Five Simple Rules for Happiness IV

Seeds XI, 19

Seed: Five Simple Rules for Happiness IV

I read the germs for the next five Seeds in a catalogue.

Five Simple Rules for Happiness. The fourth is . . . Give more.

So now, you start this path toward happiness with a free heart and a free mind and simple living. What’s next? Give more. What interests me about this is that the what is not specified. Give more what? More of whatever you want for yourself.

More peace? Give more peace to others.

More money? Give more money to others.

More time? Give more time to others.

When we give out of a sense of true abundance, what happens is that we create more of whatever we give. It’s a universal law. How about giving more focus? Giving more stories? Giving more listening? All those wonderful intangibles that good memories are made of.

Giving more doesn’t have to “cost you,” but it does have a cost, and that is learning to stretch yourself so you can receive more. What happiness giving more brings.

Be joy,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at susan@susancorso.com.

For spiritual nourishment, please visit my website www.susancorso.com

and my blogs Seeds for Sanctuary, God’s Dictionary,

Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

Five Simple Rules for Happiness III

Seeds XI, 18

Seed: Five Simple Rules for Happiness III

I read the germs for the next five Seeds in a catalogue.

Five Simple Rules for Happiness. The third is . . . Live simply.

So now, you start this path toward happiness with a free heart and a free mind. Those two are cause for happiness all by themselves. Now, a third prescription: live simply.

You’ve seen that bumpersticker: Lively simply so that others may simply live. How many winter coats do you wear at a time? How many do you own? How many dishes do you really use? How many do you own? How many cars can you drive at a time? How many do you own?

Simplicity makes daily life easier. Four outfits to choose from rather than ten makes getting dressed simpler. Four coffee mugs instead of twenty makes choosing one simpler.

Live simply is a good prescriptive for happiness. Here’s how to start: look at what you own with kind, quiet eyes. Do you love it? Do you use it? Does it have meaning for you? Good. Keep it. If it doesn’t, begin to simplify your living by giving your excess away. What happiness comes of living simply.

Be joy,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at susan@susancorso.com.

For spiritual nourishment, please visit my website www.susancorso.com

and my blogs Seeds for Sanctuary, God’s Dictionary,

Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

Five Simple Rules for Happiness II

Seeds XI, 17

Seed: Five Simple Rules for Happiness II

I read the germs for the next five Seeds in a catalogue.

Five Simple Rules for Happiness. The second is . . . Free your mind from worries.

So now, you start this path toward happiness with a free heart. What’s the next obstacle? In my case, and that of many others, it would have to be the mind. I don’t mean Mind, the consciousness that we all share on Earth. I mean my own small monkey mind, the mind that worries.

For some bizarre, heretofore unexplained reason, humans seem to think that worry acts as a sort of prophylaxis. Ever heard anyone say, well, if I worry about it, it might not happen? Ridiculous. Worry is no preventative. Instead it confuses what you want with what you don’t want.

Try this: One of the best cures for worry I know is to ask it a series of questions. Will this (whatever it is) matter in ten years? Ten months? Ten days? Ten hours? Ten minutes? Most of the time, the answers are all no. What happiness when one’s mind is worry-free—think of all the time you’ll have for imagination.

Be joy,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at susan@susancorso.com.

For spiritual nourishment, please visit my website www.susancorso.com

and my blogs Seeds for Sanctuary, God’s Dictionary,

Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

Launch Codes

Seeds XI, 15

Seed: Launch Codes

There is no Wikipedia page for these words. I had to laugh. Launch codes have been the two-word threat of my generation. They’re primarily Cold War-based, and hooked to the use of nuclear weaponry. Really, they imply the ability to set off world-altering events with the flick of a switch.

Perhaps the fact that there’s no Wiki page is a good sign though. Maybe we’re less concerned now with nuclear launchings and more focused on what we are launching from within ourselves. I think we ought to be.

It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that one person can truly change things in the world. One. And while our personal contributions don’t always make obviously world-altering events, they do alter the world.

So here are my questions to you:

What do you want to launch from within you?

What’s yours and only yours to launch?

And do you know that only you have the launch codes?

Be joy,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at susan@susancorso.com.

