You are good

i want you to be happy. do whatever you like. i know you will harm no one. it is not in your nature to. people will tell you otherwise but it's not true.

trust the goodness of the universe and those around you. there is nothing to gain from fearing them and much to lose. don't believe those that tell you to be afraid. they are just afraid themselves.

trust your own goodness. you are a strong force of benevolence that can overcome any obstacle. you have a history of solving difficult problems, and i know you will continue to do so spectacularly. you simply cannot lose.

drop the walls imprisoning your true self. let it out and watch it enlighten and enliven the world.

Cholesterol--Don't Think Without It

Cholesterol may promote neuronal communication. Maybe clogged arteries are a sign that the heart wants to speak. http://sageke.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/2001/7/nw26

Love and Debt

Abraham-Hicks recommends forgiving debts as a means to tap into one's own abundance waiting in escrow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MCcBT5-ai8&feature=youtube_gdata

Byron Katie vs Abraham-Hicks

Byron Katie's inquiry holds beliefs in a quarantined mental space so that one may determine the effects the belief has on emotion, thinking, behavior, and general well-being. It isolates beliefs and deals with them one at a time so as not to overwhelm the subject with the spiral of rationalizations that may occur in free-association.

The inquiry is an experiment in which the subject creates a model of himself with the belief and then without the belief. The way the questions are phrased invite the subject to actually feel the feelings generated by the belief rather than hold them in an indifferent, cerebral way. This is in contrast to the way most of us feel feelings: we generally latch on to the feeling first and then activate cerebral thinking to manufacture reasons as to why we should feel that way. We thus amplify and prolong the feeling:

Thought - belief - feeling - supporting thought ("reasons") - belief - feeling - repeat.

The questions of the inquiry, e.g. "How do you react when you believe that thought?" frames the belief as the creator of the feeling. We focus on the prior part of the cycle:

Thought - belief - feeling - supporting thought ("reasons") - belief - feeling - repeat.

Because belief is actually more a choice and feeling is more an automatic reaction, this line of questioning empowers us to choose how we feel indirectly by believing differently. The pivotal point in the inquiry is the reframing. If the subject jumps to the "feeling - supporting thought" phase too soon, he will reject the question and derail the inquiry. His mind will be so flooded with reasons as to why he feels that way that there is no room to catch the more useful reason, the one he can change, i.e. his belief in a thought.

Abraham-Hicks' philosophy mainly focuses on adjusting the feeling part of the cycle (though there are techniques such as the focus wheel which direct attention to the beliefs that take one in or out of a desired feeling). Their idea is that one can directly imagine a better feeling state and generate that better feeling immediately. Automatically, cerebral thinking will manufacture reasons why one should feel that way, and then the spiral flows upward.

Hence the two methodologies are complementary means to a better feeling life. Byron Katie's inquiry draws on curiosity while Abraham-Hicks asks for imagination. The inquiry is better suited for more severe emotional downturns, but requires at least a modicum of curiosity for the truth. Abraham-Hicks' focusing on positive aspects is better for brighter times as good feelings can snowball more quickly.

What is the pain telling you?

I am willing to learn how to love the pain. I am willing to see the value in my suffering.

Your suffering tells you what you do not want. It tells you the thoughts that you do not want. When you hold on to a thought that isn't in vibrational alignment with the joyful version of you, the discordant feelings you feel are a direct experience of the discord between that thought's vibration and the joyful version's vibration.

Learn to sing in the key of the best rendition of your song. It's easy because it's instinctual, and mistakes are part of the process. Suffering is just a helpful nudge. Do not get caught up in the fact that you are nudged, but instead follow its beckoning so that you may become more in tune with your joyous song.

Congestion tells you you don't want to be near someone or some situation. You feel crowded, suffocated. To alleviate congestion, either get out of the situation or love it. There is no benefit or growth in strength in enduring the congestion. In this case, more pain, less gain.

Let go of each thought that makes you suffer one by one. Do it by first holding the thought in a quarantined area which you observe carefully. Observe how the thought makes you feel and act. See how it makes you suffer to hold it. Then open the door, and let it go.

Be

What if everyone was discontent with who they were, what they were doing, and what they had? They would be continually competing for your attention and respect and constantly mired in a critical self-consciousness. They would not be happy at their jobs, so their service would be poor or insincere. Their products would be tainted with the motivation of trying to impress you or manipulate you into seeing a different image of them. They would accumulate many things that give them very fleeting pleasure and a lasting burden of upkeep and low resale value. They would defend and promote the useless things they do because they would be embarrassed if they were the only ones engaged in such futility.

What if everyone started out with the notion that they were worthwhile for no other reason than that they existed? Would they be in danger of complacency and stay in dead-end jobs or would they use the energy freed up from not trying to maintain an impression toward pushing the envelope of human achievement? Even if they did not achieve by someone's standards, would they be depressed about it? Would they need to have more and more in order to presumably alleviate the itch for more? Or would they be content with what they have and leave a lighter footprint on their environment?

People who are happy with who they are, what they do, and what they have are hard to control. Society's suicidal impulse as evidenced by the popularity of violence and Armageddon-themed movies is encouraged by the capitalist pressure to not be who you are. Even when one tells you to "be yourself", they imply that you are not being yourself right now and that maybe if you buy this product or idea you can express your unique self better.

You already are yourself. And that is fine.

Dialogue with Addiction

C'mon. You need to test out your will. If you don't test it, how do you know how strong it is?

You're lying. I know that the flesh is weak when it comes close to the addiction. That's when you want to creep in and hijack the mind.

Well, yes. But I'm doing it for your own good. This is the only way you can get pleasure.

No. There are many other ways to get pleasure. I can learn something new. I can write a program.

All that stuff is hard. They don’t guarantee pleasure like I do.

Yea, but they also don’t guarantee self-hate like you do.

Self-hate is natural and familiar. You know how to deal with it. You’ve dealt with it for years already. You don’t have to learn something new to cope with it. It's comfortable. Besides, doesn’t it feel kinda good?

I don’t really trust you. Maybe it does feel comfortable, but that comfort could be killing me.

Look, you’re going to die anyway. Might as well go out with a lot of pleasure rather than risk failed attempts at greatness. It’s better to die comfortably.

I don’t imagine being so happy on my deathbed considering that my life had been wasted away in comfort rather than accomplishment.