I love this phrase:  It literally means, squeeze yourself, press yourself out.  And this can be taken to mean a few different things that are actually all related.  One is press or squeeze your “self” out—the selfishness, the greed, the fear.  The other is press or squeeze your “self” out—your real self, the self God wants you to be; the self that is joyously and wonderfully perfectly imperfect.  I’ll get to one other way to look at this phrase in a moment, but first I want to talk a little more about these first two ways of viewing the phrase: express yourself.

Either one of these ways implies suffering.  Pressing out your self-centeredness hurts.   Squeezing out from under the heavy rocks of your doubts and fears isn’t easy either.  Likewise, letting your real, talented, lovely, and beautiful self out hurts too.  And there is risk involved.  Others might not approve.  Others might be jealous.  Others might be frightened when you step into your power and make significant, radical, and lasting changes.

Yet both of these types of expressions yield fruit.  If we think of squeezing the juice from lemons and then making lemonade, we can imagine there being something good on the other side of our suffering.  If we imagine pressing the oil from olives to make olive oil and then cook up a yummy meal, we can imagine there being joy on the other side of the pain.

So keep discovering who you really are.  Keep living your dreams.  Express yourself and rejoice.  And as long as your self expression is lawful, and for the true betterment of the world, there is nothing to fear. 

And this brings us to the last way I want to talk about expressing yourself.  Deep down, within all of us, is a Larger Self—a Divine Self—the Wonder Child.   Try expressing That, and see how your life and the lives of those around you change for the better.   Allow This to be pressed out from under the heavy rocks of inhibition and doubt.  Let This shine forth from the under the veil of dark fears and resentments.  Share This Self by being yourself, and all will be right with the world.

Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog

The word individual, is interesting.  Or should I say, the fact that society has tinkered with its definition over the years is interesting.  Individual, actually means indivisible,—something that can’t be divided, or inseparable—something that can’t be separated.   In our modern English language we use the word to mean a particular someone—a distinct entity—the rugged individualist.  In fact, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary declares that the original meaning of individual is obsolete.  Is that true however?  Can a dictionary editor wipe definitions of words out of existence with a wave of a pen? 

We need, perhaps more than ever, to be individuals in the truest, original sense of the word.  Not only do we need to keep ourselves from being splintered into many different fragments—husband, father, mother, worker, student, brother, sister, Republican, Catholic, soccer coach, etc, but we need to join in with a group of like-minded people, a Mastermind Group, as Napoleon Hill calls it.  We need more community and less isolation; more sharing and less hoarding; more paying it forward and less, where’s mine?

And that is what we are doing right now, sharing this page together.  We are a like-minded group building an ever-widening community.  We are one indivisible entity traveling the journey within together.   We are Wonder Children seeking to shine their Light in the world.  We are inseparable.  And as we shine together, we see more clearly our heart’s desire. 

Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog

The Creator is lavishly abundant—wildly abundant.  A salmon lays around 3,000 eggs.  A typical frog lays around 20,000.  A fully grown oak tree produces over 2,000 acorns.  A swan can have over 20,000 feathers.  And while no one knows for sure, some scientists estimate that the average human body has over 100 trillion cells.  There are about 300,000 different kinds of plants.  There are over 7,000 different varieties of apples alone!  Some experts believe there are somewhere between 1 and 10 million different kinds of insects in the world.  The Atlantic Ocean has approximately 17 quadrillion gallons of water.  That’s 17 followed by 15 zero’s.  The Pacific Ocean has around 35 quadrillion.  That’s a lot.  Astronomers think there are over 200 billion stars in the Milky Way.  And there are 100’s of billions of galaxies. 

Of course we know only a small percentage of those salmon eggs will survive.  Same with the frog eggs.  That’s the scientific reason there is so much of everything in nature—survival.  And that’s true.  It is also true that the Creator is lavishly abundant.  When the paints come out not only the canvas, but the whole room gets filled with color.

Imagine whirling in a shower of cherry blossoms.  Imagine a field of white, wild flowers—dazzling your eyes in the sun.  Imagine a school of blue and yellow neon fish, thousands of them darting, dipping, and rising as one.  Imagine a flock of barn swallows doing the same over a cornfield along the turnpike.  Imagine each slender palm on each thick stalk of corn that opens its lemon-gold packages to the sky, has around 700 kernels.

The Creator made an abundant universe and an abundant Earth.  If this is so for the world of nature, and we are surely a part of the Whole, then why would we ever fear lack?  Why would we ever fear anything?  The Creator lavishes us with a thousand, thousand snowflakes, each different, and crystalinely brilliant.  How much more so then with us?

Yes, eventually our bodies will melt away too, dust to dust, but our spirits are eternal.  The Creator didn’t just create us to live a handful of decades.  We are designed to live forever.  Lavishly abundant indeed. 

Not only that, but just as the tadpole becomes a golden-eyed leaper, and the gluttonous caterpillar becomes a nectar sipping, bejeweled wisp of a flyer, and just as the river becomes the sea, we too pass through our own stages of metamorphosis to become winged, golden-eyed things, soaring through mansions and gardens and ponds of glory.  So why fear anything?

There are riches aplenty.  There are resources aplenty.  Dream your dreams lavishly.  Imagine your possibilities with the flair of a giant flock of penguins torpedoing into the breath-seizing water.  Visualize your plans with the audacity of the horizon—sun-filled, moon-filled, and lightening-filled—stretching as far as the eye can see.  Lavish your dreams with fearless creativity—then go, make them real, they are flowing towards you already.

Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog