String of Lights

Now, in the twenty-first century, we are so familiar with the qualities of electricity that we play with it.  We have learned, among other fascinating things, to make strings of lights for stretching out and wrapping around and decorating.

With this acceptance of electricity's ability, this belief that energy can work this way under our belts,  we can reach just a bit further and see the possibility of stringing our own lights in our own way of playing.  A connecting game we can fire up and play any time we choose.  It goes like this:

• Imagine, pretend, or make believe you can, just by following your breath, travel in to your very center to see the spark of light that resides there. 
• Beginning to play, image its shape, color, intensity.
• Imagine your light charging up, brightening, dancing even.
• Notice that you can "see" with your inner eyes the spark of someone you would like to connect with.
• Send out a filament of light to that spark, the first in the string you are making.
• Imagine that you send out through the filament the invitation for that spark to send out its own filament of light to one that it would like to connect with, beginning to build the chain.
• With the momentum that builds, there will be more invitations and connections and light flowing in all directions in the filaments so that the string may form interconnected patterns of lights spreading out all around.
• Enjoy!

Soul Food

The alternative title for this post could be "The Care and Feeding of Your Soul."

Bodies need care and feeding, as we are well aware.  Our soul part has needs as well, on just as regular a basis as our body part.  Not to say that soul care and feeding requires participation in a religion.  Or a belief, beyond recognizing that humans are comprised of two parts.  And possibly not that; the offerings for soul care and feeding I make here may look very unlike what one would imagine nourishment of a soul to be.

• Find things that make you laugh.  Belly laughs have especially high nourishment content.
• Like yourself, warts and all.
• Assume that everyone, including yourself, is doing the best they can at the moment.
• Look for the good.
• Engage in enough exercise to cause heavy breathing.  Soul nourishment gets in the oxygen line behind the brain, the heart, all other organs.
• Do something for someone.  Size does not count.  Egos measure, souls do not.
• Take your soul out for a walk, enjoying the view, the sweet air, the sun, the rain, the snow, the wind, the stars.
• Show your soul a good time with caring company--friends, family, lovers, pets.
• Treat your soul to some beauty--art, dance, music.
•  Give your soul a little quiet, unbusy time, listening to your breath, feeling your heart.  Your body is its temple.

Just as bodies do not do well with toxins, there are things that are toxic to souls as well.  I mention this because an undernourished, poisoned soul will not leave us.  It will just not be able to offer us those experiences that give life its richness. 

To give you an idea of soul toxins: anger, jealousy, holding grudges, violence, retaliation.  In short, anything we do that shuts us down, cuts us off from others. 

And so, here's to a robust, well cared-for, exuberant soul, no matter the circumstance or the challenge life here on earth may bring.

Rites

I feel a rite coming on. . . . 

We've all got it in us, that desire for ritual.  I believe we've gotten lazy with our expressions of ritual with long established customs taking the place of fresher, and dare I say deeper enactments of what is close to the human heart.

(The one exception I see is the free-flowing rites around the Thanksgiving table, and more power to us for embracing the beauty in that sharing).

We need our own, individually created rites to mark passages, invoke aid, celebrate.  So if you are a far out kind of person, your rites can be reflective of that, and if you are of a more traditional bent, you can borrow from that richness in what you create.  Here's a couple of examples to get the juices flowing:

The Star Celebration
On a clear night, in a location outdoors and away from the effects of electric lights, place yourself standing in full view of the celestial bodies.  Then, gazing up and opening your arms wide, breathe in, celebrating the brotherhood we share with all.

That, in case you missed it, was the far out ritual.

Three Candles
This rite works nicely at the beginning of a new year, calendar or birth:
Place three candles in a row facing you, and beginning on the left, light each candle.  Saying as the first is lit, "I express my gratitude for all that has passed that strengthens me."  Saying as the second is lit, "I honor all that I have become."  Saying as the third is lit, "I embrace all the opportunities that await me in this coming year."

One last note--simple, everyday rituals carry as great a value as big statement rituals if we allow ourselves to put our hearts into them.  So go ahead, greet the sun, wash your hands of worry, blow kisses, post sticky notes, share drinks, save seats, wave good-byes, send up prayers.  Your world will be remarkably enriched when you do.

The Grease

During the days I commuted, sitting in traffic and looking for ways to distract myself from time ticking away, rude drivers, and long long lines of cars stretching out in front of mine, I listened to talk radio.  Mostly news and traffic updates and opinion pieces.  Forgettable, really.  Except for one interview with a self-help kind of guy who said things that sounded not too outrageous, with the exception of something about maintaining your chakras, which I didn't know I had, and how to deal with things going badly.  He said, in that cheerful tone early risers use when they genuinely are morning people, "Say, "That's great!'"  I couldn't imagine anything more foolish, saying what clearly isn't, is.  And then I tried it.

Un-great didn't turn into great.  What did happen with this forced bit of optimism was a sort of greasing of the wheels.  New thoughts started coming.  Helpful thoughts.  Moving forward thoughts.  Thoughts about what could be seen as good about the situation that I certainly didn't see when it happened.  So I could move forward, find solutions and not feel like the universe just shat on me. 

I recommend it.  It you find yourself stuck, you've now got grease.  And that, my friend, is very great. 

Holidays

They're playing holiday tunes in the department stores.  Just yesterday I walked into to a jazzy rendition of holiday spirit in a cozy and inviting setting we all would like to imagine to be at the heart of our seasonal gatherings.  This inspires me, this stage setting, to share what I see as the secret to a truly wonderful holiday in five simple words:

Expect less and give more.

In that order.  Because, get real, we start from our own needs and wants before we move on to seeing what we can give. Get over imagining there is a moral high ground that puts others first and set your expectations at a level that won't get in the way of genuinely enjoying ways to bring joy. 

You're going to have a hella great holiday season!

Environments

There's a commercial that's been running pretty regularly on TV featuring people who have been blindfolded and taken into a horrendously filthy house and plunked down on furniture that most dogs would refuse to sit in.  The deal is that an air freshener has been sprayed in the air before they are led in.  They're asked to comment on how the place smells.  Wonderful, of course.

It hasn't convinced me that the stuff really works.  Only fresh air smells like fresh air.  It did get me thinking about what a great job the makers of the commercials did at creating an environment.  Purely disgusting-looking, yet perceived as lovely by the actors they hired to look fooled.

If the way things look can create an environment, if the way things smell does as well, how about the way things feel?  How about the way people feel?  How about if we can set up an environment with what's going on inside us?  So that if we choose a specific thought/feeling/energy and clearly hold it, it can radiate out about us and be noticed as readily as that room spray.

I believe this is so.  I invite you to try it, play with it, indulge in choosing the highest and finest state of being that you can.  Then see what happens around you. 

Foolish Words

What's the most foolish thing you've ever said?

I started saying foolish things early, and it wasn't entirely my fault.  I regularly told people I had the milkman's ass before I had any idea of what that meant because that is what my mother told me I had.  And who doesn't believe their mother.  When my high school English teacher invited the class to offer names for her new VW bug, I mentioned it at dinner that night, and my father suggested she call it S.O.B. because she was going to sooner or later.  So I raised my hand the next day and stood up, because that's what we did when we were called on in class, and told her, my very proper teacher at my very proper girls' school, what Dad said.  You could feel the temperature drop in the room.  I also repeated a few ditties my brother taught me which I will not pass on here.  Okay, okay, just one:  Beans!  Beans!  The musical fruit!  The more you eat, the more you toot.  The more you toot, the better you feel, so eat your beans at every meal!

It turns out I'm terribly naive and hopelessly trusting.  I had no idea what I was saying or why it got the reactions it did.

