My favorite authors are my life coaches. Ester Hicks and Bette Middler are assertive , in fact I can sense a quiet impatience in them towards people who don’t go for what they deserve in life. Bette Middler , I suppose is not an author but I learn from her posts on Facebook.

Lyn Grabhorn pokes fun at herself almost like Ellen de Generes and teaches how powerful consciousness is.
Gill Edwards and Laura Bushnell advocate the pathway of joy. Why struggle? Why be a martyr?

Sylvia Boorstein was introduced to me through her book “Happiness Is an Inside Job”. Since then I have worked on my inner life and have been more compassionate with myself.

Neale Walsch and Michael Dooley are so positive. In fact Walsch makes me wonder if there is truly evil in the world. Michael Dooley puts so much premium on our thoughts.

Michael Tamura like Joe Vitale harps on our divinity. Like Vitale, Tamura believes everything is already in us.
But the most comprehensive teacher for me is Dr. Christine Page who covers health, wealth, the present, the past and the future etc.
Rabbi Darfour has answered so many of my questions even those which nuns and priests would just want me to accept in faith.

Although I no longer buy books I get messages from Dr. Orloff via Facebook.   It is the same case with Cheryl Richardson who taught me to pay attention to what the universe teaches me lest the lessons be repeated till I learn.

Dr Weil’s message is to to adjust because I live in an uncertain world.
Debbie Ford lives on on Facebook through her foundation that faithfully posts guidance for living.
Huffington is a favorite  in helping me with my fears.

My wish is that before I die, I can read a book written by Angelina Jolie regarding her life experiences – doing a lot of good without religion and without her mother who according to her was her main influence.

Apparently this is an upsetting statement from “Zero Limits” : “You have to give up the idea that people do things for you. They do things for themselves.”

“Joys of Much Too Much” has something similar: “Over the years I’ve learned as both an employer and a job seeker that you can presume nothing nor can you assume that what you think is obvious appears that way to the rest of the world. It rarely does.”

Dooley in “Infinite Possibilities” says: “We live lives that are so personal and individual.”

“Our lives are far more personal, precious and unique, than we’ve been taught and this is because they e fr more a product of how and what we think than they are of evolution or destiny.”

“It’s far more accurate to think that we all sit alone in our own movie theaters. Apart from life’s unchanging principles, we all live by different rules and truths based upon different beliefs.”

But Esther Hicks, Martha Beck and Neale Walsch would counter by saying that in truth we are all one.

So in my life, I use the Ho’oponopono strategy. I no longer try to fix everything. I trust the Divine in me to accomplish what i can’t.

Let’s listen to Martha Beck: “All of us have been taught to make things happen in the physical world. We know what it takes: setting goals, rolling up our sleeves, putting pleasure aside, and working, working, working, working, working. Then it helps if we work harder. Often we need others to help us work, so we must work to find them and work to motivate them with physical rewards (food,money, companionship,
approval) and?or physical punishment (pink slips, prison, breakups, criticism).

All of this is hard. It demands much time and effort from both the body and the calculating mind. As Genesis reminds us: ‘ In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return’. ”

Somber statements. And to make matters worse Ms Beck had to use archaic language to quote the Bible. Lucky for me, several of my favorite books counter the Statements of M. Beck.

“Blood, sweat and tears aren’t what it takes to make real change. Instead it’s your imagination, beliefs and expectations that draw you into action, circumstances and coincidences that make dreams manifest and inevitable.” Mike Dooley’s “Infinite Possibilities” speaks as though there are no obstacles just possibilities.

“You Are the Answer by M Tamura explains obstacles thus: “When we are in resistance, we give our power away to the very object of our resistance.”

“Working on Yourself Doesn’t Work” says: “If you resist something, at best you narrowly define yourself against the thing you are resisting, at worst you become just like the very thing you resist.”

I will end this musing on a positive note: by praying according to the “Artist’s Recovery” : Teach me to trust that I deserve joyfully and peacefully to be my creative self as an act of worship to you.”

“In essence, the only way to grow spiritually, know ourselves, or be of essence, is to embrace the sense of being out of control, just as the caterpillar knows that by entering the cocoon and abandoning the security of his many legs he is being offered the abundant freedom which is the butterfly.” That is from a favorite book: “Spiritual Alchemy” by Dr Christine Page.

I am still inside a cocoon though I’m turning 71 tomorrow. Because of a mild stroke in 2012 I no longer have the security of my left leg and I’m not about to abandon the security of my right leg. I am still not ready for the abundant freedom offered by flying out of control.

I still want to hang on to some of my old, limiting beliefs simply because they they have been of service in the past and are not part of the dark, scary unknown. My many books promise a bright future but Ive always been risk-aversed.

Andrew Weill’s advice is “I am comfortable with uncertainty, and I advise you to learn to be as well. We live in an uncertain universe.”

According to the “Urban Shaman”: “All meanings are made up and the absolute truth is whatever you decide it is”

Dr Page says: “This may sound sacrilegious and I have no wish to trample on anybody’s beliefs. However, I believe that breaking this spell is an essential part of remembering, allowing each of us to reconnect to a deeper, inner truth, the soul of the universe and essentially with the Oneness of the Divine.”

In the 90s I went into severe depression. It may have been a case of dark nights of the soul. But I have awakened. I have no ambition to liken myself to Van Gogh not to Albert Camus.

Ever Lent I have chosen to view the Passion and the Resurrection from a different perspective.  According to M. Tamura:
“Every time a soul is born into the earth, God dies giving that life, entering the material world to give that soul a body. Spirit must relinquish infinity for the finite, eternity for the terminal and immortality for the mortal.”

Like Rabbi Darfour, I don’t like anthropomorphizing God but I can’t help imagining how suffocating it must be for expansive Spirit to be contained within the confines of a body. For a lifetime, spirit must be limited to mundane thoughts; Spirit must be imprisoned in time and space; Spirit must contend with separation when it naturally thrives in oneness.

On oneness Esther Hicks has this to say:
“…Before your physical birth, you were vibrationally intertwined with Source, or with what humans oten call God but the full integration of you with God was such that there was no relationship between the two – because you wer all one.”

“Zero Limits” says :
“… you are created in the image of the divine. That means you were created void on one side of the coin and infinite. As soon as you are willing o let go of trash and be empty, then immediately what happens is inspiration fills your being and now you are born free.”

M. Tamura says:
“As we awaken our consciousness and grow in this field, so too our God-seed grows until we finally harvest the totality of divinity from this field.”
“In a sense, we resurrect God with our expanding awareness and love, little by little from our unconscious.”