Category Archive

A reminder keeps popping up on my phone. “Take the garbage out.” I have; it’s not garbage day. I just keep forgetting to delete the reminder. But this morning the words struck me powerfully. How often do we remember to take our own garbage out, in this crazy busy world?

We have all been doing our part – our own inner work, holding the light, letting go of what no longer serves us, staying in the Observer’s Perch and so on. Our inner work is the foundation of all the rest and the best gift we can give ourselves.

As a veteran of many different and varied therapeutic modalities, many of which I am certified in, I am a firm believer in the importance of doing your own work first. We can’t send “out there” what we haven’t taken care “in here” first. It just doesn’t work.

The world around us continues to become increasingly chaotic.   Remembering that it is a reflection of us allows our hidden “stuff” to come to the surface, so to speak. We are currently doing the work of many lifetimes, and all of that cumulative shadow, wounding and karma are flying to the surface demanding our attention. It may appear that it is all out there but every bit of it is our own individual reflection.

So what do we do with that? We continue to do what we as responsible light beings do: we own our own stuff, take responsibility for our actions and words. Everything we do now must be done with the utmost integrity.   We are told to be the Light. This, this is what being the Light means.

When you see chaos out there, try to remain in the observer’s Perch. Put Love where your gut reaction tells you to feel anger or fear. When you react, catch it and transform the moment.

There can be no question that it is difficult to accept that everything out there is our own reflection, but being proactive instead of reactive at least gives us something positive to work with, right?

Suddenly, taking out our own garbage becomes an act of the Sacred. As we individually take responsibility for our thoughts, our words, our actions, our layers of Be-ing, we begin to transform what we see out there and within ourselves. When we can remember that it is all Sacred, everything changes.

And so I am told:

As children of Light who chose to experience this physical world, it is essential you begin to recognize and accept your own divinity and immortal nature. In doing so, you reestablish the Balance on Earth and indeed throughout the Cosmos. You reestablish, more importantly, your own inner balance. Both are different sides of the same Whole for it is all One.  

The importance of personal integrity cannot be overstated. If nothing else is done, put your attention here for then you shall move mountains. When you need help or direction, ask and it shall be given to you. The illusion of separation and division are fading from the Earth experience but are ever more intense as this illusion demands to be seen and recognized.

The use of mirror as metaphor for self is a powerful tool as you step forward. A reaction to circumstance is merely fear and resistance to growth. Breathe as you are faced with information that precipitates a reaction and ask yourself: Reactive or proactive?? Continue to breathe, utilizing that sacred gift of connection to Source. Breathe into your Heart and allow it to open, filling the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual bodies with Light and Love, which then dispel resistance, fear, and illusion. 

You have been given all the tools you need on the pathway to Conscious Wholeness.

I Yield

Words come now

fragments of heart’s rejoicing as I open,

allow and re-member who I am

Old tattered pieces drift away

unwanted but briefly lamented

like ashes in the breeze

A costume put aside

no longer needed for this part

This is real

as real as this dream can be

There can be no room for the leftover and

unusable

Wonder, hitherto missing,

blinks sleepy eyes at a world gone dark and cold

reminding me that miracles and magic still exist.

Remember this, I hear, a whisper soft and faint. Remember this.

J. Finley

What a difference a week makes. Or a moment. That moment you take to remember to breathe, center yourself and bring it all back to Love.

I find it fascinating that sometimes remembering this is like breathing, automatic and second nature. Other times it is like wallowing in sticky mud and I do mean wallowing.

As a result of my own personal wallowing, I continued to ignore my own personal needs and I ended up sick. Sick in bed sick.   Not fun. At all.

What I really needed to have done instead was simply say “I would love to help you with … but I just can’t right now. Or tomorrow. I have promised myself I would take better care of myself and I am making an effort to do so.”

But I did not. So here I am instead with Kleenex, and cold meds stuck on the couch with legs that need shaving. At least it wasn’t surgery this time, that happened in December.

(Full disclosure warning). I have a very difficult time allowing myself to take care of me. When I am tired, I push on through. If my family needs something, I am there. If a job needs doing, I do it. I don’t like to ask for help so I keep going until I can’t.

More and more frequently, however, I am being shown that I have limits and up until now, I haven’t listened as well as I might have. The surgery in December was a big wake up call and this episode is a reminder that I have to “do” my life differently.

We all do. The old ways of being aren’t serving us anymore. I am sure many of you can relate to my story and others of you have your own version of things that aren’t working anymore. As we continue through this portal into the new world, heartfelt authenticity is the only baggage we can take with us.

Read that again. Heartfelt authenticity is the only baggage we can take with us.

