Making Use of Randomness

"What you seek is seeking you." ~rumi

When I became aware of Leonard Mlodinow's book The Fragility of Grand Discoveries, which makes the case for randomness' role in science, it started me thinking. Books will do that! I wondered about making use of randomness in this teeny-tiny-little experiment called my life and what discoveries might be laying in wait for little 'ol me?

If random occurrences happen and if I have an over arching intention for my life, can I then make use of randomness while thriving in the ordinariness of my everyday?

Can I declare my life will be lived in JOY and with EASE and make it stick by living simply and allowing my current daily schedule a little room to stretch and breath between regular tasks of that living?

Can I be so bold as to engage in - say a 10 minute exercise - imagining - say twice daily - what that life would look and feel like? And then can I just let it go? And in letting it go can I then give up striving to achieve it?

Would this experiment in creating a mental equivalent of my best possible life make more familiar to me what those things felt like so that when they randomly occurred I would then be more apt to recognize them?

And upon recognizing them - my visions turned in to my actual experience - might this not give me confidence to engage in more imagining, more letting go and even more manifesting?

And could all this "better world thinking" be done while just doing the dishes, taking the dog for a walk, making the kid's lunches or simply preparing to sleep at night?

Can I start this practice from right where I am now? Am I really this powerful?

The answer is YES to everything - in case you haven't arrived there already. So…what's standing in your way? You got the goods - the yearning or longing for that which makes you happy. Begin imagining today what that looks like and how it feels to be in that place. Then let it go. Now you can be confident you have done all the work necessary to assist randomness in doing it's job! 


When can you start?

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Better Happens

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." ~ralph waldo emerson

Ever wonder how to tweak your life to make it even better than it already is? No need to struggle - just allow "better" to happen.

There are those bumper stickers that say 'SHIT HAPPENS'? What that is all about, for me, is a twisted way of going with the flow and allowing the world to leave it's tire tracks all over your back. My bumper sticker or T-shirt reads 'BETTER HAPPENS'!

Both these silly statements are confirmations that without much effort the flow of things, how your life unfolds in this present moment, is inevitable. Both are true. What I find most interesting is...which one we find easiest to believe!

Don't we have a choice in the matter?

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The Happiest Place on Earth - Selling Mindfulness

"Nothing could be finer than meditating in Carolina..."

Wouldn't it be great if meditation was as American as baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet? I wonder what kind of world we could create if meditation was demystified, re imagined or sold en mass like cereal or detergent?

Is it just me or are we seeing this already? MINDFULNESS jargon is all over the airwaves. Connecting your happiness and your satisfaction to 'the product' is the name of the game, isn't it? Let's take our cues from those who watch culture and see it shifting. Let's advance the tide even further and go right to the source! 

Check it out for yourself. I have substituted meditation as the product in these notable ads. Can you guess the original brands?

 
MEDITATION – Think Small.
MEDITATION – Think big.
MEDITATION – There is no substitute.
MEDITATION – Power, beauty and soul.
MEDITATION – Save Money. Live Better.
MEDITATION – I am what I am.
MEDITATION – Just do it.
MEDITATION – Impossible is Nothing
MEDITATION – Success. It’s a Mind Game.
MEDITATION – Solutions for a smart planet.
MEDITATION – Keeps going and going and going.
MEDITATION – Live in your world. Play in ours.
MEDITATION – Share moments. Share life.
MEDITATION – Your vision. Our future.
MEDITATION – When there is no tomorrow.
MEDITATION – The happiest place on earth.
MEDITATION – Pleasing people the world over.
MEDITATION – Connecting people.
MEDITATION – Make the most of now.
MEDITATION – Open Happiness.

Let me know when you see references to mindfulness or meditation in the guise of advertisements. Now that the seed has been planted, you may see these everywhere! And I won't leave you hanging. Just in case your interest is peaked here is a primer on how to do it from one of the best.

On Meditation by Norman Fischer

"This doesn’t work by thought and will. It doesn’t disregard thought and will, but thought and will are not the engine that makes this go. The engine that makes this go is taking a step back and trusting the body, trusting the breath, trusting the heart. We’re living our lives madly trying to hold onto everything, and it looks like it might work for awhile but in the end it always fails, and it never was working, and the way to be happy, the way to be loving, the way to be free is to really be willing to let go of everything on every occasion or at least to make that effort.

