Letting go of resistance

From today's Daily Motivator:

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

No more resistance

Allowing the best of life involves nothing more than becoming aware of your resistance to it. Shine the light of awareness on your resistance, and that resistance dissolves into nothing.

Allow life's richness to be, and it flows freely into your experience. See your pain and frustration for the resistance that they are, and suddenly they are no more.

If you focus on the concerns of your ego, the resistance builds up. Realize that you are not your ego, and suddenly the resistance has no basis.

Resisting the limitless abundance of life is your own choice. As soon as you understand you've made that choice, you can quickly let it go.

Imagine what will happen when you simply stop judging, criticizing, and resenting yourself and others. You open yourself to a whole new world of beautiful possibilities.

Feel the resistance that you've created within your own life, and know that you can choose to peacefully let it go. Let it go, and come fully to life.

-- Ralph Marston

Pandora's Box

This is in conjunction with mine and Laura's photoshoot of a month ago, where we posed as mermaids. She started it off using her astrological sign as her theme, and mine was based on the wonders of Photoshop.

I used 5 images total, 2 of which were Laura and I posed separately. The other 3 (the cave, treasure box, and octopus were stock images).

Refresher and technical notes for how I achieved the image:

The cave was once brown, and I converted it to the color you see above mostly using "colorize," under the hue/saturation. But it was also attained by experimenting with duplicate layering and changing the blending modes, such as "multiply" and "luminosity."

I made the octopus image deeper with duplicate layering under the "multiply" blending mode.

I changed the box color from a brownish color to green, with Layer Style Blending Options "Color overlay," "Inner Shadow" and "Gradient overlay."

The contents escaping the box and the fishes were done with brushes, mostly set to light blue, but I did use a "pattern" for one of them under Layer Style Blending Options, and it was a pattern I created sometime ago in the Faerie-reading image.

Lastly, the mermaids were Laura and I posed individually with our hair in buns and garbed in undergarments. We took turns balancing horizontally on a footstool. I covered each of us using a "pattern" taken from fish scales. I changed the colors using color overlay and masked the scales from our arms, head and neck. I tweaked under the transformation option, using "rotate," "scales" and "warp."

For the hair, I used a hair brush for mine, and cut and pasted shots of Laura's hair for hers, using the "scales" and "warp" options from the transformation menu. The waves in our hair were achieved using "liquify" which is an option I learned to use from one of my photoshop books.

And that's it :)

from the Daily Motivator

I like this from today's Daily Motivator

Friday, December 5, 2008

Your thoughts show

Thoughts can feel like they are private and hidden deep inside of you. Yet they have an influence that extends far beyond you.

What if others could know what you were thinking? Would it change the content of your thoughts?

In many ways, other people can and do know what you are thinking. Because your thoughts are faithfully expressed by the life you lead.

If you're constantly thinking negative, limiting thoughts, people will be able to tell just by looking at you and your life's conditions. In the same way, when you fill your mind with positive, empowering thoughts, that will be wonderfully obvious.

You might be able to hide the specific details of your thoughts. Yet you cannot hide the true nature of those thoughts.

Your thoughts, whatever they may be, are expressed in every aspect of your life. Continually guide those thoughts to positive places, and your whole world will follow.

-- Ralph Marston