I began a major endeavor this month to re-edit all of the Blog posts that I had written over the years, and it has re-opened many of the hopes and dreams that I once shared while writing and sharing messages at Contoveros.Wordpress.com.
It all started with a dream I had about Socrates and Plato which connected with my “active imagination” that the eminent psychologist Carl G. Yung had wrote about in hisPsychology of the Unconscious.
Continue readingWhat a joy grandkids provide us, particularly when they share their daily lives with you as a family. I’m talking about my 6-year-old grandchild, Denalia, and my rambunctious 8-year-old grandson, Jameson Contos.
Continue readingFor the first time in my life, a bird greeted me outside my bedroom window as I contemplated whether to get out of bed earlier today.
It was 6 a.m. in the morning! A little too early for my taste, so I just rolled over and rested my head against the two pillows I had piled up on one side of the bed. (They help prop me up when I watch television many hours later.)
Continue readingI will be off to Washington DC next month on an excursion strictly for veterans to participate in what has been designated as an “Honor Flight” for those who served in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.
The program was created some years ago and even provided airfare for those living on the West Coast and living too far to make a trip to the nation’s capital by vehicle. That is where it got its name “Honor Flight” and in my bailiwick, that would be “Honor Flight Philadelphia.”
Continue readingThe month of January will always bring a sad feeling when I recall what happened on the first day of the year in 1953 to one of the greatest Country and Western singers of all time.
Hank Williams died of a heart attack while traveling in the back seat of a vehicle enroute to a performance he never was given by Fate to accomplish. He was only 29 years old, but had provided more than many lifetimes to the wonderful world of music.
Continue readingSLOW DOWN!
I believe that is what the Universe is telling me as I have gotten older and time has caught up with this aging body that – for the life of me – can’t physically handle everyday chores and activities I routinely completed some six months ago.
Slow down. Yes, you are getting tired when you ascend the steps to get into your Conshohocken home and then many more steps to get to your second-floor bathroom and/or main bedroom. So, take a break. You have nothing to prove or to “carry-on” as us veterans used to say while serving in the military.
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Continue readingI will be participating this Sunday in a gathering sponsored by a group presenting a woman I have followed for more than 10 years on a spiritual journey. Lorna Byrne is a woman from Ireland who has been seeing and speaking with angels since she was two years old and written several books on how we can open ourselves to the angelic realm that exists for our benefit.
Continue reading I never thought that words I wrote on a slip of paper and dropped into a suggestion box would somehow enlighten me.!
The senior center I’ve attended for the past two years has agreed to hire a teacher, or what I would call a “guru,“ to show seniors how to meditate at the Upper Merion Senior Citizen Center.
Five or six people had signed up for further information at the facility and a librarian from the local library who teaches meditation has contacted someone to come to the center near King of Prussia, PA, and guide us. It will start on the third Wednesday of September, according to the Center’s president who arranged it all.
The Pottstown Mercury Newspaper – where I served as cub reporter during the Bicentennial Year – will have a reunion as one of my mentors and great news reporters has scheduled a meeting this weekend.
Michael Sangiacomo, who worked the last 30 odd years at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, is returning to his native home in Norristown, PA, and has invited fellow Mercury staffers who were present when the Montgomery County paper won its first and second Pulitzer Prizes. It’s the only small newspaper in the United States that has won more than one of journalism’s grandest awards.
Continue reading I got a kick out of introducing my grandson to one of the most enduring and well-liked comedians of all time.
Six-year-old Jameson came out swinging at the television characters in my master bedroom after I called him from adjoining room and watched him view an outragiously funny scene from one of my all-time favorite Charlie Chaplin movies “City Lights.”
Relieved.
Grateful.
Joyful.
Those are the words that sprung from my heart and soul as I took in what the jury provided the entire world with their unanimous decision to convict a former USA president.
They say that “bad things happen in threes.” But I’m here to tell you that good things can happen in threes if you but open yourself to ’em.
Take today for example. I stopped at Lowe’s to get some of my walking steps in and felt proud to have parked in the spot designated with a sign that said “Veterans Parking.” I figured I might as well get some bird seed to feed my fine feathered friends who accumulate near the statues of both the standing St. Francis of Assissi and the seated Buddha.
Continue reading“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
That is what Mark Twain wrote in a cablegram he sent from Europe to a newspaper publisher in the United States that had published an obituary with false details of his death in a widely circulated newspaper one day more than a hundred years ago.
I am saying the same thing right now in the year 2024!
Continue readingA Trivia game I played with senior citizens recently at the Upper Merion Senior Service Center focused on musical songs that contained numbers in their titles. The experience stayed with me and later woke me at 3 am while I laid in bed unable to dismiss the songs not mentioned some 12 to 13 hours earlier. a
The songs we played included“One, Two Three” by Len Barry, “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford, “Nine to Five” by Dolly Parton, “One is the Loneliest Number” by Three Dog Night, “December ‘63 (Oh What a Night” by the Four Seasons, and “When I’m 64” and “Eight Days a Week” by the Beatles. I began to add more songs in my awakened state of mind and knew I’d get no further sleep until I get the songs out of my system and onto paper.
Continue readingI am about to get one of those RSV shots at the VA Hospital of Philadelphia to prevent any lung infection, and I wanted to share my enthusiasm for all the work the Veterans Administration has provided me with most of my adult life.
It started a month after exiting the Vietnam War alive and receiving a GI Bill stipend to become a “first-generation” college student, and a few years later, to buy my first home. But it wasn’t until I got caregiver burnout in 2008 while taking care of my wife, who suffered a traumatic brain injury from a fall, as well as a “PTSD-suffering uprising” from my combat experience, that I first got life support help from a VA hospital.
Continue readingDoes Fate have anything to do with the day that a person is born? Can one person born on the same date years earlier have some sort of influence on someone born years and perhaps even centuries later?
I mean, I was born on December 1st and share a biorhythm with Woody Allen, Richard Prior, Lou Rawls, and Bette Midler, all of whom are or were older than me. I love to joke around and make people smile like the two famous comedians, and I loved singing Doo Wop as a young man and still believe I can carry a tune some times.
Continue readingWhile attending the 10th anniversary of the Center for Contemporary Mysticism, a mystical experience opened my eyes to so many spiritual possibilities.
Continue readingIt has taken me three years to complete one study and a mere two years to finish the other, but I believe I have contributed to the scientific understanding of researchers for possible heart ailments and changes in thinking and memory for adults.
Continue readingI was thinking about a story I once wrote for a newspaper about the Philadelhia-born singer Jim Croce and I discovered so many stepping stones that guided me from one career choice to another with an almost mystical maneuvering.
Continue readingToday’s Supreme Court is the worst judicial tribunal since the United States’ highest judiciary ruled in 1856 that blacks were not and could not be citizens.
Yes, Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney has gone down in history for his ruling in Dred Scott v. John Sanford. It stated that a black man had no rights under the Constitution and that the Founders’ words “All Men Are Created Equal’ in the Declaration of Independence, was never intended to applyto blacks.
Continue readingToday (May 13th) is the birthday of my favorite singer of all time.
If he lived, Bobby Darin would have turned 87, but a rheumatic heart condition caused a premature death at age 37.
That was exactly 50 years ago this year on Dec. 20, 1973.
Continue readingThat’s the word that everyone in the United States can call four of the Proud Boys who were found guilty by a jury of their peers for taking part in the insurrection conducted in the Capital on Jan. 6, 2021. They reached the verdict on 31 of 46 counts following seven days of deliberation in Washington DC and nearly 15 weeks of courtroom proceedings.
Continue reading“Gabriel’s Messages” opened my heart to so many truths not only about life but of the transition of death, and I hope that others can read this wonderful book by my friend, Cyndi Smith, a fellow member of the Center for Contemporary Mysticism of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia.
It offers hope to a world that seems so weary about bad news for it predicts a new order of things 25 years from now. For instance, a “food tax” will be developed and help to send food to all corners of the world to end hunger; fossil fuels will no longer be used and be replaced by battery power or renewable energy. and medicine will become universal – we will be able to see any doctor in any part of the world.
Continue readingFox News should be curtailed on all military bases and facilities to prevent men and women in uniform to be lied to about stories and events shaping our nation, particularly the political world around us.