For spiritual nourishment, please visit my website www.susancorso.com and my blogs

Seeds for Sanctuary, God’s Dictionary,

Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

Innovativity

Seeds XI, 13

Seed: Innovativity

I first saw this word on an internal billboard of a company whose name is long-forgotten, a subcontractor on The Hanford Site in southeastern Washington. I tried to find the company on the Web so I Googled the word. There were over six thousand hits, but none of them were connected to that firm.

Still, the word grasped my imagination in the same way that the Disney Company’s portmanteau word Imagineering did. Disney’s word is a combination of imagination + engineering.

Innovativity is innovation + creativity.

Both are to be sought. Creativity? Of course! Innovation? Of course! I looked it up in the OED. Nothin’ doin’. What intrigues me is the order of the combination.

At this point in the history of the world, innovation has to lead creativity. In boom times, creativity for its own sake is valued; innovation, less so. Creativity has an element of play to it. Innovation seems like a more radical, bigger commitment.

The AA definition of insanity is doing the same thing in the same way over and over again and expecting a different result.

We are not insane. Bring on the innovativity!

Be joy,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at susan@susancorso.com.

For spiritual nourishment, please visit my website www.susancorso.com and my blogs

Seeds for Sanctuary, God’s Dictionary,

Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

Overcrowding

Seeds XI, 12

Seed: Overcrowding

Sue Monk Kidd has been one of my favorite spiritual authors for many years. She started out writing for Guideposts years ago, and when her journey took her from Christian preacher’s wife into an exploration of the Divine Feminine, she was able to be true to herself and follow that singularly unchristian path.

From Dance of the Dissident Daughter, her story of that path, she branched, quite naturally, into fiction writing. Her The Secret Life of Bees was an international bestseller; it came out on film this summer. The Mermaid Chair is equally wonderful.

I don’t know where I saw this quote of hers, but it touched me deeply.

The opposite of availability is not unavailability but an overcrowded heart.

Ooh, ouch. Overcrowding is mentioned as a problem in our cities and on our world, but what about our inner worlds? When our hearts are overcrowded, we feel as though we have no time, no space, no way to breathe deeply, and all three of these things are guaranteed to make us unavailable to ourselves and to those we love.

Do you have an overcrowding problem in your heart? Take half a day, go somewhere to be by yourself, and figure out what matters to you. Then gently begin to let go those overcrowders that make you unavailable.

Not only will your secret life be better, your everyday life will as well.

Be joy,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at susan@susancorso.com.

For spiritual nourishment, please visit my website www.susancorso.com

and my blogs Seeds for Sanctuary, God’s Dictionary,

Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

Keystone

Seeds XI, 11

Seed: Keystone

A keystone is the piece of stone at the top of an architectural structure that holds the structure in place. Notably, the image that comes to mind is an arch, a threshold, a doorway, a place that allows us to pass from here to there.

It got me thinking about the possibility that each of us has an inner keystone. In my experience, it’s usually an inner intangible value that holds the structure of our own psycho-spiritual architecture in place.

If you have been reading Seeds for any length of time, you know that my inner keystone bears a peace symbol—peace is my bottomline value. I have a client whose keystone is a beating heart—his bottomline value is love. I have a dear friend whose keystone is, for now, compassion.

The word or image on your keystone may change, but the fact that you have one does not. I encourage you to sit in the quiet and attempt to discern what’s on your keystone.

In a DC comic book series, Keystone City is the home of The Flash. Wikipedia says, “Flash v.2 #188 (September 2002), the Flash constructs a bridge that connects Keystone City and Central City. ‘Forever united, and under my protection,’ as his internal monologue reads.”

No mistakes. When you are aware of your keystone, it becomes the center of your living. Look for the flash of recognition for what holds your structure together.

Be joy,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at susan@susancorso.com.

For spiritual nourishment, please visit my website www.susancorso.com

and my blogs Seeds for Sanctuary, God’s Dictionary,

Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

Calm the Storm

Seeds XI, 4

Seed: Calm the Storm

Since 9/11/01, it has seemed to me that the storms of life have increased. Does it seem that way to you? Perhaps it’s just our instantaneous communication satellites that make it seem this way, but I don’t think so.

Imagine hearing this . . . “I’m praying up a storm!”

