Skip to content

Tag: love

Published on

Today I pay homage to the great Albert Einstein.  Why?  Because I feel like it, no other reason.  He threw out some gems for us to ponder.  “I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.”  “Love is the greatest force there is.”  And perhaps my favorite:  “You can’t solve a problem with the same consciousness that created it.”  
Quotes such as these have great ramifications for us in our lives, if we choose to ponder them for a while.   
For example, rational thinking has its place in the world.  It probably serves us really well when considering things like schedules.  But there is another kind of thinking that I think opens us up to possibilities, and this is what I believe Einstein was referring to.  He also said that “imagination is more important than knowledge.”  I like to play a game I call “What If?”  In this game, I simply imagine how life would be IF.  It is a form of spiritual practice for me.  What if? This game allows me to imagine possibilities.  And here’s the kicker:  if I can imagine them, they can happen.  My job isn’t to know how they can happen.  My job is simply to know that they can.
And here’s where the next quote comes in handy, my favorite.  This quote has also been attributed as saying that one can’t solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it, but I like consciousness better.  Consciousness goes deeper.  Consciousness is not just our thinking.  It is our feelings, our beliefs, our very sense of who we are and how we show up in the world. Einstein is not the only one who told us that if we want to change our life we need to change our thinking.  “Change your thinking, change your life” is the tag line for Centers for Spiritual Living.  
And change your thinking, change your life is the very foundation of all of my own personal work in the world.  Having problems in your life? Change your thinking.  Feeling like life is unbearable, hopeless, not worth it?  Change your thinking.  Having problems with other people, or with relationships?  Change your thinking.  And then I proceed to provide tools to do exactly that.  And again, it isn’t just about changing the thinking.  It is about changing the consciousness.
This is difficult to describe.  I have a Masters Degree in...wait for it.....wait for it.....Consciousness Studies.  And I still don’t quite know what that is.  What I can tell you is that we studied philosophy, science, religion and psychology.  What I can tell you is that incorporating all of those schools of thought and study into my own life changed my consciousness and produced a person who was different than the one who entered that study.  I changed my thinking, and my life changed.

This is why I like Einstein so much.  This guy was a scientist who knew the power of things like imagination and intuition.  He knew the power of love to solve all problems.  Which brings me to his love quote, “Love is the greatest force there is.”  Never mind that the Bible says love never fails. Never mind that it is said that love is a synonym for God. Yes, those all affirm that love is the greatest force there is.  And if you don’t believe that, allow me to share with you another experiment I’ve played with over and over again, and discovered that it works, every time.
If love is the greatest power there is, then love should be able to solve all problems.  But in order to do so, love needs to have a way to express.  That way is through us.  WE need to be the vehicles through which love moves.  WE need to be love.  WE need to have the consciousness of love.  I began to consider, when contemplating this experiment, what love could/would/should look like in my life.  First of all, it is unconditional.  This means I place no conditions on whether I love someone.  It has no exceptions.  This means I love everyone equally.  I’m an equal opportunity lover!  And what does love feel like?   It feels peaceful.  It feels joyous.  It feels relaxing.  And sometime excited and enthusiastic.  Short version:  love is always positive, never negative.  So I began to consider where I felt negative in my life, and I began to replace that negativity with positivity.  I got so good at it that people were calling me Pollyanna.  I did not care.  I intuitively (thank you again Albert Einstein!) knew I was on the right track.  Am I successful at it all the time?  No, but I strive.  I have used this technique when I was ready to divorce my husband.  I’ve used it when I have felt the weight of the world’s ills on my shoulders.  I’ve used it when there has been an antagonist in my life whose seeming goal seemed to be to cause problems for me.  I have used it when I found myself harshly judging others. I’m still happily married and the antagonists always seem to go away.   The others remain idiots but when I stop harshly judging them, I can sometimes have compassion for them, which is another form of love.  I am not perfect at this.  I haven’t yet solved the world’s problems, but you know what?  Love is the greatest force there is and if enough of us embody it, together we CAN solve the world’s problems.
It is time for me to bring this blog to a conclusion, which is sometimes difficult for me to do, because one thing leads to another which leads to another and I could go on and on.  So I will close with another Einstein quote, “creativity is intelligence having fun.”
In this holiday season, I wish you fun, creativity, changed thinking and most of all, unconditional love!
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa, Yuletide Greetings, Happy holidays, Joyeux Noël, Feliz Navidad, Seasons Greetings!

