Reminders from the Universe

Reminder from the Universe - little hits from along the way.
I often wake up with these little reminders, such as:

Excelling is like pure oxygen. It gives you great energy and it energizes everyone and everything around you. Once you have some of it, you want more and more. It nourishes everyone, is inspiring and leads to a contagious sense of happiness, powerfulness, and that all good things are possible.

Mediocrity is like a low-grade infection. You don’t feel bad enough to stay home from work, but you don’t have it in you to really try to achieve excellence. It has a “what’s the point,” drag to it a sense of powerlessness. Not necessary out-right powerlessness, but an under everything, black-hole kind of powerlessness that isn’t overly obvious but colors everything around it.

You have to go for your true heart’s desire, your true bliss, your true ability for excellence because anything less than that is boring!

You have to go for your highest vision because that’s where your life-force energy flows to and from. You have to do what you came here to do or over time you’ll just die of disappointment; first emotionally and spiritually and much later physically. Did you really go to all the trouble of choosing an adventure, a worthy Quest for a lifetime - arrange which souls you’d meet along the way and share the adventure with - arrange for some pentacle adventures (usually disguised as traumas from a body perspective) and obstacles to help build some spiritual muscles, growth and understanding, and then part way into the deal turn it into just an endurance game? Planet Earth is the Adventure Park of this dimension! You can act out adventures, thillers, romances, gothic – all and any kind of story – those are the “rides” of life on this planet! Only we’ve forgotten that we are spirits who donned a body to come into the physical realm to enjoy having emotions and sensations!

Still about breathing

There's a lot of things I love about talking to people. One of them is how it is such a relief to experience that we all go through the same doubts and tribulations, mistakes and did I say doubts? I meant doubts. Twenty years ago a friend told me a quote (can't remember who first said it) that goes something like,
"To chose a life of faith is to live a life of doubt." It's like how in so many natural healing modalities, things get worse before they get better. And in healing development, when you chose to have more love in your life all your existing blocks to love show up first - so you can heal them and actually have what you're saying you want = more love in your life.

I was talking to a friend who is also a professional healer and spiritual coach this weekend. We had a great boost of healing in the form of laughing as we talked about various people we both know (including ourselves) who are bouncing off the walls these days as our bodies struggle to catch up with the energy shifts that are going on like a series of small earthquakes.

I was telling her how one minute I clearly see how everything that is and everything that has been is all perfect and in alignment and good to go. And then suddenly, it's like someone has turned the etcher-sketch upside down again and all I can see or feel is failure and chaos, again! Just her laughing from relating and sharing that we each have friends that are experiencing similar tumult was like a balm and helped the body relax and not take things so seriously.

I know that's one of the things that I get hooked on - the seriousness of it all. There is a downward spiral of doubt that sucks all the life out of things. And then I'm hooked, I give my life energy over to thoughts of what I'm afraid will happen or has happened. Fear and not in the present - two energies guaranteed to agitate body enough to throw spirit out in the death-grip of survival. What's the opposite of the law of attraction? Desperate survival energy, the ultimate repellent. It won't work on bugs but it sure works on sending away what would really help while drawing towards you all the stuff you don't want.

If I didn't give it so much power and life-force energy, it wouldn't have enough power to become true in physical reality. I have sometimes really excelled at creating what I most fervently don't want. It really sucks, but I'm turning that around. That's what doing it different is all about really. Turning things around. That and remembering that "normal rules don't apply."

On Haiti -

I did some healing meditation work on Haiti again today. I got the message that as spirits, the people who have been involved in this mass tragedy were all signed up for this and that much good and awareness is and will come from this. This is not to say that people make choices on a body-personality level to go through something like this. It's not the self-conscious mind that signs up for these things, it is that as spirit, as the one who takes on a body and a lifetime as if donning a garment - that everlasting spirit part that takes on challenges like this one. Death is not the hard part. Death is really a graduation to a higher next level of awareness and life - just not with a body and on this plane of existence. It is a completion and a graduation of sorts. It is the physical suffering that is so hard to bear. That and the extreme fear, and the engulfing sense of aloneness.

