I love you. I'm sorry. I forgive you. Thank you.

For those of you who read your email yesterday to the Real Truth list, you may recall the PEERS message I forwarded, inviting you to listen to an interview with Joe Vitale.

Joe has become pretty famous worldwide, both in his internet marketing work and also his more spiritual work, for which he was featured in the famous "The Secret" film.

But what Joe is working on now is way beyond "The Secret." In fact, it is the next logical step, which is taking personal responsibility for everything that happens around us.

That may seem bizarre, but if you think about it, it will ring true to you. I know it always has for me. We are responsible, ultimately, for what happens in our world around us.

I know this sounds rather bizarre, and if you haven't yet watched or listened to The Secret, you really should before you go on to this next level.

Joe's soon coming book, "Zero Limit" will pick up where his earlier works left off.

In the fascinating interview I listened to yesterday, he tells the story of a Dr. Len, who in the 1960's in Hawaii cured an entire ward of the criminally insane that no one else had been able to cure. He did it by taking the patient's files and saying over and over again over the file the phrases above: "I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you."

Miraculously all but 2 of the patients were made well, and amazingly, Dr. Len didn't see or treat any of them. These phrases come from ancient practices in the Hawaiian religion, which I am told is the ONLY religion officially banned by the US government. In fact, according to what a native Hawaiian told me years ago, there are certain books which are banned from leaving Hawaii.

This man claimed to be the son of the Big Kohona, and claimed to be his heir. Apparently, his father was the first to travel to Tibet, and compare the ancient knowledge of both places.

His father was able to teleport himself and had other interesting abilities.

If you recall, years ago Texxe Mars wrote a book in which he dealt with the "Warrior Monks" used and trained by the Black Opps boys of the US military to conduct psychic warfare on others. This was way beyond remote viewing, and I have reason to believe that this person of my acquaintance was one of these.

I have had other strange encounters over the years with this strange type of operative, including 2 years where a high level Mason was attempting to recruit me into the upper levels of that order, skipping all of the lower degrees and just stepping off at his high level.

He tempted me with riches, political power, and other perks, but of course my commitment is to God, and he eventually gave up. This is, of course, indirect vindication of who and what I am, but that is not a topic for discussion at this time.

But I digress.

The point is that Joe Vitale has hit upon something quite real, and quite "unthinkable" for most people. It goes beyond what is said in The Secret, and makes it quite clear that, indeed, "we create reality."

In fact, Christ said the same things in the New Testament, except that His listeners were not able to understand it at that time, and it has been covered up by organized religion. But, this same theme is elsewhere in the Bible as well, if you can dare to look.

In the Psalms, it says "Ye are gods."

And Christ said, "The Kingdom of God is within you," but man has mistranslated it to say "among you."

Furthermore, as Herbert Armstrong discovered years ago, it is God's intent and design for us to, in his words, "Become god as God is god."

Yes, it's all over your Bible if you care to look. In fact, this theme is the FOCAL POINT of the Bible because that is the transcendent purpose in all human life.

God has revealed many things to me in addition to this simple truth, but it's a great place to start. I suggest, if you haven't done so already, that you read Mr. Armstrong's landmark book, "The Incredible Human Potential," which is in our Basic Literature section of our website library.

http://www.destiny-worldwide.net/rcg/library.htm

As I am learning, though, there is more to this story, and we have as yet only begun to scratch the surface. I will be writing and speaking on these important subjects in the near future.

However, one thing that is still absolutely true is that we need to have the CHARACTER to go with the power that will someday soon be ours. And we can learn that character through a study of God's way of life, which is summed up in His law of love.

But one of our first steps along the way, is to transform and cleanse our lives, and we can start with Joe's phrases.

Think carefully about what each of these means:

"I love you." Christ told us to LOVE our enemies and BLESS THOSE WHO CURSE YOU. It might seem crazy to most, but this is the first step upwards, and can have tremendous impact, as Dr. Len learned first hand.

"I'm sorry." It take REAL HUMILITY to say we are sorry and really mean it, even while we may still think we are in the right.

"I forgive you." Christ instructed us to forgive and forgive and forgive. The disciples were perplexed by this. They even asked Him, "If a brother offends me 7 times, shall I still forgive him?" And Christ's answer was, "70 X 7." In other words our ability and power to forgive should be almost INFINITE.

