birds of a feather

A few days ago, Monica Potts, who recently moved back to her hometown to research a book on rural America, wrote in the NY Times how the residents of Van Buren County, Arkansas live with a “prevailing sense of scarcity,” and “believe there just isn’t enough money to go around.”  They exist in their own scarcity bubble, opposing for example the salary raise from $19hr to $25hr for their county head librarian with a master’s degree, because they truly believe that “We are not here to pay your excessive salaries through taxation or in any other way,” based on the fact that most private sector jobs in the area pay only $10-$13hr.   Yet, elsewhere in the country there is plenty of money to go around.  The author describes a merry-go-round belief system that creates a self-fulfilling prophesy and can seem hard to escape. 

When we are unaware that we are engulfed in a thought or energy system that is detrimental to our mental health and wellbeing, we can become depressed and even physically ill, and see no way out.  We externalize this emotional mindset and see the world through gray colored glasses – life is difficult, I’m jinxed, I’m just unlucky.  

However, through pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, sudden awakening, the way Eckhard Tolle describes his own unexpected shift from deep depression to deep joy in The Power of Now, or through active visualization techniques as described in so many popular books by Mike Dooley, Jennifer Grace, Rhonda Byrne, or Esther and Jerry Hicks among others, you can get out from under this blanket of heaviness and recreate your outlook and your life.  

What seems illogical and nonsensical to many people is that your belief system shapes your reality, not vice versa.  So, YOU need to shift, not everyone and everything around you.  Pott’s point in her Arkansas context is that people with a different outlook move away from Clinton County to more affluent areas, associating with people who share their beliefs and energies.

What do your surroundings and the people you associate with tell you about yourself?

 

so powerful, so freeing

Wesley became paralyzed from the waist down as a result of a shooting seven years ago.  Yet, today he comes across as joyful, with a sense of purpose and a sparkle in his eyes, and he has founded two organizations to empower people with disabilities.  No grudges, no blaming his attacker.

You can watch his story on the Netflix series Queer Eye S4E2, where the high point comes when he actually meets the guy who shot him.  Not only do they both admit their role in the episode, they both forgive each other and are freed of the trauma that has accompanied them for seven years.  Moreover, and amazingly, Wesley thanks his attacker for turning his life around.  Wow! Now that is karmic redemption at its most profound.  

Sometimes your deepest trauma can also carry your biggest message of wisdom  – of forgiveness or otherwise.  Here a previous post on forgiveness.

our holographic existence

“Supernormal aspects of human consciousness are far too important to be marginalized, derided, deliberately misinterpreted, attacked unfairly, or dismissed out of hand,” writes British physicist, author, cosmologist and visionary Jude Currivan in her most recent book The Cosmic Hologram.  

For too long science got the better of us and we shoved the whole invisible aspect of our existence basically under the rug.  But it’s making a comeback – indigenous people never lost it, and prior to the 1700s we had it as well.  Ultimately our unseen reality is so much more important than we realize.   Whether you are interested in meditation, creative visualization, energy healing, telepathy, your own emotional life and psychology, or actually the new physics, we begin to open up to the idea that we are so much more than a body with a brain.  As a matter of fact, scientists still can’t find the spirit in the brain.  Phenomena such as distance healing, spontaneous remission, synchronicity, premonitions, near death experiences all create a scientific headache because they can’t be explained within the rigid parameters we have set for science, nor can they be researched and tested with conventional Newtonian methods.

Shakti Gawain’s New Age classic Creative Visualization from 1978 was probably the first bestselling book on how to conjure up what you want to manifest in your life.   Meanwhile, so many newer authors are all writing about the same thing, whether Rhonda Byrne ( The Secret), Mike Dooley (Infinite Possibilities) , Jennifer Grace (Directing Your Destiny) and many others.

Dr. Currivan’s book ends with the statement that “consciousness isn’t something we have, but that it’s something we and the whole world are,”  while French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said that we are spiritual beings in a physical body.  Once we remove the wool from over our eyes and make this shift in our minds that thought creates matter, the possibilities become endless.  See a previous related post here. 

 

 

 

 

 

empty nesting testing

Our son went off to college four years ago, our daughter just flew off for a 3-week vacation, and we are now practicing empty nesting ahead of next month when she leaves for college as well.

Prior to retirement from the corporate world some companies offer retirement rehearsal and practice retirement.   While we are a long way from retirement, this is a bit similar in that we will have more time for our own activities, whether business, personal or relationship wise. And now, while our daughter is away for the next three weeks we get to rehearse empty nesting. No more making school breakfasts and school lunches, no more school concerts, college info sessions or visits, or any of the other activities that went with having high schoolers at home. No more wondering whether they’ll be here for dinner or not, and if the cats have been fed and their litter boxes cleaned (I get to do that part now).   Less laundry and less food shopping.  Less silly texting with my daughter, and less nerve ringing when the text tone chimes, wondering what’s going on now.  Freeeeeeeeeee…………. to do other stuff. 

I hope to change my morning routine to incorporate a short meditation practice before getting ready for work.  I hope to have a bit more mid-week fun, as we did before children when we regularly had people over, went out with friends right after work, or did a free museum night.  And I already know that I will appreciate the children even more when I see them again after a longer absence. 

tending your inner life

In Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari mentions that we have lost our ability to dream, and with it the realization of how important dreaming is to the integration between inner and outer life. We forget to dream, literally and figuratively.  

Dreaming while asleep is the mind’s way of processing what hit your mind during the day and you haven’t had a chance to digest on a mental level yet.  Our fast paced life doesn’t encourage inner life self-care and training ourselves to remember our dreams and pondering their meaning. You might keep a dream journal by your bed and write down what dream shreds you remember as soon as you wake up in the morning – a lot of dreaming happens during the lighter morning hour sleep just before you wake up.  If you tend to wake up in the middle of the night you could keep a journal in the bathroom and write down your dream bits. Dream journaling sends a message to your subconscious to remember your dreams, and with time you’ll remember more and more so you can work with the messages.

Dreaming in the other sense is imagining what you might want - to do, to be, to have.  Wouldn’t it be nice if…...? Ohh, I’d love to do……………..It’s creative visualization, and that is a way to manifest what you want (as long as you actually know what you want – not what you don’t want).  This too often gets drummed out of us as a waste of time in this oh so material world that is often oh so rational. But if you can dream it you can manifest it.

Dreaming is good for you because it brings your internal dialogue into awareness.  

 

 

be nice to yourself

How’s your relationship with yourself?  Do you take good care of yourself?  Do you love yourself?   Or perhaps you haven’t given it much thought.

Last night I watched this delightful episode of Queer Eye (love those guys) S03E01 in which they helped Jody to see her inner beauty by transforming her outer self.  They said something like, “When you recognize your inner beauty, it reflects on the outside.”  I just made that up but it’s the gist of what they said.  Jody truly shone and sparkled after they helped her to express her inner beauty without making her into someone she is not.  The transformation was so subtle yet so powerful.

Taking care of yourself means appreciating your inner beauty, your inner worth,  loving yourself, and expressing that love through the attention you pay yourself.  Selfcare can take many forms, or all of them:  

·     More sleep, because you know you can’t run on empty, and sleep heals mentally and physically.

·     Eating nutritious food, because you know that food can heal.

·     Wearing clothes that make you shine, because you feel good when they reflect your inner self. 

·     Moving your body, because you love your body and want to take good care of it so it looks and feels its best.

·     Maintaining a healthy weight, because the best weight for your body type is a good base for your health in general.

·     More me-time, for time to just do what you love to do.

·     More reflection time, because when your inner life remains uninspected and ignored a part of you remains unreconciled. 

Many women are selfless, taking good care of all others in their inner and outer circle, but forgetting themselves along the way.  Many guys were raised to ignore their inner life and to disregard their physical appearance beyond the exercise part.  Where on the spectrum do you fall? How nice are you to yourself?