Our Ripple Effect

One of the mysteries of life is that we never know how we affect other people. When we act with purpose, we have intention, and for those who participate with us in a shared adventure, there will be certain intended and desired results. These we know.

Then there are also times when someone may take us by surprise and reveal something we never knew. These can be amazing experiences.

A few days ago, I published Sarah's Story, which of course I was aware of, although it was very satisfying to hear again in her own words, just how much her life had changed in a short time, due to the work I did with her. That is one of the true rewards of doing this work of healing and reading.

For example, a few years ago, I was contacted by someone I have never met who introduced himself to me by email and informed me that something I had written many years ago had changed his life and inspired him in his career choice.

Another man contacted me a couple of years ago and told me how much my creative writing class had helped him and that now something he had written was being considered as a script for a movie.

There is a woman in another part of the country who calls me for phone readings who feels that the guidance I have given her in her readings has been a great help and provided her with useful ideas, and so she refers other people to me.

There are other people who have felt that my salve and oil work so well for them that they keep ordering more. And yet both the salve and the oil were not originally made to sell. These were things that I simply made for my own use and then gave to family and friends, until other people kept asking me for some, so then began to bottle and sell it.

It is one of the real beauties and joys of doing this work that people contact me periodically and let me know the positive ways in which I have affected them. That is very satisfying.

We definitely know about some of the ways we affect people, and when we hear about some of the others, it opens another window for us to see through.

Sometimes we are so busy and focused, we are not aware of all the consequences of our actions. And other times, there are things that happen as a ripple effect, touching people we have never met in person, but yet were influenced by our actions.

In this way, there will always be mysteries, and there will always be surprises. There are so many ways to see the world and how we interact with it.

Sarah's Story

I was having a bit of a breakdown, when I found Dan Liss online. I’m not from Colorado, so I do not have the network I am used to calling upon in times of crisis. I did an online search for Tarot readers and energy workers, hoping to find both in one person. Dan Liss was the first to respond to my inquiries. I took it as a sign to go ahead and book with him, though I live in Capitol Hill (Denver) and Dan is in Longmont. I am so glad I decided to make that short trip!

I have had great experiences with energy healing and Tarot, but I am also aware that charlatans do exist. However, upon stepping into Dan’s space, any doubt of his authenticity as a healer and reader quickly faded. The energy was most definitely there, and I immediately felt calm knowing I was in good hands.

That first session was a mix of Tarot reading and Reiki. It exceeded my expectations, and I began to see my life change around me. I had felt lost and alone before going to the session. On the ride home, I knew I was on my path.

I booked a second session a few weeks later, since I began to feel the need for clarification in another part of my life. My experience was just as rewarding as the first.

Dan’s readings are thorough, and he has the compassion, honesty and insight required to genuinely be of help to someone in need of clarity and direction. His Reiki skills are equally phenomenal. In fact, after a few sessions, Dan became the Master that led me to my own path as a Reiki practitioner! As a healer, I had always been interested in learning Reiki. However, the right opportunity for me to learn just had not arisen. Thanks to Dan’s knowledge and willingness to teach, I have begun my own life-long journey as a Reiki Master.

I think back to the feelings of despair and regret I felt before that first session, and I can’t help but laugh. I am so glad I followed the signs and chose love over fear. I have no doubt I was led to Dan at the perfect moment in time. My life has received a necessary overhaul, and I can see the effects of the Reiki energy daily.

In just a few months, I have changed jobs, living spaces, relationships and attitudes all for the better. I have regained the self-confidence I had lost along the way, and I made a great friend in the process.

Thank you, Dan! It is indeed God’s work you are doing, and the world is a better place because of it. Blessings to you and yours!

Try It While You Still Have Time

For me, the death of someone I know usually prompts another jolt of reflection. We are reminded that we may have put off something we have been meaning to do, and we either resolve to get on with it or let go of it.

Bucket List in a way. But some of the things on people's bucket lists might just be one shot deals like parachute jumping.

What I have in mind are those more life altering courses changes like a person breaking out of a stagnant period in their life, going for a change in relationship, whether strengthening the ties in an existing relationship, letting an old one go, or getting into a new one.

Another big one would be to find work that you enjoy or start your own business or get additional training so that you can create new opportunities.

