DON'T LET YOUR HEART BREAK ON CHRISTMAS!

Last Christmas, I wrote a post spinning off an article in the Health section of the Huffington Post entitled: "Why Christmas Is So Deadly." The piece attempted to explain why thousands more people die of sudden cardiac arrest on Christmas, a fact that I became aware of many Christmases ago when a friend's father died suddenly on Christmas Eve and a cop on the scene mentioned that there is a big spike of such deaths on Christmas every year, mostly from heart attacks.

The Huffpost article sites and rules out excessive eating and stress, but then makes a somewhat convoluted case about health care in the U.S. 

So, what's really happening? What's going on in such a big way at Christmastime that people are keeling over and leaving the planet in such large numbers, and will that be so here in 5D? 

Well, beginning with Thanksgiving and continuing relentlessly until Christmas, we are bombarded with messages about love and closeness with loved ones, peace on Earth, giving, sharing, redemption, compassion and "Joy to the World." And at a spiritual level, we are calling in the main heart-centered spiritual energy on Planet Earth - the Christ. According to some channeled information, that energy is particularly intense now. It is said that the Christ energy "literally expunges from your being frequencies that no longer serve you." (By the way, Jesus' last name wasn't "Christ;" he was "Jesus The Christ," meaning that he embodied that heart chakra energy of unconditional love in a unique way in his time.) 

So, picture all that powerful heart-centered energy rising up in our emotional and physical bodies leading up to Christmas.  What would happen if that energy hits a closed heart? 

CRACK! Literally, a broken heart. 

It's Christmas, folks. And it's 5D, but if you want to stick around for this "Golden Age," as it's being called, you have to start operating by 5D rules. 

Check on your heart. How open is it? And if an opportunity presents itself to you today to laugh or cry heartily, take it.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

MORE ON: YOU SAY IT'S WORLD PEACE YOU WANT? LOOK INSIDE!

I just keep building on this post, I suppose because so many people are concerned right now about what they see in the world. Humbly put - here's how you change the world!

This is a quote from Paul Selig's "The Book of Mastery" - 

"When you think something must be there, it is brought into form. And when you believe it must be there, whether it’s a high creation or a very low creation, you are aligned to it, in acceptance of it, and in that choice, 'I see this thing before me, it must be so,' you give it merit and you add to its structure. If you can understand that: When you think of something in a certain way you bring to bear the vibration of that thought on the thing you see. Your perceptions, you see, are informing the vibration not only of your relationship to your own thought but upon the thing itself. When you believe something must be there, you give it credence, and there are things you give credence to that do not need to be there. Here is a list of things that do not need to be there: Fear, in all its forms and in all its creations. And here is what is fear: war, poverty, greed, anger, abuse, and violence. These are all things you see out-pictured that you think must be there. 'Well, they must be there, they’ve always been there, how will they leave? I don’t buy this for a moment.' Here is how they leave: The light that you are in its full expression has the ability to move a mountain. The alignment you have individually is much more powerful than you can imagine."

Previous post on this subject:

These are some amazing lyrics, surely channeled by Mick Jagger, a few decades ago now, that recently came into my consciousness and beautifully connect to what I wrote in the recent FPL piece: "YOU SAY IT'S WORLD PEACE YOU WANT? LOOK INSIDE!" (see below) It is also relevant to the moral outrage many people are feeling in response to recent events.

Here's Jagger:

"I shouted out Who killed the Kennedys?
When after all it was you and me."

Now, how many times have you heard that passage and just continued on bopping and singing along without considering what he was saying. We killed the Kennedy's. Me and you. Not just a crazed lone gunman, nor a nefarious group of secret conspirators. Me and you.

You and me.

Jagger brilliantly goes on: "Just as every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints."
Woah! Not one or the other. Not a cop or a criminal, not a sinner or a saint.

You see, folks, the time that we are in, the dimensional shift of consciousness that is taking place, heralded by many songwriters and musicians that came out of the Sixties, is towards the full awareness of oneness, towards the realization that everyone is connected, all are part of the greater whole of collective consciousness. The more aware of this we become, the more we can truly change our world by changing ourselves, by waking up. (See the Hundredth Monkey below)

So, the next time you're listening to the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil," and Mick Jagger proclaims that "What's puzzling you is the nature of my game," consider that the nature of the game is seeing everyone as a reflection of an aspect of yourself. And read or reread the post below.


