Never know what you’re going to find when you begin to re-read some of the messages you received on your WordPress Blog Posts.
I was nominated for the “Liebster Award” which is recognition of blog post writers by other bloggers. The author used the name of “Lillies Loves” at her site, and had offered the award in a message I had overlooked until I saw it in response to a post I wrote several years ago about the Jewish mysticism called Kabbalah.
Continue readingI was escorted from my home by a Uber driver for the first time in my life when I learned the Veterans Administration provides the service free for disabled veterans.
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.
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 readingI never thought that words I wrote on a slip of paper and dropped into a suggestion box would somehow enlighten me!
Continue readingI got a kick out of introducing my grandson to one of the most enduring and well-liked comedians of all time.
Continue readingThey 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.
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.
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 Philadelphia-born singer Jim Croce, and I discovered so many steppingstones that guided me from one career choice to another with an almost mystical maneuvering.
Continue readingThe name change has finally occurred, and I am happy to report that every US Army base where I was stationed has had its Confederate Army soldier’s name removed and replaced with more admirable names.
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.
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 readingThis month marks the 50th anniversary of when the Vietnam War finally ended. A Peace Accord was reached on January 27, 1973, making way for the complete removal of all troops by March 29th of the same year.
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.
Continue readingThe world is celebrating the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi today!
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.
The 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 readingFor the first time in our nation’s history, an attorney who once practiced law as a public defender will serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed by the Senate and will take her seat this summer when Justice Stephen Breyer steps down. She will be the first former criminal defense lawyer since Justice Thurgood Marshall, who served on the bench more than 30 years ago.
Continue readingThis quote from Mark Twain touched my very soul yesterday when I got a message from one of my old colleagues who said that he had read something “disturbing.” The exact quote via Messenger was: “Michael, are you okay? I saw something disturbing for your name.”
Continue readingauthored by Michael J Contos
at Contoveros.wordpress.com
Continue readingI knelt at the gravesite while bowing my head and closing my eyes to pray yesterday morning. I was visiting Calvary Cemetery of West Conshohocken, the burial site for Father William E Atkinson, an Augustinian priest who passed away in 2006 and is now being considered for canonization by the Catholic Church to be named a saint.
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.
Continue readingI got a call from my doctor at the VA Hospital of Philadelphia after having blood drawn earlier in the day. He was concerned about an increase in some bad things involving my prostate.
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
I wanted to shoot the political sign I saw outside of Philadelphia the other day but ended up feeling sorry for all of us who react violently against the person we demonize on the other side of the aisle. 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
“What the hell do you have to lose?” Donald Trump shouted to the all-white audience while pretending he was asking African Americans to vote for him last week.
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?
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
I’ve never been so proud of being an American as I was the past week when some forty members of the Senate held an unprecedented filibuster and it was followed up by Congressional Democrats who took the House Chamber hostage for a “sit-in” protest against our nation’s inability to halt the sale of high-powered weapons now being used for mass destruction. Continue reading
Simply cut back like the sandlot football running back you played as a kid while scampering on a field in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park.
My second wife stopped breathing shortly after they placed her in the emergency vehicle.
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.
I’ve opened my mind to a new way of seeing and I am free as long as I can keep my peripheral vision on anything but the object of my focus.
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.
It has helped me immensely in calming the “monkey mind” after a wonderful Korean woman introduced it to me, and it took a full day for me to understand its profound ramifications.
Continue readingI’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.
Continue readingI have no idea what Saint John of the Cross meant when writing about his spiritual struggles several centuries ago, but I feel as if I’ve been going through one all day today. 
Had he said one more word about my feet, I would have swung at his big Irish head, caring not one lick about the consequences. To hell with any spiritual pilgrimage. To hell with finding answers to this life and any other god-forsaken one!
Emotions run high in darkness, but clear light will always prevail
I felt out of sorts earlier in the day and had confided in the minister for six of us making up the Philadelphia contingent for the Centennial Celebration for WON Buddhism. She noticed I was down and advised me that another person I had some friction with would need to work out the problems they had themselves.
I felt uplifted and meditated on a park bench outside of a magnificent soccer stadium where more than 50,000 people would squeeze into the facility and get an inspirational sermon from the dharma master, only the fifth one in the line of major spiritual dharma leaders since WON Buddhism was started on April 28, 1916.
I ate like a Native Korean, stuffing myself with delicious rice and beans, tender fish, and a hearty portion of beef. I didn’t mind the vegetables that came with every meal, including breakfast. (I don’t know of anyone in America who has ever had to eat vegetables for breakfast. I’d call that un-American.) But I heartily ate what tasted like little pancakes, which I knew had green and red things mixed in because it was good for you!
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I resonated with much of what the Prime Dharma Master Kyongsan said, particularly about reincarnation and how we as a society have made the elevation of “matter” — what I believe he meant as science and technology — more important than our spiritual lives.
“With this Great Opening of Matter
Let there be a Great Opening of Spirit.”