Continue readingOne of my all-time favorite authors – a veteran who was a POW and a staunch anti-war advocate – would have celebrated his 100th birthday this month.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who turned me on to science fiction mixed with auto-biographical recalls, was born on Veterans Day in 1921, just three years after Armistice Day, which was the original veterans’ day. It commemorated the end of the European war “Over There” and was called “The War To End All Wars.”
Continue readingThe world is celebrating the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi today!
Francesco di Bernadone, whose real name was actually Giovanni or (John), was born some 800 years ago. He came from a wealthy family. But turned his back on his mercantile father and gave up all worldly goods to help the poor as well as the animals.
Continue reading(See Part I “My Delaware County Community College!”)
Before I ever went to a Community College, I had to make up several deficits in my learning. I had to take Remedial Math as well as Remedial English. I passed both and was then permitted to take regular classes which include journalism studies and just as important, the school’s extra-curricular activity of working on the college newspaper.
I began as a reporter for The Communitarian.
The paper used my by-line on every story I wrote, and by my second year at DCCC, I was named Editor.
I wore ‘em outdoors during a walk on my 10,000-steps-a-day journey, and the first thing I noticed was the sound of birds chirping merrily in the trees I walked under. They had to have been communicating with each other because as soon as one stopped chirping, another one seemed to follow up in response.
Continue readingWhat do a missing swimsuit and a 50-year-old photo of a newly-minted lieutenant have in common?
Both got lost and then recovered on a friendly trip to the library and the treasured gift of hoping for an uplifting outcome.
Continue readingThe following is Gabriel’s Message as channeled by my good friend Cyndi Smith:
Your soul does not completely fit inside your body. Some of your soul Remains in Heaven in what you call your Higher Self. Much of it is here inside of you but the part that overflows your body is called your aura.
Continue readingPerfectly, Unadulteratedly Human
The authentic human voice is a thing many writers strive to capture. Few can claim to have succeeded. Contos, however, very much has earned that badge of honor. The text is home to an authentic and powerful narration that still, in its honest humanity, grounds itself in the humble approach to one man’s life and what that life means.
Continue reading
I don’t often cry over books. It’s not that I can’t, it’s just something that very rarely happens.
I cried reading about the Kid of Brewerytown.
Take that as you will.
Sixty years to the day of the most memorable kiss of my life, the girl who bestowed that kiss had contacted me for the first time since way back then.
Review of Vietnam War Recall authored by Michael J Contos at Contoveros.wordpress.com
[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of “Vietnam War Recall”
Like many other young men of the time, author Michael Contos found himself in the military, headed to a turbulent region of the world to protect democracy. After completing Officer Candidate School, Michael was deployed to Vietnam to lead a platoon of infantrymen on missions while evading the formidable Viet Cong forces. Here, he describes the worst day of his life that led to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a debilitating condition that would threaten to consume his life and linger for decades; a day so jarring that he would not talk about it, even with his family.
Continue readingIt took me more than 50 years, but I finally published my Vietnam War story and the toll it took on me after leading a combat infantry platoon when I was just a 21-year-old first lieutenant in the US Army.
I self-published with the help of editors who wrote the back cover description. They used a mug shot I had taken some ten years ago while attending a PTSD meditation clinic at Omega Institute for veterans and their families. The clinic introduced me to different forms of meditation that allowed me to eventually deal with the trauma and view the war experience in a more benign and compassionate light.
Continue reading
That is, the Veterans of Foreign Wars. I could’ve joined it right out of the Vietnam War, but at that time of my life, I didn’t want to help support the war that I had just left.
Continue readingSeptember 29th is Michaelmas Day, the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, when everyone with the moniker of Michael will feel the roots extending from our favorite saint. Continue reading
“Twelve Angry Men” influenced my decision to practice law more than any movie I can remember while growing up in a working-class neighborhood of Philadelphia and being the first in my family to go to college. The movie has done more for understanding the workings of our criminal justice system than any books or school classes could possibly provide. Continue reading
Could my reckless and often unabashed “agitation” be the instigation for another person to find the voice she needed to speak directly from her soul?
