I love a good story. I especially love a true story that inspires people for years and years!

An awesome story was told to me a couple of days ago and I can’t wait to share it with you. This story is a total game changer and it’s 100% true. As soon as I heard it I knew I was supposed to share it with you.

I was having one of those days. Total chaos actually. Boxes everywhere (I’m moving) and 2 college kids home with some nasty virus. I had work deadlines and a “to do” list a mile long.

Then my phone rang.

It was my very wise and gorgeous friend Kimberly Cartwright. (I was so busy I almost didn’t answer). After respectfully hearing my rambling, Kimberly felt called to read me a story by the late Earl Nightingale.

Thank God she did because it totally set me straight.

The Acres of Diamonds story is told of an African farmer who heard tales about other farmers who had made millions by discovering diamond mines. These tales so excited the farmer that he could hardly wait to sell his farm and go prospecting for diamonds himself.

He sold the farm and spent the rest of his life wandering the African continent searching unsuccessfully for the gleaming gems that brought such high prices on the markets of the world. Finally, worn out and in a fit of despondency, he threw himself into a river and drowned.

Meanwhile, the man who had bought his farm happened to be crossing the small stream on the property one day, when suddenly there was a bright flash of blue and red light from the stream bottom. He bent down and picked up a stone. It was a good-sized stone, and admiring it, he brought it home and put it on his fireplace mantel as an interesting curiosity.

Several weeks later a visitor picked up the stone, looked closely at it, hefted it in his hand, and nearly fainted. He asked the farmer if he knew what he’d found. When the farmer said, no, that he thought it was a piece of crystal, the visitor told him he had found one of the largest diamonds ever discovered. The farmer had trouble believing that. He told the man that his creek was full of such stones, not all as large as the one on the mantel, but sprinkled generously throughout the creek bottom.

The farm the first farmer had sold, so that he might find a diamond mine, turned out to be one of the most productive diamond mines on the entire African continent. (Now known as the Kimberly Diamond Mine…the richest the world has ever known.)

The first farmer had owned, free and clear … acres of diamonds. But he had sold them for practically nothing, in order to look for them elsewhere.

The moral is clear: If the first farmer had only taken the time to study and prepare himself to learn what diamonds looked like in their rough state, and to thoroughly explore the property he had before looking elsewhere, all of his wildest dreams would have come true.

The reason this story has profoundly affected millions of people is the idea that each of us, at this very moment, is standing in the middle of our own acres of diamonds. If we could only have enough sense to realize it and develop the ground we’re standing on before we go charging off to look for diamonds every where else.

Remember, the ego’s motto is “seek and do not find”. It is literally designed to send us on one wild goose chase after another.

Jesus says in A Course in Miracles, “For all your pain comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting where it must be found.” (Please read this sentence over again because it’s HUGE!)

Can you get that right now? He doesn’t say, some of your pain or a lot of your pain. He says ALL of your pain comes from looking for diamonds in all the wrong places! How many times have we chased that carrot (karat, HA), only to arrive and say, “meh”.

The world has us scrambling about and seeking a replacement for the peace of God.

Never gonna happen.

Don’t worry. If you’re lacking abundance somewhere in your life right now, it’s totally temporary because lack is simply a state of mind.

In Truth, there is NO (NONE, ZIPPO, ZILCHO, NADDA) scarcity anywhere within or around you. It is simply fear and small thinking that are blocking the flow.

If the other guy’s pasture appears to be greener, it’s not that he has a better pasture than you;

it’s just that it’s getting better care.

No one has more than you.

You’re sitting on a diamond mine!

You already are everything and already have everything.

Ultimately you are God, you are the Christ. There is nothing to do, for you already are what you seek. You already have 100% self worth. You are in the process of realizing this ultimate truth. There is nothing to manifest for you already contain what you seek.

You are in the process of realizing God.

You are spiritually good in all of its forms; health, happiness, wealth, peace love, fulfillment and unlimited possibility. Within you is the power to satisfy all of your needs and make your dreams come true.

Are you waiting for a day when God is going to give you more? Guess what? That’s not how it works! God is never going to give you more than you have right now. He has already given you everything. With all of His Love, He has already granted you the entire kingdom and everything in it. (This was a HUGE realization for me!)

Here’s the kicker.

True abundance doesn’t just “come along” as most people think.

It’s there all the time.

If you can’t see it,
that simply means you’re not looking
in the right place.

Make THIS what you seek and nothing else.

Abundance isn’t something you acquire. It is something you tune into.

Every single good thing you desire to have in your life comes from God and is made of God. Things can be made of nothing else.

Yes, yes I know. In this world, your good seems to depend on certain channels, like people, places, things and circumstances. You seem to have little influence over these things. But this is the great illusion of life. In reality, the very people, places, things and circumstances that you depend upon for your good are individualized expressions of the infinite power of God.
Listen and listen well.

In order to cultivate your diamond mine…
you must depend upon the Source and not the channels.

Why are you so enchanted by this world, when a mine of diamonds lies within you?

Dig for your own diamonds.

When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

Expect your every need to be met, expect the answer to every problem and expect abundance on every level. (Because worry always blocks it.)

This was my #1 take-away from the 6 Month Living In Purpose Mastery Program. I was guided, reminded and given the tools to unearth and cultivate my diamond mine. I committed to 6 months of putting my full attention on all that I AM and all that God has already given to me. For me, it was definitely time to stop the struggle. I was ready to stop my daily digging for diamonds in the salt mine! LOL. I’m telling you, everything changed for me after that. It’s hard to really explain in human words but let me tell you that I have WAY more abundance, experience more peace, more joy and more Love than I thought possible.

Just like Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz, “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I shouldn’t look any further than my own back yard.”

I would love to hear from you! Please post in the Comment Area below about the DIAMONDS in your own back yard! 

I love you.

Linda Leland

I am so excited to write about the Vibratory Power of Words.

I came up with an acronym for it: V-POW!

This reminds me of the phrase “Vibratory Power of Words” which comes from a metaphysical writer from 1925, Florence Scovel Shinn.

Whenever I catch myself saying something that is not helpful or not loving, I stop myself and say V-POW!

For me, this is part of the practice of LIVING THE PRINCIPLES of A Course in Miracles. I am training my mind to see things differently, to realize the truth of who I am AND to know just how powerful my thoughts and words truly are.

I have a really funny story to share about the power of our thoughts and our words. About a month ago I decided to surprise my boyfriend Gus, with a trip to watch a beautiful sunset. So we jumped in the car and drove to Laguna Beach.

There is this awesome, awesome community above Pacific Coast Highway that they call the Top of the World in Laguna.

There are hills everywhere. So I thought it would be so fun, to drive all around the hills and look at the views of the Pacific Ocean and the beautiful homes.

Here is a photo of it:

Well as we continued on this adventure, I realized that the hills we were driving on with my Honda CRV were really steep. I started thinking about how scary it would be to have my brakes go out on one of those hills. I kept saying things like, “Oh my God, I hope my breaks are ok” and “Wow, the people who live here must have to keep their brakes in tip top shape” and “How scary would it be to go off of one of these cliffs”. We were just laughing about it, just joking around, but I have to admit, I had this fear creep in, where I kept worrying that my brakes might not work “right”. I kept talking about it, all the while laughing.

You won’t believe what happened! We got down to the bottom of the main hill and we heard this really loud grinding noise when I put on my brakes and we could smell something burning! There was something wrong with my brakes.

I just stopped myself, and said, all that “joking around” about my brakes seemed so innocent and fun, and look what happened. My brakes broke!

It was an amazing wake up call for me, about the vibratory power of our words.

So I wanted to share this story with you because it has now become a great reminder for me to catch myself when I start to say things that are negative, even when I am joking.

But it if we want to look at this very closely we realize that it goes much deeper than any words that we say. It starts at the level of our THOUGHTS and our BELIEFS.

I love this quote:

“It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power surge that can literally move mountains. There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level.” A Course in MIracles, Chapter 2, Section VI, Paragraph 9, Fear and Conflict

Our thoughts really do create form and that’s what happened on that hill.

So you might say, “Well, I cannot control my thoughts, they just happen” and this is where the good new comes in. You CAN learn to control Your thoughts.

That is where the Workbook Lessons of A Course in Miracles come in.

These lessons were actually created so we CAN learn to control our thoughts AND we are also given the tools to forgive ourselves when we have momentarily forgotten this.

This ties so closely to the 40-Day Program where Lisa teaches us how to watch our thoughts like a hawk. I have found that this vigilance is very necessary, because thoughts can literally slip in between the words while we are speaking. I remember Bill Free writing about this recently in one of his blogs and it is such an awesome reminder.

Have you ever had that happen? Where thoughts will slip in right in between your words in the middle of a sentence? YUP! This happens to me and I am so happy to become aware of this.

This is where we can become A Miracle Minded Thinker!

“You are not used to miracle-minded thinking, but you can be trained to think that way. All miracle workers need that kind of training”.-A Course in Miracles, Chapter 2, Section VII, Paragraph 1

I don’t know about you, but I am honored to call myself a miracle worker.

That’s what we are really here for, to remind people of the amazing light in this world that they truly are. And we don’t even have to try. We don’t have to try to change someone, or to change a situation, we just need to hold that person in the truth of who they really are.

We can use the vibratory power of our words in a very positive way when we interact with other people and we can also use it when we THINK of other people too.

I use this practice so much in my life now. I get more and more excited about A Course in Miracles every single day!

As you begin to pay attention to the thoughts that you think you’re thinking and to the words you use, you will begin to notice that your words and thoughts match identically to your experience in the world.

Also, we would love to hear from you. Do you have a story of how you had a thought about something or how you spoke about yourself, another person or a situation, and then it showed up exactly in your life? Let us know!

Please post about HOW POWERFUL YOU ARE in the comment area at the end of the blog.

With Love,

Judy

Remembering God …

It takes only one instant and you are back home where you never left. This is The Holy Instant of release.

“Can you imagine what it means to have no cares, no worries, no anxieties, but merely to be perfectly calm and quiet all the time?” -A Course in Miracles

Yet this is what time is for; to learn just that and nothing more.

It’s so simple, we often miss it

Peace and healing is available to us right now in this moment…

I call it THE 15 SECOND GIFT.

You can offer it to friends and family to help them and you to shift into this Beautiful state of Quiet Awareness that brings peace, healing and the remembrance of Beingness.

This is our natural state.

I simply say to someone “ I’m going to Give you a 15 second gift. Are you ready?”

If they say “sure”, I share it with them by closing my eyes. I put my hand on heart and say “Rest here in quiet, rest in God.’

Then I count silently for 15 seconds or I just guess and then say I “Amen” or and “So it is” or anything that is coming to me to express.

What I’ve noticed is people are searching for this inner peace and when you as a practitioner know this you can give this gift to others. It doesn’t feel religious or even too! spiritual for most people. The ones I’ve done it with have all said “Thank you” and then we keep on talking or we’re finished.

You will find that you receive it even deeper when you share it.

This is sharing the Holy Instant.

You can practice the mechanics of the holy instant and learn much from doing so. Yet it’s shining and glittering brilliance, which will literally

Blind you to this world by its own vision, you cannot supply. And here it is, all in this instant, complete, accomplished and given wholly.

This video will show you other ways I practice the holy instant in my life that may be helpful …

I love you.

Bill

I would love to hear from you! I invite you to try this out in your life and then post your comments below on your experience. You can give yourself a 15 Second Gift of peace and healing or you can offer it to someone else.

As a long time student/teacher of A Course in Miracles, I had heard of the story about Bill Thetford wanting to hear the Voice of Jesus the same way Helen Schucman heard it.

The way I heard the story is that Bill asked Helen to ask Jesus what he should do. The way I heard it is that Jesus told Helen to tell Bill that he should start every day with the words “Lord, here I am.”

Well, this is not exactly the way the story actually happened, as I just found out this morning.

This morning I happened to open up the book Absence from Felicity by Ken Wapnick and it landed on the exact page that tells the story of this incident. Ken writes: “The idea of Helen’s asking help for Bill (and others) remained an important issue for her.”

Below are Helen’s notes about what actually happened with this “Lord, here I am” story  – this is Jesus speaking.

I LOVE this – because this is precisely and exactly what I have a tendency to do – get part of the answer and then disconnect and stop listening. Then I decide I can figure out the rest myself. Jesus says concentration and confidence are needed.

So this isn’t really a message for Bill Thetford. It’s a message for me.

And perhaps it’s a message for you if you have been frustrated with not being able to consistently and clearly hear God’s Voice.

Enjoy!

Jesus to Helen: I can’t answer where he (Bill) asks amiss. When he asks right I have answered. He has a tendency to get part of the answer and decide himself when to disconnect. He should ask if that’s all. Since I don’t know when he’s going to ring off I have to be very short and even cryptic. It chops messages up too much.

There is also interference from three major areas:

1. He doesn’t have much real confidence that I will get through. He never just claims his rights. He should begin with much more confidence. I’ll keep my promises, but you (Helen) do not act as if you really expect him to …

2. He has to learn better concentration. His mind flits about too much for good communication. Suggest a very short phrase like “Here I am Lord” and don’t think of ANYTHING else. Just pull in your mind slowly from everywhere else and center it on these words. This will also him the realization that he (Bill) really IS here. He’s not too sure.

3. Tell him to be sure not to mistake your (Helen’s) role. If he overreacts to or over evaluates you as a person, both of you will be in danger (from your own guilt)

I would love to hear from you! Please post in the comment area below. What’s your listening practice? How is your concentration? How is your confidence (that God is with you and that’s God’s Voice will get through)? Do you stay quiet long enough to receive the whole message? Or do have a tendency like Bill to “disconnect” and “ring off”?