A really surprising piece of information that came from today's session was the message that one of the things this wake-up call is trying to tell us is that in the recent past society has been moved away from supporting individuals to supporting corporations and institutions, and we must turn that tide back around. This event and Katrina and the Tsunami show how if it is an area where people with money want to go for their pleasure (vacation fun) then the infestructure will be repaired, streets repaved, buildings and utilities restored in quick order because otherwise, some company (companies) will loose out on those sales and that is unacceptable losses. Yet if it is an area where the wealthy are not likely to go and spend money, then we hear a lot about the problems of the infestructure and getting supplies delivered, etc, etc. Institutions are having trouble getting real help to real people, and yet small organizations that are not institutions but a collection of people helping people - these are the ones that are not having trouble getting help where it is needed.

Institutions want the people to come to it and do what it needs them to do so it can help them. People will just go where the other people and the needs are.

We can no longer think of sustainability only in terms of renewable resources for food and energy. This is also a wake up call to how unsustainable the economic practices are. Since the end of WWII so much of our culture, driven by the economy, has switched from self-sustaining to dependence on corporations. And government at one time was there to protect the citizens from corporate greed, but many of those safeguards have been dissolved.

The truth is that many of us feel neither protected, defended or supported by our economy, or our "way of life" - corporate first, people second.

It is time we realize that in truth, if I don't have your back and you don't have my back, we're both in trouble. Neither corporations or government have our backs and the truth is, that's our job. WE are the family of man - and we have to wake up from the lies that tell us to suspect each other all the time. Remember, people could be friends you just haven't met yet, instead of suspects or the undeserving poor.

Just breathe

I went to a great MeetUp this weekend in North Seattle. A practitioner of Byron Katie's The Work held an afternoon workshop that was very good. The Work (http://www.thework.com/thework.asp) is a terrific tool for getting in charge of your thinking and beliefs. Very powerful, and empowering. And the site has a lot of great free information and resources.

One of the things I love about any of the methodologies of deepening, healing and discovering new frontiers, aspects and potentials within ones self is that really there are some number of stories and really we all share them to one degree and another. The woman I was seated next to was very vocal and experienced in The Work and I was naturally a bit unsure of myself at first with her. In my process of doing it different and changing normal in my own life I find my emotions are very near the surface most of the time. As a poet, a woman, a human being, and a spiritual being, I find that having my emotions flow such much is very healthy and reflects my true values, but as a "middle-aged" woman in the professional world I find it rather challenging to deal with and not judge myself for it, or care when others judge me for it. When the time came to work with a partner I was of course matched up with her. (you draw to you what you resist!)

(Please go see the site to get a real description and understanding of the work - I'm only describing my experience with it. I'm not trying to teach it or anything here.)

When you do the work with someone you hear some intimate things about them and as they are affected and sometimes swept away with their emotions, like I was when it was my turn, you gently remind them of the belief they are working on and bring them back to topic. The session went well enough when she was helping me. At this point I have gotten used to being emotional in front of people especially when it is a safe, healing setting, so of course I cry at least some. So I didn't really mind crying in front of someone I didn't know, and as much healing work as I have done I figured she could relate to what I was working on. I haven't ever been in a healing session where I couldn't relate to my clients, and I've heard so many stories - enough to know that none of us have created any new emotions since time began, and that we all have them, just to an infinite shading and degree.

When we switched turns, and she did know the procedure, but since she was actively doing it and working on her own stuff (stuff I totally related to and could have been saying myself), she was in her emotions (rightly so) and so I helped her back to her topic and supported her as she did the work. I was laughing at myself inside for how I had felt a bit vulnerable and intimidated by her before we worked together. I laughed at my falling for the lie that I'm not good enough (therefore others are better than me) again, and how even though I have improved a great deal in this area, I still fall for it. But laughing kindly at myself for that instead of 1) totally believing it or 2) beating myself up for it - again -- this is a great reminder of how far I have come.

In the end some of us exchanged phone numbers and we may get together at some point. Who knows.

It was so clear (again!) how we are all convinced that we are the only ones with this or that and feeling isolated. Partly we isolate ourselves for various reasons, but also our culture isolates us, ignores us, makes us irrelevant.
Who among us hasn't enjoyed attention and favors in the world - from being waited on a little faster to getting out of a speeding ticket, etc. and then woken up one day and Boom! you're suddenly invisible. It is the weirdest thing.