"Thank you." As I have discussed before, many times we have a problem because we lack an ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE. Today, so many people think they are ENTITLED to this or entitled to that.

And, if you are "entitled" to something, then you often forget to say "thank you."

But saying "thank you" and being truly grateful is one of the first rungs to true success. When we can give honest, sincere, humble THANKS for what we already have, or for what someone else has done for us, then the universe acknowledges that and GIVES US MORE OF THE SAME.

That is one of the fundamental principles of the Bible and of The Secret and other books like "The Science of Getting Rich," etc., etc.

It all has to do with the Law of Attraction, which God set in motion at the begining. And an attitude of gratitude actually attracts MORE of the good into our lives.

We must learn to say "thank you" and be truly grateful for what we have, and then, the universal law of attraction says we can have MORE of it.

And of course, it works the other way around. If we always think about our PROBLEMS, then we will attract more of those problems into our lives.

But of course, the "attitude of gratitude" short circuits this problem, and attracts more abundance into our lives.

I am very thankful that God is opening my eyes on these subjects more and more. As the Apostle Paul so wisely stated, we should think on "whatever things are good, whatever things are pure...." If we do that, then we will attract more of the good into our lives.

Come to think of it, Paul had another word of wisdom that escaped me until just now. He said that whatever state he found himself in, he was "therewith content," and could actually REJOICE in the midst of his adversities.

It seems like Paul knew these truths millenia ago, and only now are we beginning to rediscover them.

Which brings to mind something out of Joe Vitale's story. Joe was not always the wealthy internet marketer and success coach that he is today. At one point in his life, he was flat broke and living out of his car.

Then, he began to discover the Law of Attraction, found things to give thanks for in his dire circumstances, began to think positive instead of negative thoughts, and the rest is history.

As Mr. Armstrong said over and over again, we are to be "teachers in the world tomorrow." He said that teaching is actually the highest calling one can attain to. Especially when we are to teach the right way of life.

But, in order to become teachers THEN, we must be good STUDENTS NOW.

There is no way around it. In order to teach, we must first learn God's way of life ourselves. We can't teach that which we do not know or understand.

So, let's be good students in this life. Let's learn how to be grateful. Let's learn to love. Let's learn to say we are sorry. and let's learn to forgive.

In fact, it might be a good idea to write these phrases down. Memorize them, and inculcate them into your life. And that will be the first step upon the road of learning God's way of GIVE and forsaking this world's evil way of GET.

John

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http://www.destiny-worldwide.net/rcg/mystery/contents.htm
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Just a reminder in case you haven't noticed, that we are offering free classified ads at "So Ya Wanna Move to Costa Rica?"

Just go to our site and find the appropriate catagory on our classified ads page.

Then, click on the customer service link to submit your ad via email.

We only ask that your ad be no more than about 5 lines.

However, if you mention where you saw this announcement in the email, you can post up to 3 free ads per month while this promotion lasts. Each ad will remain online for a month.

Simply go to: http://www.soyawannamove.com

This free offer is for all text ads only. There will be a small charge to place an image in your ad.

Have fun!

John

Costa Rica Tip of the Day

Today's tip will cover general information on Costa Rican real estate.

In many areas of Costa Rica right now, there is a real estate boom, and prices are skyrocketing at the Pacific beaches.

If you want to live in a real popular area like Tamarinda or Escazu, you are going to pay top dollar.

However, if you like a more laid back lifestyle, you should pick a less popular area. There are still some Pacific beach towns that aren't nearly so well known, and you can get better prices there.

If you really like a laid back lifestyle, you should try out the beaches on the Caribbean side. There are less tourists and much lower prices.

Likewise, in the Central Valley, you will often find homes at almost half price if you look outside "Gringo Gulch." Sure, you may not be next to TGI Fridays, but the latest I heard their food sucks now anyway.

You can find a TON of information and resources at our free guidebook page, "So Ya Wanna Move to Costa Rica?"


http://www.soyawannamove.com

It has been sometime since I wrote an entry, but I promise to be good and enter blog entries on a regular basis from now on, Scout's honor.

If you've been watching the news from here lately, a lot has been happening.

