Your Best Thoughts Got You To Here

A REASON TO LIVE AND CELEBRATE LIFE.

We all think we have a reason to live. The question I have is "Do we have a reason to Celebrate Life?" Let your imagination go wild for a moment and think, "What would it be like to really Celebrate Life?" Just stop for a moment and contemplate. Now how does that feel? Is it different then the way you live? If "Yes!" this book is for you!

Before we get into the meat of the text, I would like to just introduce you to a friend of mine and then tell you a little of my life story. In doing so, you will gain a great deal of insight into whom we are and what we are capable of.
 

JONI

What a privilege it was to hear Joni Erickson speak to thousands of women from around the world, as a keynote speaker at a convention in Orlando. Joni has been a paraplegic from a diving accident since her teenage years. She is only able to move her head and has some motion in the shoulder area. She does not however have use of her hands.

Her inspiration to the thousands that night was telling them about the three people who inspire her the most. It was astonishing to note that Joni did not speak about the super heroes of our time. Her message brought tears to our eyes. Of the three women Joni talked about, not one had more mobility than she had. In fact, by the time she told you about the last person, you thanked God that life had been different for you as life's worries and trials seemed trivial.

Although the body may sometimes be harmed and disabled, as we know it, the spirit of the person lives on in full spirituality and purpose. What would you think if someone kept sending you letters of encouragement when you knew that the only mobility they had was to move their eyelashes? Yes, Joni was receiving letters of encouragement made possible through a computer hook up to her paraplegic friend's eyelids.

I can still remember the time I spent three minutes thinking of what it would be like to live my life with only my eyelids for mobility. By the time I finished, I wanted to scream, needed to use the restroom, and the phone was ringing. If you need an adjustment in appreciation of whom you are, when would now be the best time for you to spend three minutes in near motionless silence thinking about what it would be like? I think you should do it now before you read on.

What was it like for you? My response, "Joni, I love you!" I truly cherish my abilities to talk, walk, etc. How magnificent we are!

MY STORY

I was born with defective lungs. My condition was so bad that when my parents returned me to the hospital totally blue with both lungs collapsed, the doctor told them that I probably would never make it. If I did, based on my condition, I wouldn't make it through my growing years with all the deterioration that had already taken place. Somehow my parents didn't believe the doctor and never conveyed this message of desperation to me. As a result, it wasn't long before the little boy became a big boy and although I had all the conditions you would normally associate with a child with a lung condition, asthma, allergies, etc., I survived the initial crisis. All my young life I would know the hours of the day by the pills I took and the days of the week by the shots I received.

True, I lived a protected life and generally never went more than thirty days without some type of antibiotic and/or steroids. I was not allowed to walk anywhere alone and all physical activity was kept at a minimum. I was not to go out doors in the rain because my parents said I knew how to "catch a cold!" Yet many times I found a way out and without even trying, "caught that cold." Sometimes I just opened the window and "caught the cold!"

Ultimately the doctor allowed me to swim in the summer and ice skate in the winter since there would be other people around at the community facilities way up there in Caribou, Maine. With my new found freedom I began to work as hard as I could at both. Much to my doctor's surprise I made it into my teenage years. Although I was among the shortest in my junior class, there was some concern as to the possibility of my surviving a growth spurt before my twenty's. No one told me. As I stood third from the tallest in my senior year, everyone had much to be thankful for. I went on to graduate from college, got married, and started a family of two fine boys, Daniel and Jonathan.

Suddenly in my early twenties on Valentine's Day I sat up in bed and fell face forward to the floor. I did not know what had happen. I figured I had a stroke. I realized that if it was it would be O.K. because I certainly had seen people come back from a stroke. I just could not find where up right was and I was seeing two of everything as well as numbness everywhere.

After weeks of testing, the doctors gave my wife and me the diagnosis and not my parents. It hit home hard. MS . . . multiple sclerosis, a debilitating crippling disease. They explained that although some paralysis had already set in, it would not be until the next major episode that they would be able to do long range projections. They did tell me that the inner ear on the left side was severely damaged and that ice skating would be a thing of the past.

Interestingly enough it was Valentine's Day, three years later to the holiday when the next major attack happened. The doctors confirmed that a pattern had been established. They told me that I could expect another attack every three years and I believed the doctors. To my surprise, every three years on Valentine's Day I was in the hospital with another major set back. In fact, there were years when my wife would catch me getting ready weeks in advance for my Valentine's Day hospital visit.

As if this was not enough, in my early thirties while employed as a restaurant manager, I was involved in an accident of sorts. I was on the phone placing food orders one day while maintenance employees were working a few feet away trying to unstop one of those mammoth floor drains that restaurant kitchens have. One man had just poured commercial strength bleach down this drain on top of everything else they had already poured in during the last few days when I began to notice my breathing ability change. If you have ever read the directions on the back of a bottle of bleach, you realize that you don't mix this chemical with anything. Add to this the fact that commercial strength bleach is a hundred times stronger than regular bleach. Needless to say, it took the doctors two weeks to get the internal bleeding to stop, in what I had left for lungs. As if the MS was not enough, this I did not need.

As the years progressed, the levels of medication necessary to keep my lungs in operable condition increased to such a level that I had to sit down twenty minutes after taking all the medications as my whole body just shook from the reactions. I felt more like an addict in withdrawals. I was now on four times the dosages that had stabilized me in the hospital, and the doctor said that based on my blood work, the levels would need to be doubled again.

With a worsening MS condition and the ever-increasing medication levels round the clock, depression became a close adversary. Yet I knew the truth. As a man thinketh . . . so is he. I fought the mental anguish of the inevitable end. At thirty-six with the left side going fast and the right side starting to catch up with MS, the doctors informed my wife that she needed to be ready for me to be in a wheel chair.

I tell you this story so that you can see the two parallel lives I lived. One in which I was not told everything about my lungs and without knowledge of what "would be" I survived, and the second life of every three years in the hospital, on plan, on schedule with what the doctors had told me in my mind "would be." Now comes the real dilemma with a wheel chair in the future. This fact coupled with a worsening lung condition only made the end seem to draw nearer. It was more pain then I could bear. With this I reached a pain threshold in this life. It was time to do or die. " NO WAY" I said to the Doctor, "NO WAY", and with that command in my brain, the fight began.

I told my doctor that I had visited stroke patients in the hospitals and had seen the marvelous things they were doing with them bringing back mobility when it was lost by brain damage. I believed that if they could get it back...so could any MS patient. He told me I just didn't understand, although that was a nice thought, it just didn't happen. With even stronger determination I told the doctor that if he wanted to join my team and support me, I was going to prove that this was possible. If he didn't, I would find a research doctor who would. You bet! The doctor joined my team.

Enlisting also the aid of a chiropractor, I began a grueling war within myself against the nervous system that seemed to have given up. My chiropractor would do what he describes as rolling pin massages from my toes to my nose thus forcing out all the bad blood that had atrophied in the hundreds of muscle cramps all over my body generally three to seven times a week. You see my type of MS was one where the muscles would slowly go to sleep so that I would be in the same kind of pain you might experience when your leg goes to sleep and then begins to wake up. I would continue in this pain for fifteen to forty five days while my muscles slowly went to sleep. I can remember many times gritting my teeth and pleading with God to let the muscles finally go to sleep so that I could gain back enough strength to get on with the healing process. My beliefs were rewarded and much to others surprise, the feelings would amazingly come back as progress was slowly made.

Everything we do in life we do based upon our belief system. Whether we can, or can't is based upon our beliefs. Our memories from the past get interpreted in such a way that they allow us to progress, hold us back, or make us stand still.

As I tell you my story, it is important that you recognized my belief system. My first belief was NO WAY. My second was that total and complete healing is only confirmed by the receiving of communion at my local church. Now maybe you don't have the same beliefs. It is important, however, that you realize this is how I function at the other than conscious belief level. These beliefs were part of the strength that was giving me the rewards of my success.

One Friday night in my late thirties, I told my wife that when I took communion at church that Sunday, the MS would be gone. After partaking of the elements I reminded my wife of the commitment and although Valentine's Day came and went, the disease has never returned. When you talk to me ... it is will never return. It is not I have MS, it is I HAD MS.

