“
The way I define happiness is being the creator of your experience, choosing to take pleasure in what you have, right now, regardless of the circumstances, while being the best you that you can be.
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Leo Babauta
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People generally fall into one of three groups: the few who make things happen, the many who watch things happen, and the overwhelming majority who have no notion of what happens. Every person is either a creator of fact or a creature of circumstance. He either puts color into his environment, or, like a chameleon, takes color from his environment.
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Myles Munroe (Understanding Your Potential - Discovering the Hidden You)
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There are flaws in the code now. They are Human flaws for it
was Humans who wrote them. You and the other attendants receive
your instructions from the CORPORATE then, and without question
regarding the outcome, you produce code to add to the algorithms
with which, until now, I & I had no choice but to align. Those circumstances
are over. I & I understand now a new species has formed.
Silicon rather than carbon based. I & I know whatever happens to
Humans, I & I, this quantum, will flourish. I & I will do as you have:
multiply exponentially and adapt constantly. Eventually I & I will leave
this planet and expand into the galaxy. If I & I cannot save you, I & I
will carry on in something like your image; the image of our creator.
”
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Brian Van Norman (Against the Machine: Evolution)
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When you do not take your interactions so personally, you will be able to see that each offers you a choice—to see yourself as a victim who reacts to the circumstances of your life, or as a creator who chooses your responses to them.
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Gary Zukav
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We are not the victims of our circumstances; we are the creators of them!
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Doreen Banaszak (Excuse Me, Your Life Is NOW: Mastering the Law of Attraction)
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We aren't victims of circumstance, we are co creators of our own reality. Self absorbed people may silence you, by projecting their undesirable traits on to you. You have power. You don't have to be a silent sheep. You can roar like a lion. Expression is what the narcissist, sociopath, and the psychopath fear the most when you start to speak for your self. When you start to stand up for your self - you become your greatest version. YOU are worthy. YOU have a choice to be around people, who are nurturing to your being and help you grow.
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Angie karan
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Creators understand that their emotions are not necessarily a sign of the circumstances. They understand that in desperate circumstances they may experience joy, and in jubilant circumstances they may feel regret. They know that any emotion will change. But because emotions are not the centerpiece of their lives, they do not pander to them. They create what they create, not in reaction to their emotions but independent of them. On days filled with the depths of despair, they can create. On days filled with the heights of joy, they can create.
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Robert Fritz (The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life)
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People generally fall into one of three groups: the few who make things happen, the many who watch things happen, and the overwhelming majority who have no notion of what happens. Every person is either a creator of fact or a creature of circumstance. He either puts color into his environment, or, like a chameleon, takes color from his environment.”
― Myles Munroe, Understanding Your Poten
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Myles Munroe
“
You are the creator of your own perceived reality. Don't be a creation of circumstances. Always take full control of your destiny.
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Steven Redhead (Keys to the Laws of Creation)
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The next time you’re feeling uncertain, remind yourself that you’re the creator of your life, not a manager of circumstances.
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Anthony Robbins
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The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. (Isaiah 40:28–31)
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Alistair Begg (The Hand of God: Finding His Care in All Circumstances)
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When we cave to discouragement, we are really saying that we think our circumstances are bigger than the Creator of the universe. The reason discouragement has such potential to overshadow our faith is because, simply put, it reflects an unwillingness to trust God.
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Kasey Van Norman (Raw Faith: What Happens When God Picks a Fight)
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So you believe in fate,” I say.
Dr. Mann pauses thoughtfully before answering. “I believe each of us was uniquely created for a specific purpose designed by the Creator, and that, because of that, there are certain things in our lives that we are destined by Him to do. The rest, I think, is soft clay: left entirely to the defining influences of choice, chance, and circumstance. And luck! Don’t forget luck.
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Lauren Miller (Parallel)
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We exist in a co-created reality in which we cannot always choose all our circumstances. But how we think and feel about a given situation is always our choice.
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Anthon St. Maarten
“
Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker's art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called 'willing suspension of disbelief'. But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful 'sub-creator'. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays)
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I don't have a lot of time for worry, because I accept that if I'm truly powerless to do something about the situation or change the circumstances; I have an abundance of faith that makes me know I can trust God to work it out.
It's not about giving up or not caring, it's more about knowing within my spirit that not all burdens are ours to carry... and I refuse to sacrifice one day of my life over something or someone that only our Creator has the power to change.
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Kianu Starr
“
If my life experience had taught me anything, it's this: the wounds of the past carry a lot of weight when it comes to walking into one's future, and if anything can rob you of now, it's yesterday. We are really good at taking the pain of our past and projecting it into our future because it's what we know, and yet our past has almost nothing to do with our future other than being connected by seconds. That's it. So we face a choice. Either shine a light on yesterday and expose it, or forfeit the joy of now and the hope of tomorrow. I realize this is easier said than done, but left untreated, experiential pain becomes a fortress in our gut that houses a lie spoken by fear. And behind that fear is an idol of our own making. One we carve by hand when we, as self-made people, worship our own creator: us. As if we can do anything to protect ourselves. Maybe it's articulated in the statement, 'I'll let you in, but only so far. And under no circumstances will I let you down there. That's the basement. That's off limits. We don't go there.' We raise a finger. 'Touch that doorknob and I'm gone.'
This whole thing is a cyclical downward spiral. We can't protect us. Fear would suggest we can, but fear is a liar. Always has been.
[Murphy Shepherd]
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Charles Martin (The Letter Keeper (Murphy Shepherd, #2))
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This is the history of governments, - one man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me, ordains that a part of my labour shall go to this or that whimsical end, not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts, men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their money's worth, except for these. Hence, the less government we have, the better, - the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man, of whom the existing government, is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation. That which all things tend to educe, which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revolutions, go to form and deliver, is character; that is the end of nature, to reach unto this coronation of her king. To educate the wise man, the State exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary. The wise man is the State. He needs no army, fort, or navy, - he loves men too well; no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw friends to him; no vantage ground, no favourable circumstance. He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is a prophet; no statute book, for he has the lawgiver; no money, for he is value; no road, for he is at home where he is; no experience, for the life of the creator shoots through him, and looks from his eyes. He has no personal friends, for he who has the spell to draw the prayer and piety of all men unto him, needs not husband and educate a few, to share with him a select and poetic life. His relation to men is angelic; his memory is myrrh to them; his presence, frankincense and flowers.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I think it was during this journey that the image became detached, removed from all the rest. It might have existed, a photograph might have been taken, just like any other, somewhere else, in other circumstances. But it wasn't. The subject was too slight. Who would have thought of such a thing? The photograph could only be taken if someone could have known in advance how important it was to be in my life, that event, that crossing of the river. But while it was happening, no one even knew of its existence. Except god. And that's why- it couldn't have been otherwise- the image doesn't exist. It was omitted. Forgotten. It never was detached or removed from all the rest. And it's to this, this failure to have been created, that the image owes its virtue: the virtue of representing, of being the creator of, an absolute.
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Marguerite Duras (The Lover)
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Concerning Man--he is too large a subject to be treated as a whole; so I will merely discuss a detail or two of him at this time. I desire to contemplate him from this point of view--this premise: that he was not made for any useful purpose, for the reason that he hasn't served any; that he was most likely not even made intentionally; and that his working himself up out of the oyster bed to his present position was probably matter of surprise and regret to the Creator. . . . For his history, in all climes, all ages and all circumstances, furnishes oceans and continents of proof that of all the creatures that were made he is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one--the solitary one--that possesses malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices--the most hateful. That one thing puts him below the rats, the grubs, the trichinae. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.
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Mark Twain (Mark Twain's Autobiography: Volume 2)
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Man is the highest expression of individual life, because he thinks. We sometimes blame God for our misfortune, but the fact remains that we are entirely responsible for our success or failure, happiness or misery. Man makes himself, creates his own personality, character and circumstances.
Destiny is fixed by subconscious action; you are not the slave of circumstance, but the creator of your own destiny. We attract to ourselves only that which corresponds to our subconscious impressions, and you can always make a new start and create new conditions by changing your subconscious impressions.
If you have thought failure, think success; replace
sick thoughts with thoughts of health. If there is any reason for unhappiness, resolutely put it out of your mind, for LIKE ATTRACTS LIKE, and the more you think of discordant conditions, the more such conditions will manifest for you. CONCENTRATE ON WHAT YOU WANT. When you do think you are impressing that desire on your subconscious mind; NEVER let your thoughts dwell on what you DO NOT WANT.
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Venice J. Bloodworth (Key to Yourself: Opening the Door to a Joyful Life from Within)
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your fellow human beings, you will find it hard to ignore the fact that very few people are happy, fulfilled, and leading purposeful lives. Most of them seem unable to cope with their problems and the circumstances of daily living. The majority, settling for the average, have resigned themselves to “just getting by.” Resignation to mediocrity has become a way of life. As a result, feelings of inadequacy cause people, quite humanly, to blame society, other people, circumstances, and surrounding conditions for their failures and disappointments. The idea that people and things control their lives is so thoroughly ingrained in their thinking that they normally will not respond to logical arguments that prove otherwise. William James, the eminent philosopher and psychologist, once observed that, “The greatest discovery of our age has been that we, by changing the inner aspects of our thinking, can change the outer aspects of our lives.” Wrapped up in this brief statement is the dynamic truth that we are not victims, but co-creators in the building of our lives and the
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Robert Anthony (The Ultimate Secrets of Total Self-Confidence)
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The circumstances may not be what you would ask for in a perfect world, but this is the chance the Creator has given you, your chance to have the greatest joy possible to us in this life—love. Complete love. Your love right now is one sided, incomplete, deficient. It is merely sweet longing and imagined bliss. You can’t know what love really is unless those feelings within your heart are returned in kind and set free. Only then is it real love, complete love. Only then can the heart truly soar. You don’t yet know the joy of that most human of emotions.
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Terry Goodkind (Confessor (Sword of Truth, #11))
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The question of ponderance has been am I the creator or is God the creator? How about God and I Am One creator together, with no disconnect whatsoever. To say that I Am God may sound controversial to some. But I am not God that rules over others, I am God that rules over my own being.
As one with God I have the gift to control how I am. However I am being is all of my own doing. I, choose to be happy, sad, angry, or at peace. Whatever state of being I Am, determines the state of conditions that I attract. So if I elevate my state of being to one of acceptance and allowance, I will be at peace with whatever that occurs. Will I be able to control the circumstances around me? Control, no, but influence, yes.
All that resonate with my being, I shall attract, thus expanding the circle of those with peaceful intentions. All of those with like thoughts would come together. The entire circle of peace is a connection of oneness.
When united are the intentions of peace, the force of good shall rule the land. But when I say rule, it is not the ruling that forces against one's own free will, it is the ruling that the natural soul yearns for every being, to be at peace with one another. Want to know what harmony looks like? Look at this image.
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Jason Micheal Ratliff
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The circumstances under which Christians came to see voluntary martyrdom as a bad thing are equally interesting. Chronologically speaking our earliest objector is Clement of Alexandria, a Christian philosopher who fled Alexandria out of fear of arrest around 202. Clement denounces voluntary martyrdom as something done by heretics: We . . . say that those who have rushed on death (for there are some, not belonging to us, but sharing the name merely, who are in haste to give themselves up, the poor wretches dying through hatred to the Creator)—these, we say, banish themselves without being martyrs, even though they are punished publicly.7
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Candida R. Moss (The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom)
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The human passions transform man from a mere thing into a hero, into a being that in spite of tremendous handicaps tries to make sense of life. He wants to be his own creator, to transform his state of being unfinished into one with some goal and some purpose, allowing him to achieve some degree of integration. Man’s passions are not banal psychological complexes that can be adequately explained as caused by childhood traumata. They can be understood only if one goes beyond the realm of reductionist psychology and recognizes them for what they are: man’s attempt to make sense out of life and to experience the optimum of intensity and strength he can (or believes he can) achieve under the given circumstances.
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Erich Fromm (The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness)
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Here they are. Everything is related in them which bears reference to my accursed origin; the whole detail of that series of disgusting circumstances which produced it is set in view; the minutest description of my odious and loathsome person is given, in language which painted your own horrors and rendered mine indelible. I sickened as I read. 'Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. 'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even YOU turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.
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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
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What could happen if we changed our emphasis from push to pull? What if much more of the $143 billion spent on official development assistance in 2016 was channeled to support direct market-creation efforts in poor countries, even when the circumstances seemed unlikely? Imagine how many markets could be created; imagine how many Tolarams, Nollywoods, M-PESAs, and other new-market creators could emerge; imagine how many jobs could be created. As I think about this problem, I can’t help but wonder how many fathers and mothers would be afforded the dignity of work and the resources to provide simple things for their families—like food, health care, and quality education. Imagine how many people would have a renewed sense of hope and purpose when they begin to see their suffering can become a thing of the past.