I'm older and wiser now.  I know what it means to put your foot in it. 

Sadly, knowing has not been enough to keep my foot from going in: foolish words still find their way out of my mouth.

The point of this, shall I say, self-expose, is that we are responsible for the effect of our words.  If we have done damage with them, we are as liable of thievery as any other robber of goods.  We take away self-esteem, trust, hope, love. 

As powerful as is our capacity to hurt, we are capable of, if not healing the wounds our words cause, offering a balm that may be the beginning of restoration.

And so

Say it.  Say you're sorry, say you were foolish, say you didn't know what you were thinking, say you would take it back if you could even though you know you cannot.  Not expecting that you will be forgiven.  Only honestly hoping what you give with your words will make some difference.

Love What You Do

When it comes to life choices, I truly am in the do what you love camp.  I'm also in the get real camp.  First, because I haven't found actually getting to do what you love to be an overnight thing.  Second, because doing what you love doesn't mean that you'll love everything you're doing.  You might find parts of doing what you love distinctly unappealing.

What can always happen, regardless of whether or not we've grabbed that magical brass ring and live a life that features doing what we love, is to fully engage in the moments, be they ever so small, when we love what we're doing.  These seemingly insignificant acts will be life changing.  Because:

• You will enjoy the feeling of loving what you're doing and you will look for more ways to get that feeling.
• The more moments spent in loving what you're doing will result in fewer and fewer moments spent focusing on not loving your circumstances.
• You will become in charge of how you feel and so, how you live. 
• You will know what really makes the difference in the quality of your life is how you choose to live, not what you choose to do. 

Chaos

Chaos makes news.  The real news is, there is not a time on earth when there is not chaos.  The beings who survive--and thrive--on this planet are the ones who have developed the ability to live in chaos.  To find the underlying benefit in any chaotic situation, to use that gleam of hope and expectation, and move through it. 

Keep this in mind when the news makers splash their gory, scary stories in front of us.  We humans will find a way.

In peace-
Maureen

Heart Lines

Could there possibly be more ways to be connected?  Spectacular now, the ways we can access, link, be in person without our persons present.  I've got one more to add to our list of options.  I'm going to call it heart lines.  You'll see why.

• Release yourself from all forms of electronic communication.
• Access that internal power source--the breath.  With full deep, rhythmic repetitions until the body sinks into a neutral space free of thought or intention.
• Shift focus to the heart, in whatever way that occurs.
• Imagine the richness of its energy.  Its warmth, the color of its light, its movement.
• Now utilizing the capacity of the imaginative state, locate the heart energy of the one you wish to connect with.
• Send out a stream of light from the heart center in the direction of that heart.  Distance is irrelevant as light can travel easily. 
• On that beam of light energy, send out a query to connect.
• Keeping with this subtle awareness state, wait for a response.  When the offer to connect is welcomed, there will be a responding flow.
• As with any connection, the time to release it will correspond with any sense of efforting.

If you enjoyed this first play with heart lines, you may find there's more to be discovered with every heart line you set up.  First because no two hearts are the same and and also because our energies are in constant flux.  Endless possibilities for play.

Bad Happenings

Bad things happen.

Is it so that in all things, there is a purpose? 

I would guess that a sage of the very highest level of sagery will see purpose in every act of man.  For the rest of us, there are things that will remain irredeemable.

When we are in that place of despair in the aftermath of unthinkable acts, without answers, as there is no sense to senselessness, we have something more than hope.  We have opportunity.  Always.  Even when we cannot imagine how there could be.  It may take courage to find that light within and let it guide us.  I promise you, it is there and it will.

Baselines

Lately I've been getting my eye care at a school of optometry.  Student clinicians having their first stab at patients man the clinic, ever alert to anything that could be going wonky with the eyes. 

I do have something wonky with my left eye, I knew it when I first came there, having had that wonky thing since birth.  Something about how an artery curves instead of going straight into the retina.  It was a real hit with them, and as they saw potential for further wonkiness, they insisted a battery of pictures of the back wall of my eye be taken to "establish a baseline."  In case that artery had decided to curve in an as yet unknown direction the next time they take a look, they'd have something to compare it with.  My baseline.

Since my eyes have been given their baseline, a new experience for both of us, I've noticed folks are fond of establishing baselines in other care-giving situations.  Again, as a way to gauge if things are swerving off course, or maybe crashing.

I like this baseline idea.  I can see how it can be put to good use by applying a bit of creativity.  

We could give ourselves a good feelings baseline.  Not to monitor if one day was low compared to our baseline of good feelings and so to recognize it as an ugly, irredeemable day, but to go with the idea that we have one in the first place.  Then--this is the creative part--to do things every day to build up that baseline.  Incrementally, with one small good feeling at a time. 

There's endless options for making good feelings--internal, external, mind-focused, body-focused, others-focused.  Let me get you started:

• Count your blessings, as they arrive.  The blessing of a new day, the blessing of being loved, the blessing of food that nourishes, the blessings in challenges, in laughter, in opportunities. 
• Give gifts.  Of time, of caring, of sending good thoughts, of help, of things.  
• Hook up with the highest part of your being.  Breathe slowly and fully, connect to the light within, sing, dance, take yourself to a beautiful place on our earth just to be with it for a moment or two or twenty.
• Let good feelings come into you.  Let yourself be loved, appreciated, vulnerable.

The thing that differentiates a good feelings baseline from all other baselines is, first of all, it can  be directly influenced.  When that is done, when it is built up, overall well-being is built up as well. 
Because when we feed our hearts and souls in this way, our level of wellness shifts as well.  And that could only be a good thing.

New Year

My Jewish friends see this week as the beginning of a new year.  I am on the outside of the celebrations, and since I don't really know what's going on, I've made my own completely unorthodox, and unblessed version And as a new year beginning now is not a part of my heritage, I feel free to take liberties with its significance.  I make a choice to see it as less of a shared event and more of a time to take a breath, to be with what the passing year has brought.

To say it another way, rather than celebrating the out with the old and in with the new of January First, I love the thought of a year beginning with the harvest, with gathering all the goodness of the passing year and using that richness to launch forward into what is to come. 

I look as well at what I choose to leave behind.  Enmities in all their forms, unforgiveness, regrets, losses, fears.  In doing this, I see them for what they are--burdens that do not serve.

Next

I'm remembering when Steve Jobs left Apple, started a new company and called it Next.  Was it arrogance or bold expectation?  I'm guessing people in silicon valley are still scratching their heads over that.  As things turned out, "Next" took Jobs right back to Apple.

And the moral of this story could be:

When you are considering what comes next,

• In the end, making a choice to go in a hopelessly foolish direction will not be the cause of your downfall.  Rather, it will offer you chances to grow that you would have missed out on if you hadn't.
• Believing in yourself is not only a very powerful thing, it is your guiding light.
• The best time to leave is when everything that seemed unresolvable has been resolved and you can see yourself staying.

With wishes that your next is rich with everything you hoped it would be in unexpected and most wonderful ways--
Maureen

Just Show Up

I remember someone once saying that 90% of getting anything accomplished is in just showing up.  Whoever you are, I'd like to thank you for that critical piece of information.  Because people who've done great things rarely start out expecting to be so fabulously successful.  What got them to great things was doing their 90% and just going from there.

I share with you three treasured stories which fit my unabashedly liberal soul.  They are useful to remind myself why I will do my 90%:

Rosa Parks, years after her decision to take a seat on the bus lit up the South and began the movement to end the injustice suffered by souls too numerous to count, said once in an interview that she wasn't looking to start anything, she was just tired and wanted to sit down.

Joan Baez began performing on campus steps because she wanted attention, with no expectation her voice would carry her so far.  Or that the ballads she chose because they suited her voice would set her up for the freedom songs that would become her trademark.

Pete Seeger retreated to schools and sang songs for children when the Weavers were black balled and couldn't find a venue that would book them.  That would be the Pete Seeger who wrote "Where Have All The Flowers Gone", taught us This Land Is Your Land," "Kumbaya," "We Shall Overcome," and in his retirement years organized the effort to save the Hudson when it had become more of a cesspool than a river.

I'd be pleased if you'd like to borrow them.  What would please me more would be you finding your own treasures to spark you when showing up feels like it couldn't possibly be enough.

Tree People

I had this conversation with a tree soul once, through an intermediary.  One of the astounding things that happens in the work I do.  I got to ask it what trees expect to do for humans.  Renew the air with that carbon dioxide/oxygen exchange thing they do, right?  Mostly, they see that as one of the things they do to sustain themselves.  What they do for humans, as the tree soul explained, is to give structure.  "As a tree gives up its consciousness to become wood, that is the mission of the tree."

I sincerely hope loggers do not read this and use it to justify deforestation, and yet I cannot deny that the souls of trees will serve us.  I hope this leads us to reverence for the gifts they give.  To offer trees something in return as well--the time to grow and flourish here on the earth with us and to be taken with care and gratitude.  To make room in our view of who might be our brother to include the possibility of a tree.

Be A Flower

I live in an "on" environment.  In my environment, "off" is a very ungood thing.

You most likely live in this very same environment.  It is a very hard thing, to have "on" going all the time.  We can trash ourselves trying to do it.  Because we are innately flow-ers, which I have spelled here with a hyphen to save confusion. 

Our energy pulses, we have flows.  Women may get this better than men because we cannot but notice our bodies, made up of a lot of water, clearly and unequivocally flow with the tides. 

Given that our environment has moved so far away from letting flows happen there is little chance that it will change course, I offer a remedy in two parts:

• No need to panic when the low part of a flow is occurring.  The high part will follow.  Trust that it will.
• Just show up.  Be as genuinely present as you can.  Good things are still going on, you are still in the flow.

Peek-a-Boo

Remember Peek-a-Boo?  You drape a blanket over the baby's head, and then lift it up and say, "Peek-a-boo!" and the baby laughs and you laugh and you do it again and you both laugh some more.  The advanced version involves the baby figuring out it's even more fun when covers it eyes with its hands and chooses when to spring the surprise. 

Funny that the name of the game has never changed to You're Not There and Then You Are.  Students of growth patterns in early childhood are likely to point out that it takes a while for babies to get that they are not left for good when they cannot see their important people.  The game helps that scary first stage. 

I might add that dogs never get it.  It's like a miracle to them when you show up again. 

I expect you see this one coming and yes, I'm going to do it.  I am going to tell you that you are not alone and you are better at figuring this out than a baby or a dog.  Well, maybe the dog knows already.  At the risk of squeezing the heck out of a metaphor, I say you simply need to lift the blanket.

Breathe deeply, let go of all the distractions and allow your heart to tell you what you already know.  You are loved.  You are not alone.

Sticks and Notices

Final Notice!

I got one of those calls today.  I don't have the dimmest recall of a first notice, and if they are serious about not calling again, that would be more than fine with me.  They will, though.  They will do some slick form of auto-dialing and leave another recorded terribly urgent final notice message.  This will do nothing to get me the tiniest bit closer to choosing their stuff.  Makes me concerned about how they're going to stay in business.

I'm imagining now, how "This is your final notice!" would look done up in a sampler.  Instead of "Don't leave for tomorrow what you can get done today," for example.  I can't remember that moving me either. 

Fact:  You cannot get folks to do things by poking them with a stick for any longer than the stick is stuck in them.

