Tag Archives: Spirituality

A Christmas Day Story

Christmas image

I have been off the grid for many months now.  My gypsy wagon currently hitched to a new life here in Asheville, North Carolina.  The reality of being on the road is that life unfolds in totally unexpected ways which I am now ready to chronicle.  Today is my first post since last May and it is particularly auspicious that it be on Christmas Day.  I hope you enjoy the story and that you will comment on how your day has been.

Merry Christmas, Maya


Welcome Home  By Maya Christobel

 “To see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to . . . to see and be amazed.” 

Life Magazine Motto

Today I was amazed.  The day did not start that way.  In fact it was shaping up to have the potential of being bleak and unnerving. It was Christmas day.

I woke up to silence.  No one clanking in the kitchen, no children giggling, just the low whirl of my air purifier and the soft purr of two of my best friends tucked neatly under my chin as I crawled out of bed in flannel wear to face Christmas morning totally by myself.  The cat lady at 63. I was feeling a bit pathetic.

I threw open my door to the patio that leads into the woods and a blast of crisp 17 degree air woke me with a startle as both cats swiftly decided not to go outside after all.  Glassy swirls of snow drifted through the trees.  I threw on my shawl, slipped into my UGGs and walked to the edge of the woods.

With all the leaves in piles, the naked trunks of a million trees allowed my eyes to see past more than one range of Blue Ridge Mountains.  I breathed deep and heard myself say, “Well this is going to be an interesting day”.

Living on the top of a mountain with no one very close and no real contact with cell phones is such is a retreat, a refuge, a place where you are creative.  The silence catapults you into the best of who you are.  But when you miss family, cooking, laughing and hugging it feels a bit more like a sentence.  I was on the fence as to how I was feeling today.

Earl Grey Tea with coconut milk, an extra pair of socks, a left-over chocolate chip pancake and I was ready to sit at the computer to write.  But, Facebook came first, since I was assured that on Christmas morning there might very well be far more substance there than usual. I tend to rant about the mundane sharing that goes on out there.  But today I was right.  Gratitude, poetry, family photos, Christmas puppies, smiling children, songs, videos and just a pile of love, littered cyberspace.  Two hours later I was full.

I had wondered what I would do without family for the holiday. Friends were away, my daughters in Colorado, my “AO music family in St. Louis”, and me, what would I like to do to celebrate the day?  A blank canvas stared at me, my paints which I dug out of storage neatly stacked next to brushes I had not used in years.  A blank Word Document sat blinking at me from my computer screen.  Oh, the pressure.

So, I did what anyone with writers block does:  I checked out when the movie I had been waiting to see for months started.  “The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty”.   It was playing at my favorite blockbuster Regal Cinema in Biltmore Park.  And it was playing at this little hole in the wall theater down the road.

I had never been inclined to go to the Beaucatcher Theaters since number one, I just hated the name, which for some reason, screamed redneck North Carolina to me and in fact I was a bit of a movie screen snob.  This translates as “the bigger the screen the better”.  But I just spontaneously decided to go to Beaucatcher.  Hmmm.

I quickly checked my emails and sent one to my daughters.  Suddenly I received one from my landlady who was vacationing in San Fran.  Renee was letting me know that the house down the hill had been broken into.  Now it would take a lot for someone to hike all the way up the mountain to break in to the house down the road.  And I am one woman living here most of the time.  This was just the corker.

I decided to turn on the stereo and play music while I was gone.  But all of a sudden I just looked around and thought to myself.  “Who gives a shit if someone wants what I have in my tiny efficiency apartment”.  So I left a note instead.  It went like this:

“If you are here to rob me then the door is open, I cooked Christmas dinner for myself last night, it is in the fridge, so you are welcome to it and anything else I have is …yours.  Please just close the door behind you and do not let my cats out.  Merry Christmas”

I left the door unlocked. Then I left for the movie.

I got to the tiny theater with a half dozen other souls at 11:30am.   We were all doing something that most people were not.  When I got out of the car to go inside, a family of about six people got out of the car next to me and we all walked to the ticket window.  We chatted and we wished each other merry Christmas.

I had no makeup on and had just tossed my hair under a winter hat and worn gloves, since I knew the heat would hardly have had time to warm up the theater.  The family sat in the row right in front of me and about four other people were scattered around.  The smell of popcorn felt comforting in some odd way since, in all reality, the movie theater…is my church.

The soundtrack dazzled me, the larger than life faces with piercing blue eyes, the script and the wonder of this special little movie made me laugh as loud as the family near me.  It was the medicine I needed.

It was a movie about hope.  About defying the odds, about plowing right into the middle of your worst fears and finding…yourself.  It was a movie that described my last year to a T.  I call 2013 the year of disillusionment.  In spades.

It has been a year of being cut off from the source of my own hope.  I am a woman who has made best friends with coincidence and serendipity and made a religion out of doing the unthinkable.  Up until this last year it has proven to be the only way to live, full of amazing adventures and the Universe, at every turn, confirming which path and what direction my life needed to take.  But this past year, things became, quiet.

Countless veils of illusion about human nature, the state of our planet, the music and film industry and friends who suddenly behaved like enemies, became my bill of fare. Allowing myself to see past the illusion and recoup the magic has been an unexpected and difficult journey.  I began to lose heart so I have hunkered down here in the mountains into my “chop wood, carry water” mode, knowing, hoping, that “this too shall pass”.  But Christmas alone was a real cake topper.

The movie was a Technicolor injection of love and hope that was perfect for Christmas day.  That would have been enough.  The Universe does not need to do much to help me recalibrate my heart.  But, the Universe had a special Christmas gift for me in mind.

I was the last to leave the theater.  I watched every single credit for three-legged dog trainer and hair stylist until there was nothing left.  I slipped my gloves on and pulled my hat down over my hair, my eyes red from laughing till I cried.

When I stepped out into the hall the family of six were waiting there.  Millie the mother asked me how I liked the film.  Nelson the film aficionado of the family, working as a film gaffer in NYC, asked a few questions but I really could not hear the conversation.  All I saw were these smiling faces and angel wings spring forth as a bear sized boyfriend smiling next to Millie reached to shake my hand and close friends of the family circled all around me in the hall.

Then one of those short, perfect, destined conversations ensued that went something like this. “We need to talk, come visit our new motel called Peaceful Quest Retreats”, I knew we were supposed to meet, isn’t this basically magic?”  My heart said a resounding YES!  I was missing my family so very much this day.  The Universe reminded me how large my family really was.

Who were these people?  Why did we all go to the movie at the same time?  Why didn’t I go to the poshy Biltmore Park? What is it that makes a total stranger feel instantly like a long-lost family member.  What is it in a twinkle in the eye or a caring smile that is the Universe laughing its ass off and telling you that all is well in this world?  The magic is everywhere,  purpose marches forward uninterrupted, and even if you get lost in the woods, there are always the cosmic breadcrumbs.

