The YOLO Effect…

May 23, 2013 by TonyWashington

Forgive me for overworking the YOLO cliché, but I’ve got something to say that I know will help you live a little better. If you think about how many times people use that cliché and it’s context, you’ll find something very interesting. Almost every time we say it, we are making some reference to getting rid of our fear of doing something with a complimentary urge to “do it” right now. We are saying that life is too short to not do the things you really want to do. So, as you can imagine, that got me thinking…

How much time do you spend doing things you really don’t want to do? Or, how many things do you do because you think they are what others expect you to do? Or, stated in the positive, do you spend most of your time doing the things you enjoy doing; have passion about and want to do? And of course closely related to those questions, why are you doing the things you are doing?

As I’ve said a hundred times prior, this ol’ world funnels us into well-worn grooves of expectations! The subtle and not so subtle message is to get in line; shut your mouth and don’t buck the system. Do acceptable work; make acceptable comments; have acceptable opinions (not your own opinions, but the popular ones) and for goodness sakes, don’t start questioning things. If a thing doesn’t make sense to you, it’s not because it doesn’t make sense, but rather because you don’t understand it – so again, close your mouth and get in agreement (now!). The problem with that “go-along to get-along” mindset is that you no longer get to be “you” in the process. Now on the surface, you may not think this applies to you, so I ask you, give it a little more thought.

People are employed in a line of work they hate, for decades. Folks are suppressed in unhealthy relationships or subjecting themselves to unhealthy family members for a lifetime. We laugh when it’s not funny. We say the food tastes good when it doesn’t. We nod in agreement to insane political ideas when those views couldn’t be further from our own. We don’t play the music we like when others are around. We get college degrees in subjects we cannot stand. We tip waiters for poor service. We devote time to reading books we don’t enjoy. We trudge ourselves to tired church services and participate in nonsensical observances and even pray to a God we are grossly unfamiliar with! Why? Because we are afraid, that’s why! Fear, often confused with terror, is a subtle beast. We can all recognize the fright we feel when we see a tiger, but do we acknowledge the slipperier version that causes us to do all of the above? Why would a man work in a job he loathed for twenty years? He’s afraid that he can’t do anything else? He’s afraid what his family would say if he quit? He’s afraid what society might say if he stepped out of line! Why do folks put up with family members that are toxic and discourage their growth? Because they are afraid what everyone would think if they stopped coming around. Fear. (disclaimer – this does not refer to my family- ) We agree, we cajole, we acquiesce, we agree because we’re so friendly? Probably not when you get right down to it. Fear drives a multitude of things we feel obligated to do. Then there is obligation’s close companion – guilt. Guilt is just another form of fear manifesting itself as something you need to do because of something you didn’t do; should have done; or to avoid something because of what you did do (or perceive you might have done)! Fear…

I’m certainly not advocating morphing into a self-centered douche, parading around town looking out for number one only! I’m suggesting rather that you take the time to consider why you do the things you do. There really are only two great motives in life – love and fear. Love works no ill to its neighbor (or to you either for that matter) Fear starts bad, proceeds bad, and ends bad. Working out of fear leads to misery. Working out of love fans the flames of passion. Saying how you feel out of love leads to understanding and agreement and resolution. Saying how you feel out of fear leads to arguments and conflict. Doing things for other people out of love is the very heart of service. Doing things for people out of fear leads to slavery and bondage and all kinds of mistreatment.

So the simple acid test is to ask yourself why you are doing the thing that you are doing. Do you want to do it? If you had a million bucks would you do it? I’m sure we all have the fantasy of all the wonderful things we would do if we just became rich enough to do it. And the reason we cannot do it now? Fear… And while you are asking yourself these things in the solemn privacy of your mind, take solace in the truth that you can change anything you want to change. Sure folks will deride you and chastise you and demand you get back to being who you are supposed to be! But what you owe yourself is to be the “you” you really want to be! Don’t you think? People live frustrated, defeated, unsatisfied lives because they spend their precious lives living as someone else. Don’t let that be you, my friend.

Cliche’ alert – At the end of the day, we all have only one life to live and we all only live once (on earth anyway). Start today by asking yourself why and then get busy modifying and changing what needs to change. You oughta be able to be “you,” doing “you” in the ways that make “you” the most happy! YOLO my friends, YOLO!

Just some good thoughts…

Victims, Whiners and Lies…

May 16, 2013 by TonyWashington

In the spirit of true confessions, I’ve noticed in myself lately a propensity to engage in an endless stream of whining and complaining. I’m complaining about this coach and that player (I know…first world problems); what my boss thinks; what my company does; what my staff didn’t do; what people did or didn’t do according to what they said they would do etc., etc., etc. As we often say as a family insider joke, “Bitch and moan, bitch and moan, whine, whine, whine!” While in that moment of time whining and complaining seems to make me feel better, at the end of the day it doesn’t change a blessed thing. It seems to serve only as a rehearsal of all of the things in the world that didn’t go as I thought they should go, because after all, I am the supreme ruler of the universe, right?

Where did we ever get this notion that all of life should fit into our tidy, little plans and that any deviation from those plans represents a “slap in our spoiled, little faces?” It seems to be a condition that is fairly unique to Americans. We are so used to our high standard of living and ease of access to many of the comforts in life that we seem to forget that life really doesn’t work that way. I mean come on, we have to make ourselves stop eating; the temperature has to be between 70-72 degrees; we sit in artificially lit homes typing on computers and God help us if the Internet goes out. (Again…first world problems) And while I’m so grateful to God that we get to live the way we do, I still can’t help but recognize an unrealistic slant in our expectations.

Real life, much like every good story that was ever written, has a protagonist and an antagonist. One is working for the good and one is opposing the good. Our great God never, ever promised that life would be completely free of struggles. Where on earth did we get that idea? For every good you encounter there is an opposing force that is either trying to take away your good or bring some bad to counteract the good. Now that doesn’t mean, as many philosophers report, that you have to accept the bad or get along with the bad or embrace the bad, no, not at all! But it does mean that you have to take life as it is. What is, is and whining about it doesn’t change a thing, except you…

Have you ever met someone who sees themselves as a victim? (Well, if we are honest, all of us have been victimized at one time or another. Helloooo, there is an opposing force working against us!) The victim is not just one that has been hurt in life, but is one that would rather carry that “past” hurt into every current situation. I recently watched an Oprah Life Class about men that didn’t grow up with their father. It was very sad and very touching, for sure. But one thing they had in common were the stories they kept telling themselves about how life would have been or who they would have been if their father was around… Those stories were really just fantasies they kept telling themselves in light of the hurt they received when Pops left. Iyanla aptly pointed out that their romantic notions about daddy were just stories and that they had no real way to know how things would have been. What they were doing unknowingly was participating in life as a victim. A victim, by nature, has no say about how life turns out. After all, how could they after such and such happened? Here is a reality check ~ your life is what it is, right now in this moment. And, the only one carrying that hurt and pain into your present life is you (and me)! Being a victim, like being a whiner only serves to keep you held down in bondage ~ as if you have no say about how your life turns out. If that opposing force hurt you bad in the past (and that’s not to minimize the hurt you felt) ~ then allowing it to remain in your mind today is just as if it is happening all over again. And we wonder why we can still be frustrated in life despite all of our creature comforts?

God has designed life to be glorious and wonderful and ripe with victory, but never said you wouldn’t have any struggles. He doesn’t provide those struggles (God I wish people would stop saying that) but He will always provide a solution to those struggles if you are willing to hear Him! You see once we start complaining, we stop moving forward towards the solution! And related, if we have adopted a “victim” mindset, we are, for all intents and purposes, stuck back thereeeee… A better approach to life would be to accept the reality that things don’t always go how we planned and to either make a back up plan or at minimum be willing to change course as the obstacles happen. Our destination shouldn’t change, but we have to at least be willing to take a different course. Why keep banging our heads on a door that won’t open when we can take a step back, think, and find another door?

