This video was sent to me by Jack Armstrong, a man I greatly admire. His incredible book “Lessons from the Source” is a spiritual guidebook for navigating life’s journey. I have done more than one blog post about this book, because I believe it holds the keys to life in “lesson” form. I find this of value, don’t you?
Visit http://budurl.com/bhbw to vote for the book “Lessons from the Source” and http://budurl.com/agrl to buy a copy of this remarkable book. This brief video offers powerful and inspirational quotes about goodness from “Lessons from the Source.” Thank you!
What sings to your soul? What is your passion? I talk to people every day, who are reaching into their hearts, to find the joy, the passion that they know lives inside of them. Giving up is easy. Anyone and everyone can do that, and most do. Check in with yourself for some honest answers. Listen to your heart. Be brave, live courageously by living the life you came here to live.
“The potential hidden within each of us is staggering. Shed the old layers. Devote yourself to something of value that sings to the passion in your soul. Now you become the master of your destiny.”
-Debra Oakland
People want to be happy. It’s that simple. It all starts with you, not “out there” in the world. There is nothing that will make you happy for long, or satisfy you, if you are not happy inside. Take some time to connect with what brings you joy. Happiness is infectious, joy expands only when you are ready to embrace it. Be a willing participant. Become the master of your destiny.
Jamie Oliver’s TED prize talk, makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food. Jamie spoke at TED2010 this February in Long Beach, CA for 22 minutes, about the state of world health, or rather the lack of it. Jamie is reaching out globally, with courage and passion.
Remember the shaggy-haired “Naked Chef” of late-’90s? One of my favorite cooking shows back then. Jamie was courageous, raw, and was passionate about food. I became a fan. He has built a worldwide media conglomerate of TV shows, books, cookware and magazines. His idea of sharing unpretentious food with friends and family, was refreshing to me. Everyone gets to play in the kitchen.
Jamie now has Fifteen Foundation’s. He has trained young chefs from challenged backgrounds to run four of his restaurants. He visits schools to teach children to grow organic gardens of their own, and for their school time meals. Jamie’s School Dinner, Ministry of Food and Food Revolution USA combine Oliver’s culinary tools, cookbooks and television, with serious activism and community organizing — to create change on both the individual and governmental level.
I wanted to introduce you to Kimberly Schneider, The Manifestation Maven, who I had the pleasure of meeting recently. Kimberly is the creator of The Cornucopia Method of Manifestation™, a powerful and proven 5-step process that has helped thousands of people all over North America create more of what they want and less of what they don’t in their lives. I love Kimberly’s comfortable manner, while relaying very valuable information.
A former trial attorney and psychotherapist, Kimberly especially likes working with live audiences. She specializes in “5-minute life makeovers” because a few minutes are often all she needs to identify limiting beliefs and communicate them in a compassionate yet direct, lively and compelling manner.
Kimberly facilitates www.ManifestationMastermind.com, a teleseminar coaching program, and works with select high-level business coaching clients in her Alchemy of Business, VIP Map a Business in a Day and Day of Transformation coaching programs.
A poet, dancer, world traveler, spiritual adventurer and business alchemist, she lives in the St. Louis area with her husband, two kids and two cats. Kimberly has two extraordinary children, one of whom has special needs.
Mike Prysner tells of his feelings during the war, how the war woke him up to the truth of what is really going on. This video is amazing, to say the least. It took great courage for Mike to speak out. This video touched my heart to the core. Please share this with others who believe we can all live in courage.
“Our real enemies are not those living in a distant land whose names or policies we don’t understand; The real enemy is a system that wages war when it’s profitable, the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it’s profitable, the Insurance Companies who deny us Health care when it’s profitable, the Banks who take away our homes when it’s profitable. Our enemies are not several hundred thousands away. They are right here in front of us.”
- Mike Prysner
Each and every person is connected by a common bond. We are ONE. Everyone matters. This video aired during NBC’s coverage of the Opening Ceremony of the Vancouver Winter Olympics on Friday, February 12th 2010. The recording took place on February 1st, 2010, in the same studio as the original 25 years earlier. “We Are The World 25 For Haiti“, in which Jones and Richie serve as executive producers and producers with many other collaborators, to benefit the Haitian earthquake relief efforts and the rebuilding of Haiti.
The 25th Anniversary recording features over 80 artists and performers.
Many acts of courage have occurred since the earthquake in Haiti, and great generosity has been extended to the people there. The contributions have come in many forms. Like the song says, let’s make a better day, just you and me. Every day citizens – everybody pitching in. Now that is Living in Courage!
“The Meadow” Is a novel about love, that covers many thousands of years. A Tale of undying and eternal love, demonstrating the interconnectedness of the Universe through the expression of two people who live many lives over thousands of years. The authors Mike O’Hare and Elfreda Pretorius come from different continents and knew nothing about each others existence. Details of their story is below, and reads like a novel itself. I encourage you to read this amazing book of intrigue, meaning of life, eternal love , spirituality, mystery, sex and much more. Talk about Living in Courage!
