Promise and Potential
A Life of Wisdom, Courage, Strength and Will
By Scott F. Paradis
Why are you here?
What is your purpose?
Which way should you go?
Discover timeless insights to:
Overcome obstacles!
Realize miracles!
Live a full and fulfilling life!
Change your life now!
Promise and Potential is an instant classic to share with friends, family - anyone searching for a renewal of faith, hope and love.
Lift your heart and make your spirit soar - recounting narratives of trial and triumph to reveal timeless truths, ageless wisdom.
If you are ready to change your life - act now!
Purchase Promise and Potential!
Exclusively from Cornerstone Achievements.
Promise and Potential is a journey of discovery in three elements:
1. Discerning stories illustrating ultimate truths.
2. Nuggets of wisdom expressed through inspiring quotes.
3. Insights revealed through explorations of: Wisdom, Courage, Strength and Will.
Sample for yourself:
Preface
Words exist because of meaning; once you've gotten the meaning,
you can forget the words.
-Chuang Tzu-
Language, particularly written language, for all its beauty, subtlety, and strength, fails the task of complete expression. Insightful ideas captured and reduced to words, however, still serve as useful tools to help us crawl, inch by inch, toward our inevitable destination. Sometimes on rare, extraordinary occasions language strikes a chord of spirit and resonates a heretofore unfathomable truth in a simple, heartfelt way allowing us to bound forward and transform our experience of life. Promise and Potential is intended as a simple, meaningful, inspirational, and enjoyable expression of at least some part of truth.
Excerpts from Chapter One
In a short time the stranger put up the torch, fixing it to a holder on the wall. He congratulated the young woman for making the journey as together they emerged from the tunnel. They were bathed in brilliant sunshine, unlike anything the woman had experienced in the shadowy valley. The beauty of the sight they beheld was beyond description. Joy and sadness welled up together within the young women as she fell to her knees in tears. “To think,” she muttered, “I have been only a short distance from this bounty all my life. My neighbors, my friends, my family have all struggled in misery, ransoming their very lives to toil in our dying valley because we were afraid to even envision an alternative.” The stranger lovingly acknowledged both her joy and her grief.
The pair sat for some time overlooking a vast plain and rolling green hills. The young woman reflected on what this meant for herself, her family, and all the villagers of the lost valley. After some time had passed, the stranger spoke: “You now know the way. It is up to you to show others the way through their fears to a better life.”
* Something more than this physical reality exists.*
* Something organizes and animates experience.*
Our understanding of this life colors the reality we experience. Most of humanity binds itself into the drudgery of an isolated, perilous existence — like the lost villagers. While the often-misunderstood truth is that our boundaries are not static or fixed; home is not here, and we can go home. Something outside physical reality exists.
A power, beyond our own, organizes and animates what we experience. When we limit ourselves we follow the script. Conflict, challenge, and effort are component parts of the drama, lending depth, texture, and context, a credibility the ego demands. But we need not revel in the drama; we have a choice, and we can choose another way.
Life is infinitely more than the limited physical reality we readily accept. Understanding that another reality exists is beyond intellect, in the realm of faith. Faith in an ultimate truth requires a willingness to move beyond intellect to be open to a truth that seeks to reveal itself to us.
Our very existence, our awareness of life and this physical reality, is like a dream. Yet buried in the dream is a gift, a promise granted us. The promise is one of opportunity and adventure, risk nestled in security. The power that animates and energizes this physical reality offers alternatives. We have unlimited resources and vast potential to draw on to discover and create in this playground. But to discover the truth we must choose to follow the guide to lead us home.
Sages and saints guide us to doorways of spirit. We can choose to be open to the promise and potential of an unlimited life of peace, love, and joy, or we can succumb to the weight of the drama. The promise is a life of unlimited potential. We need only orient on the promise and potential of each life…
…that you may have life, and have it more abundantly.
Excerpts from Chapter Two
We are what we are — awareness/observer — yet a challenging circumstance dominates our existence: we live what we think we are. The force moving us away from the realization of “self” as unencumbered observer frolicking in the playground, to the fearful and troubled submission to the ego (the snare of the human condition) is a mental miscalculation. The ego leads us from tranquility to turmoil — from abundance to competition and lack. Through fear and the overwhelming nature of the reality that surrounds us, we surrender to the illusion. We come to believe mankind is separate from the environment and individuals are separate from each other and separate from what is.
While we possess facets beyond imagining and power beyond measure, we often act like a monkey caught with its paw in a jar, holding tight to a prize; we imprison ourselves. By way of a corrupt idea of being more by having more, the ego seeks and secures dominion. The parents of the human family, Adam and Eve in the Bible’s creation story, did not accept what they had — with profound consequences. They coveted, they chose, they acted. And still today, we compound the error by denying responsibility for our circumstances and our actions.
Only by our ultimate acceptance of life in the present will we shake the serpent. We are ultimately responsible. The ego is not in charge. We cannot allow the ego control. Until we accept full responsibility for what we have, are, and do will we understand what the ego tells us about being separate is a lie. Embrace wisdom, live the paradox, accept responsibility for what seems beyond our control.
We provide an individual perspective and experience of this existence, but we are not separate, nor alone in it. By embracing the paradox, denying self and accepting full and total responsibility for the quality of our experience, we liberate our selves. Wisdom leads us to the fulfillment of pure love and the connection of pure bliss. Through wisdom we realize, no matter what happens we are at home, we are safe, and we are whole — we are one.
Know the truth and the truth will set you free.
Excerpts from Chapter Six
What to do is accept that all is right with the world — it’s okay. Rain, wind, snow; rich, poor; educated, uneducated, it’s okay. The circumstances of life are neither “someone’s” nor “the system’s” fault. There is no victim. There is no one to blame. This lesson is offered until the wisdom of this truth is accepted. We are not separate; we are masters of our fate.
Our choice is to accept or resist — to be in harmony (at peace) or conflict (the ego’s temporary illusion of power). Ultimately, the end is not in doubt; we choose the amount of pain suffered in the illusion as we journey to wholeness. The struggle is only and forever in the mind.
What is, is. For what will be you have two choices: go with the ego or go with God. Accept the master plan; humbly rejoice in every circumstance as awakening your responsibility to choose.
Every obstacle, every challenge, every experience, is an opportunity to find the right path, to journey one step closer to home. Life is for the living. Though you are not of this world you are in it. Your quest is not to succumb to the lure of the ego but rather to use your energy, your opportunity, your circumstance, to realize wisdom. You are to grow, to learn, and to teach, for the torch you hold for others shows you the way ahead.
The ultimate objective, for all of God’s children, is to return home. Our destiny is salvation. To return to God, to achieve this goal, we have energy and will, strength and courage, and the wisdom of spirit as a guide. The lessons of life are expressed in the dynamic motion and energy of change. In this world we cannot stay still; we either surge forward or fall back. We must choose, we must act, we must live.
The relevance, beauty, and inspiration of the Bible story is not in telling a tale of an ancient people, their journey to a new land, and the promise of new life. Rather, the beauty and truth of the Bible story is that those accounts are the narrative of your life and mine. We are the souls leaving the garden, facing danger, losing our way, being bound in slavery and through faith and perseverance finding the way out and journeying to the Promised Land. We have to see beyond the dirt and rocks; the laws and the labels; the hunger and the strife; and recognize the truth. Don’t fear this life nor look for truth in the material world. The Holy Spirit guides us to find truth within. Live life with zest and gusto. Live life for the adventure it is meant to be.
One life, well live, changes the world.
Through this one inspiring volume you will come to know again, ageless wisdom and timely insights. Through Promise and Potential you will recognize the promise and fulfill the potential that is your life.
Take this journey of trial and triumph. Reflect on four simple, yet profound and powerful words: wisdom, courage, strength and will.
Pray for wisdom,
If you are wise,
Your life will be full.
If you cannot grasp wisdom,
Pray for courage,
Courage to let go leads to wisdom.
If you cannot claim courage,
Pray for strength,
Strength to overcome leads to courage.
If you cannot summon strength,
Pray for will,
Will rightly employed leads to strength.
Recognize the promise, fulfill your potential!
Remember:
What is came from how you were.
What will be comes from how you are.
Order your copy of Promise and Potential now!
Recognize the promise, Fulfill your potential!
Hard Cover, 240 Pages of Insight and Inspiration.
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