BE GRATEFUL FOR WHAT YOU HAVE / HOLIDAY DONATION LETTER

Gratefulness is the lifeblood of soul consciousness and the only antidote for the self-inflicted poison of self-pity, resentment and unworthiness. Life is meant to be celebrated ~ and that is when we become grateful for what we already do have versus resentful for what we don't have: Allen L Roland

I've lived for the past seven years in a state of low income survival while on social security ~ yet making a profound difference with my short term heart centered transformation work with both clients and veterans with PTSD while at the same time writing a weblog that is read throughout the world ~ and I still remain profoundly grateful for all the gifts in my life and celebrate life and all these  blessings, however minor, every day.

I agree with and often reflect on these humble words of William James ~

" I am done with great things and big things and great institutions and big successes, and I am for those tiny invisible forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets or like the capillary oozing water, yet which, if you give them time, will bend the hardest monument of human pride. "

The Robin doesn't sing because it's happy ~ it's happy because it sings.

My counseling work as a therapist is my song and my joyful gift is I can see through the heart and can, as such, find the lost and alone child within others who long for another choice from their self-imposed prisons of fear. I facilitate their path to inner freedom by jump starting their hearts through gratefulness and empower them to not only find their true self but also their own song ~ and in the process  overcome inner fear and begin to sing it to others.

It can happen in only seven sessions, either by telephone or in person, because they are healing themselves and I am, in essence, their coach ~ not their therapist.

These are difficult times in the world and it's impossible at times to see the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of the current worldwide economic depression, Global warming and climate change, the hurricane Sandy disaster and continuing Middle East frictions. It's easy to get out of the moment and into the future in terms of impending personal financial doom or worldwide doom for that matter.

Fear can obliterate all hope and reason ~ and love and gratitude can be easily smothered in that process under a blanket of unworthiness, resentment and self-pity.

That's why Gratitude is so important for it brings us back to what is essentially important ~ ourselves, our loved ones and our unique worthiness as human beings ~ for the people we are most grateful to are usually people who have loved and cherished us.

When we start celebrating these gifts from a place of true gratitude ~ we begin to see through different eyes and we can transcend fear and, as such, open the door to new possibilities and direction. For we are then no longer paralyzed by self-pity, resentment and unworthiness and are open to the guiding light at the end of that internal dark tunnel of despair ~ love, joy and a Unified Field of universal love and soul consciousness.

There is still most definitely good in this world such as seen in this wonderful article from the Guardian: The Feel the Music project teaches deaf children a touch of Beethoven - http://gu.com/p/3cvhn/em

And this is a wonderful, one minute video clip ~ it's full of wisdom and very brief ~ but it has a meaning for all of us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=Hzgzim5m7oU&vq=medium

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it." ~ Helen Keller

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/be-grateful-for-what-you-have-holiday.html

This newsletter is sustained through donations from people like yourself. Please send check or Money Order to Allen L. Roland, PO Box 834, Danville, CA 94526 ~ and I gratefully thank you for your holiday donation.

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

LOVE NOTE TO MY TWIN

My twin brother Bobby and I literally grew up surrounded by the Ocean on the tiny Peninsula of Nahant, Massachusetts. Bobby is now in a nursing home in Nahant suffering from stage 4 Parkinsons disease ~ probably accelerated by many concussions while playing college football. From his window at the Jesmond nursing home, where he now lives, he can see the Thompson Club ( now Nahant Club ) where we played together for many years as young children and also right across the street from where we lived on Nahant Road. This is a love note to my twin as he looks out that window: Allen L Roland  

My dearest twin,

As you look out your window at the old Thompson Club, you may not remember the glorious summer days we spent as children playing baseball, football and even tennis together but I will help you ~ for I remember virtually everything about our closeness and the fun we had together as twins, before events forced us to go on separate paths in our late teens.

It was so special to wake up every morning with my best friend and playmate ~ we were the Hardy Boys, my favorite book series, embarking on new daily adventures and using the whole peninsula as our playground. The Thompson club was our sports arena and depending on the season ~ it became Fenway Park or any sports stadium we invented in our active and exuberant imaginations.

The barn in our backyard became the set piece for all the movies we watched and acted out as well as the radio shows we listened to ~ The Shadow, Jack Armstrong, The green Hornet, the Adventures of Sam Spade , the Lone Ranger and of course, the Inner Sanctum and Lights Out.

Once again, in many ways, we WERE the Hardy Boys ~ "The Hardy Boys are constantly involved in adventure and action. Despite frequent danger, the boys never lose their nerve ..."  They are hardy boys, luckier and more clever than anyone around them." They live in an atmosphere of mystery and intrigue: "Never were so many assorted felonies committed in a simple American small town. Murder, drug peddling, race horse kidnapping, diamond smuggling, medical malpractice, big-time auto theft, even (in the 1940s) the hijacking of strategic materials and espionage, all were conducted with Nahant (Bayport) as a nucleus." With so much in common, the boys are so little differentiated that one commentator facetiously describes them thus: "The boys' characters basically broke down this way ~ Frank (Allen)  was the thinker while Joe ( Bobby ) was more impulsive, and perhaps a little more athletic." The two boys are infallibly on good terms with each other and never engage in sibling rivalry."  Wikipedia / Hardy Boys

Those were fun childhood times in Nahant and I vividly remember the hurricanes that swept over that Peninsula as we watched from our top floor bedroom perch on 287 Nahant Road ~ two houses down from the Jesmond Home where you now reside.

