Its like swimming back to the sinking ship because its Too Cold

Posted on November 7, 2014 by Rod's World

There are hundreds of images of freighters sinking on Google Images but its not the same as a fully rigged ship, the grand masters of the sea during our formative exploratory years entering the murky depths. This is like the statement above that was made at our last session of Raw, there are no limits. I googled it and it seems its an original so kudos to the member who came up with it.http://changemakersfestival.org/event/raw-there-are-no-limits/.

It was prominent during the night and has stuck in my mind ever since, how many times am I guilty of this seemingly foolish practice. If I did not do this ever I would have lived a life full of wonder with no hiccups. But there are many masters modern and ancient who point to the fact that this sort of life leaves you short of a life well lived. If we are always sailing on a flat ocean with no storms how do we know if we have risked our all.

Helen Keller reminds us that “Life is a daring adventure or it is nothing ” Do we remember those days in our lives where we just got up went to work for 10 hours, came home and fell asleep or do we remember those days we spent realising a new possibility that could transform our relationship to life.

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in everydirection, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than youever dreamed yourself to be.”
~ Patanjali – the author of Yoga Sutra

It helps to have a purpose in your live, as Patanjali, the author of Yoga Sutra intimates, the forces that will become available to you are immeasurable and what you will be able to achieve is unimaginable to your mind, it is more located in your heart. My purpose is the ethos of Interculturalism Love and Respect for All, Everyone Included https://www.facebook.com/groups/Interulturalism/ It took me 59 years of journeying through addictions, mental illnesses, Buddhism, meditation and banal Government jobs to get there but it was well worth the journey, I intend to transform the world with your help.

Zig Ziglar is considered one of the greatest American Success coaches and his quote ” People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well neither does bathing – That’s why we recommend it daily ” hits home as to what it takes. Get up, do stuff that has your purpose move forward, don’t expect it to magically happen, being in action is what it takes, the law of Attraction does not leave action out of the picture.

I couldn’t wish to be an astronaut as a child because they didn’t exist, I wanted to be a Ships captain because we used to go down to our Aunty Ruby’s farm outside Leopold and you could see the ships in Corio Bay, I’m not a Ship’s captain, the closest I became to a man of the trades was an apprentice French Polisher, the rest of the time I spent behind a desk. As I said I have found a purpose and I’m sure the child back in Pakenham when it wasn’t on the Metro line would be proud of me.

“I love you, not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.”
~ Roy Croft

Roy Croft is a little known poet who wrote a poem called Love which begins with the above line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Croft, I believe that this line applies to both friendships, self friendship and other friendship, heck you could probably replace friendship with love if you wished to. You will keep going back to the sinking ship if you do not have both of these in your life, the water will get awfully cold very quickly with out them.

“I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.”
~ Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey is loved by millions of women worldwide for her earthy summation of day to day events and is a living example of the above statement. Willing to share it all she is also a disciple of Zig Ziglars statement “You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” So if you do not wish to have to swim back to the Sinking ship take some of the advice that these modern and ancient thought leaders have to offer

Namaste until next time my friends

Fire In the Belly!!

Posted on November 4, 2014 by Rod's World

What do 105 men do at a weekend mens empowerment event for 3 and a half days. I went along after having attended a total of three mens empowerment circles with an attendance of 4 people at each. having created all the worst case scenario’s of woad wearing rituals and group screamings I enrolled because everything that frightened me about it were the reasons I should attend.

My friend from a previous retreat Michael also enrolled and we drove down together to Grantville Lodge http://uccamping.org.au/grantville-lodge/ to a magnificent view of Westernport Bay on the friday afternoon of the Cup long weekend. We found our sleeping places and settled in , Michael found out an old friend of his was in our cabin and I chatted to another of the participants who had had much more experience with men’s groups than I and his reassurances that it would cover all shades of grey helped me greatly.

We then had dinner and this was followed by the opening ceremony where an incredibly moving fire ceremony took place with the lighting of the event fire that would burn all weekend until the completion of the event. We then were split into our tribal groups, each named after a volcano, our’s was Corvo; http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/corvo-volcano.html , it seems this is in the Azores. I was with three of the presenters and a person who volunteered at Men events as a leader. Our group leader was a wild man who didn’t fancy wearing shoes. We had an hour to get to know each other so shared some of our stories at this first meeting.

