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.