You were my constant companion and sharer of joy and we were indelibly connected together through our shared nine month journey to this planet and obvious deep loving twin connection.

The twin connection defies description, Bobby ~ it's a loving connection that goes beyond time and space ~ it's a deep knowing soul connection that was cemented in the womb as well as our shared birth experience.

Since I am the first born twin, two minutes before you, it is my responsibility to prepare you for the final transition by sharing that God (a loving plan in action) only reveals itself to a grateful heart and that alone will prepare you for your final passage.

My heart is most definitely grateful that you were my loving twin and companion for so many years and I will most certainly be with you in your final moments and most definitely when you pass through the event horizon of physical death.

Right now, you may feel increasingly alone since it's so difficult to speak and move ~ but you are being well taken care of and are most certainly loved by your immediately family as well as brothers and sisters.

But be aware that I am already holding your hand, as I did as a young enfant, and as you look out that window at the Thompson Club you will see me beckoning to you, with a baseball bat on my shoulder, telling you to hurry up before the summer rain squall starts and you will smile knowingly and be grateful, as I am, that you are indeed blessed to be a twin.

With my deepest love and joy

Allen

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/love-note-to-my-twin.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

ELECTION 2012 / OBAMAVILLE AND STATUS QUO SURVIVE BUT WARREN AND GRAYSON ARE GAME CHANGERS.

The morning after Obama's 2012 presidential victory we are faced with the cold reality that ObamaVille and the status quo still reign supreme ~ but the election of Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren and Rep Alan Grayson just might be the game changers regarding the obvious need for Wall Street reform: Allen L Roland

Senator elect Elizabeth Warren is a breath of fresh air for Main Street America.

I did not vote for Barack Obama on November 6th ~ Instead I voted for real change, along with Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky, and cast my vote for Jill Stein of the Green Party.

As Andy Borowitz correctly writes in ICH ~ One day after the costliest Presidential election in U.S. history, Americans awoke to the ugly realization that the nation had spent $2.5 billion with absolutely nothing to show for it….. “Four years ago, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, and that is still the case,” says Professor Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota. “The only difference is that we as a nation are out $2.5 billion.” Mr. Logsdon claims that America’s system of egregious political spending “has made us the laughingstock of the world,” arguing, “Even Greece would know better than to blow through money like that.”   See article : http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32965.htm

But a ray of hope and light as well as the potential for a change in the status quo has emerged in 2012 with the election of Elizabeth Warren ~ a formidable and authentic agent of change. She is also Wall Street's biggest headache and rightfully so ~ the Dow Jones was down over 300 points the morning after her election. Here are some of her most memorable quotes ~
“Wall Street C.E.O.’s ~ the same ones who wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs ~ still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them,” she said in her speech at the Democratic National Convention in September.
“The people on Wall Street broke this country, and they did it one lousy mortgage at a time. It happened more than three years ago, and there has been no real accountability, and there has been no real effort to fix it,” she said in a debate last year.

Ms. Warren, the architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will have the opportunity, as a Senator,  to weigh in on a number of the issues that are making Wall Street rightfully nervous ~ as regulators work to implement the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law.

As William Alden writes in the New York Times ~ " Ms. Warren has supported a simpler, stronger Volcker Rule, the regulation that bars big banks from betting with their own money. She has also pushed for a new version of the Glass-Steagall Act, the now-repealed law (Courtesy of Bill Clinton) that kept commercial banks out of securities businesses. And she may be sympathetic to arguments to break up big banks."

See article ~ http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/11/07/what-wall-street-needs-to-know-about-elizabeth-warren/?emc=eta1

Warren obviously is a truth teller and doesn't pull her punches ~  "People feel like the system is rigged against them, and here is the painful part, they're right. The system is rigged " 1 minute video on who Elizabeth Warren is ~ and she's just what this country needs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE_wj6NHdEQ

The first step towards real change is the unblemished truth and that's what sadly lacking in Washington, DC but Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren and Rep Alan Grayson may be just the antidote for that ongoing cancer.  

Part of my job is to make sense of all that I hear, and to retell it in a forceful way so that the decision-makers at Treasury can hear it. At least that's how I see it: Elizabeth Warren

One person can indeed make a difference and one or two truth tellers can help change and heal a corrupt and rigged system ~ so that's why I see Elizabeth Warren and Alan Grayson as much needed game changers. Here's a short 2 minute video of Alan destroying right wing hack P.J. O'Rourke on the Bill Maher show. http://www.realecontv.com/page/20910.html

The times, they are perhaps a changing ~ but let's wait and see if Elizabeth Warren is made chairperson of the Senate Banking committee ~ then I might be convinced.
However, I will indeed be the first to predict that Senator Elizabeth Warren will be a presidential contender in 2016 and a Warren/Grayson ticket would indeed stir the masses ~ but most certainly not the corpocracy.

Allen L Roland


http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/election-2012-obamaville-and-status-quo.html

 

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net