So, Millie Facebooked me before her Christmas dinner, I looked at photos of her magical retreat in Asheville that she purchased three years ago and said she was called to come to Asheville, just like countless people I know here.  The calling that no one can really put their finger on but each of us have just gone and moved here to find out why.

I went home filled with the wonder of it all. Wonder and awe are my elixirs in life:  The magic of destiny that keeps me going through countless disillusionments, barbaric wars and horrific loss in the world.  Millie and her lovely family was not only a B12 shot for my soul, but a personal invitation from Spirit to get back on the horse and keep riding.  Even when the future is so uncertain.  Now Millie is part of that future.  Yesterday I did not know she existed.

I got home and sat in the car for a while.  A red Cardinal that frequents my patio sat on the table.  The note for the ‘possible thief’ blew in the breeze still stuck to the door and I could hear the music I had left on inside.  Welcome home it said.

 

A Case for Greatness

We live in a world where speaking to someone’s Greatness is infrequent.  Most often we speak to what is wrong, what is incomplete, aggravating, and problematic in a person.  Praise and appreciation fall between the cracks of relationship usually rendering the basic pallet of connection one of working it out, putting up with, overlooking or simply, reactive confrontation when we get overwhelmed.

The basic ingredient that can change the tide in any relationship is honesty:  Speaking the truth, first with yourself and then with the other. The first question is “Why am I not telling the truth?  What am I afraid of and what do I think the outcome will be if I keep choosing to withhold my feelings or thoughts and observations?”

Yet, in our new age culture where tolerance is far more desired than confrontation, we have gone to the other side of the equation.  Tolerance tends to end up looking like skirting the issue, having sympathy for the plight of a friend, when many times it is really fear of confrontation that drives our silence and in-authenticity.  So we call it “Tolerance”.  That is a kind of lie that we feed.

There is a middle ground that we rarely find ease at identifying and then live out in our relationships:  A combination of Empathy and one of Fierce Truth Telling.  The question is for most of us, how to tell the honest truth from the heart in a way that speaks to the appreciation for and the greatness of the person we care about, instead of how they have failed?”  This is the essential and necessary shift we all need to make in all our relationships, both to self and others, and in the larger Shift that is happening on our planet.

As the paradigm of power shifts incrementally from a patriarchal model to a more balanced form of Power, which now includes the feminine skill of empowering through intuition, instinct and empathy, we are challenged to re-write the common ways in which we approach all of our relationships.  It is way past time, to eliminate all the dysfunctional forms of relationship with other people and with ourselves no matter what we imagine the risk to be. The cost of not doing this is far greater than the perceived risk.

There is a long list of habits that we learned from our parents, our government, our culture, our church and an even larger list that is fed from unspoken fears: Namely, that if we are ruthlessly loving, we will be rejected and unloved in return.  How many of us have become expert at ways of being in relationship or business that in fact never helps us achieve what we want, which is connection, love, power, creativity, full expression of self and harmony?  How many ways of undermining the success of relationship do I practice without consciously thinking?

*  Withholding the truth because I believe the person cannot handle it?

*  Withholding my feelings because I don’t want a conflict or to be rejected or in many cases loose the little bit I have or think I need from that person?

*  Telling myself that I cannot say the truth because I need something from that person that they will take away if they do not like what I say?  I then settle for something that is incomplete, dysfunctional and dishonest. I fall out of integrity with myself.

*  Rationalization is the biggest lie that we use to protect ourselves.  We tell ourselves that it is better that the person does not know the truth because they will be hurt, offended or will not be able to handle the truth, so “I will protect them from those feelings because I love them”.  This is the root of becoming an enabler:  Allowing the person to continue to be or do things in ways that alienate and create problems for themselves and for others and not speaking to the power and greatness in them, but to their weakness instead.  By doing this we never allow for the possibility of change and growth and everything becomes stagnant.  Not only the flow of love in the relationship but the flow of money and resources.  A kind of energetic constipation where nothing is moving takes over.

The minute we conform to someone’s dysfunction, adapt to it, and accommodate even for selfish reasons, we have supported limitation and dysfunction instead of health and vibrancy in the person we are with.  And have you noticed that we then feel less vibrant ourselves, more constrained and unhappy? In other words, we strip the person of the possibility to grow into the person they are capable of being and strip ourselves of a life of integrity that only brings ill health.

When we do this the toxicity of Resentment and Bitterness worms its way into the groundwater of each person in the equation.   We do not foster greatness in ourselves or in the other.  We live in a model based in fears and limitation.  Therefore, the outcome of ANY relationship, whether it is a love relationship, a friendship or a business partnership, will reflect the energy going into it; namely, limitation and lack of greatness, stagnancy of feelings and of resources.  As within, so without.

A model for a new paradigm in relationship or business must be based on not only honesty at all costs which is rooted in holding the vision for a persons greatness and for their own ability to learn and change, but also for our capacity to rise above the adaptation to weakness model and firmly plant ourselves in the vision of who we are capable of being and who the person is capable of becoming.

We do not hold with respect, a persons inherent Greatness, if we allow a friend, lover, parent, husband, wife or colleague to become defined by their limitations or blind spots.  And, we do not live in our own Greatness if we are not willing to risk living in total honesty and fierce loving.

AO Means Light

AOMusic went to Nepal with five young people in August.  We recorded children who are singing on our new album to be released in 2013.  This is our fundraising trailer for a documentary that we hope you will all support.

 

The Seed of Truth

 

A Seed Planted

It has been one year since I sold most of what I own and drove away from Tulsa Oklahoma.  I had been called there to help my mother die.  Four years later, my time was done in Oklahoma and I asked a question. “Now…what makes me happy”.  Then I turned the corner into my sixties.  For the first time in nearly forty years I had no children at home, no husband, no clients to care for.  I just had me.  And my two cats Hazel and Snow.

The question of what makes me happy was new.  It was asked in a new spirit with the emphasis on ME.  What makes ME happy.  I had spent decades organizing my answers around the ‘whole’ of my life.  My happiness was always intertwined with my daughters, or the man I loved, my mother and family and the concern I had for my clients who entrusted me with their stories and their care.

There had been little time to truly know what my own seed of happiness was.  So, I set out for one year to discover the answer.  Not by making a list of what made me happy, but to have an experience of “being happy”.  What became quickly obvious was that I was surprised by happiness.  I never went out looking for it or trying to create happy moments.  Happiness found me.  And in unexpected ways.

And what also became a life lesson was discovering that the way happiness found me was because I slowed down every aspect of my life and made room for happiness to come in.  The art of allowing my life to flow and simply following the current has been the gift of this past year.  Our society is focused on doing, on making, on busily trying to get our life to look like our vision.  This presupposes that we are the only one to make or break our own possible happiness.  That boot-strap mentality locks us out of the experience of being part of the mystery, of the divine, of a destiny that has a design and pattern to discover.  It creates isolation.

Allowing life to move us has at the center this divine mystery of a perfect design. But allowing is a relational word.  Allowing does not mean I do nothing.  Allowing means I hold the vision, embody the energy and move my feet and then the dance begins and my partner is Spirit, God, the Universe, and Love.

