Stephen Richards's Blog: Mind Power Author Stephen Richards, page 13

Jacky Can Over Two Weeks After I Rescued HimABove is an image of the more powerful Jacky Can the day before he returned to be with his parents, well fed and now grown into an even more handsome chap.

A number of weeks after I had rescued him from behind my fireplace (fallen chimneypot nest), my wish for him to survive and to be released back into the wild came true. I suspended a lot of my life for him, and now I was to be rewarded. My visions of him flying with his parents was about to become fact. I had visualized Jacky flying, it was a real image for me and now was soon to transpire.

Never for one minute did I doubt that Jacky would be in flight and soaring free. That is the same belief you have to apply to anything you want to manifest in life.
In compariison to the image above, here's Jacky the day after I rescued himWhat now seems like thousands of mealworms and many efforts to get him airborne, Jacky, today, eventually made it back to his parents.
I had kept Jacky outside during the day so as to keep him in contact with his parents, as they had a dialogue going on but Jacky just wouldn’t leave the garden and they wouldn’t come close enough to get him to go with them.
The fledgling Jacky having a bathJacky became quite at home in my garden, although I monitored him as there are just too many predatory cats around. He even had a bath in a bowl I leave out for the other birds to drink from.

Jacky drying off after his bath Jacky Can, back where he started from Happy ending picture above shows Jacky back where it all began, on the chimney pot his nest fell down to behind my fireplace from.

After some hard work by Jacky he eventually responded to the calls of a number of other jackdaws, first tentatively flying on to a gate post, then a higher wall and then to a roof top. About 10 jackdaws were involved in calling Jacky, and eventually the call of the wild become so strong that he acted on it and up he went.

Still now, a number of hours later, he is airborne and comes and goes to the chimney pot it all started from, accompanied by his parents this time.

It was some work involved in looking after him, time consuming and at times mentally draining, but all worth it to see him back with nature. 

POEMS ABOUT JACKDAWS
The Jackdaw of Rheims

The Jackdaw sat on the Cardinal's chair!
Bishop and abbot and prior were there;
Many a monk and many a friar,
Many a knight and many a squire,
With a great many more of lesser degree,
In sooth a goodly company;
And they served the Lord Primate on bended knee.
Never, I ween,
Was prouder seen,
Read of in books, or dreamt of in dreams,
Than the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims!

In and out
Through the motley rout,
That little Jackdaw kept hopping about;
Here and there
Like a dog in a fair,
Over comfits and cates,
And dishes and plates,
Cowl and cope and rochet and pall,
Mitre and crosier! He hopp'd upon all!
With saucy air,
He perch'd on the chair
Where, in state, the great Lord Cardinal sat
In the great Lord Cardinal's great red hat;
And he peer'd in the face
Of his Lordship's Grace,
With a satisfied look, as if he would say,
"We two are the greatest folks here to-day!"
And the priests, with awe,
As such freaks they saw,
Said, "The Devil must be in that little Jackdaw!"

The feast was over, the board was clear'd,
The flawns and the custards had all disappear'd,
And six little singing-boys--dear little souls!
In nice clean faces and nice white stoles,
Came, in order due,
Two by two,
Marching that grand refectory through!
A nice little boy held a golden ewer,
Emboss'd and fill'd with water, as pure
As any that flows between Rheims and Namur,
Which a nice little boy stood ready to catch
In a fine golden hand-basin made to match.
Two nice little boys, rather more grown,
Carried lavender-water, and eau de Cologne
And a nice little boy had a nice cake of soap,
Worthy of washing the hands of the Pope.
One little boy more
A napkin bore,
Of the best white diaper, fringed with pink
And a Cardinal's Hat mark'd in permanent ink.
The great Lord Cardinal turns at the sight
Of these nice little boys dress'd all in white:
From his finger he draws
His costly turquoise;
And, not thinking at all about little Jackdaws,
Deposits it straight
By the side of his plate,
While the nice little boys on his Eminence wait;
'Till, when nobody's dreaming of any such thing,
That little Jackdaw hops off with the ring!

There's a cry and a shout,
And a deuce of a rout,
And nobody seems to know what they're about,
But the Monks have their pockets all turn'd inside out.
The Friars are kneeling,
And hunting, and feeling
The carpet, the floor, and the walls, and the ceiling.
The Cardinal drew
Off each plum-colour'd shoe,
And left his red stockings exposed to the view;
He peeps and he feels
In the toes and the heels;
They turn up the dishes; they turn up the plates,
They take up the poker and poke out the grates,

They turn up the rugs,
They examine the mugs:
But, no! - no such thing;
They can't find THE RING!
And the Abbott declared that, "when nobody twigg'd it,
Some rascal or other had popp'd in and prigg'd it!"

The Cardinal rose with a dignified look,
He call'd for his candle, his bell and his book!
In holy anger and pious grief,
He solemnly cursed that rascally thief!
He cursed him at board, he cursed him in bed;
From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head;
He cursed him in sleeping, that every night
He should dream of the devil and wake in a fright;
He cursed him in eating, he cursed him in drinking,
He cursed him in coughing, in sneezing, in winking;
He cursed him in sitting, in standing, in lying;
He cursed him in walking, in riding, in flying,
He cursed him in living, he cursed him in dying!--
Never was heard such a terrible curse!
But what gave rise
To no little surprise,
Nobody seem'd one penny the worse!

The day was gone,
The night came on,
The Monks and the Friars they search'd till dawn;
When the Sacristan saw,
On crumpled claw,
Come limping a poor little lame Jackdaw!
No longer gay,
As on yesterday;
His feathers all seem'd to be turn'd the wrong way;
His pinions droop'd - he could hardly stand,
His head was as bald as the palm of your hand;
His eye so dim,
So wasted each limb,
That, heedless of grammar, they all cried, "THAT'S HIM!
That's the scamp that's done this scandalous thing!
That's the thief that's got my Lord Cardinal's Ring!"
The poor little Jackdaw,
When the Monks he saw,
Feebly gave vent to the ghost of a caw;
And turn'd his bald head, as much as to say,
"Pray, be so good as to walk this way!"
Slower and slower
He limp'd on before,
Till they came to the back of the belfry door,
Where the first thing they saw,
Midst the sticks and the straw,
Was the ring in the nest of that little Jackdaw!

Then the great Lord Cardinal call'd for his book,
And off that terrible curse he took;
The mute expression
Served in lieu of confession,
And, being thus coupled with full restitution,
The Jackdaw got plenary absolution!
When those words were heard,
That poor little bird
Was so changed in a moment, 'twas really absurd.
He grew sleek and fat;
In addition to that,
A fresh crop of feathers came thick as a mat!
His tail waggled more
Even than before;
But no longer it wagg'd with an impudent air,
No longer he perch'd on the Cardinal's chair.
He hopp'd now about
With a gait devout;
At Matins, at Vespers, he never was out
And, so far from any more pilfering deeds,
He always seem'd telling the Confessor's beads.
If any one lied, - or if any one swore,
Or slumber'd in pray'r-time and happen'd to snore,
That good Jackdaw
Would give a great "Caw!"
As much as to say, "Don't do so any more!"
While many remark'd, as his manners they saw,
That they "never had known such a pious Jackdaw!"
He long lived the pride
Of that countryside,
And at last in the odour of sanctity died;
When, as words were too faint
His merits to paint,
The Conclave determined to make him a Saint;
And on newly-made Saints and Popes, as you know,
It's the custom, at Rome, new names to bestow,
So they canonized him by the name of Jim Crow!