So the practice really works with sitting down, returning awareness to the body, returning awareness to the breath. It usually involves sitting up straight and opening up the body and lifting the body so that the breath can be unrestrained. And then returning the mind to the present moment of being alive, which is anchored in the breath, in the body.

Then, of course, other things happen. You have thoughts, you have feelings. You might have a pain, an ache, visions, memories, reflections. All these things arise, but instead of applying yourself to them and getting entangled in them, you just bear witness to it, let it go, come back to the breathing and the body, and what happens is you release a whole lot of stuff in yourself. A whole new process comes into being that would not have been there if you were always fixing and choosing and doing and making. This way you’re allowing something to take place within your heart."

Try it! You'll like it.

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"When I Grew Out of…"

"When you feel peaceful joy, that is when you are near truth" ~rumi

I smiled when a friend used this phrase in an email recently,"When I grew out of…" It reminded me that, even after the age of 50, we do grow out of things. It let me know that whatever I am going through right now is important and okay and I will grow out of it. And from it I WILL GROW.

Let's do Spring this year ... consciously! Let's reflect on those things we have grown out of and those things we WILL grow out of! 

I have grown out of the sensibility of relying on others to do things for me. I am doing things for myself now! 

I have grown out of accepting denigrating thoughts about myself AS TRUE for I know they do not serve me in any way!

And I have grown out of judging. There is no possible way I could know the totality of me, much less the totality of you, so passing judgement seems absurd!

And I am currently growing out my old life. I can feel it receding fast like the sudden drawing back of sea water revealing 400 feet of shore line before a tidal wave slams into the coast. Sounds scary and violent and dramatic, I know, but it feels right and good and organic too. 

Birth is like that. 

So let's do Spring consciously this year! Let's reflect on those things we have grown out of and those things we WILL grow out of! And those things we are becoming!

I write these words out of Love and Compassion. This is what I have grown into. These are the things I am becoming! This is my place. I will allow the rest to unfold.

What compassionate words do you have for yourself?

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We Are All Veterans

"When the Indian saint Ramakrishna was asked why there is evil in the world, he answered, “To thicken the plot.” These very plot thickeners, often the most difficult and insistent ones, can lead us to open our bodies, hearts, and minds." 

~ from A Path with Heart by Jack Kornfield

We are all veterans. We all have some powerfully painful experience we have survived. We are here to survive our experiences and grow from them. 

It is just the way it is.

And the best part of this, for me, is to be a veteran means the experience of struggle is past and now I can move on! The realization that the battle is over and that I have survived is so joyous for me! I am free to look forward toward whatever is next…knowing more than I did before and confidently knowing I can take it! 

What struggle can you triumphantly now put behind you?

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Life is Butter: The Meaning of Power

"Butter", 8 x10 Watercolor

"Power" is a powerful word. I know I am not supposed to use a word to define that same word. So what other words are conjured up when you think about POWER?

My head and heart used to turn toward FEAR when I considered the idea of POWER. "Run away! Run away!" like Mike used to say when he imitated Monty Python's Holy Grail knights of the round table. 

To be powerful I was sure I needed to know all about everything, because it was what I did not know that would ultimately get in my way. In living this creed I unconsciously set boundaries and limited the heights to which I was allowed to soar because I never knew enough! 

To me this is the landscape of the powerless.

And to manifest power I had to control things. This is a given  - right? To be in control is to be powerful. It is strength in action to make sure all things were perfectly done without error or mistakes. Because when all things are in proper order for the right reasons, my prescribed notion of what is correct, my world cannot collapse - now that is Power! 

But this is rather hard to sustain over long periods of time, over our physical world and more importantly over people who are not - frankly - me. 

These days I am turning toward understanding my own personal power and turning away from trying to seize or manipulate those things that are external to me and I have absolutely no power over. And I never had any power over for that matter! 