I did do one important thing before I put the carrier on top of my Nissan and drove away toward the East Coast:  I set an intention.  A strong intention.  I sat up late into the night and wrote my vision for my life.  I soaked it in, knowing that somehow I had captured on paper a glimpse of a life I would love and then I tucked the writing into my Tarot Bag.  The vision was filled with joyful ideas of being closer and working with my daughters in a business, of being surrounded by music, living in nature, writing for film and seeing myself succeed with my writing.  I wrote of being in a common community with like-minded people, increasing my health and prosperity and being with children in my work.  Then I drove to Asheville, North Carolina.

Now, one year later I am astonished.  When I arrived in North Carolina to spend a short time with my daughter I ran into a problem renewing my driver’s license.  This problem still persists and even baffles congressman Perlmutter in Denver.  No one seems to know how to solve my lack of ‘drivability’.  The loss of easy mobility left me stranded in North Carolina longer than expected.  So, I went to a workshop on manifestation and then two days later met Richard Gannaway from AOMusic through a Craigslist ad of all things.  Four hours later my life rearranged.

Richard handed me two of his Grammy nominated albums.  Driving home I slipped them into the CD player in my car and headed down the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was raining. My first big surprise was about to occur.  I started weeping, pulled off the road and nearly one hour later had finished listening to’ And Love Rages On’, with the windows fogged and motor still idling.

The weeping was a direct message from my soul to me.  Weeping with joy validates the moment I am in as sacred, as important, as inspired.  In that moment something redirected in me and pointed me back to Richard and AOMusic.  My mind said “this is crazy”, “this wasn’t on the agenda!”, “WHAT are you DOING?”.  I kept driving. Now one year later I am a partner with Richard and AO and proceeding with a vision for a film series that is inspiring great interest.  I am immeasurably happy.

That one surprise by the side of the road…of joy…love…creativity…happiness has led to me back to digging out that piece of paper I put into my Tarot Bag just a year ago.  I re-read my hopes and dreams.  I smile when I realize that almost everything I envisioned is in my life right now:  I work with children who sing, I am surrounded by music, my daughter Jessie and I work together on a project she helped to shoot in Nepal, I write for film, have gone to film school, live part time in two amazing natural environments, Asheville and the Pacific North West.   I have a community of inspired, creative, loving co-workers and friends.  I have a new kind of partner of the heart with Richard Gannaway.  I have been prosperous and happy and healthier. All because I opened to the possibilities, allowed for my life to move with serendipity, coincidence and intuition.

The art of navigating life this way has been the largest learning in my lifetime.  And now as our holiday season begins I have a new question.  Not about what makes me happy, or what’s next.  But a question about where is home?  Having been nomadic for over a year now it is time to find ….home.  And finding home is never possible until each of us feels entirely at home in the self.  This year of SELF discovery has brought me to a new way of thinking about home.  Home is the space that is a sacred anchor for our soul to live out our purpose for being here.  Finding home is my next adventure. Or better yet!  I will let home find me.

 

 

From Tulsa to Kathmandu

 

I left for my “Year as a Gypsy” on September 2, 2011.  As that year comes to a close my life has opened.  By shedding my beliefs about what I “thought” might make me happy in life and asking a new question about “what would bring me joy”, I made some bold new moves.  After selling most of my belongings, letting go of my house, my man, my dog and my attachment to any outcome, I packed my car and drove off.  First stop, Asheville, North Carolina.

My blog, www.the-gypsy-life.com has chronicled what can only be described as a “surprising” year.  I had thoughts of writing full time, landed a screenplay writing job, re-invented myself with a new website www.mayalunachristobel.com and felt the stars aligning in what I believed was my destiny.  And then I learned a very important saying first hand and right between the eyes:  “How do you make the Gods laugh?  By telling them your plans”.  It was simply a few weeks into my adventure that I threw the blueprints out and adopted the only thing I knew to do:  Navigate by intuition …one day at a time.

So, here I am, many stories later, still no driver’s license, but well traveled, well cared for, well fed, well loved and inspired beyond anything I could imagine.  And after just one short year I have found that my heart is happiest singing, participating in a music company that has children at the center of everything, and creating opportunity for myself and as many others as possible to live their dreams.  How could I have known any of this before taking the leap?

Today, August 18th, one of those dreams is being realized for a group of young people who just landed in Kathmandu, Nepal.  I took a leap of faith and decided to produce a short film of recording children in Chitwan, Nepal, singing songs composed by my partner, Richard Gannaway and AOMUSIC. By reaching for my dream as a filmmaker, four amazing young people are reaching for theirs.  Paying it forward is not just about money, or gifting someone, but is also about what happens when I say yes to a vision from the heart…it expands to include so many other people who get a chance to do the same.  Physics of the Heart.

It is the height of the monsoon season in Nepal.  This “Dream Team” is made up of my daughter Jessie, who with her Canon 5D will be interviewing the village, the children and the team as, come rain and more rain, the children learn to sing.  Her photography will be part of a campaign for a documentary series.  Then there is Rob who is from Asheville and a yoga/slack line teacher as well as musician par-excellence who will be recording the children.  Josh is the “Yoda” of this entourage.  Josh has been living in India and has a story to share that will both curl your hair and make you stand up an applaud the tenacity of spirit in this young man.  Josh is a musician and teacher of music to children all over the globe.  And lastly is Karan, from Mumbai, India who is going to film the entire journey of AO in Nepal.  He has filmed numerous documentaries and brings so much to this unfolding story of AOMUSIC as we trek to where children are in need and hear the songs of their undaunted hearts.

So in these next ten days I will post a short story every day from Nepal to give you a window into the courage, the creativity and the spirit of those on this trip, the people of Nepal, my own unfolding in this process that has not been without obstacles, all in the hope that just one person might find their own heart on fire for change, for reaching for your dream and for helping those who need you most when you do.

As for me and coming to the close of a year on the road?  The Gypsy Life has become the life I choose from this moment forward. There is no other way to live for me.

 

Practicing Transformation

by Maya Christobel

 

I am hearing daily from so many people that they are feeling… “different”:  More sensitive, feeling body pains, getting ill, energized for some, sluggish for others. Tired but not sleeping. Overwhelmed but not knowing exactly why. All bodily responses to changing energetic fields all over the planet and in our solar system.  The answer is not sleeping pills or any conventional response.  We need an entirely new perspective.

 

It is no  longer possible to separate ourselves as if we are distinct from EVERY OTHER THING.  We are being affected daily by our Sun and Solar Flares, by Climate Change, by our Economy, our Friends, our Fears and our Dreams. Greece cannot have economic collapse and create a global fear response and we not feel it on the other side of the globe as we eat dinner.

 

So, we are being asked, if not required, to take a new position in our lives in order to integrate these new energies that are changing the very DNA of us as a species so that we not become ill in response. This sounds overwhelming and for some it is.  Confusing and it is at times. The natural response to change is usually a kind of “contraction” in our lives, a reactivity to fear, a stepping up of activity and problem solving.  This is no longer working.  The new response to these demands is to…relax.  Breath.  Walk.  Sleep.  Laugh and be in a place of Openness and Love.  Not easy as the lives we live swirl around us and the majority feel massive amounts of fear.

 

I remember reading about a woman who was attacked by a bear.  She was just in her tent minding her own business when out of left field a bear tore through her tent and began to drag her off to the woods to kill her.  Others had already died.  What she did was counter-intuitive to screaming and resisting.  She went silent and limp. She stopped resisting.  What happened next was astonishing.  The bear dropped her in the woods and walked away.  She was not unharmed, but she was alive.

 

I am finding that I have the opposite response to mounting tensions in the world, tensions in my life and personal crises.  I am not worrying or trying to “figure anything out”. I am not resisting.  That is very new for me and may have much to do with my choice to begin to live in the flow.  Allowing rather than pushing the river that rushes all around me.  My list of what I think I should do still sits mostly unaddressed as I put on my hat and grab my binoculars and go out to Lighthouse point to watch for the Orcas to come through.  Years ago I would have decided that I was in denial, crazy as a loon, lazy, afraid to face facts if I had done such a thing.  Now I am different.  I feel perfectly centered and none of the traditional triggers in my life that would have sent  me to bed sleepless or with a sore throat and a pounding heart seem to affect me in any of the usual ways.  And that undone list of “necessary responses” is till there and the world has not collapsed around me.  I have not become a bag lady.

 

The antidote to the psychotic times we live in is not to speed up…but to do exactly the opposite:  Slow down.  Slow way down so that the body can manage the energy that is presenting itself in a hundred new ways a day.  To stop our reactive resistance just like the woman who saved herself from the jaws of a bear.

 

The second cure for harrowing times is to change your mind.  The mind wants to solve the unsolvable and will use up all available energy trying to.  The way to stop this over-thinking, over-worrying, over-analyzing is to change your thoughts from “I am overwhelmed”, to “I have an opportunity for creativity”.  From “I am afraid”, to “I am practicing love and trust in this process of change”.  What these changed minds mean is that we are finally acknowledging that we are in control of our experience. Fear is the belief that we are not in control. What we intend to think really does change the outcome of our daily experience.

 

Many people all over the world are talking about the unprecedented times of spiritual, physical and emotional evolution we are in.  From CNN to Psychics we have a delicious array of input to help us navigate our changing times, changing relationships and emerging new world view.  Here is just one piece of writing that I think is helpful. It came to me from Marlene Swetlishoff.  Good, sound and inspiring guidance.

 

“You are in a period of stillness awaiting the influx of greater energies that are soon to flood the Planet. Be receptive and open to these energies and absorb as much of them as you are able. Set your intention to receive in grace and ease and it will be so. Many changes continue to take place within your physical bodies and your DNA is being further activated. The next six months will bring through many revelations and a greater connection with your inner truths. 

 

Stay connected to your inner core essence and let it guide your way. This will help you to stay in the knowing of yourself and that which is important for you to follow for the highest and best outcomes in all that occurs in your daily living. In dealing with others, always look to meet them in the areas of common interest and endeavor to reflect to them your Light, and in turn, allow their Light to reflect back to you. You are in a period of igniting each other to the unfoldment of greater visions and dreams.

 

This will transpire in different ways for each of you and the outcomes will be wonderfully diverse as each of you express through your Beings that which is uniquely your own essence. Become each others greatest cheering teams, for much joy and laughter will facilitate the moving forward of each of you to your true and rightful place, as the shift of the ages continues to occur. Let go of all remaining fear and doubt, for all that comes through you is the merging of the higher aspects of yourselves. There will be prolonged periods of the feeling of joy that bursts from within you as you leave all that was behind you.

 

Stay grounded into the Earth each day as she will support you as the metamorphosis within you continues to take place. Drink copious amounts of fresh, clean water to help facilitate the movements of the new energies coming through you and be outdoors as much as possible. Practice deep breathing exercises each day to help move the new Pranic energies into your cells. Allow the expression of all that comes through you and observe what comes forth. You are reconnecting to skills, abilities and talents that have been dormant for a long time.”    Marlene Swetlishoff

 

So, in between sharing about my journey on this road I am on, I will be sending up a few flares for your consideration as we all float in this big boat of change.  What an exciting time to be in.

 

And again, I invite you to share your story with me.  How are you changing and what are you doing about it in your life? What are you learning?  We all need each other, as Marlene said, to cheer us on during this amazing time.

 

Blessings, Maya Christobel

Eddie! Or is it Eddy?

I wish I could say that I had fallen in love with some guy named Eddie.  The only Eddie I know is Eddie Haskell from Leave it to Beaver, and all I really remember about him is his annoying high pitched and grating voice.  A real whiner.  No, here I am referring to the eddy, those spots in a river that, on a long paddle, you look for to catch your breath. At least that is what I remember about canoeing.  My hope was for a calm eddy around the corner so I could get out of the current and take a breather.  Well, this memory of the benevolence of the eddy is being challenged and I am currently having quite a different experience.

For nearly 9 months I have dedicated my life to learning to live in the flow.  To live from a much more aware and intentional place in myself. To give my mind a vacation.  It has been both challenging and magical.  My most valuable compass has become practicing the art of navigating life from the heart, the intuition and that “gut feeling”.  Yet in this practice my heart is always accompanied by my mind trying to get control of the process and of the unknowing. My mind believes it can figure anything out and that it will make me feel better in the face of uncertainty.

So, the river of life I live in right now is moving at a speed that my little boat is having some difficulty navigating.  My mind just wanted to “eddie out” and consider my options.

My home base for the better part of a year has been a room in my daughters apartment in Asheville North Carolina, where a few of my things and my cats live when I am not here.  She and I have busted the illusion that mothers and daughters cannot co-habitate as adults and it has been a great time.  But, the lease is up here and Jessie is leaving for the Virgin Islands on her adventure and I am packing my few things, my cats and heading….hmmm….well that’s not clear.

I have many options but no one of them turns that inner light of knowing on or makes me feel inspired and certain.  Every choice that comes up on the radar sounds great:  More time with Film School in Seattle, going to the coastal town of Point Roberts and writing, Findhorn in Scotland, setting down some roots here in Asheville, creating community with new friends.  All these ideas of what is next for me seem great from my mind’s point of view, but my heart is quiet. I have lost my compass.

So, I did the most familiar thing I could do in the face of packing boxes and moving out in  five days from now.  Yep 5 days.  I decided to let my mind take over and make a solution.  Big mistake.  My lack of patience to wait for the answer kicked in my most primitive response.  Just figure it out.  You can do it Maya.  Just get that pad of paper and get those pro’s and con’s down and it will be clear what you should do next.  Big, very big mistake.  It was at this moment I began to eddy out of the river of my inspired life and discovered that an eddy if far more complicated than I had remembered.

An eddy is a place in a river where the water is “moving in a different direction or different speed” than the main current. Eddies are made by rocks in the river, outcroppings along the side, behind logs, bridge pilings, and also on the inside of bends or along the side of the river.  An “eddy line” is the part of the river that separates an eddy from the main current. Eddy lines can range from gentle changes of current, to violent, whirl-pool-causing obstacles. The speed, volume, and motion of the current will decide what type of eddy line is formed.

The eddy that was created, the moment my mind jumped into the front seat of my life was nothing short of a violent whirlpool of thinking.  I began to chew on every detail of why this and not that.  My pros and cons list graduated to a full sized dry erase board in my living room where I could move around all the factors in my life like on a chess board.  This process of “figuring it all out” became exhausting and took me just deeper down the rabbit hole of indecision.  All the while I am being churned around in the washing machine of my own thoughts, the river is just moving past me in it’s predictable and constant flow and always going somewhere.  In the end, I made myself sleepless, anxious and stuck.  I had forgotten my compass.

Right when I hit my breaking point I stumbled on a post on Facebook.  There was a black and white cartoon of a man in the darkness without a flashlight.  All you could see were his blinking eyes.  That was me!  The quote went something like this: “They say when one door closes, another door opens.  But these hallways are a bitch!”.  I was in the dark corridor between leaving something and beginning something and I did not like it.

So, with a week before I had to fill a car full of cats and belongings, find storage for my few other things and go to AAA to get a new set of maps and trip books, I came to a grinding halt in my process of efforting to discern the right thing to do.  I just stopped thinking. I gave up trying. What a relief.  My little boat broke loose of all the debris and obstacles that the mind had created and just silently drifted back into the rushing current of uncertainty.  I was allowing myself to simply not know.  Chop wood, carry water was for me “pack one box at a time” and not know where it was going.  Sleep returned and anxiety stopped. I allowed the vast knowing universe back into my process.

And I now spend time every day reminding myself of the joy of the journey, even if I do not know the destination.  And that is the key.  Letting go of the destination.

When most of us take trips we have a map or a tour guide.  Without the map we do what?  We drive down the road and if we get lost we ask directions (or at least I do).  But like most I had become dependent on knowing where I am going and getting the map out when I felt lost.  The map shows you what is ahead, when to turn, the distance and the constructions zones to avoid, all in the service of me getting from point A to point B.  I have a point A but no point B.  I wanted a map and my mind was going to make one. But in reality that is delusional.  How can anyone get a map from point A to nowhere?  This process of needing to know and have a destination stripped me of the very things I have been learning:  That I do not always know what is next and if I allow that unknowing to just “be” then, without exception, something breaks into my life that is new and magical.  My heart and my intuition know that but my mind had forgotten.

I had forced myself out of the flow of my own knowing and put myself purposefully into a place that was “moving in a different direction or different speed” than the main current.  Why?  Because I was afraid to not know.  I was afraid to make the “wrong” decision.  I was simply uncomfortable in limbo and unwilling to live with the discomfort. Fears were my “eddie line” separated me from the main current of life.

So, you might be waiting to hear what I have finally discovered that I will do come May 29th.  Me too!  I still have no idea.  I rededicated myself to the path that this entire year is about for me and I am waiting for the direction to emerge.  I am waiting and floating on the river with my heart as the rudder.  And until that feeling of joy and inspiration floods my very being, I am packing one box at a time, I am getting my oil changed, I am putting out requests, I am meditating on the very vision of why I am on this road in the first place:  To discover what makes me happy.  So stay tuned for the next chapter.

6 ways to Empower Others

Starhawk has been teaching all of us about the nature of Spirituality for years.  She has a new book entitled, The Empowerment Manual.  Here are six ways to empower others.  In understanding about being a true leader or teacher and empowering those around you, you empower yourself.

An empowering leader holds and serves a vision broad and deep enough to inspire others and allow them to take parts of it and make it their own. When Rob Hopkins founded the Transition Town movement, his vision was to take the insights of permaculture and ecological design and apply them on a local community level. That was a big vision, far too big for any one person to realize alone. Within it, there was room for many people to step up and realize their own creative ideas and pursue their interests—how to transform a vacant lot into a community garden, how to plant forest gardens in city parks, how to influence policy around water resources or investment in renewable energy. Rob’s original vision called many people into their own power and leadership.

An empowering leader helps the group develop a strategy—a plan for getting from here to there, with milestones and goals along the way.

An empowering leader rarely uses Command mode. Most of the time, she leads by example and persuasion. But when command is called for, an empowering leader will step forward and then step back into a more democratic mode once the need has passed.

An empowering leader also steps back. He doesn’t hog the center or the spotlight, but is always looking for ways to share.

An empowering leader puts the needs of the group first. He thinks about how each of his actions will affect the group.

All of this is, of course, the ideal. We can strive for it, but most of us will fall short in one way or another. An empowering leader makes mistakes. If she doesn’t, she’s probably not experimenting enough. An empowering leader is also a good learner, an experienced and willing apologizer, someone who can make amends and move on.

Keep Power Circulating

The Empowerment Manual Book Cover

Power tends to concentrate, and even the most benevolent and empowering leader may unconsciously begin to hoard power over time. When power becomes permanent and static, the group often stagnates.

Collaborative groups need strategies for sharing power and developing leadership in all group members. To keep power circulating and flowing freely in the group, we can adopt a few key elements in our structure.

1. Limit the Accumulation of Power

We can make agreements that limit how much responsibility any one person can take on, how many committees they can join, for example, or how many aspects of a project they can coordinate. We can break big tasks into smaller roles and share them.

2. Share Roles and Responsibilities
Meetings typically are co-facilitated, so that a powerful role is shared. When roles can be shared, we can also reinforce one another’s strengths and compensate for our weaknesses. A born Grace whose strengths are affiliative might look for a partner who is more of a boundary-setting Dragon.

3. Rotate Roles and Responsibilities
Many roles benefit by being rotated—for example, meeting facilitation. Some roles put people in center stage—media spokes, for example, or convener of a gathering. People who take on those roles get more attention—both positive and negative. Rotating them can spread both the praise and the blame around more fairly.

Other roles are more in the nature of chores that must be done—taking notes at meetings and distributing them, turning the compost, doing the dishes after the potluck. When they are shared, no one person is stuck with an unpopular task.

4. Train and Apprentice
Some roles require training and preparation: facilitating big meetings, keeping accurate books, propagating cuttings in the greenhouse. For the long-term growth of the group, we can create ways that people can learn, apprentice, and be mentored in those skills. And when skills are needed by the group as a whole—for example, communication skills, consensus process skills—the group should devote resources to provide overall training for all its members. It will be well repaid over the long term by improvements in function and by hours and hours of fruitless arguments avoided!

5. Pass Power On
Because roles of power are fluid in collaborative groups, part of a leader’s job is to sense when and how to pass the power on. Power circulates, and we can trust that, when we let go, others will take on the tasks and responsibilities, freeing us up to find new areas of interest and new challenges.