In the Dale Carnegie courses I taught, the first rule was to “never criticize, condemn or complain (the three golden C’s)! (Yeah, I forgot that!) Complaining, whining and playing the victim simply means that we have bought the lie ~ the lie being that there is nothing we can do about the situation. With God behind us, there is always something we can do about the situation. You and I are only in charge of one life, ours… Make the decision today to stop complaining (you may be shocked by how much you do it) and instead focus immediately on the solutions. Oh and if you are watching the playoffs and your team is losing, quit complaining about the coach; the players and the refs, and simply sit back and remember the team that believes to win, wins, despite any obstacles!

Win in life…

Faith Games

May 14, 2013 by Tania

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see…by faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death…And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen…by faith Abraham, when called to go to a place…obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going…and by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who made the promise…by faith Moses‘ parents hid him for three months after he was born…by faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of the Pharaoh’s daughter…by faith he kept the Passover and application of blood…by faith the people passed through the Red Sea on dry land…by faith the walls of Jericho fell….what more should I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of flames, and escaped the edge of the sword… Hebrews 11:1, 5-34

I’ve come across a television show on National Geographic called Brain Games. It is quite the interesting presentation of the phenomena that occur within our complex human brains. They present many different “tests” to show the viewer how their eyes or ears or even sense of touch is detecting something different than the truth. A couple of these tests stand out to me in a remarkable way as a demonstration that we can’t even believe what our own eyes are analyzing as truth, and if we can’t believe our eyes, why should I rely on my physical senses to tell me the status of God’s work in my life?

One “brain game” was to show the viewer a woman saying “gaa gaa gaa” over and over, however the soundtrack playing under it was the same woman saying “baa baa baa”. If you closed your eyes, you could hear the “baa” but when you opened them and watched her mouth, you “heard” the “gaa” sound. How is that possible?!? How is it possible that your eyes changed what your ears heard?

Another “brain game” changed what your eyes saw when you heard a certain sound. Showing the same animation the viewer either saw two white balls pass each other or bounce off of each other and when they heard the sound of two pool balls hitting, even if they saw the balls pass each other, they suddenly saw them bounce off of each other.

Well, as I consider those tests as well as the many “brain games” on that show, I realize that if I listen to my physical senses and my perception, rather than God’s, I will go down a path where I’ve already been and experienced the painful, hopeless, dead end. It really is quite simple and I know that I’m not alone in having to remind myself frequently about what God showed me and to keep my eyes focused on Him and remind us both of His promise. As I walk in this, I continue to stumble over my own insecurities, doubts, questions, and what ifs. I continue to cry out to Him to help me, to strengthen me, to give me wisdom. I continue to search for His face, His glory, and His will. I will continue to ask Him to renew my faith and like the incredibly wonderful God that He is…he ALWAYS answers and refreshes my spirit.

…It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith…Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. … Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be…”Romans 4:13-22

The Thousand Deaths of Growth

April 25, 2013 by admin

“…We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us…” Rom 5:3-5

Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle. —Napoleon Hill

While I have been struggling lately, I know that God is doing something wonderful in me even though I can’t see it yet. I know that I am to lean on Him for my strength, however Sunday’s bible study was incredible for me if for no other reason than I saw James 1 in a new light. For years, I’ve only thought of verses 2-8 as encouraging believers to be joyful through their struggles and trials, however it was clear this morning that we are to pray for wisdom during those times as well. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I’ve been praying for relief, strength, peace, companionship, many things during this time, but I had not considered that God wants to give me His wisdom. I prayed for it, and He answered me almost right away.

