“Chutzpah is  the Yiddish word for nerve… It takes real chutzpah for anyone to try to outline for another the components of a well-reasoned faith. faith is such a personal matter that what one person says can, at best only partially satisfy (or dissatisfy) another!”  These are precious words from Rabbi Belfour Brickner.

He continued:” Any faith worthy of a personal commitment needs to begin with a belief in oneself… This aphorism comes very close to saying it all. Until and unless one has a healthy ego, one will not only be unable to lead or guide others, but one will also be unable to make up one’s own mind and thus become easy prey for others who have strong opinions and even stronger convictions.”

Although I am approaching 71 years, coming from an educational system where conformity, obedience, and compliance were considered premium, my ego is still undergoing reconstructive rehab. In another essay I wrote why I rely heavily on my favorite authors to integrate my new beliefs and values.

For a meaningful life Victor Frankel had this to say: “The answer lay in the way each individual thought of himself or herself.”

“As long as they found some meaning in their day-to-day existence, as long as they looked forward to some small survival goal, they had a better chance of making it than those who lived only in the past.”

“His faith was pinioned on a sense of self: I am worthwhile. I have something to live for.”

According to Rabbi Brickner: “Frankel lived by a quotation from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”

The early first-century rabbis, according to Brickner interpreted the biblical phrase “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself to mean You shall love your neighbor, he is yourself.

” When you think or speak thoughts of thanks what you’re really doing is thinking thoughts of having received or having been blessed.  When you think thoughts of having received those thoughts seek to come back to you experientially.    Your thoughts craft circumstances in which you will physically receive whatever you were giving thanks for, so that you can then experience that gratitude you previously sent out.”

In my life I am made to feel I am living out a story from my fairy-tale days when the character receives blessings after fulfilling conditions laid out by a powerful, external benign force. It may be a fairy godmother, a king, a wealthy donor etc. But I must contribute to the process via my thoughts and feelings.

There seems to be a universal law that: “will give you reason to experientially  feel the gratitude you first put out crafting occurrences and surprises that you may never even thought about but that were exactly the kinds of things that would manifest the feeling that you did think about.”

Infinite Possibilities by Dooley graphically explains manifestation thus: [Gratitude] works because of the thoughts and feelings it generates which can only be made physical by becoming the appropriate things and events of your own life.”

“You Are the Answer” by Tamura says: “Life gives moment by moment, step by step.”

The same interpretation on how original sin has tainted the whole of human nature can be used to explain how my consciousness, cleared of fears and anxieties can cleanse the fears and anxieties of all who are in my consciousness. Perhaps, the process is similar to the phenomenon of the hundredth monkey described by Dr. Christine Page.

According to Joe Vitale in “Zero Limits” all I have to do is apply the Ho’oponopono  healing strategy. I have observed that as the energy of my fears and anxieties is neutralized such are also neutralized in everybody in my sphere of consciousness.

The experience and belief of Haleakala Hew Len, teacher of Joe Vitale is that “as he cleans himself” through the Ho’oponopono litany, “the world gets clean because he is the world. “All outside of him is projection and illusion.”                  “If you create your own reality, then yu created all you see, even the parts you don’t like”.

In my reality, I used the Ho’oponopono strategy to help our daughter who has become so anxious about my health. When she doesn’t get a message from me or when she doesn’t get notes from me via Facebook, she wonders whether I went to the emergency room again.

This is bad. I cannot allow our daughter to waste her energy on unnecessary monkey mind business. According to Laura Bushnell: ” you must release the problem and allow yourself to receive the solution”.

“Infinite Possibilities” has this to say : Whenever you want change, come from a place of desire and strength not of need and incompleteness, so that the ensuing journey can feel like one of adventure and choice.”

For around 5 years now, I have been inspired by the following from “Urban Shaman”: “The shaman was trained to be flexible, to be comfortable with change and to direct it in a positive way, to be free to explore new ways and means of doing things, and to constantly update, and expand his or her knowledge by travel and study with other teachers”.

A priest from Don Bosco, Manila has declared shamanism as New Age; This means it is forbidden territory for obedient Catholics. But It is from my book “Urban Shaman” that I acquired the best appreciation for the Passion and my salvation.
Now that I am no longer active in the academe, I enjoy being a teacher of life. “As teacher, shamans were trained to demonstrate and share their knowledge, helping people to discover their own power to change their lives”.

In my own life I draw inspiration from the likes of Martha Beck, Gill Edwards, Dr. Christine Page, Sylvia Boorstein etc. From Facebook, I get daily inspiration from the likes of Dooley, Dyer, Neale Walsch, Esther  and Abraham Hicks etc.
I manage my thoughts because I believe I am responsible for however my life turns out to be. According to “Urban Shaman: “Confident authority is the key to conscious creations, whether used with words, visualization or feelings.”

According to “Infinite Possibilities” by Dooley: “…because not everything you think can instantly spring into time and space, only those thoughts that are aligned with your beliefs and are felt intensely to the degree that they automatically throw you into action can appear.” This I hope can help those disappointed with “The Secret” I have been protesting against “The Secret”. It does not happen automatically!

Furthermore: “The belief of yours that are the strongest will ultimately muster up, the most powerful thoughts, you think, determine the words you speak and eventually manifest the life you lead.”

“By mistrusting God’s heart by reaching to take control of what they wanted, Adam and Eve initiated a process in our hearts, a desperate grasping that can only be described as addiction”
“Desire goes mad within us”

In my case it can be as petty as a problem with a feature of Facebook. For quite some time now, I have been replying to the messages of our daughter sent via Facebook. Weeks ago, I would get text messages from our daughter complaining about not hearing from me.

Out of the blue, I got a message from Yahoo that my messages needed an email address. Only then did I realize that I had been replying to the notifications of Yahoo and not replying to Facebook messages. But why only then?

At that point I needed “Urban Shaman’s” : “Understanding isn’t necessary to bring about positive change but a lot of people feel better if they have an explanation first .”
“Some people” Like me, logical by template “insist on knowing why things are the way they are before they will give themselves permission to change.”

But I have learned from Dr Cherie Carter Scott: “…we each will be presented with lessons that are custom-designed for us and designed to teach us what we need to learn next.”

So I will change if only not to be banished from the Garden of Eden. I want to be wiser than Adam and Eve.

I want to end this with a positive note from M. Tamura : “It is not God who kicks us out og His grace, it is we who drop out of the oneness, abundance, and flow of life when we resist anything. “