My pal Mary Jane and I had a lot of discussions about that, trying to figure it out and just how to adjust to it, when it first happened to us. And tonight I was surfing imdb.com, one of my favorite sites (I love movies. I have a very cosmic, spiritual relationship with movies). I'd seen Diana Rigg in Network earlier and so I wanted to read her biography on imdb. and in the Personal Quotes section, she talks about suddenly being invisible! Diana bloody Rigg! One of The Most Fabulous women of the 1960's! I can't imagine anyone being dumb enough as to not see her, or think she's not relivent, or has nothing other than sex appeal to offer! Absurd, not to mention sexist. I'm sure I'll come back to this rant later.

Where I was going with this is that we've all been programmed to believe that we are alone feeling like this, and we aren't. As Tony says, we know all these amazing women who are spiritual and healers and creative as all get out, living in a culture that totally doesn't care or value any one it can't make a buck off of, so we buy the lie that we aren't good enough or that people don't want what we have to offer, and it's a crock. In fact the world needs us more than ever.

Each one of us has a specific note to sing in the chorus of the Universe and the song isn't complete when even one of us don't sing our note to the fullest of our ability. God/The Universe/our Spirit selves doesn't make junk. Our special gifts are needed - here and now - today. We need each other to be who we really are. Imagine how different (better) the world would be if we all actually Showed Up as ourselves. Our real, full, powerful-yet-vulnerable selves... For one thing we wouldn't be able to keep the lie that we were alone and irrelevent!

Just breath. Breath into being. Breath into grounding into the now. Breath into being who you truly are. Just breath.

Living spiritually - in a small office

The office is not a natural setting for human beings. Sitting still for 8 hours with occasional breaks to the bathroom or lunchroom is not natural. Bodies aren’t built for that. The 40 hour week isn’t natural either. To spend 40 hours a week in the company of people you might not ever care to know is hard enough, but to do that with the false and unnatural physical intimacy (in my office no body is further than 5 feet away from some one or two other bodies) and false friendliness when really everyone gets on everyone else’s nerves, due partly to proximity.

I know people (one, anyway) who is really passionate about what they do and they do it in an office setting, but they are at the top tier and don’t have to be at the office to work, have a lot more flexibility along with all that more responsibility, and are in charge of themselves – when they show up, where and when they go, etc. They are in positions of authority and while others may not agree with them, they aren’t in a position to argue too strongly with them either.

I know one thing – I am not now, nor have I ever been, built for office life. Yet that’s where I’ve been off and on for most of my adult life. I guess it’s a testament to determination and my ability to succeed at anything I set my mind to, since everyone will tell I don’t belong in an office, doing bookkeeping/accounting tasks, and yet that’s what I’ve been doing to pay the bills for a very long time.

I read some of "Eat, Pray, Love" and while it seemed a really well written and good book, I couldn’t get past the fact that yea, when I’m on the road and traveling to distant and wonderful places I feel very spiritually in tune and aware. Hell, when I have some financial security I find it very spiritual. My problem is that when I work in an office 40 hours a week to pay the bills and stave off the wolf at the door it’s hard to feel anything other than numb. Numb because otherwise I’d be a screaming lunatic or in seething mode all the time.

My theory for years has been that I ought to be able to be spiritual in any and every situation. Would the Dalai Lama feel the way I do working 40 hrs a week at a job isn't his main passion in life? I mean, if told death was coming in 3 weeks, who would be rushing to the office to call an insurance company to find out benefits and coverage for a client of some else’s? I mean, I could possibly see myself doing that if it were my client, but if I had just 3 weeks to live, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be spending it ‘in business’. Besides, insurance companies don't cover spiritual counceling or psychic readings, so it wouldn't come up.

So the question is; is working in an office so hard for me because of some weakness or fault on my part? or, is it that my strenghts don't get tapped into in administrative tasks so the problem is me putting myself in situations I don't belong in, artifically making me and "them" wrong?

One day at a time

These days I am experimenting with repetition. For years I didn't really go with affirmations because to me they seemed like lying. I was still under the illusion that I was very dedicated to honesty and didn't appreciate the manipulation and lying to myself by telling myself things that weren't true today. I really didn't get what they were talking about when it came to affirmations.

