Monthly Archives: August 2022

Jack wrote this on a thread on the lottery players’ site in June, 2005:

Anytime I begin talking much about affirmations I’m in danger of becoming a bit preachy, so I don’t talk about them a lot.  For me, my most valuable affirmations are ones of gratitude, which I try to do as many times every day as I can remember during an idle moment.  I’m a complete believer that those have changed my life, reversed some fundamental, negative patterns of thinking… made my life a better place.  I’ve explained somewhere on the threads, or on my blog, how I use those.
But when I only have a moment I use the simplest one I’ve ever come up with:

I’m grateful for everything that’s ever happened to me;

I’m grateful for everything that’s happening to me now;

I’m grateful for everything that’s going to happen to me in the future.

If I find there’s any place I haven’t managed to make this true, I examine whatever the experience is and find ways I can be grateful for it.

I began doing forgiveness affirmations about a decade ago, forgiving everyone I could think of whom I believed had done me wrong in any way, wishing them the best, meaning it, starting with the ‘worst offenders’, eventually getting down to the guy who just shot me a finger in traffic.  Difficult job of work, but worth it.

For winning affirmations, I believe everything that happens to me in life is a win.  I do a sort of mantra on some events I’d like to see come into my life, such as understanding these communist lottery numbers, but it’s too simple and redundant to give a lot of words to, explaining.

In short, I see myself as the luckiest, most fortunate man who’s ever trod this planet.  Affirmations helped me to recognize it and know it’s true, why it’s true, and cause me to believe at a foundation level that there’s no person on earth who shouldn’t want to be me, whereas, I would absolutely refuse to be anyone else.

I was going to edit this in, but I was out on the porch sniffing the little treasure of a thunderstorm we plucked from the universe, but thinking about affirmations.  (I cautioned you I can go on and on about them).  Rather than beleaguer anyone with more of my own ramblings about affirmations, I thought I’d tell you about Richard Bach’s (Jonathan Livingston Seagull, et al) experiences with them, and the guy who did that comic strip about a guy with a talking dog and cat living with him.

Bach was a Silva Mind Control aficionado….. used affirmations to write just about every book he ever wrote…. went from being a barnstormer vet pilot to a best seller writer many times over… much of which he attributes to affirmations and other Silva methods.

The other guy, comic artist, was a nothing sort of fellow, going nowhere.  But he went into Silva and began practicing affirmations…. wrote down 50 times a day that he was going to produce a comic strip, the most popular comic strip in the business.

Which he did, along with a lot of other stuff I won’t belabor you with.

You don’t need Silva for affirmations.  I think it’s a great thing, but I’m not pushing it for anyone.  But I’ll shout about affirmations from the rooftops so long as I have a breath in me and there’s anyone out there who will pretend to listen.

Jack

Old Jules, have you seen a “sign” lately?

That lunar eclipse the other night seemed to me a pretty good ‘sign’ we’d gotten our need for lunar eclipses out of the way for a while. I pulled my glasses back on my head to watch through binoculars and they fell spang off onto the dark ground. I carefully stepped back to keep from stepping on them and squashed them underfoot. Bad sign. I figure it means I’m going to have to buy new glasses, even though these are superglued back enough to keep on my face.

Old Jules, how do we determine what is natural and what is not? Example: How is homosexuality less natural than heterosexuality?

Everything in the potential body of human experience is natural. No escaping it. Homosexuality is only less natural than heterosexuality when homosexuality gets outside the boundaries of potential human experience.

Old Jules, what is it like for you to be human?

It’s a bargain, being human, and I love it as much as everyone else.

Old Jules, why is the human race so destructive?

Best answer: Just one of the ways humanity manages to extend its own lifetime most likely. The species is unable to take direct measures to control its own numbers so it finds other ways to do it in more cunning ways. Humanity has to somehow survive if it’s going to last long enough to evolve. It can’t survive if it’s stacked like cordwood half a mile high alive but unable to kick.

Old Jules, what is life?? Serious question…?

Don’t take this seriously, but it’s an attempt at a serious answer more-or-less as an analogy, and strictly my own with no attempt to assert it’s true, except I believe there’s evidence to support it: Life is something that exists at the boundary line between the past and future on the time landscape, which is a landscape as opposed to something linear. My thought is that it’s a mechanism the side of the boundary we think of as ‘future’ dangles downstream across into ‘past’ to mine it for some resource more abundant on the past side than on the future side. DNA is floated downstream much the way a fisherman with his boat anchored midstream dangles a baited hook and lets it drift. It’s not the answer you wanted, and nobody but me believes it’s likely, but there you are. That’s what life is.

Jack wrote this in September, 2006:

I’m pleased to say that I’ve finished the project to put all these blog posts in paperback book form. As I’ve said before, these are available on Lulu.com, here’s a link or you can just search for Jack Purcell on the Lulu.com website.
https://tinyurl.com/4mdchhwm

My apologies for the poor quality of this one photo, but the lighting in my apartment is really bad. You can see the covers better on the link.

Also, I have to apologize for the book pricing. Lulu sets their production price based on number of pages, design, etc. and then it’s up to me to choose that price or increase it for further profit, so I kept it close to their minimum each time. The only good way to get a discount (unless you live in the KC area and want to have me order you one personally) is to get on their email list and wait for their discount prices to show up. At the moment there’s a 10% off promotion, and they frequently have 15% off.
The last book covers more years and is around 300 pages. It also includes pages of recipes that Jack made up while he was on the no/low-sodium diet as well as the tribute I wrote on this blog when he died.

There’s an additional book listed on his Lulu page at the moment that is unrelated to our projects, so I’m working with Lulu to remove that one book. It’s by someone else entirely.

As I’ve mentioned before, this blog will continue with older posts not previously posted on this site until around the end of December. I will also be including some letters and older writing from time to time. (Those aren’t in the published books). I have one audio recording coming up and might post more of those later this fall. At the end of the year I’ll re-post about ordering the books and then leave the blog in place in case I have future projects to tell you about. I have ideas, but due to some travel plans, I won’t be working on those this fall.

If anyone has any interest in using Lulu.com, feel free to contact me if you want to discuss how it works (elisekasten@hotmail.com). I’ve learned a huge amount going through this process, and while these books aren’t 100% perfect in every way, they are good enough for me to be proud of the results!

Thanks for being loyal readers,

Jeanne

Jack wrote this in September, 2006: