This Year ...
This year ... -
I'll take more time to laugh and smile, -
To feel the wind upon my face, -
To learn true wisdom from a child, -
Give my soul the needed space, -
To live life pure and clear ... -
... this year.
This year ... -
I'll learn to turn off my computer, -
Interact with human beings, -
Spend less time in online stupor, -
More time learning, breathing, seeing -
All that life holds dear ... -
... this year.
This year ... -
I will resolve to write that letter -
That I have too long neglected, -
Make an aching heart feel better, -
Cheer a friend who feels dejected, -
Bring someone some cheer ... -
... this year.
This year ... -
I'll not be hijacked by my deadlines, -
Or imprisoned by ambitions. -
Or let dismal, gloomy headlines -
Dictate my heart's disposition. -
I'll choose faith, not fear ... -
... this year.
This year ... -
I'll see the struggling flower beneath -
The hard, frosty exterior -
Of one who lets frustration seethe -
Because they feel inferior. -
I'll try to draw them near ... -
... this year.
This year ... -
No high and mighty resolutions -
Fit for presidents and kings. - I
'll start a quiet revolution,
Seek these simple loving things -
Above wealth or career ... -
... this year.--Ian Bach
***
Trends Journal Scoop - The Top Trends Of 2011
By Gerald Celente
12-17-10
Wake-Up Call: Top Trends of 2011
After the tumultuous years of the Great Recession, a battered people may wish that 2011 will bring a return to kinder, gentler times.
But that is not what we are predicting. Instead, the fruits of government and institutional action and inaction on many fronts will ripen in unplanned for fashions. Trends we have previously identified, and that have been brewing for some time, will reach maturity in 2011, impacting just about everyone in the world.
1. Wake-Up Call
In 2011, the people of all nations will fully recognize how grave economic conditions have become, how ineffectual and self-serving the so-called solutions have been, and how dire the consequences will be.
Having become convinced of the inability of leaders and know-it-all "arbiters of everything" to fulfill their promises, the people will do more than just question authority, they will defy authority. The seeds of revolution will be sown.
2. Crack-Up 2011
Among our Top Trends for last year was the "Crash of 2010." What happened? The stock market didn't crash. We know.
We made it clear in our Autumn Trends Journal that we were not forecasting a stock market crash, the equity markets were no longer a legitimate indicator of recovery or the real state of the economy. Yet the reliable indicators (employment numbers, the real estate market, currency pressures, sovereign debt problems) all bordered between crisis and disaster.
In 2011, with the arsenal of schemes to prop them up depleted, we predict "Crack-Up 2011": teetering economies will collapse, currency wars will ensue, trade barriers will be erected, economic unions will splinter, and the onset of the "Greatest Depression" will be recognized by everyone.
3. Screw the People
As times get even tougher and people get even poorer, the "authorities" will intensify their efforts to extract the funds needed to meet fiscal obligations. While there will be variations on the theme, the governments' song will be the same: cut what you give, raise what you take.
4. Crime Waves
No job + no money + compounding debt = high stress, strained relations, short fuses. In 2011, with the fuse lit, it will be prime time for Crime Time. As Gerald Celente says, "When people lose everything and they have nothing left to lose, they lose it."
Hardship-driven crimes will be committed across the socioeconomic spectrum by legions of the on-the-edge desperate who will do whatever they must to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table.
5. Crackdown on Liberty
As crime rates rise, so will the voices demanding a crackdown. A national crusade to "Get Tough on Crime" will be waged against the citizenry. And just as in the "War on Terror," where "suspected terrorists" are killed before proven guilty or jailed without trial, in the "War on Crime" everyone is a suspect until proven innocent.
6. Alternative Energy
In laboratories and workshops unnoticed by mainstream analysts, scientific visionaries and entrepreneurs are forging a new physics incorporating principles once thought impossible, working to create devices that liberate more energy than they consume.
What are they, and how long will it be before they can be brought to market? Shrewd investors will ignore the "can't be done" skepticism, and examine the newly emerging energy trend opportunities that will come of age in 2011.
7. Journalism 2.0
Though the trend has been in the making since the dawn of the Internet Revolution, 2011 will mark the year that new methods of news and information distribution will render the 20th century model obsolete.
With its unparalleled reach across borders and language barriers, "Journalism 2.0" has the potential to influence and educate citizens in a way that governments and corporate media moguls would never permit. Of the hundreds of trends we have forecast over three decades, few have the possibility of such far-reaching effects.
8. Cyberwars
Just a decade ago, when the digital age was blooming and hackers were looked upon as annoying geeks, we forecast that the intrinsic fragility of the Internet and the vulnerability of the data it carried made it ripe for cyber-crime and cyber-warfare to flourish.
In 2010, every major government acknowledged that Cyberwar was a clear and present danger and, in fact, had already begun. The demonstrable effects of Cyberwar and its companion, Cybercrime, are already significant and will come of age in 2011. Equally disruptive will be the harsh measures taken by global governments to control free access to the web, identify its users, and literally shut down computers that it considers a threat to national security.