Some things we might want to do because the thought has been in our head repeatedly, but it never seems so urgent that we make time. The interest might be learning tai chi, writing a book, learning to dance or playing a musical instrument.

Whatever it is for you, today is a great time to move in the direction of your dreams. I am thinking of those longer term developments. All the things I have mentioned involved a consistent effort to yield results.

Whatever it is, try it while you still have time.

Outliving Our Children

A friend from Atlanta called this evening to tell me that the daughter of someone I used to work with died today. She was an only child so that makes the pain even more intense. The fact that it was suicide made it even more shocking.

It is not the natural order of things for parents to outlive their children. My father's mother outlived both her sons by a large number of years. I know that it weighed heavily on her. Once you have grown children you are at an age where having more children is not an option. Nothing can ever replace a lost child, although when you have more than one, you still have some children left to share your life with, whereas if you only have one, there is no other child to help with the healing.

It is often a challenge to put events like this into perspective. The age at which she chose to cross the veil is about the same age as her mother and I were when we worked together.

She was a good kid and the most important person in her mother's life. Why her life became what it did and what led her to make the choice that she did, we will never know. People can only speculate.

We will also never know for sure what happens to spirits after we die until we get there ourselves. Do people who commit suicide go somewhere different than people who die of illness or accident or get murdered or killed in a war?

The various religions all offer their versions, but they are all just stories to try and help us reach some kind of understanding of the order of the stages of life. Karma and reincarnation seem to offer good ways to understand such events. Ever since caveman times, people have had death rituals because they just instinctively knew that our spirits must go somewhere after the life leaves our body. And the rituals are to help ease the transition both for the one who left and the ones who are left behind.

Rituals can ease the transition to a degree but we also instinctively know that children should outlive their parents and for those who experience a young death, that semblance of natural order can never be put back into place. The best the survivors can hope for is to find some solace and peace of mind through their own form of spirituality and the comfort offered by friends and relatives.

Any death of a person we know can reorient our sense of perspective, and cause us to reflect on our own mortality.

A Breath of Fresh Air

A few days ago I wrote about feeling good and how it helps us be more productive, more creative and opens doors for us that can help us reach our goals.

If you are still wondering how much truth there is to that, consider how often we feel lazy and unmotivated when we allow moodiness to rule. When we feel disappointed, sad or unappreciated, notice how little we get done, how we allow those feelings to prevent us from getting going.

We can witness the truth of how our feelings affect us in our everyday life by observing our own behavior and noting when we are really performing to our best.

So if we know this is true and we can redirect our own energies, stir it up to get the most out of life. Sometimes it can be as simple as putting on some music and dancing, or going for a walk, going for a swim, just about anything.

When we want to bust out of a rut, a good way is to just get up and do something to stimulate the flow of endorphins, get some oxygen flowing through the blood, the brain, seeing and smelling the plants in bloom.

Often that is immediately followed by a new idea, and the idea is followed with new actions.

Decide to be happy first and see what happens next. We already know what happens when we feel sad and do not do much. Which one feels better?

It's All About Being Happy

Our reason for being is simply to express joy. All the other reasons we make up simply lead to that.

Whether we say that the reason for what we do is to improve the quality of life, help people, reveal truth or become successful, it is all about expressing joy.

We each make up our own reasons for what we do, what goals we have, what we think is our life's purpose is. We make up all these things because it makes us happy. When we achieve whatever we decide to achieve, we feel joy.

It's always interesting to watch these documentaries where someone will ask various religious authorities and they like to say that our whole purpose in life is to worship God. They answer that way because it suits their purposes. After all, their continued income is dependent on getting people to continue to join and fund their institutions.

However, if you think about it, doing things that make us happy is the simplest reason of all to do anything. If you have chosen to get married, get a house and have a family, that is the way you pursue happiness. If you start a business and grow it into a profitable enterprise, that is a way you pursue happiness. If you choose to play a musical instrument, dance, play a sport or game and do it well, that is another way to pursue happiness. It is always about the pursuit of happiness.

You know that famous phrase in the Declaration of Independence that we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It's right there. If we have life and liberty, the natural expression of that is the pursuit of happiness.

So choose happiness as your attitude today and see what happens. Be happy no matter what happens. It's on that same plane as choosing love over fear. Choose happiness over not being happy. See what it difference it makes.