What I have come to observe is that real power, the stuff that grounds me and never fails to result in good things happening all around me is born of being confident in the core of my being. My warm ET place, you know the movie ET, is flashing bright red as I write these words. Cultivating an awareness to that which warms me takes the place of trying to make things happen my way. I call this living from inside out!

Letting go of old paradigms has empowered me. I have let go of the notion one must be toiling to get anywhere. And I now know meditation is NOT only done on mountain tops in Tibet under the guidance of someone holy, old and mysterious. Let me tell you there is nothing more mysterious than that silent small place inside yourself you have never been to and have no idea how to reach! 

Yes - I know this is all squishy woo-woo talk! But why can't woo-woo be win-win? Why can't non-purposeful silent breathing once a day for 20 minutes be enough to increase my own sense of personal power? Why can't trusting that setting a highest intention for myself and my life will out-picture in real ways in the physical world? Why can't "not struggling" be as effective as toiling long and hard? Who says life has to be hard?

Mark Nepo says it this way "...who's to say that the budding of wings from the ribs of a small bird doesn't begin with the impulse within them to live? Who's to say that the butterfly breaking through its cocoon isn't the result of its being tired of living in a tight weave of it's own making? Who's to say that the migration of flamingos from South America to Africa doesn't begin with a yearning to eat the yellow ribbon that keeps lining the horizon? And who's to say the color of passion doesn't line our faces the instant we grow tired of living in a tight cocoon of our own making?..."

What if life is only as hard as YOU make it?

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A New Way to Love

"The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky,

Are also on the faces of people going by.

I see friends shaking hands, sayin', "How do you do?"

They're really saying, " I love you" 

~from Lyrics "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong

I am IN love. 

Not like "what is his name?" kind of love. 

Not like "every Cary Grant movie ever made" kind of love. 

And not like "co-dependent attachment you can't do without it" kind of love.

What I mean is I am always "IN love" because I am always surrounded by (in) Source (love) all of the time.

Feels great to use these words - "IN love" about myself when I know it is not some bullshit positive thinking word game but my honest and real Truth.

Feels great to use these words - "IN love"  about myself when I know that this love cannot and will never be taken away from me.

Feels great to use these words - "IN love" about myself in such a new and different way than ever before -  so fully, passionately and completely.

Within this Love I am safely held. And it just feels great!

Can you dig it? Too quote Billy Crystal as Louis Armstrong, "I knew that you could. Oh Yaaaah…"

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A Daily Practice

"Fish live in streams

Birds nest in trees

Human beings dwell

In warm hearts."

~Japanese folk Zen saying

Keeping my heart open is the plan for the day. It is the plan for everyday. It is a mantra, a philosophy, a way of life.

Keeping my heart open allows all my periodic fears to be passers by and not live-in lovers.

Keeping my heart open allows change and surprise to be trusted companions instead of unwelcome apes leaving banana peels across my path.

Keeping my heart open creates wonder within every breath I take, beneath every step I make and behind every blink of my big 'ol fascinated eyes.

Keeping my heart open is my daily practice.

What is your daily practice that supports you NO-MATTER-WHAT?

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Trust

“THE EDGE, there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”~hunter s. thompson

'Soft Verges' is a sign I saw posted whilst driving in the English countryside last year. Verges are the edges of the road. They are also, "She is on the verge of something great!" Or "He is on the verge of a nervous breakdown." If we are lucky we are always on the verge of something. That means we are living in discovery and all the time growing.

John O'Donohue writes, "Though we know one another's names and recognize one another's faces, we never know what destiny shapes each life. The script of individual destiny is secret; it is hidden behind and beneath the sequence of happenings that is continually unfolding for us. Each life is a mystery that is never finally available to the mind's light or questions. That we are here is a huge affirmation; somehow life needed us and wanted us to be. To sense and trust this primeval acceptance can open a vast spring of trust within the heart. It opens up our lives to become voyages of discovery, creativity, and compassion. No threshold need be a threat, but rather an invitation and a promise. Whatever comes, the great sacrament of life will remain faithful to us, blessing us always with visible signs of invisible grace. We merely need to trust."

Are there times you could make use of Trust?