I like to think so. I believe I might have sparked a keg of memories that were waiting for the right moment and touch to manifest and explode for the world to finally see. Continue reading
It was Saturday morning, May the 19th of 2012. I awoke that early morning feeling well rested. Since the beginning of the new year, I have been working Monday through Thursday, having Fridays off. In the past, when working a full week, my Saturdays were spent sleeping in and catching up on the many hours of sleep lost during the week. Continue reading
My second wife stopped breathing shortly after they placed her in the emergency vehicle en route to a hospital some eight years ago. The day was six-months to date of her first bout with an emergency wagon when she fell in our Conshohocken, PA, home, suffering a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).
She remained in a coma for more than five days. This time, however, they were more certain that she would not recover from her latest, unplanned date with Miss Fate. A nurse or a social worker at the Hospital suggested I contact a priest to say the last rites for Wendy. Continue reading
My son, Nicholas, just didn’t seem to understand how much pain I suffered in Sutcliffe Park when I took him to see fireworks on clear and starry night sky on the Fourth of July some years ago.
At first, I enjoyed the rockets zooming into the air. They were colorful red, white, and blue explosions that took your breath away with gasps of wonder and awe.
Soon, however, they took on a menacing demeanor, as each blast began to remind me of the Vietnam War and the rounds of mortar fire that fell on me and my platoon some 40 years earlier.  Continue reading
Julie traveled all the way from Chicago and came to the Lotus Flower Island with a question about her life’s purpose. By the time she left the privately owned spiritual retreat, there was no doubt whatsoever that she found the answer she was looking for.
She’ll return to this rustic hideaway, hidden away off the mainland of South Korea, and remain there, devoting herself to serving others from around the world who are searching for similar answers. Julie’s newfound happiness will be in helping others suffering from too much technology and not enough love. Continue reading
I’ve been to some ten different Buddhist temples in the mountainous regions of Korea, taking in the rustic, centuries-old magnificent works of art and spiritual creations of man. I felt uplifted when entering doorways that millions, perhaps billions, of others walked through in search of peace and calm on their way to potential enlightenment.
None, however, has inspired more of a majestic feeling inside than the new WON Center in Seoul, Korea, where a bolt of soft and pure lightning once again struck me with what I can only describe as a divine presence that’s humbling and elevating at the same time. Continue reading
Korea awaits me next week as I travel more than a thousand miles to find myself and discover reasons why I am still here on planet earth.
Yes, I’m joining a group from Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago that will fly to Seoul, South Korea, to take part in the centennial celebration of the WON Buddhism by its master on April 28th, 1916. Continue reading
The Beatles got it right in the 1960s.
“All You Need is Love.”
“Love is All There Is.”
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I couldn’t agree with them more, particularly after experiencing the warm glow and gentle caress of a bunch of lovers who helped me to open my foolish heart to “A Course of Love.”  Continue reading
The Heinz ketchup bottle illustrated what it could look like . . .
And I have fallen victim to it whenever I try something new and start to visualize what could possibly go wrong.
It’s called “Anticipation Anxiety Continue reading
I heard a banjo strum as I fed the birds outside near the plum tree in my yard this morning. Banjo? Strumming? Where could that have come from, I wondered?
Continue readingDay 7 – Total Balance Is Natural Balance
Question 1 of 4
Describe three sources of inspiration in your life that keep you aiming to be a better you.
— Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra’s Free 21-day Meditation
If I had a magic wand, I would wave it and remove all of the hate in our land. It would take away the hurt all felt throughout the ages of man from the beginning of time, when Cain killed his brother, and when a stupid Esau sold his birthright to his brother Jacob for a lousy bowl of soup.  Continue reading
One doesn’t have to go on a diet to lose the excess weight of a lifetime of living. All you need do is to lighten your mind, get rid of burdens carried from childhood when the trauma of difficulties and missteps caused you to stumble and lose faith in your God-given direction.
“Lighten up,” is what someone told me once, and that is exactly what I have tried to do after experiencing Holotropic Breath Work and listening to the new “Weight Loss” meditation offered by Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra today. My struggle has ended, and from now on, I will be in harmony with me, myself, and I.