6. Let Go Gracefully
In a ritual, we often drum up a cone of power, bringing the group to a peak of excitement. Drummers, of course, love to speed up and go into a dramatic drum roll—but we discourage them from doing so because then they control the pacing and the buildup of energy (and often get it wrong). Instead, we teach them to hold a steady pace, listen to the group and follow the energy instead of driving it. As the cone rises, the drummers fade back until only voices are left. The voices raise the cone, because everyone has a voice, though not everyone has a drum.

Starhawk is the author or coauthor of twelve books, including The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups, from which this article was excerpted. An influential voice for global justice and the environment, she is deeply committed to bringing the creative power of spirituality to political activism.

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A Change of Heart

Finally I bought the book, HeartMath.  I have known about this amazing institute that has studied the energetic effects, the health changing experiences and the power of the heart.  You have heard me say over and over that one of the most untapped resources for changing our lives and our world is the energy of the heart.  That the electromagnetic field of the heart is far larger than our mind.  And we walk around every day holding this energy in the center of our being.  This one organ is responsible if we live or die.  And yet most of us do not take any time to even consider the heart unless we have heartburn or a heart attack or our heart is breaking.  Cultivating a deep awareness of the heart energy we possess and then responsibly building that energy with our children, our lovers, our friends and with ourselves could be the one way we could make our biggest contribution to changing our world. This is a wonderful article.  I don’t usually reprint other writing but why reinvent the wheel?  Enjoy, learn and then practice.  And the amazing drawing below if one my daughter Jessie Felix did.  Amazing! Blessings, Maya

