During my first week of work in a museum in New York City, I discovered a fascinating set of small sculptures on exhibition. Our curator of archeology told me that these were votive offerings, imagery created with the intention of connecting with the divine. Quite simply, ancient societies offered these devotional objects as gifts to the Creator and as prayers for the fulfillment of dreams.

Such exchanges of mortals seeking favor from the divine are features of ancient and modern societies. We know that the ancient Egyptians decorated tomb walls with murals depicting the deceased enjoying the afterlife. Ex-votos are another example of a practical application of this formula for making art to gain favor with the divine and to give thanks for blessings received in this present life.

The artist as shaman or alchemist is another new old idea. Artists, like shamans, are perceived to have the ability to explore other realms of experience, tap into higher states of consciousness, and bring back eternal wisdom to share with this world. Art, therefore, has sacred abilities.

I became intrigued with the idea of art’s sacred ability to “make magic” or to manifest. By visually portraying our dreams, wishes, needs, and desires, we could bring them from our inner worlds into our outer world. Magic! Manifesting through art! Make art! Make your dreams happen!

So with an open heart I set out to practice this sacred wisdom regarding our connection with the divine as co-creators.

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Sarah and I met at an exhibition of Mediterranean landscape paintings and that evening we spoke of our mutual love for the classical art and architecture of Greece, its sweeping vistas, and the beauty of its grand civilization. As she told me of her desire to be in Greece, I could feel us standing in the sun on a rocky hillside looking out over white stucco houses that shone brilliantly against a deep blue sea and sky!

I knew in that moment that an intentional mural had the power to serve as a conduit to bring forth Sarah’s dreams!

We began with her vision and established our intention for her mural. We developed the design and chose colors that would enhance her living space as a whole.

Upon completion, Sarah was thrilled with the beauty, elegance, and upliftment her mural brought into her family’s home. Now she could be in her beloved Greece every day!

Then something interesting happened. Greece had become so much a part of her everyday focus that it seemed natural when out of the blue a telephone call came from an old friend. He was giving a workshop and he needed her expertise as a facilitator. Would she be interested in taking part? The workshop would take place that July in Hydra, Greece!

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Intentional mural art is akin to the goals of Feng Shui art. Symbolic imagery is used to enhance opportunities, fame, fortune, career, business, success, health, love.

My buddy Rob longed for love in his life. He was in his mid-forties and had never been married. A colleague suggested Feng Shui principles as a way to energize his bedroom thereby attracting more love into his life.

This seemed to Rob like some sort of mystical interior design! But he liked the intentional mural art that I was creating and was willing to have his “fantasy painting” on a wall in his bedroom.

The focus of his painting was an embracing couple. Waking up every morning and seeing this man and woman happy and so much in love made him feel hopeful.

Living with art that portrayed his dream of love, it came as no surprise to hear good news from Rob sometime later. He had met a beautiful woman and they were getting married!

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Magic? You decide. Or is this simply the way the godstuff of this world works? Imagine the possibilities…

Mural art, intentionally designed, is a very practical way to produce harmony, comfort, balance and beauty in your life space. At a deeper level and through intentional imagery, I believe mural art has the power to co-create states or conditions for the manifestation of dreams.

-Caroline Woodruff

For more information on this intriguing idea, contact Caroline at cwwoodruff@hotmail.com

Born in New Orleans, Caroline Woodruff is a second generation fine artist. She began her career as an illustrator and designer working in television. She went on to work for a decade in the museum world of New York City, painting large scale works of art in the galleries of the performing arts museum at Lincoln Center. Today she practices intentional art painting murals and auspicious Feng Shui imagery with Golden Villa Studio.

Unique spirituality information tells us that before we entered this physical universe we all made an agreement with God. This agreement is part of our spiritual growth and we can understand this agreement once again when we unite and become one with the source of our existence. It is a very individual journey that allows this spiritual growth to happen.

You might ask why we don’t get this information from our religious institutions and that would be a very good question.

Religions perform an important function as a beacon of light that humans can use in their quest to understand their relationship with God. Unfortunately, religions have resorted to using fear as the tool that unites the parishioner with the parish. Religions have strayed from the teachings of the masters on whom the religions were founded. The spiritual masters who founded the major religions of the world all told us the same message.

The message is that we are one with God. Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, Buddha, Moses, Abraham, and all the other masters told us this one universal message. We are not separate from God, we are one with God. It is the ultimate message of love. It is a message that unites us with God and with everything that exists. Most religions have found it necessary to deliver a message, or a doctrine, that keeps us separate from God, and this separation mentality is a fear based paradigm from which to live your life.

This does not change the actuality of our beingness, which is that each and every one of us is a spirit child of God possessing the same essence of God. That is who we are. That is who we really are. Always have been and always will be for eternity. Just like God.

Just as God is eternal and all knowing and creative, so are we. God created us in the image and likeness of God as part of God’s master plan when God created the physical universe and the concept of relativity.

Remember, God created the physical universe in order to know experientially all that she knows conceptually. There is only one way for God to accomplish that. God had to create us, her spirit children, to occupy this physical plane in order to experience something that God cannot experience herself. You see, in order to experience herself as God, God has to experience herself as not God.

You see, God is God. God cannot not be God. God is the absolute and that is what God is. So, in order for God to experience herself as not God, she would have to somehow forget that she is God. There is no way for God to do that, except through God’s surrogates, through God’s spirit children, through us.

So, are you ready for a huge Ah-haaaaa? Here it comes.