The above was by Reverend Richard Harris Barham

The Jackdaw

There is a bird who, by his coat
And by the hoarseness of his note,
Might be supposed a crow;
A great frequenter of the church,
Where, bishop-like, he finds a perch,
And dormitory too.

Above the steeple shines a plate,
That turns and turns, to indicate
From what point blows the weather.
Look up -- your brains begin to swim,
'Tis in the clouds -- that pleases him,
He chooses it the rather.

Fond of the speculative height,
Thither he wings his airy flight,
And thence securely sees
The bustle and the rareeshow,
That occupy mankind below,
Secure and at his ease.

You think, no doubt, he sits and muses
On future broken bones and bruises,
If he should chance to fall.
No; not a single thought like that
Employs his philosophic pate,
Or troubles it at all.

He sees that this great roundabout,
The world, with all its motley rout,
Church, army, physic, law,
Its customs and its businesses,
Is no concern at all of his,
And says -- what says he? -- Caw.

Thrice happy bird! I too have seen
Much of the vanities of men;
And, sick of having seen 'em,
Would cheerfully these limbs resign
For such a pair of wings as thine
And such a head between 'em.
By William Cowper

Copyright Stephen Richards
Resources for Stephen Richards:See videos relating to the work of Stephen Richards on YoutubeWebsite relating to Cosmic Ordering for Stephen RichardsGoodreads author site for Stephen RichardsOfficial author site for Stephen Richards Myspace page for Stephen RichardsBooks by Stephen Richards on the Mirage Publishing siteAmazon author page for Stephen RichardsFacebook (public) page for Stephen RichardsTwitter page for Stephen RichardsAssociation of Cosmic Ordering Practitioners page for Stephen RichardsOfficial Cosmic Ordering site for Stephen RichardsFanbox Cosmic Ordering site

Over the last seven days I have learned something quite profound! Something happened that drew me to my deepest part within ... yet it took something so simple to reveal those hidden depths!
Jacky The Cosmic JackdawThere is a fundamental worth we all hold within every one of us! Sometimes it takes a “near death” experience for people to change, and I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes. We all like to think there is a little left in the reserve tanks for us to change for the better, but it’s never at the right time! Some say that within each one of us is an implanted code that paves the path our lives will take, regardless of whatever should happen. So many blame others for the state their lives are in, but if that is the case then life is simply an illusion!  

Mankind travelled the path of civilized society only a few thousand years ago, yet nature has been on this path for millions of years! The core of this civilization has been to go forth and conquer, to exercise dominion over earth and its creatures. People the world over are enduring hardship … earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear leaks, death storms, water shortages, wars, famines, pestilence, civil chaos and heading towards what many believe is an apocalyptic decline!

We live in a so-called democracy, believing those we have charged with our care will indeed act in our favor, but the banks, governments and the elite corporations continue an exploitive charge that is leading in a direction that many of us can now see for ourselves to be loaded with the bullion of chaos!

What Age Is A Landmark In Your Life?


Many people believe that a landmark in their lives happens when they reach a certain age: 18, 21, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and if they are lucky … 100 ! That is how they mark the passage of time and what their lives have meant! Each of those years they have lived learning them valuable lessons.

We learn:  Man cannot live on love alone.You cannot buy happiness. Success isn’t just about how much money you can make.  For things to happen in our lives we must embrace change. Contributing to society is the best we can do in life to show how much we care. Health is to be valued more than anything else.Goods and chattels are mere trinkets. What you work at in life is not the be  all and end all of everything.Following our original dreams is what really matters.Those close to us really matter. Whether you are a king or pauper then what does it really matter. Emotions of anger, hatred, jealousy and the likes are wasted.We are not the centre of the universe and all does not revolve around us.Freedom exists in our minds.The moment is what we live for.Fear is just a concept of the mind. We can change without conflict. We are not perfect.Suffering is all around us in many different guises.Self-doubt is not worth dying over.Being honest is important. Trying to work it all out is an endless task!

Jacky the Cosmic Jackdaw - The Essence of Life


And then I look at Jacky the Cosmic Jackdaw and feel and sense the essence life! The obstacles we have to overcome melts away. The incoherence of those in power is diminished. A sense of oneness prevails and that forgiveness of ourselves is essentially the way to absolve the wrongs we have done.

The care we put in to those around us overshadows the care we should put into ourselves, our lives are overloaded with burdens that we create for ourselves.

We are all too fast to rebuke ourselves for the wrongs we have done, we apply ourselves to those around us before we even consider ourselves. Yet not in a caring way that merits reward or attention so as to make us worthy of consideration even for a kind thought from others. We are too quick to turn on ourselves when we have made a mistake! And there is the answer to it all ...  it is within our hearts! We cannot judge ourselves or punish ourselves because we have not lived up to our expectations!

By accepting the things we cannot change as being beyond our control and also by working at what we can change being within our control gives us the wisdom to know the difference between the two extremes of both positive and negative of the same element. By focusing our attention to our own burdens we lose focus on what is really important. Painful thoughts, stress and lack of joy robs us of the fundamental underlying learning from the journey we are all on.

During this time with Jacky I have been able to refocus my attention and see a shift in my thinking. Many people do not know how to move away from the painful hurts of what has often dogged their lives! These thoughts are responsible for bogging many people down, and yet externally they look no different than the rest of us!

A release of emotion is what can free you from these difficult feelings ... to be the object of another’s love is one of the greatest privileges we can enjoy. Man’s attraction to what does not yet make sense has a grounding in our childhood. We start out by not fully understanding what is around us, just like how Jacky started out. The mystical nature of communication allows us to secure our needs. We cry out for food and it is given. We cry out for warmth and it is given. We cry out for love and it is given. That is how simple it all starts out as! Whatever we want in this modern world we get.

The Mystical Nature Of Life! 


Then as we grow older, doubt sets in and stops us securing those very things we could once manifest with ease. The mystical nature of life ceases to be the magic we once accepted it to be.

We then find the power others has a hold over us. It becomes a tool with drastic consequences, and then we have lost our grip on life. Often the full costs of what we desire does not become apparent until sometime later, when the cost is the power other people have over our own lives.

Imagine starting out life and having all of your needs met, you learn the simple language of manifesting your desires. Then as you get older you find the will of others being exerted upon you, even allowing your own happiness to be vacuumed away because you give up on your own dreams.

Few learn the second language of manifesting their desires, bringing a kind of power that the current one does not have. Many find themselves back at square one, where they have to learn the art of manifesting all over again … yet the sense of powerlessness can be quite profound at times. That is what I have learned from working with Jacky, that learning how to manifest for many is like a foreign language to them. Yet they were born with it! This new language of manifesting is akin to being a pre-lingual child, but is a time when all the universe is at one’s command!

The once forgotten language of the child is lost, where one commands this all-knowing, all-caring ability to produce food, love and comfort, and the likes. To be able to evoke such a world at will is lost to the adult! To transport oneself into it at will is magical.

