Election November 2010

Personally, I've never thought of myself as very political.  I am registered as an Independent.  I vote from my heart. I vote for what I think is best for our nation, our planet, our world.  I am very saddened by the political scene right now, and some part of me said...."Why vote?  Does it really matter?"  The wisdom of my age said "YES, it matters".  There are so many people on this planet that have died for the right to vote,  and are dying for the right  "TO VOTE".   So PLEASE!  Honor your birth right.  Follow your HEART and VOTE.  Whether you vote or not, you really are influencing  your future.  To that I say  - Have more voice in your future by voting.

Acceptance

The other day, I had a conversation via email with a friend of mine.  My friend was unhappy and depressed with his current circumstances - the lack of a romantic relationship and feeling all alone. 

My advice was: embrace being alone. Love it, accept it, and don't fight it. When you do, the perfect partner will appear. I've always found that when I TOTALLY accept whatever it is I don't like, IT changes.

My friend responded and said he felt I had taken his feelings and the circumstances of his life too lightly.

Again, I responded:  In every spiritual teaching I know, acceptance is the key to change. What you resist, persist. My point - accept it. Accept the fact that you have created being alone. If you were supposed to have a partner right now, you would have a partner right now. Life doesn't always give us what we want, but it does always give us what we need. On some level, you chose this, so again, my point is to accept the fact that you are not in a relationship right now. Trust the universe. Trust yourself, and focus on all the good in your life and on everything you have to be grateful for.

The truth is I really needed to hear my own words. I had recently returned from a trip to Florida to visit my son, his wife and my 8 month old granddaughter Catalina.  I had totally fallen in love with Catalina and felt my heart was being torn out when we left to return to Oregon. I had enjoyed every single second I had with her, and now I was sad because I felt I was missing out on so much since we live so far away. My choices are (1)  to focus on the pain of separation or (2) accept the fact that I created it this way and just appreciate and be grateful for the time I did have with her. If I am to have a different experience, I will create it at some point. Until then, this is what IS. All I can really do is accept it. I immediately felt better.

Two days later I received an email  about a Coexist Event with this Affirmation:
I cannot change what IS, only what will BE, by ACCEPTING what IS. 
How perfect!

Since the message was received from Coexist, I will include their website for reference.
http://www.coexistcelebration.org/home

No wonder we are grandmother and granddaughter. 
It is truly a GRAND experience! 

Passage from Initiation by Elisabeth Haich

I read Initiation by Elisabeth Haich about 20 years ago I guess. This book isn't for everyone, but I believe the right book comes along whenever you are ready to receive the gift it offers. The first time I tried to read this book, I wasn't ready, but a year or so later I was able to read the book and receive the information it offered. There was one passage that touched me on a very deep level. For some reason it resonated within my soul and I felt it should be shared.


If you would have the message of the Gods to direct your life, look for that which repeats, again and again, for this is the message given you by the Gods; the Karmic lesson you must learn for this incarnation. It comes again and again until you have made it part of your soul and your enduring spirit.

Oil Spill in the Gulf

Since I lived most of my life along or near the Gulf Coast, the BP oil disaster has truly saddened me. I think what saddens me the most though is how everyone is looking at BP as the cause, and at BP and the government for the solution.

But shouldn't we all accept responsibility for this terrible event? Isn't it our own need for oil that contributes more to this than anything else. We are the ones that WANT oil. We are the ones that USE oil. And we are the ones that want more and more of it on a daily basis. We don't seem to care where it comes from. We don't seem to care about any environmental issues. Just give it to us, and give it to us now! And now, we blame the oil companies and the government instead of our own need and greed. Yes, I think that is pretty sad - pretty sad indeed.

PLEASURE

One of my favorite quotes or mottos to live by is:

The mind creates the abyss, and the heart crosses it - Sri Nisargadatta.

I have found this to be all too true. My mind has the incredible power of turning everything into an uphill climb, a difficult situation, a task too hard, a place too awful, or a day filled with all work and no pleasure. It is often difficult to just get over myself - my mind - and allow my heart to lead the way.

I am currently reading Eat, Pray, Love - One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert. Since this book has been on the best sellers list for several years, I am probably one of the last people on the planet to read it. I am currently reading a chapter about pleasure, and how Americans have such a difficult time finding the pleasure in life. We are either too busy working or finding ways to entertain ourselves.

The definition of Pleasure: an activity that affords enjoyment; a fundamental feeling that is hard to define but that people desire to experience.

The opposite of Pleasure is Pain: a symptom of some physical hurt or disorder; emotional distress; a fundamental feeling that people try to avoid.

My questions are: Is our society in pain? Is our world in pain?  If we are not experiencing pleasure in our lives on a daily basis, are we experiencing pain? And yet, no one consciously chooses pain over pleasure. That would be insane!  Right?

I guess I'm going to think about this for a while. It starts with me and my own mind. Now I'm going to go try and have a nice day.....hopefully filled with some pleasure.

Choices

I have read so many self-help, self awareness, self-improvement books and newsletters about how to accomplish your goals, and I understand the idea, but actually being able to put the lesson or the message into action requires understanding on another level. For me, the true realization of what something means happens in a moment when I least expect it – like washing dishes or taking a shower. Hmmm…water usually seems to be involved. Anyway, I had one of my sudden understandings the other night while cleaning the kitchen after dinner. Even though I thought I understood the steps to accomplishing a goal, I realized something on another level – something that may actually have an impact on whether or not I succeed in accomplishing my goals. It’s simple; it’s sweet and makes complete sense to me. When making choices, we often choose what we want in this moment, not a future moment. To succeed, we have to make choices based on what we want in our future.



Example:


My goal is to be more fit. More fit means to exercise more often. In the present moment, I don’t feel like exercising - I don’t have time – I don’t really want to exercise – I can exercise tomorrow. If I make my choice from the present moment, I won’t exercise. However, if I make my choice based on what I want in a future moment, it might help me push past the present moment's “I don’t want to” and focus more on “I want that. In order to have that….I have to do this”.


In a nutshell….stay in the present, but make choices on what you want in the future. I have been exercising daily and for longer periods of time. Will I accomplish my goal? I think if I continue to make choices based on what I want in future moments, I will. And if I apply the same principal to choices I make about relationships, business, diet, you name it, what will happen? I think I want to find out.

I actually wrote this about a year ago.  I was able to maintain that for a few months, and then I got busy with projects and it was easy to listen to the voice that said "I don't have time to exercise. I have way too much to do."  One thing led to another and before I knew it, exercise was not in my reality. 

For the past few weeks I have been exercising again.  I'm also trying to do other tasks that I often put off - like bookkeeping. It is so easy to reach for an excuse to not do the things we don't always enjoy.  However, once again, if I think about what I want or don't want in my future, maybe I'll hold true to my intentions.  So....we'll see how it goes. 

Resistance

Several months ago I bought a new computer with Windows 7. Initially there were some issues networking this computer with our other computer that was operating with Windows XP, but I kept hoping that I would be able to determine the cause and correct the problem. That never happened.

Week after week, another problem would occur with one program after another. I continued to search for corrections and help, but each week the problems would worsen. I was becoming more and more frustrated by the day. I upgraded Windows 7 to the Professional Version - No Improvement. The programs I need and use everyday for my business were hanging up and shutting down. I could no longer print. Perhaps it was a printer issue. I bought a new printer. The new printer did not work on my computer. Weeks, days, hours, minutes had been spent trying to correct the problems.

I knew a System Restore might be the solution, but I had been resisting that course of action for weeks. After all, I would have to start over….save all my documents to another drive, do the restore and then load all my programs again.

Last week, I became aware that I was fighting against what was. I was not in acceptance of the moment. I was in total resistance and I had to stop - take a breath - and just get over myself. Resistance was only causing me more pain, more frustration, and more delays in getting work done. I chose to accept the fact that there was a solution - just not the solution I wanted. I embraced a System Restore and began the process on Friday. It took me 3 days to get everything done, but I now have a computer that works again. It even networks with the other computer without problem.

What did my resistance get me? Everything I didn't want. The old saying "what you resist will persist" - well it does! My lesson in all this is to try to be more aware of my resistance to WHAT IS and embrace WHAT IS with acceptance. I don't have to like it, but I don't have to fight it or resist it.

 

Negative Thoughts

Negative thoughts are very powerful and have a tremendous influence on our actions. The other day I awakened and one of my first thoughts was I didn't like something about the way I was going to have to start my day. Rather than catching it in the moment, I began my day doing what I didn't want to do and feeling resentful about it. That influenced how I interacted with my husband, and so on and so forth. It took me an hour or so to catch where I was and do something about it....and just get over myself.

That little experience gave me something to think about though, and I realized my entire day could have started off very differently if I had addressed my negative thought in the moment. When I first had that little negative "I don't want to do this" thought, and changed it into a neutral thought or even better - a positive thought, my day would have unfolded very differently.

About negative thoughts:

• A negative thought has the incredible ability to grow into something much bigger like a snowball rolling down a hill growing bigger as it rolls and collects more snow. By the time it reaches the bottom of the hill, it won't even resemble the little snowball that began rolling down the hill. Negative thoughts are lot like that - they attract more negative thoughts, and what could have been a simple matter to address, becomes much more problematic.
• Negative thoughts can be addictive. It does seem crazy that we would choose negative thoughts over positive ones, but often we do. We want to stay angry, resentful, and upset about something. We want to have that misery!
• Negative thoughts influence our attitudes. Negative attitudes affect our personal and professional relationships, our health and our performance and success in work or play.

Negative thoughts can be neutralized by thinking positive thoughts. Have one negative thought and rather than allowing it to take off down the hill gathering more negative thoughts along the way, choose something else. Choose to conquer the negative thought with a positive one. A negative thought looses power in the presence of positive thoughts. It usually isn’t easy to loosen the grip of a negative thought though since that is what feeds our need to be right or our need to be angry and resentful.

Needless to say, our world would be very different if we put some effort and energy into transforming our negative thoughts into positive ones.

Messages From The Universe Past & Present

Throughout our lives, we receive messages from the Universe.  They can be delivered via a song, a movie, a book, a TV show; or they can come from the words of a friend or a stranger.  Messages are delivered almost daily and speak to our hearts.

Today, while on the treadmill, I watched the last half hour of Working Girl, a movie I had seen more than once many years ago.  In 1988, that movie inspired me and gave me hope that I could change my life.  Carly Simon's  Let The River Run, the theme song from that movie, had stirred deep feelings I could not explain.  I remember buying the soundtrack and listening to that song over and over again.  

Now, twenty-two years later, I watched the end of the movie again and listened to the lyrics of Let The River Run.   Memories were stirred, but the movie and the song did not have the same impact.  The message delivered 22 years ago had been taken to heart, and thankfully,  I had changed my life.

The message today.....exactly the same.  Change!  Don't be afraid.  Step out of the box.  Do it differently.  Follow your truth.  I had been having a feeling to start another blog, but I had not done so.  My message today - Just do it! 

And I did!