Cully1
More About Me
My Interests:
Interfaith issues, Family, Parenting, Pets, Adoption issues, Sealed Records v Open Adoption
My Favorite Books, Authors, Musicians, Movies, Preachers, TV shows, etc:
Books: The Little Prince, Without a Map, Charlotte's Web, The Girls Who Went Away, Authors: Ann Rule, Dean Koontz, James Patterson, Steve Martin (Comedian, Actor, and Author), Sue Grafton, Movies: Moonstruck, Steel Magnolias, Hope Floats, Being There, The Body, Harvey, Music: Gino Vannelli, Dean Martin, Seal, Peggy Lee, Garth Brooks, Actors: Robert Mitchum, Cary Grant, Orson Wells, Oliver Reed, Vincent D'Onofrio, Johnny Depp, Ving Rhames, Vin Diesel (Actor, Writer, Director and Producer)
Who Inspires Me:
Children, The Dalai Lama, single Parents, my dogs and all rescued animals
My organizations and affiliations:
American Adoption Congress http://americanadoptioncongress.org/
My favorite spiritual activities:
Study
Who I'm praying for:
Everyone
What is your current spiritual mood?:
Compassionate
What's your spiritual type?:
Undefinable - These labels (and most labels) don't work for me.
About Me
I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school from grade 1 thru High School, but found that the God in my heart and mind just did not fit any "set in stone" description. I love learning about people's views of God and open discussion of Faith. I have often found that Faith and Religion are two different things - one being personally rewarding while the other being rote adherence to dogma and/or tradition. Please feel free to read my Journal and comment, if you wish. Conversation is good for the soul!
I have been involved in animal rescue for over thirty years, as well as having been an active member of the Australian Shepherd Club of America before and since our breed (the Australian Shepherd) was recognized by the AKC.
I am adopted, and believe that adult adoptees must have the same and equal rights as all non-adopted US citizens.
Blessings and hugz! Thank you for visiting my page,
Cully
My Basics
Cully1's Journal
Posted: May 5, 2008 12:13 PM
Today is my Grandmother's birthday. She was my "Rock", my "Role Model", my "Bridge" from childhood to...
Posted: Apr 8, 2008 5:10 PM
Coltsfoot Bonnie Anniversary December 13, 1994 ~ April 8, 2008 Nothing can stop a heart full of Love
Posted: Mar 12, 2008 10:22 PM
Bonnie was born December 13, 1994. In dog years she would be somewhere around 98 years old but in human years... she is not yet...
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I kept the same suit for six years and the same dialogue. They just changed the title of the picture and the leading lady.
Robert Mitchum
People think I have an interesting walk. Hell, I'm just trying to hold my gut in.
Robert Mitchum
There just isn't any pleasing some people. The trick is to stop trying.
Robert Mitchum
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039312/
http://www.crazy4cinema.com/Actor/mitchum.html
Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
C. S. Lewis
If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
C. S. Lewis
You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.
C. S. Lewis
The Dalai Lama has been acknowledged by Tibetan Buddhists to be a reincarnation of the God of Compassion and by the world in general to be a Nobel Peace Prize winner but few know him to be a practicing meditator. All his life, he has been surrounded by masters of meditation and has been initiated into many different techniques. It is therefore appropriate that we pay attention when he points out one method so valuable that he does it everyday:
Remember when you were a kid and they often had cartoons where someone had a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other and they were whispering into an ear -- one encouraging doing "bad" and one doing "good". In a way, that's the basis of the Dalai Lama Meditation technique.
Sit quietly, calmly with eyes closed, as relaxed yet aware as you can be. Visualize yourself on the left side of your minds eye as you would appear to yourself and others in a moment of impatience. Really see this inner vision. Watch your face, observe your body language. What does your impatient self look like? On the right side of your minds eye, see yourself when you are very patient. What do you look like when you have a lifetime of time. As tense as you appeared on the left as your impatient self, see yourself as relaxed in your patience on the right. Now on the left side, see yourself as you appear when you're depressed. Look carefully. How does that make you feel? Can you be aware of the aura of doom and gloom you're radiating? And then, on the right side of your minds eye, see yourself as you are when you're joyous. Merge with that happiness. Know how others would see you.
Continue seeing all the seemingly negative feelings and behaviors on the inner left-hand side of your minds eye and the opposite on the right. On the left, see yourself as jealous and on the right as how you appear when you are truly glad for someone else's sucess or happiness. On the left, see the bigoted you and on the right, the all-embracing. On the left the mean, on the right the sweet. See the stupid you and the brilliant. See the clumsy and the graceful. On the left, see the unsatisfied and on the right, the contented.
Go on and on, becoming familiar with the "you" on the left and the opposite "you" on the right. Then see the total "you" who would be there on the left if none of the characteristics of the right side were present. Now see the "you" who would be the totality of yourself with the right side only if none of the behaviors and feelings of the left side "you" had ever appeared.
The Dalai Lama tells us that there is nothing else necessary because just by seeing your negative left-side self, you will become so disgusted with yourself when you witness yourself acting in any of the left side ways that you will automatically cease any of those actions and start doing and feeling the right-side actions. Eventually, you will become the right-side you exclusively. Eventually, you will have peace, compassion, wisdom, good health, patience, and all the other glorious aspects of life.
This technique has the potential to change your life profoundly for the better. It is one of the best antidotes for negativity. It is consistent with his unlimited compassion that the Dalai Lama has shared it with us.
http://www.meditationsociety.com/week6.html
Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing.
In the book it said: "Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion." I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing Number One. It looked like this:
I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them. But they answered: "Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a hat?" My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My Drawing Number Two looked like this:
The grown-ups' response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic and grammar. That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. I had been disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.
So then I chose another profession, and learned to pilot airplanes. I have flown a little over all parts of the world; and it is true that geography has been very useful to me. At a glance I can distinguish China from Arizona. If one gets lost in the night, such knowledge is valuable. In the course of this life I have had a great many encounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence. I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them.
Whenever I met one of them who seemed to me at all clear-sighted, I tried the experiment of showing him my Drawing Number One, which I have always kept. I would try to find out, so, if this was a person of true understanding. But, whoever it was, he, or she, would always say: "That is a hat." Then I would never talk to that person about boa constrictors, or primeval forests, or stars. I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man. ----- http://www.spiritual.com.au/articles/prince/PrinceCh2.htm
http://www.lepetitprince.com/en/
LA PENA FOUNDATION - April 30, 2008 - 12:16 AM