by Gailstrail on April 22, 2009
I listened as the teacher said to the young boy. “We each have a destiny; full filing this destiny is our purpose.”
Do you understand what this teacher meant? Are you on the road to full filing your destiny? Or, has the road become dark and your path uncertain? Have you reached what seems to be an ‘impassable juncture’? If you feel yourself at this juncture…this is where you dig into your heart; you call on ’something for which there seems to be no proof’.
“Nobody else knows your reason for being. You do. Your bliss guides you to it. When you follow your bliss, when you follow your path to joy, your conversation is of joy, your feelings are of joy — you’re right on the path of that which you intended when you came forth into this physical body.”
- Abraham - Hicks
I like what Abraham says: it’s encouraging. However, if you are really in a crunch…like reached the bottom of the pit or that impassable juncture, it would seem difficult to just jump up and feel that inner light. If we could all reach it so easily…well, we and the world would definitely be very different.
Reason For Being
How do we reach this ‘inner light’ that ‘light you and I brought with us into this body at the very beginning’. Do we need to step back in time? No, you don’t have to step back in time to find away out of what seems to be an ‘impassable juncture’! What you must do is take responsibility for your well being. There is ‘no quick fix’! I’ll say this again: there is no quick fix! If you believe the pharmaceutical industry will develop a pill to insure your well being; you’re delusional!
A Walk In The Woods
While reading this, click on the video to the right. Take yourself into a quiet place. Ideally a place where there is no electricity. Surrounding oneself with running water, trees, nature sounds. Get out of the static…the cities are full of static and crazy makers: television is the number one culprit. I’m so grateful television was not around when I grew up. Entertainment was an outside event!
A walk in the woods is free and easy. One step after the other will lead to waking up the heart and freeing your inner light. Find or create some ‘quiet’. Having a place where your mind can be still is crucial. When your environment is quiet, your mind can take a breath and empty out all the static buildup. Take long deep breaths; hear the birds twittering in the trees; water; rustling trees. Did you know it takes a tree 24 hours to take a breath! Imagine! Take some slow and deep easy breaths. Sit, close your eyes.
Do this on a daily basis you will feel joy and peace enter into your being. No doubt. I’m proof positive. I feel Joy and Peace everyday. Humans can not do without nature. There is no substitute. Nothing is more positive. Nothing brings more joy. Nothing brings more peace. See it. Believe it.
As you continue to do this: inner light, peace and joy will fill your heart and illuminate the path you have been seeking.
by Gailstrail on April 19, 2009
Recently, I sent an email to a long lost friend whom I wished to reconnect. I asked if she would like to spend a few hours and attend the Science and History museum with me one day this summer. She wrote back and explained that she did not have time to cultivate a friendship with me. She said she was sorry for being so harsh; wished me well and hoped great things happened to me. I wrote her back and told her not to feel sorry, that I was comfortable in my skin and that I would never think her harsh. I told her great things happen everyday.
Later, when looking for a new book to begin, my hand stopped at ‘The Power of a Woman’;Timeless Thoughts On A Woman’s Inner Strengths, Edited by Janet Mills. Today I need some words to reflect my inner thoughts and feelings about love and peace; and the greatness that envelops me each day, I need someone else’s words to express my thoughts about ‘the power of love’. So, it is very fortuitous that my hand came to rest on this particular book today. Below are excerpts from the book.
“Within the smallest grain of sand there is love, joy, history, romance and hope…eternal life, in changing form…It is Love in all of its manifestations, holding form together, bonding our souls to this earth and to one another.”
“Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.”
- Mother Teresa
“I seldom think of my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.”
- Helen Keller
I think of my long lost friend with the same ‘touch of yearning at times; it too is vague; ‘like a breeze among flowers’.
Peace
by Gailstrail on January 17, 2009
Save me! Every time I take a bite of anything these days, I wonder about the resources that went into it.
I normally don’t eat beef. I did recently. A burger and fries at Ted’s Grill. Did you know Ted Turner owns Ted’s Grill? Did you know Ted Turner owns 80% of all the Bison? As we walk into Ted’s Grill, I notice a huge Bison head mounted on the wall. It looked like a giant. There must have been 10 feet from one tip of it’s horns to the other. Impressive! It was huge! Needless to say, I set with my back to that wall and didn’t order bison from the menu…remembering the glass glare from the bison held on the wall.