The sentence burst fiercely from a client of mine in a dire situation. Yes, it was life and death, fatal illness. She was desperate, and so was her family.

Enter Divine Inspiration . . . I exhaled when I felt the ferocity of the emotion in her words, and said a prayer asking for the right words.

Moments passed.

I answered her, “Dearest, let’s pray up a calm instead, shall we?” *

Be joy,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

*Today, the dire illness has left her, and she’s calmer than ever.

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at susan@susancorso.com.

For spiritual nourishment, please visit my website www.susancorso.com and my blogs Seeds for Sanctuary,

Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

A Blessing

Seeds XI, 3

Seed: A Blessing

You are receiving this Seed four days before the Inauguration of the 44^th President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama. If you have read these words over the years, you know that all names have meanings.

Try this on for Mr. Obama . . .

Barack = Barak (from the Arabic) = Blessing

Hussein = Husayn, diminutive of Hasan (from the Arabic) = To be good

Obama = Opeyemi (from the Yoruba) = I should give praise

His first name means Blessing.

His middle name means To be good.

His surname means I should give praise.

No matter your political orientation, consider this metaphysical spin on this man is who will lead all Americans:

He is meant to be a blessing to our nation, and all nations.

He is meant to be good for our nation, and all nations.

He is in need of our praise, and the praise of all nations.

Names are never mistakes. We have our assignment. Let’s get to praising Mr. Obama’s ability to be a good blessing for the whole world.

Be joy,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

P. S. I looked up the meaning for Obama online and WikiAnswers provided this:

Obama is a name from the Luo ethnic group of southwestern Kenya, where Barack Obama Sr. was born. It was originally the given name of Barack Obama’s great-grandfather. It is based on the Luo (technically, Dholuo, the name of the language of the Luo) word bam, which means “crooked, slightly bending” . The prefix O- means “he”, and many Luo male names begin with it. Since most traditional Luo names were given by the baby’s mother referring to something about the child’s birth, the best guess is that when Obama’s great-grandfather was born one of his arms or legs looked slightly bent.

Additional Answer

Email rumors have charged that U.S. Presidential hopeful Barack Obama is a practing Muslim, a rumor that has since been proven false. However, Senator Obama does have an unusual name which reflects his African Muslim heritage. Senator Obama was reportedly named after his father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.

The Senator’s first name, Barack, is a Swahili name that has its origins in the Arabic language. The original Arabic root of the name (B-R-K) means “blessed.” In Arabic, the root word is used in many other phrases to denote blessings and to describe people who are blessed:

Mabruk! = “Congratulations!”

Barakallah feek = “May God bless you”

Barakah = blessings from God (feminine version of the name)

Senator Obama’s middle name is Hussein, which was his grandfather’s first name. The name, of Arabic origin, means “good” or “handsome one.” It is common in Muslim cultures for children (both boys and girls) to have a middle name which directly connects them to their father or grandfather.

Senator Obama’s surname is not uncommon among the Luo tribe, one of the three largest ethnic groups in Kenya. They speak the Dhoulou language.

The “slightly bending” interpretation intrigues me. Isn’t that what Obama will have to do in Washington? Slightly bend the old ways and means to the will of the American people who elected him?

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at susan@susancorso.com.

For spiritual nourishment, please visit my website www.susancorso.com and my blogs Seeds for Sanctuary,

Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

Disregard et al

Seeds XI, 2

Seed: Disregard et al

Beliefnet is always a rich source of inspiration for me. I receive several daily newsletters from them. You get your pick. This was in one of them.

Disregard your complaints and discover your gratitude. Release your trouble and restate your blessings.  Anonymous

Let’s just look at the verbs, shall we?

Disregard comes to us via Old French and Old High German from roots meaning not to watch again. Don’t look at your complaints—no matter how persistent they are!

Discover comes from Late Latin and means do not hide. Let your gratitude crow!

Release, according to my own God’s Dictionary, means to write a new rental agreement. It also implies that we only lease our troubles—we don’t [have to] own them!

Restate means to say over again in a new way. Again and again, if we will return to our blessings, our blessings will multiply!

Be joy,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at susan@susancorso.com.

For spiritual nourishment, please visit my website www.susancorso.com and my blogs Seeds for Sanctuary,

Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.