If you find yourself poking yourself with that figurative stick, it's time to choose a better way.  I'm going to lay it out here for you to try.  It might make you feel self-conscious (okay, foolish) at the beginning.  Give it a week and see how you feel about it then:

Every time you do something that is the least bit not fun, exciting, uplifting and yet needs to get done, say, "That was great what you just did!  Thank you so very much!  I really appreciate that you  __________!" Every time.  Not necessarily out loud.

You're gonna love it!  I promise!

Do Overs

I worked for a time for a jewelry designer.  Fabulous things came out of his head, and most often worked out when they got to three dimensions.  When they didn't, the first attempt would be given back to the fabricator, usually with a re-thought description, for this thing called a do over.  That's all it took for something that had gone very wrong to turn into something perfect and beautiful. 

Wouldn't it be amazing if we could have do overs for those times and things that don't work out the way we hoped.  It will come as no surprise when I say we will not be getting them. 

This is not a place where everything is meant to be perfect and beautiful.  This is a place that is messy and turbulent and unpredictable and what goes on in our heads and hearts rarely comes out looking the same when it hits the ground.  What would we learn if we got everything right, or should I say, what we see as right?  

So let's try to get over our imperfect selves.  Set aside the guilt, take up the strength that is always embedded in our sorrow, see where we are in need of learning and do that.  Learn.

Color Game

The Fourth of July is over.  Without any big fun events coming around for months, we could get a little bored, like kids on the in-between stretches of a road trip.   In the spirit of livening things up, I've got a little game to play that's good for at least a week of distraction, and maybe even fun:

• Choose a color from the selection below.  This will be the color of the day.
•  It will pop up, like magic, everywhere.
• When you see it, breathe your color in on your in breath, out on your out breath.
• Play at being a color resonator for seconds or minutes, you and your color just hanging out together.
• Tomorrow, choose a new color for the day and do it all over again.  Delicious!

                                                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                           
  

Creature Comforts

I am a student of humans.  Also of a few kinds of animals.   Dogs, cats, snakes, and horses at the top of the list.  Also porpoises, who I have discovered see themselves as our brothers, have a consciousness connection with us and try to help when they can.  That may be a later post. . . .

In my on-going study of humans I have noticed that things stick to us.  Or, what is likely closer to the truth, we put stuff in them and then we can't seem to let them go.  Because now they have meaning. 

I, for example, have a drawer of pens that have meaning.  No one gets to use them.  They have gone from being the messengers of thoughts to holding my thoughts of them.  We are in a relationship.  Completely one-sided. 

If you are a human observing my one-sided relationship, essentially keeping pens from being pens, you will at the least overlook it.  You may even see it as being not all that strange.  Because lots of us, and maybe all, do this. 

I point this out so that what we choose to have sticking to us, and we are going to do it, is done with our eyes open.  Then we are in the position to know what we have invested our energy in and see what has crossed from creating comfort to weighing us down.  And then we are free to let go.

Party Animals

Summer and I were having another chat the other day.  You know Summer, she comes in June and stays until the end of August.  I'm telling her about the bugs and the heat and the humid air and the sun burns and the rattlesnakes she brings along and how it makes for a giant minus side to her stay.  She squints her eye, figuratively of course, and points out that she and Earth put up with gallons of bug spray, sun screen, exhaust from recreation vehicles and boats, piles of party trash and lord knows what else, like the horrendous and scary things we light up on the Fourth of July.

She has a point.  We could try harder to have a care about the destruction we're capable of when we're having fun.  Summer offered a slogan, which I reluctantly pass along:  Be more of an animal and less like a party animal.

I'm feeling a little used as I realize Summer has tricked me into mounting a soap box for Earth.  Before she has a chance to slide in another slogan, and I can just see her saying "Earth--love her or leave her!," I collect my weeder and trimmer and trowel, dump the weeds in the green bin and head back to the house and out of the H-E-A-T. 