Then I went through psychic seminary and saw how we are programming ourselves and being programmed by others all the time. Family and society start programming us even before we are born - this I know. I had railed against and done many hours of healing work around this fact and got to know its depths. I also learned that under the surface energy on any of these lie/beliefs I'd naturally picked up, the face and voice that perpetuated them was me. The old Pogo joke, "I've met the enemy and they is us!" I saw over and over again that no matter what the lie was and who " started" it, I'm the one that has kept it alive in some form and brought it with me through the years. The fact that many of those "perpetrators" have died has also helped me get real.

I started noticing how in the name of telling myself the truth about myself, I'd lie like crazy. I noticed how I often seemed to not feel better until I had settled on the absolute worst interpretation of what I had said/done/whatever. As a child someone had told me, "if you aren't in pain, you aren't telling yourself the truth about yourself," and as an impressionable child I listened? That, or I've just rebelled and resisted the concept so much all my life I periodically become that notion. Or maybe it was just all that Catholic training I grew up with. All I know is that I was willing and would go to any lengths to get myself feeling bad about myself and had no problem lying like crazy to get there. Totally an inside job.

Now that I've done the research and really listened to inside my head enough that even Catholic denial can't keep me believing that the river of criticism is true, I've started changing the tapes, so to speak. Now I take another slice of the truth, a slice less caustic and more neutral, or more caring, and repeat that thought over and over for a while, till I lose focus and fall unconscious again, usually at my desk at my day job. But more and more often during the day am I remembering to challenge the old tapes.

I love that bumper sticker that says, "Don't believe everything you think." And, "Don't believe everything you feel" would be good too.

Between not believing all the old tapes/lies/hooks, and playing around with the stories I tell myself about me and the world, etc, things do seem to be improving. A little at a time.

It's a beginning

Recently a dear cousin asked me what I've been doing to, "stay so happy and productive," and I almost fell off my chair laughing.  I had just had yet another day at work were I felt crazier and crazier as the day went on until I couldn't stand it anymore, and couldn't wait to get out of there. I felt pretty buggy, and as many years as I've been doing healing work and soul searching and self-awareness exercises and advanced psychic development and training, I would have thought I wouldn't get buggy anymore. But I do. That's one of the things I miss about my mother and the spirituality of her peers. You could be a good Catholic without being perfect. You did your best, took action to make a difference in the lives of those around you, talked and listened to the god of your heart and practiced forgivess daily. These days the expectations are so distorted and the agreements to go along with them so prevelant it's hard to just be honest and authentic and perfectly human, not perfect like stagnant imaginary standards.

So I'm on a mission to be perfectly human and to be relaxed and self accepting. And this job is part of that because really, it is not now nor has it ever been my passion to do accounting in any of the forms I have done it or am currently doing in. (Terrible grammer but you get the point.) I've been on my case for "hiding" in the bookkeeping jobs but that's where talking things over with friends is so great, for a more neutral, healing perspective. Today my pal Tony said, "You aren't hiding - you're working to pay the bills! There's no dishonor in that. And it's okay that you are doing that job even if it isn't your spiritual mission on Earth. You gotta balance being spiritual with action steps. When the time is right for you to be doing something else, you will. In the meantime don't give yourself additional grief for getting a little crazy when you're having to spend so much time in an unnatural, toxic environment. It's not that the people you work with and for are bad or evil, but it is an unnatural situation and just because it is common as dirt doesn't mean it's not crazy making. Any time there is a person who has the power to fire you and that person can tell other people who work there who they can spend time with and talk to, well it's a crazy world we live in. Don't add to it by making youself wrong by judging yourself for getting a little wiggy by be in that crazymaking environment."

 That did help a lot. One of the things I've seen over and over again is that The Truth may be hard but it never makes you bleed. Sad, maybe, but it doesn't make you pay and pay all the time. Whatever that is, it's not The Truth. The truth sets you free because you don't have to pretend anymore; you don't have to cover up or run away anymore. The truth is I am not on this earth to be a good administrative assisant or office worker. Once I accept that and stop making myself wrong for finding that environment to be so totally toxic, the less my body will have to act out with illnesses to try to get my attention.

Tomorrow is Monday and Monday's aren't too bad usually. Everyone still has the scent of their real lives all about them so they are less inclined to mess with each other.  In the meantime, I have started a blog. There's an action step taken in my favor. It really is true that what is inside you must be expressed or what is inside you will kill you. What 's inside me is a poet and painter and essayist and clairvoyant and spiritual teacher, and I have to act on those parts of me or it won't be pretty!

It's a beginning.