In order to see where we have gone wrong as adults we need to go back to a pre-lingual state - a state in which a child is loved unconditionally and cared for unceasingly by a parent who utters mystical things. How people are affected by such experiences, though, might differ with their temperaments and by their own childhood experiences. This is what working with Jacky the Cosmic Jackdaw has shown me!

I have noticed that Jacky is intrigued by all that moves. He looks most intently at moving objects. It is as if the motion itself has a kind of magical meaning to him. It is as if nature has given him a special kind of instinct for observing motion in a special way. This is exactly what many trying to manifest things within their lives fail at, they fail to focus with intent.

Jacky will survive by continuing to master the skills he is developing, yet we humans expect miracles from hardly any effort. Just as Jacky has a language to communicate with the universe, so have we humans.

I can see fully now where many are going wrong, there is a kind of innate laziness combined with an ever -looking to make things even easier attitude.  Many want all of the benefits of manifesting without the work.

It is ever the case that one person will know some useful thing that another does not know. Humans wish to transcend the constraints of mortals yet are not willing to apply the effort. The universe is much bigger than our own understanding. However, in order to get near enough to our pre-lingual notion of that concept we have to start all over again, ridding ourselves of the emotional hang-ups we have burdened ourselves with. By doing this we can create our desires in a way we would not otherwise be able to do.

Many have lost touch with the mystical part that is still willing to allow us to manifest our desires. Our pre-lingual state came before we learned the language of fear, hate, anger, stress, resentment, jealousy, shame, embarrassment, self-limiting beliefs, feeling worthless, lack of self-esteem, control, abandonment, loneliness, joblessness, hopelessness, feeling unloved, neglect, punishment, blame, abuse, insecurity, violation, distrust and a million more things like this!

So now you know what you have to clear away to get back on track, which is something I learned from a recued jackdaw over a period of seven days! A valuable lesson I would say.

Copyright Stephen Richards
Resources for Stephen Richards:See videos relating to the work of Stephen Richards on YoutubeWebsite relating to Cosmic Ordering for Stephen RichardsGoodreads author site for Stephen RichardsOfficial author site for Stephen Richards Myspace page for Stephen RichardsBooks by Stephen Richards on the Mirage Publishing siteAmazon author page for Stephen RichardsFacebook (public) page for Stephen RichardsTwitter page for Stephen RichardsAssociation of Cosmic Ordering Practitioners page for Stephen RichardsOfficial Cosmic Ordering site for Stephen RichardsFanbox Cosmic Ordering site

Be Careful What You Wish For! Jacky Can The Cosmic JackdawLet me start by telling you a little about myself, just so you understand what the title of this intro is all about. My name is Stephen richards, I am a self-help author, although that is not too important for the purpose of this story. However, what is important is to impart to you how we can, at times, subconsciously wish for something without even realizing it! Then it comes along and we wonder how it happened. Well in this case it all started from a Facebook exchange of comments when I added a link to my Twitter profile.
Jacky Can The Cosmic JackdawOn 22 May 2012 I posted a link to my Twitter page on my Facebook profile page with the heading "Anyone for Tweeting?"

I received a comment back from one of my friends: "tweet, tweet, tweet".

My reply was: "2 wit...2 woo, 2 wit...2 woo".

My friend's reply was: "yes I know".

To all intents and purposes that was the end of that, or so I thought!

A few days after that Facebook posting, along came Jacky Can (As I named him) the Cosmic Jackdaw!

From My Hearth To My Heart: A Jackdaw Calls
Bracken My Rescue CatOn 24 May 2012 I was in my lounge when I heard a noise coming from the area of my fireplace! I thought it may have been a mouse. Well of course I have a cat, Bracken, and she is a true "mouser". Before Bracken came along it was quite common to see mice droppings in my home, and since I live in a rural setting it wasn't anything unusual as my house is 400 years old. So long as the mice weren't running amok then the odd sighting was tolerated.

Then along came Bracken, a cat I rescued, and there were no more mice! Bracken even brings them in from outside, through the cat flap. She brings them in live! Why I have an exclamation mark is because she uses them as practice to keep in mouse catching trim. Well of course to Bracken this is a game she loves and I loathe! I don't loathe it because of what she is naturally doing; I loathe it because of how she lets it go and then darts about after it. I attempt to catch the poor mouse, and sometimes do, and get it by the tale and set it free back through the cat flap, with Bracken in hot pursuit!

Sometimes the mouse, though, will not be captured either by Bracken or I, it disappears beneath a sofa or armchair and Bracken waits in prey mode, and maybe the next morning I will find the remnants of the mouse, which Bracken has left as a gift to show me how good she's been.

I know this may appear to be like a scene from a horror movie, but that's just how nature is. It's not like some Japanese whaling boat chasing whales or Canadians clubbing seals! But I do still feel for the mouse!

So there I was, this noise is coming from behind the fireplace and I think nothing of it, as it is bound to be another mouse that has escaped Bracken or a one trying to get in to my pantry (not that I have a pantry), but not so! I could hear a sort of squawking noise. At first it was barely audible, and certainly didn't sound like a mouse. As I listened more intently I picked up that it was in fact a bird!

Because I live in a rural location we have all sorts of birds nesting in the nearby trees, even at times they have been known to build a nest in a wall crevice. Maybe it was one of those birds that had somehow fallen down the chimney.

After some time I managed to disassemble the fireplace and there is was ... a bird that was quite black. It was lucky for the bird that the fireplace it fell down was converted to accommodate a gas fire, which meant no live flames or massive amounts of heat going directly up the chimney. The gas fire configuration meant that the actual chimney itself is set back from the fire, leaving quite a gap behind the sealed unit, and this is where the bird was.

I took hold of the bird, and at first I thought it was some sort of mature medium-sized bird, but on closer inspection I could see it was a baby! And there in a broken bundle was the nest, all twigs, rather large ones at that. They were all dried out and had obviously dried out and shrunk over time, hence the next collapsing. I checked closely to see if any other baby birds were there, but it was only the one.

Come Fly With Me: Is It A... 
Jacky Can The Cosmic Jackdaw - First Day Of Rescue I managed to reconstruct a cardboard box that I had flattened and placed a towel in the bottom. The bird looked a little worse for wear, but it wasn't frightened of me, but I put that down to the fact that it was in shock. I had some plastic syringes which I used to use to feed water to an old cat I took in after my mother had passed away, well that's another story as it was actually two cats I took in.

I wasn't really sure what I was doing, but I guessed the bird would take water if it was dehydrated, as even though the gas fire was a sealed unit, it must have still been hot behind it. I now know that if you just coat the side of the bird's beak with water then it will lick it off with its tongue. I then wondere4d what I could give it to eat? Yes, cat food would do as I had heard of people feed rescued birds cat or dog food. I feed the bird some of Bracken's food from a set of old tweezers I had lying around. Wow! It loved it, its mouth was gaping wide and I ensured the pieces were small enough to be easily eaten by the bird, well not so much eaten but swallowed!

So after a while the bird was bedded down for the night and the following morning it looked a lot cleaner and I could actually tell what type of bird it was a, erm, crow! Or so I thought!

I found the phone numbers for some animal rescue places and rang them, but none of them took birds in. I then rang the official channels and they were of little help, it was as if though I were going around in circles! SO I dug around on the internet and was rather taken aback by how some rescue birds were mishandled and even how some o the official places we expect to do their best don't! I do not want to go into detail, but needless to say that after reading this sort of stuff I was not keen on the bird going to one of these places.