 

Seduction

On the twenty-first of June, not far from when I write this, we will be enjoying the beginning of luscious, hot, seductive, lazy-making and impossible to ignore Summer, with a giant moon hanging low in the sky on the twenty-third to kick things off.  Summer, being the bighearted gal that she is, asked me to pass this message on to you:

Dear hard working humans in the Northern Hemisphere, pleeese do come play with me!  I know you have to do the things to pay the bills, deal with disputes and other pressing concerns, keep the car going and the kids from running dangerously loose.  I'm not asking for you all to commit to earth-shaking, lallapaloosas of elaborate vacations (and I have heard some of you mention that the worst blow-outs you have ever experienced happened on one of those).  I just want you to give yourself over to play.  Simple fun.  Cheap, even.  I'll be there to enjoy it with you.
Your ever-dedicated friend who happily shows up every June and stays til September,
Summer

Home Place

I live in a forty-nine square mile city.  It's big enough to have a ridiculous number of neighborhoods.  If you live in one, you find out you have neighborhoods inside yours that outsiders have yet to recognize.  If you drill down a little further, you can find neighborhoods with sort of floating neighborhoods passing through them.  We do not appreciate the floaters.  We call them homeless.

I bring this up not in the interest of making a political statement.  I am wanting to ask if you have found your home place and what it is that makes it so.   First, so that you recognize what is the core of it and you will keep even though things around it change.  Second, so that if you have not yet found it, you can begin to become clear about what you want it to be.  Because when that becomes clear, what it is you want is given the seed to draw you to your home place.

Differences

Recently, I got the chance to hang out for a few days with an old friend on her Ohio farm.  She has stayed true to the salt of the earth traditions we both grew up with while I have winged off into less charted territory.  At breakfast one morning, Barb, curious to know how far I had flung, asked me how I see healing.  My description looked something like this:

Stored away within us is a blueprint of a perfectly functioning body.  More than a blueprint, it is how our physical presence strives to be.  When it is provided with the raw materials to create that highest form of itself, it will do just that.  The best raw material is energy of the highest, purest frequencies.  When it is given the choice, the body will be drawn to the highest energies available.

In healing, the one offering the healing holds the highest level of consciousness it can access in their awareness and at the same time, holds the one who is asking for healing in their awareness as well.  Then, the one asking for healing has a resource for their body to draw on, in creating the highest form of itself.  And can then shift from dis-ease into ease, perfect being."

"Oh," she says, "like praying."

"Yeah," I say, "like praying."

One Cheese

I'm in a cheese store here in Gouda.  Facing a madly huge selection of rich country cheeses piled up on a table in the middle of the store, for tasting.  You want to come hungry.

I eat my way around the table, every little chunk of goodness as incredible as the one before.

This is getting to feel like more of a meet and greet than shopping in the cheese aisle has ever been.  I might be talking to the cheeses.  I hear myself saying things like, "You're so salty and dense!"  "Sooo creamy!" "Oooh baby!"  "I want to take you home!"  In English, fortunately.  There's less staring and moving away than there would have been if I could speak Dutch.

In the midst of this happy little vignette, I give myself a good hard mental poke--I am here to buy a cheese.  Uno.  Not half the store.

I leave with my one cheese wrapped in its special cheese paper.  I don't know if I got the best cheese.
They all seemed like the best to me.   What I do know is letting myself get a little crazy is food for my soul.

Find yourself a cheese shop, or the equivalent, and see if that isn't so. 

Having A Gnat Day

Days come along when seeing myself more like a gnat in the face of the universe than a strong, empowered she-woman looking for the next building to leap overtakes me.

After lots of trial and error, rolls of toilet paper and six ounce 90% cacao bars, I've found that a little preemptive action works better to get me through a gnat day than letting the crying jag with chocolate come on.