The most onerous thing has been the passage of the new law that discriminates against men, making it a crime to even insult your girlfriend or wife. I personally believe this will be found unconstitutional by the Sala IV, as this discriminates against men and leaves the door open for women to denounce men for insults as a form of revenge. I certainly hope this is the case, because this is a very bad piece of legislation.

At least the rains have been holding steady, replenishing the reservoirs. I have even noticed the water coming out of the tap has been somewhat colder lately, no doubt because of all of the new water added to the reservoirs.

In other news, it was announced yesterday that Costa Rica was, sadly, breaking off diplomatic relations with Taiwan in favor of China. It was a sad day for Taiwan, that's for sure.

It was also announced yesterday that the Banco de Costa Rica [BCR] was delaying the issuance of licenses and passports at its branches until July 1. Then, it will start with 10 branches and eventually expand that to 30 or so by the end of the year.

This should shorten lines at Immigration and the DMV someday. That's sorely needed, because instead of catching up on its workload, immigration is, reportedly now issuing appointments for AUGUST OF 2008 if you can believe it.

When Arias issued the automatic extensions late last year to residency cedulas, the intent was to shorten the waits and lines. Instead, it seems they have gotten further behind. Now, your renewal may be expired before you even get it.

This is an incredible mess, and hopefully the BCR strategy will work, becuase they will ultimately renew residency cedulas there as well. We can contrast this mess with Panama, where, supposedly, it only takes a matter of days to get some of this done instead of years.

But of course, all is not hunky dory in Panama either these days. On May 25 they passed a new law to issue only 30 day instead of 90 day visas to tourists, and it seems they want to start a witch hunt against so called "PT's".

Costa Rica gave up that stupid idea about 2 years ago, but it seems like bureaurats have nothing better to amuse themselves with than interference in people's lives, making them complicated.

Personally, I think people should be free to go wherever they want in the world without hassles, but then that idea isn't so popular with many.

Governments worldwide need to get out of the way ane let people live freely so that we can all enjoy life as much as possible on this planet.

By the way, we are working more on the community project, and we are about to make our debut in YouTube video with a new Costa Rica program. It will be a program filled with news and views and features from Costa Rica. We want this to be a FUN program everyone can enjoy, and it might even contain some entertainment segments.

If you have any program ideas, or would like to showcase your talent or idea, we plan to make this into a regular series. Please go to our So Ya Wanna Move to Costa Rica page and register your interest by sending us an email to Customer Service.

http://www.soyawannamove.com

We are also gearing up to provide top notch tours of Costa Rica. We will be appealing to some audiences not currently served, such as those on a budget, those who are interested in alternative therapies, organic food, and all of that healthy stuff.

So keep on visiting our page to keep up to date on what's happnin'. We also now have LOTS of classified ads, so give that a look too.

See you next week.

I was hoping to make more than one entry this week, but it has been quite a week, and not necessarily in a good way.

For those of you who know about current events in Costa Rica, you will know that just a few weeks ago, for about a two week period, we had power rationing with 4 hour + rolling blackouts.

It was the end of the dry season, and some of the reservoirs were at record low levels. Thus, ICE had to conswerve the water in the reservoirs, because they are used both for power generation and for water and they were really low this year, and ICE has been neglected over the past 3 presidential administrations so no new projects were in the works, except the ones that were having environmental issues.

As a side note, Costa Rica really needs to explore geothermal energy. A friend of mine has called CR the "Saudi Arabia of geothermal energy," yet this resource remains mostly untapped.

These projects would cost about the same as the hydroelectric projects and take about as long to build, yet, they would not have the environmental impact of the huydroelectric plants that ICE seems to be fixated on.

In any event, about a week or so it started raining finally, so the rationing was cancelled after about 2 weeks. It certainly felt nice to have things "back to normal."

Well, things went along fine all last week, but then, between the time I went to bed Sunday night at 4 AM and the time I got up on Monday, I discovered that my internet and cable were down -- literally.

I called the cable company first thing Monday, and they promised to send somone out, but no one came. So I called several times on Tuesday, but still no one came, but they promised to come first thing Wed. morning.

When I turned my cel phone on at 7:17 AM or so, I discovered I had a message waiting, and it was from the cable people. When they said they were coming "first thing in the morning," apparantly they had meant it this time.

I called the dispatcher, and she told me they would be out to my house "in 15 minutes."

When they didn't show after half an hour, I began to paic. I then remembered how the cable company originally had my address wrong when I first had it installed, and how the techs barely made it out then.