– Founding Master Sotaesan
This is the “founding motive” of Won Buddhism’s teaching, this holy man said. And it made a lot of sense in 1916 when telephone lines were being introduced into Korea (for the royal family) and tracks for the coming of the railroads were laid in what was still a united country. Little, if any, emphasis was given to the moral compass of the nation or to the human spirit of the entire world, for that matter.
Hence, the creation of a “spiritual power” that could conquer the material power that has (in my words) “run amok.”
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I wanted to dwell in the spaciousness of what I had just heard from this holy man of whom I met earlier this week, genuflected in front of, and bestowed a kiss on his hand before he realized some crazy American had fallen in love with his very presence.
I wanted desperately to talk about it with others moved by such an eloquent understanding and discourse on the human condition that the latest dharma master said was barely surviving today in the “emergency room.”
But I had to rush out and get into a van and travel dozens of miles with no discussion or debate of what my heart had just exposed me to, and longing to open more for. I felt deflated following such an exuberant outing. I felt unfulfilled. I felt alone.
When my roommate brought up my stinky socks, I took them to the bathroom and washed them — and my feet. But when he said more when I came back, he was lucky I didn’t hit him with every negative feeling this post-traumatic stressed-out veteran with a near-blinding red rage was having trouble keeping boiled up inside.
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Where had my peace of mind gone? Where was the love? What kind of monster switches from such a loving and understanding person, to one who wants to do bodily harm to another spiritual seeker, and care not what wounds he might receive in return?
If that’s not a “Dark Night of the Soul” on a spiritual path, then I don’t know what you would call it. I’m glad I didn’t swing. I’m happy for both our sakes that I left the room with a lot of cursing on my part but no physical contact.
Calmness has returned. Getting away from the stressful situation is the first thing psychologists tell those of us with PTSD to do.
Writing about it also helps. It is as therapeutic as meditation can be.
I just hope someone seeking a spiritual path like the one I’m on doesn’t get turned off by this public Internet confession.
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(Note. My roommate and I just made up before midnight, and I’ll be returning to the room with less smelly feet and a heart that is on the mend. His too!
That is, his heart and not his feet.)
Pride Cometh Before the Fall.
Continue reading
That’s one of the prayers I’d recite as an altar boy at St. Ludwig’s Roman Catholic Church, and I’ll never forget it ‘til the day I die. Don’t ask me what it means right now. I never figured it out as a kid, but I loved to say it!  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.
The Beatles got it right in the 1960s.
“All You Need is Love.”
The Heinz ketchup bottle illustrated what it could look like . . .
Collegeville may or may not have been named after a religious school called “Ursinus” in the central part of Montgomery County. . . Or some long ago seminary school. I really don’t know, but I rode through it when traveling to one of the last outdoor movie theatres, the one located in Limerick, Pa, a drive-in movie just outside of Pottstown.  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 readingI went within and felt nothing this morning. I knew this day would come, but I thought I would put it off until the day I’d die. Yes, I thought I’d have enough juice within to tell my story until I took that last breath.
But Life fooled me. It hit me upside the head, showing me, you can’t take anything for granted. All things are subject to change. All phenomena are transitory, all are impermanent. The only permanence that exists is Love I believe that energizes us and the world we all live in. Continue reading
Day 7 – Total Balance Is Natural Balance
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
Love makes our world go ‘round. It provides the essence of all that exists in our solar system. It created what our scientists call the “Big Bang,” and it continues to expand even though we are unable to see it with our limited vision.
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.
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.
We’ve all experienced love in one form or another. Most remember the romantic love that may have flourished when we were young and felt the longing to receive the touch of love from another person.
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.
For the past five days, nothing greeted me when I got out of bed.
I grew up in a two-story row house in North Philadelphia in a mixed neighborhood where we played in front of the fireplug and got ice from old ice trucks that made their way up the tiny one-way street. Continue reading
When will I ever learn to trust the Universe?
When will I develop enough faith to believe things happen for my well-being? And when can I truly trust my instincts and live more peacefully in tune with what the Cosmos is manifesting just for 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:
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.
Psychometry – the art of visualizing an energy force or spirit from a token or an object – really does work.
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
“Inner Being” is a State of Mind
I don’t feel my age. I know I’m getting older and will soon meet my Maker. But I just can’t see myself as a senior citizen, let alone someone who will one day praise the glory of Medicare and the free rides on public transportation in Philadelphia.
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
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?
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 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
I remembered what love once meant to me, and I thought I’d share it with those of us who might have forgotten it.
Who am I? What do I believe? And can I name a few of my beliefs?
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!
“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
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
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 readingThe 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.
Continue readingI believe that I have become a “Spiritual Soldier of Fortune” and would travel anywhere my heart beckons me to learn, to pray, and to find answers about the Universe.
Today, while in what I call the “Post-Meditative State,” I wondered if something spiritual might have occurred when I was much younger. I then thought of a time when I was in first grade at a Roman Catholic Church School. Sister Saint Leonard had chosen me to be one of the so-called angels. The duty of an “Angel” was to guide the second graders to the front of the church where they were to receive their first Holy Communion from a priest.
If you didn’t know it by now, science supports the claims made by Abraham about the Law of Attraction and how it could help revitalize your life from this moment on.
Contoveros 