What’s positive about jealousy, you ask? Lots, believe it or not. All of our feelings have lessons lurking inside. Jealousy may feel uncomfortable but it may indicate something that you feel is genuinely lacking in your life, or the love you feel for someone, or insecurity issues that remain unresolved. Here’s what the experts have to say:

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
Robert A. Heinlein

A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.
Jean Baudrillard

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.
George Eliot

Back then I didn’t think a woman like that, or a relationship like that, could exist with complete freedom and no jealousy or possessiveness. I thought it sounded too good to be true and I was certainly convinced it wasn’t the life for me!
Sylvia Kristel

Don’t waste time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind.
Mary Schmich

From heresy, frenzy and jealousy, good Lord deliver me.
Ludovico Ariosto

I do not say anything from jealousy.
Anna Held

It is not love that is blind, but jealousy.
Lawrence Durrell

It’s amazing the clarity that comes with psychotic jealousy.
Rupert Everett

Jealousy - that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion.
Emile M. Cioran

Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Jealousy is a dog’s bark which attracts thieves.
Karl Kraus

Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.
Erica Jong

Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.
Aristotle

Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire.
Solomon Ibn Gabirol

Jealousy would be far less torturous if we understood that love is a passion entirely unrelated to our merits.
Paul Eldridge

Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretense of keeping it alive.
Henry Ellis

Jealousy… is a mental cancer.
B. C. Forbes

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live!
Bob Marley

Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/jealousy.html#ixzz1cYGqMHLR

Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it. - Emily Dickenson

While we may be a “day late and a dollar” short in the Halloween department, spells can be cast anytime of the year. They don’t require much and you probably cast spells without really knowing it (wishing hard and throwing a penny in the fountain anyone?) Here’s some steps to refine your spell casting abilities:

1. Identifying the purpose of the spell
This first step  allows you to collect your thoughts and become conscious of your internal state as well as drawing your awareness to any physical sensations that arise in response to your current situation. This places you fully in the present moment as you contemplate what it is you truly seek, where the root of the matter lies, if your heart is in it and how best to phrase your instruction in an affirmative, current statement to attain resonance on all levels.

2. Preparation for the spell
Gather ingredients such as herbs, crystals or candles, decide on timing in accordance with lunar phases or other natural rhythms and plan what your rite will be, to get into the head space that channels life force toward your desire. The process of planning your petition subtly addresses your sentiments around the subject and creates an opening in your energy indicating your willingness to receive what you are asking for.

3. Creating sacred space from which to cast the spell
Next is to enter a space that is a time with no time in a place with no place where you turn within and connect with your core being. This meditative state facilitates alpha brain waves and verifies your connection with the Greater Whole. In essence, you enter an energy vortex that is untouched by time and that expands throughout all dimensions. It is from this place of unity with the fabric of the universe that you are able to harness Original Substance and craft it into manifest form.

4. Performing the rite itself
This step often consists of a symbolic gesture such as lighting a candle, burning a prayer paper or fashioning a talisman ~ your right brain responds to images and the carrying out of the act itself conveys a strong message to your subconscious mind. Casting a spell shifts your consciousness and provides a sense of action, similar to how locking a door affirms your sense of security. The thrill of casting magic alone raises your vibration, welcomes magical experiences and invites possibilities into your awareness.

5. Loading/Magnetising
Charge an item or raise the intensity of energy within the cone of power (vortex) you have conjured. This can be done through holding a vision of your desired result in rich visualisation, chanting a rhyme, brandishing a wand, drumming, dancing or a myriad other ways that facilitate pouring your creative essence into the etheric form of your intention.  Loading aligns body, mind, emotion and spirit to cohere into a swirling magical missile.

6. Release
Finally, cast your magic into the universe like a cosmic flare and severe any attachment to the outcome by forgetting about it and going about your day as usual in the full knowledge that it is done. This practise relinquishes control and allows aspects unknown to you to unfold.