We, as God’s spirit children, are all made from the same stuff that God is. We all possess the same powers and abilities as God. We are all part of God. That is who we are. That is who we really are.

God’s purpose in creating us, her spirit children, was so that we could experience in the realm of the physical universe all that God knows as concepts in the realm of the absolute. That is our purpose here in the physical relative world. We are in a giant collaboration with God. Our mission is to experience life in all of its different perspectives in order for God to know, through our experiences, all that she knows as concepts in the realm of the absolute.

How do we have these experiences? We create them. God gave us free will to create our lives as we choose. There is no agenda set out for us except what we choose as an agenda. We are free to be whomever we choose to be.

That’s why we were created with the same powers of creation as God. We are creating machines. If this is so, then why don’t we create a more peaceful loving world and why don’t we create our own lives to be abundant and full of love? God would say to us, “Yes, why don’t you? You have the absolute power to do so.”

I agree with God. If we have total choice to create our lives in any manner that we choose, and we do, then why don’t we create our own lives to be in alignment with the highest visions that we hold for ourselves? Why don’t we create a world society that is peaceful and loving and honors the planet that is our home instead of destroying it for short-term profits?

Once again the answers to these and all the questions that confound us lies in this beautiful concept called relativity. We know that in order for God to experience all that he knows conceptually, he would have to be able to compare God to something that God is not. God is an absolute. God cannot be what God is not, but God could make an agreement with her spirit children to forget that they are a part of God, made up of the same essence as God.

Okay, all together now, Ah-haaaaa!

Richard Blackstone is an award winning author and international speaker on Love, Oneness & Creation. Journey into discovery of Self by reading this FREE report; “The 3 Simple Immutable Laws of the Universe” at: http://www.NutsandBoltsSpirituality.com

Ron Paul is the right man to lead the Republican party and will be a good choice as the next president of the United States of America. Ron has an abundance of experience and education after a long political career since the late 1960’s. Ron has a large following right across American because of his refusal to focus on minor issues and for always seeking the truth. He seems very smart on both the military and the economy and is the right man to lead America forward in to the future with the major issues continuing to arise.

The republicans need to win in to office again as there reputation under George Bush has been damaged. Ron Paul also doesn’t agree with any thing George Bush has done in his time at office. Saying the Iraq war served no purpose that strengthened the United States of America and he is first to rubbish the current state of the American economy which has led to the world financial markets being weak and unstable at the moment.

Ron Paul being elected in November would be great news for America. Lets hope the recent news that Ron may pull out as a candidate is fake and not true. Because he has a massive fan base which will likely see him elected as the republican candidate and he has a good chance at being president. The campaign he has led is of the highest quality and lets hope we can get this honest man in to the most powerful position in the world.

Visit What Ron Paul Will Do As President! This is a must see site for all political fans. Which Party Will Win The Election and Who Will Be elected President!

My storytelling father always seemed to be able to hold our collective breaths with his tales of ghosts and the undead. You knew how effective his scary stories were by the number of under the bed inspections that were held in our house. I’m sure my mother appreciated it since my father worked at nights at the New York Times. My father’s imagination and storytelling were legend and so were our nightmares. Just don’t ask me to go down to your basement.

I was listening to “The Second Half of Life” in my car last week. The author, Angeles Arrien, PH.D, talked about how Storytelling can trigger memories, associations and one’s imagination

She went on to recount a true story by Dr. Charles Garfield who has written about high performance people.

It unfolded something like this:

Back in 1984, Dr. Garfield encountered a toll booth employee on the Oakland/San Francisco Bridge who was dancing to loud music that was blasting from his toll booth. The doctor asked what was going on. The dancing man in the booth said that he was having a party. What about the other people working in the other booths? Oh, they were not invited to his party. Loud horns blasted from impatient drivers (don’t you just love them) and ended the conversation abruptly but the doctor made a note to find the dancing man again.

And he did.

The dance party was still going on. The Dancing man remembered the doctor and asked him what the other 16 booths looked like to him. The doctor had no clue. “No imagination, no imagination” was the reply that came from the toll booth. “Look again, look again.”

The doctor was stumped, gave up and asked for an answer from the dancing man.

“Vertical Coffins. These 16 people come to work everyday at 8:30 and die in their booths and then at 4:30 they come back to life just in time to go home. They look like Vertical Coffins.”

“What makes it different for you?” The doctor needed to know why this one man was so happy.

“I have a corner office with glass on all sides. I can see the Golden Gate Bridge, Berkley Heights, and San Francisco and while thousands of people travel everyday to visit, I get to live it. I get to dance. I get to do what I love.”

So many of us don’t get to live the lives we are entitled to. We go by someone else’s rules and expectations and we forget that we even had dreams that were so full of hope and adventure. We find ourselves getting by on “no imagination, no imagination” and we struggle in our own vertical coffins.

How would it feel to dismantle one or two of those vertical coffins that keep you from what you really want to do? It could be as simple as saying “No” to some of the requests that others pour on you (and not feeling guilty!) so that you can have 30 minutes to read, take a walk or just sit and listen to your own hear beat. It can be as grand as reexamining where your life is going: does the job do it for me, would going back to school open me up again or would Jimmy Choo’s heels really make me feel better? The latter was what Gwyneth Paltrow asked me….in a dream. I assured her that they would.

So it might have been a little stretch but how about try taking a look at one of your vertical coffins and scream “boo” at it and make it go back under your brother’s bed?

elizabeth cassidy,CTACC
Branching Out Life Coaching.com
BranchOutLife@optonline.net
http://www.BranchingOutLifeCoaching.com