When Ted Turner was asked what is it that you like about bison?
“I just, I really love them. I’m a naturalist and an environmentalist, and I was touched by the tragedy that occurred with the bison. There were 30 million of ’em on the Great Plains when the white man landed in North America. In the 1880s, there were only about 200 of ’em. I wanted to do everything I could during my life to bring them back. In order to do that you have to be able to monetize the surplus.”
What I didn’t know
about Ted Turner was that he is a huge experimentalist! In 1997 Ted Turner and his family established the Turner Endangered Species Fund as a response to the mass extinction of the world’s plants and animals. Thanks Ted.
Anyway, when the server brought my plate, I commented that the food on the plate could feed three people; and asked for a take-home-box at the beginning of my meal. I cut my burger in half and put half the burger and 3/4 of my fries in the box. [click to continue…]
by Aishwarya on January 13, 2009
In Pune India, about 160 kilometers southeast of the state capital, Mumbai, Suman, a widowed wife and a mother of three children, supports herself and her family by working as house help and also works in a bricklin (a place that bakes bricks).
About 25 years back her brother got her a little brown puppy to keep away thieves. The entry of the little puppy brought so much joy into their lives. They named him ”Jackey”.
Jackey Had Great Responsibility
Jackey was a puppy with a lot of responsibility. Every morning he used to follow Suman’s children to school; escort them to the gate and also escort them back from school. The children say he used to come and wait near the school gate at 6pm and time to go back home. They wonder how he knew the correct time; Jackey never came by the school at odd hours.
This was his regular duty inspite of being troubled by the stray dogs in that locality. Jackey also knew the time Suman left from the bricklin, he call on her too. Everybody there including Suman’s master used to say ”Your joker has come to call on you.” After his dinner he used to go and wait for the arrival of Suman’s brother.
Home Cooking Feeds The Soul
He used to eat one big brown home-cooked bread with a bowl of milk and on days when Suman could not afford milk she used to give him water with sugar; he never complained. She says he ate only once during the day and if you try to feed him more, he would not eat.
Next he comes by around 6.30 for his fill and he needs to eat hot food always. As soon as he listens to the ice cream man ringing the bells he’ll pull Suman towards the van to eat ice-cream his favourite treat. Everytime he got hungry he use to open his mouth indicating that he was hungry. [click to continue…]
by Gailstrail on January 12, 2009
Wild Horses
“My face up against the glass. I’m looking out. Is this my life I’m wondering. It happened so fast. How do I turn this thing around. Is this the bed I chose to make. Its greener pastures I’m thinking about. Wide open spaces far away. All I want is the wind in my hair to face the fear but, not feel scared. Wild horses I wanna be like you. Throwing caution to the wind. I’ll run free too. Wish I could recklessly love, like I’m longing to. I want to run with the wild horses, run with the wild horses!
I see the girl I wanna be. Riding bare back, care free along the shore If only that someone was me. Jumping head first head long without a thought. To act and damn the consequence. How I wish it could be that easy. But fear surrounds me like a fence. I wanna break free. All I want is the wind in my hair. To face the fear but, not feel scared.
Wild horses I wanna be like you. Throwing caution to the wind, I’ll run free too. Wish I could recklessly love, like I’m longing to. I wanna run with the wild horses, run with the wild horses!
I wanna run too. Breathlessly abandoning my self before you. I wanna open up my heart tell him how I feel. Wild horses I wanna be like you
Throwing caution to the wind. I’ll run free too. Wish I could recklessly love, like I’m longing to. I wanna run with the wild horses, run with the wild horses!
I wanna run with the wild horses.”
- Natasha Bedingfield Lyrics
by Gailstrail on January 11, 2009
There is an ineffable hunger in each of us that food just doesn’t reach. Yet we keep stuffing ourselves: we live in a nation of obesity; 32% of United States children are overweight; 60% of the Australia population is overweight; making the Aussies the number one obese country and the U.S. a close second.
Starving for Purpose
Why do we eat and eat and never seem to fill our hunger? My answer may be a bit hard to swallow. I believe the human species, with our ability to think, has an inexplicable purpose. How can the unexplainable be explained? How can the indescribable be described? What does purpose have to do with starving?
