I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas

if you stop opening presents and listen.

~Author unknown, attributed to a 7-year-old named Bobby

It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.

~W.T. Ellis

A Christmas candle is a lovely thing;

It makes no noise at all,

But softly gives itself away.

~Eva Logue

Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.

~Laura Ingalls Wilder

Christmas - that magic blanket that wraps itself about us; something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance - a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved.

~Augusta E. Rundel

Kindness in words creates confidence.

Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.

Kindness in giving creates love.

~Lao Tzu

Real generosity toward the future

lies in giving all to the present.

~Albert Camus

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world,

and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.

~Norman Vincent Peale

You can give without loving,

but you can never love without giving.

~Robert Louis Stevenson

~photo by S. Bourne

Christmas is a season for kindling the fire for hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.

~Washington Irving

Your most precious, valued possessions and your greatest powers are invisible and intangible. No one can take them. You, and you alone, can give them. You will receive abundance for your giving.

~W. Clement Stone

Holiday Greetings

From The Intenders of the Highest Good

We would like, at this most pregnant point in history, to remind you of your calling. You are called, now, to give birth to a new way of life for yourself and for all those who walk this world with you. You stand poised at the threshold of great expansion in your perceptions, your possibilities, and your consciousness. Now is not the time to settle for less or to think small. You are here to rise up and out of the prevailing paradigm of beliefs by shining your light and sharing your joy.

With each new day now, you are called to set an example for all those around you, not by commiserating with them, but by being happy regardless of circumstances, by remaining serene in the face of gloom and doom, by expressing your gratitude for opportunities that come your way, by speaking up for the highest good, and by holding, steadfast, to the vision of the way you want it to be. For, as you stand firm and strong in the knowing that your intentions are manifesting as you picture them, a new world will unfold before you and you shall be gifted beyond measure.

This is our 2009 Holiday Intention for you:

May all who seek comfort enjoy it.

May all who desire abundance experience it.

May all who intend peace create it.

May all who give love receive it.

And may all who shine light live in it.

www.intenders.org

You are all perfect and expanding; you are all adored and worthy; you are all here having your exposure to experiences and doing the best that you can from where you are. You have not been sent here in a test or trial; you're here as creators as part of an expanding Universe. You can't have it both ways. You can't have, at the root of that which you are, Well-Being, and then have that same root of Well-Being have the capacity to pronounce you evil. It is vibrationally impossible. That judging, vengeful God is manufactured from humans' place of deepest despair.

~Abraham-Hicks

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

~Wayne Dyer

Sabotaging Phrases

What you say is what you get

The Intenders of the Highest Good understand that the exactness of our words counts. We know, beyond all doubt, that the words we are using are constantly determining the kind of experiences we will have. By the same token, we have become more aware of when we are projecting an experience out into our world that we really, in our hearts, do not desire to see manifested. People do this unconsciously in their everyday conversation quite often. We call it negative projection or self-sabotage, and we gently point it out to each other when it happens in an Intenders Circle.

Much of the time, these self-sabotaging words and phrases are added onto what we have just said, like an afterthought. For example, you'll frequently hear someone say, "I intend that the repairs go easily and effortlessly, without too many problems." By adding on these last four words, they've suddenly undermined their original intention. They've sabotaged their own future by bringing "problems" into the picture.

When we Intenders catch ourselves projecting an undesired experience like this, we immediately remind ourselves of one of the main reference points in the Intention Process - that our thoughts and our words are constantly creating our world. The old saying, "As you believe, so it shall be for you" is a great truth. Since our words are exact reflections of what we believe, it is prudent for us to be much more careful with the words we are using. It's simply not in our highest and best interests to continue to be frivolous with our words. These words have power. They can either limit our experience or enhance it.

Here are several self-sabotaging phrases that we've heard recently. You can make your own list too, just by listening closer to what you and the people around you are saying.

1. There's never a place to park when I need one.

2. Why is everything always so difficult for me?

3. Some things never change.

4. There's no possible way this is going to work out.

5. It's too late.

6. I just can't lose any weight.

7. It's going to be too expensive; we'll never be able to afford it.

8. So and so is incapable of changing; they're a lost cause.

9. It doesn't look very promising.

10. Easier said than done.

11. Well, I'll be damned.

12. It's going to be a bad allergy season this year.

13. I'm afraid there's not going to be a good harvest this year.

14. The weather is getting worse.

15. I'm just real sensitive to those things.

16. There's nothing we can do about it.

17. What a struggle this is.

18. This is a pain in the neck.

19. I'm getting sick and tired of all this.

20. The doctor says it won't go away.

My Intention for today is:

I intend that I am clearly shown what I am creating

with my everyday thoughts and words.

The Inteders of the Highest Good

www.intenders.org

Speaking in the Present

Everything in your world - the world at large as well as your individual world, including everything you see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and feel - is the result of a thought manifestation.

When you first begin to form your intentions into words, it's always best to take a moment and create a very clear picture in your mind of that which you truly desire to manifest. See yourself in the picture acting as if it has already happened. Then you can use the words "I intend that I am _____" and know that you've gotten off to an excellent start with your intentions.

Another phrase we've recently gotten rid of is "to be." In our circles, we say, "I intend that I am happy," for instance, instead of saying, "I intend to be happy." This small but very important change has produced extremely rewarding results for us. It brings everything into the present time, as opposed to keeping our desires somewhere off in the future. There is a big difference in intending to be happy and intending that you are happy now. By intending that you are happy now, you are seeing the end result from the beginning. Otherwise, you can intend to be happy and the Universe may follow your exact instructions and keep you in a state of readiness for a very long time, waiting to be happy. If you don't rephrase your intentions, you could easily remain on the brink of your happiness indefinitely without ever quite reaching it.

Sometimes it also helps to imagine that you are working hand in hand with your guides, helpers, or angels from other realms, and that these helpers are there to serve you. They listen closely to your intentions and go scurrying throughout the far corners of the Universe, taking the thoughts and words that you have provided and then delivering them back to you down here on Earth in the forms and substances that you call third-dimensional experience. When you state your intentions in the present and envision them as if they have already occurred, you send the clearest possible message out to your helpers. You've made their job a lot easier, while optimizing your own potential for bringing your dreams into physical reality.

My Intention for today is:

I intend that I am always phrasing my intentions in the present tense.

The Intenders of the Highest Good

www.intenders.org

Spread love everywhere you go.

Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

~Mother Teresa

~photo by Z. Datbayev

Conscious Language

Know that you are assisting others by your own realizations.

You then enhance and increase the possibilities

for others to go where you have been.

****

So much of our lives have been spent thinking that we can be frivolous with our spoken words, but now we're finding out that it's to our great advantage to be clear and concise about what we desire to manifest. We know that our words are the building-blocks of our future. With this in mind, we've eliminated five words that kept us unempowered and no longer serve us well. In our circles, we've stopped using trying, hoping, wanting, to be, and not because they were interfering with the manifestation of our intentions. Today we will talk about the first three of these sabotaging words.

We eliminated "trying" because it's a halfway word. It provides a built-in excuse to be unsuccessful. If you're having a conversation with someone and you say, "I'll meet you tomorrow morning at 11 o'clock ," and their response is, "I'll try," it isn't very reassuring.

We've also dropped "hoping" and "hopefully" from our vocabulary. When a person is "hoping" that something will happen, he or she is holding on to a little bit of doubt about whether their intention will really come true. If they replace "I hope" and "hopefully" with "I intend", and really trust in the Intention Process, then things will begin to change for them. They will stop limiting themselves unknowingly.

"Wanting" is another word that we refrain from using in our Intenders Circles because it implies that there is a scarcity of things. We looked it up in the dictionary and it said that if we were in a state of wanting, then we were lacking. So now, instead of saying, "I want a new car," we say, "I intend that I have a new car." This slight change, though very subtle, has taken scarcity out of the picture and brought us much closer to our own empowerment.

You can easily tell what's going on in the lives of your friends and acquaintances by listening closely to what they're saying. If they are using these unempowered words, then they are most-likely creating scarcity and limitation in their lives. You can help them to raise their level of consciousness by setting an example for them and, when they're receptive, by gently explaining to them how their words are limiting their experience. When you do this, everyone is uplifted. And that upliftment radiates outward into your community and into the world you live in.

My Intention for today is:

I intend that I am only using words that serve me.

~Intenders of the Highest Good

www.intenders.org
~photo by S. Leach

All diseases have been healed.

We do ourselves a great disservice when we believe that we have a particular sickness and call it by name. When we do this we are discounting the fact that each of us is a unique being who has had different experiences, different parents, different genetics, and so forth that brought us to the state of imbalance we are dealing with. By believing what a doctor or someone else tells us about ourselves we lump ourselves in with everyone else who has ever had similar symptoms to ours, not realizing that our mind, in it's infinite wisdom, will begin to send messages to our body, telling it to create the symptoms we are believing in. And, since our thoughts are always creating our experiences, our body will immediately comply with the mind's wishes and begin to manifest the disease we believe we have.

Wouldn't it be better to hold a vision of ourself in our highest light and manifest that message instead?

Many years ago the Rosicrucians set up experiments to show us the power that our thoughts have upon our body. They hypnotized people and then approached them with a normal pencil or pen, telling them that the pen was a red hot poker, like a branding iron. Then they touched the pen to the person's arm and guess what? The person would immediately cry out in pain and a blister began to form. Within moments, the arm took on all the physical characteristics of having been burned.

Stories like this have been hidden from us, but their message is clear. We human beings are very suggestible and it serves us well to remember that we are each unique. Likewise, it does not serve us to believe everything everyone else tells us about ourselves. Not only could their suggestions be entirely wrong, but if we believe them, we run the risk of manifesting all sorts of things we're apt to wish we'd stayed away from.

My Intention for today is:

I intend that I always remember that I am a unique being, capable of so much more than I've been led to believe.

The Intenders of the Highest Good

www.intenders.org

~photo by Claudia

Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony.

~Gandhi