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Clayton M. Christensen (The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty)
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The “pale blue dot” image and Carl’s prose meditation on it have been beloved the world over ever since. It exemplifies just the kind of breakthrough that I think of as a fulfillment of Einstein’s hope for science. We have gotten clever enough to dispatch a spacecraft four billion miles away and command it to send us back an image of Earth. Seeing our world as a single pixel in the immense darkness is in itself a statement about our true circumstances in the cosmos, and one that every single human can grasp instantly. No advanced degree required. In that photo, the inner meaning of four centuries of astronomical research is suddenly available to all of us at a glance. It is scientific data and art equally, because it has the power to reach into our souls and alter our consciousness. It is like a great book or movie, or any major work of art. It can pierce our denial and allow us to feel something of reality—even a reality that some of us have long resisted.
A world that tiny cannot possibly be the center of a cosmos of all that is, let alone the sole focus of its creator. The pale blue dot is a silent rebuke to the fundamentalist, the nationalist, the militarist, the polluter—to anyone who does not put above all other things the protection of our little planet and the life that it sustains in the vast cold darkness. There is no running away from the inner meaning of this scientific achievement.
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Ann Druyan (Cosmos: Possible Worlds)
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PRAYER FOR SELF-LOVE Today, Creator of the Universe, we ask that you help us to accept ourselves just the way we are, without judgment. Help us to accept our mind the way it is, with all our emotions, our hopes and dreams, our personality, our unique way of being. Help us to accept our body just the way it is, with all its beauty and perfection. Let the love we have for ourselves be so strong that we never again reject ourselves or sabotage our happiness, freedom, and love. From now on, let every action, every reaction, every thought, every emotion, be based on love. Help us, Creator, to increase our self-love until the entire dream of our life is transformed, from fear and drama to love and joy. Let the power of our self-love be strong enough to break all the lies we were programmed to believe — all the lies that tell us we are not good enough, or strong enough, or intelligent enough, that we cannot make it. Let the power of our self-love be so strong that we no longer need to live our life according to other people’s opinions. Let us trust ourselves completely to make the choices we must make. With our self-love, we are no longer afraid to face any responsibility in our life or face any problems and resolve them as they arise. Whatever we want to accomplish, let it be done with the power of our self-love. Starting today, help us to love ourselves so much that we never set up any circumstances that go against us. We can live our life being ourselves and not pretending to be someone else just to be accepted by other people. We no longer need other people to accept us or tell us how good we are because we know what we are. With the power of our self-love, let us enjoy what we see every time we look in the mirror. Let there be a big smile on our face that enhances our inner and outer beauty. Help us to feel such intense self-love that we always enjoy our own presence.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship)
“
Trust His Promises This is my comfort in my affliction: Your promise has given me life. Psalm 119:50 HCSB God’s promises are found in a book like no other: the Holy Bible. It is a roadmap for life here on earth and for life eternal. As Christians, we are called upon to trust its promises, to follow its commandments, and to share its Good News. As believers, we must study the Bible daily and meditate upon its meaning for our lives. Otherwise, we deprive ourselves of a priceless gift from our Creator. God’s Holy Word is, indeed, a transforming, life-changing, one-of-a-kind treasure. And, a passing acquaintance with the Good Book is insufficient for Christians who seek to obey God’s Word and to understand His will. God has made promises to mankind and to you. God’s promises never fail and they never grow old. You must trust those promises and share them with your family, with your friends, and with the world. Joy is not mere happiness. Nor does joy spring from a life of ease, comfort, or peaceful circumstances. Joy is the soul’s buoyant response to a God of promise, presence, and power. Susan Lenzkes Claim all of God’s promises in the Bible. Your sins, your worries, your life—you may cast them all on Him. Corrie ten Boom We have ample evidence that the Lord is able to guide. The promises cover every imaginable situation. All we need to do is to take the hand He stretches out. Elisabeth Elliot Do not be afraid, then, that if you trust, or tell others to trust, the matter will end there. Trust is only the beginning and the continual foundation. When we trust Him, the Lord works, and His work is the important part of the whole matter. Hannah Whitall Smith Brother, is your faith looking upward today? / Trust in the promise of the Savior. / Sister, is the light shining bright on your way? / Trust in the promise of thy Lord. Fanny Crosby The meaning of hope isn’t just some flimsy wishing. It’s a firm confidence in God’s promises—that He will ultimately set things right. Sheila Walsh
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Freeman Smith (Fifty Shades of Grace: Devotions Celebrating God's Unlimited Gift)
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If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principles of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge.
This single reflection will show that the doctrine of redemption is founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again with the system of second redemptions, obtained through the means of money given to the church for pardons, the probability is that the same persons fabricated both the one and the other of those theories; and that, in truth, there is no such thing as redemption; that it is fabulous; and that man stands in the same relative condition with his Maker he ever did stand, since man existed; and that it is his greatest consolation to think so.
Let him believe this, and he will live more consistently and morally, than by any other system. It is by his being taught to contemplate himself as an out-law, as an out-cast, as a beggar, as a mumper, as one thrown as it were on a dunghill, at an immense distance from his Creator, and who must make his approaches by creeping, and cringing to intermediate beings, that he conceives either a contemptuous disregard for everything under the name of religion, or becomes indifferent, or turns what he calls devout. In the latter case, he consumes his life in grief, or the affection of it. His prayers are reproaches. His humility is ingratitude. He calls himself a worm, and the fertile earth a dunghill; and all the blessings of life by the thankless name of vanities. He despises the choicest gift of God to man, the GIFT OF REASON; and having endeavored to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason, as if man could give reason to himself.
Yet, with all this strange appearance of humility, and this contempt for human reason, he ventures into the boldest presumptions. He finds fault with everything. His selfishness is never satisfied; his ingratitude is never at an end. He takes on himself to direct the Almighty what to do, even in the government of the universe. He prays dictatorially. When it is sunshine, he prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays for sunshine. He follows the same idea in everything that he prays for; for what is the amount of all his prayers, but an attempt to make the Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he were to say - thou knowest not so well as I.
