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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A Vivacious Cycle

"Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is.” ~mary anne radmacher

Sometimes I feel like I'm absurdly gifted with things nobody wants. Like, "She is really good at climbing trees and painting turtles" or "He can correctly guess the weight of your grocery bags - separately or all together!" Yet the awkward talents I possess, my own unique gifts, please me to no end.

Where does my gifted spirit best meet this corporeal world? How can I spend my limited time here on earth loving what I do and serving others as well?

My spirit meets this world at it's verges - on the edge of all boundaries where no man or women has been before. This is the spot creativity meets joy and beauty. This nexus is my place. This is where I belong.

If this is true - then how should I see those pernicious companions of mine called Sorrow and Tears? Their significance cannot be ignored or denied.

Tears are tools I am told. We use them to whittle away at the rough edges of things. They hone our sensitivities and help us reveal what is smooth, easy and true. If we pay attention, they can make clearer what is most important in our lives.

If this is true - then I am waging peace for unencumbered Beauty and Joy with ease and comfort knowing this spiritually vivacious cycle begets only more of the same. Perhaps this will be of service to someone in some way someday?

My accountability to you is lighting the candle and being the flame. I am alive in the moment. I am the placeholder for wonder.

Now... what's for breakfast?

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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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Pandora

Hey Pandora...Why not look inside?

"Endowed by the gods with every attribute of beauty and goodness, Pandora was the first woman on earth. Happy the man given her as wife! Her dowry from the gods included a box, which she was warned never to open. No one but the gods knew what was hidden inside. Why, oh why could she not open the box? Finally overcome by her curiosity, she opened the mysterious box…from which flew innumerable plagues for the body and sorrows for the mind. Terrified, she rushed to shut the box, but could do nothing to stop or retrieve the evils unleashed. Only hope, the one good thing among all the evils the box had contained, remained to comfort humanity in its misfortunes." 

Isn't it her innocence, not her curiosity the gods are protecting her from? 

What if Pandora had chosen to never open the box? Do we imagine this type of behavior admirable? Will this choice really alleviate the experience of pain/suffering in the world? Perhaps an unwillingness to look inside Pandora's box can be seen as a fear-filled unwillingness to grow and evolve? 

The power of conscious and deliberate choice is central to the myth of Pandora and her box.  

Understanding life is challenging and then still making a conscious choice to open the box completely changes our perception of all it contains!

"Our perceptions, our senses, our skin, our illness and health, our pain and suffering are precious doorways to the sacredness of our world. The dichotomies of imagination and rationalization, intuition and intellect, heart and mind, heaven and earth, feminine and masculine need to be viewed less as polarities than as partners in a delicate dance of balance and harmony. Only by embracing all parts of ourselves are we able to know the wholeness of the world and our inherent inseparability and interdependence with it. Art is spiritual. Art is about our world, our sacred world, inside and out, and our world is alive. Each breath is a new breath, a fresh breath, totally awake and intimate before being encumbered with the weight of conceptualization, labeling, and judging." ~ mini frailly-hansen 

Pandora's box is an invitation to peek, then explore, then celebrate what is inside - consciously accepting the inevitable "plagues and sorrows' of life as, not evil, but gracious good lessons to be confronted, absorbed and overcome.

Have you something you have been unwilling to see? 

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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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A Teaching Creme Brûlée

“I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon.”
― Charlotte Brontë

I am no innocent bystander. Everything I do, say, think and believe affects my life. I had a teaching creme brûlée last nite. I knew it was OK to order it, but I did not pay enough attention to the description on the menu. It read, "enough for 2 or 3 people." So when the oval tart dish arrived - it was the size of a clown shoe - we were all very surprised. It was then I had a choice and I did the right thing. I ate just the right amount and had the rest wrapped up to take home. (I did offer to share it with my friends, but they so rightly would have none of it. I hang with very enlightened people!)

But I was again tested at home as I took the pudding from it's shiney folded black paper box to place it in a more durable container. "Gee - that is not as much as I thought," I thought. "Gee - that spoon tastes good. Ya know - I think the burnt sugar may dissolve before I get to it again tomorrow. Perhaps I should finish it tonite?"

Don don don donnnnnnn! Oblivious to the forbodding Beetoven-ish chords playing over me and the dish and the spoon, I carried my doom with me up the stairs to my bedroom. Yes - it was eaten. Yes - there was a belly ache. And yes - I had totally disregarded all my inner wisdom. 

I am no innocent bystander here. I created all of it just like I am creating this message to myself today, as a reminder. I am not powerless. I am NEVER powerless. All the choices I make bend my life forward!

Knowing this Truth I move onward being more aware in the moment of every single MOMENT!

What thing needs more of your attention today?