A change of heart changes everything

A California institute demonstrates how people can actually make their heart beat in a healthier way. Through its research, the Institute of HeartMath proves that health starts with love, and that love can reduce stress. It is a method that is used by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide and more than 100 organizations–from global corporations to hospitals to government agencies and schools. This simple method is changing the world. A report from Boulder Creek, California. Jurriaan Kamp | June 2005 issue All you need is love, sang John Lennon. True, according to most people. The only challenge: how do you create love? A quite startlingly simple answer was found to that question in the redwood forests of Boulder Creek, California, south of San Francisco. Since 1991, the Institute of HeartMath has generated a large body of convincing scientific evidence that it is indeed possible to create love. HeartMath’s research shows that emotions work much faster, and are more powerful, than thoughts. And that—when it comes to the human body—the heart is much more important than the brain to overall health and well-being—even cognitive function—than anyone but poets believed. Its dominance inside the body is now clearly demonstrated. Thinking clearly with your brain is useful. But feeling positively from your heart provides an amazing boost to health and creativity.
Briefly re-experiencing a cherished memory creates synchronization in your heart rhythm in mere seconds. This increases the release of healthy, energizing hormones, while at the same time decreasing levels of damaging stress hormones, at the same time your immune system is strengthened, blood pressure decreases … and health and focus increase. Using a simple prescription that consists of a number of exercises that anyone can do anywhere in a few minutes—the details are coming shortly—HeartMath is successfully battling the greatest threat to health, happiness and peace in this world: stress. Stress is the plague of our time, an epidemic that is spreading rapidly. The World Health Organization (WHO) raised the alarm 20 years ago, but things have only gotten worse. Every day some one million Americans fail to come to work due to stress. The European Union estimated in 2000 that the annual price tag of stress, in the form of healthcare costs and lost productivity, amounts to some three to four percent of the EU’s gross domestic product. Stress is one of the most important causes of high blood pressure, which afflicts one in three adults in Europe and North America and is the cause of many serious illnesses such as heart disease and stroke. Stress also lies at the basis of depression and burnout. “The good news is that the negative effects of stress can be effectively countered more easily than people might imagine. This leads to better performance in every aspect of life. It is therefore a smart strategy for every organization to tackle this source of excessive costs and human strain,” according to HeartMath’s president and CEO Bruce Cryer. That insight has now permeated many companies and institutions. Managers are sent to stress seminars. Yoga lessons are offered at company headquarters. And there are even companies that encourage their employees to take vacations. But these measures aren’t very effective as long as stress continues to permeate the corporate culture. The sense of relief from a yoga lesson or a weekend at the beach is often lost during the first chat with a frustrated colleague at the coffee machine. A successful anti-stress strategy provides results precisely at the moment the stress is experienced. This is what HeartMath does, which is why its client list now includes such leading companies as Hewlett Packard, Shell, Unilever, Cisco Systems, and Boeing. HeartMath was established in 1991 by Doc Lew Childre. Childre had made a name for himself as a researcher and advisor to companies and scientific institutions. With the founding of HeartMath, he embarked on his mission to demonstrate that the heart was central to human health, success and fulfillment. While HeartMath’s techniques emphasize the importance of emotional self-management, HeartMath is no new age phenomenon.
It is a research institute that in the space of nearly 15 years has published a large body of scientific research in established and respected publications such as the Harvard Business Review and the American Journal of Cardiology. Those publications support HeartMath’s central aim of presenting revolutionary scientific discoveries in a solid, “bullet proof” way. It has demonstrated significant cost savings for healthcare organizations struggling with staff turnover, and has shown significant health benefits in an array of studies covering congestive heart failure, diabetes, asthma, and hypertension. As Cryer says, “HeartMath is not based simply on belief. There are proven physiological reactions in how emotion, heart and brain interact.” In other words: HeartMath’s work is kept scrupulously free of the obvious potential for opportunism. Which is admirable given that financing and survival issues have presented tricky challenges for the organization through the years. HeartMath’s location reflects this cautious strategy. The institute is located in a group of buildings on a lovely retreat-like setting in Boulder Creek, a town that is nearly impossible to find among the tall trees of the ancient Californian forests. Stress and Boulder Creek have little to do with one another, I realize, following a drive through the pouring rain. And yet the decision to locate HeartMath here was not so odd. Forty-five minutes down the road is a well-known hotbed of this “modern plague:” Silicon Valley. Research director Rollin McCraty is in his office—a simple study with a huge window looking out over a wooded slope—working on one of HeartMath’s latest initiatives: a computer-driven experiment that shows how the heart reacts more quickly to external stimuli than the brain (see box). HeartMath programs utilize an innovative biofeedback system—developed by founder Doc Childre—whereby your finger or ear is hooked up to a sensor that shows the heart’s activity on a computer screen. The feedback is not a precondition for the result of the HeartMath exercises, but seeing your heart rhythms live on a computer screen makes it easier to convince critics of the favourable effect of positive feelings. Measuring internal feelings using modern instruments is not new in itself. For example, with the help of the electroencephalogram (EEG), it has been proven that meditating yogis produce completely different brain waves than—say—stock traders on Wall Street. But HeartMath’s heart-driven method extends much further than relaxation through meditation. McCraty notes, “Meditation is mainly geared towards consciously separating yourself from the reality around you.
That has totally different physical consequences than our approach, which is geared towards actively adding positive energy to a particular situation.” To measure the heart’s reaction to particular events, HeartMath uses a relatively new concept—one that is currently a hot item in mainstream medicine—as an indicator of a healthily functioning body: heart rate variability (HRV). Research conducted 10 years ago by Dr Andrew Armour of Dalhouse University in Halifax, Canada showed that the heart has its own neural network–in essence, a little brain. HRV—the rhythm of the time period between two heartbeats—plays a key role in that network. It has now been demonstrated that the heart sends signals to the brain and the hormonal system via nerves which carry the heart rhythm patterns. It doesn’t matter so much how many times a heart beats per minute; it’s the rhythm of the heartbeat that counts. Childre, McCraty and HeartMath’s research team have discovered that certain patterns in the heart rhythm correspond to a particular emotional state. McCraty explains, “With every heartbeat, information is supplied that affects our emotions, our physical health and the quality of our lives.” This means that feelings of compassion, love, care and appreciation produce a smoothly rolling—HeartMath calls it “coherent”—heart rhythm, while feelings of anger, frustration, fear and danger emit a jagged and capricious—”incoherent”—image. But this is more than a statistical difference. HeartMath’s research shows that a different heart rhythm leads to other chemical and electrical–even neurological–reactions in the body. Simply put: when people experience love, they not only feel happy and joyful, but they also produce, for example, more DHEA, the hormone that prevents aging, and gives us feelings of youthful vitality. Not surprisingly, a synthetic form of the hormone is currently sold in pill form at drugstores and health food stores. At the same time, the production of damaging stress hormones like cortisol is reduced. High levels of cortisol have been associated with Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, depression and fatigue. By contrast, a “loving body” absorbs less cholesterol, thereby preventing arteries from clogging while boosting production of immunoglobulin A, an important biochemical that boosts immune function. In addition, blood pressure stabilizes. McCraty links this effect to problems many organizations face: “There is a clear connection between healthcare costs and blood pressure levels. When your blood pressure falls, so do visits to the doctor…” And so HeartMath concludes that love is both an emotional and a physical state: positive feelings—like love—generate health. The reverse is also true. Someone who is angry produces less DHEA and more cortisol. And so on. HeartMath’s slogan—a change of heart changes everything—pretty much sums it up. But how do you “change your heart?”
According to HeartMath research, it is much simpler than it looks. McCraty says, “If you consciously shift your attention to a positive emotion, like appreciation or care, or if you allow your thoughts to return to the feeling of a cherished memory, your heart rhythm changes immediately.” This phenomenon continues to astonish the some 25,000 people who attend HeartMath courses each year. Initially, HeartMath utilized expensive medical equipment to measure and display the heart rhythm. But since 2000 HeartMath has offered a “do-it-yourself” equivalent: the Freeze-Framer, an award-winning computer program with an innovative sensor that anyone can install in their computer at home or at work. So far, HeartMath has sold more than 30,000 of these systems. The first time I start up the Freeze-Framer at home and attach the sensor to my finger, a freakish pattern appears on my computer screen (see image). My heart rhythm is all wild peaks and valleys or—in HeartMath jargon—an “incoherent pattern.” I then perform my prescribed exercise. I shift my thoughts to the area around my heart, I visualize that I’m breathing in through my heart and out through my solar plexus (the energy point under the breastbone, above the belly button). I remember a sweet memory with my daughter. I feel the warmth of our contact at that moment… and I see the graph on the computer screen change. The exercise, which I’ve only been doing for a couple of minutes, is quick and effective. The volatile peaks change into rolling hills on my screen. My incoherent heart rhythm has synchronized into a coherent rhythm. And what I can’t see on the line of the graph, but know—from HeartMath research—is that my body is now functioning in a more healthy and wholesome way. The research is convincing. A group of managers from Motorola attended a HeartMath workshop and were tested six months later on the results of their daily exercises. One-quarter of the managers had high blood pressure at the start of the project. After six months, they all had normal blood pressure levels. In another study with Hewlett-Packard managers, the average blood pressure fell from 138/86 to 128/80. This large an improvement is comparable to the effect of losing nearly 20 kilos (44 pounds). A recent study of employees at the food and household products multinational Unilever shows that the production of the favourable hormone DHEA increased by an average of 50 percent after six months of HeartMath exercises and rose to 90 percent after nine months.
The exercises also work for people with chronic diseases. For example, diabetes patients who performed a total of one hour of HeartMath exercises every week for six months scored significantly better on a number of health aspects crucial to them. Another HeartMath study indicates that the savings on health care costs and absenteeism can run up to $ 700 U.S. (540 euros) per employee a year. For a company with 1,000 employees, that would mean a savings of $ 700,000 U.S. (540,000 euros) a year. The fact the exercises are so easy may well be the most promising aspect of the HeartMath system. Bruce Cryer notes, “Time pressure is continually increasing. No matter how good a program might be for them, many people simply don’t take the time to invest in their emotional and physical health every day. People want exercises to take virtually no time, but to yield results. That’s the strength of our approach. You can learn the techniques in five minutes and get positive results if you do them a few times a day for 30 seconds. When you’re on your way to your next meeting, for example. Or when you start up your computer. Or sitting at a stoplight. Or waiting to make a phone call. Or before starting to check your e-mails. By making the techniques simple and quick, you can integrate them into your daily schedule without having to drastically change your life.” Regularly using the Freeze-Framer is particularly helpful in recognizing stress patterns. You gain insight into your own behaviour and the effect of that behaviour on your health. In that respect, the Freeze-Framer works like a thermometer: you get to the point where you don’t need to take your temperature any more to know you have a fever. As a result, it becomes ever easier to quickly correct the experience of stress. Cryer says, “HeartMath’s aim is to eliminate stress. Of course we can’t eliminate stressful events from our lives, but we can change our physiological and emotional response to them. The goal is to teach you to recognize which circumstances create stress so you can change your reaction to those situations. For example, practising a HeartMath technique helps you not to curse if someone cuts you off on the highway, but to react differently. And the most important result is that no damaging stress hormones are released in your body and no damaging comments come out of your mouth that could make the situation much worse.” Is HeartMath the only effective answer to stress? Clearly not. Every walk on the beach is beneficial. The same goes for an enjoyable concert. And for experiences of friendship and love. There are also other promising initiatives with a comparable focus. Ode previously reported on the work of the Italian Amedeo Maffei (see Ode, June 2002) as well as the computer game Wild Divine (see Ode, April 2004). And there are other projects geared towards synchronising the heart and brain rhythms to stimulate favourable biochemical and electrical processes in our bodies. But the strength of HeartMath lies in the convincing evidence of the effectiveness of the exercises and their simplicity. And its approach takes into account the sense of time pressure continually experienced by the stressed target group. Less stress and more health is, of course, enough of a recommendation for following HeartMath’s system. But there’s more: studies show that the electromagnetic field of the heart (which is created by the heart’s electrical system, or electrocardiogram) can be measured from between two and three metres from the body. HeartMath has discovered that if someone has a coherent heart rhythm, it has a demonstrably positive effect on other people in close proximity to him or her (and the reverse is also true). Just think about how you feel in the presence of someone who is appreciative or caring, compared to being close to someone angry or frustrated. That is: if your own heart rhythm is coherent, there is a greater chance that your environment will also behave coherently. That is: the health of your environment starts with your own health. That is: changing the world starts with you. Cryer notes how, “A lot of people feel powerless. Climate change. Poverty. War. Terrorism. There are so many things we could fear in the world.
So where do you start as an individual, when the size of the problems seem so daunting? It is important to know that you can have a demonstrably positive effect on the world. We can change the world, starting with ourselves.” That enthusiasm is behind all the solid research done by HeartMath. This vision also explains why the Institute never opted for quick fixes, but instead preferred building steady proof of concept. Cryer concludes, “It is our mission to help the world change, by helping people change. The root of most of our world’s problems is a lack of emotional management, a lack of understanding, care, respect and compassion. Most organizations and governments are fairly dysfunctional, because their leaders lack skills to manage themselves emotionally, let alone be an example for others to follow. That dysfunction damages the planet every day. We offer tools that are needed to eradicate major challenges and problems and to prevent wrongs.” Those tools help the heart to make love. All you need is love, John Lennon sang. It’s as simple as that.

