I wanted a perfect ending.
Now I’ve learned, the hard way,
that some poems don’t rhyme,
and some stories don’t have a
clear beginning, middle, and end.Life is about not knowing,
having to change,
taking the moment and
making the best of it,
without knowing what’s going to happen next.
Delicious ambiguity.
Gilda Radner
I wish you a stable, safe and joyful year 2009
Here is a simple tip any gardener will tell you that you can try out next year. Try pulling on a plant. If it comes out easily, it’s a desirable plant. If it stubbornly resists with roots that cling deep into the bedrock, you know it’s a weed.
So, too, it is with habits. Good habits are often too easily abandoned when life throws unexpected roadblocks your way. Bad habits, on the other hand, often seem to take monumental efforts to break.
The book Growing through Joy provides you with tools how to strengthen good habits and overcome bad ones
Learn to
What I see in Nature is a grand design
that we can understand only imperfectly,
one with which a responsible person
must look at with humility.
This is a genuine religious feeling
and has nothing to do with mysticism.
- Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955
Erma Louise Bombeck, 1927 - 1996 reminds us of the polarity that we need to know the difference
There is a thin line
that separates laughter and pain,
comedy and tragedy,
humor and hurt.And how do you know laughter
if there is no pain to compare it with?
The trouble is that many know much better the side of pain than the side of laughter.
If you want to explore more of laughter and joy, check out the Ebook ‘Beyond Suffering’
It will help you to discover the four pillars of how to grow joy in your life . It will teach you
CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE MORNING
By Pearl S. Buck
He woke suddenly and completely. It was four o’clock, the hour at which his father had always called him to get up and help with the milking. Strange how the habits of his youth clung to him still! Fifty years ago, and his father had been dead for thirty years, and yet he waked at four o’clock in the morning. He had trained himself to turn over and go to sleep, but this morning it was Christmas, he did not try to sleep.
Why did he feel so awake tonight? He slipped back in time, as he did so easily nowadays. He was fifteen years old and still on his father’s farm. He loved his father. He had not known it until one day a few days before Christmas, when he had overheard what his father was saying to his mother.
“Mary, I hate to call Rob in the mornings. He’s growing so fast and he needs his sleep. If you could see how he sleeps when I go in to wake him up! I wish I could manage alone.”
“Well, you can’t, Adam.” His mother’s voice was brisk. “Besides, he isn’t a child anymore. It’s time he tok his turn.”
“Yes,” his father said slowly. “But I sure do hate to wake him.”
When he heard these words, something in him spoke: his father loved him! He had never thought of that before, taking for granted the tie of their blood. Neither his father nor his mother talked about loving their children–they had no time for such things. There was always so much to do on the farm.
Now that he knew his father loved him, there would be no loitering in the mornings and having to be called again. He got up after that, stumbling blindly in his sleep, and pulled on his clothes, his eyes shut, but he got up.
And then on the night before Christmas, that year when he was fifteen, he lay for a few minutes thinking about the next day. They were poor, and most of the excitement was in the turkey they had raised themselves and mince pies his mother made. His sisters sewed presents and his mother and father always bought him something he needed, not only a warm jacket, maybe, but something more, such as a book. And he saved and bought them each something, too.
He wished, that Christmas when he was fifteen, he had a better present for his father. As usual he had gone to the ten-cent store and bought a tie. It had semed nice enough until he lay thinking the night before Christmas. He looked out of his attic window, the stars were bright.
“Dad,” he had once asked when he was a little boy, “What is a stable?”
“It’s just a barn,” his father had replied, “like ours.”
Then Jesus had been born in a barn, and to a barn the shepherds had come…
The thought struck him like a silver dagger. Why should he not give his father a special gift too, out there in the barn? He could get up early, earlier than four o’clock, and he could creep into the barn and get all the milking done. He’d do it alone, milk and clean up, and then when his father went in to start the milking he’d see it all done. And he would know who had done it. He laughed to himself as he gazed at the stars. It was what he would do, and he musn’t sleep too sound.
He must have waked twenty times, scratching a match to look each time to look at his old watch — midnight, and half past one, and then two o’clock.
At a quarter to three he got up and put on his clothes. He crept downstairs, careful of the creaky boards, and let himself out. The cows looked at him, sleepy and surprised. It was early for them, too.
He had never milked all alone before, but it seemed almost easy. He kept thinking about his father’s surprise. His father would come in and get him, saying that he would get things started while Rob was getting dressed. He’d go to the barn, open the door, and then he’d go get the two big empty milk cans. But they wouldn’t be waiting or empty, they’d be standing in the milk-house, filled.
“What the–,” he could hear his father exclaiming.
He smiled and milked steadily, two strong streams rushing into the pail, frothing and fragrant.
The task went more easily than he had ever known it to go before. Milking for once was not a chore. It was something else, a gift to his father who loved him. He finished, the two milk cans were full, and he covered them and closed the milk-house door carefully, making sure of the latch.
Back in his room he had only a minute to pull off his clothes in the darkness and jump into bed, for he heard his father up. He put the covers over his head to silence his quick breathing. The door opened.
“Rob!” His father called. “We have to get up, son, even if it is Christmas.”
“Aw-right,” he said sleepily.
The door closed and he lay still, laughing to himself. In just a few minutes his father would know. His dancing heart was ready to jump from his body.
The minutes were endless — ten, fifteen, he did not know how many — and he heard his father’s footsteps again. The door opened and he lay still.
“Rob!”
“Yes, Dad–”
His father was laughing, a queer sobbing sort of laugh.
“Thought you’d fool me, did you?” His father was standing by his bed, feeling for him, pulling away the cover.
“It’s for Christmas, Dad!”
He found his father and clutched him in a great hug. He felt his father’s arms go around him. It was dark and they could not see each other’s faces.
“Son, I thank you. Nobody ever did a nicer thing–”
“Oh, Dad, I want you to know — I do want to be god!” The words broke from him of their own will. He did not know what to say. His heart was bursting with love.
He got up and pulled on his clothes again and they went down to the Christmas tree. Oh what a Christmas, and how his heart had nearly burst again with shyness and pride as his father told his mother and made the younger children listen about how he, Rob, had got up all by himself.
“The best Christmas gift I ever had, and I’ll remember it, son every year on Christmas morning, so long as I live.”
They had both remembered it, and now that his father was dead, he remembered it alone: that blessed Christmas dawn when, alone with the cows in the barn, he had made his first gift of true love.
This Christmas he wanted to write a card to his wife and tell her how much he loved her, it had been a long time since he had really told her, although he loved her in a very special way, much more than he ever had when they were young. He had been fortunate that she had loved him. Ah, that was the true joy of life, the ability to love. Love was still alive in him, it still was.
It occured to him suddenly that it was alive because long ago it had been born in him when he knew his father loved him. That was it: Love alone could awaken lovve. And he ccould give the gift again and again.This morning, this blessed Christmas morning, he would give it to his beloved wife. He could write it down in a letter for her to read and keep forever. He went to his desk and began his love letter to his wife: My dearest love…
Such a happy, happy Christmas!
May these days be filled with bliss and happiness for you and all you love
Ulla Sebastian
Somehow not only for Christmas
But all the long year through,
The joy that you give to others
Is the joy that comes back to you.
- Elwyn Brooks White, 1899 - 1985
Hannah More, 1745 - 1833 reminds us of the importance that each one of us has for the world
One kernel is felt in a hogshead;
one drop of water helps to swell the ocean;
a spark of fire helps to give light to the world.
None are too small, too feeble, too poor
to be of service.
Think of this and act.
Are you suffering from low self-esteem wondering what your place and task in the world may be?
If so, why not checking out the free courses on improving your self esteem and finding your life’s purpose for the next year?
It’s free, no hooks, my service to the world.
The following text is taken from the book: Growing through Joy. You can buy this book as a printed version (in Europe) or as an ebook overseas
For many years, I was occupied with the question how we could shift the deep rooted Christian inheritance of guilt, sin and suffering into responsible and life-enhancing strategies
I found two books, which broke new ground for me: Vernon Woolf’s ‘Holodynamics’ and Michael Talbot’s ‘Holographic Universe’. They explore the power of holograms, inner images that influence or even determine the course of our lives from the Unconscious.
A hologram is a three-dimensional picture that looks like an actual object. However, you can walk right through it. It has no physical limits.
A hologram is produced by a pure light source, like a laser beam, which is split in two by a beam splitter. The first beam reflects off the object; in this case let us say an apple, onto a photographic plate. The second beam reflects off mirrors onto the same photographic plate. Both beams together create criss-crossing wave patterns. They are called interference patterns.
Imagine yourself throwing two stones into a pond of still water, making waves, which ripple outwards, and cross each other. They create a pattern of wave mountains and valleys. This corresponds to the interference pattern of the two laser beams.
When you let a third laser beam shine through the interference pattern on the photographic plate, a three-dimensional image of the object appears on the other side. This is the hologram.
The interference pattern on the plate contains many sections of the photographed object or situation. According to the angle from which you let the third laser beam shine through the plate, you will receive different images of the object or event.
If you apply this phenomenon to a human being, the third laser beam corresponds to your intention. Depending on your viewpoint, aspiration or desire, you create a different reality. If suffering impregnates the viewpoint, you create a different reality than if you were to perceive the same situation from the angle of joy. The popular language expresses this phenomenon in the image of a half-filled glass. The pessimist describes it as half-empty, the optimist as half-full.
True love isn’t so much a dreamy feeling
that you have
as it is an enduring commitment
to give sacrificially
- even, or perhaps especially,
when you don’t feel like it.
- William R. Mattox, Jr.
This is a longer road than just being in love
Use the free course on Creating healthy relationships to learn how to be a well of affection
The course provides you with information, instructions and tips on
If you want more support check out this option
Music washes away
from the soul
the dust of everyday life.
Berthold Auerbach, 1812 - 1882
We all are a piece of music. Let us enjoy the concert
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure
nor this thing nor that
but simply growth.
We are happy when we are growing.
This insight of the Irish poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 resonates with my life experience.
For this reason, I wrote the book Growing through Joy
The book helps you to discover the four pillars of how to grow joy in your life
It will teach you
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.
Only through experience of trial and suffering
can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared,
ambition aspired, and success achieved.
Although the world is full of suffering,
it is also full of the overcoming of it.
Helen Keller, 1880 - 1968
Who would know better than Helen Keller?
She was born at Tuscumbia, Alabama in 1880.
She was a bright and attractive child until she fell sick at 19 months with “brain fever,” now believed to have been meningitis. She wasn’t expected to live, after recovering she had lost all vision and hearing.
Over the next few years her temper made her difficult to live with. With the full-time help of Anne Sullivan, Helen learned to communicate several different ways, and as her world opened up again her manners improved.
By age eight she was a celebrity, when she graduated from Radcliffe in 1904 she was the first deaf and blind person to acquire a bachelors degree. She spent the rest of her life raising funds and consciousness for the improvement of treatment of the blind.
If you wonder about your purpose in life and how to gain strength to fulfill your purpose, I offer a range of support :
Learn more about life-issues we all deal with by checking out the articles in the section ‘life-issues in focus’ and publications
If you love to learn through books, here are two choices
Good Health or bad health is not just a question of destiny. Our thought forms play a vital role.
As children, we get taught a lot of attitudes that later on influence our bodily and mental condition.
Here are some cultural ‘favourites’ that you may have heard as a child
Are any of them familiar?
Feel free to write down those messages that have been important in YOUR life.
Those messages have power.
This doesn’t mean that you have to be a victim to them. You have the power to change them.
You can change them using your mental capacity or shifting the energetic structure that are holding those thought forms in place.
If you feel confident with your mental power, check out the free course on Positive Affirmations
This is the true joy in life,
the being used for a purpose
recognized by yourself as a mighty one;
the being thoroughly worn out
before you are thrown on the scrap heap;
the being a force of Nature
instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances
complaining that the world will not devote itself
to making you happy.
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), Man and Superman, Epistle Dedicatory
How about a gift that helps to cultivate happiness and joy?
Well, what brings happiness is our inner contentment.
It’s easy to grow bad habits. it’s much harder to cultivate joy.
Give a loved one or yourself the know-how for Christmas with the Book ‘Growing through Joy’ and the Ebook ‘Beyond Suffering’
The book will teach you to
If only you could sense
how important you are to the lives of those you meet;
how important you can be to people
you may never even dream of.
There is something of yourself
that you leave at every meeting with another person.
Fred McFeely Rogers, 1928 - 2003
We are often so involved with feeling badly about ourselves that we forget the importance that we have for others.
We need to cultivate the consciousness of it.
I offer a range of support for you how to be aware about the impact you have on others as much as others have on you.
If you love to learn through books, here are two choices
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