. When you are in emotional distress you have less energy, less power available to you. That is when we fall into habits and run on automatic pilot. So it is essential to develop new habits when you are feeling good, or at least in a neutral place.

Let’s explore a real life example given to me by a woman who lost her only sibling to murder. She said that she was looking forward to seeing “the day of repentance” rather than “the day of judgment” for his murders. That means she is very close to grasping the deeper lessons in her experience.

This exercise falls under the categories of both contemplation and right thinking. Ideas you can explore in such a situation are:

• Why do I suffer because a loved one is dead?
• Is it for my loss or is it because I am afraid of death?
• Can I have some sign, some experience, that tells me my loved one is trying to let me know that they are well?
• Can I savor and remember that sign when I am feeling loss?
• Can I recognize and appreciate what it is that I still do have? Perhaps their absence freed up some energy that I can now direct in new ways.
• Can I appreciate that I have plenty of things, people, loved ones, to get by for just this one day, just this one single moment?

And there are many other thoughts that you can use to transform your feeling about it. Keep on reaching for new thoughts until you feel a change. This is exercise for the mind! The more you practice the stronger you will be and the better you will get at it. If you are stuck on some aspect of this please ask for help. You must make friends with a new perspective, you must find a new way to view the pain and suffering such that the pain and suffering disappear. I assure you that it is possible. Then use this new perspective to dig yourself out of an emotional hell hole the next time you find yourself in one.

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The topics of “Forgiveness” and “Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People,” are a very close match. Underlying these two topics is a common root, perception and perspective.

First of all we would not need forgiveness if bad things did not happen, if people did not do bad things to us. Isn’t that correct? So what makes a thing or an event bad? This is a question that we must ask ourselves, and we must not stop asking until we go very deep with this question.

It is pain and suffering that cause us to label a thing or event as bad. But what if pain and suffering were optional? What if an event occurred and even if it would usually cause pain and suffering, it did not? Or what if the pain and suffering lasted only a fraction of the time it usually does, say only 1% as long? Would that make it easier to hold back your judgment about an event? To give it some time before you decide if it were good or bad?

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Yes there is a relationship between intuition and desire. Desire is the creative force in your life. Desire is what brings to you the things you have in your life. So if you are creating with desire then it is quite natural that intuition would come about, an advanced warning, something you want is near.

You are always meeting up, every day, with that which you desire. Isn’t it true? Well ISN’T it? It is true. Now, unfortunately most people don’t understand desire and how they create and they think life is a series of random events. It is not. Or at least it must be random when something bad is happening right? WRONG!

Let’s take a hypothetical example. Someone gets treated poorly by someone else, disrespect, neglect, abuse, anything like that. How does that make you feel when it happens to you? How long do you spend dwelling on it, “If only I said this, or that.” Hours, days, weeks, lifetimes? Only seconds, then you are truly enlightened. But it is not seconds is it?

Now if I try and stop you from thinking of the disrespect, try to get you to stop talking about it and sulking or being angry, will I be successful? Will you want me to stop you? No. And if I can distract you for a few moments, won’t you go right back to later? Yes. Why? Because you want it.

Look, you have to control your thoughts, and desire is a thought. You have to know you have the desire, but that one slipped right past you didn’t it? You have the desire to get pissy at someone else don’t you? Sometimes it feels downright good to get indignant doesn’t it?

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