I also searched the internet for images of baby crows, and found nothing like the bird I had, so I expanded my search and eventually found it to resemble a jackdaw! In fact it WAS a jackdaw, and I instantly named him (as I feel it is a he) Jacky. So Jacky was to remain with me until as such time as I could, somehow, reunited him with his parents.

I had a brainwave! I went out and looked up at the chimney, although what I was hoping for I do not really know. Perhaps the mother bird would be there and if I waved her baby around then maybe she would fly down and thank me before flying off with him.

I did manage to speak on the telephone with a rather knowledgeable person, he advised putting the box up a nearby tree and that the mother would maybe pick up on this and actually nest in the box while looking after her baby. All sounded so simple!

The Birds! 
Jacky Can's Tree LodgeMy reasoning was that if I was going to attract the mother to where I would be putting Jacky then it would help if I had some jackdaw noises, so I kindly asked my webmaster if he could get me from the internet and put them on to a CD so I could play it. As mad as that may seem, it actually worked, but initially it seemed to attract every jackdaw within a three mile radius! Crikey, this was like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 film The Birds! However, I spotted two jackdaws up on the chimney, which is extremely high up.

While this was going on I was frantically building a wooden base that I could nail up in the nearby tree I had selected to put the box up that Jacky was in. Saw, saw, saw! Bang, bang, bang! After a while I had fashioned some sort of wooden base that would fit a particular gap in the branches I had selected where the box was to go.

Now from ground level it all looks quite easy when looking up to where you want things to go in a tree, but when you are up the ladder and holding a wood frame, hammer and nails it's all a little shaky! Of course the tribe of jackdaws I had attracted with the recording being played of other jackdaws made it seem an intolerable job, so I dumbed down the noise of the recording and eventually had a holding tank that I had placed on the wooden base in place. This holding tank, actually an old plastic water tank I had lying around, would accommodate the box Jacky was in, as I didn't fancy the cardboard box becoming wet if it rained and Jacky falling out of it.

After what seemed like an age, I had Jacky safely placed into his tree lodge. I stood back and admired my handiwork! I have to admit, I am not gifted when it comes to working with wood! The first set of wooden stilts I ever made as a young teenager snapped soon as I got on them, and ever since I have been equally as skilled with anything I have made out of wood!

Tchac-tchack-tchack
Mammy Or Daddy Jackdaw On The Chimney Pot  One of the two jackdaws flew from the chimney pot into the tree Jacky was in. "yes," I thought! Then, "No," as it flew out of the tree! Throughout the day I watched from a distance, the mammy and daddy jackdaws would fly off from the chimney and return, but that was it! They would call out "kya" and Jacky would call back an even higher pitched "kya" from his tree lodge. But that was all what went on!

During the day other jackdaws would fly around rapidly calling out, "Tchac-tchack-tchack". It seemed I had drawn them in even when I had stopped playing the recording of other jackdaws calling out. I had been concentrating so hard on drawing Jacky's parents in that I must have connected with quite a few other jackdaws. Some were making a "'kaaar-kaaar-kaaar" cawing, which I discovered is a warning!

Day turned into dusk and still no commitment from the parents to come to Jacky's aid, so I had the job of climbing up to his tree lodge to feed him, which I did when the parents had flown off to wherever they went for up to half an hour at a time. I wasn't going to leave Jacky up the tree all night so I took him in, as even though he was quite high up there was still a chance that some other animal could get at him or if it turned cold during the night he might not be used to it.

As A Conscious Empath I Could Feel Jacky Can's Energy

Perch King Jacky Can The following day, after feeding Jacky a hearty breakfast of dried cat food (soaked in water so as to hydrate him properly) and wet cat food, I put him back out into the environment he was used to. Jacky is still very accommodating in letting me lift him out of his box while his bedding is changed, he happily perched on my finger.

I really don't want Jacky to become too attached to me and me to him, as my aim is to get him back out there with his fellow jackdaws as soon as he's ready. Although I know the best laid plans of mice and men are aft to go astray, I am keen to ensure he is in a fit state to give him a fighting chance.

Of course because I am a conscious empath I have the ability to connect to energy, and I don't mean what comes through the electrical sockets, because I feel energy in others, and that could be a high vibrational state or a low vibrational state, it makes it difficult for me not to feel for Jacky and how daunting it is for him to be in such a position as he is now. So to try to remain emotionally detached for me is, at times, like asking my rescue cat Bracken not to chase mice!

Walked Like A Man With His Pants Falling Down
Bracken On The Prowl For Mice After putting Jacky up in his tree lodge I played some more jackdaw audio from the CD player, which was sitting on my front step. One of my neighbors was out in his garden, well when I say garden I don't mean a small square of grass, these are very large gardens. I spotted him and aid not to be alarmed if a clattering (that's what you call a group of jackdaws) of jackdaws appeared, as I was playing some audio to attract Jacky's parents. (Of course the conversation was much more in-depth than this, but I am sure you get what I mean.)

Not long after I set the CD playing the jackdaw signature "kar-r-r, kar-r-r, kar-r-r" the parents of Jacky flew in, and it was rather like a train arriving on time as they touched down on the chimney stack of the house. The parents and Jacky exchanged kar-r-rs, but that was as far as it went. "What's wrong with them?" I thought to myself as I wondered why they weren't flying to the tree lodge to check on Jacky.

One of my Facebook friends commented that maybe the parents didn't come to feed him because they wanted him to leave the lodge on his own and then they would feed him as he was grounded, so to speak. Well of course with Bracken wandering free and a multitude of other neighborhood cats on the loose it wouldn't have done to have Jacky on the ground, not that he could really walk that well. In fact when he walked he looked a little like a man with his pants falling down!

Jacky' Can's Pseudo FlightI decided to bring Jacky down from the lodge, as I was concerned that if he managed to jump to the top of the box and somehow drag himself out that he would fall the considerable distance to the ground. Although I had consciously shrouded the area around the tree with my thoughts of love, it was better to be safe than sorry.

I had read somewhere on the internet that you could hold a bird by its body and get it moving its wings. So I had a go. I held Jacky quite firmly but gently by his body, which felt full of energy and I started walking fast with him, rather like a child holds a model airplane, except I wasn't making airplane noises.

As Jacky became more confident I started raising and lowering him and I ran a little faster until I was jogging with him, of course I was totally oblivious to my neighbor seeing me running around holding my arm out straight in front of me with Jacky flapping his wings! That was until I noticed my neighbor mesmerized at what he saw! Hmmm, well! A grown man running with a flapping bird in his stretched out arm must have looked a right sight! Anyway, I was pleased to see Jacky using his wings and certainly I could feel the power he had, but not quite enough for him to fly solo. Judging by the energy I could feel coming off Jacky, he loved it! His little blue eyes were smiling.

I then put Jacky in his box, but I didn't return him to his tree lodge. I placed him on a rockery in his box, I then realized he had no cover from the sun so got an umbrella and placed it so as to block the sun. I felt like a protective father with his children at the beach.

When dusk came in I took Jacky in, as all what had happened was the same as before, parents and child exchanging "kar-r-r" and" kya" sounds.

Jacky Can Has New Flight Cage 

Jacky Can Safe In His Flight Cage The following day was a repeat performance. I decided to get Jacky a proper flight cage, as he couldn't stay in a cardboard box all of the time, he needed his confidence building up. I got some branches and trimmed them down to make perches in the flight cage and soon Jacky was able to perch on them, a bit wobbly at first but just like a child learning to ride a bike he soon got the knack for it. Oh, and just to say that I when sawing the grooves in the ends of the branches I also sawed into the end of my thumb! My affinity with wood continues!

The cage was more for Jacky's protection from cats, as I wanted him to still have some communication with his parents but also for him to be able to stretch and do the exercises fledglings do with their wings in readiness to fly. As soon as I put Jacky outside he started to call for his parents, and within five minutes they flew in with their kar-r-r, kar-r-ring and were back on the chimney stack. Jacky was calling out like Placido Domingo in his solo operatic career, I was proud of him. He had a new resonance and power to his calls.

I had hoped that the new flight cage would have this effect, and I was right. Sadly, though, the parents just looked down and only returned Jacky's calls, they did not fly down to him. Ah well, at least they were still in communication. All day I sat with Jacky, well not in the cage with him! I still do not want to humanize him, as such a majestic creature should be flying free, not caged. I wouldn't be able to have Jacky fly around and be my friend as Bracken would go all sulky and of course when a cat is jealous it can only lead to one thing. So for Jacky's protection I look forward to the day when he flies off into the sunset.

Be Careful What You Wish For!

Jacky Can Will Melt The Toughest Of Hearts As I sat there with Jacky something dawned on me! I thought back to the Facebook posting I made on 22 May 2012 when I posted a link to my Twitter page on my Facebook profile page with the heading "Anyone for Tweeting?"

You will recall how I received a comment back from one of my friends: "tweet, tweet, tweet", and my reply of, "wit...2 woo, 2 wit...2 woo", and then my friend's reply to this: "yes I know".

I realized that this exchange of dialogue between had created a Cosmic Order, as two days after this
I received Jacky Can the Cosmic Jackdaw down my chimney!

I posted this on the Facebook comment's page beneath my friend's last posting:

"Do you know I have just realized something! When we went through this dialogue between us do you know where it led? Well on the 24 May (two days after this) was when I received Jacky Can the Cosmic Jackdaw down my chimney! Be careful what you wish for is sort of correct in this case ..."

My friend's reply to this was:

"You were obviously wishing for a little birdie to be a guardian to! That is very fast manifesting."

So I guess the moral of the story is, be careful what you wish for!

(A note of caution, wild birds should not be made into pets although to let Mother Nature take its course is not often a nice sight! I believe if what it takes to reach a positive outcome then you can bend nature somewhat, but then let nature take its course in a natural way.)

William Cowper's Poem The Jackdaw
There is a bird who, by his coat
And by the hoarseness of his note,
Might be supposed a crow;
A great frequenter of the church,
Where, bishop-like, he finds a perch,
And dormitory too.

Above the steeple shines a plate,
That turns and turns, to indicate
From what point blows the weather.
Look up -- your brains begin to swim,
'Tis in the clouds -- that pleases him,
He chooses it the rather.

Fond of the speculative height,
Thither he wings his airy flight,
And thence securely sees
The bustle and the rareeshow,
That occupy mankind below,
Secure and at his ease.

You think, no doubt, he sits and muses
On future broken bones and bruises,
If he should chance to fall.
No; not a single thought like that
Employs his philosophic pate,
Or troubles it at all.

He sees that this great roundabout,
The world, with all its motley rout,
Church, army, physic, law,
Its customs and its businesses,
Is no concern at all of his,
And says -- what says he? -- Caw.

Thrice happy bird! I too have seen
Much of the vanities of men;
And, sick of having seen 'em,
Would cheerfully these limbs resign
For such a pair of wings as thine
And such a head between 'em.
William Cowper 1731-1800

Copyright Stephen Richards
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THOUGHTS THAT COME TRUE
Have you ever had an omen, dream or a premonition that something bad was going to happen and it came true? I was rather intrigued by this notion, as some many believe that whatever you think about is what can actually happen.Generally going, we have millions of flashes of thoughts per day, maybe even billions.

OMENS AND DREAMS
When there are omens and signs in your regular dreams, and you see bits and pieces of events like a jigsaw puzzle, little by little, until you feel you know what is going to happen, do you sit up and take notice or just ignore them?

Time has no real meaning; perhaps you can see events several years before they occur. As you get older you may find these premonitions increasing to a knowing when major events like death will occur and to whom it could happen, especially accidents.  Were there times when you would try to forewarn people beforehand? Dealing with the burden of knowing things are going to happen is not a fun emotion. There is usually a physical toll after the occurrence comes to fruition.

The “what you think is what you get” theory of the law of attraction has been taken wholly out of context and warped into something more sinister by so many! The original source of the theory is based on: what you “focus” on is what you get! But rather like how religion uses scare tactics to get their followers to toe the line, so it was that someone contorted something that is a very beautiful ideology into something that is akin to witchcraft!

Briefly thinking of the “worst” does not carve that notion in stone! Focusing on it and dwelling on it, though, does create some “catastrophic vibrational negativity”, which in  a nutshell is when you dwell on negative thoughts and allow them to take over your life and pull you down, this is when you can set off a chain reaction of negative events, and then the phrase “I have nothing but bad luck” pulls even more negativity to the source ... YOU!

WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW THE FUTURE?
Sometimes we get flashes of images, from that we have a feeling something is about to happen to someone or someone you know is going to be involved in certain events. There are different ways to see the future, some more useful and more accurate than others.

There is what is called divination; things like Runes, Tarot, I Ching, scrying, casting of bones and the likes.

Then there is channeling, which is all about receiving messages from third parties ... such as: disembodied entities, aliens and so on.
Precognition is another way, which simply put is a vision of a future event.

Anyone had any psychic reading done for them or even practicing it will know it is another way of looking into the future. It is done in various ways but the most common ways are being connected to your Higher Self or communicating with spirits.


PREMONITION IS A SURVIVAL INSTINCT
Focusing on looking deeper into premonitions as a source of signaling to us that something is on the horizon in terms of a future happening, this is a gift we all have and, without the use of divination, channeling, precognition or psychic reading, is something that we can sense as a gut feeling that something willhappen.

What if you had the gut feeling that tomorrow a particular set of circumstances that were tied in with something you were planning on doing was going to result in something bad happening? wouldn’t you want to BE alerted over it so that you could do something about it so as to avoid the bad thing from happening? The problem though is that many of us go against those “gut” feelings of premonition and go ahead with something that might be doomed?

BENDING TRAGEDY IF YOU HAD A PREMONITION
If we knew beforehand that tragedy was going to happen,  would we be able to bend that tragedy away from us? What, though, if it were too late for you to save yourself or someone? Whjat if that event is already something that has happened and that we are simply re-enacting events?

WHAT IF THE FUTURE ISN’T REALLY DEFINED?
What if all the bad things you have premonitions over might happen, but don’t have to happen? What if you could turn a negative premonition into a positive one? For instance, you have the gut feeling that tomorrow you will come into some money. What if that never happened, would you feel bad? Maybe! So would you still want to know the future even if you knew you were going to feel bad about it?

Premonitions can range from the very vaguest of feelings to the strongest of suspicions! Many dismiss any such premonition as being nothing more than happening by luck or by chance. However, there is compelling evidence which shows that such things are real and true and happen to people all the time.