Wolves On The Run
I believe we are ‘Starving for Purpose’; looking for any and all morsels of food to fill this emptiness. The answer to this ‘ineffable hunger’, came to me in the early morning hours. I lay unable to sleep; images of wolves running through the tundra of Alaska to escape aerial hunters kept filling my mind. How can I stop the images? The cruelty?How can a woman, the Governor of Alaska, condemn these angel beasts to die?
Then my mind is filled with images of wild horses being killed and slaughtered to make room for more beef cattle; the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM) believes this is necessary; as if we need more burgers!
[click to continue…]
by Gailstrail on November 24, 2008
Dear Obama-Biden Economic Team Members:
Much of our foundation for health as a nation lies with the food we consume.
It does not take a rocket scientist to see the connection between the cancer that is so prevalent in our society and the food we eat.
With this said, I urge the new Economic team to look at creating jobs within the rendering plant industry. Then create jobs that monitor jobs within rendering plants. Rendering plants manufacture protein and nutrients (food enhancers) fed to our livestock and poultry.
What are ‘food enhancers’ made from? They start with ‘raw products’: thousands of dead dogs and cats; heads and hooves from cattle, sheep, pigs and horses; whole skunks; rats and raccoons –all waiting to be processed.
“Every day, hundreds of rendering plants across the United States truck millions of tons of this “food enhancer” to poultry ranches, cattle feed-lots, dairy and hog farms, fish-feed plants and pet-food manufacturers where it is mixed with other ingredients to feed the billions of animals that meat-eating humans, in turn, will eat.” [click to continue…]
by Gailstrail on October 15, 2008
First Class all the Way
No industry or government should be built by coning its citizens. And yet, we let banks, industry and government squelch our ineffable spirit; succumb to their marketing and believe its entertainment; buy whatever they’re selling to feel good and to feel good about ourselves…and we are so full of ourself; we think we have choices.
It’s not a matter of turning a blind eye to truth; trying to do differently is like climbing Mount Everest! We don’t just put off our dreams, we don’t recognize them.
Who Deserves a Bail Out?
Industry and financial institutions wants the government to bail them. Why? Does it have anything to do with their poor choices? And what about the workers? They’re just trying to pay for their home, feed and send their kids to school…and have fun, fun, fun! The CEO wants same thing, only they want to go ‘First Class All The Way‘; like checking into a $14,000-a-night hotel; the Marie Antoinette for instance. Both choices seem a bit of a nightmare!
CBS News
On Sunday, October 12, 2008, in the last five minutes of a CBS News, Face the Nation broadcast, Bob Schieffer talked about Edward Bernays. I was shocked to see the story aired on prime time television.The coincidence amazed me; as I was writing about the same story for this post.
Womens’ Emancipation
It was March 1929. Women had just won the right to vote: Governors who died in office were succeeded by their wives in such states as Texas and Wyoming. More women were attending college and entering the workforce; women were making great head way in certain areas of society. However, socially women were not treated equally. For instance, it was taboo for women to smoke in public, if they smoked socially, they were considered to be harlots and loose. Women were permitted to smoke in their homes behind closed doors, but if caught in public, they were arrested. Legislation did not permit women to have this same freedom as their male counterpart. [click to continue…]
by Gailstrail on October 2, 2008
Last week I attempted to do an update with regard to the Pet Food Recall and got side tracked: Pet Food Recall: Trail of Tears, which gives a heart wrenching account of the loss of my Golden Retriever, Annie Oakley. Today, I wanted to get an update on China’s baby milk poisoning and landed on ‘Police arrest underground gang ‘poisoning baby milk for profit’. The contamination has led to China’s worst food safety crisis.
This week, I’m taking a long look into centuries of food industry practices. Practices which began innocently enough, but, in many instances have developed into a dark and dangerous business; bringing disease and death to the planets inhabitants!
The Truth Will Sit You Free!
There are hundreds of reports and stories about the ongoing Pet Food Recall and its continued impact to our pets. What seems most important after reading these reports is to pass on what I’ve learned and to keep linking together with others who have similar concerns; doing so gives more credibility and a more effective means of convincing people to change what they and their furry friends eat!
The sense to be made of the Pet Food Recall and the ongoing tragedy is not something most people want to know. Knowing means you find a truth. What you do with the truth is what counts. My advise is to take a journey. Take time to take a deep look into the Pet Food Recall before you make any decision. For me, the journey has taken some horrific and outrageous trails. [click to continue…]
