Amanda's Thoughts
MONDAY: BE GENEROUS WITH YOUR TIME
Just because you can’t do everything, you should still do everything you can.
Time is one of the most precious commodities we have. Love is the most precious and we should love enough to give our time. This is an investment with an abundant return. After we have passed, it will live on in those in [...]
SUNDAY: BE GENEROUS WITH YOUR SPIRIT
“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Altruism is the quality of unselfish concern for the welfare of others. Today is your day to be creative and see how you can joyfully be generous and allow your spirit to [...]
SATURDAY—REVERENCE FOR YOUR FOOD
Grace is not just a rote prayer we mindlessly say over our meal; it’s a way of transmuting our food into physical and spiritual nourishment.
Decide that from today on, you will only put the best quality fuel in to power your body. No more sodas, ever! No more diet drinks. No trans fats. Read all [...]
FRIDAY—REVERENCE FOR YOUR BODY
“He who loses his reverence for any part of his life, will lose his reverence for all of his life.”
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)
This is a big day! Hopefully it is the start of a new way of treating your body—the temple that houses your spirit.
I don’t want to hear any laughter about your body being a [...]
THURSDAY—REVERENCE FOR YOUR SOUL AND SPIRIT
“There is a beautiful creature
Living in a hole you have dug”
From “I Heard God Laughing, Poems of Hope and Joy,” translated by Daniel Ladinsky; 1996; 2006, Penguin. Reprinted with permission.
This is your day! The day for you to discover for yourself what a spectacular and awesome being you are. Try not to let judgments and [...]
WEDNESDAY—REVERENCE FOR OTHERS
“Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You need only a heart full of grace.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Namaste. That is your meditation for today. Silently greet every person you meet and every animal and plant you encounter with this word. In your imagination, feel [...]
TUESDAY—AWE AND WONDER AND NATURE
“Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.”
John Milton (1608-1674)
It’s almost impossible to talk about reverence without mentioning awe and wonder.
PROJECT 1: TO BRING A CONSCIOUSNESS OF AWE, WONDER AND REVERENCE IN NATURE
Go out today and find some aspect [...]
MONDAY—REVERENCE FOR LIFE
“By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world. By practicing reverence for life, we become good, deep and alive.”
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)
Life is a precious gift, which we largely ignore until it is about to be taken away or changed dramatically. A life-threatening illness or event usually transforms a [...]
SUNDAY–REVERENCE FOR GOD, OUR ANGELS AND ALL THE SPIRITUAL BEINGS WHO HELP US
“Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.”
John Milton in “Paradise Lost”
No matter what your spiritual belief system, we need to treat God, or your equivalent of God, with awe, wonder and reverence. And we need to do the same with angels, guides, the nature spirits and [...]
SATURDAY—DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HOPE-ING AND HOPE-FULL
“The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”
Author Barbara Kingsolver
There is a difference between wishing and hoping. Hope without faith [...]
FRIDAY—TACKLE SOMETHING DIFFICULT WITH HOPE
“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”
Dale Carnegie (1888-1955)
Think of a difficult situation in your life right now. Are you looking at it through “glasses” made of fear or of hope? Do you have a [...]
THURSDAY—HOPEFUL EXPECTATIONS
“There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow.”
Physician and writer Orison Marden (1850-1924)
Today is the day of hopeful expectations. In other words, you are to go through this day expecting good things to happen. And for situations to work out perfectly, as [...]
WEDNESDAY—FIND THE FEARS; MOVE TO HOPE
“Don’t lose hope. When it gets darkest, the stars come out.
”
Anonymous
In “Freeing the Soul from Fear,” my wonderful mentor and teacher Robert Sardello suggests fear is always present in our world. Learning to work with hope in our hearts can help balance that fear, and move us towards a hopeful heart.
Today is the day to [...]
TUESDAY—HOPE FOR YOURSELF
“Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.
”
Pope John XXIII
We all make mistakes. We are all constantly learning [...]
MONDAY—FIND WHERE HOPE LIVES IN YOUR BODY
“If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Today is the day for you to clearly find where hope lives in your body!
Find a place where you can sit uninterrupted [...]
SUNDAY—HOPE AND FAITH
“Hoping does not mean doing nothing. It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusion. It means a confident, alert expectation that God will do what he said he will do. It is imagination put in the harness of faith. It is a willingness to let God [...]
FRIDAY: COMPASSION FOR YOURSELF
“If you have no compassion for yourself, then you are not capable of developing compassion for others.”
The Dalai Lama
Reflect all day today on “What compassion do I give myself?”
Many people judge themselves harshly. Do you allow God’s grace to flow through and to you for the mistakes you make? Do you beat yourself up as [...]
THURSDAY: COMPASSION FOR YOUR “ENEMIES”
“Compassion compels us to reach out to all living beings, including our so-called enemies, those people who upset or hurt us. Irrespective of what they do to you, if you remember that all beings like you are only trying to be happy, you will find it much easier to develop compassion towards them. The true [...]
TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY: COMPASSION AT HOME
“The Lord is full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.”
Psalms 103:8
Okay, these are the easier days. This activity is so important and there are so many people involved that you have two days to practice.
It’s easy to have compassion for our children. We give them endless space to be who [...]
SUNDAY AND SATURDAY: SELF-LESS-NESS
“In separateness lies the world’s great misery, in compassion lies the world’s true strength.”
The Buddha
This is a two-day exercise. For two days, try to focus only on others, and how you might help, support and bless them and allow God’s grace to flow through you to them.
These two days are not about you at all. [...]