Each of us, no doubt, can think back to a time when we had feelings or thoughts about an engagement or meeting we were due to attend. Most of the time we dismissed these feelings or thoughts. Perhaps you had the fleetingest of feelings that something good or bad was going to happen, and it turned out to be right or accurate or true in some way.

WHAT PROOF IS THERE?
Can premonitions actually be proven to exist? Well, after my own research the answer turns out that it can. How can it be proven? All it requires is a study of what people do or don’t do, in large enough numbers or great enough detail.

If we look at the incidence of train crashes with a correlation of the volume of passengers on any given day, it shows that on the days when there were accidents, the number of passengers on the train was significantly less than usual.

SURVIVAL INSTINCT KICKS IN
One way or another, when trains were due to crash there were a lot of people avoiding those trains in one way or another. They had had premonitions of some sort!

THE GREATEST EXAMPLE OF ALL
The sinking of the Titanic is a very well-known disaster. When the ship set sail it was just over half full. In the weeks prior to her sailing, over 40 percent of the passenger capacity was abandoned. Even one of the shifts of the ship’s stokers missed the sailing, and this was a much publicized sailing! The ship was nearly half empty and without a full crew?

JOHN LENNON'S DEATH PREMONITION
It has been claimed that John had premonitions that he would be shot. Asked on the reason The Beatles broke up he replied, “We were not bored and certainly did not run out of songs. I was paranoid about somebody trying to bump us off." When he heard that the Beatle's former road manager had been shot dead by Los Angeles police, he said over and over again, “I'm next, I know it.”

THE ABERFAN DISASTER OF 1966
A small Welsh village suffered an unbearable loss when a hill of coal waste turned almost into liquid mud through constant rain slid down and buried the village school, killing 28 adults and 116 children.
Grief counselors found that for two weeks prior to the accident people had feelings of depression, feelings of gasping or choking, children running and screaming, and visions of coal dust and black clouds.
History is replete with an astonishing number of accounts of individuals who accurately predicted the manner and time of their own deaths, sometimes down to the exact minute.   NBA PISTOL PETE

MARAVICH PREDICTS HOW HE WOULDN’T WANT TO DIE
In 1988, NBA star Pistol Pete Maravich, at the age of 40, dropped down dead from a heart attack. We have to go way, way back to 1974 when Pistol Pete said, “I don't want to play 10 years in the NBA and die of a heart attack at age 40.” Well, after starting to play pro ball for exactly 10 years he died of a heart attack at age 40. Was Pistol Pete’s premonition just coincidence?

CAN IGNORING A PREMONITION BE FATAL?
In the case of Carole Lombard, both her mother and a famous psychic, Jeanne Dixon, urged her not to fly. Yet, even though she had had a premonition of a friend's death on the day he died many years before, her own determination to return to her love Clark Gable meant she ignored the warnings. She died in a crash in January 1942.

THE CASE OF SPEED KING DONALD CAMPBELLLand and water speed record holder Donald Campbell was killed on 4 January 1967 when Bluebird K7 flipped and disintegrated at a speed in excess of 300 mph (480 km/h).

Why was I so interested in this man and his record breaking feats? I wanted to find out how far a premonition could actually go in becoming reality. You see, Donald had a premonition of his death when in playing card games the night before he died he turned up the ace of spades and later the queen of spades.   "Mary Queen of Scots turned up the same combination of cards," Campbell told chief mechanic Leo Villa, "and from it she knew she was going to be beheaded. I know that one of my family is going to get the chop. I pray to God it is not me."   Villa said Donald told him while waiting for the water of the lake to calm that he turned up the queen of spades.

I travelled to Ullswater (English Lake District in the north west of England) and stayed in the exact same hotel where Donald Campbell held press conferences when he formerly broke the water speed record on Ullswater in July 1955 when his boat hit 202.32mph! The hotel now has a room dedicated to the record holder and there is a plethora of newspaper cuttings and other paraphernalia on display.
I also travelled out on Lake Ullswater in a boat; a rather large boat that held up to 250 people, although on the day I went out it was, agreeably to me, less than full. I wanted to get a feel for the man’s vibrational messages he had left behind. I then travelled to the fateful location of Lake Coniston where Donald met his untimely end on January 4, 1967.

BLUEBIRD FLIPS ON LAKE CONISTON

Donald Campbell’s jet-propelled speedboat flipped at 310mph while running the hydroplane Bluebird on the final stretch of a speed run at Lake Coniston where several of his records were previously set. The jet-powered craft suddenly flipped through the air. It somersaulted and plunged back into the lake, nose first. The boat then cartwheeled across the water before coming to rest. The impact broke Bluebird forward of the air intakes (where Donald was sitting) and the main hull sank shortly afterwards. Campbell had been killed instantly.

Campbell's last words on his final run were, via radio intercom:

“Pitching a bit down here...Probably from my own wash...Straightening up now on track...Rather close to Peel Island...Tramping like mad...er... Full power...Tramping like hell here... I can't see much... and the water's very bad indeed...I can't get over the top... I'm getting a lot of bloody row in here... I can't see anything... I'm going.... oh....”

The cause of the crash has been variously attributed to Campbell not waiting to refuel after doing a first run of 297.6mph (478.9 km/h), and hence the boat being lighter; the wash caused by his first run and made much worse by the use of the water brake fitted to Bluebird; and, possibly, a cut-out of the jet engine caused by fuel starvation.

On Thursday 8 March 2001, Bluebird was recovered from Coniston Water where she had lain since the 4 January 1967. Campbell had broken the world water speed record seven times in 10 years when the accident happened.

On Monday 28 May 2001 it was announced that human remains had been recovered from Coniston Water and it was believed they were the remains of Donald Campbell. This was confirmed in August. The funeral took place on Wednesday 12 September in foul wet weather even by Coniston standards.

I must admit, all the signs I picked on were that Donald was underfunded and just keen to get it over and done with so that his premonition didn’t have time to come true. Yet it was the very fear of the premonition that spooked him into setting straight off for the second of the two timed runs on Coniston. It was the very fear of the premonition that was to be Donald’s undoing.

If you want to do more research then do a search on Google  for "foresaw own death"..."prophesized own death" and "predicted own death." The results are extraordinary. You will find literally thousands of instances when individuals predicted the exact time and manner of their deaths.

MAKING USE OF THIS GUT FEELING
Premonition is a continual factor in the lives of everyone. The trick, as ever, is learning to recognize it and then, having done that, to listen and act upon it. Many people have saved their own lives like this. Many more could have done so if they had not overridden it.

The fact is, premonitions make can actually make some feel nervous about friendships because they are afraid to get close to people in case they jinx them. Well, let me assure you ... you can tell some people until you are blue in the face and they will still go ahead and do whatever it is they are going to, regardless of your warnings.

My own premonitions of other people come in the guise of images, but I am able to filter the negative ones out and just see the good images. Hence surrounding myself and others with positive vibes. So don’t be afraid to tackle these premonitions and change them to being good ones. Don’t be swayed by the fact that a premonition is carved in stone. Many people are dubious about premonitions. They are skeptical and rightly so. Personally I believe that premonitions ARE very real phenomena. Use them to foretell of a good day ahead.