Waking Up

I woke up this morning , cats perched on my chest purring so loudly who needs an alarm clock.  I had great plans for my day.  The sun was finally out after a few days of torrential rain and I had plotted out my next installment of writing to be done on the screenplay I am involved in, a screenplay that tests my very metal.  I would get up and then reward myself with watching the Golden Globes. So, I got up and did the usual.  Brushed my teeth, fed the now yowling cats, poured a cup of Masala tea and headed to my desk.  But I got waylaid.  Something tugged on my heart from the inner realms and stopped my trajectory toward the computer.

It was a large purple and white orchid I had sitting in the window.  The sun was streaming in behind the  spider veined  petals and they seemed to be lit from the inside out.  Suddenly, nothing seemed relevant at all except to drink in the beauty of the petals and the cosmic design of it’s very unique personality.  No orchid is the same.  No petal the exact mirror or design.  Humans are just like that even if they are twins there is one mole or a different shape to the smile that makes them one of a kind.

Already my day was traveling down a different road.  In the past, I had my list, my “to do’s” numbered one through infinity and would start the day by reminding myself what I was up against and then like my exercise regime, I would just do one rep at a time till I was done.  Sometimes that would take me till after midnight.  But, my life has changed since those days. Living in the flow of life makes living by lists a bit obsolete.  And you may ask, ” If you live in the flow how do you get anything done”.  Well that is truly a mystery.

Somehow, even when distracted from an original intent to sit at my computer and answer emails, and instead sitting with the orchid as it vibrates its neon colors, as the sun pours in the window one minute, illuminating shapes and hues that I have no name for and then a cloud mutes it all into an impressionistic painting, my vibrational frequency rises to the experience.  My field of the heart opens, I am more in a feeling state, feeling my life, I am more joyful and happy.  I am changed for those moments I INTENTIONALLY allow myself to “wake up” to what is right in front of me. To slow down to notice life.  My heart is met with a kind of energetic communication that changes how I hum through the day.  And subsequently, how I hum through my to do list.

I know you.  You and I are very similar.  We each have a habit of thinking just the opposite:  “If I get everything else I need to do today out of the way I will feel satisfied, less stressed, more productive and then I will have the time to sit and really look at the flowers in front of me, the ones that have been there all the time.”  And I am here to tell you that this is an illusion.  When was the last time that really did happen in just that way?  What really happens is we believe the illusion, start ticking away at a list that is filled with not terribly inspiring things like calling the insurance company, taking out the trash, answering emails, vacuuming, that oil change etc etc etc.   And before we know it we have little time left for anything creative, joy filled or contemplative.  Right?  We are simply too busy to be happy.

Well here is the truth.  Somehow, very much a mystery to me  (and the mystery is what makes my life worth living), somehow when I am awake enough in my own body and my own intentional life, and I make the room to let myself be surprised by joy, interrupted by the unknown and the unplanned, then my to do list gets done and then some.  Because you see, when I vibrate at the level of love and joy, I hum along in an open posture to life, not reactive to it and I draw in a total experience of every thing else humming along and vibrating at the same rate I am:  Faster.

Everything is done with efficiency, every call to people who I usually have to struggle with like a credit card person or a tech person for my computer are all in good moods and get the job done for me in a blink.  And I just find myself un-flustered, and just a more pleasant person all the way around.  Then what happens is I draw in more very pleasant people, more inspired experiences, more surprises to throw me off my game on getting things done and I “flow” toward those new and wonderful interruptions to my day….and it still all gets done because I am feeling happy and creative.

“If you want to make god laugh…tell him your plans.”

And there is a caveat to this truth.   Sometimes those interruptions are hard, sad, filled with crisis and a demand to do something that feels entirely unpleasant or unwanted.  A car accident, a friend suddenly dies, a husband cheats with his secretary, a foreclosure, lost job, illness.  These harder aspects to living still require the very same posture.  Move with the flow, feel it all, see the opportunity to be a bigger, better, less reactive you.

And in the contrast of this difficult moment is its opposite:  In the pain there is the joy you would rather feel, in the shock is a calm place inside of you that you can reside, in the anger is a compassion available at all times.  The bumps and bruising of life is only a contrasting experience that reminds us of what we truly do want,  what we are capable of and what we desire.  It is our business and our choice to decide where we focus.  Do we want the pain or the place of relief.

We are in total control of our experience.  If we panic and rush headlong into finding a solution to the crisis we will certainly be met with the same energy; chaos, reactivity and confusion.  If we can take a breath and step out of the crisis for one split second and see the other side, see the beauty of our lives, the design, the people who love us and will give a hug freely, the dog still centered and waiting for you, the opportunity to be a stronger version of yourself, then you will find quickly, the appreciation you have for the crisis and the pain.  It is a choice.  And what’s the worst thing that can happen?  Really?   You die.  Isn’t that liberating.

So. I have yet to do my exercises this morning, make my breakfast and sit to write the next scene.  I am a few of hours behind schedule.  And that’s ok.  I have had such a lovely experience communing with my orchid and my cats and now with you, that my writing will be the better for it.  And about those flowers right in front of us.  Look around.  There are “flowers” blooming everywhere.  Those little faces of the people we love, with children inside of them, that just simply want someone to say, “come out and play”.  Then there are our dogs who need that brushing we have been putting off or that walk with you, without you being on the cell phone, but paying total attention to this being who is the most unconditional love you will ever experience.  Or that clerk at the coffee shop that you have meant to speak to and thank for helping you every day, but you are in too much of a hurry.  The trees blowing in a rhythmic dance outside your window, decorated with singing birds that are there for you to notice and appreciate, the feel the water pouring over of you in the shower, the smell of the roasted coffee in the kitchen, it is endless.

Wake up!  Are you paying attention to everything around you so that you can then FEEL everything inside of you?    The universe supplies you with endless opportunity to stop and smell the roses, hug the loved ones, see, and I mean truly see the sky and breath in this new day you have been given a chance to truly live.  This is the only day you have right now.  The to do list will wait and in fact it will all get done.  I promise.