I'm glad you came to this page and thank you for being interested in what I have to say. Here, then, are some of my humble thoughts:
About Religion: To me, it makes no difference in the way we practice our faith. Whether we are Protestant (including all sects within the Protestant faith), Roman Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, or any other religious denomination -- isn't it fair to say that it's much more important that we practice our faith? Period! This is where the emphasis lies with me. We are all born each with a soul filled with divinity, and that divinity encompasses all of us.
I believe that all religions lead to the same source, whether we call that source God, Jehovah, Allah, Yaweh, or whatever we picture it to be.
I see goodness in the hearts of most human beings, and I am positive that the majority of us want that to be manifest.
I am just as positive that we have an innate sense of right and wrong. Whether we follow that sense (or knowing) or not, is our choice entirely. We belong to one universe, and whether we like it or not, this is the Universal Truth. It is what I call our Universal Consciousness.
For those of you who have read Conversations With God, written by Neale Donald Walsch and his "co-hort" God, you will have recognized by now that I agree with the tenets written in his first three books.
I firmly believe that you will not read these books until you are ready for them. So, be prepared when the spirit moves you to do so. God changed my life, and so too will He yours. With complete truth, I tell you now that not in any other book that I have read my entire life, have I seen anything in print which I knew instinctively to be true. I felt these words inside my heart as I read them, and never had uttered a word to anyone about what I had always really believed about God and how He is connected to us. Nobody knew! I kept it close inside me. So, to me, these words are the Universal Truth, and you will hear me use that term many times. It is by design.
After I read these books, I took back myself. When you, too, can learn the enormity of being able to practice taking back yourself, becoming one with the Universe, making it completely yours, wrapping it around your heart, and being able to feel the absolute unconditional love of God, will you know what I mean.
On the bookcover of Friendship with God is written: "Listen.....and God will come to walk beside you -- as your friend." It is my belief that once we allow this to happen, we need no other institution to guide us. We are our own leaders, and what is most important of all is the language of our thoughts. We need no interpreters.
About Unconditional Love: This is a tough one! We are human beings and with human failings. Therefore, it is more important than anything else to believe in the core of our being that To Err is Human -- To Forgive Divine! So, if we have divinity inside of us, then it goes without saying that we can easily forgive, if we allow ourselves to do so. We have to make that conscious choice! If you can love the unloveable, that is unconditional love.
About Love in General: Ah! The very source of life! Love! The wonder of it all! Is it any wonder that we feel so energized, so full of life, so out of our minds! Well we are. We are in our hearts. And that is where we should be. To love someone is to enhance ourselves. We only grow larger in spirit when we share our love. We cannot give it away, and lose all that we have, for there is an unlimited source.
That is why when we shut ourselves off, it builds up until we feel as though we may just burst! It has to come out. It has to keep coming out. We do not feel ourselves unless we allow it to pour forth freely and unconditionally. This is the way of the Divine Self....from the ultimate source, our friend and creator God, the one who taught us all He knew about love.
Love all beings -- but especially love yourself ! Fill yourself up with God's love. Then give it away! All of it. There is an unlimited supply, and it comes from only one source!
About Family: I saw a Hallmark card once which said, "When you laugh with family, your soul knows it's home." Unfortunately, the author was not listed, so I can't give the person credit, but it struck me, as I stood in that store, as another Universal Truth.
This is why, I think, that those who are adopted, despite having lived happy lives with their devoted adopted family, still have that nagging feeling deep in their soul that there is something missing. This is what I call the "missing soul connection." It is an authentic feeling and they instinctively know it. Whether or not they decide to explore where they come from is not the point. The feeling exists and it is real.
Is it any wonder then, that those of us who are fortunate enough to have been born of our natural parents and grow up to know them, our siblings if we have them, and the rest of our extended family, we also are exquisitely aware of the fact that we belong. And nothing feels familiar without them. We always have that need to be home.
Whether or not we are in the midst of a loving and nurturing family, is not the point. The point is that we are a part of a family and it is home to us. The family can be completely dysfunctional, but we are home in that family, and we know that. It is the instinct that we are born with. The instinct to know, regardless of the situation.
If we are enlightened enough to regain this knowledge, it is then, and only then, that we can begin to work towards correcting those things in the family that aren't connecting. We can yell and scream and disagree and cause hate and discontent, but if we are home we feel safe, even if we aren't connecting. It might not be a good feeling, but it is authentic and worth every part of our being to authenticate that connection by enhancing it with love and understanding.
It is only recently I learned that when my parents made their transition, my soul connection was deeply disturbed. I thought, at the time, that I was in pain simply because of their physical loss. I know now that it involves much more than that. And I realize now that because it involves much more than that, unless one recognizes that it is a disruption in the soul connection and makes an effort to regain that reconnection, the pain will be consistent.
This phenomenon happens with physical or emotional death. It makes no difference which it is. It still manifests itself as a separation in the soul connection.
It is the wise person, therefore, who can rediscover this knowledge while the family is together on this earth plane, because for some it is almost impossible to do so once a loved one has moved on, unless they have someone to guide them in this process.
This is why, when a loved one has made the physical transition, many of us seek spiritual advisors to re-connect with them. What we are doing, I believe, is really trying to reconnect with our own souls, because we aren't aware that our loved ones continue to reside alongside us within our own souls always. It is just in a different way. They continue to be there, we just don't recognize it because in our physical bodies we have forgotten to see the spiritual.
We continue to feel it because our soul memory tells us so, but our intellectual memory has this information filed away so it can't be manifest in a way in which it is recognizable -- unless something happens to wake us up. Simply, this can happen with physical death, or it can happen when rifts within the family happen that make us unhappy and discontented.
I give thanks each day that I was blessed by God in this lifetime to have been born by two amazing people as my parents, and enhanced even further by the grace of being a mother, myself, to two of the most beautiful souls in God's creation. It hasn't always been an easy road to travel. But I'd like to think that, along the way, I tried hard to learn my lessons.
My children are the lights of my life, and I am eternally grateful to both of them for the life lessons I have received through them. Just as certainly, I know there are more lessons ahead through my blessed grandsons, Nathanial Peter, Jacob Ryan, Victor Emmanuel and granddaughter Kaitlyn Elizabeth.
Family, to me, means home and without it I am lost. I am blessed, I know. But, it is not a rare phenomenon. All families are blessed. We just need to know that.
Reconnect with your family, if you need to. Cry if you have to, but most of all laugh if you can.
After all, we all know that laughter is good for the soul and your family is your soul.
About Friends: There's a famous saying that goes something like this: "You can't pick your family, but you can pick your friends." Well, apart from the fact that I might disagree with the part about picking family because I believe that we do, the meaning of the saying comes through loud and clear.
Our friends are a conscious choice. Our family is an unconscious choice -- a soul choice.
When we meet a stranger, we can choose whether or not we want to get to know them better. We are far more likely to make that effort with a new friend than we are with members of our family. That's because we take our family for granted. We feel we don't need to get to know them because they will always be there.
Sometimes we are tempted to fall on our laurels with friends when our efforts have finally paid off and we think we are safe in their friendship.
But have we allowed them to know us?
Isn't it true that we quickly learn, when we cease to make those efforts, that our circle of friends slowly dissipates and we are finally left alone again?
Well, there's always our family again, isn't there? And that's not a bad thing, but it is also why we must treasure our friends.
Our friends can be the source of our comfort, our stability, our encouragement, our learning and ultimately, our peace, because they, above all, will tell us the truth.
Without harmony in our own personal friendships, there is no possibility of it spreading outwards towards others to blend into, ultimately, world harmony and peace.
We have to lead by example and the only way to do that is to nurture our own circle of friends so that they may go out and nurture their own circle of friends -- and so on. It always has to begin at home. It's the law of nature. It is an amazing thing -- if you've never experienced it, please begin at home. It works.
Finally, I would like to stop right this minute and thank those of my own circle of friends and family who have stopped to take the time to sign my guest book. All of them, in their own unique way, have encouraged me throughout this process of my growth, and without whom I would never have been inspired to tell this tale........Even if some of you reading this missive would have preferred otherwise! (A little humor never hurt anyone) God Bless You Everyone and Be Consciously Happy! ©Deirdre Moignard Miller
