Posted on 03/11/2024 5:22:36 PM PDT by Lazamataz
Hello everyone! I am forming a ping list/community here, on Free Republic, that is intended to support, encourage, and mentor upcoming writers and connect them with professionals.
Please contact me here and ask to be part of this community and its related ping list.
EXIT TWENTY-SIX ~ THE HEART AND SOUL OF YOUR LION
Alexander the Great once said, “I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep. I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.”
When faced with life’s difficulties, two of the more popular bits of advice you’re often told are, “Listen to the little voice in your head,” and “Follow your heart.” Both are well-meaning, as the intent is to seek your own intuitive guidance. To look within.
The two sources of inner knowing, however, couldn’t be more diametrically opposed to one another. It’s like seeking wisdom from both a lion and a sheep. The lion, of course, is your heart, or actually, your soul. The sheep is your conscious mind. In short, your lion feels, and your sheep thinks.
That sheep is the little voice in your head that tells you, “You can’t do this,” “They’ll laugh at you,” or “You don’t deserve it.” It’s chock full of the things that you’ve read, heard, and experienced in the past. And when it comes to making a decision, it needs to classify it as either right or wrong, good or bad, reward or regret.
Unfortunately, your sheep considers the world while purely in survival mode. Hesitation, anxiety, and disbelief largely originate from there. The lion, your soul, operates through its spiritual connection to God and knows your true abilities, as well as your divine purpose in life. Your brave lion says, “I want to do this,” “I’m going to speak up for that,” or “I deserve it.”
The lion is modest, however, and doesn’t have a roar that screams out you should or shouldn’t do something. It’s well connected to that gift of free will from the Father, you see.
Guidance from your lion is more of a steady undertone that’s always there, but just below the constant bleating of your sheep. It can be a physical feeling of warmth or an emotional feeling of excitement for the possibilities of a decision. You sense what’s right and wrong throughout your body, don’t you?
As a baby, you survived by the natural inclination to follow your heart. Your sheep didn’t make decisions. It wasn’t even alive yet. You didn’t have the experiences of life or the supposed “wisdom” that the mind would need for making choices.
Instead, your infant decisions were based on your feelings, or your lion - your heart and soul. If you felt happy, you giggled. If you were tired, hungry, or angry, you cried. At no time did you consider how it looked to others. You only knew your lion. Over time, the instinct to follow your heart began to fade. It happened as social “norms” were learned and your personality became based on not how you feel, but how you think. Not only did this come from society, but also from the expectations of behaviors from your family and friends.
So while your lion knows what to do, the sheep thinks it knows what to do. Well, at first, anyway. Maybe it’s sure one moment, but not so sure the next. Then, it's sure again. The sheep constantly goes back and forth between decisions based on survival, which creates fear and anxiety, and most times, inaction. Anytime you feel caught up in such an internal struggle, you can bet the sheep, the conscious mind, is responsible, and not the lion. Not your heart and soul.
Once you realize the sheep, the little voice in your head, is just trying to survive, a whole new world opens up to you. Yet you really have no choice but to listen to it, do you? It’s there. You constantly hear it, even now as you read these words. But listening is far, far different than following, isn’t it?
How do you follow instead of listen? Well, it’s easier said than done. Listening to your mind, your thoughts, your sheep, is deeply ingrained in your life, after all. Start by doing what feels natural to you. Maybe that’s more involvement in the church or learning to play the piano. It doesn’t really matter what your feelings-based decisions are.
When you do things that intuitively bring excitement and purpose to your life, you begin to live once again within your heart and soul. You are closer to God. While you may have to listen, stop believing everything said by your sheep. The more you stop paying attention to all the doubt and fear it offers, the more you’ll find it no longer controls you.
Living your life from your heart and soul, the lion, will feel right. You’ll soon begin to trust your gut, or your feelings and intuitions, instead of the doubts offered by your sheep. Do this and watch the world unfold in awesome growth, peace, and purpose, instead of living a cold, rigid existence built on fear and anxiety.
You can do this...with the heart and soul of your lion.
Please add me. About a year ago I became a weekly columnist for Bionews.com so I guess I fit.
