Wow — my new website is beautiful and complete! There’s a great story here and it all goes back to Christmas Day 2007. That was the day I met Joey, the person who redesigned the site for me, during our morning shift at the Grand Avenue coffee shop we were both on the schedule for.  Back on that fateful December day, I never would have guessed that Joey would become such a huge part of my route to going public and teaching forgiveness. At that time, I was working two jobs, 65 hours a week, and was really reeling from the effects (in truth, the non-effect) of publishing my first book through a Print-on-Demand company. It was a little over a year after Earth Angel had come out and not only was I not making enough money to write and teach full time, I was making no money from the book. That day would mark the beginning of an ongoing friendship with Joey and literally years of his encouragement of me and my work. His fiancée Claire, a designer, has created the cover of Soulmates & Chakra Mirrors (to print in June of 2011) and it is truly a work of art. She has a gift for seeing the potential of a manuscript in her mind and creating basically a tapestry of the essence of the book: Claire told me when we met in January to look together on line at various covers of other books to see what kind of style and colors I might like that she wanted to read the book first before sitting down to make a cover for it. She said that a designer who has inspired her recommends this as research for all artists who are designing the cover of a book. She also explained that the reason a book cover will often look like it was ripped from a template is because the designer almost never reads the manuscript first in order to learn not only what it is about, but what the author is about. When you see this gorgeous cover, you will know that she truly figured out what I am about!

And Joey was the one who sat me down and truly explained why blogging and having a website with wordpress (or some other type of integrated blog) is imperative to establishing and maintaining a core following. In this spirit of giving me excellent free advice, he offered to redesign my website for me at a discounted rate. I am so thankful, not only for Joey’s generosity and the beauty of this website and how accurately it reflects my own personality and soul, but for the odd and seemingly random times that I would run into him or Claire or the two of them around town, sometimes at coffee shops, sometimes just walking down the street, but always at a time where their vision of my future was more aligned with God’s vision of my future than my own was.

One rainy, cold and dreary day back in the spring of 2009, I got on the bus to go to work an hour later than my habitual 5-times-a-week schedule. Joey’s car happened to break down that same morning and he got on several blocks later to take the very same bus to work,  when he would otherwise have driven there. He asked me how my writing was going and I asked how his writing was going and how Claire was doing — the usual catching up. But I was also feeling sad: I was doing so well at work, and by “well” I mean making good money by successfully motivating debtors to repay their debt and earning a remarkable monthly bonus for my collection efforts, that I had been working overtime and had let writing completely fall by the wayside. (Joey, I don’t even think I ever told you about this — but it is pretty cool how you always appeared whenever I lost my compass.) I took my vacation time a month later and once again, rededicated myself to finishing S&CM. Fast forward to June of 2010 during a fantastic rain storm at the Tea Garden, where Joey happened to be picking up a drink for Claire to bring it to her at work: in an ironic twist, I had all the funds necessary to publish and promote the book but it wasn’t ready yet, I explained during our brief chat before the downpour hit.

But the whole truth was that I didn’t want to go public. I have affectionately named this reluctance — and ambivalence — in lightworkers to shine their light “Dimmer Switch Syndrome” and we explore in depth this tendency to submissively dim our light in S&CM: the reason we do it is to avoid hurting other people by reminding them that life is unfair, that we have achieved our goals and are doing well while they may be in the midst of pain and struggle. When we prevent our own success, we also protect ourselves from empathically soaking up the pain others may feel if our happiness were to remind them of their unhappiness. We will then feel their sadness as if it were our own because of our high degree of empathy, and until and unless we know how to forgive ourselves for hurting others by shining our light – even though we had zero intent to hurt anyone this way – we will keep on dimming our light for a wholely logical reason: to prevent the pain it may cause others (or ourselves, by proxy). This summertime run-in with Joey was like a little hug from God via Joey: he again asked me why I wasn’t on Twitter and Facebook yet and repeated that Claire was still totally up for giving me a reduced rate on cover design. This was the turning point. What followed was six months of clarity and devotion (minus the month of September which was filled with shoulder and neck pain from sitting at the laptop for hours a day – thank God for my chiro who had me out of pain in five adjustments and feeling back to normal in one month) culminating at the end of the year with a joyful plan for 2011: just after the holidays, Joey offered to redesign my site, Claire and I got started on brainstorming for the cover and soon S&CM will be available on Amazon. I also plan to read it aloud and put that recording for sale on itunes (via tunecore) for those who prefer to listen to their books. Look for some entertaining videos on youtube as well — I’ll tweet when they’re ready. I’m especially looking forward to making one about the chakra mirrors. They are fascinating.

My mission is to teach as many people as I can how to forgive in my lifetime and I will use this site, prayer vigils, peace gatherings, books, audio books and music and any other method of communication to teach people how to forgive. I have some controversial views but those are my own. The message I am here to deliver on behalf of God is that the first step to solving all problems — whether political, social, or international – is forgiveness because forgiveness opens the heart and fills it with God’s Love. Remember, people whose hearts are open – those who can feel God’s Love – do not take actions that cause others pain. When we give the desire for other people’s happiness (their ability to feel God’s Love, which is Joy) up to God, in the form of a prayer, regardless of what they have done, are doing, or are planning to do in the future, we are forgiving them. We are filled with Love and so are they. We are healed of pain and sadness and so are they. Forgiving daily is the most important action you can take if you desire world peace. Humanity’s collective heart opens every time we join in this simple prayer and the space and time between today and the day World Joy arrives shrinks.

If you pray only one prayer each day, let it be this one, in the morning:

God, I join in prayer with the Circle of Angels that perpetually surrounds the Earth and envelops it in a cocoon of divine love. Please let everyone on Earth be healed of all pain and sadness and filled with Joy by the power of your Love.

^i^ ^i^ ^i^

 Angel blessings to you! And thank you for taking the time to read my blog. Please join me in the forum for more interaction and networking. And if you are interested in either Claire or Joey’s services, just click on their names to be redirected to their sites.