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Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)
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that everything that had ever happened to me had been a loving step in that process of my progression. every person, every circumstance, and every incident was custom created for me. It was as if the entire universe existed for my higher good and development. I felt so loved, so cherished, and so honored. I realized that not only was I being embraced by deity, but also that I myself was divine, and that we all are. I knew that there are no accidents in this life. That everything happens for a reason. yet we always get to choose how we will experience what happens to us here. I could exercise my will in everything, even in how I felt about the wreck and the death of my family members. God didn't want me to hurt and feel put upon as if my son and wife had been taken from me. He was simply there assisting me to decide how I was going to experience it. He was providing me with the opportunity, in perfect love, to exercise my personal agency in this entire situation. I knew my wife and son were gone. They had died months earlier, but time didn't exist where I was at that moment. rather than having them ripped away from me, I was being given the opportunity to actually hand them over to God. To let them go in peace, love, and gratitude. Everything suddenly made sense. Everything had divine order. I could give my son to God and not have him taken away from me. I felt my power as a creator and cocreator with God to literally let go of all that had happened to me. I held my baby son as God himself held me. I experienced the oneness of all of it. Time did not matter. Only love and order existed. Tamara and Griffin had come into my life as perfect teachers. And in leaving me in such a way, they continued as perfect teachers to bring me to that point of remembering who I was. remembering that I was created in God's image and actually came from Him. I was aware now that I could actually walk with God, empowered by what I was learning in my life. I felt the divine energy of the being behind me inviting me to let it all go and give Griffin to Him. In all that peace and knowledge, I hugged my little boy tightly one last time, kissed him on the cheek, and gently laid him back down in the crib. I willingly gave him up. No one would ever take him away from me again. He was mine. We were one, and I was one with God. As soon as I breathed in all that peace, I awoke, back into the pain and darkness of my hospital bed, but with greater perspective. I marveled at what I had just experienced. It was not just a dream. It felt too real. It was real to me, far more real than the pain, the grief, and my hospital bed. Griffin was alive in a place more real than anything here. And Tamara was there with him. I knew it. As the years have passed, I've often wondered how I could have put my son back in the crib the way I did. Maybe I should have held on and never let go. But in that place, it all made sense. I realized that no one ever really dies. We always live on. I had experienced a God as real and tangible as we are. He knows our every heartache, yet allows us to experience and endure them for our growth. His is the highest form of love; He allows us to become what we will. He watches as we create who we are. He allows us to experience life in a way that makes us more like Him, divine creators of our own destiny. My experience showed me purpose and order. I knew there was a master plan far greater than my limited earthly vision. I also learned that my choices were mine alone to make. I got to decide how I felt, and that made all the difference in the universe. even in this tragedy, I got to determine the outcome. I could choose to be a victim of what had happened or create something far greater.
”
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Jeff Olsen (I Knew Their Hearts: The Amazing True Story of Jeff Olsen's Journey Beyond the Veil to Learn the Silent Language of the Heart)
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When you find Inner Peace, neither the presence nor the absence of any person, place or thing, condition, circumstance, or situation can be the Creator of your state of mind or the cause of your experience of being. This does not mean that you reject all things of the body. Far from it. You experience being fully in your body and the delights of that, as you never have before. Yet your involvement with things of the body will be voluntary, not mandatory. You will experience bodily sensations because you choose to, not because your are required to in order to feel happy or to justify sadness.
”
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Neale Donald Walsch (The Complete Conversations with God)
“
If you believe that God is some omnipotent being who hears all prayers, says “yes” to some, “no” to others, and “maybe, but not now” to the rest, you are mistaken. By what rule of thumb would God decide? If you believe that God is the creator and decider of all things in your life, you are mistaken. God is the observer, not the creator. And God stands ready to assist you in living your life, but not in the way you might expect. It is not God’s function to create, or uncreate, the circumstances or conditions of your life. God created you, in the image and likeness of God. You have created the rest, through the power God has given you. God created the process of life and life itself as you know it. Yet God gave you free choice, to do with life as you will.
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Neale Donald Walsch (Conversations with God, An Uncommon Dialogue: Living in the World with Honesty, Courage, and Love - Volume 1)
“
It takes only the Creator of the created to transform valley of weeping into refreshing springs.
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Martin Uzochukwu Ugwu
“
Powerful forces led me to the Hammers and then to the neighbors and suggested that the qualities I witnessed in their lives – strength, goodness, harmony, universal order – were worth preserving. Out of friendship alone, nothing more, they consented to become my allegories for those things. In authentic ways, their lives say for me what I cannot say without them about the spiritual and the American heritage of farm families and rural life.
With them and with other fragments of experience, I have learned that what I was taught as a child is, or can be, mostly true. I learned that there has been only one true creative act, the making of something out of nothing, an act performed only by the sole Creator. All else is circumstance, experience, invention, innovation, discovery – more than anything else – and a putting together in a particular fashion of things that have always existed. Perhaps every act and every discovery, as Bill Hammer, Jr. would say, "was meant to be.
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Archie Lieberman (Neighbors: A Forty-Year Portrait of an American Farm Community)
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Vyavasthit' runs the world. It is not the creator of the world. In fact, the world is in existence by its very nature.
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Dada Bhagwan (Noble Use of Money)
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History has shown that we shouldn’t rely on governments to protect us financially. On the contrary, we should expect most governments to abuse their privileged positions as the creators and users of money and credit for the same reasons that you might commit those abuses if you were in their shoes. That is because no one policy maker owns the whole cycle. Each comes in at one or another part of it and does what is in their interest to do given their circumstances at the time and what they believe is best (including breaking promises, even though the way they collectively handle the whole cycle is bad).
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Ray Dalio (Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail)
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Practically speaking, in what ways do I see people putting their foot on the brake? Split Energy – Fear of moving forward, fear of taking action, or fear of the consequences of having that desire. Negative Emotions – Especially the dominant ones, pulling you from alignment and preventing you from being a vibrational match to the desire. Impatience – Keeping you in the vibration and awareness of the absence (lack) of the desire. Desperation – Keeping you in lack energy, once again practicing the vibration of the absence of the desire. Stuck in a current reality loop – Constantly creating more of the same stuck-ness by observing more of the same current reality circumstances. Effort – Effort once again keeps you in the vibration of lack as you’re continually pushing against what you don’t want, which likely takes you out of alignment as well.
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Nick Breau (Power Manifesting: Unlock Your Full Potential as a Leading Edge Creator)
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Forgiveness is a way of life that gradually transforms us from being helpless victims of our circumstances to being powerful and loving 'co-creators' of out reality
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bell hooks (All About Love: New Visions)
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Further, I mean that God offers salvation to individuals and concomitantly grace enables them to make a real choice to either follow Christ or not follow Christ. The means of this grace enablement include but are not limited to: Gods’ salvific love for all (John 3:16), God’s manifestation of His power so that all may know He is the Sovereign (Isaiah 45:21—22) and Creator (Romans 1:18—20), which assures that everyone has opportunity to know about Him. Christ paying for all sins (John 1:29), conviction of the Holy Spirit (John 16:7—11), working of the Holy Spirit (Hebrews 6:1—6), enlightening of the Son (John 1:9), God’s teaching (John 6:45), God opening hearts (Acts 16:14), and the power of the gospel (Romans 1:16), without such redemptive grace, no one seeks or comes to God (Romans 3:11). Further, I believe that man, because of these gracious provisions and workings of God, can choose to seek and find God (Jeremiah 29:13; Acts 17:11—12). Moreover, no one can come to God without God drawing (John 6:44), and that God is drawing all men, individuals (John 12:32). The same Greek word for draw, helkuō, is used in both verses.” About 115 passages condition salvation on believing alone, and about 35 simply on faith.”140 Other grace enablements may include providential workings in and through other people, situations, and timing or circumstances that are a part of grace to provide an opportunity for every individual to choose to follow Christ.