When it was time to leave church, my children began asking for kolaches. I thought about it and decided that we could go to the restaurant that the church frequently bought from. My children were excited as I rarely say yes to impulse purchases. We arrived at the shop and they were closed. Upon checking the time, I realized they’d closed 3 minutes earlier than our arrival. I turned them around to go back to the car and I was met with immediate protests. I told them that the kolache store was closed and we had to get back in the car. This was when God opened my eyes to see…

I immediately began planning to find out if the other kolache restaurant that was only a couple of miles away was closed when we returned to the car, however I didn’t disclose this to my children. One of them immediately began crying and raging. She was angry and as I tried to buckle her into her car seat, she began to physically fight me. Another cried and wailed loudly but went along and allowed me to buckle her in. While the second one cried and wailed, she also verbally protested and gave me her opinion several times. A third one was obviously disappointed and sad, however when we were back in the car, he asked if we could instead make smoothies at home. The fourth one simply went along without saying a word. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he hadn’t heard me at all, however he said later, “it was okay mommy, we were still going to get something.”

In the midst of that moment, God showed me different aspects of myself and others when a promise is not fulfilled in the way we believe it should be. As I watched them react in their different ways, I felt nothing but love and grace for them. I was also awed as my heavenly father showed me how He sees me when I react to things that don’t go my way or the way that I believe they should. As the design of my loving Father would have it, the second kolache store was MUCH better than the first had ever been. When we trust that God is taking us somewhere and we allow him to drive the car, we end up in places that are exponentially better than where we would have raged, and cried, and disappointingly asked to remain. Although all four of them enjoyed the food once they had it, my son who sat back and trusted not only enjoyed the food, he expressed his gratitude for the deliciousness several times and he was also able to enjoy the ride without stress, anger, or resentment.

When your path begins to turn from where you thought you were headed, how do you react?

“Think of yourself as God made you as an acorn. It is a marvelous little thing, a perfect shape, perfectly designed for its purpose, perfectly functional. Think of the grand glory of an oak tree. God’s intention when He made the acorn was the oak tree. His intention for us is, “…the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” Many deaths must go into our reaching that measure, many letting-goes. When you look at the oak tree, you don’t feel that the “loss” of the acorn is a very great loss. The more you perceive God’s purpose in your life, the less terrible will the losses seem.”
—Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity

www.lovebridges.wordpress.com

How to Get What You Want, Now!

April 15, 2013 by TonyWashington

How many books have been written that purport to tell you how you can use the “power of your mind” to get something that you need? It’s an alluring concept for sure, but one that simply isn’t true. There is no power of the mind other than the power to choose what you will. I know, I know, this idea runs cross purposes with many famous works such as, “Awakening The Giant Within,” but suspend your disagreement for a little bit and allow me to explain what I mean.

There’s a verse in the Bible that states, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. (Read that sentence again!) There’s another one that states, guard your heart with all that you are because out of your heart flows the issues of your life. Those words have been there for years, but what do they even really mean? Well, those things we believe in the depths of our heart to be true, shape and form our existence today. And, by the power of choosing what we will think about, we can guard the heart of our minds; the place where our believing expectation comes from. Believing expectation forms the essence of our lives. What we believe to be true will come true if we really believe it. In fact, your life at this very moment is a direct reflection of those thoughts and beliefs you hold about yourself most dearly. It is 100% accurate in every way. Remember it is not what you wish you were or would like to be, but what you truly are at this moment in time. It is a system that never errs in any way. God wouldn’t have told us to guard our hearts with all that we are if what we believe in our hearts did not have a dramatic impact on the life we are living. So, if you think about, believing is not the power of your mind, but rather your connection to All-Power. However, I must add a caution, believing works with tremendous accuracy for positive and negative thinking alike. What you fear is also believing; believing that connects you to a different power; one that brings about frustration and defeat. Negative believing (fear) leads assuredly to negative results also with 100% accuracy.

