How many times have we all heard that it’s the small things in life which make for a great journey? When we hear this we usually think of things like sunsets, full moons, autumn colors or a child’s laughter. There are so many more of those small, joyful moments that can lighten our hearts if we just open ourselves up to them. Some of us are good at finding those moments. Some of us need some practice in lightening up and enjoying the moments more. It’s all those singular moments that make up the story, that define us, that bring us to understand that in the end, past all difficulties, all is well and life is good.

The cat, Mr. Yin, keeps walking across my keyboard. I would never have known except that I return to find my Word doc full of zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz’s or whatever key he pauses on as he searches for the perfect resting place. In the winter he has the habit of curling up on my desk, leaning against my laptop, sometimes on the corner of the keypad. I discovered that’s how I get twelve calculators opened at once.  He always does this when I am away from my desk as though he waits for my move so he can make his. He knows he is not invited and he knows if he gets all comfortable before I return odds are he can stay. Why do I do this? Who knows? Maybe because I find it funny and I like Mr. Yin.

His twin brother Mr. Yang has a different gig finding the perfect resting spot on my shelves, right between the Mahabharata and the basket of receipts waiting to be recorded. He doesn’t ask either.

Cats as I know them have their own unhidden primary agenda – taking care of their needs and comforts. I watch them and try to learn something about myself. They don’t seem to worry and they definitely know how to relax. I wouldn’t want to be so self-absorbed though. I don’t for a minute assume they think I am any greater or more useful than for giving a good petting. Still I get something from our relationship. They bring a certain amount of humor to a day. I think maybe Dr. Seuss might be referring to them when he said, “From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere.” I would miss them if they weren’t around.

We need to look around and pay attention to the small things, laugh more and lighten up. Ever since I read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road I am immensely more aware and grateful for a leaf or a weed, a piece of celery, green and alive, and people. Like my granddaughters barreling in the door after school; the silence dissolves into their singing, not to return until bedtime. Could I use more quiet to work? Of course, yet it is worth adjusting in order to participate in small joy-filled moments of life.

I was once told that if you keep care of the small things, the big things take care of themselves. There is no big life without all the small moments.

May We All Walk in Beauty

The saying, “Wherever you go there you are” is something most of us eventually discover when trying to get away or make a change in order to feel differently. The state we live in is inside.

I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired as I began my work today. Nothing wrong, just that sort of ho hum lethargy that can easily slip in at times.  My solution was to put on some Aretha.  By the time I got through Chain of Fools, Respect, and found out I was a Natural Woman I was in good shape. We each have to figure out what to do when what we are doing isn’t working. Sometimes I just need to take a few long, deep, focused breaths.

Being able to switch our emotional or mental state is one of our greatest gifts. It’s not always easy. I just know we can do something, even if it is a small baby step. What happens though is we can get caught up in that heavy downward spiral until we finally figure out we are going down a dead-end road.

Everyone has to figure out for themselves what they can do in the moment to interrupt the negativity and shift in the opposite direction. I am pretty sure that is what Lord Buddha was telling us when he said, “Drop It.” These days He might say, “Get off it.”

There is no use denying that we have these moods.  Feelings and emotions are part and parcel of being a human being, no matter how spiritual we might be. Yet, the more aligned we are with our own spiritual nature the more we experience an empowering state of being. In other words, less stress, more equanimity and a lot more inner peace.

What can we do ~ what can you do to shift your state to feel even a bit more empowered in the moment? Some folks take a bath, a walk, pet their cat or dog, bake a cake. Giving encouragement to someone else having difficulties or doing some random act of kindness gets you out of the way. Being self-absorbed in your misery takes a back seat.

Achieving a state of equilibrium is a benefit of doing a meditation practice. If you meditate regularly, circumstances, situations, relationships, daily life just works better. Still there will be moments when emotions and feelings hit a low and there is no capacity to sit and quiet the mind. That is exactly the moment you do the thing that you have discovered will shift you toward getting out of a mental, emotional mire. Maybe Aretha will work for you too.

May We All Walk in Beauty

QUOTE: The last of human freedoms – the ability to choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.” ~ Viktor Frankl

Have you ever looked at your life and asked, “What happened? How did I get here?” Of course there are times when we are where we intended to be and know how we got there. Not so often I think. Our life journey is often more like when we drive to a destination and don’t remember the time between our departure and our arrival. Or other times we clearly head in a direction and get distracted with side trips along the way.

What’s great about waking up to where we are and asking ourselves how we got there is that hindsight can be 20/20 vision. If we are honest with ourselves we can see we set it up. We did it. After all as the Teaching says, We are Cause (with a capital C). And more importantly, there is a good possibility that we knew what we were doing from a Higher Consciousness perspective. Sometimes we didn’t and we have some regrets, which to me is a waste of time.