YOU SAY IT'S WORLD PEACE YOU WANT? LOOK INSIDE!

This is yet another quote from the extremely quotable book, "ONENESS":

"You may ask then, what are you to do when confronted with the opposing viewpoints of another being or an expression of collective will. You begin not with the scrutiny of the other party’s motives, but with your own. You begin by digging honestly beneath the surface of the stance you’ve taken and exploring the real basis for your own position. Chances are, if you approach this exercise in full honesty with yourself, you will recognize a fortress built on a foundation of ego—an expression of will rooted in the fear of suppression by the will and ego of another. This is hardly the recipe for Oneness—much less for the world peace to which you all pay much lip service. Stop looking for the self-serving motives of the other side and begin looking at the self-serving motives that underlie your own actions. That is the basis for the true harmony you all yearn for at the deepest level."

Now, take a deep breath, and the next time you get fired up about the police, racism, misogyny, terrorism, greed, corruption, or Donald Trump...reread the above. The greatest, most worthwhile, transformational gift you can give yourself, and the world, is to see your reflection in everyone, everything, and every event in your field of vision.

What, PL?! I'm not a racist or misogynist. I'm not violent, and I certainly have never killed anybody or stolen anyone's pension or 401K. Perhaps not. But... do you still adhere to a consciousness of separation or lack, believing in your own abandonment or "bad luck" or the superstition of pessimism? Do you still believe that your worth as a being has to be earned, and then measured by other people's outward opinions of you? Do you still indulge in anger, resentment, grudges, self-righteousness or perhaps self-pity and victimhood as a way of stimulating yourself and filling the void of what you perceive to be the unknown?

If your honest answer is yes, and you can sincerely, with compassion, without judgment, admit that inner state of being, then forgive yourself, erasing the karma left over from 3D, your life and interactions with others will come into a state of harmony. And then, as the Hundredth Monkey, you will change the world.

No joke .             .

FOOT FETISH? SPANKING? THE SHRINKS NOW SAY YOU'RE GOOD TO GO!

This is from a report on Slate.com this morning:

"The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the bible of psychiatry published by the American Psychiatric Association, currently defines "unusual" sexual turn-ons as paraphilias. Paraphilias include everything from foot fetishes, S&M and erotic eating to exhibitionism and pedophilia. These paraphilias are now to be considered harmless unless the person experiencing them feels distressed about their preferences or if their unusual sexual practices are harmful to others."

"Simply put, the latest edition of the manual, DSM V, will say that happy kinksters don’t have a mental disorder. But unhappy kinksters do," wrote Slate's Jillian Keenan.

Well, we're getting there. Here in 5D, the "Pleasure Principle" is in full force. Like the survival instinct, our instinct to follow pleasure is hard-wired into the human organism. Simply stated, the Pleasure Principle comes down to this: if it feels good, it is good, with the one not-so-small caveat - that in order to know what truly feels good, you have to actually be in touch with your body and your feelings which, because of the wounds we all endure in childhood, requires a fair amount of self-work first in order to dismantle the defenses created to survive those early slings and arrows. Once in touch with yourself in that way, you can then live well by following the dictates of your pleasure principle and Full Permission Living.


Here's an excerpt from the Pathwork Guide Lecture entitled, "MOVEMENT, CONSCIOUSNESS, EXPERIENCE: PLEASURE, THE ESSENCE OF LIFE":

"Experience contains the pleasure principle. The possibility for utter bliss is contained in the life force. It is your inborn longing to partake of this experience, which becomes possible when your entire organism is in harmony with reality, when you no longer fight against it because of misunderstandings."

The "in harmony with reality" part is key in this way - to have sadistic or masochistic fantasies, and to consciously and mutually indulge them in sex play, is fun. But to actually be sadistic or masochistic in your intent, and to act out those aspects in your relationship life is not. In his book, "Dark Eros," Thomas Moore, a former monk and Jungian analyst and writer, writes that it is precisely this topic [sadomasochism] that needs to be explored mentally, even spiritually, through fantasy and play, in order to prevent it from erupting into anti-social, or even criminal acts in the flesh.

So, back to your fetishes... the bottom line is this: if your sexual fantasy life, and the concomitant games you play in bed (or in the kitchen or the dungeon), don't stress you out or hurt anyone else, well...

Repost: I NEED MY PAIN!

In one of the STAR TREK movies, the fifth one I think, "THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY," there was a rogue Vulcan who could use his mental powers to relieve a person of all their psychic pain. He could take away your long-held grief or chronic fears or self-doubt with one simple Vulcan mind meld. Quite desirable, yes? Not to Captain Kirk. Nope. He refused the treatment, defiantly saying: "I need my pain!"

Kirk goes onto to explain to his weaker comrades that our pain is part of who we are.

Kirk: "Pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away!"

Well, Kirk does border on the masochistic there, and from my perspective, he still needs to work on his psychopathy, but his point is well-taken, nonetheless. Avoiding feeling pain (or having it "magically" - i.e. falsely - taken away by drugs or distractions) does not serve our life purpose, which is to become fully ourselves.

This morning, I found an excellent piece on the Huffington Post on this subject entitled:
"Pema Chodron: Reality Hurts? Relax. Use Your Discomfort." by Jesse Kornbluth

Here's a great quote from it:

"Life is hard. Don't wait until you 'get it together' to work at being your best self."

I have said this to many people many, many times. Our issues, our "problems," our pain and fears, do not have to stop us from having an evolving and expansive life and doing what we love to do. In fact, our problems are not our problem. Our judgments of our problems are our problem.

Including our judgments about our pain and fear.

Many of us react reflexively to pain, sadness or fear, as if their presence in our body or psyche automatically means something "bad" is happening. But no. Nature built in the capacity to feel those feelings, just as our ability to feel joy and pleasure are innate and instinctual. We have tear ducts, remember? There are times when we need to cry to release a build-up of sadness from a loss, for example. It's totally natural to do so, as natural as needing to urinate from a build-up of fluid in our kidneys.

Likewise, pain forces us to focus on a part of our body or a part of our emotional life that requires attention. Again, nothing bad is happening.

And as far as "getting it all together" before proceeding to seek out the love, abundance and creative expression you desire? Forget it! You'll never be perfect... because you're alive! Perfection is an illusory, static state, not real and not attainable, except to the degree that you can realize that you are already perfect in your imperfection!

Remember, I'm not talking about passive masochism here, folks, or oral laziness. Accepting your pain is not the same as creating and attracting pain from a character structure, and relaxing is not the same as collapsing. Take action regardless of your current struggles is what I'm saying. You never have to be paralyzed.

As I laid out in my piece from my classes on character structures, at the core of our distortions are the gifts of our Higher Self that we came in with, that we're meant to actualize. (See ALL OUR HIGHER SELVES by PL)

I'll give the final word on that to Jesse K:

"What you hate about yourself is just the flip side of your specialness. Yeah, your life is an interesting, smelly, rich, fertile mess - and that's what makes you human."

YOUR IDEAS OF WHO PEOPLE ARE, ARE ALWAYS FALSE!

Wrap your head around that! Well, of course, you can't, but you may be able to wrap your heart around it.

This is from the mind-and-heart opening book, "The Book of Truth," channeled by Paul Selig:

"We will ask you each to make a decision now. Decide one human being in your life stands before you, anyone in your life, a friend or a parent, a coworker, perhaps, and you see them as you see them. You decide who they are based on your prior experience. 'Oh, she is wearing the sweater I bought for her. Oh, he is looking angry again. When he looks angry, he will do such and such.' You are prescribing behavior or an outcome or assigning history based on what you’ve known about them. Now would you look at this person again and make a new decision? 'Everything I know about this person is wrong, is my idea of who he or she is, and I have been projecting an identity upon them based on my prescriptions—perhaps through my experience, yes, but I am knowing them through the intellectual self who has history or ideas about who someone is.' This is the second step. To realize that you may not know is a precursor to knowing."

"Now we will ask you each, you who attend to these words, to imagine that one before you as if she was never born, had never come in the form she is in, had never been invested in a physical self, but is just vibration. What you are doing here is disassembling form or the requirement of the form to be the rendering of the construct of frequency that they express as. If they have no body, are they still themselves, or have you mistaken them through the flesh to resemble what you think they are based on prior intention? If they don’t have the body, are they still in love, in the frequency of love that I have placed them in? Are they still beautiful or ugly or old or young? In fact they are not. They just are as they are in the vibration of truth."

"Your ideas of who people are, are always false. Do you understand this? They are just your ideas and they are prescriptions you hold based on your history."

STRESS KILLS WAY MORE OFTEN THAN TIGERS!

An avid, and wise, FPL reader linked me to the Chopra Center website, and she said this to me: "The topic on Stress reads like you wrote it!"

Hey, maybe Deepak got the wording from me, or maybe I read his thoughts in advance because I've been using the exact analogy of the tiger for years. Either way, the Truth is the Truth, and everyone has access to it.

Here's the passage from Deepak:  

How the Body Works with Stress

Most of us aren’t even aware how much fear rules our lives, but our bodies reflect this truth. While fear is designed to be a healthy survival mechanism that triggers the fight-or-flight stress response when your life is in danger, the body can’t tell the difference between being chased by a tiger and having fearful thoughts about work, relationships, or money. Whether you’re about to be a tiger’s lunch or you’re having a fear-based thought about an imagined future, a stress response is activated, and the body is filled with stress hormones like cortisol and epinephrine.

But here’s the real kicker. The body is beautifully equipped with natural self-repair mechanisms that know how to fight cancer, prevent infection, ward off heart disease, and retard aging. But these self-repair mechanisms are turned off every time the body is in stress response. This wouldn’t be a problem if your body was only in stress response once or twice a week, since stress responses are only meant to last 90 seconds beyond when the threat to your life is over.

But this is not what happens. Modern-day humans experience over 50 stress responses per day—most of them stemming not from real threats to your life but from thoughts about imaginary threats that will most likely never come true.

Really.

REPOST: WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO...?

Are there people in your life who are no longer in your life as significantly as they once were? People who you used to see or communicate with more frequently, but now only "touch base" with you occasionally, people who have seemed to drift out of your daily life? Or perhaps, there are individuals who have more abruptly disappeared from your sphere altogether due to a geographic change, marriage or divorce, birth of a child, career shift, health crisis or even death? And finally, are you finding yourself simply unable to tolerate certain people in your life who you once maintained obligatory relationships with - relatives, old friends, colleagues?

Well, if you've been working on yourself in a determined way in recent times, chances are your answer to any or all of the above is yes.

Some of my fellow travelers and I have been calling it the "Whatever happened to...?" syndrome, and it's part of the Wave I've been talking about since the beginning of this year.

The Wave is the surge of energy that's been sweeping across the planet for several years that is either moving people forward in their evolution at an accelerated rate, or slamming them hard into their resistances to change. One thing has been certain and obvious, though - in no instances is the Wave allowing anyone to remain in "neutral." Just look around. Another way of thinking about this is that we are all engaged in the process of deciding if we are staunchly remaining in 3rd-dimensional (dualistic, linear) reality, for now, or are we ready to shift to a 4th dimensional existence, that of knowing that we create reality from the inside out, no exceptions.

In conjunction with the Wave, I would also like to mention another concept, that of the "vortex."

Many who have pursued New Age spiritualism over the last few decades are familiar with this term as it applies to certain geographic locations on the earth - Sedona, Arizona, Machu Pichu, Peru, the Bermuda Triangle, etc. These are ancient "sacred" places where magnetic energy and cosmic forces have coalesced in such a way as to promote anything from personal growth and enlightenment to extraterrestrial visitations.

But something quite fascinating is occurring lately that heralds the acceleration that human beings have invited upon themselves - vortices are popping up everywhere!

More and more, whenever any number of individuals gather together for the purpose of opening themselves up to higher dimensions of being, a vortex supporting that elevation is created. This may indeed explain the sudden disappearances, as well as the sudden appearances of people in your lives.

If you could visualize a kind of sustained tornado, which is how I see a vortex, kind of like a funnel-shaped stream of powerful energy swirling clockwise, said vortex will either powerfully thrust someone out of its energy field, or just as powerfully attract someone in. The determining factor of whether one is thrust out or pulled into the vortex that you may be creating is how open the internal system of that individual is, along with whatever prior soul agreements may exist between you and said individual to come together at a certain place and time.

What does this imply for your day to day?

Well, first of all, if you are finding that your relationships, career direction, passions and other interests are shifting, you would be well-advised to open yourself to the possibility that the next phase of your journey may not include that person, job or activity, at least not in the same way you've been used to, rather than clinging to what is familiar. Holding onto that which you've outgrown can only have detrimental effects for all involved.

Also, if you truly desire something in your life, consider that the laborious, linear steps you've always thought were required to attain the fulfillment of that desire may not be necessary after all. Consider that if you make a shift in your consciousness, your life can change at the speed of thought!

And finally, folks, notice things!

We all have experiences that are out of the space-time continuum, but we superstitiously dismiss them out of irrational fear. Deja vu, premonitions and intuitive insights, vivid dreams or visions, coincidences that are so outside of the realm of statistical probability that they can't be coincidences... these are glimpses into 4th dimensional reality. Pay attention to those moments and you can expand them and became a more conscious creator of your life.

Or you can let the vortex fling you outta here!It's up to you!

MAKING ROOM ON PLANET EARTH!

I've been writing for a while about the phenomenon of people leaving Planet Earth (i.e. - "dying," in 3D language) at increasingly accelerated rates (See the post below, and the related links, for more details.) Well, recently came even more confirmation, right from someone on the front lines: an undertaker!

I participated in the farewell ceremonies for someone who lived on Earth for almost 87 years, someone who was a "big" soul, albeit a young one. During the process, I noticed something interesting - on the journey back and forth from New York City, and driving around the suburbs of Long Island, I kept seeing hearses and funeral processions with unusually high frequency.

In addition, in the days before the funeral I was to attend, I'd heard from other individuals about people in their work or personal lives who were reporting in unusually high numbers some occurrence of death in their circle of friends, family or colleagues.

I understood at a more in-depth level, expanding on what I wrote a few weeks ago (below), what was happening - we're making room. 

Many souls want to enter the sphere of Earth right now, and so, many who have been here for a while, and weren't ready developmentally as souls to live in 5D ongoing, were fulfilling their agreements to leave the planet at this time to make room. I recently posted this quote from Dolores Cannon, one of the foremost writers on the matter of the great transition we are in:

"We are living in the most important time in the history of the Universe, and it’s very important to be here now. There are thousands of souls who want to be here to experience this – even if they can just be here for a few hours. For some, even if they’re born and die right away, they can say, 'I was there when this occurred."

And I would add something to what Dolores is saying, and also to the reality of needing more room for souls wanting to enter the Earth plane. We also need more room for those who are already here and who are prepared to live in 5D for the long haul. Those human beings who are becoming self-actualized during this new era have expanded and are expanding their energy fields, and that literally requires more room, more space-time, as it were, and more possibilities for solitude when needed. A highly crowded planet won't do for those needs.

So, back to the undertaker. After the funeral was over, I asked him straight up if he was finding his business to be very busy lately.

"Oh, yes, very busy." He said."There's a lot going on out there."

I laughed to myself, wondering about the boat or country house the undertaker was fantasizing about. Then someone young, but very astute, asked: "Do undertakers get their funerals for free?"

Hmmm.

Here's the post from a few weeks ago:

5D MEANS LESS PEOPLE, PEOPLE!

That's right. 

I've written and talked a lot about the "Whatever happened to..." phenomenon in 5D in which people whose vibration is significantly lower than yours, and who have no conscious intention of changing, will disappear from your life, either through death, moving away, getting too busy, etc. 

I wrote last year about a statistical report that there were more deaths recorded on Planet Earth in 2012 than in any previous year. A piece in the Huffington Post business section this week reports: "U.S. Population Grows At Slowest Rate Since The Great Depression"

While the business minded might want to see this as an economic cause and effect, and part of some kind of historical cycle, the truth is that in the 5D era, there will organically be less people on Earth, at least on the 5D version of the planet. As some people I work with have experienced this reality in their lives, they are at first a bit disconcerted and fearful:

"Who am I going to talk to?" 

"Everyone seems asleep or crazy."

"I'm going to end up being alone."

Not at all. When you clean out a closet of old belongings that no longer suit or fit you, you don't imagine that you will never own anything to go in that closet again, do you? Likewise, while many people you have known and interacted with in 3D may be disappearing, new people that you have "spiritual contracts" with will be appearing. In fact, as you awaken and lift the veil of 3D un-consciousness, you will be amazed at how not alone you are.

Indeed, as the physical population on Earth declines, your awareness of beings not entirely physical or even human will be increasing.

Ready or not (and if you're reading this, you're ready), here we go!

LOVE AS THE MAJOR CREATIVE FORCE!

When I concluded the final class of the first round of the Full Permission Living program I was teaching in 2001, I asked my students what they had learned after three years, what did it all come down to? I summarized their answers, and my own understanding, in three statements:

1. We create our own reality
2. We are all one
3. Love is the essence of All That Is

Many people I've had the pleasure of guiding since 2001 have worked diligently on numbers 1 and 2. Understanding how we create our own reality from our beliefs, conscious and not, and from our higher and lower selves, is a challenging endeavor, and ultimately a rewarding one. Likewise, connecting to our oneness with all others and with all things, witnessing our own reflection in all that we see, is a great and worthy challenge. That a growing number of human beings have taken up these tasks with such dedication and sincerity has and continues to be a joy to watch and share in.

Now, we are ready for the next, and highest, level of creation: love.

But what does it mean to speak of love as a "level of creation?" What does it mean that "Love is the essence of All That Is?"

Clearly, we are not speaking of love in just the romantic sense, or in the parent-child sense, or in the way that brothers, sisters or friends may love each other. And we are not just speaking of the love of beauty or song or delicious food or a sunny day. Additionally, we are not speaking of love as action, as doing "good deeds," nor acts of kindness or generosity.

We are speaking of love as the essential energy that our Universe is composed of, that all of creation and existence springs from. That is why all love is unconditional, as I wrote in my "Truth About Everything, Part Two..." HERE. It cannot be conditional if it infuses everything. In the truest sense, then, neither can love be "given." It can only be channeled, allowed to flow through us to the degree that the channels within our emotional and physical bodies are cleared and open. 

Can we have the experience of directing love? Yes, though the more powerful the flow, such as when we "fall in love," it seems to happen to us, which is why we call it "falling" in love. Can we have the experience of blocking its expression? Yes, though the more we keep our inner channels congested or closed, the more we create what we experience as illness and unhappiness. 

All of the above has always been true. So, what is different about this time? I'm glad you asked.

As just mentioned above, love can be directed to the degree that our channels are open, and now, during this great awakening that is taking place in our time on Planet Earth, more so than ever before. We are engaged in the process of becoming conscious creators of our reality, but no longer from our beliefs, positive or negative, nor from our lower selves and egos. 

As mentioned in "Rule Number 2" in the FPL post at the beginning of last year, "IT'S 2013! WHICH EARTH ARE YOU ONE?!" - "Creating your reality and its experiences from your emotions and your ego is obsolete. Creating your reality from the vibrations of your Higher Self, supported by and in collaboration with the human and universal collective, is the 5D way of living." 

The "vibrations of our Higher Selves" are love, wisdom, and will, the highest of which is the all-encompassing energy of love.

So, here's a simple little story from my journey: 

There's a round, metal end table that had been next to "my side" of the living room couch for years. The top of it was very brown and spotty, and basically, I hated it, and looked forward to getting rid of it one day. In fact, I would have gotten rid of it already, except that my partner on the couch insisted that it was a worthy piece of furniture. 

Anyway, we recently decided to do some refurbishing, which included buying some new end tables. This was my chance, I thought, to trash the old table. But my partner protested, telling me something I didn't know - that the table top was made of copper. "Really?" I said, rummaging for some metal cleaner under our sink. "Let me check that out."

Well, as I started coating and rubbing the copper top in earnest, it began to shine and glow a beautiful, reddish color. I realized, to my surprise, that I was falling in love! So much so, that by the time I was done, I'd transplanted it to the sacred space of my cherished therapy office. First chance I had, I went online to order a special buffing kit that I could use to make the table really shine. 

The table now sits proudly next to me as I conduct sessions. And it hit me with a wonderful and great force that I had just learned a universal lesson for my life - Whatever we direct love towards, including something that we might have previously hated, it transforms into something we love. And it might mean that the thing (or person) in question remains in our life as beloved, or if preferred or meant to be, that which is loved can leave our life, infused with love. Simple, but yet profound. It's a win-win. Or as John Lennon said: 

"It's easy. All you need is love!"

Check it out!

STILL MORE ON: BEANS, NAPS, BOOZE, SEX and IKIGAI!

Here we go again! Another in the series...

Emma Morano, the world’s oldest person at 117, died at her home in northern Italy on Saturday afternoon. Morano’s doctor confirmed the news to the Associated Press, saying Morano’s caretaker informed him she had died peacefully while sitting in an armchair at her home in Verbania. Morano was also believed to be the last person alive who was born in the 1800s, with a birthday in November 1899. Morano, who outlived all eight of her siblings, had attributed her long life to a diet of three eggs a day, two of them raw, the BBC reported. She survived two World Wars, more than 90 Italian governments and a tough personal life, with the loss of her only son at six months old and an abusive marriage.

So, why do we do it? What makes it all worthwhile?

In the American remake of the movie "City Of Angels," Nicolas Cage's character, an angel, asks Dennis Franz' character, an angel who incarnated as a human being, why he did it, didn't he miss being able to hear the sunrise over the ocean the way he could in angelic form? Franz says "Yes, I do miss it sometimes, but... I can do this!" as he strips off his clothes and runs naked into the ocean.

So, it's time for a check-in, an update on your "Ikigai,"the Japanese concept meaning “a reason for being,” or as they think of it on Okinawa, “a reason to get up in the morning.” What does it for you? Love, Eros and Sex? Fine food? Music? Painting? Cooking? Playing tennis? Building a house? Watching the final episode of "Mad Men?" (I'm really glad I was here for that!)

Whatever it is that gets you up in the morning, folks, appreciate it. Remind yourself to indulge whatever your greatest pleasures and preferences are. It's why you're here... and there's nowhere else like here!




Below are two previous posts that ran under the heading on FPL:

"MORE ON: 'BEANS, NAPS, BOOZE, SEX and IKIGAI - ARE YOU IN THE BLUE ZONE? (OH, AND PASS THE BACON!)"

Okay, here's the headline: Susannah Mushatt Jones, World's Oldest Person, Eats Bacon Every Day!

Susannah Mushatt Jones turned 116 over the summer and is the oldest person in the world.

So what's her secret? It just might be plenty of bacon. Jones has bacon, eggs and grits for breakfast every morning.

Along with a daily dose of bacon, Jones spends plenty of time snoozing. Her niece, Lois Judge, told The Huffington Post in June that she sleeps about 10 hours a night and also takes regular naps.

And what about Ikigai? "I surround myself with love and positive energy. That’s the key to long life and happiness."

Jones, who was born in Alabama on July 6, 1899, is one of only two known living people who were alive in the 19th century.



[NOTE: Jones is not alone among centenarians in her love for bacon. Pearl Cantrell, who died in 2013 at the age of 105, enjoyed bacon so much that Oscar Meyer sent one of its Wienermobiles to her home to deliver some. Cantrell: "I love bacon. I eat it everyday."]




Here's the earlier post on longevity and Ikigai -

Saw a very interesting interview the other night on Bill Maher with author, Dan Buettner, who wrote the bestseller, “The Blue Zones.” What are the Blue Zones? They are 5 places in the world – from Okinawa, Japan to Loma Linda, California – where people regularly live to 100 years old. (The other 3 Blue Zones are Sardinia in Italy, Ikaria in Greece, and Nicoya in Costa Rica)

Buettner found that: "Blue Zone centenarians have somehow managed to avoid the chronic diseases – heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes – that kill the majority of people in industrialized countries around the world, and especially, in the United States.” 

Buettner sought to discover what the people in these 5 places had in common.

You ready? Here it is – every population group had beans as a regular part of their diet, took daily naps, had 2 or 3 drinks of alcohol per day, walked a lot (but no gym) and had sex at least twice a week!

Beans, naps, booze and sex!

Oh, and one more thing, perhaps the most important – they all had “ikigai,” along with some kind of spiritual practice. What is ikigai? It is a Japanese concept meaning “a reason for being,” or as they think of it on Okinawa, “a reason to get up in the morning.”

"Everyone," according to the Japanese, "has an ikigai. Finding it requires a deep and often lengthy search of self."

In a TED Talk, Dan Buettner referenced ikigai as one of the reasons people in the area had such long lives. This ties in with the entire concept of Full Permission Living, of course, and with many posts on FPL, including the recent quote from Lee Carroll channeling "Kryon," that asks the question: "What did you come here for?"

So, folks, find your ikigai. You have one. You do. And the great secret to finding it through your dedicated self-work is this: as much as possible, do what you feel passionate about doing in every moment.

And don't forget the bourbon and beans!

YOU CANNOT BE A MASTER AND A VICTIM!

From "BEYOND THE KNOWN," channelled by Paul Selig:

"Too many of you like to think that things happen at you. 'He did this thing to me.' 'She took away my will.' 'I wasn’t consulted.' 'I didn’t confirm.' 'I certainly didn’t agree.' In some ways, this may be so. But until you understand that you are authoring your experiences here for the purpose of learning and evolution, you are going to conceive of the self as a victim of experience. And, as we have stated prior, you cannot be a master and a victim at the same time."