Stella Seaspirit fosters your Witchiness and refines your energy-crafting abilities by offering a unique and fresh outlook on Witchcraft as a living philosophy in a simple to understand way. Her goal is to assist you to cast more potent magic. Stella is the creator of Magick by Design coaching and facilitates the Sparkling Witch Tribe, a private online sanctum. Sashay over to her website to get your free Witchification Kit. Connect via Twitter and Facebook.

This year has been filled with natural disasters throughout the world. Most recently, a7.2 magnitude earthquake ravaged approximately 2,000 building in eastern Turkey. But some hope lay amidst the rubble, as an infant, mother and grandmother are found after 2 days.

ERCIS, Turkey — A 2-week-old baby girl, her mother and grandmother were pulled alive from the rubble of an apartment building in a dramatic rescue Tuesday, 48 hours after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake toppled some 2,000 buildings in eastern Turkey.

Television footage showed a rescuer, Kadir Direk, in an orange jumpsuit squeezing into the hulk of crushed concrete and metal to free the baby. The infant, named Azra Karaduman, was wrapped in a blanket and handed over to a medic amid a scrum of media and applauding emergency workers.

The baby’s mother, Semiha, and grandmother, Gulsaadet, were huddled together, with the baby clinging to her mother’s shoulder when rescuers found them, Direk, the emergency worker, told The Associated Press. There was a bakery at the ground floor of the building, which may have kept them warm, he said.

Two-week old Azra Karaduman is carried by rescue workers from a collapsed building in the Ercis province of Van, in eastern Turkey, on October 25, 2011. (ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images)

The baby was in good health but was flown to a hospital in Ankara, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported. Hours after she was freed, the two others were pulled from the large, half-flattened building and rushed to ambulances as onlookers clapped and cheered. The mother had been semiconscious, but woke up when rescuers arrived, Direk said.

“Bringing them out is such happiness. I wouldn’t be happier if they gave me tons of money,” said rescuer Oytun Gulpinar.

Source: Chron.com

Who doesn’t like a good, rainy day? It offers you the ability to crawl under covers and watch and old movie. It encourages pensive thoughts and deep daydreams. It saturates our soul:

Healing rain is a real touch from God. It could be physical healing or emotional or whatever.
Michael W. Smith

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
Robert Frost

A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.
James Dickey

A rose must remain with the sun and the rain or its lovely promise won’t come true.
Ray Evans

A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long.
e. e. cummings

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
Rabindranath Tagore

Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/rain.html#ixzz1bzoYaPKq

This is a touching piece based on a change of names and roles of 285 special girls in India:

Hundreds of Indian girls whose names mean “unwanted” in Hindi chose new names Saturday for a fresh start in life.

A central Indian district held a renaming ceremony it hopes will give the girls new dignity and help fight widespread gender discrimination that gives India a skewed gender ratio, with far more boys than girls.

The girls — wearing their best outfits with barrettes, braids and bows in their hair — lined up to receive certificates with their new names along with small flower bouquets from Satara district officials in Maharashtra state.

In shedding names like “Nakusa” or “Nakushi,” which mean “unwanted” in Hindi, some girls chose to name themselves after Bollywood stars like “Aishwarya” or Hindu goddesses like “Savitri.” Some just wanted traditional names with happier meanings, such as “Vaishali” or “prosperous, beautiful and good.”

Read more at MSNBC.

Who we are is reflected in the way we treat the animals we share the planet with. This story shows how good and respectful animal loving people compensate for the cruel:

LIBERTY, S.C. — A black Lab puppy is lucky to be alive after being rescued from the top of a train car after a journey that had a mysterious beginning.

No one knows how the puppy, who appears to be about 3 months old, ended up on top of the Norfolk Southern train that left Pennsylvania, and had already gone through Virginia and North Carolina on its way to Atlanta.Tina Parker, of Pickens, said she and her family were driving home Sunday night when they stopped at a red light by the Walmart store in Easley, S.C., as the train passed by.Parker said she spotted what she at first thought was trash on top of the train. But she said the “trash” started moving and she realized it was a puppy.Parker called 911 and then followed the train on to Liberty.

A Norfolk Southern spokeswoman told News 4 that they were alerted to stop the train. The spokeswoman said the train would have been traveling about 50 mph.The Parker family helped spot which car in the long train the puppy was on top of.”The only thing we can think is probably somebody put her up there,” Parker said.The Liberty Fire Department arrived and used a ladder to reach the pup on the top of the Hunter boxcar. The cars carried double-stacked containers, making them about 20-feet tall.

Read more: http://www.wyff4.com/news/29570990/detail.html#ixzz1bo1ciUeW

It’s always a positive thing when you can use something you were just about to throw out for some other purpose. It’s called “repurposing” or “pre-cycling.” And I bet there are plenty of items you are getting ready to toss that can be used for something else instead. Here are a few examples:

1. Reuse your blankets and towels. Bring them to a local shelter that will be glad to put them to good use and give animals a soft, warm place to sit.

2. Reuse seeds from fruit and vegetables and try to grow them!

3. Reuse old plastic bags. There are 10 creative ways to reuse plastic bags here.

4. Reuse paper bags as school book covers, or be a little more creative with these ideas.

5. Cut used pieces of paper into scrap pieces of paper (a message pad!).

6. Reuse stove heat by opening up the stove once you are done with it and letting the warm air into your home in colder weather. Reuse the heat!

7. Reuse coffee grinds by keeping them aside and placing them into your garden or soil.

8. Reuse coffee that you don’t drink by putting it over ice and placing it in the fridge for an iced coffee later.

9. Reuse Christmas trees (not the fake ones) by putting them outside for birds and letting it naturally break down.

10. Reuse packing peanuts, air pillows, bubble wrap and boxes for your own ebay shipping, or bring them by the local post office or recycling center for others to use.

Check out more here.

Many of us, globally and locally, are feeling the pinch (or the stranglehold) of a trying economy. Here are a few quotes about a different kind of wealth to remind us that we’re all rich in our own ways:

Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha

It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.
Mohandas Gandhi

It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.
Thomas Jefferson

Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.
Benjamin Franklin

It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth.
Benjamin Franklin

The first wealth is health.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.
Ernest Hemingway

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.
Confucius

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.

Socrates
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
Henry David Thoreau

Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.
Theodore Roosevelt

Ability is a poor man’s wealth.
John Wooden

Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.
Henry Ford

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.
Napoleon Hill

Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/wealth_2.html#ixzz1bEaMyYcV

Anyone out there remember Wild Kingdom? Well, the host of that decades-old television show has taken it upon himself to make a worldwide difference to people in medical need. Kudos to this man and his flying-high medical organization, Remote Area Medical!

Letter From The Founder of Remote Area Medical Stan Brock

A half century or more ago, I was living in a part of the upper Amazon basin where health care was a 26-day march away on foot. I survived malaria, dengue fever, numerous wild animal attacks and various encounters with Longhorns and mustangs without the help of a doctor. Others were not so lucky and I buried a number of them. It occurred to me that designing an all-volunteer health and veterinary care program for such desolate places might make life easier for a whole lot of people. It took a few years to work out the concept, but in 1985, Remote Area Medical® was born. We have been called RAM ever since and in quite a few parts of the world, the appearance of a RAM Team means an opportunity for poor folks to get some real treatment free of charge from real doctors and veterinarians. But real doctors can’t do it without real help from nurses, technicians and all sorts of support people. In fact, over 26,000 of you have temporarily left your comfortable homes, jobs and families behind and signed up as RAM volunteers and about 300,000 patients are very glad you did.

Let’s take a moment of thanks and appreciation for the Occupy Wall Street protesters. You don’t have to agree with them. But they are exercising their rights as US citizens and taking a stand and attempting to make a positive change.

What can you do today to take a stand, no matter how small? Make a difference in your own life first and the ripple effect will occur. How can you instill in others around you the importance of standing up for your rights?