EXIT FORTY-THREE ~ COWARDS, VILLAINS, AND FAITH
There are times in life, ugly times, which can change a personality. If those times come too often, or too heavy, you might find that you’ve become unrecognizable to everyone, including yourself.
Don’t despair. With faith, you can once again bring yourself back to a place of peace and purpose. The true account of two errant men that follows will verify that it’s been done by even the most implausible of people.
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Over the centuries, their association has been written about and read many times. They were teacher and student, with one literally altering the course of his life to follow the other. It was a true giving and receiving experience where the teacher unselfishly guided and provided for his apprentice.
Then came the teacher’s hour of need. Although guilty of no real crime, he was arrested. Suddenly, it was neither safe nor wise to be known as this man’s follower. A crowd gathered and someone singled out the student, exclaiming to all that this man was an associate of the captured man. Then, the apprentice became afraid for his own life and repeatedly shouted, “I do not know this man.”
The student fled from the accusers, attempting to keep himself safe. He succeeded but, in reality, there was no place to escape the guilt and shame that came from being a coward. A few hours later, his devoted teacher was badly beaten, flogged, and put to death.
You could assume the apprentice never amounted to much in life. After all, the shameful label of coward should have remained with him for the rest of his time. Instead, this denying apprentice would become one of the most acclaimed leaders of all time in his mentor’s teachings. He actually rose above his shame to become someone who was admired and followed by so many others.
Now, there was another man during these times that was admired by many and was certainly no coward. And although he never met the teacher before his death, this villainous man made it his life’s mission to destroy his work. He went as far as finding, arresting, and putting to death those that dared follow the teacher.
Like the coward who would become a prominent leader, this heinous man also turned out to be another who defied man’s reason. On the road to town one day, a chance encounter with faith caused a change in his heart. As a result, he would become one of the world’s most famous and admired authors.
How is such a powerful, positive change possible? How could a coward rise from such guilt and shame to become a man of courage? How could a villain become an ally and a man of faith? Well, according to the testimony of both, each was visited by the teacher in the flesh after he was savagely put to death, and that altered their lives forever.
It was the Apostle Peter who shamefully denied Jesus three times in his hour of need. Yet Peter would become the first official leader of the Christian Church. It was the Apostle Paul who first sought out and persecuted Christians. Paul would then go on to spread the Christian Church to the outermost regions of his known world and authored more books of the Bible than any other man.
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These are amazing stories for sure. When you think about them, however, if God created the universe, who else is more capable of transforming hearts and turning cowards into men of bravery and villains into allies?
If life has taken you to a place inside where you don’t want to be, or into a broken person you never imagined, faith will change your heart.
I often think I might have a story or two that is waiting to be explored, but I'm not motivated enough to put down the books I'm reading to create my own...
Thanks!
Urine.
(You’re in)
Well, what a relief ;-)
Laz,
I write terribly boring but OSHA, CSB & MSHA approved procedures & manuals....
not very exciting stuff, but I hope you’d include me in the guild.
Thanks
Another bump - Another Exit (Chapter) from my book, Digest of the Broken Road Traveler
EXIT EIGHT ~ DIAL IN THE GOOD STATIONS
You’ve surely experienced driving between towns in your car when the radio station you’ve been enjoying fades out. Why? Because you’re moving away from the source of the broadcast. The antenna that sends out the radio frequency is back in another town that you’ve purposely left behind.
If you do nothing with your radio dial, you might soon only hear annoying static. Or maybe you begin to hear several frequencies battling each other and belting out nothing but a confusing garble of inaudible noise. Knowing there’s a new town on the horizon, though, you begin retuning your dial, searching, finding, and then leaving it set to some new program that hopefully moves you.
Your soul is very much like your car radio. It, too, receives frequency signals from broadcast stations found along the waypoints of your life. Your conscious mind is the driver that listens to what’s being offered, based on where you are in life and where you’ve set your listening dial.
You can choose to listen to a myriad of stations as you move along your life’s journey. Some will broadcast programs that offer faith, hope, growth, and joy. Other stations transmit only despondency, doubt, confusion, and fear. Others, still, offer nothing but mindless dribble. Life is filled with endless offerings for a being granted free will by the Father.