Overview of The Meadow
The Meadow is a passport into other worlds, allowing the reader to travel to ancient destinations whilst remaining in the safety and comfort of an arm chair. Philosophically, it is a tale of the struggle between Light and Dark, personified in two root characters that meet and fall in love in antiquity, only to discover that life is imperfect and far too short.
The tale of The Meadow assumes that we slip through the trapdoor of death to live again and again to continue experiencing the magnificent spectrum of emotions and polarities of more lives which enable us to grow spiritually, mentally and emotionally. Precisely how the soul is molded over eons into a sentient being with the ability to feel and experience is a closely guarded secret of Creation. Yet, there are instances of refined consciousness, capable of traversing heavenly realms, which have discovered the Meadow, ingeniously hidden in the astral level or Middle Place. The story of Teuch and Anacaona’s love is woven around just such a concept, daring the reader to delve into the possibility that all is not as it seems and that we bear a solemn responsibility to live our lives in as much consciousness as we are capable of.
Swathed in primordial mystery, the story blazes a trail through four devastating lives and personalities, from ancient Mexica to contemporary Pakistan, before luring the lead characters into the twenty first century, where we meet them as Steve Ballantire and Eva Norman. But they do not arrive here alone. Obsessed with revenge many centuries old, their nemesis, representing the Dark side, is in hot pursuit of the protagonists.
The intrigue intensifies when the British authorities express an interest in Hugo, the brilliant child of Eva, and snatches him and his mother from the clutches of ‘the evil one’ in Tel Aviv, to place him under the tutelage of Steve Ballantire, an esteemed professor based in North East England. Due to this intervention of MI6, the lead characters finally meet in this life. However, their fanatical adversary yet again follows them to England, leading to the devious abduction of Eva and resulting in a nerve-wracking international chase across the world; climaxing in the Himalaya Mountains. It is here where a small, but remarkable monk begins to lead the story back to its roots in antiquity, and the boundaries of time are finally erased. Inevitably, ancient identities of past eras emerge into full awareness to force the final cosmic showdown.
Steeped in symbolism and mystery, Hugo, a mildly autistic savant, unravels the enigmas of the story and reveals his understanding of our universe being based in mathematics. The Tibetan monk and the boy independently confirm the existence of the celestial halfway house known as the Meadow, and this leads to Hugo locating star gates which demonstrate the absolute interconnectedness of everything.
This tale is of an ancient dream that had awakened into the twenty first century, where from the smoldering embers of antiquity, it snaked a path through centuries of unspeakable violence, impossible sacrifice and incredible passion to find its way back into the lives of Steve and Eva. Through the trials and tribulations of the characters in the book, the readers are subtly invited to investigate their own lives and evaluate the possibility of having lived before. But that is not where it ends.
Drawn together by unusual circumstances to tell the story of The Meadow are two strangers who live on separate continents. As they created the tale, the authors peered through the kaleidoscope of life, and slowly turning the lens, they wrote about sex, violence, intrigue, betrayal, murder, mystery, politics, religion, suspense, science and physics, spirituality, and even magic. The jury is still out on whether the authors wrote their book from actual memory, or if this all springs from very fertile imagination.
The Meadow is comparable to “The Thornbirds” by Colleen McCullough and “Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follet. The book will appeal to female readers of adult age and interest the growing number of people around the world (male and female) curious about exploring the possibility of life continuing on beyond death.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
A remarkable aspect of The Meadow is that the authors hail from separate continents and for most of their lives knew nothing about each other’s existence. By the time they had completed their mega manuscript they had still not laid eyes on one another and, given their life circumstances and vocations, even a chance meeting was a most unlikely possibility. Yet, with Mike O’Hare who is from North East England and Elfreda Pretorius, who resides in Canada, an interesting but powerful force was at work which would dictate almost three years of their lives. In 2005 an unusual meeting of minds set the scene for an ambitious project that neither author could have foretold, even if they had had a crystal ball.
Mike O’Hare began his career as a compositor in the newspaper industry but with an inherent love of writing, the pen always lay alongside the setting stick/Linotype keyboard and he soon began contributing short editorials for his local paper. In 1969 when Neil Armstrong stepped off his moon ladder, “one short step for mankind” became the foundation for Mike’s article, which set a trend for years to follow, during which time he wrote a series of short pieces for magazines and newspapers.
In later years he lost heart for his trade as it evolved into the electronic era and transferred from the production side of printing to the excitement and trappings that sales offered. Eventually he brokered his way to a comfortable existence and retired early to nurture his love of writing and concentrate his creative efforts on an idea that had taken root in his mind when he was in his late teens. Fearful of ridicule, the idea remained a closely guarded secret, but an unusual meeting with a stranger would soon lead to its blossoming into The Meadow.
Elfreda Pretorius’s field of expertise is communication, expressed in writing, coaching and teaching. As a best selling author in the self-help industry (Stop Struggling and Start Living – Rules of the Game), she demonstrated her grasp of the human psyche through authoring this book which has become a powerful tool to help change the games of others along with its companion workbook, Ten Truths from the Top of Table Mountain. Due to popular demand, a self coaching program based on the book will soon be available for download from her personal web site: HYPERLINK “http://www.elfredapretorius.com” www.elfredapretorius.com.
Similar to Mike, she is intensely interested in the world, the dissemination of accurate information and the evolution of man as he is subjected to various schools of thought. They became acquainted via the Internet, on a web site where just such a meeting of minds was in progress and very soon slipped into a wonderful friendship, as comfortably as one would slip into an old pair of jeans. She learned of his wonderful idea for a book, and spontaneously offered to help him dip pen in ink. Due to a pressing workload, her plan was not to linger for too long, but she never left the project. Through the confluence of their combined creativity The Meadow developed into a narrative neither could have imagined in their wildest dreams.
The entire novel was written via the Internet, through an exchange of ideas and thoughts that defies accurate description. Both authors were aware of a creative force at work in the two and half years that it took to complete a project of which they feel very privileged to have been a part.
I had the pleasure of watching Emeril Green, on Planet Green recently. Emeril visited a courageous little town in Hardwick, Vermont. I am courageously dis-attaching from the global food system, and moving to organic small sustainable farms for our food. As Dan Rather asks in this video, where do we get our food and what are we eating? A down on it’s luck, old mining town in Hardwick Vermont started answering those questions by designing a 21st Century food system. The town has been transformed into a community wide farming circle. The global food system is killing our planet, communities and people. Processed products that are shipped on airplanes, contaminated, injected, full of chemicals, grown in bad soil with poor seeds, stored for long periods of time and who knows what, are just bad for our health, and well being Let’s participate together in making this planet a better place for all. We need more communities like Hardwick around the globe.
Use your courage to tune in, tap in and turn on you inner power and light. We all have it, no exception. Enjoy the wonderful voice of Ester Hicks as she brings forth this message of positivity and inspiration.
The End Of Poverty is a new documentary release directed by the brilliant Philippe Diaz. Imagine listening to politicians, economists, and leading experts in the world, along with the voices of people living in poverty. This movie is the first of it’s kind.
The End of Poverty asks why today 20% of the planet’s population uses 80% of its resources, and consumes 30% more than the planet can regenerate? Today, global poverty has reached new levels because of unfair debt, trade and tax policies — in other words, wealthy countries exploiting the weaknesses of poor, developing countries.
The film premiered in NYC this past weekend at Village East Cinema, sold out some show times, and had better box office numbers than every other film playing at the Village East including Disney’s ‘A Christmas Carol’. Unfortunately because a lot of the Hollywood blockbuster’s are coming out this weekend, ‘The End of Poverty?’ will only be playing in New York for one week (ends on Thursday), so make sure to check it out and tell all your friends in NYC.
November 18th 2009 there will be a benefit preview screening in Los Angeles for Office of the Americas. A panel discussion with the director, Philippe Diaz, the founder of OOA Blase Bonpane, and philanthropist Aris Anagnos will follow the screening. Everyone will receive a free gift bag. Tickets are still on sale. Go here for more information: http://www.facebook.com
• The richest 1% of the world’s population owns 32 % of the wealth.
• Today more than one billion people live in the slums of the Southern hemisphere.
• Almost 1/3 of the world’s population has no access to affordable clean water.
• Almost 16,000 children die each day from hunger or hunger- related diseases.
• Cutting global poverty in half would cost $20 billion, less than 4% of the U.S. military budget.
Systems that create poverty have been in place since 1492 when the Spanish and the Portuguese conquered the Americas; indigenous people were killed in mass murders, mineral wealth was plundered, local economies were destroyed, and a plantation culture was established. Although the institution of slavery was abolished in the 19th century, it still exists around the world where at least 80 million people are forced to labor in terrible conditions for very little money. The filmmaker interviews poor workers who complain about being treated like slaves, abused and humiliated, and always forced to live with no security or hope for a better life.
The economic damages wrought by colonialists, with an assist from Christian missionaries, stemmed from a series of power plays that encouraged the private ownership of land, the destruction of the communal way of life, the promotion of individualism, and the stamping out of indigenous cultures. All of these developments solidified the enormous gap between the rich and the poor.
Capitalism with its emphasis on greed, profit, and political wheeling and dealing has further widened the abyss between the haves and the have-nots. Under the aegis of neoliberalism, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have subjugated poor nations — especially in Africa — with the burdens of international debt and economies based on raw-material exports. Two scary stories illustrate the structural violence of neoliberal polices. One is the privatization of the water supply under Bechtel (which was overturned by the angry response of the poor who could not afford it) and the injustices perpetrated on poor Africans who cannot pay for hospitals and schools.
The voices of those who have suffered set alongside the consensus of the experts bears witness to the deprivations heaped upon Southern peoples by the nations of the North who have accumulated more than 80% of the world’s resources for only 20% of the world’s population.
French filmmaker Philippe Diaz discusses his latest gem, The End of Poverty? about the systemic causes of poverty, what is terribly wrong with our system of global capitalism and its control of Western foreign policy. Interview by Jim Dingeman.
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“Debra Oakland has clearly written Living in Courage from the heart. This is a book that guides people to summon the courage to face life's biggest challenges. You will find wonderful nuggets that you can apply to your life now.”
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the #1 Self Improvement Website on the Internet
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