What Is is OK

Work in Progress

Glimpses of letting go

Glimpses of holding on

And the living in between

Galloping forward 

I am a work in progress 

Rocking back and forth this way

Steadiness seems out of the question right now

But as sure as the letting go and the holding on and the in between happen over and over again

I will survive

I will thrive

I am alive

Hum 

Paying Attention

A Centipede was happy quite 

until a frog in jest said,

"Pray which leg comes after which?"

This raised his doubts to such a pitch,

He lay bewildered in a ditch

Considering how to run.

~ Author Unknown

Taking yet another e-course with Thomas Moore, author of "Care of the Soul", we are studying The Holy Fool: Finding Spiritual Liberation in Foolishness and Humor. This is right up my alley some would say. Today's discussion is on 'The Fool as Inner Guide.'

Within this lesson is the idea of being NOBODY. Sounds strange and perhaps awful to some. The problem with adversity is that it is very hard to appreciate it in the moment. 

Being nobody can be very liberating. It can allow us to be unencumbered by societies' (and our own) expectations. Being nobody breaks open the cask of possibilities and, while frightening, is also very exciting.

Emily Dickenson's poem, "I am nobody" holds in high esteem this idea and suggests that 'if I am nobody than perhaps so are you.'

"I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Are you - Nobody - too?

Then there's a pair of us!

Don't tell! they'd advertise - you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!

How public - like a Frog - 

To tell one's name - the livelong June - 

To an admiring Bog!"

But I have always found it very important to recognize everyone I meet as important and somebody. Those who wear the costume of stranger - wait staff, clerks, and fellow classmates - are not NOBODY, but some bodies vibrating next to me. They are to be heard and valued. Sometimes, if I am not paying attention to my life I do not recognize their value in the moment. But when I take time to reflect on the day and on all the interactions I have had - this idea is reinforced 100%.

How can both these ideas - being nobody and being somebody - exist simultaneously? Being here - in this  paradoxical space - is a vast and benevolent experience. 

Don't think about it too long lest you end up capsized in a ditch unable to run. Just vibrate yourself on toward your next task at hand and remember with Love you are nobody and so am I!

Are you paying attention to your life?

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Change

"The birds are molting. If only man could molt also - his mind once a year its errors, his heart once a year its useless passions." 
~ james allen

This is WCHG radio sweeping you forward to a brighter day! Give a listen. Click on the names below - unless you don't want to feel empowered?

Change lifts and carries me forward with the help of Sam, Otis and Aretha. They each have their own way of singing Sam Cook's "A Change is Gonna Come" - can you believe this future anthem was originally the B side? Seems Sam and the record company were scared to put it out in 1964. 

Fear of change creates interesting circumstances...sound familiar?    

Let's face it, change is a heavy lift. It is made even heavier by the strength of my own Will which is comfortable, if not happy, with the place I am at. So I need a little more help from my friend Jennifer Holliday.

When she sings "I Am Changing"  I am on stage singing right along with her. And there are even people applauding us at the end!

My friends work their soulful magic by nourishing me with their affirming incantations. Their songs strengthen the light shining on all our unlimited possibilities. Listening to their power assists me to powerfully focus on allowing change to manifest in my own life. 

What helps you make change easier?

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My Ego - Not Yours! Mine. Mine. Mine.

I sent my ego to the "timeout chair" this morning. I am sitting here smiling imagining this silly and sweet happenstance.

What would my ego look like if I could see it? Is it a smaller version of myself? It seems to be an innocent who does not know any better, but is not me as a child. It is a part of who I am right now, the part that has limited vision and reflexively stomps or rejoices. 

I sent my ego to the timeout chair this morning not to be judged and sentenced. I am showing it the way forward toward a new sensibility because it is part of me that deserves to be loved and understood. I am rerouting it toward a more all encompassing nature beyond it's usual pattern of instantaneous and emotive "me-me-me-ness."

In order to reach for my best self, the person I am meant to be, I am sweetly aware of my lovely and energetic ego self that requires guidance... from me or from some kind of higher self. That is why the moment I recognized it needed to become recumbent and docile I sent my ego to the timeout chair to "think about what it had done"

For this awareness I am grateful. 

"OK, do you know why I had you sit there a while? Yes - that's right, you can get up now. I love you very much. Now go and play."

Have you a part of yourself that needs more guidance?

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Receiving Love

Oh I can give Love all day long. 

It is automatic and very fulfilling. Every morning I enjoy making sure the needs of my dog are graciously and completely met. 

I feel real happiness making sure my sister has all she needs to be relaxed and feel like a winner. And when I am able to be a provider to my guests so they want for nothing - this is one hell of a yummy time for me. 

I even make sure strangers are not impinged upon as I pick up the shit of my healthy well trained dog! This impulse of mine is done, of course, with a little less enthusiasm, but is no less natural or inate to my being.

But when do I make sure I am ready to fully and completely receive Love? How do I open myself up to accept the abundant possibilities of Love coming to me at every moment from everywhere, everything and everyone?

Can I sopp up Love as automatically as I dish it out? Will I gracefully allow Love into my life without stopping it at the border to check it's credentials. Can I stop batting Love away because I used to be someone else's girl?

When will recieving Love become instinctive, involuntary and impulsive again?

How about from this day forward?

From this day forward I vow to practice letting Love in. From now on I am a receiver of Love from everywhere, everything and everyone. So when I see Love coming I will not duck and I will not hide. I will stay put and let Love spill on to my life. I am porous and soak Love up as naturally as a sponge.

Ah...now doesn't that feel better?

Do you ever stop Love in it's tracks?

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So Many Passions

What does Passion mean to you? 

For the first half of my life I thought Passion was that feeling derived from sex and love. BTW this is also the time I thought sex & love were the same thing. 

Passion was that fleeting thing that waxed and waned according to life's circumstance. It conjured up images of operatic gestures and storylines about extreme choices made in sudden fits of itself.

But in more recent days I am coming to know a different kind of Passion. A more soulful call from deep within that is not sudden or fitful but gradual and steady. It calls to me when I seek it. It patiently waits on me to pick up it's trail. It is not dependent on conditions. It existed then, exists now and will always exist. This kind of uninterrupted Passion shows me the way.

Are these two branches from the same tree? Are they siblings, cousins or ancient ancestors? No I don't think so, their effects are both a call to action, but their way of doing things are so completely different.

Perhaps they overlap eachother like my younger and now older selves. Or perhaps they are companions which simultaneously inform each other like surf and shore? 

I can see conditional Passion's irregular waves roaring and breaking toward land creating an ever changing line on top of the shore. It alternates between exposing and covering up that other species of Passion, the unfluctuating one. Whether seen or unseen, unconditional Passion is like all shores everywhere - unceasingly directional, timeless and forever joining land to sea.

I love this place were the land and sea meet. I am fixed by it's constantly changing and changeless nature. It is here at the shore's edge we are able to see all the possibilities of becoming our truest selves. It is here where choice and moment meet and I become awake. 

I am grateful to be able to recognize this enduring flow of things and to periodically live in my own becoming.

How do you experience Passion?

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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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