Category: Interesting Stuff

So – how do you start your day?

That’s a question I sometimes get asked.

I answered it in a broadcast e-mail I sent out to the AbundanceTogether community a while back, and it got a lot of positive responses.

So, here is my morning practice, my routine, with a few amendments. I:

• Wake up early, open my eyes and check the time.
• Meditate for a few minutes, focussing on my breath
• Look at the lake, beach, and sky and thank the Universe
• Ask myself and answer 2 important questions:

1. What can I do today to be even more financially secure, healthy, loved and loving, now and in the future?
2. What can I do today to wake up every day feeling vibrant, passionate and excited about living my purpose, enjoying everything around me, and leading a meaningful, fulfilling and free life?

• Go to my office, turn on my computer and look at my Vision Board
• Leave my sleeping wife and go downstairs
• Say hi to my cat Harley
• Do a brief foot exercise to a avoid plantar fasciitis.
• Use the toilet, brush my teeth and drink some warm water with cider vinegar
• Check my weight, the weather, and my schedule for the day
• Do some Mirror Work
• Take my vitamins, supplements and nutrients
• Make coffee
• Feed the cat
• Go for a run
• Work out [Tabata]
• Make and eat breakfast and drink some coffee
• Visualize
• Write in my Gratitude Journal
• State my Vision, Mission, Purpose, Expectations and Intentions
• Repeat selected Affirmations and Declarations
• Perform a Tapping [EFT] exercise
• Read some Motivational/Spiritual literature
• Review some of my Goals
• Shower, shave [every day or two] and get dressed
• Do a guided Meditation [sample noted below] or listen to an audio, including binaural beats.
• Check e-mails and messages and get on with my great day.

Now, how do YOU start your day?

Your morning practice will affect the rest of your day, so make it a good one.

Some experts say it takes 21 days to set up a good new habit or break a self-limiting one, others say it takes 10-12 weeks [3 months].

Either way, you can do it!!

For more information on some of these practices, check out my other blogs or send me an e-mail and I can direct you to some great resources.

Love you and keep manifesting 🙂

Tony

If interested in getting a free copy of my mini e-book and subscribing to my e-mailing list click here.

So, how do you react when you hear the word “God”?

Well, if you’re anything like me, maybe you cringe a bit. You see, the “God” I learned about when I was a kid was the “God” of the Bible [particularly the Old Testament]. The same one as in the Quran and the Torah. A vengeful, punishing, and demanding being. That was the “God” of my parents and of my church [I was raised in a very conservative Roman Catholic home]. Mary Morrissey in Prosperity Plus suggested that this “God” needed to take some anger management courses. To me “He” was anything but unconditional love.

I stopped believing in that old version of “God” a long time ago.

And I began a lifelong search for a new version. A god that I could relate to and that would relate to me.

Now, Natalie Ledwell of Mind Movies says “…universal source energy, or God, is the timeless physical and nonphysical energy that makes up all things and holds everything together. It’s the building block of everything we see and don’t see.  In essence it’s the natural energy flow of life.”

Joan Borysenko adds “… god is one of the most loaded words in the English language. It has often served as a screen for our projections of fear, inadequacy and intolerance.”

And Neale Donald Walsch tells us that, contrary to what I was taught “Man was not created in the image of God but instead created god in the image of man.”

So, following that line of thinking, the “God” I was taught about was merely a larger version of ourselves.

And that caused me some difficulty.

So, I did a bit of research and found that there were more names for “God” than I ever imagined.

Some call Infinite Intelligence “God”. Others call Him/Her/It  [in no particular order] the Source, the Divine Presence, the Abundant Universe, Spirit, Divine Mind, the One, Principle, Substance, the Universe, the Good, Higher Power, All That Is, the Total Field of Possibilities, the Goddess, the Essence, the Holy Spirit, Allah, Supreme Being, the Tao, or the Oneness.

“God” is also known as the Infinite, the Eternal, the Truth, Logos, The Word, Vortex, Krishna, the Almighty, Lord, Creator, Yahweh, Heavenly Father, Prime Mover, First Cause, Alpha and Omega, Christ Consciousness, the Force, Jehovah, Holy Mother, Creator, Great Spirit, Yahweh, The I Am, Shiva, Tara, Inanna, the Light, Shakti, Ishwara, Ram, Infinite mind, Jesus, Divine Presence and more.

A rose by any other name…..

Personally I choose, or prefer to use, the terms the Source, Divine Mind, or the Universe. No matter what name you choose to use to describe this oneness, I believe it is the same vibrational energy, an essence, which permeates all substance and anything and everything that exists. I suppose you could just call it “Life”. All that is.

Maybe your god is science, money, career, beauty, fame, celebrity, or intellect. But that god of yours is not really the complete god. It’s only a very small portion of the all.

 According to A Course of Love, “Everyone has a god because everyone has a being and an identity for being. Everyone carries the memory of I Am.”

So, stop cringing [if that’s what you do] when you hear the word “God”, as if it was the rule-making, punishing, and authoritarian version of old that you remembered. Instead, celebrate the new version of the loving Source.

Raise your glass in a toast. L’chaim [ləḥayyīm]: To LIFE.

Keep manifesting 🙂 

Tony

If interested in getting on my e-mailing list click here.

A while back my brother and I travelled south to Florida for a week
To visit an old friend.
The 3 of us toured, and talked and laughed a lot.
One of our many conversations dealt with the topic of beliefs and how they shape our world.

Or at least how we view our world.
We also talked about “fake news” which seems to be quite a sensitive topic down in the United States.
As soon as I returned home I checked out a quote I had read.
It was in the notes from the Absolute Abundance course I had taken earlier this year.
Here it is:

“Do not believe anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe anything simply because it is found in your religious books.
Do not believe anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for generations
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
Buddha

Wow.
He and so many other great masters/avatars of the past were so far ahead of their time, weren’t they?
As the late great Dr. Wayne Dyer said “You’ll see it when you believe it.”
So, change your beliefs, and you will change your life.
By changing your beliefs you will change what you think, say, and do.

And you will change your results.
It’s worked for me.
Let it work for you.
Find the answers inside of you.
Namaste.

Keep manifesting 🙂
Tony

If interested in getting on my e-mailing list click here.

 

Is your job/career/business/livelihood your ministry?
If not, why not?
On the other hand, what does it have to do with ministry anyway?

A while ago a close friend of mine asked me how my ministry was going.
I must admit that at first I almost felt offended by his use of that term.
I did not see what I did through AbundanceTogether as a “Ministry”.
To me, the word ministry had religious connotations.
While I thought of myself as spiritual, I did not consider myself religious.

And then, the next day, as I was re-reading Marianne Williamson’s phenomenal best seller “A Return To Love”.
I turned the page and, in her chapter on Work,  there it was.
A subheading called – Ministry. And this is some of what it said:
“Think of your career as your ministry. Make your work an expression for love, in service to mankind.”
“We all have the same job: to minister to human hearts.”
“Any job can become a ministry, as long as it is dedicated to love.”

Serendipity or what?
So now I feel that yes – what I do is a ministry – in the best sense of the word.
Service to others.
In love.
Now, you only get to keep what you give away.
Inspired by a vision of a healed world.
So, I’ve dedicated my life to ministering to you and to the world.

As it was once said in the Daily Word:
“Only by being of service to others I most fully express my unique gifts for myself. In serving others I am fulfilling my highest spiritual purpose.”

Keep manifesting 🙂
Tony

If interested in getting on my e-mailing list click here.

Panic was my first reaction.

A number of mornings ago,  I was in the kitchen with my dog and cat, while my wife was till asleep upstairs. Each morning I took my vitamins and nutrients before running with the dog, exercising, having my coffee or eating breakfast.

I also ate a dried prune. You see, my mother had always told me that it was important to have a prune every day to “stay regular”. Anyway, I guess I hadn’t chewed the prune well enough because as I tried to swallow it with the pills everything became a lump in my throat. And this lump would not go down. I tried to sip some water but that went nowhere. I could not breathe and I started to feel woozy and panicky.

Luckily, having recently taken a first aid refresher course [in order to maintain my certification as a motorcycle riding instructor] I remembered the procedure for preventing choking when one was alone. I vigorously slammed the front of my body into the edge of kitchen counter. I then began to cough and vomited up the lump in my throat. I  began to breathe regularly, but broke into a cold sweat with a rapid heartbeat and the shakes.

It was a close call, and I was quite upset, however I also felt a strange calmness. It was like I had just passed up the opportunity to see what’s on the other side and had chosen to stay here in my current embodiment. For the time being anyway. The fact that I actually had a choice in whether I passed on or not was rather reassuring. Knowing that my spirit really doesn’t die and that I merely change form [since energy cannot be created or destroyed],  just meant that if I had choked to death, I would’ve just entered another phase of my existence.

So I basically said to myself – release and let go, whatever happens will  happen. I was not tied to the result. While I did not want to suffer,  I was not afraid to die.
Weird huh?

Or not.

Keep manifesting 🙂
Tony
If interested in getting on my e-mailing list click here.

So, are you in recovery? Are you addicted?

I was recently asked: “Are you in recovery Tony? You seem to regularly refer to sobriety, freedom from addiction and being, or getting, clean in some of your e-mails and sometimes on your blog.”
Well, here’s my answer – no – I am personally not in recovery from any particular substance.

But I did, and still do, have friends and relatives who are, or have been, addicted – to drugs or alcohol.
Yes-  I used to smoke [tobacco as well as some grass and hash ] but broke that habit a long time ago. I also used to be a news junkie – reading the daily paper, wading through at least 2 newsmagazines a week, watching the TV news and listening to radio reports – every hour on the hour. But I’ve let that go as well.

I still enjoy a good cup of coffee [or 2 or 3] every morning, and a tumbler of single malt scotch, a cold bottle of beer, or a glass of red wine [or more] at the end of the day.

The main things that I am still in recovery from are: judgment, criticism, and blame – of myself and of others. Oh yes – and negative thinking. Are you recovering from those things as well?

So I’m taking it one day at a time – releasing myself from self-destructive thought patterns and beliefs. Replacing them with a positive mindset.

Remember the Serenity Prayer? It’s by Reinhold Niebuhr.
“God give me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I can’t and the wisdom to know the difference.” Easier said than done right?

I once posted a plaque featuring that saying on my wall, by the door, outside my office, at a new workplace. One of the senior managers approached me a couple of days later, asked me if I was a friend of Bill’s and showed me an unusual coin.

I suddenly realized that she was a member of AA and thought that I was as well. I explained to her that I was not and that the prayer that she referred to as the “Alcoholics Anonymous Creed” applied to anyone. Anyone who struggles with fear, worry, panic, anxiety or stress. Anyone who needs to surrender to a higher power.

As Joan Borysenko says in Pocketful of Miracles:”Surrender to the things that can’t be changed is one of the keys to peace of mind. In other words – What is, is, and I can handle it”

It’s being receptive to new attitudes, ideas perspectives, creativity, open-mindedness, and possibility. It’s not quitting or giving up. It’s trusting in your own higher self. It’s recovering from negativity.

And we can do it together.

In closing, if you are overwhelmed by alcohol or know someone who is, please check out “The 30 Day Sobriety Solution“, co-authored by Jack Canfield. It could be a lifesaver.

CLICK HERE

Keep manifesting 🙂
Tony

If interested in getting on my e-mailing list click here.