Summoning What Really Matters

Okay, let's take a moment and use all our powers of imagination. Let's pretend for the next 10 minutes. Let's crank up our happiness quotient as if we are children making things up just to try things on and see how they feel… just for the fun of it.

Are you there with me? Is your sense of wonder and excitement palpable? Is your heart racing fast like mine is? Okay - now in this creative feast of a moment pretend your wildest dream has just come true! 

...hey what just happened? 

My imagination just totally shutdown. And my excitement just dropped off a cliff. I had no idea how hard this was until I actually tried it. Turns out imagining as attained your most amazing hoped for outcome in a pretend moment of exaltation is r-e-a-l-l-y scary! To hold space for this kind of completeness, I must confess, is way passed my abilities right now. 

Maybe I need to work up to this "imagination challenge" by first pretending I just read a great book in which the hero made it through some horrible gauntlet and then finally achieved her heart's desire. Perhaps right now that is the best I can do - see my dream as happening to somebody else who is not only NOT ME, but NOT EVEN REAL!
Oh but…

...wouldn't it be grand to feel the way the hero feels - to feel the foggy giddiness of pure joy that eclipses all other joys? To allow my body to fall back in a beautiful crush of surrender and elation knowing nothing else mattered and I could die happy knowing that I have missed out on NOTHING. Wouldn't it feel fabulous to have finally got that which my soul has been demanding for so so long!

Yes, yes, yes, I feel it now. It feels warm in the middle of my chest. It feels like vast and never ending pink and green BLISS.

Hey! I did it! I imagined it!

I guess the trick is to let go of the mind's particulars, the never ending detailed plans, and just work our imagination muscle long and hard enough until our thoughts find their way to (or from) our hearts.

Feeling blissful emotions creates electrical charges you know. Whether these charges arise organically from a reaction to real world circumstance or whether they are actively summoned from a deep well of conscious imagination the energy is exactly the same. 

This is the energy that manifests desire into form. This fundamental understanding is the driver that churns dreams into reality. If this is new information you may find it difficult at first to believe, but it does get easier with practice. And I am convinced if we can begin a practice of dreaming and freely feeling our dreams, the rest will take care of itself.

Experiment and see. Summon your child-like self again. It will be fun, I promise.


What have you got to lose?
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It is Graduation Time Again...

If I were 22 again I would tell myself, "Life has so many graduations for you. Enjoy this one from University and know there will be many more ahead!" I would want to take the pressure, which I personally placed on my own shoulders, off - so I could enjoy all the moment had to offer.

And in a way I did. I graduated college and did what any young woman of 22 would do. I became a stand-up comic. Sure, that's normal. Right?

"Life is only as hard as YOU make it!

Most of us experience transitions in life as singular events. Sometimes we choose them and sometimes we don't. These events are designed to bring about a shift.

You are no longer a child so expecting CHANGE in a life well lived is at least prudent, and at best very wise. Let this be your only expectation though. Give up all the others.

And with this - know changes are NOT the end or the beginning of anything. They fit in the flow of our growing selves stepping up and out of our regular ways and becoming more of who we are meant to become. Trust the change. Allow it with as much ease as you can muster!

We move, we marry, people are born and they die. Mortality is a great teacher. It rises up most often in unexpected ways. Why is that? Why are we so surprised by death? Perhaps we are surprised by all death asks of us?

Oh... that is my story today. Let's get back to that universal individual. That person who is equal parts confident, alienated and frightened. And at just age 22 is told, "You're a man now. Yes - this means you too ladies! Go navigate this world as best you can."

I am not sure my 22 year old self would have accepted this life lens through which I see things now. It was my path to not know this then. For 29 years life has slapped me about and held me mighty high at times. But I imagine I would have surfed life's waves differently - with even more joy and excitement and with an even greater sense of wonder about what's next - if I had only known.

Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily…life is but a dream.


What does this song mean to you?

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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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Yearning: Other Words Other Ways

We all yearn for something.

Christine Valters Painter stirs my yearning to be one with my soul's heart. I say yes and yes and yes to living from the inside out!

"This is not a poem
but a rain-soaked day keeping me inside
with you and you loving me like a storm.

This is not a poem but a record of a hundred mornings
when the sun lifted above the stone hills outside my window.
This is time for boiling water poured into the chipped cup
holding elderflower, hawthorn, mugwort.

This is not a poem but me standing perfectly still on the edge of the lake
in autumn, watching a hundred starlings like prayer flags fluttering.
This is my face buried in May’s first pink peony,
petals just now parting, eyes closed, inhaling.

This is not a poem but the field beyond thought and judgment
and the ways I tear myself apart on too many fine days.
This is the place where clocks no longer matter unless
it is the dusty gold watch which belonged to my grandfather.

This is not a poem but me standing desolate in a parade
of white gravestones, when a single bluebird lands and sings.
This is the bunch of Gerbera daisies you handed to me one foggy
February afternoon, pale yellow like the long-forgotten sun.
This is the first bite of bread after too many hungry days,
This is my grandmother whispering her secrets to me after dusk.

This is not a poem, but me taking off my clothes
and stepping eagerly into the cold mid-December sea.
This is the silence between breaths and in that stillness
this is me saying yes and yes and yes." ~christine valters painter 

For what do you yearn? What can you use to stir IT up?

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Renewed Willingness

"Freedom is available at anytime to anyone - and so is captivity." 

~martha beck

Renewing my heart's willingness to Love is my next task at hand. Here are some of my limiting beliefs... 

How do I fathom such a thing? 

Where does one heart end and another leave off? 

What kind of trial must I go through before allowing myself to love again? 

When will I know it is OK? 

Why am I making this so hard?

Today's Super-Equinox-Eclipse-Moon may be exactly the moment I have been looking for...or just another March 20th? It is said to be a profound time for new beginnings. Some claim the energy today is favorable for letting go of what no longer serves us and embarking on new and exciting journeys. 

And all I have to do is decide!


What limiting beliefs are you operating from?

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