They had announced the following days workshops at dinner and at 6.00 a.m. next day was Mandance and I am a dancer so I attended. The atmosphere was extraordinary with only male energy present and the presence of testerone was high, men have 4 times the testerone levels of women. I am frightened of barechested caveman like behaviour so this was confronting for me but as it went on I got to see it was all within the passion to dance as we were sacredly held through an ecstatic wave to reach a state of trance to gain inner peace.

Workshops during the day were to open the heart space through physical movement and groups that included quite a bit of role playing to allow this to happen. The first I attended was on a technique called Life Mechanics that allowed you to see where you spent time in the negative where it was just as easy to be positive.

followed by the life freeing talk on Procrastination and Distraction, Playing with our Power that had me see how easily I get distracted in life and what it costs me big time – http://www.davidnaylor.net.au/ . I finished the day with Non Voilent Communication a technique I had had a bit to do with several years ago, It all came back to me with the I statements taking responsibility and how you felt and making requests to resolve issues. http://www.nvcaustralia.com/index.php?action=trainer&id=68.

I forgot to mention that during this event I had a raging viral infection and slept through the Saturday night ceremony Heart Space. I asked my friend Michael on the drive home what it was like and he said it gave credibility to the statement from Avatar I See you and was one of the more special things he had been through.

Day two, I didn’t wake up until 6.40 so missed the 6.00 session and went to breakfast provided by the wonderful Sun Hyland and his team http://www.newearthcatering.com followed by a session on the dangers of porn by one of my Tribal group, it was confronting to see the role of it in our society, http://manenough.com.au/events/man-enough-november-workshop-2/ . There had also been drumming and juggling sessions during the day but my body was still not up to it. There was a session on the work of Byron Katie so I attended that, I love the work of Byron Katie and the four simple but empowering questions Is that true?, Can you absolutely know thats true, how do you feel when holding the story and Who would I be without this story can change your life if you stick to the script. http://www.thework.com/thework-4questions.php . The last workshop I did for the day was Financial Sabotage, an inquiry into how we sabotage ourselves and what would be possible if we stopped doing so .

We then moved to the cabaret, a celebration of men’s talent, lots of singer songwriters, comedians but the highlight was the interpretive dance by our 92 year old elder, he gave us a Ted talk of his wisdom at each break, if only we all could be so lithe at the age of 92. My friend Michael said to me this should end soon, its one o’clock. I didn’t believe him because it had been such great entertainment, but it was.

To the final day when we said goodbye to our Tribal group whom I had fallen deeply in Love and Respect with, we had an hour and a half to complete and team Corvo embraced each other and declared themselves inside a group hug, we were gifted a final breakthrough in this session by one team member it was humbling and empowering that we trusted each other that much in such a short time. We then had lunch and came to the closing ceremony where the group thanked the committee for organising it, the group leaders for being a stand for us all, Sun and his team for the great service and then a crazy hand slap to everybody chaos ruled but it was beautiful. About 20 inspired men stood forward to organise next years event including my friend Michael, i’m sure he will be great.

The main thing I got out of this event that it is OK to be a conscious man in 2014 in Melbourne Australia because there is plenty of other brothers out there and we will transform how men relate in society. Thank you Menergy 2014 http://www.menergy.org.au/wp/

Namaste until next time, my friends

When we dare to be Powerful

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Rod's World

When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid or not – Audre Lorde

I read this quote this morning in my friends Thea Westra’s book Time for my Life 365 Stepping Stones, 2843 Life Power Boosters at your fingertips http://www.timeformylife.com. i think this is one of the best daily empowerment books on the market. A page for each day of the year that has a coaching, an action, a challenge, a quote, a clearing, a question and an affirmation on it, it never goes out of date because its not year based but day to day based. The quote called to me powerfully and never having heard of Audre Lorde I googled her.

Audre was a Caribbean-American writer, radical feminist, womanist, mother, lesbian and civil rights activists who believed our life mission is to speak our truth as this is what has let the world get into the situation it has today. Audre died in 1992 but her words are more relevant today than when written. I came across this rather lengthy quote but it is brilliant in its perception –

“I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you…. What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language.”

I began to ask each time: “What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?” Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, “disappeared” or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.

Next time, ask: What’s the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end.

And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.”

These inspiring words point me towards a call for us all to be in action, saying that its all too hard and not speaking your truth to avoid confrontation will not get it done. We will end up with more and more right wing governments who are driven by warmongers, coal barons, media moguls who have lost touch with the hearts of the people they are meant to serve. They will lock babies and children up in the name of keeping their counties safe, they will let major companies get away without paying taxes and let homelessness run rampant.

So should we take to the streets, only if you believe in it. Each of us has a different vision or passion that gets us up in the morning inspired to face the day. Mine is to have Love and Respect for All, Everyone included be the world paradigm. I’ve started implementing it through my open Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/Interulturalism and this blog. I’ve met people further down the path – Mastin Kipp with his http://www.The dailyLove.com, Danielle La Porte with her inspirational workbook The Desire Map http://www.daniellelaporte.com and Jeffrey Slayter with his Free Humanity movement -http://www.jeffreyslayter.com, each of them has a huge vision that they can speak in an elevator speech and then if you want to know more there is always the opportunity. They all are not silent and speak their truth, I’m getting better at it.

Namaste my friends until next time

Do you make enough requests?

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Rod's World

I have a promise to myself to write a blog every two days but missed out on it as I attended the Free Humanity weekend seminar led by Jeffrey Slayter http://www.jeffreyslayter.com on the recommendation of my friends Miroslav, Belinda, Paras and Mari who had spent the last few months travelling up to Byron Bay to do his courses. Free Humanity was coincidentally free so I instantly had concerns about background selling as I has spent 10 years attending Landmark Forum introductions that were also free.

I hopped on my Electric bike and rode down to Carlton and was surprised by the fact that I knew about a quarter of the crowd, friends from previous events Miroslav and co. had run, showing the faith we have in them, they are such beautiful people after all. After milling around and catching up with some of them we entered the room. Jeff spent an hour or so creating the space for him to led the weekend speaking of his background and his desire for the world to be free for humanity.

Having done this Jeff then moved on to the purpose of the weekend, to free each of us up to be the best we can be in every area of our lives. He made a statement that probably a lot of us had spent years working on our spiritual sides but had not spent a lot of time on learning how to value ourselves and make money from our knowledge. I know for me that this is true and for a lot of people I know in the spiritual field. How were we meant to shift this and be adept in all arenas? Well what occurred over the next two days was not what I expected.

Jeff had us look at areas in our lives where we are focussing on one thing which has put us out of balance with the other side of it, for me it was educating myself in the spiritual world and not focussing on my financial wellbeing. Each of us had our own version of it and Jeff was highly skilled at getting us see what yours was. We would meditate during each session to help clear our minds as health was one of the premises Jeff believes is important in living a vibrant life.

We also created our calling, This includes who you are going to be, what you are going to do, what you will have out of it and what emotion will it generate. Mine is –

I’m going to transform the world conversation to Love and Respect for All, Everyone Included.

I will do this via Social Media through the FaceBook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/Interulturalism/ and my blog I am an Interculturalist at http://www.Rodwill1707.com and having Intercultural Centres set up in every Local community in Australia for cultures to educate each other about the best they are.

I will travel to the six major energy points in the world, have a home in Australia and Costa Rica and I will have a soulmate to share my life with

The emotion this invokes in me is Bliss.

We also did breath work to release our fears from where they were entrapped in our bodies. The person I did this with laughed through the entire process so was obviously releasing something.

So to the final teaching and the reason behind the title of this blog. Requesting versus selling. Jeff intimated that requesting and asking are the two most powerful actions you can take, and that why a lot of us had little money was that we did not request closure for our services and did not value them highly enough. He requested that we learn to sell what we had to offer people and to build vehicles that expressed our talents and spiritual nature. That we not sell out and not do what we love doing. Working a full time job and part time dreams quickly becomes working your full-time dreams but you will never access this if you don’t give it a go. We all have plenty of experiences to teach others or we would not have been at the seminar so he implored us to get out there and start requesting.

Jeff has lots of other courses that cost money and yes he requested we enrol in them, I will when I get out of the financial situation my stories have kept me in.

Namaste till next time my friends.

Is there Hope?

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Rod's World

Why is this picture of runners in black and white, because it relates to a time in my past I was a member of Worldrunners, a running group who ran to spread the message of ending world hunger back in the early 90’s. When I joined the group I smoked 40 cigarettes a day and had not run for approximated 15 years since I left school. They were going to Moscow to run the Moscow Peace marathon, yes the 42 Kilometre jobbo, If one is going to put their foot in why not go the whole way.

I was at a party about a month later and I looked at the cigarette I was smoking put it out and declared that this will be the last smoke I ever have, on that day I gave up cigarettes and dope, i didn’t realise I was giving up the second but it was an added benefit. I thought it would be a good idea to run the melbourne marathon as I did not want to go all that way and appear like a dick not being able to do it. This meant I had to train through melbourne’s winter and back then it used to rain in Melbourne. I had a training partner named Gemma and when I didn’t answer the door two days in a row at 6 a.m. because it was pouring with rain she reamed me and we did the training it took to run from Frankston to Melbourme, every time I drive it i still shake my head that I used to be able to run that far. I ran it a second time when we got back into a headwind and driving rain just to prove marathon runners are a little bit crazy.

So off to Moscow we headed six months later not knowing a great deal about the country besides the fact that it was run by communists, this was the year before the wall came down. We nearly didn’t make the connecting flight in Narita Japan because the Toyko to Moscow flight was considered a domestic flight and we were waiting in International, a kind JAL official walked us through the lines that make Tullamarine’s look like it takes 5 minutes to check in. We arrived safely at Moscow to be told by our guide not to exchange too much money, the reason for this being he had a friend who gave you a better deal, the black market and Moscow mafia was rampant back then and I have heard it is still quite prominent to this day.

We had a few days to assimilate into Moscow lifestyle and visited the touristy sights the highlight being Gorky park where hundreds of circus performers did acrobatics all through the park. Come the day of the race we go down to the starting line to find out they were saying they did not have the Australian contingents entries. Linda, a wild Texan woman, part of the Worldrunners organisers would have none of this and we got to run. Moscow is a beautiful city with some amazing building and we set off along the river, being handed water by real life soldiers at the water stops. 35K in my knee decides to start popping out, and these two burly gentlemen says you can not come this far and not finish and carried me between them to the finish line, I gave one of them my runners as they were heaps better than what they were wearing and I had a spare pair.

We then went on our 30 days tour of the region, first stop was Tbilsi, capital of he federation Of Georgia. Tbisli is Georgian for warmth as it is located on a lot of hot springs and we all went off to experience the local fare which ended in us meeting our guide for the next few days as when we came out it was pitch black and the only place we could find that we recognised was Bar, they sold coffee and ice-cream as sale of alcohol to the public was banned. The two highlights of Tbilsi were the speech that a Georgian poet gave, we could not understand a word but were all in tears at the end and the underground clubs our new friend took us to. Georgian brandy is famous worldwide and they may not sell it but people certainly knew were to get it.

Next stop was Kiev, capital of Ukraine, they have a great tradition of having dancing in the public parks and we went there three nights in a row and danced with the locals, so much fun. We couldn’t work out why no body was swimming in the river until someone told us Kiev was downstream from Chernoybl, site of one of the worlds great nuclear disasters a few years before. e ran into the Australian youth rowing team in a park one day, its a small world. With the trouble between Russia and the Ukraine these days we were advised back then it was not wise to call Georgians or Ukrainians Russians, not much seems to have changed

Off to Leningrad, know known as St. Petersburg, this is where the two most memorable events of the trip occurred. We visited the Summer Palace, my main memory of this is not the half mile long stretch of solid gold statues that the Nazi’s pinched but the fountain of a duck, a dog, a hunter and the assistant blowing the horn with the cages that the people making the appropriates noise lived in. We were looking for Alex, a gold medallist athlete we had met in Moscow who ran an Athletic club and instead of finding him the hotel sent us to the ministry of sport. Linda, previously mentioned was not fussed at all and told them why we were there. We got a phone call telling us that we would be running down Nevetsky prospect the main thoroughfare at 5 pm that Friday. They had arranged to all. so the Minister for Sport, the mayor and about 20 people ran with us, the Australian Ambassador back in Moscow would not believe us until we showed him Photos, those things people used prior to smart phones.

The other thing that happened was the highlight of the trip for me. We had met Sergei, Lydia and Michael Jackson in a cafe, they wan’t to improve their English and worked out we were nor from Russia by our garish clothing. Lydia invited us to her place for dinner, spending precious money on the black market to buy us Western food so we felt at home, her toilet had been on the waiting list to fix the leak fir 10 months. We were due to catch the Leningrad to Moscow midnight express and Sergei was giving us a lift. We took off but seemed to be going the wrong way as we were going deeper and deeper into the High rise units that made up most of the accommodation in Leningrad. Sergei drove us to one of these unit blocks and gestured for us to wait. He came down 5 minutes later with his fiancee whom he said that he wanted her to meet us as she had given up hope and we proved that it still existed. It was getting awfully close to midnight and we arrived at the railway station 5 minutes after midnight. Miraculously the train was still there, good old Linda has convinced them to wait. AS the soldiers and officials approached the three of us Sergei stepped in and explained what had happened. We all got our photos taken with the Engine driver and the head of security in front of the train

The Berlin Wall came down the following year and we received a letter from Ivan, A Georgian teacher who slept on the verandah of his parent house with his wife and small child and who had organised a 2,000 people Worldrunners run the following year that he felt that actions like ours in coming to Russia had helped it happen. I don’t know if this was true but it was worth going to give lena, Sergei’s fiancee hope again.

namaste to next time, my friends

Do you Mean to Kill Them?

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Rod's World

My carbon footprint in getting around is fairly low, Walking , Pushbike and Public Transport. I used to ride a motor bike for a few years but had an accident whilst drunk driving and lost my license for two years and never got it back.

On my journey around our fair city of Melbourne I cannot but notice the laziness of the general public in disposing of rubbish. It is discarded everywhere but in the receptacles provided it would seem. Cigarette packets and cigarette butts , junk food containers and alcohol bottles seem to make up the majority of it pointing towards a certain kind of person being the main contributor to this malaise.

And what does this have to do with the cutie in the picture above, she is an albatross who lives on Midway Island. Fleetwood Mac in the 60’s wrote a magnificent instrumental about these birds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAefTj7GXwQ, they have survived happily on the Island for many years or have they. Where is Midway Island you ask, heres a map to give you an idea.

It s in the middle of the pacific island thousand and thousands of kilometres from the nearest land but this cute picture does not tell the harrowing tale of what is occurring on Midway Island these days. I attended the Sustainable Living Festival last year with my friend Kavisha and happened to be in BMW edge when there was a speaker by the name of Chris Jordan set down to speak. I forget the name of his talk but after being transfixed by the content not the subject matter. Chris is an American photographer with an interest in Environmental issues and had been producing a documentary about the albatrosses on Midway Island for the past few years.

Why he has been doing this is because we have been killing them with plastic. Adult albatrosses have been feeding their young with plastic gleaned from the ocean all those kilometres away and they are dying in their thousands. Here is a link to Chris sharing about the documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M9t2fm__K0. The only way the plastic gets in the ocean is because we as a race are too lazy to carry our rubbish with us to the nearest bin or to our homes to dispose of it in our own bins and it is washed into the ocean. Next time you are tempted to throw something away because there is no where to put it think of this image.

On my way walking to work or the market I have begun picking up rubbish as I come to it on the footpath knowing it will always be there because we are unthinking when it comes to the costs of dropping rubbish. I hope this little rant makes a few of you think.

Namaste until next time, my friends

Live better, Help often, Wonder More!!

Posted on October 18, 2014 by Rod's World

With a lot of my blogs I sit at my table in my kitchen and look around the room, How I choose The Sunday Assembly as my subject was that I was reading the article I got for us through my friend Paula, she is sub editor of the Northern leader newspapers in Melbourne Australia and they are always looking for an interesting article http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/central/abbotsfords-sunday-assembly-gathers-atheists-and-others-into-the-fold/story-fngnvlpt-1227092995319?nk=9e95699130ce2590a780890578c00898 I thought that we at the Sunday Assembly were one and she agreed.

So the best way to talk about Sunday Assembly is to tell Rod’s story as too how he became involved. I have a friend that I admire greatly, the always feisty Catherine Deveny read her great stuff at http://www.catherinedeveny.com/ who posted about this thing called Sunday Assembly and if you weren’t doing anything at 11 a.m. on a Sunday you should go along, so I did. I didn’t know about Atheism and no God as I’m a bit of a Deepak and Wayne fan and travel the spiritualist path and replace God with Gaia to make it okay when that word that reminds one of the Sunday School horrors rears its ugly head.

So I went along not knowing what to expect, to my surprise there were all age groups with a smattering of people wearing Atheist paraphernalia gathered in this hall in South Melbourne all waiting expectantly, The Dev came on and lead us singing one of the three songs that you do at the assembly. It was I come from a Land down Under and the next minute we were doing a Conga Line, Catherine has the ability to take you from point A to point Z very quickly. The speaker at this assembly was Ezra Bix https://www.facebook.com/ezrabix and he spoke on Wonder, one of the three premises of Sunday Assembly.

So a little bit of a history re how Sunday Assembly came about.

The Sunday Assembly started on a car journey to Bath when two comedians, Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans , realised that they wanted to do something that had all the best bits of church, but without the religion, and awesome pop songs.

The first version of this was in January 6th 2013, and though they weren’t expecting many people, the entire place was full. At the next Assembly there were 300. Then they had to go to two services a day. And then it went viral.

Now there are 28 Assemblies across the world (check here to find one near you), and it looks like there’ll be 100 by the end of 2014. It is the most exciting thing in the world.

People across the world were drawn to our simple values, clear message and excellent mission.

We are a godless congregation that celebrates of life.
We have an awesome motto: Live Better, Help Often and Wonder More.
A super mission: to try to help everyone find and fulfil their full potential.
An awesome vision: a godless congregation in every town city, or village that wants one.

We are dedicated to helping the people that attend, and the folk in the wider community, to make the most of this one life that we know we have. We harness fun and joy and wonder to build communities and to help others.

So who do we have speak at The Assemblies, wide and varied from asylum seekers who had made it to professors who spoke about the statistics of happiness. A few of my favourites, Frazer Kirkman on Mindfulness http://frazerk.net/ Trevor Young on having your own brand in the world of Social Media http://www.trevoryoung.me/, and the comedian Ben McKenzie http://labcoatman.com.au/ at the inspirational and very humorous talk on What would Doctor Who Do.

This month we have Dick Gross ex St. Kilda Mayor speaking about Ritual and a naming ceremony for one of our members new borns, its on the 26th October at 11 a.m. Its called The Grand Hello : A secular ceremony at the Collingwood Senior Citizens Hall behind Collingwood Town Hall in Hoddle Street. http://www.meetup.com/SundayAssemblyMelbourne/events/207136642/

Last of all we cannot forget our musicians who donate their time so lovingly, for two oof the past three months Tom Carty http://tomcarty.com/bio has been our resident musican Tom has an awesome project in mind, Busking for swags, he will pick a specific time and gather people together and when he has the money for a sway for a homeless person, about 70 bucks he will give it to the person.

Unfortunately I cannot make it but go along, bring your cake and have a great sing, be inspired and tell your friends.

Namaste till next time , my friends

Bliss Is my Essence!

Posted on October 7, 2014 by Rod's World

What makes your life thrive? I attended this amazing workshop on this subject this week called Thrive, funnily enough, going along not knowing what to expect. My friends Arion Light and Jules Sutherland have created this sacred space to help people access their vision and set out steps to have miracles occur in your life.

A courageous group of about 20 turned up, some with their vision pretty much worked out and others who where there to find words to express theirs. We go through life discovering things that inspire us but often do not go past that as we lack the support or knowledge on how to make them concrete.

The premise was offered that visions are not results driven but come from the heart because the head or mind can find all the reasons why they will not work. We did a breathing exercise to access our big vision, mine is to gift my book, Ten Words, transform a Life to the world by June 2015. I have always intended to write it but never saw it as a gift to the world so something shifted in the exercise.

As we meet monthly we then worked on a little vision for the month, something that would inspire us to fulfil our big vision, I chose to complete the first draft of the first two chapters, I only have the book title and the chapter names as I write this. I really don’t know how to turn ten words into 20 to 50,000 but as my phone buddy Kira said don’t think about the number of words just write them and see what happens.

We then moved onto the essence of the vision doing another breathing exercise to access this, its amazing how you can access your hearts essence when you focus on the breath and not the head. I have five core desired feeling form the work I do with Danielle La Porte: I am Peace, I am Bliss, I am Love, I am H.O.P.E. – Helping Other People Evolve and I am Abundance. Bliss kept resonating with me during this exercise so for this month my essence is bliss and my commitment is to write in a blissful state.

We then set out our core actions/practices out, I will be writing for half an hour each weekday and for two hours on Sunday and be in contact with Balboa Press about having my not yet completed book published.We then asked for help in regards to having our vision come into reality so I now have a phone buddy for a call each day at 7.30 a.m. to empower the day. I am feeling more and more blissful and its only two days into the month and loving my new Thrive community.

To contact Arion http://activationschool.com/ Jules http://blog.perpetualmojo.com.au/ and Danielle http://www.daniellelaporte.com/

Namaste to next time my friends

How to live your vision.

Posted on October 5, 2014 by Rod's World

I spent yesterday with six other courageous souls revealing and uncovering what it is that we would love to do in our lives to earn money and resolving the issues that prevent us from doing just that. This course aligns the heart of the spiritual entrepreneur with their purpose in life so they can begin to embody their full self in the business world and personal life. it was called getting paid for doing what you love https://www.facebook.com/events/1496549073934157/?ref_dashboard_filter=calendar

The course facilitators Miroslav Petrovic and Charmaine Adam skilfully took us through several life altering exercises, the first allowing yourself to shine, we were askers and witnesses in this process where we intuitively asked our partner questions and they got to express and create their visions for themselves, it was beautiful. Mine is : Love and Respect for All, Everyone Included and my mission is to set up Centres and run workshops to create this throughout the world.

We then looked at the Potential Blocks and resistance that exist in out psyche and outer world and what is rehired to change to resolve them. Mine is I am an unqualified dreamer and no one will listen to me, to resolve this I have to get in touch with how unique my life journey has been. Other ways I sabotage myself is to get sick via mental illness, not follow up on opportunities, and do too much at once.

We didn’t get to the third process which was about our relationship to the external factors that may restrict us reaching our visions, we were asked would we let ourselves have them and who may be able to nuetralise us reaching them in our external world. As I am dependant on the government for my income at the moment this one came up so I have sworn to be off them and earning my own income by the end of 2015.

Next was the major process of the day , Charmaine has developed the Serenity Vibration healing training that allows you to release the negative blocks that permeate your thinking http://www.essentiallyexotique.com/serenity-vibration-healing-svh/ and we were given access to these powerful clean-zings in a dignified empowering manner.

I left the day with the following statements:

I am social media manager For the Darebin Intercultural Centre

I have ten years experience in managerial and editorial roles

Currently writing a book called Ten Words: Transform a Life and have been approached by Hay House

and the people I typically work with are visionary decision makers.

When this course is held again I would highly recommend that you get on board the journey that is Get paid doing what you Love. To contact Miroslav https://www.facebook.com/myky.petrov and Charmaine http://www.essentiallyexotique.com/serenity-vibration-healing-svh/

Namaste to next time my friends

Do you write Love Letters?

Posted on October 1, 2014 by Rod's World

I write Love letters, yes by hand to anonymous people.

I took up the practice when I came across a Ted talk http://www.ted.com/talks/hannah_brencher_love_letters_to_strangers The idea of receiving letters from strangers appealed to me so I looked up the website as you do https://moreloveletters.squarespace.com and signed up about 12 months ago.

I have written about 60 love letters in that time and have had the gift of expressing unconditional love as it cannot have conditions, you do not know them. I’ve written to China, The Philippines, the good old U.S of A., England, Germany and Australia where I live. You are told a little background about the person and away you go. Write on!!

I have also taken up the practice of writing Love Letters to people I know as well, Its quite a beautiful thing to do , to acknowledge the reasons you love another person in your community. If I don’t have their address I email them one, but much prefer using my colour crayons as it appeals to my inner child.

I use distinctly Australian cards that an organisation I sponsor, Indigenous Community Volunteers www.icv.com.au produce. I get about three packs for an additional $20 in sponsorship, so that covers me for three months and its all tax deductible.

So some questions for you –

1. Who do you love that you would take time to write a letter to?

2. Are you open enough to receive a bunch of love letters from strangers?

3. Are you open enough to receive a love letter from family or friends?

4. What is stopping me doing this beautiful practice?

If you want any easy access to self love I recommend you take this on, if five letters is too much you don’t have to write to everyone, just as many as your heart and soul can handle, it will open them up in ways you cannot foresee.

Namaste till next time , my friends