To that end, your soul receives all those signals, whether good or bad, and presents them to you as a choice on your radio dial. What stations that you, the driver, or the conscious mind, tunes or retunes to is solely up to you.
Sadly, most drivers have absolutely no idea they even have a radio dial, or that they can change the station at all. They just go about life while accepting and listening to whatever’s being played at the moment.
Some desire positive support but are only tuned to negative frequencies and wonder why they can’t find happiness. It’s like desiring to hear rock music when the radio dial is set to a talk show format.
Some drivers move between waypoints and, as their signal fades, just accept the mind-numbing static that plays. Because of this, their journey seems boring and meaningless, but they just keep driving along.
As they approach the next town, however, their radio begins picking up a fresh signal on the same dial setting. Soon, a new program plays loud and clear. Unfortunately, this one is negative, with nothing that offers the driver hope and happiness. And, with no understanding of how to change the station, their life becomes a very sad journey.
How can you learn to change the radio station along your life’s journey? Train your conscious mind to always be aware of what’s playing. Focus on changing your thoughts from bad to good. Begin to become aware of when it’s fading or playing something that doesn’t serve you well. In those moments of realization, consciously adjust your radio dial.
You certainly want to change your dial to something pleasant and inspiring, right? But do it ever so gently, at first. Don’t try to force it. It’s actually better to let a bad broadcast play out than it is to fight against it. That only creates anxiety and tension in your mind. And if you remain consciously aware of what’s playing, you can take away as much positive growth from the bad as you can from the good.
Using your conscious awareness is always the best way to keep your radio dial tuned to what you want and need to hear. To that end, when you do hear it, remember to express gratitude and appreciation to your soul for making available that which you desire to hear.
With conscious effort, you can tune your soul’s radio, and your mind’s radio dial, into an inspirational way of experiencing life. You’ll have a full understanding that your soul takes in all frequencies and freely offers them for your use.
Tune your dial to a station that’s aligned with positive growth.
Please add me to the list. I’ve always heard, “Write what you know”, but I don’t know if I know anything anyone would want to read...
You can put me in the “Writers Guild of Free Republic”. I’m returning to writing.
How are you doing these days, my friend?
-Jeff
I’m doing well sir! I’ll put you in the Guild. BTW, if you want to see a draft of where I’m at on this novel, I’ll send you a copy. Send me your email address by Freepmail, I’ll shoot you a copy.
I have often reflected on the books by Horatio Alger. He wrote after the civil war when many fathers were missing and influenced a whole generation of young men in turbulent times.
His common theme is “a little a little good deed leads to success.” A message that influenced a whole generation of men.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/168
I as a kid I read a lot and remember these books from estates. Very few people of my age remember them or were influenced by them.
I have often though they need to be republished for the current generation of young boys. The crap that goes into young minds these days needs to be replaced with something good. I support a ministry to Haite and at one thime thought of translating and giving them to young boys as an experement.
Anyway, just a reminder to all of us that it is going to take a generation to change things and we need to put new thoughts in young minds.
The “rags to riches” books were a successful social experiment in my look at history.
Me: Cool. Making the cross sign and a shallow half-kneel motion.
Here I sit on the pooper, giving birth to an Illinois State Trooper.
Are you asking to be put on the ping list?
Is your umlaut broken?
Unfortunately my writing is on the level of “Go Dog Go”.
Serious writers use professional tools. Here’s what I use for novels:
Scrivener
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/
Beautiful, full-featured development environment.
Price: one time charge of $59.00.
30 Day Free Trial (a “day” is opening the program once; e.g: if you open it every other day it will last for two months.)
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Although Scrivener also works fine for screenplays, my need for specific functionality motivated me acquire a different tool for screenwriting:
Final Draft
Price: one time charge of $199.00.
Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules for Good Writing
My most important rule is one that sums up the 10. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. - Elmore Leonard
With any art form, it’s important to learn from a master, and while it’s smart to study many different writers, it’s not a bad idea to focus on your favorite writer, the one you most enjoy reading. Immerse yourself, read all his/her works, repeatedly, studying how that author presents material.
Now emulate that work within your own until you have mastered that style. Then use that foundation as a point of departure and develop your own style.
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