To answer your question, can I ice skate? You bet! I even took a National Amateur Senior Olympic Freestyle Gold Medal competing in the twenty one to forty two year old category. I use my fingertips and the pressure of movement to help stabilize my balance. I even appeared as a guest solo performer for Ice Capades. Spins, jumps, the works, I do them all and encourage others to do the same.

Well I had the MS taken care of, now what about those lungs. The change began the day I went back to the Doctor to have my blood taken to find out what the medication levels needed to be. I already shook so much that I pleaded with the Doctor to please find me something different. After the results of the blood work came back, he informed me that not only was there nothing else he could put me on, but that they would need to double my current medication levels. "NO WAY" I told him. Just give me enough pills so that I can make it two weeks and then If I don't have this thing licked, I'll let you double the levels.

You don't understand, he explained. With the MS it took a year and a half to go into remission. (Please note, remission is his term for a non-existing condition of something I once had.) You can't do this with your lungs in two weeks. I finally got the prescriptions and had an appointment for two weeks later.

After hearing a sermon in Ft. Walton Beach Florida called Take Your Limits Off God! I finally decided that what I really needed to do was analyze my beliefs on why I wasn't totally healed. To my surprise, this introspective thought caused me to discover a very simple belief that was the key to the problem. Remember when I said that I was born with defective lungs. That was my problem belief. I claimed that I was "born defective" and I believed that when you get something at the store that is broken or defective you simply take it back or suffer the consequences. That was the only way for it to be remedied.

Must be time to change my belief and change I did. Based upon my knowledge of The Lord's Prayer, which says "Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven!" I began to realize that I didn't plan on having defective lungs in Heaven. This changed my thinking and therefore my belief.

The following Friday at nine P.M. I told my wife that on Sunday when I take communion my lungs will be totally healed. Out of force of habit I took my afternoon medications with me Sunday as after church we planned a trip into the mountains. At church when it came time for communion, it was interesting that the pastor announced that God had spoken to him on Friday evening about nine P.M. and told him that when people took communion that Sunday, lungs would be healed. Well that was the entire boost needed. Upon the taking of communion I proceeded to the pastor and placed in his hands the afternoon portion of medication. With a funny look on his face, the pastor turned his hand back over and said, "Don't you think you should take these with you, just as a precaution?" I replied, "Whose faith are we to doubt, mine or Gods?" With that the pastor kept the pills and God completed the work. It was a funny feeling to begin to breathe way down deep in the lungs. I called it an interesting tickle. Cavities that only moments before held no air, now filled with amazement and wonder as the creative intelligence of the universe combining with my beliefs began to complete a marvelous, miraculous, transformation. This transformation would change thousands of lives. Little did I know what God had waiting for me.

When I went to the doctor the following week, my doctor got a surprise. "You have got to understand, this is not possible?" The doctor explained. Yet, the breathing level was incredible. With alarm in his voice, the doctor began to talk about the new medicines that he would need to put me on to prevent the massive withdrawals that I was about to go through. I am sure you guess my answer to that, "NO WAY!"

All medication was now behind me to where even taking a vitamin seemed odd. No longer was my hand searching every four hours for the next dose.

Truly an amazing and incredible story and certainly one that empowers me to go on as a motivational healing coach. I am the one who has had the marvelous delight of watching, feeling and hearing life being transformed by thought, by my belief in myself and my knowledge of the divine intelligence I here acknowledge for me as God. That power that says life is not to be known as "super natural", but as natural done in a super way. I used the only thing that God had given me complete control over ...my thoughts. My thoughts to change my direction in life. My thoughts to live abundantly.

I learned that just as that creative intelligence allows you to use your mind (thoughts) to produce disease, so also it has the answers to our ability to be healed. Simply stated, if the mind can make you sick, than the mind can make you well. Dis-ease in the mind produces disease in the body.

CELEBRATE LIFE CREATED

These are just some of life's experiences that have caused this writer to demand to know more about the brain and the mind, how we think, process information, and cause ourselves to be successful. How do we become healthy, wealthy, and wise? Insatiable would be the right word as I have searched out the best of the best to learn all that I can so that I might be able to pass the information on to others.

Celebrate Life was the name my wife, Anne, and I gave the coaching sessions as we continued to help people through some of the most incredible information that keeps coming forth about our mind and what makes us tick and keep on ticking. We felt a necessity to find a way to keep it simple and yet be able to reach the masses. Now at the age of fifty, almost 13 years after the healing of my lungs, and certainly by demand from our circle of influence,

Your Best Thoughts Got You To Here is somewhat of a composite gift to you of all that thrills my inner being and flows to others in "live" Celebrate Life coaching sessions. It is to that purpose in life...giving ...that I pursued writing this book.

TAKERS AND GIVERS

There are two types of people in life, the takers and the givers. Takers do whatever they can to get whatever they can get. Givers do all that they can, expect nothing in return, and receiving becomes the evidence that they are givers. The difference between the two is so evident as I work with people. Some have learned that you can either live your life as an example or live your life as a warning. Our goal should be to help improve other people's environments in such a way that they will be able to be most successful in the environments they are in.

WHEN THE STUDENT IS READY

My life changed when I began to take back the health that I was losing by changing my belief in what was possible. I realized that I had done something that so few people could or would ever do. The world is full of people demanding health and wellness. Yet they don't know how to unlock those gifts that are already there in their mind. I demanded an explanation of what I had done and as the old proverb says, when the when the student is ready, the teacher will appear, it happened. Is it not amazing that what you think about comes about in your life. The more I searched for answers inside the more they appeared on the outside. Sources that only divine intervention could bring about.

The decade we are in now is called the Decade of the Brain. You will discover the most astonishing things are taking place about how we learn, who we are, and how we function. The brain is front-page news coverage and the make-up of several TV specials. The information is coming forth almost faster than it can be put into print. Much of it has always been there. It is just that science is now finding ways to prove what we thought we knew or didn't know was right. Quantum physics and modern technology have combined to unlock and go beyond such mysteries and miracles as DNA. Life as we know it is rapidly changing.

Let me show you what I mean when I say when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Perhaps one of the most interesting teachers to be sent along in the beginning was a Catholic Priest by the name of Father Stephen Byrum. In telling you how we met, you will have a little better idea of what I mean when I say, "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear."

A few weeks into one of my deeper searches for the Biblical aspects of the mind, I was given a tape by the local head of the Full Gospel Christian Businessman's Fellowship. Upon listening I was pleased to hear a scholar making distinctions on the brain based on Biblical principles. I became determined to find this man, yet no one had an address or a way to contact him. Just prior to speaking at a luncheon meeting of The International Fellowship of Christian Businessman, a puzzled looking lady came in and said that God had told her to come to this meeting to give someone a message. She went on to say that she was Catholic and hoped that we would welcome a Catholic at this meeting. Being welcomed, she joined us and continued to explain that she really felt rather foolish knowing that she did not know what the message was or whom it was for.

I gave my coaching session on The Brain, God's Gift, and then we started to pray. Just prior to our final conclusion, this lady spoke out and said, "Oh, I know something you can pray about. There is this Catholic priest that is coming to hold special services at Saint Anne's Catholic Church all next week. He has been sent by the Pope to teach the real power of Christ through Salvation and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. He will need all the prayer he can get. His name is Father Byrum." With that I leaned into the prayer circle and said, "I know what your message is and who it is for."

The following week nearly everyone in that room, plus everyone else we could tell, heard Father Byrum at Saint Anne's Catholic Church in Charlotte, NC. Everyone was welcome from any denomination and we filled Saint Anne's to overflow. By weekend, the miracles began to flow.

I did get to spend some private time with Father Byrum, and I must say the Pope has a magnificent emissary working for him. I still prize those additional tapes that were made available for this ready student. Truly the universe is on purpose and, when you too are on purpose or about purpose and ready, the teachers do appear. They will come in a phone call, today's newspaper, or even a book written two thousand years ago.

I believe all the great words have been written, we are only working together to bring them more into consciousness for the everyday person. Looking back on your life you will discover that the choreographer or producer has always been there making all the pieces fit.

ROCKS, PLANTS, ANIMALS, & HUMANS

What an amazing piece of machinery this everyday person is. When you stop to think of all that we do you become overwhelmed with a sense of awe. We taste, touch, see, hear, and smell. Plus we walk, talk, breath, carry on semi-intelligent conversations, drive cars, and work computers. In fact man even invented or brought into being the last two. Imagine we fly in big silver birds, while some have gone on rockets to the moon and back. How complicated life has become from the days of the fig leaf clothing. This physical body that we know is something that is here as a result of an organizing intelligence in this universe. For some this intelligence is called one thing for others something else. For me, I call this intelligence God.

Materially, when we break down the chemical compounds of the human body we find that we become dust. We are but the chemicals and compounds of the earth enhanced in a greater state. We are made up of the same materials as a rose, a rock, and other animal life. Somehow we have something extra about us that this organizing intelligence, God, did not give the rocks. We have an ability to control our thoughts. We have a greater level of intelligence. We have a greater level of awareness both by attention and intention.

At the quantum physics level, scientists can break down a rock to the subatomic level and discover that the rock is composed of the same infinite intelligence that you and I are made up of. There is activity in progress at all times within the rock. Now I don't intend to go too deep here, so stay with me.

Let's look at plants. The intelligence level of a plant will show up when you place it in one end of the room and the sunlight is coming through a window at the other end. Somehow that plant knows to turn its foliage towards the window to get the necessary light that is coming in. In general with trees and plants, no one seems to be held totally responsible for giving them nourishment and life and yet, if you cut off the light, they die. So it is at this level that I begin to recognize a greater intelligence that must be in charge keeping life on purpose and on plan. For me a God who said,"let there be light", as his first known command, as if, it is from this light that all life springs forth. Hmm, something to think about? Light a source of life. Something you can see through, feel, and yet not touch. Light, that substance that all NDE's or Near Death Experiences people speak so often of as being the source of life flow as they traversed that experience.

There have been studies showing plants that are coddled and spoken to in love grow much better than those that receive little or no attention. Even music like Baroque versus Rock has been shown to make a difference in how plants grow. Baroque producing fat healthy hardy plants and Rock producing tall spindly plants. They have even played music over fields growing rice for harvest and seen the magnificent increase in the crops. Not Rock music though, unless you like tall skinny plants.

Let's move on to the animal world where we see creatures that take care of each other and show definite sign of affection and caring. Remember that pet that came running when you drove into the yard. I certainly have never seen a plant come running, but maybe they are happy to see me. As yet I don't have an understanding of how they express that happiness. For an animal it must be a sign of a greater level of intelligence that allows for a greater mobility than a plant. Although they move about like man and seem to be able to communicate with each other, they still do not function at the level of intelligence of man. If you doubt they communicate, just come to my house around 2 A.M. and see if you can explain the noises those loving pets are making in my neighbor's yards. In heat you say, not all year long. In fact the gas meter man just came by about a half-hour ago and they still have not let up!

Lastly let's look at the species known as man. Really just who is he at the quantum level. The level he does not like to think about only because he has learned so well to dwell upon the physical.

Dr. Deepak Chopra in most of his teachings mentions that radio active isotope studies reveal that we replace nearly 98% of all the atoms in our body within a year. This means that you replace your stomach lining in 5 days, new skin every 30 days, a new liver in 6 weeks, a new bone skeleton in 6 months, and even every brain cell that was there last year, is not there this year. Scientists will tell you that 99% of your body is actually empty space at the nuclear level.

A photon is a quantum level of light, just as an electron is a quantum level of electricity. So the body has its own breakdown to a quantum level known as thought. Sometimes known as feelings, drive emotions, ideas, impulses, hunches, etc. A pulse of thought is, an impulse of information, and energy; a non-material information energy source that basically interacts with our consciousness. These thoughts, energy, or impulses allow us to act upon our five senses, and go well beyond the basic complexities of operating the heart, and maintaining the body.

THOUGHT - AWARENESS

Is it not amazing when you begin to realize this massive piece of molecular miracles operates on thought? You operate on an intellectual level rather than a physical. This intellectual level is most often known as a spiritual level. We have always known that we have a part of us that makes our heart beat and ears hear, etc. and we have called that our spirit, yet have we ever gotten into the nitty gritty basics to discover the basic energy we run on.

