Do you feel it? I do. A dis-ease. There is, as they said in the Star Wars movies, a disturbance in The Force. Lest the more cynical of you think I am talking out of my ass, let me assure you, there is a vast work of scientific evidence that says that there is an energy force of which we are part, and it is a part of us. Thus, we are all connected. And we are disturbed.
Some days I wake up and I feel this disturbance more than others.
Today is one of those days.
I could not sleep last night, a rare occurrence. And I feel out of sorts this morning. And nothing is wrong in my life. In fact, things are going wonderfully. My husband and I are getting along great, we are getting settled in nicely to our new home and I am in love with my husband, my home, my neighborhood. I just released another work yesterday and already sales have exceeded my expectations.
So why am I feeling out of sorts?
Because there is a disturbance in The Force and I am sensitive to those things. I actually cultivated and nurtured this sensitivity. Go figure.
I didn’t mean to. But I began doing things like meditating, and purposely connecting with this Force so that I could live a better life. It works, this stuff. My life is better than ever. But what I did not know was that there is a drawback to having this strong of a connection. I feel the disturbances in the Force.
So I will get up in a bit and go and ride my horse and forget about it all for a while. This has a dual purpose. It will reset my mood, because riding always resets me. It’s like pushing a reset button on a computer. And, in resetting my mood, I contribute to the consciousness that I am calling, for today’s purposes, The Force.
See, because we are all connected, we can’t afford to live lives based in fear. Those of us who know better, those of us who live lives based in love, must be more determined than ever to maintain attitudes of love, joy, gratitude, acceptance. Because if we give in to the fear, we contribute to the disturbance. And that I will not do. I prefer to change that disturbance to peace. The more of us that replace our own fear with love, the more difficult it will be for the fear to continue to reign in this country.
There is a lot of fear in this country now. Lies are told and believed. Manipulation of the populace is easier than ever because of the fear. Racism has once again been given permission to blossom, as has misogyny. That is why those of us who live lives based in love rather than fear must be diligent in our maintenance of optimism.
We can overcome this. If you are feeling the fear, take a step back and do what you need to do to feel the love instead. The more of us that do that, the easier it will be to calm down that disturbance in The Force.
TThe Companion Workbook is now complete!
I've had so many people ask me about a workbook or class to accompany my book A New Thought Journey through the 12 Steps. I've done numerous workshops on the key elements, but nothing I've done up to this time is as thorough as this workbook.
Designed to do either on your own, or with a group, this workbook will facilitate within you changes that lead to freedom, joy and happiness in your life, unlike any you've ever known before.
Get the workbook, get the book if you don't already have it, and begin.
And let me know what you are thinking and feeling as you move through it!
Just another life event
When I was in my early 30s, I learned a very valuable lesson from my loving ex-husband. I learned that yes, I could indeed be a homeowner. See, people like me didn’t own homes. We rented apartments. In neighborhoods that were a bit nebulous.
My husband at the time was having none of that, and I am so grateful for that lesson from him.
Fast forward a bit, and when we got divorced, I bought my own home, on my own. My first! I was going to live there forever. It was actually two buildings, right next door to one another. My home in one building, and my photography studio in the other.
It was perfect, and I built gardens, and enlarged my photography business and all was well and successful for a a very long time. I had a tough time with maintenance on those two buildings, as they were built in 1947, but I loved the character of those old buildings and I learned a lot about carpentry and roofing and flooring and all sorts of other home maintenance kinds of things. My dad bought me a power tool for Christmas two years in a row, and I was ecstatic!
Fast forward some more, and the recession hit and the photography industry changed and just about everything else in my life changed and while I owned the commercial building free and clear, I still had a mortgage on the house, and it foreclosed. I simply could not make the payments. I tried everything. I tried restructuring the loan, short selling, everything I could think of. I kept getting a no with everything I tried. If you are familiar with the stages of grief (bargaining, acceptance, denial, anger, shock, depression) you will understand it when I say to this day I have a bit of bargaining going on. Maybe if I had tried this or that, I tell myself. I’ve already gone through the depression and the guilt and let those puppies go. And the reality is that today I am in extreme gratitude for that loss, for I would not be here today had that not happened. I hung on longer than most, but on New Year’s Day of 2013 I moved down to a little studio apartment on an 80 acre horse ranch in the Carson Valley.
I was in grad school, studying for a new career, and it soon became very clear to me that I needed to sell the commercial building, so I did.
Fast forward a bit more, my husband Floyd and I get together and decide we need to live in a bigger place than a studio, as nice as the ranch was, so we rent. I find myself back in the land of renters and while I love the place where we live, renting has is drawbacks. First of all there is the way we are treated by the rental company. The first one was ok, they treated us respectfully and promptly responded to any service needs. Then the owner changed rental companies. This one is horrible. They send out nasty emails containing thinly veiled threats about caring for the home, don’t respond promptly to calls, and are just plain rude and disrespectful. I began longing to own my own home again. I began to dream of having a place where I could plant my garden and maybe have some chickens and other critters and paint my walls anything but white and nest and set down roots.
So, I did what I know works. I began within to manifest my own home. I made a list of everything I ever wanted in a home, with great detail. I visualized this list. I affirmed it and I affirmed what it would feel like when I owned my own home. I set my prayer partners on the task to know that this would manifest in my life. I realized that I wanted my own garden, so I cultivated a very small patch in the yard in the rental and planted flowers. How we do one thing is how we do everything and when I set my mind to something, I am consumed with it and I rarely take no for an answer. It is how I have gone so far in life, how I have been able to do what others say is impossible, over and over again. I can and do achieve the impossible, regularly.
Today, we found out we will be home owners once again. This house is perfect in every way and has plenty of room for all our desires. I can plant my gardens and still have room for critters. Floyd can have his boot shop. I can have my office and maybe one day a meeting/class room space, in the back 40. Because this home sits on 2.5 acres. We’ve achieved what some people said was impossible. It hasn’t been easy. I’m self employed, in a new career, with new sources of income. Floyd is retired. We have submitted no less than 48 various financial documents to the lender, completed 14 other to do items required by them, paid 1000’s of dollars in ernest money and inspection fees, and to top it all off, after we made the offer on the home, and it was accepted, we discovered that a court had to approve the sale, due to some sort of probate.
Today the court approved the sale, and we close escrow in just a couple of days.
Happy dance! This waiting game has been an experience fraught with alternating bouts of incredible tension, hope and excitement, doubt, tension, then hope and excitement again. WOOGIE WOOGIE WOOGIE!
We will be moving soon!
I can’t tell you how full circle this seems. I can’t tell you how this feels like both the ending and the beginning of a cycle that began with incredible loss and change. Imagine losing a home, a business, moving, switching communities, and going back to school to learn a new career, all in the time frame of about 3 years. According to the shrinks who like to test such things, I should have been in the nut house. I’m stronger than that, but I did go through a fairly heavy duty grieving process with no small amount of the return of my old companion PTSD and that even older companion of low self worth. Most of that is gone again now. I’ve done a lot of inner work in these last few years.
So now we begin anew. This new home is symbolic of a new life in many more ways than just a different place to live. I’ve been flailing a bit, trying to figure out my niche in my new career. So many different directions I could have gone. I feel that solidifying, I know where I want to go now with this and now that I have a direction in which I want to go, I’m headed there with all the obsession and drive that I have done everything else that has allowed me to wildly succeed where others fail. I’ve got some land to play with, and so I am plotting and planning footprints for my veggie and flower gardens. I’ve been getting rid of stuff, decluttering both mentally and physically. I’ve convinced Floyd that it is ok to get rid of things, and he has grudgingly gotten rid of a few items.
We will be moving soon! I put up a Christmas tree, because I can’t imagine this season without one. Floyd was puzzled by this. He could not see the sense in putting up a tree when we might be moving soon. I told him, “that’s easy. I have the tree here. When it comes time to move, I’ll pick that puppy up, put it in the toy hauler, move it to the new house, and plop it down in the living room and plug it in.” He still is doubtful. He hasn’t yet learned how much possibilities there are in things. Hell, I might even reinstitute an old tradition of mine, to keep a tree up year round, because I like the symbolism of the lights and because I like the beauty of them. One thing at a time.
I just wanted to share with you this journey. If you want something, don’t listen to the naysayers and the society and the others who say it can’t be done. Just quietly go about your business and it shall be done. Begin within and set it up that way, and then move outward with the action, and it shall be done.
A workshop for those who are tired of the same old same old
A trained mind is a good thing to have
If it is true that every thought sets the fulfillment of its desire in motion, and I believe it is, then it behooves us to make sure our thoughts are setting good motions in place. Ernest Holmes tells us that “trained thought is far more powerful than untrained....”
This means we must take steps to train our mind. Those steps are the spiritual practices of self inquiry and meditation. Done together regularly, consistently and persistently, these two practices allow for a trained mind that is supportive and friendly.
I am fond of saying that my mind is not the boss of me, but that doesn’t just happen automatically. I had to do some work to establish a positive relationship between me and my mind. You may be familiar with the saying that the mind is a dangerous neighborhood, we should not go there alone. When I first began the spiritual practices of self inquiry and meditation, it was very scary and uncomfortable. But I was told that my life would get better if I did these practices. I did, and it did.
Today, I not only DO these practices daily, but they are a lifestyle for me. It hasn’t always been like this, but I can assure you that if you make a beginning you will eventually end up with a trained mind that is a friend, not a foe.
If you have an untrained mind that seems to be against you, I can help. Contact me for more information.
