God said:

Your basic heart is pure. Then interference accrues. Static takes over. The individual, the seeming owner of the body, starts to feel frail and unprotected. This is you. Admit this.

Then the entity known as ego steps in as your defender, and you become resistant to love. You embrace the fear of being offended. You are en garde. You are ready to duel at the drop of a hat. No one is going to take advantage of you. No one is going to get the better of you. Ego won’t let that happen. At these times, ego rules the roost. It is like you are the King or Queen, and others must be prepared to kiss your feet, or else, you deign in heart: “Off with their heads.”

You hold on to believing that you are in the right and that you must fight to prove it. You become self-righteous when you are, in fact, defeating yourself. This is what is meant by shooting yourself in the foot. This is what is meant by sabotaging yourself. This is what is meant by cutting off your foot to fit the shoe. This is nailing your foot to the floor. This is trying to hold life in place, and, you, right or wrong, in the forefront, a supreme being who can do no wrong and must defend himself to the end. This has been your practice on more than one occasion. Yes, dear ones, you may feel another is slandering you, yet it is you slandering your True Self.

HJ: Developing self-confidence is not so much about force as it as about clearing away all of that which stands in the way of you experiencing your true self.  Because your true self is pure love—is divine—and wherever pure love and the divine exist, there is never a lack of confidence.  There is simply awareness of the greatness from which you emerge and that is you.

– Truth

A Change That Leads to Unconditional Self-Confidence

By Alison Breen | Becoming Superfluid

“Kindness in words creates confidence.” ~Lao Tzu

Does your life feel like an endless experience of struggle and stress? That while you have moments of reprieve, they are transient and short lived?

By Paul Brundtland
Guest Writer for Wake Up World

Guess what The Beatles, Buddha and the brain have in common? Here are some clues:

It really worked for the Beatles, making them even more successful than before… Buddha said if you want to find peace in meditation, you should do this with any thought that comes into mind… You can reprogram your brain if you do this when an unwanted or unpleasant emotion or sensation comes up…

The answer to all 3… Let it be!

Are you obsessing over something you know is just a waste of your valuable time? Does your back seem to act up whenever you do something that most people can do easily, and neither doctors nor therapists can help? Are you having trouble getting over a break-up that you know had to happen? All of these conditions can be helped by applying that little phrase mentioned above. In this article I’ll describe why and how we should let uncomfortable emotions “be” if we wish to be rid of them.

“Lies are a little fortress; inside them you can feel safe and powerful. Through your little fortress of lies you try to run your life and manipulate others. But the fortress needs walls, so you build some. These are the justifications for your lies. You know, like you are doing this to protect someone you love, to keep them from feeling pain. Whatever works, just so you feel okay about the lies.” ~William Paul Young

Many of us have learned to wear a fake psychological mask to show others that we are something that we actually are not, lying about ourselves and doing our best to convince others of our false persona. This, however, causes tremendous pain and suffering to us, because constant lying is only helping us to feel stressed from constantly suppressing ourselves, which prevents us from living a life of peace and tranquility.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes. ~Oscar Wilde

How many times have you wished to accomplish things but you are afraid to give them a try because you are afraid of mistakes that could lead you to failure? Many of us are so afraid of making mistakes that you don’t try anything new, thinking that failure is a bad thing that we should always try to avoid. Here you will learn that this is not so, and you’ll come to know some important tips on how to stop being afraid of making mistakes anymore, embrace failure and use it for achieving success. So here they are:

1. You are not perfect.

“All those who love Nature she loves in return, and will richly reward, not perhaps with the good things, as they are commonly called, but with the best things of this world-not with money and titles, horses and carriages, but with bright and happy thoughts, contentment and peace of mind.” ~John Lubbock

Nature can be a powerful healing force for all of us, only if we realize it and harness it for our own benefit. According to recent scientific studies, spending time in nature can help boost our energy, happiness, creativity, memory and even self-esteem. Unfortunately, most people in the Western world spend most of their time sitting inside a building, and they rarely go in the countryside to enjoy nature and receive all of the amazing physical and psychological benefits it has to offer.

Here are some recent research findings from scientific studies that prove the healthy benefits spending time in nature can have to your mind:

Nature can increase your energy and happiness

The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere, they’re in each other all along. ~Rumi

All human beings desire to love and be loved, and those who have found true love have found true meaning and purpose in life. However, to find an ideal partner with whom one can open his or her heart wide is tremendously difficult for most of us, mostly because we don’t know how to recognize if they are meant for us. For this reason, you’ll read here some basic revealing signs that will help you recognize your ideal partner.

When you meet your ideal partner:

1. You will feel as if you know each other forever.

Source: www.trueactivist.com | Original Post Date: July 14, 2015 –

Photographer Aaron Draper believes it is the duty of artists to use their talents to illuminate social issues and inspire change.

Do you believe art can change the world? Photographer Aaron Draper does, and he’s using that passion to creatively capture lit portraits of California’s homeless population. For his Underexposed series, the artist and social activist is seeking to make those who dwell on the streets “as visually appealing as possible.”

He shared on his website that the beloved American author John Steinbeck is one of his inspirations: