Dear Friend,
If you are one of the many who became (or renewed) as Cygnus Supporters in the last month, or who chose to place an order with us, or who got in touch with words of advice or support, we are so very grateful to you all!
Thanks to your help, we managed to pull through the last four weeks by the skin of our teeth – April and May are always difficult months because of the bank holidays and, since we are all of us passionate lovers of nature, we imagine that most of you are far too absorbed in soaking up the long-awaited glories of spring, to worry about reading. Totally understandable!
No-cost ways for you to help us
If you’d like to, there are a few ways you can help us grow that won’t cost you a penny:
1. Like us on Facebook
2. Follow us on Twitter (promise we will start posting daily soon – see below)
3. Tell all your friends about us (if you haven’t already!). If each of you could find, say, 5 people who would appreciate receiving a monthly dose of inspiration, guidance and support on their spiritual path, as well as reviews of the best new mind/body/spirit books. You could then encourage them to join Cygnus, which would help us more than you could possibly imagine. And, as you probably know, if your friends mention your membership number when they place their first order, you will receive a £2 Cygnus voucher as a ‘thank you’.
4. Help us write a fundraising book (see below).
Progress
Via our blog, we told you about the plans we have to bring ourselves into the second decade of the twenty-first century. The way Geoff and I think about business is still very much influenced by the very earliest days of computers, before the internet was a twinkle in anyone’s eye, which is useful when it comes to understanding the needs of those of you who cannot (or do not want to) get involved with computers and the internet. For the rest of you, however, we’re very fortunate to have our two sons on board, helping us to learn how things are done now, and how they are likely to be done in the future. John and Sam have made great strides with our new website, which looks as if it is going to be way better than anything we could have bought ‘off the peg’. It will be able to store your credit card details securely so you don’t have to go to the trouble of keying them in every time you place an order; and you’ll be able to buy e-books and MP3s from us easily. We’ll also be able to use the new website much more easily to develop a sense of community amongst us all. There will be loads of other benefits too, which we’ll tell you about when we launch the site.
Help us write a book
Some of you may have noticed that I have written the odd thing on Facebook during the last month (although I’ve yet to distract John or Sam from their website project for long enough to be able to show me how to log into Twitter – I’m sure it’s very simple but now you can see how stuck in the 1980s my mind is!).
Anyway, a very interesting thing came out of your responses to one of my Facebook posts. I mentioned that I had been contemplating the sentence: ‘I love myself’ (I was trying to really see it with the eyes of my heart), and I asked people if they would like to expand that sentence to make it’s meaning clearer, only saying things that really felt right in their hearts.
Many people wrote beautiful things about loving themselves, which I personally found very helpful so I hope others did, too. But some wrote about how the words ‘I love myself’ just did not compute with them. How I understand that feeling! Yet so many psychologists, health experts and spiritual teachers say that the ability to receive and give ourselves love is the essential foundation of not just all the other loving acts and feelings we may aspire to, but also of health and our spiritual growth. So if we don’t ‘get it’ yet, or only partly ‘get it’, we had all better roll our sleeves up and start changing ourselves and rewriting our internal programming in the most profound way. For this kind of love – self-love – when properly understood and flowering within us, truly does change everything.
And you know what? As suggested by Cassandra Scott on Facebook – we could all help each other to do that. Together we could make a pocket-sized, affordable book filled with affirmations about loving ourselves, and then, every time we felt ourselves veering off course, we could pull out the book, open it on any page, and have our minds and hearts back in the eternal sunshine in no time. This could help Cygnus too, because if you all donated your affirmations for free, then we could put all the profits towards Cygnus’ recovery and development.
If you’d like to contribute to this book, here’s the sort of thing we would be looking for:
An affirmation (or a number of affirmations if you’re really brimming with creativity) that comes from your heart and feels right in your heart, that helps you to remember that:
– the love and compassion that you are in your deepest essence is also freely given to you; or
– the love that is the underlying structure of the universe is intended for you and is freely given for you; or
– that you are lovable; or
– that you are loved; or
– that even the aspects of you that you may consider to be less than desirable are in fact wonderful and deserving of love, and will be seen to fit perfectly into the grand scheme of things when we are able to see ourselves from a ‘God’s-eye view’;
– that our undesirable aspects are certainly not to be feared or rejected, but on the other hand, loved, and in that way ‘softened’, maybe even dissolved… or evolved!
Suggestions about a title would be welcomed as well, and of course we’d like you to send in your contributions by post or email.
This could be a wonderful thing for all of us!
With blessings and love,
Ann, Geoff and the Cygnus Team