Often when we look at where we are it is accompanied by some idea of where the world thinks we should be. There’s this whisper from the world at large about what is right, wrong, success or failure regarding any given stage in our lives. I think listening to that is also a waste of time. Life consists of an endless series of adjustments. Living fully, like driving well requires we keep our hands on the wheel and be alert. The journey is rarely what we expected, at times even difficult to understand.

I like what retired surgeon and author, Bernie Siegel says. “If you think your path in life must be logical, then you are path-o-logical.” As usual, Dr. Siegel makes a great point and makes me smile. I can relate.

Everything I had planned for my life when I was much younger, loose as it was, has turned out very differently. The good news is that I am happy about it. All those unexpected places I ended up in seem to have molded me, prepared me for where I was supposed to be all along.

Perhaps it’s normal for us to realize our lives are different than what we thought it would be; sometimes we are pleased and sometimes not. We’re usually not drawn to that reflecting until we are about thirty years old. Coming to grips with things being different and even being temporarily disappointed is a Life Passage. Being absolutely okay with where we are and being okay with the choices we have made for ourselves is a sign of Self-Mastery.

If we end up where we did not intend, we get another GPS direction and start making corrections. Recalibrate. And while we are at it, it’s smart to look around and see what we could have missed had we not ended up where we thought we didn’t want to be. Who knows, maybe we had to be where we didn’t want to be in order to get to where we intended. Any journey worth taking is full of surprises.

May We All Walk in Beauty

QUOTE:

“ A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it. ”
~ Jean de La Fontaine, French Poet and Fabulist, 17th Century

Same Kind of Different as Me is what we need to figure out about each other. 

It’s a title of a book and a movie based on a true story. It’s one of those films I wish more folks would take the time to watch.  Same Kind of Different as Me is a compelling story of the resilience of the human spirit and vastness of our capacity to truly love.

It reminds us that we really don’t know another person’s story; given their circumstances where would we be?  It reminds us to not be so quick to judge, to have an opinion of right/wrong, good/bad.

While the story reveals the horror and injustice of racisms, the overlying message is about the power of love to heal and change people and circumstances for the better.

Love is an Action word and the heroine of this story imbibes it; teaches by example and heals those around her.

Take the time to expand your perspective by checking out this true story of human victory displayed in several of the characters. It reminds us to see the humanity and Light of God in each other ~ all of us.

May We All Walk in Beauty

What if what we were seeing in or about another person wasn’t accurate? What if what we were seeing was being seen through a filter of our interpretation?

Imagine having something over your eyes where you could still see, however, what you were looking at had a tint of color, brown, blue, pink, any color, that changed the appearance of what you were looking at.

Picture looking at a white rabbit through a rose or brown filter. In reality, the rabbit is white and not to you. It’s absolutely rose or brown.

Consider that there are things you see differently than before; the judgment or strong opinion about what was wrong with that person is no longer present. What might you be seeing now that could change if you changed your filter of seeing?

The journey of Awakening, is an experience of attitudinal healing, of becoming a clear human being. The filters of perception drop away and we see that the rabbit is indeed white.

May We All Walk in Beauty

You see what you believe.  

If you are not clear about what you believe, notice what you are seeing in your life, relationships, and the world as a whole. This is not necessarily an easy task.

In this age of communication, we are familiar with sayings, quotes, even sutras. So familiar, we think we know what they mean.

Some folks embrace, to see it is to believe it. Many have become more aware of how their beliefs, patterns and thoughts determine their experience in life.  So, more aware folks think in terms of, what we believe we see.

The challenge is that knowing what you believe is often unclear. In this context, the term believing, refers to your view of life; of you, of others, how you think things should be and should not be; what you consider right and wrong, good and bad. Our life experience reveals our beliefs.

I often witness folks feeling challenged when considering what they believe; oh, wait, let me think about it, hmmm, well…… Or, they think they believe something and a little probing brings realization that no, that’s how I used to believe or that’s what the people I grew up with believe. Now I have a different experience and with that the old beliefs fall away.

We need go no further than our daily life experience to discover our beliefs. If we find need for change in what we are seeing (we want different outcome), we look to see how we can change our perspective and have a new way of believing so we see something new and better.

So, which is it for you? Seeing is Believing or Believing is Seeing?

May We All Walk in Beauty

Every day, every person, every experience is a lesson for us about us. We need look no further than ourselves. Even small new perspectives can greatly change our experience in a most empowering way.

For example, there was a time not long ago when I was extremely tired. Really consistently tired. While this distinct tiredness finally healed, I noticed there were still times I felt tired for no explicable reason. In hindsight I realized I habitually grabbed a label, “feeling tired”; then, of course, I became more tired.

Recently I had an epiphany. What if I was mislabeling my experience?

I thought of my teenage granddaughter when she comes downstairs first thing after waking up in the morning. When greeted, she always replied, “I’m tired.” One day, I asked her if she would consider that what she was labeling as being tired, was in fact not yet being awake. Some folks wake up quickly. Some don’t. She agreed that was indeed the case.

I realized that what I had continued to label as tired, was, in reality, a calling to be not engage in anything external.

What I was labeling as tired was a strong pull to be quiet and still.  I was able to make the distinction between being tired and this experience I labeled as being tired. I’m not so tired anymore.

This small new awareness has made me even more aware of how labeling anything creates our experience. So, I am asking myself what I might reframe or relabel in order to have a new more empowering experience. The process of discovering can be subtle; the discoveries can bring freedom.

Consider what you might reframe or relabel?

May We All Walk in Beauty.

I watch the invisible movement as the vines thread their way up the trellis. One moment they are here, the next moment there. These are vines of unknown origin, untamed and untethered. They came uninvited; their sole purpose is to climb.

The vines made me think of my own journey. Without disciplining the vines in the direction of the trellis they will go every which way, at times their tendrils grabbing onto something that takes them down instead of up. Or they get entangled in whatever is around them and fade into a non-descript existence; not being seen for themselves.

The vines remind me of our human journey. Climbing is instinctual ~ deep within us is the innate desire to be the best version of ourselves ~ sometimes we call it being happy and fulfilled. Sometimes we call it being Awake. Yet, like vines we need guidance to go in the direction that will bring out that best version of ourselves ~ to become Awake.

May We All Walk in Beauty.

I can see patterns of behavior and perception I passed down to my children. I see my children’s patterns passed down to my grandchildren. I can see the patterns of my parents passed along to me. There’s some good stuff and some not so good.

It has taken me a lifetime to know which patterns served me and which ones I needed to transcend. My children will need to do the same ~ and their children.

There’s no such thing as a perfect situation that would generate the “best” patterns. We are an ever-evolving humanity and we learn as we go. I think in many ways we are getting better ~ more conscious of what works and what does not work. There is more conversation about discovering patterns of behavior and having the ability to change them.

No matter how great a parent you want to be. No matter that you don’t want to do some of what your parents did, you will at least do some.

In my own journey I came to appreciate my parents even more as I had my own experiences in life, including being a parent. I could see how certain of their values empowered me and others limited. Those patterns passed down to me may not have limited my parents, however, because those patterns were not my truth they limited my expression.

So, while the lessons come from our experiences in growing up with parent’s patterns, it’s not about our parents; what they did right or wrong. It’s about knowing ourselves.

At some point in our maturation we have to get over it; the “it” being that disempowering pattern we picked up from our parents.

I got to thinking about this when a question came up in a workshop for healers I recently delivered. The question was what was best thing they could do to serve God and humanity. My answer is always the same ~ get to know yourself. What really makes you tick? What inspires and motivates you? What upsets you? What causes you grief and worry? What are your strengths? What are your liabilities ~ those areas where if you could change them would create a greater version of you and your life experience?

This takes a lot of self–inquiry and processing of issues. And in the end, it is the most beneficial. We need to be clear in order to assist others to clarity. We need to have the inner peace that comes from being a clear human being so we can contribute to peace in the world. We cannot contribute what we do not have.

I like to think my parents did a better job than their parents; that I did a better job than them. I know in many ways my children are doing a better job than I did. And none of it is perfect; it’s not supposed to be. At least perfect in the sense that there are no challenges, nothing to transcend, learn and grow from.

Bottom line is we are all on a journey of awakening and that means we each have to get to know ourselves. In that knowing ourselves we can correct what is not working about us and we can acknowledge our strengths and greatness.

May We All Walk in Beauty

Imagine watching a movie. The protagonist is crawling across a vast desert, fingers digging into the hot sand to move forward, clinging to the last thread of hope that help is just over the next rise ~ only to see the endless down and up of more sand dunes mocking him.

We can see on the screen that the hero of the story is one rise away from sliding down into the oasis. Victory.

But our hero can only see what is right in front of him ~ the endless obstacle of sand. The defeat and pain of his journey overshadow his will. We can see him giving up. He stops crawling. He feels only failure and lays his head down.

Our hands grip our chair arms. We think, No!  Keep going. You are so close. Just keep going; your victory is over the next rise!  We are rooting for him. Don’t give up! We know something you don’t know. We know there is an oasis.

This is one of those movies written with alternate endings. You choose. And like our own hero’s journey, we have alternate endings. Life is a play of consciousness and we write the script.

May We All Walk in Beauty