My host in Freiburg, Germany, escorted me and her husband on a shamanic journey as we lay on the carpeted floor in their guest room, and she guided us to the “lower world.” She drummed for a good 15 minutes, never letting up the beat as she walked around us, covered by blankets with eyes closed and our hearts open.  Continue reading
The Shaman applied pressure with his fingers and thumbs to the side, back, and front of my skull. He told me to let him know if he caused me any pain.
I felt some discomfort, but it wasn’t intolerable, and so I said nothing and let him continue the process as I sat in a chair in front of more than a hundred people attending the symposium on “What is Healing? – Archaic Traditions Meet Ways of Experiencing Modern Consciousness Exploration and Psychotherapy.” He was the principal speaker, having taught the participants to dance and sing in two large circles in the room where we had met.  Continue reading
Don’t take my word for it. Scientific research has discovered that the active conditions of anxiety and agitation cause unhappiness. Becoming quiet and stilling the mind lowers blood pressure and relieves the stress that’s produced in our busy lives.  Continue reading
Those words in German jumped off the page from a brochure I couldn’t read, but by the end of a presentation in Freiburg, Germany, I got a better handle on who does the healing.
I do! And you do!  Continue reading
I feel like the character in a comic strip who has had a cloud over his head with nothing but calamities and obstacles blocking his every move. No matter what he did, he’d be thrown off stride, be it from a torrential rainfall or an avalanche along a sunshine-filled pathway.  Continue reading
I got the best sleep I’ve had in years last night and I owe it all to the treatments I have received for not only what ails me, but what has been blocking my lower brain from connecting with my upper brain.
I slept like a proverbial baby, having gotten up only once during the night — around 4:30 am — to relieve the bladder and be kind to my prostate. Going back to bed, I drifted right back to sleep and enjoyed a complete dream of the old neighborhood and my days in a lawyer’s office, both in Philadelphia.  Continue reading
For the past five days, nothing greeted me when I got out of bed.
There was no ache, no pain, no reminder of how bad my back has become after so many years of walking, running and standing on this earth. Not to mention, jumping out of an airplane five times, landing badly on my first parachute jump, and hiding it from the military instructor who would have kicked me out of jump school had he suspected I injured myself.  Continue reading
I’m enjoying life and feel a peace and calm I didn’t know I’d ever experience again. It’s like falling in love for the very first time. I look forward to each new day filled with hope and a smile for whatever life presents to me.  Continue reading
I think I’m going “Cat Shit.” You probably heard of someone going “Bat Shit.” But I’m here to tell you that I’ve gone “Cat Shit” and this is the reason why:
My son’s cat, Daniel, has developed some ESP skills. Extraordinary Sensing People skills.  Continue reading
A few weeks ago, I envisioned what the coming year would be like in a “Vision Board.” I got together with a small group and pasted magazine pictures and bold 48-point type letters to a cardboard placard showing what we would like to see enfold in 2016.
I placed the Vietnam War book at the top, adding lots of spiritual and meditative symbols alongside it. On the bottom line, I pasted “Love to Travel” and displayed two large pictures of my son and me on a cruise to Alaska some two years ago.
Psychometry – the art of visualizing an energy force or spirit from a token or an object – really does work.
I recently took part in the practice and discovered insights I never believed possible until I realized I had developed some sort of psychic ability.  Continue reading
The word, “Contoveros” in Latin means “Singer of Truth.” I didn’t know that as a child, when I learned that it was my father’s real last name. Someone at Ellis Island shortened it to “Contos.” One of my wives once told me that the new word means “Short.” Continue reading
It was the ice on the truck that beckoned to me when I was six years old and playing on the one-way street near my home in North Philadelphia. Continue reading
“Think before You Speak” reads the sign that my new best friend gave me for Christmas. She thought of me when she saw it, she said. She knew how many problems I had had with boundaries. Or, rather, lack of boundaries.  Continue reading
Reiki, the universal life energy, opened me to one of the most vivid dreams of my life last night. And, as my Reiki teacher once told me, “Write down your dreams . . . There could be a message in store for you.”  Continue reading
“What am I doing here?” I asked myself as I sat in a cushioned chair with some 50 other people early this morning on the last day of 2015. I was here at the invitation of a woman I hardly knew, a minister, who enticed me to join the world in a planet-wide prayer for peace. Continue reading
I experienced something scientists have labeled “Post-Traumatic Growth” twice in my life and some forty years apart. Both led to major changes in my life and a new look at life like I never had imagined it to be. Continue reading
I didn’t know how much joy there could be in grief until sorrow encompassed me and a warm flow of unconditional love spread throughout my entire being. Someone I knew experienced a death in her family and it hit me like a proverbial ton of bricks when I learned of her demise . . . Continue reading
Mental illness scares the shit out of me. The very term conjures up images of some crazed guy with wild, straggly hair and a demon-like smile of malevolence. Steven King kind of comes to mind when I think of someone who might be a little touched in the head. A Stephen King character, that is. Not Stephen King.  Continue reading
I love my cousin Betty Ann. She’s a few years older than me but I warmed up to her just as my adolescent hormones started to bubble up as I visited her at her farmhouse in New Jersey years ago. Continue reading
I would love to write a book about how people came to the current journey they’re on.
You see, I have this tendency of going up to people and asking them how they came to be where they are; that is, spiritually, if you know what I mean.
I know very little about New Age holistic energy and healing. Yet, I believe that some force beyond my understanding has arisen in my life and I’ve become the beneficiary of something mystical.  Continue reading
When was the last time you read a book where you had to stop to digest what you just took in because you wanted to savor what you felt?
And then while resonating with it, you get a warm glow about yourself; you feel lighter, more connected with the world, and so happy that another person can put into words what you know is so true?  Continue reading
Why is it that I find myself sticking my foot into my mouth every time something good comes my way? Why do I screw things up so badly? What curse have I created in some past life for me to resolve through some kind of karmic debt that I must repay in this lifetime?  Continue reading
Reflections opened a new world of understanding today. Years after a traumatic event, I can look back and see things in a totally different and healing fashion.
I couldn’t do it when the shit was happening. It hurt too much.
Even five or ten years after the trauma, I’d get sweaty palms and a sped-up heartbeat when thinking about the worst day of my life. I couldn’t dwell for too long without having to relive the God-awful experience.  Continue reading
I fall to my knees every day and give thanks for at least three things that I am totally grateful for. I usually include my son and at least one of our cats but also acknowledge the advent of a new day as well as a nice new warm bed and the person who invented the heater to keep all of us warm. The cats included!  Continue reading
No matter where I go, Philadelphia will always go with me. I’ve taken the old neighborhood to combat in Vietnam as well as to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. I let it shine in the courthouses of Philadelphia and the one and only house of pleasure I visited in Panama.
Yeah, I’m from Brewerytown, an old German-based section of Philadelphia that families of beer-makers settled in a small enclave of the City of Brotherly Love. Brewerytown is near the Philadelphia Zoo on Girard Avenue and not too far from the Eastern State Penitentiary, where Al Capone once lived in a section called Fairmount.  Continue reading
I remembered what love once meant to me, and I thought I’d share it with those of us who might have forgotten it.
I’m talking about the love that hits you upside the head when you’re not looking; the type that won’t let you think of anyone else besides him or her; the love that you wish your lover would feel but you’re too afraid to hope for a schmuck like yourself.  Continue reading
Who am I? What do I believe? And can I name a few of my beliefs?
Let me name a few things I believe about myself. They’re in no particular order.  Continue reading
I believe that all of us are placed on this earth for a purpose, and the aim for us in life is to find out what that purpose is!
We don’t usually seek the answer right away. Most put it off until some calamity forces us to find answers to life’s most important questions. Why am I here? Why am I in this body? Who am I, really?  Continue reading
“I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, and more desolation. Some of these young men think that war is all glory but let me say . . . ”War is All Hell!”
American Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman
If you haven’t tried it, you ought to Google “EFT” and see if such a technique could help with whatever might ail you today!
I grew when meeting four people on Monday who helped me expand my consciousness in ways I had never known existed before. Someone introduced me to the Fifth Dimension, while another invited me to a New Age exhibition in Bucks County, where light-workers of all shapes and sizes would introduce newbies like me to new and exciting pathways to Nirvana. Continue reading
Death doesn’t seem to scare me as much as it used to. I mean, I see it as a transition, and not an ending. In some ways, it will be a welcome “new adventure” if you think about it in spiritual terms.
No, I’m not talking about heaven and hell like the Catholic nuns and priests preached to me as a kid at St. Ludwig’s Roman Catholic Church where I served as an altar boy and wanted to be a priest until I discovered girls. I’m talking about a transition to a “way station,” a place where your spirit — or soul — ascends to meet with higher spirits or what some might call Ascended Masters.  Continue reading
Like December 7th, 1941, the date of “9-11” will go down in American history as a new generation’s Day of Infamy.
In my lifetime, it ranks up there with the horrific day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  Continue reading
You wanted more, and I couldn’t give it to you. I was seeking love, romance, and someone I could be committed to. You simply saw me as a “one-night stand.” Someone you enjoyed being with for an hour, a night, or just one day in the life of two ships like us meeting briefly on a night at sea.  Continue reading
Musical refrains from Rock & Roll songs helped get me through the Vietnam War. I didn’t know all the lyrics of the songs, only those short parts where I’d stop what I was doing and raise my voice in unison with the lead singer.  Continue reading
Reiki melts away stress. That’s how it works on me. I feel parts of my body easing up, relaxing, and “collapsing in” on themselves, if that is possible or, rather, imaginable. I liken the feeling to the green-colored Wicked Witch of the West, who, when splashed accidentally with a bucket of water by the Tin Man trying to douse a fire engulfing the Straw Man, the personification of evil in the Merry Old Land of Oz, declares, “I’m melting. I’m melting.” Water melts away the bad, and Dorothy is proclaimed all that is good.
Summer always served as a “new beginning” for me when I was in the US Army. I got drafted on the Third of June and did my basic training in the hot, dry air of Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
I can’t tell you how many push-ups I did during the two-month training session, as the meanest drill sergeant I ever saw brought fire to my poor soul by running me everywhere and cussing me out to force me into fighting shape.
Much of what I know about War was what I learned while playing as a kid. You know, using a stick or a broken branch from a tree, I’d pretend it was a rifle to shoot the bad guys who were out to get me and the rest of the good guys in my old neighborhood. 
When I write, I try to tap into the child within. I try to “feel” something that I can share with another, be it humorous, educational or shocking.
I have stories to tell from my past that brought me to this point, and I think they may help others to feel what I feel and to take action, even if that action is simply to refrain from acting or even thinking.
Continue readingAll of my legal career involved defending someone charged with crimes or offenses against the law. I worked 20 years as a lawyer, trying more than a hundred jury trials, winning more than half of them.
But to be honest, my first taste of arguing the law came not as a defense lawyer, but as a prosecutor, one appointed by some colonel to bring charges against a buck private who broke a law and faced a summary offense for some minor infraction.
President Barack Obama may have raised an issue on all wars when he eulogized a fallen comrade on June 26, 2015, at the funeral for the pastor of the AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
While never detracting from the valor that Confederate Soldiers fought with in the Civil War, he offered a plain and simple truth.
Continue readingListen to what the Universe is saying. It may speak to you in ways you might not understand unless you’re open to all means of communication. 
I personally try to go with the flow. For instance, I planned to take money out of a fund created for my son more than 20 years ago to pay for four new tires on his car. They cost more than a thousand dollars. I called the firm that held his stocks and had obtained the necessary paperwork to sell off 30 stocks to get $1,200.
I misplaced the paperwork and no matter where I looked for it, I couldn’t find it.
Opening to the Universe needs to be practiced daily!
I believe that I am being told by forces around me and within me that use of my son’s savings is not the source to get the money. I’m listening to something that is more than just a coincidence. It is a guidance, a nudge into a direction other than the one I had planned to go.
I’m listening to the Universe. And I’ll seek a different avenue for the accomplishment of my task.
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It can be as simple as that. But only if you open your true self to listening in different ways!
Listen. You can Hear the Universe Speak if You but Let It . . .
Closing my eyes, I open all my senses to group meditation!
The smell of lavender and a hint of myrrh greet me as I walk into the meditation room. I had not expected my sense of smell to be the first one to experience such a warm and inviting welcome. I should not have been surprised. The olfactory system is the first sensory organ I usually use, and I’m not too proud to state I am usually led by the nose. 
Contoveros 