Smoking OPs

I was listening to some old blues this morning and suddenly this old phrase just popped into my head, "smoking OPs." I haven't heard this phrase in a long time. This is something we used to say way back when me and my friends used to smoke cigarettes. When somebody else was out of cigarettes and they would ask if they could have one of yours, you would say that they were "smoking OPs." OP meant other peoples. Some people always just seemed to have run out and always wanted to "borrow" one of yours. Some people were chronically smoking OPs. In fact when someone was always mooching, it was said that their favorite brand was OP.

Well it has been a great many years since I quit smoking cigarettes and most of my friends don't smoke any more either.

So maybe the phrase popped into mind because these days there are lots of different common expressions as well as different ways of doing things.

Today there are quite a number of people who have become enamored of the idea that they are great manifestors because they got something they wanted by simply asking someone else for it. So the other person who was giving it may have done so out of pure and simple generosity. But sometimes the receivers delude themselves into thinking that they are capable of great magic and ability to manifest because their friend responded.

A lot of this is due to the plethora of popular books and workshops promising that you can have anything you want just by wishing for it. Quite a seductive thought of course. No work is required on your part according to this line of thinking. All you have to do is keep thinking about what you want and you will have it. Of course, this is flawed thinking. You must take positive, decisive actions if you want your life to change.

Otherwise, you are not really manifesting, you are just smoking OPs.

Back then, the language was more honest. You both knew that the person borrowing the cigarette was really just asking for one out of your pack. However, today's delusionals might say that they "manifested" a cigarette, as if they performed some enormous triumph.

But we know what is really happening, don't we? Sometimes we just have to humor them when they are someone we know and like. We know that no matter what they say, they are still smoking OPs.

Courage

When we think of courage, images of warriors come easily to mind. But courage is not always a physical thing. Courage of your convictions is one. It has been said that the freedom of speech that our country values is most needed by people with whom we disagree. People who hold popular positions and are popular speakers do not need any protection. Nobody is trying to shut them up. Courage then, is doing the right thing by letting the unpopular people speak. Having the strength to listen to another perspective and consider it even if you disagree.

Courage in pursuing a goal is when you press on and move forward to build according to your plan even if you have doubts about yourself or your ability. That's when courage is most needed. Anybody can roll with a sure thing, but it takes courage to persevere in the face of adversity because you believe in your goals, dreams and visions. Doing the sure thing is easy. Doing something challenging is what makes us grow.

The word courage comes from the French word for heart, coeur. Whatever the kind of courage you have in mind, or whatever kind you have experienced, the one thing they have in common is that it takes a lot of heart.

Making Love In a Room with No Furniture

Watching a movie featuring two lovers in a hot relationship, there were these tweaks and memories of times when I have experienced that, when the excitement was so fresh that we could make love in a room with no furniture and not even notice that there was no furniture.

These were the times of poetry, when there was magic in the smallest touch, the softest word. Music stimulated our taste for each other again and we danced in the living room, just the two of us. We danced and we danced until we found ourselves in the bedroom again.

We went out in the field and picked wildflowers to bring home for our altar to our time together, an altar to the intertwining of our energies, on which we burned fragrant incense and candles, and refreshed each other from a bowl of berries and orange wedges.

Special memories surface when our spirit seems to call for them. Crystal clear moments that stand out from the rest. From the whole span of a relationship, sometimes it is only the moments like this that we remember years later. The excitement and the passion ignite our taste for life. In those moments we welcome the joy and the sweetness back into our life. It is so powerful that even it's recall can summon the magic back in for moment, for a while.

When you didn't even notice that there was no bed in the bedroom was the first time you were truly present.

Love, Fear, Optimism and Restrictions

In every area of our lives, we choose our course of action based on either love or fear. Acting from love may often show itself as optimism and acting from fear becomes a restriction.

A long time ago a famous business man said that "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. I just don't know which half."

That may sound strange, but sometimes when we try advertising our business in a new publication or a new medium or on a website, we really don't know if it is going to work until we see the results.

When we act from love we look for different ways to become successful. When we act with passion and love we find more effective solutions to problems, challenges and blockages. We find ways to free up the energy.

You can often hear people who act from fear expressing a lack of confidence in themselves. The express fear about venturing out because there is no guarantee that if you start your own business you will succeed.

Of course there is not. However, the more actions you take to make your dream come true, the more you increase the odds in your favor.

And here you can see the turning point where an idea is translated into actions, where a person chooses whether to turn to acting out of love rather than fear.

As many of you have, I have also recently been changing my marketing approach in an effort to expand and evolve. It is always an act of love for me because being independent feels so much better than having someone else always telling you what to do, how to do it and when to do it.

Yes, it is risky to be optimistic and act from love, but it feels so much better, so much more freeing than the other way.

Spiritual Awakenings

During the times we have had those insights, those AHA moments when we suddenly could see the world in a new way we did not always find agreement from those around us.

Of course, some awakenings are hard to describe. There have been instances where something happened and when someone asked me what happened my honest answer was "I don't know."

There were also times when I did something but if you were to ask me how I did that, I would have to say "I don't know."

Today, however, when someone asks me how I know something that they didn't think I could know, or do something they didn't think I could do, my response is that this is the result of consistent effort in connecting with my spirit guides and using my intuition. The more we practice, the more connected we get.

Why Do We Not Trust Our Intuition?

Everyone has asked themselves this question at some time or another. Including me.

When we get that gut feeling that this is our best choice yet we overrule it, the root lies in the fact that if we don't have an explanation for our choice that it cannot be our best choice.

One way of describing it might be that struggle between right brain and left brain. Funny though, our brain is not always as reliable as our feelings.

Haven't you also had that experience of overriding your gut feeling and then regretting it? Actually, isn't that always what happens after you override your gut instinct.

I have come to believe that this gut feeling is our connection to our spirit guides and ancestors who are trying to advise us, but they are just giving us a prompting, a physical sign that one thing is a confirmation and the other is a warning. Perhaps we fail to trust our first instinct because we would rather have it come to us in the form of a conversation, complete with explanations.

Then again, even when we get that, we sometimes choose to ignore everything that was presented to us, even if the presentation was factual and reasonable.

So, really, our most reliable guide is that gut feeling. Next time you have it, go with the yes. Don't override and go with the no. If you go through this experience again, take that as a confirmation that your gut feeling intuition is your connection to your spirit guides and ancestors who want to see you do well, survive and thrive.

Try it. See what happens next.

Secret Secrets

Are there really secrets that people have been hiding from us that keep us from getting ahead? No, there are not.

The truth in this case, is once again hidden in plain sight. There are three components to getting more of what you want out of life. One is that you need to form a clear vision of what that is. Second, you need to have a burning desire to achieve those goals. And finally, you have to take action to make something happen.

It is really that simple. Taking a look at our own lives we can see it. If there is something that we wanted, but we haven't got it, are we weak in one of these three aspects?

If you want your life to change, you have to change your life.

If a person asks about how to make a significant change in their life, but they don't want to do anything different, what reason is there to believe that things are going to get better?

There are always people who believe that there is some secret to explain success in life and so they buy books, recordings, courses, and so on, but a little honest self evaluation, a refocusing of goals, a burning desire and willful action to further your own cause is really all it takes to change your life.

There seem to be sales of secret information happening all over the place, and there is a good reason for that. Lots of people have suffered economic losses and they really want to make their life better. When a person is out of work and has lost savings and investments, someone promising the secret road to wealth can be really seductive.

The truth, however, is often hidden in plain sight. Sometimes we overlook it and then conclude that someone must have been hiding the goodies from us.

Take a look at this yourself and see if what I say makes sense. Are your will, desire and vision all in accord?

Feeling Your Vision

It is quite normal for a person to change their vision as they grow.

We have all had that experience of being a little kid and having an adult ask "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I still hear parents ask little kids that same question.

Of course the answer the kid gives is often whatever happens to come off the top of their head at the moment. The next day, you might get a different answer.

You can't really expect a long term vision before a person has a chance to have some life experience. Only a handful of people are so focused that the same thing that they named as a kid is still their goal as an adult.

Then as an adult what happens? We may work in one job or one career for a while, then we move on to something else. These days the move is often prompted by layoffs or changes in an industry or a corporate takeover. Other times, however, a person simply has a burning desire to do something different and start a business or make a career change because they want a real connection between doing what they enjoy and doing what pays.

When you are visualizing yourself in that new job, can you really feel how it feels to be there and enjoying it?

If your dream is to be a great author, can you feel how it feels to be a great author, know what it feels like be be famous, be interviewed, have your book on the bestseller list?

If your dream is to live in a certain kind of house, can you feel what it might feel like to live in that house? Can you not only see yourself, but feel yourself living in that house, swimming in that pool, and having a drink on the deck?

Whatever your dream is, the more you feel it, the more you activate the principle of like attracts like, the law of attraction.

Feelings are important because you will draw to your to yourself other people who share those feelings. We like to associate with others who share our values. Those who share our values will likely share our feelings about certain things.

Every day when we get up, we can choose to feel good or feel bad. We choose our attitude. If we choose to be happy even before we achieve all our goals, we can only get happier as we progress toward those goals.

When we choose to feel good each day, we draw ourselves closer to our goals. Try it.

Feeling Good

When you are radiating out feelings of joy, you are drawing more joy to you.

Picture a person who has a scowl on their face. Now picture a person who is smiling. Which one do you feel like spending time with? Most people, naturally, will choose the one who is smiling.

When you want more of something coming into your life imagine how good it will feel when you get it. That good feeling you are radiating will magnetize you to more of those good feelings.

Feelings are what people tune into. Feelings are what the universe tunes into. When you feel good, it is contagious. Ever notice how when someone starts to laugh all the people around them start to laugh?

Achieving goals is easier when we are happy. If you decide to be happy, you are presetting the signals to everyone around you that you want to draw more of that into your life.

Remember the connection between passion and creativity? People become excellent at what they really love to do. That's because they care enough to act with an eye on quality and the creativity to find ways to do things even better.

Happiness flows from all that. When you are happy with your achievements, you radiate out good feelings. When you are radiating out good feelings, people are drawn to you. When you care enough to do good things and people are picking up on your good feelings, you can't help but have happier interactions with people every day. And when you do that, you magically move along that vibrant pathway to more that will make you happy.

Feeling good leads us to be more optimistic. Optimism leads to recognizing more opportunities. Among those opportunities are ways to achieve our goals and visions.

Decide to feel good and notice what happens.

Intensity

One of the secrets behind making the Law of Attraction work for you is intensity.

Many times when we are picturing what we want in life, we take the attitude of "wouldn't that be nice?" But that attitude is not strong enough for us to muster our true creative energies.

When we really want something to happen, we find ways to create that reality in our life. The mystical, magical part that we do not always know is how that will happen. Often times we fail to make the connection between the intensity with which we hold on to the vision while doing what we have to do. So on those occasions where our vision becomes a reality and it is not a result of a direct action we took or it seems to have come about without our direct involvement, it looks mysterious.

However, we had just as much of a hand in that mysterious development as we do in a simple cause and effect, action and reaction sequence.

Consider this example of how we activate our true potential. When you are doing work that you don't really care about, you remain at a level of simply being competent with it, just doing ok. Nothing special. Do this, do that, log in, log out, get paid and hope everything just stays the same so that you can keep getting your paycheck. That is one level of reality and productivity.

Now consider another. When you are doing work that you really love doing, you think of ways to do it better. Your creativity is open and working. You have joy in your life and there are constant improvements, from little tweaks to big breakthroughs. The dedication and intensity are what open the channels for creativity to blossom. A person who is working with this energy and intensity does not think about just getting by, they are focusing on being excellent. Time passes swiftly for a person who is focused and enjoying what they are doing.

When can take that same concept beyond simply our interactions with activities that we do for money. The same holds true of what we might consider hobbies or activities we simply enjoy doing. We have all seen examples of people who have created beautiful items from odd scraps of wood, or people who have created beautiful jewelry, just for fun. Or those who play a musical instrument sweetly, just because they enjoy it and fully engage themselves in the process.

Or those who are wonderful dance partners simply because when they go out to dance, that is the focus of their energy. When dancing they are not thinking about anything else, they are simply present with the music and the other dancers, simply doing this dance, and they seem to float effortlessly across the dance floor.

So consider the factor of intensity. If you have no intensity invested in your vision, it may be time to change your vision. If your current vision of your future is simply expressed with "its ok with me if it happens, and its ok with me if it doesn't," change it to a vision that you really, really, really want to see come true. Notice what happens when you make that change.