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Getting Back to My Life

"A low point in life is sometimes a turning point. but you have to turn"  ~ thomas moore, author of Care of the Soul 

In a difficult moment I found myself saying aloud, "I can't wait to get back to my life!" And seconds later I recognized that this moment, every part and parcel of it, was my life. So I took a deep breath and thought to myself - just go with the flow.

Now I find myself thinking I am relinquishing too much control and must put order back into my life. I must invest in my own intentions. I am masterful and must take hold of the reins and choose a path!

Then I say aloud, "How do I do this exactly?"

Taking charge suggests taking action to me. Is this always the case you think?

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An Open Invitation

Crazy good explanation...I am so grateful for it's joyful clarity! http://omeleto.com/199433/

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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Like Walking on the Moon!

Love is a many splendid thing, but it is NOT something concrete -  nor is Will, Reason or Imagination. Yet we've all experienced these insubstantial (yet very foundational) things. 

We've all felt love for a person, place or thing. We've all willed ourselves out of bed. And we're always Reasoning... "Is it better to do thing A or thing B?"

In general, none of these intangibles can be weighed on a scale, held in our hands or seen with our eyes. But they are no less real than the frozen tundra of Greenland, a fig leaf or the elephant in the room. I am sure you get the picture - right? 

Yet because they are unseen they always seem to be neglected. There just never is a good time to examine the weight of them on our lives. Or the unlimited possibilities of holding them in our consciousness. Or to experiment with them to see how they can help us manifest a better life for ourselves.

For me, when I caught wind that I could intentionally make muscular my ability to see and fortify Love or Intuition -- insert your desired intangible here -- it felt exactly like walking on the moon! What a strange and beautiful place to be, but how do I navigate? At first, in this unfamiliar place I was unable to grasp things with my goofy large gloves and only able to breath from my own limited supply of recirculated air. And I was sure the tank would run out sooner or later. Then I started to take a walk out into the unknown.

Now, after some time playing with these ideas, the gloves have come off. I am untethered! I am examining "the thing" I want from every angle. How do I feel about it? What do I believe. Why do I believe what I believe? Is this belief of mine really true? 

This helps me form a clearer picture of what I want and what I do not want. And from this place IT IS EASY to hold in my consciousness exactly the effect I want to show up in my life. And damn it if I don't see real evidence of my most heartfelt desires right in front of these new eyes of mine. They may not be in the form, color or shape I pictured but they are just what I ordered! 

The trick I found was in not planning how, but just holding the result in mind and more importantly feeling how I would feel when my intangible showed up. Then, having refined it, just let it go.

This takes some practice. I've had to renegotiate within a different gravitational pull. But now -that I sort of have the hang of it - the air is less rare and my tank is always full!

What new thing will you try today?

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Creating From Wholeness

"I am going to tell a story with great meaning. I am going to make you cry, then make you laugh." 

~ me to myself after dreaming strange things.

In my past I have created things (comedy, paintings, writing... even relationships) from a hungry place so I could feel worthy. Creation to fill emptiness, though still good stuff, is weighted down and stained. It is like taking a breath that is less than full with lungs hobbled by years of tobacco smoke. 

What would it be like to create from a different place - a clearer space - a place that was not so stained? 

What would it be like to be free of this addiction, this need to fill an emptiness, to get love, to feel OK? What would it feel like to create from a pure place of being?

I want to create from this space of already knowing I am loved, already knowing I am worthy, already knowing I am whole. I wonder what those creations will look like? I wonder if they will be different?  And I wonder what that would feel like? I wonder when the screen of broken-ness is removed from my imagination would there be more clarity, more joy, more flow - more art?

I wonder how is this done? 

Here is one idea...

"Very closely allied to the intuition is the faculty of imagination. This does not mean mere fancies, which we dismiss without further consideration, but our power of forming mental images upon which we dwell. These form a nucleus which, on its own plane, calls into action the universal Law of Attraction, thus giving rise to the principle of Growth. 

The relation of the intuition to the imagination is that the intuition grasps an idea from the Great Universal Mind, in which all things subsist as potentials, and presents it to the imagination in its essence rather than in a definite form. And then our image-building faculty gives it a clear and definite form which it presents before the mental vision, and which we then vivify by letting our thought dwell upon it, thus infusing our own personality into it. So providing that personal element through which the specific action of the universal law relative to the particular individual always takes place." ~ Thomas Troward

Dude - why to manifest!

What kinds of things do you wonder? Do you wonder things?

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A Healing Effect

"For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them."  ~ thich nhat hahn

Describing a feeling is never easy unless I have an acute sense of it's components. I have been living under an umbrella of grief for 23 months now so I can describe that pretty dog gone well...and I think I have. 

Over time I have developed tools, tricks and strategies to dodge, absorb and release much sorrow. But now - today and for the past several days - there is something new afoot. 

There is a freshly burning thing wanting to be revealed. It appears to be a calming answer to an earlier request. And I 'think' I am more grounded and whole because of it. Only time will tell if there is Truth here.

What seems to be building round the middle of my chest is a broad and natural heat, the likes of which one expects to find at the center of a heap of long composted garden waste. Yet this triple shredded compost is inside of me! This may sound strange but it is almost like a space has been made clear "for my husband" inside of my heart. We are connected together again in a new and profound way.

Am I receiving a gift of sorts? Or do I just have indigestion? 

It appears to be the antithesis of those irregular intense strikes of pain and loss. Yes - this feels of steadiness and comfort and love. It is as if by allowing Michael to become part of me - part of my heart - I am made more than whole.

Does any of this make any sense? How can one be more than whole? Is this kind of equation (100% + 1) even possible? The effect of being stretched beyond my current understanding is a feeling of empowerment, compassion and humility for it all.

The one familiar aspect of this new found formation within is finding myself in yet-another-transitional-place. Change has become quite normal to me. In fact it has become standard operating procedure!

As any good Buddhist will tell you, the only way to find permanent joy is by embracing the fact that nothing is permanent. And though I am not Buddhist, experience has shown me this is, ironically, the UNCHANGING Truth. 

This is all I am allowed to know at this time. When I know more I will be sure to tell you. For it is "the telling" that has become my healing. 

And I am hopeful, too, that there are healings in these writings of mine for others. For this is my task. And for this task my gratitude is unbounded.

How are you changing today?

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Requesting Relief

Loving someone is neither 'a trap' nor 'the answer.' It is a connection to Love. This truth allows for expansion of giving & receiving. Knowing this truth is a gift of great freedom and joy!

Struggling to stay content with all the great and wonderful aspects of the life I am living I am arrived at a crossroads. I am needing relief from paralyzing desire.

This desire is for a person, but it could just as easily be for anything that is unattainable or beyond your control. 

Desire is a sticky place. It will not let me go. I am caught up in a thicket of confusing old thoughts, feelings and experiences. They bind me tightly to the past and do not let me move on. 

I find this condition showing up again and again. And I chaff at how easily it quickens and absorbs all of my attention. The momentary elation I feel when I willingly climb back into this space is scarred by the truth of the thing.

It is from within this space of inner controversy - because I cannot have what I want - that I request some relief.

And I am, as usual, given what I ask for as I have asked from a place of acceptance and love.

Loving someone is neither 'a trap' nor 'the answer.' It is a connection to Love. This truth allows for expansion of giving & receiving. Knowing this truth is a gift of great freedom and joy!

Full Engagement

Peacocks of Chatham County, 21" x 27" Watercolor

There is a way to manufacture a life so it sits up straight and eats it's vegetables, but I want more. There is a way to place yourself on a positive path by counting your blessings and recognizing the good things that are right in front of your nose, but I want more. 

I want to be engaged! 

"Engagement" is a word bandied about in the Social Media Basics for Business class I am currently taking. The class is full of terrifically warm and passionate people looking to learn how to tame or at least ride this phantasmal beast. But I am not sure full engagement can be found on the Internet. On social media Engagement is quixotic currency, defined differently by each platform sometimes open sometimes not, used to propel your carefully (or not so carefully) curated presence outward into the matrix. Engagement here is a calculus, an algorithm -  a game of numbers distilled from SQL code and CRM customer relationship management.

And I know it is not fair to compare business intentions with more soulful intentions, but who said life was fair?

I want to be fully engaged.

I want to be IN LIFE, feeling it's pulse and riding it's waves with full and complete knowing. I want to employ all of my senses - those five we learn about in grade school that allow us to take in all things material. And those six more subtler senses of will, reason, perception, memory, imagination and intuition - which are scarcely recognized, much less developed in these here United States. 

All these resources, tangible or not, are ripe and ready and always available. And they are FREE. All we have to pay is our attention.

I want these sensibilities to place me in that time and space called NOW. And I want NOW's electric energy - with all it's unlimited possibilities - to see my soul through toward loving and expressing and learning and serving.

Is this too much to ask?

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6 Mental Faculties

"The task is not to see what has never been seen before, but to think what has never been thought before about what you see every day"  
~ erwin schrodinger 

Saw this NASA image and immediately thought of Renaissance painter Mantegna's fresco painting on a ceiling in Ducal Palace, Mantua, Italy.

NASA astronomical photo of the day 2014 July 24

Mantegna "The Bridal Chamber" circa 1474

Kinda cool - huh? 

This juxtaposition of images sings a song to me of the six mental faculties: Will, Perception, Memory, Reason, Imagination and Intuition. 

Experiencing simultaneously time, space, art, science, wonder & joy in the moment of this discovery I am also reminded that I am a unique character with a unique perspective all my own. Recognizing this is "good stuff making!"

What makes you unique?

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