We are so accustomed to “who” we think we are that it can be difficult and uncomfortable to let go of those ways of being that have defined us but now no longer quite seem to fit. We often forget that the rewards of being authentic are worth the uncertainty of letting go of the outworn and no longer useful.

We forget how freeing it is to be filled with possibility instead of limitations, for, after all, don’t definitions of who we believe ourselves to be limit us? Growing up, I was the smart child and my sister was the athletic one. These very labels limited both of us from any possibility of being both or even something else altogether.

I have spent much of my adult life gathering and reclaiming the bits and pieces of me that were accidentally or deliberately lost along the way. And even so, as we are now facing the potential of astounding growth, I am still finding bits that were useful but no longer fit as they once did.

And so I am told:

The caterpillar believes himself to be the finished product. He experiences the chrysalis as death, and yet he is transformed in a way he could not have imagined, predicted or even known he desired. Humankind, indeed, is no different. Transformation is a gift to be cherished and embraced but never feared. Should you find yourself drawn to something new or old and familiar but long forgotten, embrace it and welcome home a fragment of Self. The artist paints with all the known colors of the visible spectrum. Why should your growth be any different? Why limit yourself to only certain shades or palettes? The purpose of limitations is so that you might become aware of them and then ultimately choose to disregard them and see yourself as limitless. Or all the colors of the rainbow. Open your hands and allow the pieces you cling to fall away. As you do, you make room for the multi-colored wings of a butterfly and so very much more.

As I sit down to write my offering, I am really at a loss for anything to write this week. Usually, I have something poking at me that demands to be put on paper but all I can think this week is that I am tired. Between the political circus and my own personal life, I have reached a wall. As my daughter said yesterday, “I am tired of the bad guys winning all the time.” Sometimes it really feels that way.

Now, I know that is not the case, even while it may seem so. As “out there”, so inside. So yes, this all comes back to me and my own responsibility.

What has made me so emotionally and mentally exhausted is not what anyone has done, but my own reaction to these events. Both of these situations have been festering, for lack of a better word, for several years now. I have endeavored to stay focused and balanced, hoping to ride this craziness out and then everything would be ok again.

I believed this even though I knew that the breaking that is taking place is not something we just move past or get over. The old world is breaking because it has to. Its time is over and a new age is beginning. But somehow, deep inside I still hoped it would all work out.

So I toughed it out, being strong for everyone around me. Everyone that is, except for me. My physical body has taken a toll this last year and the universe has provided me with many messages that it might be time for me so stop doing what I am doing in the same old way and regroup. Or maybe just surrender…

How could I possibly do that, I wondered. I am the wise elder, the loving mother, grandmother, friend… I had to keep everyone else focused forward, trusting and having faith with wide-open hearts. I was so busy doing all of this that I completely lost myself. I thought I was taking care of mySelf, but I wasn’t. At least not in the way my Self needed.

During my fruitless attempts to channel something, I found myself worrying about how I was going to have enough energy and physical resources to entertain friends who are coming to visit in March.   It was that moment that I suddenly stopped and asked myself what I thought I was doing. My ego had run amok and I was a willing accomplice!! What a slap up the side of the head and blessed awakening…all at the same time.

And so today I am told:

Dearest one,

You have allowed yourself to be crucified in a construct of your own making. You see that now, do you not? We laugh gently at how hard you have worked to create this trap for yourself, for it is a trap and one easily escaped from when one remembers who one truly is…

You have experienced your perceived outer world as a pendulum at the outer edges of its swing before it reverses course. Similarly, you have experienced yourself as a taut rubber band stretched to the breaking point. What you have perceived “out there” as a pendulum swinging in an ever reaching arc, stretching, stretching, just a little bit more, is an illusion and nothing more, as is your own rubber band. They are only as “real” as you make them.

The intensity of your focus and attention has created a sense that if one looks away one might miss the moment “it all changes.” You have forgotten that it is all Now in this moment of time/space. The “pendulum” is swinging, has swung and will swing again. Or does not exist at all…

Time/space is subjective, you know, and the intensity of your focus makes the process you are “caught” in seem endless while your attachment to outcome creates an emotional and mental response to what you perceive as this never-ending cycle.

Far better for you to forget the pendulum and rubber band altogether and place your attention on something as simple and miraculous as your heartbeat. In the sanctity of your own heart is the simple solace you so desire. Contemplate the joys of your life and let gratitude be your wellspring. Imagine yourself awash in gratitude, bathing every cell of your body. Feel how your body, mind and spirit begin to lighten in this sacred space of immersive gratitude.

How similar gratitude is to love, is it not? For surely we say to you, they are petals on the same flower.

Sometimes the answer is so simple.

“Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the Light.” Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban