In my area, and probably yours too, sometimes volunteers will stand at the busy intersections and accept donations from passing cars for various charities.  As I dropped my pocket change into one of their collection buckets recently, in return I was handed a flyer with this sweet little story on it.  I hope it touches your heart as much as it did mine.  Enjoy!

Back when an ice cream sundae cost much less, a boy entered a coffee shop and sat at a table.  A waitress put a glass of water in front of him.  "How much is an ice cream sundae?" "Fifty cents", replied the waitress.  The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied a number of coins in it.  "How much is a dish of plain ice cream?" he inquired.  Some people were waiting for a table now and the waitress was impatient.  "Thirty five cents" she said angrily. 

The little boy again counted the coins.  "I'll have the plain ice cream".  The waitress brought the ice cream, left the check on the table and hurried away.  The boy finished his ice cream, paid the cashier and departed. 

When the waitress came back, she swallowed hard and began to cry at what she saw.  There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, was fifteen cents - her tip. 

~author unknown 

 “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute  of the strong.”  ~Mahatma Gandhi    

“We achieve inner health only through forgiveness - forgiveness not only of others but also of ourselves”   ~ Joshua Loth Liebman 

 
We've all heard the famous quote, "To err is human, to forgive Divine".  But what does it really mean?  Ever thought about it?


It's my belief that as souls, we choose our lives before we are born, and that those of us who chose to be born into a life of difficulty and hardship have chosen to do so in order to either work off some karmic debt or to learn major soul lessons through the experiences and relationships we have.  In other words, we are all students and we get to pick and choose our classrooms, our teachers, our desks and even our school supplies long before our first day begins.  Some have chosen harder classes than others, but if we pay attention to the lessons, we'll do just fine.
 
A while ago, a friend and I were talking about forgiveness.  She regrets not being as emotionally available as she'd have liked for several family members towards the end of their lives, and was having a difficult time forgiving herself.  I think that this is a position that many of us find ourselves in.  We look back and beat ourselves up over things we've said or done in the past and end up with feelings of guilt.  The trouble with that is, we can't go back and change it!  If we spend our time focusing on things that we did yesterday, we will never truly experience today, and the cycle of guilt continues.  Often carrying around these feelings of guilt can lead to difficulties in our current relationships.  We need to embrace today as a new opportunity to build healthy, happy memories for the future. 

Letting the past go can be a difficult thing to do.  If we've made mistakes (and who hasn't?) we have to forgive ourselves and allow ourselves the permission to have been wrong, and to have been human.  Every challenge that we have faced in the past was a learning experience; so ask yourself what you learned from it and what positive experience you can create from it.  Maybe you learned to be more of a good listener and source of support to someone who is ailing, or maybe now you know how you'd handle that same situation if it ever came up again. 

To err IS human, it's where we learn, it's where we grow.  If we had no adversity, we'd never know our own strength.  To forgive ourselves for the errors we make, however, truly is Divine.  

From "The Edgar Cayce Handbook" by Mark Thurston, Ph.D. and Christopher Fazel :

"Your mind is like a tree, and the thoughts are like birds. It's not so important which birds land on a branch of your tree for a moment and then fly on. What matters is which birds you allow to build a nest in your tree and make a home there."

I love this quote. Particularly because lately I have really been conscious of the "mind chatter" that goes on in the back of my mind lately.

By "mind chatter", I'm referring to the stuff we think about under the surface of our conscious thoughts. Does that make sense? Surely not all of it is negative, but some of the constant mental messages we tell ourselves such as "I am too fat" or "There is no way I can do this, what was I thinking?", etc. are really the ultimate form of self-sabotage. So I am consciously working now to create some better, more positive mind messages to replace the old, counter-productive negative ones that repeat over and over like a dusty old cassette tape in my mind. I am a true believer in the Law of Attraction, which states that we are responsible for creating our own reality, through the power of our own thoughts and intentions. It's tough, because we tend to be our own toughest critics, but very possible to turn our thoughts to positive and useful messages. To me, the quote basically says that though we all have fleeting moments of negativity or self-doubt, the messages that keep repeating are the ones that can be most detrimental - or helpful - to our desired outcome.

When most people come to me to have their cards read, some are having relationship issues, some need career advice, others are looking for direction along their spiritual path in life.  

While I certainly do my very best to offer sound advice based on what I see in the cards, there is always one element - one key ingredient - that I have absolutely nothing to do with.  You guessed it, it's ACTION! 

Think about the honeybee.  If he just sat around all day looking at the clover, admiring its' beauty and scent, thinking about maybe flying over and gathering its' nectar, or even flew to the top of the hive to find a wise old bee who shared the secrets of nectar gathering; without actually flying to the flower and doing the work, all that effort is wasted and no honey will ever be made.  

Even with the best intentions, the most planning and strategizing, and the most sound advice, action must be taken in order to manifest our desired outcome. 

So, what have you done TODAY to bring your dreams to life?  The size of the step doesn't matter...as long as you're moving forward!