You're master of what you've lived,

Artisan at what you're living,

Amateur at what's next to live.

Richard Bach wrote that in his book: Messiah's Handbook. He does sum up the past, present and future and what I believe about it. I am a master of my past, and at times I'm a slave as well. When I think about the past it does take time away from the present where my flesh meets my spirit. My thoughts about the past actually influence what kind of artisan I am in my present. When I remember mistakes I've made, situations that hurt me in one or another, I bring them into my present and I create versions of them over again. They may not be the same experiences but they are the same energy. I want to change what I experience, but I forget to change the way I perceive my self. That keeps me locked in the cell marked victim, a victim of my own beliefs about my abilities to create anything other than what I believe I created in my past.

My past is filled with happy experiences and positive moments, but I have conditioned my self to push them into a corner of my memory that I visit at times, but I don't make the connection long enough. I examine the past to discover what's wrong with the present and I find where my beliefs told me to look, in that cell that haunts me. It's filled with skeletons of guilt and fear and I drag them into my present to relive them once again.

Jane Roberts explains what I do this way:

Constant examination of the past in order to discover what is wrong in the present, too often miss the point. Instead, they constantly reinforce the negative experience from which they are trying to escape. Their initial problems were caused precisely as a result of the same kind of thinking. A great many unsatisfactory conditions result because individuals become frightened at various periods in their lives, doubt themselves, and begin to concentrate upon negative aspects.

In order to change what I'm experiencing, and what I believe about it, I should look in my past with a new concept in mind. If I'm sick, I need to remember the times I was healthy; there is proof in my past that I am healthy. If I lack something, I can think of times what there was no lack, abundance has always has always been part of my past.  If I remember all the wonderful times I have experience, the positive energy runs through me like a bolt of lightening and touches everything in my present. That's where my spirit lives and that's where all my power exists. Instead of asking what's wrong with me, I should be expressing everything that's right about me.

So I can re-pattern my past in my present when I consider the success I've experienced and bring them into the present. Nothing is wrong I unless I believe something is wrong. By believing that things are wrong I create limitations, both physically and spiritually, and then I express and define my self by those limitations. The true nature of my reality is joy and Bach gives me a formula that I can use to create in my physical world.

Bach writes:

Find what you love to do more than anything else in the world.

Do it, no matter what stands in your way.

Give the gifts of what you've learned from that love to others who care enough to ask.

I am the artisan of my present; I choose the brush, the paint, the canvas and the colors to paint with. I know where to find them now...

http://www.shortsleeves.net/

http://halmanogue.blogspot.com/

This Weeping Willow!

Why do you not plant a few

For the millions of children not yet born,

As well as for us?

Are they non-existent, or cells asleep

Without mind?

Or do they come to earth, their birth

Rupturing the memory of previous being?

Answer! The field of unexplored intuitions is yours.

But in any case why not plant willows for them,

As well as for us?

Edgar lee Masters wrote that poem in his 1919 book: Spoon River Anthology. The book is filled with thoughts from people who have passed and are buried in the Town of Spoon River. They write about their physical lives and the thoughts about it. The ups and downs of life's experiences are expressed by each soul and each one reveals something about them that was not common knowledge when they were in physical form. The poem above is from the soul of Columbus Cheney. It appears the people of Spoon River planted willow trees at his gravesite and that prompted him to ask why not plant them for the children who haven't been born yet. It seems Columbus is telling us that the children are already here and gone and still very much alive.

Thoughts about life before life aren't discussed that much in normal conversations, everyone has a belief about what's going on before birth, but it's hard to put in words that make any sense. I had a religious belief about life before birth, and that information is expressed in a mythical way. There are no references or associations that can be made about life before birth. I can explain life after death in terms that can be believed depending on the structure of the belief. But I was taught that children come from God and are born in his image. Then I accepted a belief about not being good enough because of some act that had nothing to do with me and I put my self in state of separation. Perhaps the act of birth is a metaphor for one self separating from another self.

As I remember more about my self I realize that it is hard to visualize what I thought about or looked like before birth. I know I am consciousness but don't remember  consciousness looks like without a form of some kind, unless I consider things like the wind as consciousness; I can feel but I don't see it, I see the effects it has had on other material objects but never see it. Tornados are the wind but in another form. Water is consciousness and it has several forms and I can see and feel most of them. Hurricanes are wind and water in another state of consciousness but altered in appearance. Perhaps what I consider my natural state is actually altered in appearance too.

  Life before birth and after death eludes my physical senses. What does that mean? Does all consciousness exist in natural forms that elude me? It appears I am experiencing a limited part of my self. Surely the other aspects of me before birth sensed and experienced consciousness in another way but then separate in order to expand.

Children then, are the extension of consciousness manifested physically. Forgetting the sense of consciousness that is interconnected energetically, I choose separation and distinction. But that is just one aspect of my separated consciousness; there must be other parts that separated too. Why would I choose one experience when there are so many to choose unless consciousness, even in separation, is still action and energy connected but manifested in the wind of remembering. Consciousness like a hurricane or a tornado is still complete in the process but is not regulated by time, space or senses. Like the energy cell of a hurricane or tornado I experience physical life in an instant but call it a lifetime.

Cheney's idea about planting weeping elms or any tree before birth and at death make sense to me, I am the same expression as a tree or a hurricane or tornado. Like the weeping willow I come from the seed of consciousness and root and grow a physical trunk and build branches of lives and form leaves of experiences and shade my self but hide my seed in order to feel the consciousness of the wind, the rain, the earth and my separated self.

http://www.shortsleeves.net/

http://halmanogue.blogspot.com/