Published on
On this Memorial Day, it is rainy and cloudy and windy outside my home. Most likely snowing at the higher elevations. My cat is vacillating between climbing on me, purring and snuggling, and looking for trouble. He is still very kitten-ish, but beginning to show signs of adulthood with increasing times of purr-in-the-lap snuggles. I am preparing for two upcoming talks and a workshop. And basking in the glow of a great time of fellowship last night. I am now hosting a once a month pot luck in our new home, a practice I used to do when I lived at Tahoe, and last night about 15-20 people showed up with all sorts of wonderful things to eat. And we talked. We indulged in that ancient practice of breaking bread together. There is something magic that happens when we do that. Some sort of bonding, a creation of good relationship. We have only one thing in common, and many things not in common. Yet we break bread together and get along just fine. And I had a chance to practice something new in an interaction with someone. Instead of digging in my heels, claiming my rightness and judging the wrongness of the other person, I took some time to practice what I’ve been preaching for almost two years now. I’ve been preaching that we need a new way to communicate, a way that does not claim a side but instead seeks to find the common ground. A way that does not blame but instead seeks to find a solution to a problem. A way that does not make one of us wrong and one of us right, but instead seeks to find a compassionate way of viewing why the other person might have said or done what they did. I purposely sought all that. I fought through the layers of self righteousness and ego seeking rightness and superiority and anger that makes me feel powerful, but only for a little while before it turns into sickness. And I went deeper, into compassion and a common ground. And discovered that common ground. Turns out the other person wants the same thing I do: inclusion. No exclusion. And together we found a way to implement it. And this brings me to the explanation of my meme, because you know I just can’t post a meme without an explanation, right? One of my upcoming talks is about a deeper sort of prayer, the sort that gets things done. The powerful sort of prayer that all the great sages of the world used to heal, change conditions, and make life bearable. This goes way beyond a beseeching to an outside entity. This is the kind that changes our own minds. This is the kind of prayer that does indeed have the power to move mountains. This is the kind of prayer that has the power to eliminate all the sad, dismaying, hateful, judgmental shit that is going on in this world, and to replace it with love, compassion and hope. And it begins with each of us. It begins when we approach prayer with openmindedness and willingness to have our own minds be changed. To move from our own judgement and rightness and anger and into a way of being that embodies compassionate acceptance, a seeking of common ground and a releasing of that anger. I dream of living in a world that works for everyone. I happen to think it is possible. But only if we change our ways. And it begins inside each and every one of us, with a way of living that embodies a prayer that we be open and compassionate. Become what you wish to see and experience, and you will have learned the secret of powerful prayer.

Published on

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.

Published on

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.

Published on

KAL_0697

I've been thinking a lot lately about the equinox coming up, probably because I'll be traveling to Lake Havasu City at the end of this week to do a talk there on this very topic at the Lake Havasu Center for Spiritual Living.

We get an equinox, or solstice, twice a year.  Once in the spring around March 20 and once in the fall around September 21.  These signify the day when the daylight hours and the night time hours are equal.  For the spring solstice, the day light hours then grow at a rate of a few minutes a day, till the fall equinox, when the day light hours then begin to shrink at the same rate.

Traditionally, fall equinox celebrations centered around harvest time, and this makes me think of what I am harvesting.  And what I am harvesting today depends on what I have planted yesterday.

Ernest Holmes (founder of Centers for Spiritual Living) tells us that today's outpicturing is the result of yesterday's consciousness.  This means that the thoughts and beliefs I held yesterday are what is manifesting in my life today.  Is this to be taken literally?  Not necessarily.  More accurately, it means that the tendency of my thoughts will influence my life in that direction.

So if I have planted good thoughts, thoughts of gratitude and optimism and love, then that is what my life will look like.

Does this mean that shit won't happen?  Nope.  It does indeed happen, it is part of life.  But if my thoughts have been ones of love and acceptance, then I am better able to handle it when it hits the fan.  I am not talking about spiritual bypassing either.  I'm talking about focusing on what is good while taking responsibility.  A good example of this would be the cancer patient who chooses to create humorous situations, all the while going through the medically indicated treatment.

So this is a time to consider what is going on in your life, and consider the seeds you have planted in your consciousness.  Do you live in the past, basing your current decisions on what happened when you were a kid?  This might be a good time to revisit that and see if a change is indicated.  Do you limit your actions based on fear?  This might be a good time see what it is you are afraid of, and what is behind the fear.  It may no longer be valid.

The equinox means the days will be getting shorter and the flurry of activity that most of us engaged in during the summer will begin to slow down.  Fall is a time to regroup, and see if perhaps we want to plant some different seeds.

I'd love to hear about your seeds!  What have you planted that is growing in your life right now?  What do you want to plant from this point on?

KAL_0908