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Find and Focus on the Beauty in the Change
I became very aware a long time ago that life tends to imitate nature. I used to go and sit on the east shore of Lake Tahoe and watch the storms come in, because in that area, the storms almost always came from the west. As I watched the clouds move in, I would think about the clouds of life moving in. Storms sometimes bring with them great destruction. The weight of the snow and the high winds topple trees and power lines and damage buildings. The storms come through in winter and we do the best we can to clean up the messes as we go, clearing driveways and sidewalks of snow. But what happens when there is so much snow that there is no longer any place to put it? What happens in life when there are so many storms that crisis fatigue sets in? What happens when all hope is lost, when faith disappears? We do the same thing that we do when winter sets in. ...continue reading "Find and Focus on the Beauty in the Change"
If we don’t go within, we go without
I have two weddings today, with a break in between during which I will do one of my favorite things: have lunch somewhere by myself and read. And this morning I’ve begun the day’s journey with more reading. I love to read. It simultaneously changes my consciousness and gives me ideas. Reading transforms my thinking from doubt, worry, disappointment, dissatisfaction and general malaise to confidence, faith, hope, contentment and general well being. Reading also is part of my research for much of the stuff I get to do in life that pays the bills: the workshops and retreats, and my writing. I take in the wisdom of others, and let it simmer inside of me, like cooking a great meal in a slow cooker, and then, when it is ready, out pops my own unique flavor of wisdom. I have two workshops coming up, one I have designed and completed. It’s actually one I’ve been doing for years, one that was requested. When a workshop I’ve already done has been requested, I simply tweak the workshop to better represent and match the audience. So one workshop is ready to go. The other one is about fear. I only have three hours for this workshop, and fear, well, fear covers a lot of ground. Do we lean into it? Avoid it? Do we believe the teaching that fear and faith or love cannot co-exist at the same time in the same entity? How do we recognize fear in our lives and what does it have to teach us? And what do we do about it when it comes? This promises to be a doozy of a workshop and I am excited to see how it develops. I’ve got a good beginning. I’m also in the midst of creating a series of talks about abundance, and so much of my reading is on that topic. I love the weddings and portrait sessions. When I did that work full time, it not only provided my means to pay the bills, but it fed something within me and I was full up, complete. Now that I do that work part time, it still contributes to paying the bills, but it only feeds part of me. After all the training and schooling, I’ve changed. After all the inner and outer changes in my life, I’ve transformed and thus, how I show up in the world has transformed, and what I need to feel that contentment I spoke of has changed. What really feeds me is the other work: the workshops, the retreats, the teaching. What I have to say to the world is that life truly begins from the inside of us. If we don’t go within, we go without, and everything I do begins within. My life is wonderful, and being able to facilitate this transformation in other people is what truly feeds me now. So on this beautiful fall day I will go off into the world and do some wonderful work, and spend some time preparing to do some other wonderful work. Life is good.
Are you an expression of love?
If everything is either an expression of love or a call for love, that has great ramifications for us in terms of how we live our life, and how we respond to life.
Boiled down to its simplest form, we get to pay attention to whether the events and people in our lives are an expression of love, or a call for love. And we get to pay attention to whether we ourselves are expressing love or calling for it.
This is the life lesson. What is our own call for love? What is our expression of love? The most accurate way I know of to determine that is to examine how other people are treating us. And how life is treating us.
Chances are, if one person is treating us a certain way, it is happening in other areas too. And if we remember that life is simply reflecting back to us what we are projecting, then this puts us in the empowering position of examining what we are projecting in life, then changing that projection.
So we begin with an exploration of our core values. And we pay attention to what is showing up in our life. And we adjust and/or tweak our own responses, actions and words to fit our values. Or we change our values. In this way we are taking charge of our lives, no longer victims. Empowered to then be an expression of love, and to better answer other’s calls for love with that expresssion.
FUN: Fill Unique Niche Or Fabulous Unique Nut or …?
Fun
Fabulous Unique Nut
Feeling Up Now
Feeling the Universe Now
Find Ur Nature
What is fun? Think about it. How do you have fun? You DO have fun don't you? Do you do fun things? Is life itself fun? Or do you simply go from one SHOULD to another, one task to another, thinking that you will have fun one of these days?
I have an invitation for you: don't do it if it isn't fun. Yep. I have learned that life is too short to do anything that isn't fun. But your fun is different than my fun. The key is to figure out what is fun for you.
And so we get to the first invitation when we consider fun: Figure it out! Figure Unique Nourishment.
...continue reading "FUN: Fill Unique Niche Or Fabulous Unique Nut or …?"
Get ‘er done!
Yesterday I was having a chat with Lovely Lili and she said, “We aren’t what we do, we’re what we love.”
That struck me as so profound and simple....and powerful, given the context of our conversation.
We were talking about overwhelm. As in......we both wanted something done and it wasn’t happening! Do you ever feel like that: overwhelmed? Like you won’t ever get it all done? Like there is too much? Or...perhaps it doesn’t seem to matter how much you do, you never quite seem to finish. It never gets completely done! Success always seems just out of reach.
When I feel like that, it is for one of two reasons:
- There is simply so much to do that I don’t know where to start, and I get stuck. Then procrastination stops by to say hi.
- I don’t feel worthy of getting it all done. Same result: I get stuck.