I was a died in the wool, analytical, left brainer, and I forgive myself.

It made me feel safe. I couldn’t find the answers to all I was feeling, but damn I was safe. What more could I want? Well, as life and the picture I had painted, and the story that I had written as my life, began to unfold the answer to that question came. But, did I have the courage to walk uncharted territory and forge my own way?

The answer to the second question began to unfold when I got married at age 48, gave up a lucrative job with benefits, sold my house, said goodbye to my family, and headed west to live my dream. It all scared the @#$%! out of me. So I dusted off an old suitcase, a family heirloom, and threw all my mental and emotional “stuff” in. I put it into the U-Haul, right along with the furniture.

Out of family loyalty, of course, I kept that piece of luggage when I arrived in Montana. I looked through it daily in the first days and months in my new home. When I could no longer lug all the emotional “stuff” I had moved with, and had none of the old friends and family to reflect back to me the person I saw in their eyes as me, I began to look through the contents of my suitcase. Fear, fear, and yes, more fear was the predominant theme. It came in all shades and styles in my wardrobe. While still very frightened, I made a conscious choice to see what thoughts about myself still fit and what emotions I wore because others thought they looked good on me. Finally I began to discard family and societal patterns, releasing beliefs that I was taught were mine, handed down from generation to generation. Who was I to drop the family ball? All this shook me to my core and then was followed by an incredible sense of relief.

We all write our own story from the beliefs we carry with us in that voice inside of our heads. After stripping myself of everything I knew, the separation between my head and my heart revealed itself. As I tried harder and harder to build my dream with my mind at the helm, my dreams kept ahead of me. When one of my guiding Angels appeared in the form of a friend, I finally heard the message, “Go into your heart and listen.”

That’s when my heart became part of the team of Love and Light guiding me. I began to see that checking with and hearing my heart was getting me where I wanted to be. I found that God accepts me exactly as I am, motivating me to grow in trust and love for my Self.

It can be incredibly frightening to be out of your mind and in your heart. There is a huge attachment to identity, to conform to society’s standards, and to follow blindly the voices that are other than Self. To lead with the heart, coming from a place of love for self and others, takes awareness and trust of Self. Despite the pressure, inside and out, to conform to the norm, I am now committed to taking responsibility for building my dream, day by day, thought by thought.

Who would have thought being “out of my mind” and committed could bring me such peace?

Stephen King is one of the most famous writers on the face of the earth, and these 19 Stephen King quotes are a glimpse into the twisted mind of this master writer. Let these famous quotes ring in the September birthday of this genius.

1. “Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”

2. “People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.”

3. “The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings – words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.”

4. “Time takes it all whether you want it to or not, time takes it all. Time bares it away, and in the end there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometimes we lose them there again.”

5. “The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there…and still on your feet.”

6. “It’s better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost.”

7. “Oh yes, we all float – and when you’re down here with us, you’ll float too!”

8. “The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn’t real. I know that, and I also know that if I’m careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle.”

9. “You can’t deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.”

10. “Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”

11. “I’m not a big fan of psychoanalysis: I think if you have mental problems what you need are good pills.”

12. “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.”

13. “We fall from womb to tomb, from one blackness and toward another, remembering little of the one and knowing nothing of the other … except through faith.”

14. “Sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. It’s what you say when you spill a cup of coffee or throw a gutterball when you’re bowling with the girls in the leage. True sorrow is as rare as true love.”

15. “No one ever does live happily ever after, but we leave the children to find that out for themselves.”

16. “Life is not a support system for art. It is the other way around.”

17. “The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.”

18. “Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.”

19. “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

Whether you think he’s a genius or just plain odd, you have to admit he’s a talented writer. If you’ve ever wondered how someone with such a twisted imagination thinks, hopefully these Stephen King quotes have shed a bit of light (or darkness) on it.

It’s not the job of the mind to tell us who we are.
–A.H. Almaas

See the original and other great related posts here

Most movies are simpleminded and pretend it is earth-shakingly important whether this boy and this girl mate forever, when a lot of young romance is just window-shopping and role-playing, and everyone knows it. You break up, you sigh, you move on. The process is so universal that with some people, you sigh as you meet them, in anticipation.
–Roger Ebert

Most of these quotes are from Criss Angel, himself. Theres only one that was from his brother JD. I try to give you enough time to read most of the quotes, but there are some which are long and harder to read. You can always go back and pause it the second time watching it, right? =) Song: Fear by Criss Angel

The mind considering itself–I shudder; it is too vast, a space without dimension, filled with cosmic events that are silent and immaterial.
–E. L. Doctorow

“The teacher, if indeed wise, does not bid you to enter the house of their wisdom, but leads you to the threshold of your own mind.”

Zen Quotes Koans & Wise Sayings Soundtrack: Zila Khan – Rubai (Sufi Darvesh)

“If you want to reach a goal, you must “see the reaching” in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.”

The sweetness of the mind brings sweetness in words and interactions. There is an understanding of the need for being sweet in words and interactions. But this sweetness can be expressed only when there is sweetness in the mind. Sweetness of the mind means there is not even a trace of negativity. Such a mind is further open to all that is nice and beautiful and expresses its own freshness and