9. Youth of the World Unite
University degrees in hand yet out of work, in debt and with no prospects on the horizon, feeling betrayed and angry, forced to live back at home, young adults and 20-somethings are mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore. Filled with vigor, rife with passion, but not mature enough to control their impulses, the confrontations they engage in will often escalate disproportionately.
Government efforts to exert control and return the youth to quiet complacency will be ham-fisted and ineffectual. The Revolution will be televised blogged, YouTubed, Twittered and.
10. End of The World!
The closer we get to 2012, the louder the calls will be that the "End is Near!" There have always been sects, at any time in history, that saw signs and portents proving the end of the world was imminent. But 2012 seems to hold a special meaning across a wide segment of "End-time" believers.
Among the Armageddonites, the actual end of the world and annihilation of the Earth in 2012 is a matter of certainty. Even the rational and informed that carefully follow the news of never-ending global crises, may sometimes feel the world is in a perilous state. Both streams of thought are leading many to reevaluate their chances for personal survival, be it in heaven or on earth.
(People of the Keys editor: The world will absolutely with out any doubt what so ever not end in 2012. Read our studies in the Studies section of the web site concerning the books of Daniel and Revelation and you will know and understand the sequence of events that will be unfolding in the near future.)
With a 30-year track record to prove it, no one has a more accurate inside scoop on the crucial trends shaping our future than Trends Journal Publisher, Gerald Celente.
***
MailOnline
Many will say I'm deluded, but I just know we all have a guardian angel, says LORNA BYRNE
By LORNA BYRNE -
Last week it was reported that a third of Britons are convinced a guardian angel watches over them. This will come as no surprise to Irish mother-of-four LORNA BYRNE, 56, who claims she can see and talk to angels.
Many will dismiss her as a fantasist, but her first memoir, Angels In My Hair, was an international bestseller two years ago. Now, in her second book, Stairways To Heaven, she describes how angels helped her through the untimely loss of her husband -- and the remarkable story of one paralysed boy...
An angel stepped through the trees -- and as he came closer to me, the aura of light surrounding him grew brighter. Tall and elegant, he had a human appearance.
He was radiant, his face was gold in colour and his eyes gleamed with a pearly light. His clothes were draped over his figure, but as he moved not a fold changed. As with all angels, his feet didn't touch the ground as he walked.
He was surrounded by golden birds in flight and on the ground around him were all kinds of other, smaller birds -- crows and jackdaws, robins, sparrows and finches.
Spiritual guidance: Lorna Byrne says we all have guardian angels
As the angel walked towards me, he opened his enormous wings and moved them gently. I could see each individual feather, some huge, some tiny -- all white with a tint of gold.
I knew this was the comforting Bird Angel I had last seen shortly before my husband Joe's death a few months earlier. I knew he'd come to help me.
I see angels all the time. I cannot remember a time when I haven't. These days I see them as clearly as I see my youngest daughter, Megan, 14, sitting across the dinner table from me.
I talk with them as I talk with other people, but I can also communicate with them without words. To me there has never been a day when I haven't seen angels -- it's the most natural thing in the world, and they are my best friends and companions.
The angels told me when I was quite young that I should keep what I was seeing a secret, but when I became an adult they told me that I had to write a book about them.
When I was younger, the angels I saw generally adopted a human form -- to make it easier for me to accept them. Now that's no longer absolutely necessary.
The angels I see now do not always have wings, but when they do I am sometimes amazed by their form. Sometimes they are like flames of fire, and yet they have shape and solidity. Some angels' wings have feathers, like the wings of the Bird Angel.
When angels have a human appearance -- with or without wings -- their eyes are one of their most fascinating features. Angel eyes are not like human eyes. They are so much more alive, so full of life and light and love. It's as if they contain the essence of life itself. Their radiance fills me completely.
I don't know why God has chosen me in this way. I don't think I'm better than anyone else. I'm just an ordinary person. But He did choose me and He sent His angels to teach me.
'When I see an angel, I want to stop and stare. I feel I am in the presence of a tremendous power. That's how it was when the Bird Angel visited me'
That's how it was when the Bird Angel visited me. When he approached me, he knelt down in front of me and wrapped his enormous wings around me. I could feel the gentle pressure as they encircled my body. As I snuggled into the feathers, I suddenly felt at peace. I whispered to him: 'Thank you for coming to comfort me.'
That was just a few months after my husband, Joe, had died in March 2000 from complications following a series of strokes. He was just 47.
When the angel came, I was missing Joe terribly. But saddest of all was that I'd always known that I would find myself in that position -- right from the age of just nine or ten.
As a schoolgirl, an angel called Elijah -- a strong, broad, rust-coloured angel who has appeared to me at crucial points in my life to give me strength and courage -- had shown me a vision of Joe.
Elijah told me then that Joe was the man I would marry and have children with, but that he would fall ill and we would not grow old together.
Our destiny was preordained from my childhood. Tragically, everything happened just as the angel had predicted. Many years later, Joe applied for a job in my father's petrol station, where I worked after leaving school, and we fell in love.
We bought a little cottage and got married, but even before our wedding, Joe's health was starting to deteriorate. Because I'd been sworn to secrecy by the angels about what would happen to him, I used to alternate between begging God and the angels to make him better, and castigating them for letting this happen. But to no avail.
It was God's plan -- and after we were married Joe had one health problem after another.
He became a diabetic, and then the diabetes affected his heart, leading to heart surgery. For the past ten years of Joe's life he was bed-ridden for most of the time. Towards the end, he suffered a lot of strokes.
Despite his illnesses, however, we were very happy together and had four children: Christopher, Owen, Ruth and Megan.
Fascinating forms: Lorna says she sees angels all the time, and that some even have feathers, like the wings of the Bird Angel.
In the last weeks of Joe's life, I would watch angels wrapping a spiritual blanket around him as he sat in his chair at home. The blanket was bright and looked like cotton wool. The angels were so loving and so gentle with him. I could see that they were trying to help his body to be less sore, to ease his pain.
At home, the night before Joe died, I woke up many times and turned to look at him sleeping in our bed beside me, to check he was OK. I knew the angels were going to take Joe's soul very shortly.
His beautiful guardian angel, who had loved and cared for Joe so tenderly throughout his life, and particularly in those last years, was no longer behind him where she should have been. Instead, glowing incredibly bright and radiant, she had moved through Joe's body and was holding his soul.
Each time I woke up, I would just look at Joe with tears in my eyes and then his guardian angel would tell me to go back to sleep. I would fall asleep instantly, then, an hour or so later, I would wake again.
Eventually, at seven the next morning, I awoke to find Joe was no longer breathing. His soul, looking like a perfect, ethereal version of himself -- and accompanied by his guardian angel -- was already moving away towards a beautiful light, to Heaven.
I wanted so desperately to ask God to allow Joe to stay, but I knew I couldn't, that the answer would be no. An angel touched my lips and I couldn't speak. It was time to say goodbye.
Every single human being has a guardian angel with them at all times, regardless of their religion, their nationality, the colour of their skin -- even if they have no faith. I have never seen a human being in my whole life who hasn't had a guardian angel.
So, regardless of whether you believe in it or not, you have a guardian angel there, trying to help you. Your angel is a gift from God.
I often see guardian angels as a column of light about a yard high, appearing about three steps behind a person. Sometimes a guardian angel will open this light up for me and show me a very beautiful, perfect human appearance. This happens most days.
Your guardian angel never leaves you for one moment -- from before your birth to after your death. Your guardian angel loves you and is there to help you. You are the most important person in the world to your angel -- he is there to do everything he can for you.
Once the angels allowed me to talk about them in public a few years ago, I started getting calls from people who wanted me to help someone they knew.
One of those needing help was Conor, a young man in his early 20s who lived near me, who'd been in a terrible car accident. He was pushed in a wheelchair up to my front door by his parents.
As we sat around the kitchen table, I looked at Conor; the light of the energy around him was so dim. He couldn't speak and was motionless, slouched in his wheelchair.
His mother cried as she told me he was severely brain-damaged and paralysed. He didn't seem to understand or hear anything. There was no response and there was no way of communicating with him.
The doctors had said he would remain in this state for the rest of his life. I looked at their son. There were healing angels around him, yet no light of energy around his body.
But the light of his guardian angel opened up to me, showing a great masculine strength and he said to me forcefully: 'He is not a vegetable, Lorna! Talk to him -- he will hear you. He needs a reason to live. He needs courage to fight to get up out of that wheelchair, to walk and live his life.'
I stood up and walked over to Conor and, praying silently, touched his legs, his hands, his arms and his chest. As I felt his heartbeat, I put my hand on his head and looked into his eyes.
'I know you can hear me,' I said. 'I know you will get well, but you have to fight for it. You have to struggle to walk and talk. You have to do it. You must want to get better. You can get well, have a job, marry and have children, but you mustn't give up on yourself.'
I stopped talking for a little while, praying over him. Six healing angels surrounded him. Their arms were outstretched, touching every part of his body. 'I know you can hear me,' I said to him. 'I know you have heard what I have said, even if you can't show it. You can do it -- but you have to fight.'
Around a year later, his parents rang to say they wanted to bring Conor to see me again. He was a completely different person. He was still in the wheelchair, but he could move his arms and his head. And he could talk in a faltering voice. He told me he'd heard what I had said the last time he had visited.
'You gave me belief and courage to force my body to respond. Thank you,' he said. 'I know I will get better. Will you keep praying for me?' I prayed over him again, as healing angels descended.
The last time I saw Conor was about a year ago. He was walking down the street, laughing, hand in hand with a girl. He didn't see me, but his guardian angel opened up and gave me a big smile.
For me, it was a joyful moment, and proof -- not that I needed it -- that angels truly do guide us throughout our lives.
Extracted from Stairways To Heaven by Lorna Byrne
"Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."Hebrews 13:2
Each person is born with three angels.
The three angels are assigned when the baby is first created.
One angel is to pray for them through their life-as the prayer will help to influence the baby and growing child.
The second angel is the guardian or protector angel, to protect the person through life.
The third angel influences their thoughts. This angel is always trying to help them to make the right choices and decisions, and to give them the strength to do so. This is the angel of the heart and conscience.