Everything we do, we do by, from, or through thought. To break it down further would be to call it awareness. Awareness can be either by attention or intention. Your brain is always asking, "What is it?" and "What do I do with it?" "What is it," brings the information into your attention. Then "what do I do with it," causes you to seek the intention.

Daily we generally process somewhere around 60,000 complete thoughts. Yet most of our problems in life stem from the fact that most of us repeat 90 to 95% of the same thoughts every day. We dwell in the past. We live life in review. We don't force our self to recognize that we only have now and will only continue to live as change takes place. We must learn to live life in preview. Especially when the only gift God gave you complete responsibility for is thought.

I am fascinated by the simple fact that when you hurt yourself accidentally, like a cut or bruise, you heal. How does this happen? How does your body know how to heal that cut or bruise? Better yet, try the even bigger questions. How does your body know when to stop healing? What runs the mechanics that makes it all happen? Who has that computer? Who makes it all happen? Is it really just Mr. Immune and Mr. Lymphatic in charge of their own operations? Do you possibly in recognizing a need turn on the healing. I am sure you have heard the stories of people who have been shot or injured and it did not bother them at all until someone happened to point it out! Someone brought it to their attention. Then with this awareness some faint. Yet they were able to previously carry on by intention as though nothing had happened.

Which came first, physical man or spiritual man? That's a simple question to answer? Which one, if you took the other away, would keep on going? That's what I thought. Thought. There it is that word again. There is nothing we do without thought...energy flow; an energy flow of electrical impulses that causes our heart to beat, our legs to move and our eyes to see, etc.

My life has been transformed by knowing that I am first and foremost a spirit being that inhabits a body. I am definitely not a body that inhabits a spirit being. I even came about as a result of thought. My father had this thought, and my mother allowed him to put it into action! Now here I am.

As you begin to search the depth of this information for meaning, you too will come to the understanding that we are not a physical machine that has learned how to think. We are thoughts that have learned how to maintain the physical body. We are impulses of intelligence, of energy, that know how to multiply and divide to create other physical bodies. Not that we are the ones that give life, we are but the instruments of reproduction used by a greater intelligence to provide the shell for life to enter.

There is no greater proof I can give you than a trip to the hospital. Even though my elderly friend was sure to die within hours, policy dictated that she must be weighed as part of the admittance procedures. 76 pounds and 12 ounces was the inscription the attendant wrote. Within hours life ceased. Death was the name the doctor gave the condition. Her body would never respond again and yet as they weighed her once again the record showed 76 pounds and 12 ounces.

Life had gone, as we know it, yet the borrowed shell it had been in still weighed the same. There was no more that we could do to create a return of the person we had all known and loved as Nana. Yet she would remain in our thoughts forever. Her thoughts in that 76 pounds and 12 ounces moved on to live with that infinite intelligence she knew as God.

As I sat with my wife on Hilton Head Island in the early hours of the morning watching the sun rise over the ocean, I recognized the life that flows forth in those invisible beams of magic that we see as the rays of the sun. It reminds me that the moon is like our body. It gets its form of life or light that we see from another source. We call it the sun. We perceive the moon as a bright light in the sky when in fact it is not a light at all, but a reflection of its original source, the sun.

I can remember one gorgeous night when we were watching the moon and all of a sudden, someone took continuous bites out of it until amazingly, with no clouds in the sky.... It died. It seemed like death, as we know it, as for the moment there was no reflection. There was no sign of life. Everywhere around us it was pitch black. Then as quickly as it was eaten up, it was put back together.

The spirit of the moon seemed to return. Well, I don't ever expect Nana Farrington's spirit to return to her body. It does however remind me that we still have a life supply force to the body that is subject to termination often at the least expected time. That is why now is the most important time in your life. Now is the time to control thought.

Try living without thought. What? You say. I thought, I thought, I could, but the thought occurred to me, it's an impossible thought to believe.

There we are full circle back to believe and our beliefs that control all that we do. With this foundation, we will get ready to change the world! First let's check to see if you've got any elephants you want to turn loose?

So when would NOW be the best time to order this book?