So, how can you learn to believe for good? Well, in actuality you are believing something all of the time. However, most people become so frustrated with life because they believe in accordance with what they think they see and not in accordance with what they want. For example, the media, your neighbors, your family, financial analysts tell you it is a “bad economy!” And, it is difficult to get a job in a bad economy. So, unknowingly, you believe what they said and thus have a hard time getting a job. After all, it’s a bad economy. You are believing something that is not necessarily true and limiting yourself in the process. That belief is not true because what you truly believe to receive, you will receive 100% of the time, in every case. Imagine, there are many people who are not only NOT suffering in the “bad economy” but are actually prospering. Why? They have chosen to believe otherwise. Can you see it? You cannot allow present circumstances or conditions to affect what you believe or else you give your power (your ability to choose) over to something else. And, you will never, ever be able to change your present circumstances as long as you keep doing that. So, ummm stop it!

So, when is the right time to believe? The right time, is right now! Well, when do you want to get the “things” that you want? Right now or five years from now? The reason so many things seem to take so long to come to pass is because we are not believing for them to happen right now. Logically if you imagine your life being full of abundance and peace and love at some future date, it is not going to happen right now. (Read that again!) Ask yourself, why does so much time need to go by before I get what I really want? Good things take a lot of time to happen? Says who? Says you! And thus it is true for you! If you can wrap your mind around that concept, things can transform in your life, in a hurry. In order to get what you want in life, you have to see it happening in your mind, right now. Thus believing (true believing, not wishing) is seeing the result you want in your mind first before it happens in your reality. Wishing, on the other hand, is always in the future and you cannot live in the future, so it is a futile effort. And if we are honest, we don’t really believe the things we wish would happen are going to happen, that’s why we continue to “wish” they would!

Believing is therefore seeing your intended result in your mind’s eye first and then holding that image there despite what the whole world tells you to the contrary! Believing for good things in your life is not going to come without opposition. In fact, the larger your believing for good things, the more contrary “facts” will show up to talk you out of what you believe. God forbid you ever learn how much control you really do have over your life, if you only knew it (he says sarcastically)! Your job and my job therefore, is to not allow the world, the circumstances, the conditions, our limited and finite thinking, to talk us out of the things we really want.

Believing is almost magical. By believing you can be healed of ANY disease. By believing you can receive tremendous financial abundance. By believing you can find the answer to every question and repair anything that was ever broken. By believing you can transform your life from mundane to dynamic; from so-so to oh-so; from ordinary to extraordinary!

Get what you want out of your life now, folks. Don’t spend any time trying to awaken the giant within you, instead believe wholeheartedly to tap into the greatest power in the universe, God’s power for good! God is for it! I am for it! Now it’s time for you to be for it! Get it and get it now!

Anxiety…Solving the Mystery of Misplaced Fear Thoughts!

March 21, 2013 by TonyWashington

Not too long ago, one of my staff confided in me that he was seeing a therapist for anxiety. Many thoughts ran through my mind about what I’ve learned about anxiety, but I silenced myself and just listened… He began to tell me that his therapist explained, contrary to public opinion, anxiety wasn’t related to fear. Anxiety was in reality a totally separate experience based on how we think about things. And like a good boss, I smiled and said that’s interesting. I mean why challenge someone’s definition of anxiety who is being treated for anxiety? (smile) But, after he left I thought, well my goodness, anxiety is totally based on fear, but I could see how perhaps a savvy counselor was working to get his patient away from certain stigmas, and after all, no man wants to think ultimately he is afraid.

Anxiety is perhaps a prolonged form on feeling anxious. Now, everyone feels anxious at times, but not everyone’s anxious thoughts turn into anxiety, at least not that overwhelming, debilitating kind. I can vividly recall a time in my life where I became overwhelmed with anxiety. I was having anxiety attacks and felt like my life had grinded to a halt (recognizing the presence of fear yet?). I could barely interact with other humans and life morphed into a living hell. Thankfully with God’s specific, kind and loving help I recovered from that seemingly endless episode, but as I look back on that experience I learned what had actually happened to me. Anxiety by biblical definition is to have a divided mind. It is literally trying to think two things at the same time. When our minds are clear and focused on one thing, we feel peaceful. But when we allow our thoughts to become divided we feel anxious. So what causes our minds to become divided or distracted? ~ Unchecked, unchallenged fear thoughts!

All of us are consistently challenged with fearful thoughts. I mean how many disastrous possibilities can one mind entertain? You already know the answer to that, right? But being confronted with some fearful potentiality isn’t the issue. The issue is allowing those fearful thoughts to go unchecked. And often thoughts go unchecked because we are so distracted from the present that we can scarcely recognize them. In some instances we recognize the fearful thought and choose to simply ignore it rather than take it on. Some might even maintain that we should ignore fear thoughts since they are after all, fear thoughts. But if something hit your mind with enough meaning to cause you to feel some fear, it isn’t going to go away on its own. Imagine it this way ~ some fearful possibility hits your consciousness and registers. You ignore it and move on. Some time later another fear thought hits your consciousness (surreptitiously connected to the last one) and you ignore it as well. The process continues on and on working with great secrecy until, unknown to you, you become full of fear. All of those misplaced fear thoughts, now hidden from your conscious mind, form the basis of your anxiety or generalized feelings of fear. (And you know the anxiety feeling is a fear feeling, right? Nuff said) It stands to reason that you cannot be afraid of a general “nothingness” – so there has to be something behind that feeling that you simply lost track of. All that ignoring and feeling the fear and “doing it anyway” is eventually heading towards a fall.

In order to defeat fear, you have to take it on. And, the best way to take it on is before it gets a foothold in your brain. If fear was a monster (and it isn’t but it comes from one) and it came to your door, your sole responsibility is to get the door shut before it can get a toe inserted inside. But, if you in your distraction let it get a toe inside it won’t be long before it is a leg, then two legs, then its whole body. The worst time of my life, “the anxiety attacks of 1991″ happened because I wasn’t paying attention to my thoughts. And I recovered some 3-4 months later by challenging those same fear thoughts one by one until they were gone. Some days I felt I was challenging every thought (like the plight of someone who just quit smoking) and some days not so much. But trust me, I had to acknowledge that the arena I had suffered defeat in was my mind and by God, it was still my mind!

So if all this sounds too familiar to you or even too simplistic or fanciful, believe me whan I say that fear and anxiety WILL NOT go away on their own! Like any enemy, it goes away when you hit it with something stronger than it hit you with. That something stronger is the truth of God’s Word. God’s Word cuts through all those veils of illusion and gets to the core of the matter. It’s not so important that you understand how as it is that you give it a try. Don’t throw away your meds yet! Don’t stop seeing your counselor! Do whatever works best for you. But in the end know that anxiety in its most simplistic form is misplaced fear thoughts (that come back with hair on them)…

No-one has to live in fear and anxiety day by day. And while the prospect of confronting those fears may seem dreadful, nothing is as dreadful as a life lived in perpetual anxiety. Break out of the grips of fear and be the competitor God called you to be!

Just some good (peaceful) thoughts…

Let it be enough to reach the truth

March 16, 2013 by admin

truth

I remembered black skies, the lightning all around me
I remembered each flash as time began to blur
Like a startling sign that fate had finally found me
And your voice was all I heard that I get what I deserve

So give me reason to prove me wrong, to wash this memory clean
Let the floods cross the distance in your eyes
Give me reason to fill this hole, connect the space between
Let it be enough to reach the truth that lies across this new divide

There was nothing in sight but memories left abandoned
There was nowhere to hide, the ashes fell like snow
And the ground caved in between where we were standing
And your voice was all I heard that I get what I deserve

So give me reason to prove me wrong, to wash this memory clean
Let the floods cross the distance in your eyes across this new divide

In every loss, in every lie, in every truth that you’d deny
And each regret and each goodbye was a mistake too great to hide
And your voice was all I heard that I get what I deserve

LINKIN PARK – NEW DIVIDE LYRICS

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Tag Archives: God

The YOLO Effect…

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Victims, Whiners and Lies…

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Faith Games

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The Thousand Deaths of Growth

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How to Get What You Want, Now!

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Anxiety…Solving the Mystery of Misplaced Fear Thoughts!

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Let it be enough to reach the truth

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