What the Heck Just Happened?

Greetings my gentle readers to another week’s installment of the “be yourself, often” blog found at http://www.joelwlamoure.com. This is the point in time of the week where we are able to sit back and mindfully reflect on the moments that were and the impact that they have had in our lives.

This is our first blog posting of the past six weeks. Those of you who follow our radio show “prescribing spiritual hope” on WULC out of Carrabelle, Florida on the Spreaker network will also have observed we have been off the air for the past two months.http://www.spreaker.com/show/tuesday_prescribing_spiritual_hope I anticipate that not only will the blog be back to its normal weekly posting effective now, and our radio show be on the air again by mid-July at its usual time of 9 PM Eastern time and think all of our dedicated listeners and readers from around the world for staying with the network.

The past couple of months have been an exercise in journey into the deepest recesses and caverns that exist within the mind. A time within the wilderness where over the past 40 days and 40 nights opportunities have presented themselves repeatedly. Unfortunately, as we know in life, and that we as humans are not the divine architects of our own plans, most of the “opportunities” have had a negative flavor. However, the concepts associated with the phrase “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” are all well and alive.

These have been days of a death of dreams and recalibration of determining what is important. A time to realize that what one thought would be logical, in fact was illogical. There were birthdays forgotten by others, promises broken, expectations shattered, religious discrimination, hate crimes, decades of planning eradicated, disease and illness. A breach of confidence by confidents and friendly fire. Bullets that derive from close sources fired under the brave face of anonymity, send through an unwilling messenger. Sadly hypocrisy and vigilante justice is alive and well.

As such, based on what the title states, it leaves one wondering, especially a man of faith wondering why so many good people have been hurt while the sinful, wicked and evil continue to prosper in their lies and deceit, claiming to be and searching “enlightenment” themselves. I use the term in quotes as it is ego-centric enlightenment they seek, not Spiritual Enlightenment. My friends, these are days of learning the highest virtue, which is forgiveness. “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do…”

Within forgiveness, which is an easy word to say but hard action to do lies the resolution of inner turmoil. Resolution of the inner turmoil is not playing it out words and harming other people. Resolution does not lie by constant complaining, self harm, belittling, telling stories repeating stories, playing victim, hatred, or any of the other tools that were initially used against us. I believe, that is why true forgiveness takes longer… Perhaps truly 40 days in the wilderness.

It is about finding again what makes one happy and appreciating that we have the “free will covenant” and do not have to be the same as those that wrong us. It is not up to the courts to make a decision of judgment or forgiveness, but the quiet Light of Divination that says so much. To be able to not focus on stuff, and focus on the Light with clarity and intensity will allow us to be the spiritual being having a human existence and truly be yourself, often.

~~~ Rev. Dr. Joel Lamoure June 2013

Emotional Based Living: All the RAGE!

Greetings my gentle readers to another week's installment of the "Be Yourself, Often" blog… that time in the week which hopefully you look forward to in order to try to filter through and make some sense of the week that was. Even more so, perhaps the impact and components of YOU in the week filtered through healing and HOPE. Hopefully, you bring with you some questions that are left un-answered through simply living the week. Not enduring the week, but rather embracing it! For really, are we not students in this life? Are we not always eager to advance our learnings?

As we discussed last week, the evidence informed life is one that we have an understanding of our built in thoughts and biases. There is an appreciation of the subtleties of the moment and the impact that we have in these events having transpired as well as what we subsequently do with these events moving forward. We now also realize this concept can advance our spiritual karmic battery charges and leverage us even better for our future through active involvement. Sorry folks, passivity or entitlement will not work here. It is an active process.

Indeed, it is not about simply living this life but since we are spiritual beings having a human existence, then it stands as a logical extension of this concept that we will impact future lives as this spirit returns in whatever form.

That is belief. It is a factor based in hope, faith and belief that as individuals we have this opportunity to live in this sort of way. However, how many people truly believe that they have this opportunity in the future. Our individuals truly squandering the moment in life in order to achieve short-term outcomes question per wit, are our earthly hormones and desires driving us.

An emotional-based life is one where despite all evidence an individual will progress down a maladaptive pattern of use. In fact, we can go one step further and say it is a maladaptive pattern of miss use of a normal resource available to us, which is life. We KNOW value and we know what the artifically ascribed associations mean to us, which are susequently sold in marketing ploys (Platinum card, King-sized bed etc). SO sad.

I do believe it is possible to become addicted to the excesses of a Western driven culture. Much I can to an addict, and individual rooted in emotions [including negative emotions such as the demise Asian] loves the effect of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine in the brain the keyless acumen's is associated with drive and pleasure. This is the root cause of addiction. As stated, addiction is basically a maladaptive pattern of use. I mean really, how is the way some people live their life really any different?

How much in the way of excesses does a person actually need? Gandhi stated there is enough for everyone on this earth in need, but not in greed. Thus if we take a look at individuals who are in the top 5% of earnings and can buy whatever they want those 5% of individuals own 90% of all the stuff.

There is a reason that Dante identified the seven deadly sins, of which one is. Really, and emotional-based life has a strong degree of interplay between these seven deadly sins. They include, but are not limited to: last, greed, sloth and gluttony to name a few.

If you want to embrace a emotional taste life then you sadly may have been sold a false bill of sale. For these emotions have been biased and altered through changes in brain chemistry. This opens up the concept that there are different stages of emotional-based living. Perhaps, we can integrate our positive emotions into our evidence-based and evidence informed living.

If we take the converse of gluttony, then we are looking/ and need to look at the individuals who are and have stripped away the excesses in order to really understand who they are and the impact of what they do in their lives. These are individuals who are at ease with the moment through mindfulness, meditation, prayer and positive play. The shackles of consumerism do not bind them

.

It is okay to ground, be a kid, not have everything designer, and not have 20 pairs of shoes, 30 skirts or 40 shirts or 60 pairs of socks. Can we express and share or why do we covet these things? Can we not ground and connect and love and live life? Perhaps, we can take a look at some of the humility that was identified by Buddha or Jesus Christ.  Individuals who looked to collect members and Disciples who were average individuals and laborers. But mindful people. 

Maybe, just maybe we can live in peace, patience, silence, humility and serenity. Perhaps, all of this plays in together through positive discourses.

What is the cost of this venture? How hard is it? What are the outcomes.

Well my gentle readers, the end outcome is to bind with the amorphic side of nature and beauty and be yourself, often

~~~ Rev. Dr. Joel Lamoure   March 2013

Living the Evidence-Informed Self: Those Silent Moments (Part 2)

Greetings my gentle readers to another week’s installment of the “Be Yourself, Often” blog. As always this is a time when we can sit and in quiet meditative mindful reflection look at the week that was and realize the impact of the decisions that we have made. As we touched on in our blog last week, too often people will assign blame to other people, and embrace as was stated by Eckhart Tolle as our “pain-body” and the role of victim, vs active participant in our life.

Unfortunately, this is often falsely convicting another party, which inherently will have to establish changes in boundaries, changes in verbal, as well as changes in non-verbal responses to that individual and similar situations in the future. This is your altar that is changing. You hurt, they hurt…everyone hurts.

Too often have you looked at somebody and made a preconceived notion or judgment about them? They look like a bum because they are not clean? They look smart because they wear glasses? They look like they have money or credible because they have clean designer clothes? Indeed, way too often this is done. Our evidence is filtered through an improper lens which causes not evidence informed decisions but rather emotional-based decisions. We will discuss evidence-based emotions next week.

However, going back to evidence informed that living. In being able to ground and connect with higher spirits through prayer, healthy diet, exercise and play then we can understand what is important to our spiritual connection. When we do not fill ourselves with the detritus of society and societal dictates or the man’s, we are more able to be free and make an appropriately informed decision. Per wet, we are not mere puppets of a Western culture.

Other clouds and filters that may impact on your ability to make a decision include unhealthy living or filling your life full of stuff that are not relevant to positive long-term objectives. They may be items, tangibles, ideas, beliefs or constructs. This may even include sacrificing your inner self and existing belief structures in order to be someone else, or by someone else’s objectives for you. At the end of the day, there is very little you in there. Across time, the whole organism that is YOU is bound to, in fact has to change with the constant onslaught of challenges. Welcome to the jaded world! SO emotionally driven and hormone mediated, while at the same time often not believing how much control you really HAD in the situation.

So in order to make an evidence informed decision, which will drive, a more positive, evidence informed life then we need to be at one with our spirit. We need to know our biases. We need to live a purpose driven life. There needs to be an awareness of our gifts and how they can translate into helping ourselves help ourselves help others. At this point, we can read the evidence and the impact as it occurs and understand how our subconscious has made the decisions that it has.

This is not a hard thing to do. It is about prayer, diet, healthy living, and play. There is indeed a balance rooted in a strong Spiritual foundation to build upon. It is about not assigning bias, nor blame and indeed assigning a healthy role to the moment. Life is not always a paranoid individual’s constant dream of conspiracies! There are players and victims, heroes and villains and a more open-minded approach and embracing the gestalt of the situation helps so much. It means, even when it is hard, that you might be not correct. Notice that the word “wrong” was not used.

How can this life be wrong or when there are so many miracles and gifts that exist within it? If we embrace our life as a gift in the present, rooted in mindfulness, then we should be able to truly be yourself, often.

~~~ Rev. Dr. Joel Lamoure March 2013

Enlightened Beings, Really?

Greetings my gentle readers to another week's installment of the "be yourself, often" blog and happy new month, welcome to March 2013. Hopefully, this is the time of the week when we can step back and appreciate exactly what we contributed to the components that added up to be the week that was. And when we stop and appreciate our involvement with people, places, things and all forms of nature hopefully the balance sheet of our contributions are on the side of the positive. This week's blog will go on a little longer then normal as it addresses several psychopathologies that present within the concept of “enlightenment” as we are seeing it develop in the Western world by and large.

As we know and have stated multiple times, prescribing spiritual hope operates under the premise that in some way we have not yet been able to achieve our full goals and objectives. But really, we cannot achieve these hopes and dreams if we do not know what we are even striving for. As such, knowledge of our goal of hope is essential. One cannot help but wonder as we evolve whether or not as stated by Monty Python whether or not the gods are truly crazy. Let us explore this concept through the lens and filter of H.O.P.E.

H stands for holistic health, where we are able to look at all aspects of our being and realize exactly what requires healing, without judgment. It is only at that point when an individual becomes an active participant in their healing through identification that appropriate steps and forms of treatment may be engaged. Per wit, this is the period of diagnostics. Once an accurate diagnosis has been made, only then can the appropriate methodology and treatment interventions be brought to bear. Really, it is along the theory and approach of knowing our enemy.

While there are many potential interventions that can be used, often they are ineffective or actually may worsen the individual’s clinical or psychiatric status if utilized in the wrong way. I believe we are seeing examples over and over of this in our "spiritual awakening". Without having a root understanding of spirituality there are so many that profess to being experts in this field. Often, it is an extension of the hunger and dissatisfaction that progresses in a society where so many are left feeling helpless. Given challenges and "fattening up", as well as having blinders affixed to the eyes through this Industrial age, we have been left spiritually bereft for so, so very long.

Now, add in a society and culture where individuals are used to, and in fact demand having everything handed to them or available at their fingertips. Sadly, we have been created a culture of sheeple, but ones that still have expectations and demands. I believe we can call these "first world whines". In true Freudian terminology, we have suppressed our most basic intellects at the cost of massive hyperinflation of our superego. Basically, we can get any color at any size at anywhere at the best cost, and have been more than assured that we [or rather our superego, which is affixed to our pocketbook] our first and foremost.

Once we look at the interface of vectors of these hyper-inflated egos, entitlement, narcissism, point of access to information and add in a hint of delusion regarding grandiosity, one can see there is not much room for true spirituality. True spirituality would mean that an individual is able to connect with their God [however they see their God [example Christianity]], while at the same time being able to embrace the differences and opinions of others and then use their God given gifts and talents to help advance other people.

Now it is not about helping advance other people while at the same time advancing your ego. It's not about sharing information and not learning it yourself. Those are the blinders coming back to bear on you. So really, are we truly becoming more enlightened? Or is there a generation of hypocrites that are developing? Is there truly an angry and confused generation evolving?

These are very interesting times looking at these last three questions. Certainly, the methodology that has been utilized over the past 100 years is no longer sustainable. New approaches, concepts and strategies must be employed. This is a time for peace, not war. As such, if we indeed are spiritual entities having a human existence then we should act as such. This is a critical time in our evolution to stop and reflect and learn. That learning is in the form of a diagnosis of the human race, but also a determination through spiritual social work of what are the goals of therapy.

Basically, if you want to be an enlightened soul, act like one. Believe like one. Study like one. Avoid the temptations of playing victim or engaging in hypocrisy. There was a wonderful expression I was told years ago, when I thought I knew everything that stated “Take the cotton from your ears and stick it in your mouth.” Once we do that, we can see the insanity that is evolving all around us. Wiser minds who look a all of the prevailing opinions as well as all of the evidence does not always prevail and in the sense of true entitlement sometimes the loudest entities in the interests of crusading get the most attention as well as the foot soldiers. This is a recipe for disaster and even potentially anarchy at a spiritual level, destruction of all, as we know.

This peace and enlightenment is not a hard object to strive for my gentle friends. It starts from within ourselves and an examination of what we believe in, our gifts and their talents, and the knowledge of what we are prepared to do. It is accepting the negatives and seeing how we can translate those into potential positives it is not boastful, nor being a victim. It is not taking up of arms nor justice of a vigilante approach. If we truly want that enlightenment, we need to look at that quiet and serene core that exists within us. That place where we are able to truly see that there are miracles that abound all about costs, and take them as the signs that they are, not any different than Noah was promised with the rainbow. This is a place where we can totally be at ease and thus avoid the dis-ease that exists within the disease that presents through the veil of society. It is a place for we can look with wide-eyed wonderment and the willingness to play us if a child again, including the wonderment of realizing the gifts that we have and the potential for positive outcomes. You don't need to be anyone else, or impress anyone else. Simply realizing that “I am as meant to be” is a very powerful message for us to learn and embrace.

For to recognize those positive outcomes and achieve peace and enlightenment, to be an enlightened individual is to truly be yourself, often.

~~~Rev. Dr. Joel Lamoure   March 2013

Living the Dream or Dream to Live? (Part 2]

Greetings my gentle readers to another week's installment of the "be yourself, often" blog. As usual, this is the time when we can step back and reflect on the moments that were, the moments that are in the moments that will be if we make the conscious decision to make the right decisions in the here and now. Too often, we don't make the right decisions as they are influenced by external sources that aren't necessarily the best for us.

Last week we took a look at living the dream and this week we will take a look at dreaming to live. Too often many of us merely dream to live and don't actually get to live the dream. That is because we are so tied up in all the challenges, chaos and frivolities of the day. If we ask ourselves the question move this matter in 100 years, most of us will have to say no. However, even worse, if we ask ourselves with this matter in six months than often most of us will have to say no with the situation that is stressing us out and shortening our life.

That means that most of us are dreaming to live. We don't see ourselves as instrument is rather loudly. That is very sad my gentle readers for that means we are not embracing life is a fully can be embraced. With respect are karmic batteries, it means that we are dead in the moment and not able to recharge or offer ourselves or our resources or our gifts to ourselves or others.

Why do we dream to live? It is because that we are often sucked into the challenges and chaos of the moment. It means that within the moment there is very little us and very little me in the situation. If we stop and take a look at the events that have transpired, we see that we have influenced very little or not at all. And what a sad place that is to be. At the end of the day, do you go to sleep tired with a good tired or a bad tired? Harry Chapin once said that to go to sleep with a good tired although you may have lost each and every battle in the day, they were a year hopes your goals your dreams and your objectives and they were your battles that you fought. They were not other people's.

As such, sometimes a day that you lost may be a day that you actually won. For you’re the chance to translate some of these challenges occurred within the course of the day and realize that there was a lot of you with in the day. And each and every day is a new opportunity, a present, and a gift. We can take with these gifts than these presents what we decide to do. And truly to have all of these presents is to be present in the moment and be aware of our gifts, talents and what we mean to the moment.

Dreaming to live means that you don't know beyond what man makes, constructs and dictates that thou must do. It is a sad place to be. As we stated last week, you can truly lived a dream. And to live that dream is to love the moment. And to love the moment is to be yourself, often.

~~~Rev. Dr Joel Lamoure   February 2013

Living the Dream or Dream to Live? (Pt1)

Greetings to another week's installment of the "be yourself, often" blog at www.joelwlamoure.com . This is a time of the week we connect you stop and step back and reflect on the moments that were in the moments that will be. This is a point in time that we will never get back again and so it is important that we look with mindfulness and reflection at the valuable increments that are sands through an hourglass.

This is the first of a two-part series. Although I have written about this before, I think given some of the discussions that have happened and transpired of late, it is important that we stop and look at what we do. Are we for sure getting our absolute all to the moments that are or are we deflecting for a future time that may or may not come? Are we stopping and being at one with the moment, or are we adversaries with the moment?

For the first week we will take a look at the living the dream question. I believe if we take a look at ourselves from a spiritual entity having a human existence than that becomes very clear. However, if we look at it from the converse, and we are merely humans than we may not feel the excitement, love and joy that transcends each and every moment.

First Peter chapter 3 verse four states, "rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. My gentle friends, we have the opportunity to be a gentle and quiet spirit, as opposed of and within the chaos that exists in the here and now.

We have the opportunity to assist us in a pool of isolation within the sea and tsunami that exists around us. This is our choice. We can truly live the dream, drink the margaritas and enjoy the surf, sea, sun and sand that a balance about us. That is truly living in the moment, living the dream.

So how do we do this in the busy life that we exist in? Does it have to be such? This is a choice that we have my friends taking a look at the free will covenant that exists within each and every one of us. We have the choice to embrace the insanity society or step back and truly be ourselves, at one with the moment.

As we find and become ourselves, we can realize that we are not alone. And our island of isolation is full of people similar like us. It is not about the commercials, magazines, celebrity worship that we have been sold. It does not have to be like this. Indeed, we can have the best life ever. It is about stepping back and looking at the healing parameters at each and every one of us has within us. So how do we unlock it?

That is about being comfortable with the moment. It is being at one, mindful with the tastes, touches, smells, sights and embrace them fully. It is about not caring what others think and about embracing our individual inner child. It does not have to be about worshiping others, but about finding and being ourselves.

And in order my gentle friends to live the dream we need to identify what is the outcome that we are looking for. What are our hopes, goals, dreams, and aspirations and how do you think that we can make them happen? Embracing the child within, not having a worry about being judged. Judge not, lest you judge thyself. And in order to realize what is important to us, we need to stop and reflect with mindful awareness of exactly what we are able to do. These gifts and transitions that we have, what we do for ourselves and for others, will truly ultimately identify and become and be yourself, often.

~~~Rev. Dr Joel Lamoure   February 2013