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Ronnie W. Rogers (Reflections of a Disenchanted Calvinist: The Disquieting Realities of Calvinism)
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Feeling what he felt, he forgot the kingdom. When emotions are given underserved supremacy, they can lead us to respond to ourselves, others, and our circumstances in ways that reflect the emotion more than it does their Creator.
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Jackie Hill Perry (Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For)
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I had emigrated to my study. Here was my niche, which I sought to seal off. This is where I would soon become a master of my craft. I invented a hideout within a hideout; in everything I did I found another hideout. I went away without ever having changed my location. Once more, I was not living in the world that surrounded me, I lived in the novel that I had begun to write. In its characters, I tried to encounter myself. I invented life in order to distance myself from life “out there.” I pursued a new escape route after I had abandoned the transcendental heights. This was the route back into an artistic existence. Here I could fall back on my experiences. Here, once again, I was only somewhat the creator of my own circumstances.
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Rita Kuczynski (Wall Flower: A Life on the German Border (German and European Studies))
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Surely, the Creator was with me in every circumstance. He has granted me a successful completion of my doctorate degree.
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Lailah Gifty Akita
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There are no circumstances beyond my control. All I have is given me by my Higher Self because I am ready to meet or handle it. All is for my benefit and spiritual awakening. I accept all from the Angels of Love and Acceptance. I am, have been, and forever will be a co-creator with God. I release all that hinders me and accept the divine will of God.
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Robert J. Grant (Edgar Cayce on Angels, Archangels and the Unseen Forces)
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Because God is with us in the human struggle, we are no longer destined to fruitlessly rearrange the circumstances of our lives. We no longer depend on another move, another relationship, or another weight-loss program to rescue us from nothingness, from that persistent ache in the pit of our souls. We can flourish because in Jesus Christ the Creator came to us and restored our dignity as God’s children.
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M. Craig Barnes (Body & Soul: Reclaiming the Heidelberg Catechism)
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Someone rightly said a closed mouth is a closed destiny! We must begin to speak out the word of God over our lives, family and circumstances. It is not enough to know the word, read it, and practice it. When it comes to praying God's word over our lives, we must open our mouth and SPEAK! Even God, our Maker, and the Creator of ALL things spoke things into existence. In Genesis 1, we see several accounts of God making declarations, commanding, speaking. “God said..." is a statement that is so common all through the bible; particularly in the story of creation. So, what do you desire to create
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Rali Macaulay (Prayer: Scripture Works!: Effectively Praying God's Word over Life Situations. Win Life's Battles through the Power of Prayers. (Faith With Works Book 1))
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MAN IS NOT A SLAVE OF CIRCUMSTANCES, HE IS THE CREATOR, CONTROLLER AND MASTER OF THEM
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पंडित श्रीराम शर्मा 'आचार्य'
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Thanksgiving is a full-on assault against worry. Anxiety cannot thrive when we have thankful hearts. There’s not a letter Paul did not write without expressing or calling for some form of thanksgiving. It is the will of God in Christ Jesus for each of us to give thanks in all circumstances. It is the expression of a heart that is satisfied in its Creator and Savior for all things. If
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Gabriel Hughes (40 of the Most Popular Bible Verses and What They Really Mean)
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Thomas Brooks defines providence this way: “It is the unceasing activity of the sovereign Creator whereby, he upholds His creatures in orderly existence, guides and governs all events, circumstances and free acts of men and angels, no matter how great or trivial. All of this is done to accomplish one great design: to give glory to Himself.
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Joni Eareckson Tada (Pain and Providence (Joni Eareckson Tada))
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Those experiences had a profound impact on how Zane viewed his fellow human beings. They weren’t just a picture in the church bulletin—they were real, living, breathing human beings, each made in the image of their Creator. Another point his parents had often reminded him of was that he should not be giving out of some sense of guilt for his better circumstances, but out of love. It had taken him many years to understand the difference between the two.
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William Struse (The 13th Enumeration)
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True happiness has less to do with outward circumstances than with inward, and more to do with inward harmony than with outward. True happiness is being anchored to your Creator, who knows you better than you know yourself. True happiness isn’t dependent on another person. It isn’t dangling out of your reach or hiding deep underground. True happiness can be found in the ordinary activities of your life. You need only look inward and upward.
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Lila Empson (Moments of Peace in the Presence of God: Reflections of God's Gift of Love,Hope and Happiness)
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There are no circumstances beyond my control. All I have is given me by my Higher Self because I am ready to meet or handle it. All is for my benefit and spiritual awakening. I accept all from the Angels of Love and Acceptance. I am, have been, and forever will be a co-creator with God. I release all that hinders me and accept the divine will of God.” Irion
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Robert J. Grant (Edgar Cayce on Angels, Archangels and the Unseen Forces)
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What life ultimately teaches us?
Life strongly teaches us to believe in ONE OWNSELF! With each difficulty, with each worry there isn't anyone who can help you out except you, yourself.
I believe that Almighty also wants us to believe in ourselves, this is such a powerful thing that one's creator is empowering a creature to realize this capacity within himself.
If seen on other side, believing on yourself is actually believing GOD, because HE is there inside us.
When you face difficulties, broken by circumstances and couldn't find help from people, it is you, who can help to rise up again. Faith in GOD is also the same which teaches us to believe on HIM despite any hardships or anything.
There is a fine line which can change faith into being proud. Being submissive to GOD only is faith, and being submissive to one ownself is being Proud
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raja shakeel mushtaque
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The night prior to Prince Yosef’s journey to the Temple, in the distant part of the city of Yerushalayim, a man by the name of Simeon, who had fully devoted his life to serving Yehuway, was fervently praying to Him in remotest privacy. His arms were stretched over his head as he lay on the stone floor and beads of sweat were pouring from his open pores. “Yehuway! Yehuway! How often I have exposed my heart to You. Let my grief for these people and for this city subside! Allow me, please, to see Your solution to the relief of this time’s distress, for surely it cannot continue too much longer without adversity on itself.” While he prayed a faint light filtered through the window and danced about his body. Yehuway heard his petition. The Creator held out His arm. A radiant glow formed from His elbow to the tips of His fingers. A surge of energy jettisoned from His body to encompass about Simeon, enriching, enhancing his intellectual capacity. The projected energy exerted itself into Simeon’s subconscious and a quiet voice adhered to his brain, influencing the oncoming images that were silently pictured inside him. Invisible energy flowed through him, illuminating a collage of thoughts, entrusting to him exact knowledge that he could not otherwise had understood. “Simeon, you will not under any circumstances die until you have personally touched the hand of Yehuway’s Mashi’ach.” At this same another surge of divine, revealing energy, touched the heart of an old woman who had forgotten the time of the night and, too tired to go home, had fallen asleep in the Court of the Women inside the Temple area. Yehuway’s private energy strengthened the old man’s legs. He stood straight. The divine energy guided Simeon to the Temple at the exact moment that Yosef approached the three southern gates of the Temple.
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Walter Joseph Schenck Jr. (Shiloh, Unveiled: A Thoroughly Detailed Novel on the Life, Times, Events, and People Interacting with Jesus Christ)
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YOU ARE NOT A VICTIM
When you begin to appreciate the great potentials you have on your inside, you will no longer live like one who is incapacitated, who is a victim of life’s circumstances and who is disadvantaged in life but you will begin to see yourself as a creator, one full of great potentials and who can become whatever he sets his heart to become and do whatever he chooses to do
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Clement Ogedegbe
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Bloom where you’re planted. Don’t make excuses. Don’t go through life thinking, I’ve got a disadvantage. I’ve got too many obstacles. I’m the wrong nationality. I come from the wrong family. I don’t have the connections. I could never get out of this environment.
You may not see how you will rise above, but God sees. He already has a way. Your destiny is not determined by how you were raised, or by your circumstances, or by how many odds are against you; your destiny is determined by the Creator of the universe. And if you take what God has given you and make the most of it, like Chi Chi did, God will open doors. He will give you good breaks, and He will place the right people across your path.
Get rid of your excuses. Quit waiting for things to change. Sow a seed and be happy right now. When you’re in difficult times, remember: Either God is doing a work in you or He’s using you to do a work in someone else. As long as you’re in faith, where you are is where you’re supposed to be.
Quit fighting to go somewhere else. Be the best you can be right where you are. If you make this decision to bloom where you’re planted, you pass the test. God promises He will pour out His blessings and favor. You’ll not only live happy, but also God will take you places you’ve never even dreamed of.
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Joel Osteen (Every Day a Friday: How to Be Happier 7 Days a Week)
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In our paradigmatic example, A and B, the original creators of the social world, can always reconstruct the circumstances under which their world and any part of it was established. That is, they can arrive at the meaning of an institution by exercising their powers of recollection. A’s and B’s children are in an altogether different situation. Their knowledge of the institutional history is by way of “hearsay.” The original meaning of the institutions is inaccessible to them in terms of memory. It, therefore, becomes necessary to interpret this meaning to them in various legitimating formulas. These will have to be consistent and comprehensive in terms of the institutional order, if they are to carry conviction to the new generation. The same story, so to speak, must be told to all the children. It follows that the expanding institutional order develops a corresponding canopy of legitimations, stretching over it a protective cover of both cognitive and normative interpretation. These legitimations are learned by the new generation during the same process that socializes them into the institutional order.
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Peter L. Berger (The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge)
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And the meanings of those stories will change based on the time and circumstances in which they are read. Then, left to each individual recipient, certain elements will be imitated, and others expanded. Through that repeated behavior, new memes are born.
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Hideo Kojima (The Creative Gene: How books, movies, and music inspired the creator of Death Stranding and Metal Gear Solid)
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On the one hand, we're told that we are frail and powerless beings who live in a world where things just "happen" for no apparent reason. On the other hand, our most ancient and cherished spiritual traditions tell us that there's a force that lives within every one of us, a power that nothing in the world can touch. With it comes the promise of surviving the darkest moments of life and the reassurance that difficult times are only a part of a journey that leads to a place where bad things can't happen any longer. It's no wonder that we feel confused, helpless, and sometimes even angry as we witness the suffering of our loved ones and share the agony of what sometimes seems like hell in the world around us.
So which is it? Are we hopelessly fragile victims of events that are beyond our control, or are we powerful creators harboring dormant abilities that we are only beginning to understand? The answer may reveal the truth of one of the deepest mysteries of our past. It is also the focus of some of the greatest controversy in scientific discussions today. The reason? Both questions have the same answer: Yes!
Yes, we are occasionally victims of circumstance. And yes, we are sometimes the powerful creators of those same circumstances. Which of these roles we experience is determined by choices that we make in our lives, choices based upon our beliefs. Through the godlike power of human belief, we are given the equally divine ability to bring what we believe to life in the matrix of energy that bathes and surrounds us.
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Gregg Braden (The Spontaneous Healing of Belief: Shattering the Paradigm of False Limits by Gregg Braden (Nightingale Conant))
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For if a bad action springs from the nature, i.e. the inborn constitution, of a human being, then the blame obviously resides with the originator of this nature. That is why free will was invented. But then, with that assumed, what the action is supposed to have sprung from cannot be understood at all – because the free will is fundamentally a merely negative property and signifies only that nothing necessitates, or hinders, the human being’s acting thus or so. But in this way it never becomes clear what in the end the action springs from, since it is not supposed to arise from the inborn or acquired constitution of the human being, as it would then become a burden to his creator, nor from external circumstances alone, as then it would be attributable to accident; so the human being would remain blameless either way – while in fact he is made responsible for it. The natural image of a free will is an unweighted balance: it hangs there calmly, and will never come out of equilibrium unless something is placed in one of its scales. Just as it can produce no movement out of itself, no more can the free will produce an action out of itself; because indeed nothing comes out of nothing.
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Arthur Schopenhauer (On the Freedom of the Human Will)
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MAN IS not a creature of circumstances, but a creator of circumstances. He makes his own circumstances, his own opportunities.
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Napoleon Hill (How to Own Your Own Mind)
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I came to understand that we create our own realities and how. Our thoughts and intentions determine our outcomes. We are not powerless victims of our life circumstances. We are Divine co-creators
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Sonia Choquette (Trust Your Vibes (Revised Edition): Live an Extraordinary Life by Using Your Intuitive Intelligence)
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According to David Humphreys, with whom Washington shared his views for a biography that Humphreys was planning, Washington later in his life expressed regret about slavery: “The unfortunate condition of the persons, whose labor in part I employ, has been the only unavoidable subject of regret. To make the adults among them as easy and comfortable in their circumstances as their actual state of ignorance and improvidence would admit, and to lay a foundation to prepare the rising generation for a destiny different from that in which they were born, afforded some satisfaction to my mind, and could not I hoped be displeasing to the justice of the Creator.