I can't take credit for this.  I learned it at an Awakening the Light Body seminar with Duane Packer (check out www.orindaben.com).  There was this guided meditation where we were going to "visit" some very large beings, who would see us as about the size of a gnat, if they noticed us at all.   To get big enough so they could recognize us, we gathered up all of our consciousness.  This may be sounding mysterious and it really isn't.  See--we are members of our solar system, its planets, the stars in our galaxy.  Astrologers can show us by referencing our birth date and time and location on our planet how we are affected by all of this.  And we are affected because--tahdah!!!--we are connected to all of it.  It is part of our identity.  Loosely translated, it is part of our consciousness.  If your eyes haven't rolled back in your head yet, consider that another element of our consciousness that contributes to us being bigger than a gnat in the face of the universe is all the lives we have experienced.  They as well are part of our consciousness.  We are BIG.

Okay, so how do you gather up your consciousness and get big.  I'm going to try to describe this, and understand that my description is just a reflection of what happens.  Trying it out yourself is going to be simpler and clearer than the explanation:

Get quiet and settled.  Say your name.  Imagine that there are lines of energy going out from you, connecting you to the earth, the planets, the stars.  Imagine that from all of these points of connection, energy flows back to you, right into your center, there where a point of light resides.  Next, imagine that you notice your time line.  It extends out from your center in both directions.  All the way back to your beginning and forward to what is to come.  All of this power, all of this consciousness is you.  Drink it in, breathe it, notice your light, your expansiveness.  Once again, say your name.

Big Things

A very long time ago, during the period when I interpreted my interest in teaching to mean I should be in classrooms, I gave the students in my literature class an assignment to write poetry.  Every poem they turned in got an A, just to encourage them to risk opening up their hidden selves.  Some of them had never seen such a grade before and there was a good chance they wouldn't be seeing one again.  It offered me a hint at how huge a deal being awarded can quickly become.  There was light in their eyes when they saw those big A's marked on their papers.  As if, with the award of the grade, they had just been granted greatness.

Does it make it better, are we bigger, if someone acknowledges our striving?

The challenge I offer is to be so completely engaged in the game that we live for both the lumps and the kudos.  Wearing our crowns when crowns come, leaving no moment unlived for its lack of luster or for its pain or ordinariness.

Finding our own juice.  Way in there, in our core, where our best, strongest, most beautiful selves bubble.

I wrote the first part of this post and decided it was too silly to finish.  Then I read an article about some market research that was done on the concerns a large segment of consumers have about what is going on in their mouths and what they can/should do about it.  If market researchers, those miners of what makes us tick at any given moment, see teeth as a notable issue, this post may not be so nuts after all.

Take something you do every day.  Not big, ordinary.  Like brushing your teeth.  And become your own observer.  Somewhere in that very ordinary thing you do is the reason why.  Maybe you brush because your mother convinced you that is how days start and end.  Maybe you hold the thought that people like you better if you're minty fresh.  Maybe you like you better if you're minty fresh.  Maybe it's just plain fear of the dentist.

Because you are an observer, not a judge, let yourself be neutral about what you discover.  Neutral is, for example, seeing yourself without the thought that you are still under your parents' control, neurotically begging for the approval of strangers, hopelessly self-involved and fear driven.  Neutral is that it does not matter.  Free of those fascinatingly juicy emotional hooks that come with judgement.

Observer that you have become, if only in front of the bathroom sink, you are now equipped with an amazing new tool: you can become deeply aware and at the same time choose that neutral, no judgement perspective when that is what serves best. 

Experiment, give that neutral perspective a road test.  Here is something to try:

At the risk of seeming like you have become the second coming of Spock, spend a day out in the world being observer, not judge.

In all your doings and seeings, let there be no hint of conclusions drawn.  If you notice clouds, clouds will not brood or threaten, be filled with promise, offer to play.  Colors, textures, tastes, words spoken, written, sounds, shapes all observed in their fullness.  Unaltered, unjudged.

Was there richness in the day?  Was there connection with your world?  Was there none?  Will you do it again, give it another go?