Don’t take premonitions to mean literally what you feel they are about. Premonitions are not just about forewarning of danger! They can also predict good things happening!

IS THE PREMONITION REAL OR PHANTOM?
If the premonition is to do with a health crisis or death or is spiritual, highly vivid, or seems sincere and is associated with physical symptoms or if the premonition is experienced independently by a spouse, partner, lover or close friend then do pay more heed to it than usual. Warnings between parents and children, spouses, siblings (particularly identical twins), close friends, and lovers are extremely common and should be listened to.

MAKING A PREMONITION WORK IN YOUR FAVOR
Although we cannot have premonitions on demand, we can invite them into our lives by setting the stage for them, so they are more likely to occur. We can become more premonition-prone and use premonition power to our advantage. How can we do this? We can do this by developing a discipline of quietening our mind and attending to the subtle messages from within and without by virtue of meditation and becoming immersed in nature. By doing this we can develop brain-heart synchrony and receive information a few seconds before the actual message. The human body has the ability to anticipate its future emotional state by reacting moments before the actual event itself. It is as though we have the power to be subliminally primed for a future event.

BOOSTING YOUR PREMONITION POWER
The power of premonition can be heightened through practice and use. We are all made of energy; our output is in waves of energy. Allow your blinkered spiritual vision to be cast aside, see yourself and others as energy waves that can meet and interact at all times and under all circumstances. By sending loving thoughts to people around you, you will be able to ensure everyone knows you are positive, hence you have created your future. When I am working on projects or with others I meet with on business I charge myself up with love and it then rubs off onto them. I watch their reactions to gauge the strength of the loving energy I have sent out to them.

SHIELD YOURSELF AND BECOME POSITIVE AND HAPPY
Create a premonition of protection and protect yourself from negative energy by infusing the space around you with bright white light. Practice seeing this light as strong and unconquerable. Be thankful and grateful as often as you can. The sense of thankfulness conditions the space around you, which in turn increases your psychic power. Finally, to add more to your day, surround yourself with happy, positive people.

Too much ego, and you become vain, arrogant, and selfish, sometimes even cruel.


You believe that you are the center of the universe, and when things don’t go your way, you take it personally. At best, you simply throw a temper tantrum. At worst, you take it out on others.

In an even worse case scenario, you give up, realizing with a traumatized shock that the entire world can actually function without you. Even better probably. Too little of it, and you make yourself a doormat for others to walk on.

You feel you deserve nothing, which is probably why you have so little.

You mistake criticism as a pronouncement, abuse as affection, and try to make yourself as invisible as is humanly possible.

You watch life go by you, somewhat embarrassed by the fact that you take up space and air, hoping that others are not too inconvenienced by your existence, and constantly apologizing for this sad state of affairs.   

Like everything else, balance is the key. You have a right to feel worthy of what is good and abundant, but not so worthy that you are entitled to become arrogant, selfish, and cruel.

Nothing whatsoever entitles you to such qualities, and nothing entitles another to their effects.

You have a right to feel the universe is willing to provide you with blessings, but not to the point that it cannot do without you.    

Consequently, it is proper that you understand that there are forces greater than yourself, but not to the point that you deserve abuse. And while it is appropriate to apologize for any inconvenience you may have caused others and to be embarrassed about it, you should never have to feel unworthy of your existence. Forces greater than yourself caused you to be here. To apologize for your life, therefore, is to feel you are unworthy of it.      

You have no right to denigrate such powers or to question their wisdom. This too is a form of arrogance, though it may not feel like it to those who subscribe to such erroneous thinking.    

Everyone and everything is sacred, and therefore worthy, but no more worthy than any other, save for what they achieve on their own merit and hard work. The ability to walk this fine balance, therefore, between a sense of worthiness and a sense of humility, is the key to true power.

Copyright Stephen Richards
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An undisciplined mind is a wasted one, which will be reflected in the life of the one who possesses such a mind.


To control your life, therefore, control your mind. To control your mind, control your breath.

One of the most effective means of controlling both is through breath meditation. This is done by simply focusing on your breathing. As you breathe in and out, focus only on your in-breath and on your out-breath.     

If other thoughts arise, pay them no mind, as you would ignore a television playing in the background.     With regular practice, you will find that your mind becomes less distracted, and falls more and more under your conscious control.     

Once you achieve this, you can focus on your goals and on the attainment of your dreams, free from the distractions of others’ dramas, your own, and seemingly negative circumstances.     

You also avoid the lack of direction an undisciplined mind imposes when it has you running first after one desire, only to give it up when the next one comes along, leaving you with nothing in the end.

Copyright Stephen Richards
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If you do what everyone else does, you will get what everyone else gets. If you want more than what most have, then you must do far more than what it is they do.


Too often, we live in a bubble dictated by everyone else. We are told to pay attention in school, to get a job, to settle down, to save money for a rainy day, and to set some aside for retirement. Banks tell us to borrow money for that house or car, while the fashion industry tells us what to wear.

While there is nothing wrong with such advice or urgings, per se, sometimes it becomes an excuse not to think for ourselves, not to pursue our own goals, and not to follow our own dreams or our own way.

It becomes easy, in other words, to remain within our comfort zone.

The problem is that the more we succumb to others’ ideas of how we should live, think, and be, the more distanced we become from ourselves, until our comfort zone becomes something set in stone, becoming smaller and more rigid with each passing year.

One day we may wake up and wonder what happened to our lives, to the dreams we used to have when we were younger. If we are negative, we may look back with regret and say, “if only.”

If you are positive, however, you will use those same words to make up for lost time.

Do not neglect your dreams, and do not settle for the average, however you define both.

The universe is infinite, and the experiences and opportunities available to us are likewise. Reawaken in yourself the child-like wonder you used to have that has never really died, but only been suppressed beneath the weight of your daily routine. You put yourself where you are, and if you find yourself unsatisfied with how you are, then get yourself out of it.

Begin by learning more about successful people. If you do, then you will find that besides being positive people, there are also those who have never let go of their dreams. However diverse their dreams may be, a common thread runs through them all: their dreams are about doing what it is they love.

When you tie your positive attitude with what you love, and pursue a career in the same, you will find new opportunities opening up for you. Do not avoid doing what you love because you fear that it will only result in poverty or lack. If you fear this, then this is exactly what will happen.

Remember: the universe is infinite and abundant. Therefore your income (if that is what concerns you) need not be tied to what you do, but with what you think and feel.

Gratitude is one way to improve the way you think and feel, but it becomes strengthened when you act upon it by living your life to its fullest. You do this by following your dreams, by not being content to be just one more observer, but by being an active participant in your own life.

Remember, the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. However humble you start out in the pursuit of your dreams, your passion, your goals, the important thing is that you have made that start, that you have taken that first step.

The universe, being responsive, senses that and must therefore respond accordingly.
Copyright Stephen Richards
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One cannot live in this world without being influenced by others. This is how we learn to adapt, to be able to function in our culture, and to relate to others.


Much of what we are today is the result of our formative years when we were taught by our parents, teachers, and other authority figures, whether what they taught us was conscious or unconscious on their part.

Regardless of which, our minds absorbed information and imitated others, while personal experience shaped our attitudes, beliefs, and ideas till we achieved habituated ways of thinking. We still unconsciously cling to these ingrained precepts without question, and believe them to be absolute. The formative years are, therefore, the most important.

Often, however, our ingrained intuitiveness is destroyed by a cookie-cutter school system which is often more focused on ensuring conformity than it is with the betterment or actual learning of the children given in their care. The emphasis by many, but certainly not all, is on discipline and rigidity, not on the actual teaching process.

Imagination, inventiveness, wonder, self-exploration, creativity, and others are not encouraged in such a system, because these things cannot be quantified or measured. Most schools focus on the mundane, denigrating what cannot be understood by the five senses and modern technology.

How we react to this process, either positively or negatively, perhaps because of our home life outside of school, also determines whether we will be open-minded and positive, or close-minded and negative.

It is important to guard yourself against such pessimism and rigid conformity, as well as the idea that all you are is what can be seen, heard, and felt, and that all you can accomplish is what can be made with your own hands.

This is not to suggest that those who teach such things are your enemies, or that their intentions are negative.

Most teach what they themselves have been taught, believing that such things are right, true, and good. In passing it on to you, they likewise believe that they are doing the correct thing.

You must be on your guard, therefore, and understand that what they teach is only a part of the whole story.

Those who say things like “it can’t be done,” “that’s impossible” or “there is no such thing as…” are absolutely correct, because they believe it to be so. As such, it becomes so for them.

This does not, however, have to be so for you or for others.

Those who say things like “it can be done, and I’ll prove it,” “it is possible, and I’ll do it” or “there is such a thing, and I’ll have it,” on the other hand, are also absolutely correct. Because they believe it to be so, it therefore is or will become.

Consider all that we take for granted today: cars, trains, airplanes, electricity, television, cell phones. There was a time when such things did not exist, and to suggest they were even possible went against the grain. At best, those who said that such things “could be” were ostracized, or considered insane. At worst, they were punished, hurt, or even killed. History is filled with many such examples of both cases.

With this in mind, pay attention to the people you associate with on a daily basis. Are they positive people who believe they can achieve things and succeed? Or are they negative people who believe the odds will always be stacked against them, and do not even try to succeed?

Are you surrounded by genuinely happy people whose presence is a joy? Or are you surrounded by sad, pessimistic, and bitter people whose presence is a burden?

Whatever the case, look into yourself and find out if your attitudes are a reflection of their own.

It is said that misery loves company. If so, and you associate with such miserable people, are you then a miserable person yourself? If this is indeed the case, do you enjoy being miserable?

If you do, then nothing here will benefit you, save to enforce your miserable life, inviting more of the same into it. You have already chosen your truth, are living it, and can comfort yourself in the fact that you may look forward to yet more misery.

If, however, you want to change, or if you want more out of life, then read on.

Starting with the premise that you are a negative person, then the first step is to stay away from others who are negative.

Sometimes, just changing who we associate with can be the start of something either good or bad, depending on the type of people we choose to hang out with.

Those who speak most of health, have it. Those who speak most of wealth, have it. Those who speak most of joy, have it. The opposite also holds true. So which would you rather have?

It is never too late to change. But it is all up to you. With patience, persistence, belief, and work, you can choose not only who you spend time with, but how your life is to be lived from now on.

Copyright Stephen Richards
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Gratitude is a form of worship in its own right, as it implies the acceptance of a power greater than yourself: whether that power is another person who is able to provide what you want or need, or something higher still.


Gratitude is also an acknowledgement that we cannot do everything, as well as a recognition that, sometimes, things happen at just the right place and at the right time.

The ability to feel and express genuine gratitude for the help given when it is needed most, for the gift or boon that is given at just the right time and under the right circumstances, is a way of surrendering one’s self to benevolent external forces.

It also opens us to yet more blessings, as the power which ensures that they come our way is a responsive one.

However grateful your demeanor and your words may be, however, if your inner voice, your true self, is so mean-spirited that it cannot express it sincerely and fully then you cut yourself off from this power which sends blessings your way.

The more grateful we are, the more we practice this in our everyday lives, the more connected we become to the universe around us.

This is because we set forth a power that reaches out to all corners of the universe. As mentioned earlier, it is also a form of surrender, so in our openness, we leave room for more good things to come our way.

If in the early stages of your practice you have a hard time being positive, then practice daily gratitude.

You do this by being thankful for a new day to start out anew. At day’s end, be thankful that you survived it if you can find nothing else to be grateful for.

When someone does something for you, however seemingly unimportant, give genuine thanks for their service, even if it was just a ticket you paid for, given by a clerk behind a booth.

Find something, anything, to be grateful and genuine in your gratitude about.

While this may seem difficult in the beginning, make it a practice. Better yet, keep a journal where you find reasons to be grateful. The more you practice gratefulness in the beginning (even if it is mostly fake), you will find yourself genuinely becoming so in due time.

Eventually, you will find that you do not have to make things up. You will become so sensitive to the wonders, the goodness, and the abundance all around you that they cannot help but continue to come your way.

This is a good way to practice being positive, and a good way to overcome negativity.

There is a universal law which states that “like begets like”, and once you find yourself becoming more genuinely grateful as opposed to merely pretending, the universe will respond by giving you real people, things, and situations to be truly grateful about.

Once you see this power taking root in your life, you will find yourself seeing the futility of holding on to past negativity, to old grudges, to deeply held anger and hatred. You will see that you have been the cause of your own frustrations, however unintentionally or unwittingly.

The more consistently and persistently you practice genuine gratitude, the sooner blessings will come your way, as this responsive universe reciprocates your gratitude with its own.

As more good comes your way, your belief will increase, until you move past it into the realm of conviction.

This conviction will sustain you in times of seeming adversity or failure, and you will understand that sometimes, blessings do come to us in various guises. If we fail to see them as such, however, then the fault is ours, not that of the universe.

Copyright Stephen Richards
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It is not always possible to do away with negative thinking, but with persistence and practice, one can gain mastery over them so that they do not take the upper hand.


It is best to start out small, conquering them one tiny step at a time until doing so becomes second nature to you.

If you tend to procrastinate, for example, instead of saying: “From this day forth, I will never procrastinate again, ever!”

Try scaling it back a bit to more realistic expectations such as: “I will not procrastinate on any tasks for the next two hours.”

Consider the difference between both statements.

While the first may seem courageous, bold, and right, the truth is that you did not become a procrastinator overnight. Any habit takes time to develop until it becomes ingrained.

Just as it took time to become set in such a habit, therefore, so it will take time to undo it.

If you become too ambitious, old habits will pop up, as it is human nature to desire routine. As a result, you may feel discouraged when you fall off that too high a horse that you have set up for yourself. Your mind rebels at too great a change, and will sabotage your efforts. Again, this is your doing, as you have let it control you instead of the other way around.

The solution is to go slow, to trick your mind into accepting a new habit, slowly, persistently, but surely.

Once you realize that in this case, avoiding putting off things for a mere two hours wasn’t too bad, you can add another two hours to that the next day.

By making slow but sure changes that you can comfortably stick to, albeit with some effort on your part, you begin to find that change does not have to be something traumatic. Your mind accepts this, and in time, becomes more cooperative with you when you make more positive changes in your life.

As you gain more confidence over your own ability to improve yourself, over your growing control over your own mind, and your own inner voice, you can then go on to bigger things.

This confidence will eventually spill over toward mastery over your own life.

Copyright Stephen Richards
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