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Good Fortune Awaits

"Dreaming without action is never going to get me what I desire"

I love this wonderful photo I captured today? I feel so lucky to have recognized the wonder of this moment. I am so glad to be alive and kicking. Seems this new year is begun with electricity, instead of blood, in my veins. 

I am kindred today with Harry, a feral cat, so fortunate to be given shelter by a local shopkeeper in this most luxurious manner. How does a cat of his wild sort achieve such good fortune? 

How do any of us get so lucky?

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Lessons from the Farm

"…before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we've learned as we've moved toward that dream." ~from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Perhaps everybody knows these 3 things, but they were never explained to me so viscerally or so well as they were today!

Ask and you will receive. 

Walking past Flash, the dark brown and white speckled pony who is second in line in the pecking order between Tophat and Skippy, I was not focused on him there in the side pasture. I was focused on the six slips of hay I needed to get and dispense in the back pasture on this gray blue December day. So no mind was paid to Flash and his water barrel. After getting the hay in all the right places and on my coat and fat wool knitted scarf, Flash had not budged from his barrel to go eat. I took note and fed the goats. 

Suddenly there was no question what Flash wanted to see happen. Oh so that's the reason the blue barrel is lashed twice round the fence post. Wordlessly he was knocking the thing again and again so I Iet him know I hear you, "OK, OK...I get it...must put water in the empty water barrel NOW!" Requiring confirmation he did not leave his post to get his breakfast until he saw with his own pony's eyes the barrel and hose joined and the water flowing.  Ask and you will receive. The farm taught me this. 

Make every step count. 

Watching a 60 gallon barrel become full...just watching it is a gift. Resting there with intermittent rays of sunlight noiselessly raking the pasture, the peace of that moment was unmistakably given and received. 

Looking back at Flash's barrel, I worked out the time. Not clock time. Not the time to catch a bus or to meet a date. I needed to know the best approximate interval to begin walking, walking around the goat pen past the garage through the stone gate on to the muddy patch and beyond the guinea hen's squawk to get to the pump to turn the off the water that was currently filling the bucket. 

Figuring in real time this distance and pace to walk so I can shut off the hose at that exact perfect moment the bucket is filled is my kind of fun! I love this soft squishy numberless calculus involving just woman and foot and practical physics. When I got back to the barrel it appeared I had done it. We were all filled up, Flash and me, he with his water and me with my Joy! Make every step count. The farm taught me this.

Turn it off at the source. 

Flowing water is a must around here. A hose with many junctions provides flow all over the farm. The cutting off of the flow at the source would eliminate extra work and avoid unwanted complications. Turn the water off at the source, not at a junction otherwise you will just have to do it again and again until you get it right. Turn it off at the source. The farm taught me this.

So glad I got up this am. Seems nature and the animals are full of the Truth of Life. And so grateful I am awake and studying - never know when I will be tested again!

What teaches you stuff?

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Advocating for Meditation

"Through the sacred art of pausing, we develop the capacity to stop hiding, to stop running away from our experience. We begin to trust in our natural intelligence, in our naturally wise heart, in our capacity to open to whatever arises. Like awakening from a dream, in the moment of pausing our trance recedes and Radical Acceptance becomes possible." ~tara branch

Everybody has their own unique natural state, their own baseline from which all their experiences begin. Some say we can move up the vibration of this - our unique natural state - to enhance our experience of life; to increase the amounts of JOY and LOVE we are able to know.

If you knew this to be the truth, why would you not set about immediately to begin doing it? 

"The realization of eternal truth comes at the expense of all of our illusions." ~adyashanti

Aha! Well I have had nothing to lose recently so my way of raising my vibration is through meditation. If I mindfully begin by setting my intention to make more abundant JOY and LOVE in my life and then practice quietly sitting still - in a way that makes sense for me - I have found I do generate just that. Not by direct effort, i.e. analytical planning out a strategy with steps and goals, but by simple use of my breath and my mind and my body in a standard practiced way. 

I use these same capacities, my breath, mind and body, in every other of life's routine situations. When I am brushing my teeth or washing my face or cooking a meal I use them to stay healthy, to shed cells, to grow and transform. So why not use my breath, mind and body (over time) to amp up my perception?

Like clothes that are worn in bright sunlight and washed and then hung on the line over and over again - Meditation has helped me to indirectly become slowly bleached of hardship and sorrow. My natural daily responses are fading away from material concerns and focusing more toward a wholistic embodiment of loving energy. I do not know where this will lead but this is the direction in which I am going! 

Oh I still go grocery shopping, make plans, art and money. But gradually I am coming to see with these newer more joyful and loving eyes. And I see that all is well. Really...I swear! And all this "all is well" jazz started by just sitting quietly and not trying at all. This is a feat in itself - I know.

And so unlike the way we have been taught to strive for JOY and LOVE. So alien and perverse and cliche! But it works for me. This is my chosen path. And I am still living the same life I have always lived - just better by every measure.

What does your path look like?

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Turning the Corner

"...while the voice of social conditioning manifests itself as a stream of thoughts in the head, wisdom often appears as emotions or physical sensations in the body." ~martha beck

Unfoldment

Rough hune husks fall away

Making tender tendrils shown

Creeping vines and shoots gather

In a storm of awakening

I am anew

I am crossing over

I am peachy keen apple sheen and picked clean of waste and affirmative prayers

I will not shine without my own permission

I await the next unfoldment

For what do you need your own permission?

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Viva Les Questions!

"It can't just be about others because it's too depleting. It can't just be about ourselves because it's too lonely." ~Jason Garner

Everywhere everyday opportunities arise to help ourselves and to help others but where is the balance? How can we next make the right decision to help ourselves or to help others? What kind of mastermind can hone in on the right thing today to do right now?

These are an awful lot of questions. But I have found when I ask questions it is not my responsibility to answer them. It is only my responsibility to form them from a deep and meaningful place within my heart. And I know if I do this, from this place, the answers will come to me easily.

Takes a load off doesn't it? 

It is so great to know you don't have to have the answers. You only have to ask the RIGHT question! 

These questions are both the key to our suffering and the key to our joy. I am certain you are totally aware we all have easy access to our own questions. They just naturally exist in us all. They are as individual to each of us ad our own particular journeys. And they all contain the answers we are seeking within them!

Just ask them. 

Just ask them WITH FEELING from a sincere place deep inside your heart knowing in the asking the answer lies. 

I have found great peace in allowing myself to just live in my questions like this  - for I know the answers will come. 

Got any questions?

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The Divine in Scotland

the divine in the palm of our hands

"I am where I need to be.

Everything around me

includes and hides the sacred."

                     ~ Mary Mrozowski

This includes haggis.

What is divine that is in front of you?

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Pumpkin Bread

He loved Pumpkin Bread. He loved a lot of specific things. He knew what he liked because after much living and much thinking about living he made a point to extract the wheat from the chaff. He knew by practical experimentation which things worked best and he held tight to those things. 

So I always knew what to expect. I always knew where things stood for him and with us. And even though, at the time, it was occasionally frustrating - his certainty, his precision, his discipline - there was an awful lot of comfort in his smart, steady and well reasoned ways.

Now, since his death, my husband's quirky and concrete preferences are landmarks in time. So often, when I come across "the right hanger" or I again "hang the towels his way" in the bathroom so they dry fast and well, I smile. But sometimes these things, like this speciality bread at the beginning of Fall, break-my-heart-all-over-again. 

No sense in avoiding it, so I just let it come. Once Iit, it races up from my heart straight out my eyes like how brush fires hop fences in a robust wind. I think about how I have no napkins to wipe my tears here in the cafe. And how I should have some sunglasses to hide my swollen eyes. 

Thoughts act as a break dousing the thing. The more I think the more things improve.

I have lots to do today and lots to look forward to. Lots of new beginnings and exciting changes going on! And just as I know every moment is sacred, I also know this moment will pass. Some new thing will happen and this event too will become the past.

Fire now out, smoke and char remain. But I keep it together. And I move on…

Have you tasted the Pumpkin Bread at La Farm French Bakery? Oh you must, it is sooooo delicious! 

Why can't we live fully with joy - no matter what?

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