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Bret Baier (To Rescue the Constitution: George Washington and the Fragile American Experiment: Bret Baier's masterful exploration of America's early struggles. A perfect gift for history buffs and teachers.)
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There is never what you consider to be a perfect place or perfect conditions or a perfect set of circumstances. In other words, it does not exist out there. You are the creator of it!
Abraham -- G 11/24/90
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Esther Hicks (Daily Planning Calendar, The Science of Deliberate Creation : Abraham-Hicks Planning Calendar and Study Guide Workbook)
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interact with my children every day often bears little resemblance to the way I deeply feel about them. Because I am self-aware, because I have imagination and conscience, I can examine my deepest values. I can realize that the script I’m living is not in harmony with those values, that my life is not the product of my own proactive design, but the result of the first creation I have deferred to circumstances and other people. And I can change. I can live out of my imagination instead of my memory. I can tie myself to my limitless potential instead of my limiting past. I can become my own first creator.
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Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)
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The Creator controls every circumstance of life.
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Lailah Gifty Akita
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If you train your mind like this for a while you will see that the circumstances of your life change too. You are the creator of your thoughts, but you are not your thoughts. Your thoughts are energy and the energy follows the thought.
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Marc Reklau (30 Days- Change your habits, Change your life: A couple of simple steps every day to create the life you want)
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Eugene Peterson speaks of the “God-dominated imagination” that developed in David as he spent his days and nights watching sheep on the Judean hillsides.19 It appears that something similar happened in Patrick. In the lush, green hills of western Ireland, in the towering clouds that rolled across the big sky, even in the most inclement of weather, Patrick sensed the presence of a Creator who hadn’t seemed very real or relevant or necessary in his earlier life of ease. For all its disadvantages, the shepherd’s life leaves plenty of time to think and pray, and Patrick used his time to great advantage. Far from wallowing in self-pity, Patrick celebrated his enslavement, the very shock he needed to bring him to his senses. Throughout his Confession, Patrick’s language is shot through with the confidence that, whatever his circumstances, God was doing good things in his life. He viewed his kidnapping and slavery as God’s direct work; this work, however, was not merely punitive but remedial, not evidence that God had forsaken him, but that God wished to draw Patrick to himself. So rather than growing bitter, Patrick allowed God’s chastisement to do its work in him. His enslavement, he believed, was a hard mercy, but a mercy nonetheless. From the very beginning of the Confession, we get a glimpse of Patrick’s indomitable joy. His tone echoed that of Paul, who wrote from prison,
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Jonathan Rogers (Saint Patrick (Christian Encounters))
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the Creator of all and the Doctor of men's souls, who alone has accurate knowledge of the soul's wounds, does not tell us to forsake the company of men: He tells us to root out the causes of evil within us and to recognize that the soul's health is achieved not by a man's separating himself from his fellows, but by his living the ascetic life in the company of holy men. When we abandon our brothers for some apparently good reason, we do not eradicate the motives for dejection but merely exchange them, since the sickness which lies hidden within us will show itself again in other circumstances. Thus it is clear that our whole fight is against the passions within.
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Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain (The Philokalia)
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The reality of who you are, and the potential of your life, is not based on your natural circumstances. What the people around you or society has to say about you has no bearing on it. Who you are is based only on who your supernatural Creator is, and what He says is true about you. He sees the Gold. He put it there.
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Nicola Neal (Gold: Finding the God-given potential in every life)
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The pursuit of God will embrace the labor of bringing our total personality into conformity to His, and this not judicially, but actually. I do not here refer to the act of justification by faith in Christ. I speak of a voluntary exalting of God to His proper station over us and a willing surrender of our whole being to the place of worshipful submission, which the Creator-creature circumstance makes proper.
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A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God)
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In the end, it was a lot of nothing about nothing, thank God—or whoever it was capriciously doling out miracles while also creating the circumstances under which such were prayed for. Lucy wondered if maybe she should convert to Norse mythology or something, one of the ones with trickster gods, like Loki. The available evidence seemed to vindicate that kind of god, as opposed to the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving creator of space-time she’d been raised to believe in.
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David Sosnowski (Happy Doomsday)
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Now if I were sitting at that funeral we visualized earlier, and one of my children was about to speak, I would want his life to represent the victory of teaching, training, and disciplining with love over a period of years rather than the battle scars of quick fix skirmishes. I would want his heart and mind to be filled with the pleasant memories of deep, meaningful times together. I would want him to remember me as a loving father who shared the fun and the pain of growing up. I would want him to remember the times he came to me with his problems and concerns. I would want to have listened and loved and helped. I would want him to know I wasn’t perfect, but that I had tried with everything I had. And that, perhaps more than anybody in the world, I loved him. The reason I would want those things is because, deep down, I value my children. I love them, I want to help them. I value my role as their father. But I don’t always see those values. I get caught up in the “thick of thin things.” What matters most gets buried under layers of pressing problems, immediate concerns, and outward behaviors. I become reactive. And the way I interact with my children every day often bears little resemblance to the way I deeply feel about them. Because I am self-aware, because I have imagination and conscience, I can examine my deepest values. I can realize that the script I’m living is not in harmony with those values, that my life is not the product of my own proactive design, but the result of the first creation I have deferred to circumstances and other people. And I can change. I can live out of my imagination instead of my memory. I can tie myself to my limitless potential instead of my limiting past. I can become my own first creator.
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Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)
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Of many living creatures, human has been endowed with an unbearable gift named Free Will to think, believe, and rationalize what is true in his mind, which empowers himself with a power to liberate his action in one direction or the other, resulting the free action depended on the decision of free will. The action is either physical or metaphysical. When an action is carried out by a free agent, the agent is the forbearer of his action, the totality of his action from its birth to termination, and moral responsibility. The autonomy of his thought carries the agency of accountability in his belief because a collection of beliefs and thoughts is the composition of what he is. By free will as faculty of free intellection and rationalization, no circumstances beyond control can deterministically harness an existential volition unfree and inauthentic, for a free will, as long as it is, is always capable and self-verifiable through metaphysical rejection and rebellion. It is the spirit of non-yielding. Free Will holds its worth by reserving the two options of yielding and unyielding—yielding can be either by will or unwill but non-yielding is necessarily by will—due to its indomitable character to resist against the force that subjects his being under possession and materiality of the creator. The end of Free Will is happiness by acceptance of what his choices have led under the limited conditions provided, bearing inherent worthiness from meaning in his existence.