Now I really was in a panic, thinking maybe my service visit was going to get bumped to the end of the day due to this stupid mistake. So, I called them, and, sure enough, they had given the techs the wrong address AGAIN. They hadn't made the correction from the previous visit.

So I gave them my correct address information again, and they said they would be right over, which they were in about 15-20 mins.

In talking to the techs, I found out that they had, indeed, went on a wild goose chase to the wrong address as I had feared, but, fortunately for me, the company had radioed them the correct address before they moved on to the next customer.

Finally, by 8:30 I had TV and internet again. What a relief. I could now get back to all of my backed up internet work.

The rest of this week has been a game of catch up and errand running. I had to go to the supermarket, the bank, Pricemart, the microbioticas, the post office -- everywhere it seemed. I was out of money, out of food [almost], had to pay the rent and utilities, all in the remaining days of this week.

Today has been the only relatively "normal" day this week, but I still had a ton of email backed up from yesterday since I was out and about most of the day.

Wew, what a week this has been.

And, on top of that came the guilty verdict in the ongoing Villalobos soap opera/trial. That would be too much to go into today, I am not writing a book today, you know.

This has been a very interesting, exciting, and hectic week here in paradise. It certainly helps that I know some Spanish or I would really have been in trouble with the cable company fiasco.

I'm going to try to wind down a little now and enjoy at least some of a weekend.

I will update my blogs again Monday or Tuesday, so until then, Pura Vida.

May 11, 2007

Welcome to my new, revised blog.

From now on, I will be making posts to this blog several times a week, and daily if necessary. I am going to have a new focus for this blog. It will contain news and views as before, but also personal life stories and chronicles.

I have lived here for 12 years, and it recently occurred to me that what I take for granted every day might be news to you. So I am going to try to have a more chatty, personal dialogue, as if I am writing each of you a personal letter, which in a way I am.

Well, the power outage crisis seems to be over for now. The lights have been on now for a full week without interruptions, and the government is at least putting a band aide on the problem. I certainly hope they will look at the best long range solution, which is to harness the abundant geothermal energy this country has, but so far I have heard nothing about that.

Instead, ICE still seems to be stuck on the idea of hydroelectric, which is better than burning fossil fuels, for sure, but it damages the environment by flooding vast tracts of land, and when it is extremely dry, especially at the end of the rainy season as happened this year, the reservoirs can be very low indeed.

Geothermal energy doesn't have these pitfalls, and with all the volcanoes around, it is a natural source of all the energy this country could need, if ICE and the government would only think ahead and move into the future instead of dwelling on the past.

Anyway, enough about that. Other than that, this week has brought with it the same helping of bad news you see everywhere else in the world. It's quite a shame, really, that news doesn't dwell more on the positive instead of on the negative, but "that's showbiz." They have to have those sensational headlines and film clips to get readers and listeners.

Like that story from earlier this week about that drunken couple who rammed two cars in an Escazu plaza, after getting totally plastered in a bar in the plaza. They were having such a good time that they even shared the juice with their dog, and got it drunk.

Then, they stumbled out of the bar and got in their car, where they promptly started to move towards having sex in the car in broad daylight.

When the security guard saw it, he stopped them. The couple decided to leave with the woman driving, and she promptly rammed 2 cars in her drunken attempt to get out of the parking space.

The security guard told her to stop and wait for police, but she didn't comply, so he had to shoot out her tires.

Finally, police arrived to assess the damage and issue tickets.

I guess that's the news story that sticks out most in my mind this week, that and the fact that the TSE has finally decided that it will hold the referendum on CAFTA on Sept. 23.

I guess that's about all the news that stands out in my mind this week. Next week I will be making more entries, so I suppose more will stick out.

By the way, we are at a good point in the revision of our online guidebook, "So Ya Wanna Move to Costa Rica" right now. All pages have content now, and there is a lot of useful stuff there, but you need to check back often, as there are lots of things that need updating. In fact, unlike a print guidebook, this one will never be finnished and will always be fresh.

We have LOTS of useful resources you won't want to miss, so go on over there if you haven't already.

The url is: http://www.soyawannamove.com

Well, I'm done for today. As Walter Cronkite used to say, "That's the way it is, Friday, May 11, 2007."

See ya next week.

John