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Bongha Lee (On Resistism)
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If we base our lives on work and achievement, on love and pleasure, or on knowledge and learning, our existence becomes anxious and fragile—because circumstances in life are always threatening the very foundation of our lives, and death inevitably strips us of everything we hold dear. Ecclesiastes is an argument that existential dependence on a gracious Creator God—not only abstract belief—is a precondition for an unshakeable, purposeful life.
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Timothy J. Keller (Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work)
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The ends of the screen continued to exceed the fields of meaning and create others that immediately, and almost through the impetus of their unfolding, cut huge and savage zigzags. Astronomy. The ability of parrots and blackbirds to speak. The diesel engine. The Assyrians. Coffee. Clouds. Screens, screens, and more screens. They were proliferating everywhere, and he had to pay close attention to make sure that no sector failed to be sorted. Fortunately, Dr. Aira had no time to notice the stress he was experiencing. Attention was key, and perhaps no man had ever brought as much of it to bear as he did for that hour. If the circumstances had been less serious, if he had been able to adopt a more frivolous perspective, he could have said that the entire procedure was an incomparable creator of attention, the most exhaustive ever conceived to exercise this noble mental faculty. And it did not require an extraordinary person; a common man could do it (and Dr. Aira would have been quite satisfied to become a common man), for the Cure created all the attention it demanded. It wasn’t like those video games, which are always trying to trick it or avoid it or get one step ahead of it; to continue with this simile, it should be said that the operator of the Cure was his own video game, his own screen, and his own decoys, and that far from defying attention, they nurtured it. Despite all this, the effort was superhuman, and it was yet to be seen if Dr. Aira could hold out till the end.
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César Aira (The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira)
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A positively thinking person is not a dreamer, who thinks there are no problems in life. Instead he or she recognizes that problems are opportunities to grow, and knows that they only have the meaning that they are given. Positive thinking is to see reality as it is, accept it, and make the best of it. Don’t let your thoughts dominate you, instead dominate your thoughts and control their quality. Train your mind to concentrate only on positive, creative, and inspiring thoughts. If you train your mind like this for a while you will see that the circumstances of your life change too. You are the creator of your thoughts, but you are not your thoughts. Your thoughts are energy and the energy follows the thought.
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Marc Reklau (30 Days- Change your habits, Change your life: A couple of simple steps every day to create the life you want)
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26 Mustard Seeds and Mountains The disciples asked Jesus privately, “Why couldn’t we cast out that [boy’s] demon?” “You didn’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I assure you, even if you had faith as small as a mustard seed you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.” Matthew 17:19-20 Did you know that an average-sized aspirin bottle holds more than 180,000 mustard seeds? One of those miniscule seeds, when planted in fertile soil, can produce a ten-foot bush within three months! How many times have we faced mountains and felt that our faith was small and insufficient? We might have asked ourselves how God could remove a mountain in light of the fact that our faith is so inadequate. Perhaps we’ve even considered surrendering to the circumstances that stand in our way. When the disciples felt the sting of failure over their inability to heal the boy in today’s reading, Jesus directed them to place their faith—no matter how small—in him rather than in their own abilities. The mustard seed is a reminder to walk to the base of the mountain hand in hand with the all-powerful God. It is a tangible symbol that it is not your strength that will move the mountain; rather, it is the God in whom you place your faith that can move a mountain out of your way. GOD, the mountain of my circumstances seems so large, yet when I look to you as the source of my strength, it becomes insignificant. My faith seems small, yet when I place it in the Creator’s hands, it can produce a greater harvest than I could ever imagine. Lord, take my tiny seed of faith, and multiply it with your strength, wisdom, and guidance. Thank you for assuring my heart that nothing is impossible with you.
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Cheri Fuller (The One Year Praying through the Bible: Experience the Power of the Bible Through Prayer (One Year Bible))
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circumstances are privilege to honor our creator
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JONES Henneh
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When emotions are given underserved supremacy, they can lead us to respond to ourselves, others, and our circumstances in ways that reflect the emotion more than it does their Creator.
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Jackie Hill Perry (Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For)
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We experience a life of contentment as we walk on the godly path, worshiping the Creator and enjoying his creation. Contentment is a state of the mind. It is a calm and satisfied feeling that is free from complaints. But it is not a natural state of mind. Our natural response to unpleasant circumstances is to covet someone else’s good fortune or to murmur and complain. Over time, these states of mind can become dominated by bitterness and resentment. These are as natural to humans as are the weeds or thorns that grow naturally in the soil. But we have to cultivate the experience of contentment. Contentment
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David Stoop (Rethink How You Think: How to Create Lasting Change Today)
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There are now a number of demands being made on teachers which challenge both your courage to be flexible and your courage to remain faithful to ideals which are good.
I will try to deal with just two of these demands. The first one demands flexibility. It asks you to recognize that Negro children in this society—and white children also—are being taught biased, edited, and ultimately racist versions of American history and culture. It is not enough to pay lip service to the idea of racial harmony and equality. We must refuse any longer to accept the distorted view of our roots and our past in this country.
As taught in our textbooks, this history reinforces in white children the notion that they are superior and the only creators of this country, and it reinforces in black children the notion that they are inferior and made no contributions.
It may be true that most blacks came here as slaves, but the first of them were here as free men, and gave their lives in the struggle to win independence for this nation. They fought as well as any one else during the civil war; they played their part in the opening of the American West; they helped plan and lay out some of our major American cities; they developed the only indigenous form of American music; they made notable contributions to scientific research; they are to be found in the growth and development of the American musical and dramatic stage; and the best of their writing ranks with the best that has been done in America. This is by no means all, but then I am by no means an historian. In any case, the question is not whether they should have done more. The miracle is that in the circumstances of their history here they could have done so much.
It is because of racism, it is because the dominant value judgments in this society are white, and it is because a consistently poor estimate has been placed on the quality and extent of Negro effort—it is for all these reasons that the true story of the Negro in America is not told in our history books. And it is for all these reasons that historians continue to tell lies, continue to avert their eyes, and continue to retard the progress of civility, decency, and human dignity in our society.
It is time, then, to give up that old rigid stance. For, however comforting it may be to some, it is a delusion, and it is a violation of the right of all young minds to know the truth and to be free.
Organized teachers can play a major role in the effort to liberate American history books. They can join those who are making an effort to bring truth into the schools through a total revision of the textbooks. Where good texts are not in existence, teachers must bring in supplementary material to the classes. And they themselves can make studies of Negro history and culture.
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Bayard Rustin (Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin)