Bringing an End to Judgment
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: Musings

Bringing an End to Judgment

When you bring an end to judgment, you bring an end to an entire way of living. This is no small thing. This is a life-changing shift in attitude and behavior. This is a miracle. But how does one perform this miracle? That is the question to which everyone wants an answer. Please, then, pay very close attention to what I am going to tell you now: The way to move out of judgment is to move into gratitude.

Happier Than God Neale Donald Walsch

The Infinite Journey to Conscious Loving
Mood:  amorous
Topic: Musings

The Infinite Journey to Conscious Loving
by Gay Hendricks, Ph.D. & Kathlyn Hendricks, Ph.D.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make a heroic shift out of an old paradigm, the default programming that we’re born into Unconscious Loving to a new paradigm, Conscious Loving. Here’s a quick look at the old and the new paradigms, so you'll know what you're getting out of and getting into.

UNCONSCIOUS LOVING

We repeat the same patterns and problems over and over, and we don’t identify ourselves as the source of those patterns and problems. We spend a lot of time ignoring or recycling the patterns, and expend considerable energy trying to prove somebody else is to blame.

We get defensive in situations where we could get enlightened. Somebody says, "Hey, you’ve got a drinking problem." We reply, "Says who?" They say, "Well, you drove into the driveway last night, ran over the kid’s bike, threw up in the flower bed and peed in your wife’s steam iron." We reply, "Nobody’s perfect, and you're a jerk for ruining my day with your negativity." (Defensive maneuvers: Getting sleepy, bored or tired; getting irritable, hostile or tense; getting fascinated by TV, food, liquor, tobacco, drugs; stonewalling, sulking, withdrawing.)

We have feelings we don't share, or are carrying secrets we haven’t told to the relevant person. (Distinction between secrets and privacy: Secrets are things you hide because you’re afraid of how others would react if they heard them. Privacy is when you keep something hidden because to share it would dilute its personal or sacred nature. Example: For Bill Clinton, Monica was a secret, and the relevant person to tell was Hillary. For Monica, the journal she kept would fit the privacy category.)

We think of ourselves as victims and go back and forth between thinking of others as perpetrators or fellow-victims. In conflicts, we argue from the Victim-Position, casting others as Perpetrators. To resolve arguments, we often join the others in being Fellow-Victims.

Example:

Us: You're ruining my life, you jerk.
Them: No way. You're ruining my life, you jerk.
(Repeat until somebody drops from exhaustion.)
Us: You know what? You and I are okay. It’s the world that’s ruining our lives.
Them: Yeah! Here, have a brewski.

We don’t express our full creativity, and have a variety of reasons, many of which are excellent, why we’re not doing so.

CONSCIOUS LOVING

The new paradigm is built on the earlier foundation described in our earlier books such as CONSCIOUS LOVING. In that book, two principles occupied center stage: The Authenticity Principle and The Responsibility Principle. The Authenticity Principle holds that relationships only flourish when both people speak the microscopic truth. If any relationship problem recycles, look for the significant truth that has not yet been spoken. If the microscopic truth is not spoken (for example, "I didn’t have sex with that woman") a costly and tiresome melodrama usually occurs in the aftermath of the lie.

The Responsibility Principle holds that relationships only flourish when both people take 100% responsibility for any issue that arises. By contrast, most people try to apportion responsibility, which always leads to blame, conflict and power struggles. For example, a repetitive conflict about money only resolves when each person claims full responsibility by asking, "Even if it looks like my partner’s problem, in what ways am I contributing to the perpetuation of this problem?"

EMERGENCE OF THE NEW PARADIGM

Now, two new principles take relationship transformation into a new dimension: The Commitment Principle and The Appreciation Principle. These principles hold powerful keys to an ongoing problem in human relationships: How to free individual creativity while simultaneously bringing both partners into greater harmony.

The Commitment Principle: Every relationship problem is rooted in an overlooked commitment issue, and if this issue is addressed correctly it becomes a springboard to a profound breakthrough in closeness and individual creativity. The principle holds true even if the two people involved in the conflict have been in relationship for decades. It also applies to boardroom as well as bedroom relationships. By analyzing hundreds of conflicts, we discovered that the problem often began with a withheld commitment. In other words, someone (or sometimes all parties) did not fully commit. Once we made this discovery, we worked out a simple way to find where the commitment problem was located and a technique for moving through the impasse rapidly.

The Appreciation Principle holds that relationship problems begin in an "appreciation gap," a specific place where a break occurs in the ongoing flow of appreciation. In the absence of a felt-sense of appreciation ‹given and received, spoken and unspoken) a host of energy-draining problems ensue. After discovering this principle, we designed a simple set of appreciation activities, which anyone can do.

In Conscious Loving, we do things very differently than in the old paradigm:

If a pattern or problem repeats itself, we look for the source of the pattern in ourselves, even if another person looks like the main character in the drama. Example: Even if your partner is the one who’s come home drunk every night for the past sixteen years, the conscious person thinks, "Hmmm, how am I inviting this sort of behavior in my life?" and "Hmmm, who was it that didn’t kick him/her out fifteen years and 364 days ago?"

We commit ourselves to learning, instead of getting defensive, in every interaction. We get skilled at thanking people and the universe for giving us feedback, instead of punishing them. "Thanks for pointing out my drinking problem. From my actions (the bike, the flower bed and the steam iron), it appears I’m out of control."

We make conscious commitments, and hold ourselves scrupulously to those commitments. We commit to things that are within our control, such as telling the truth and taking responsibility, not to things that can't be controlled (promising to love the person always, promising we'll never do it again, etc.)

We tell the truth, and give enough detail so that the relevant other person fully understands. Bill: "Yes, indeed, I had sex with that woman. The first five times were fun and titillating, although I didn’t ejaculate, but the last two times were ho-hum even though I did. I feel guilty as hell and scared you won’t like me."

We take full responsibility for what happens in our lives, and seek out relationships with others who also take full responsibility. In a conscious relationship there are no power struggles because each person takes 100% responsibility.

We commit ourselves to full creative expression. If we're fully engaged in our own creativity, we don't have time to accuse others of oppressing it.

We speak appreciations frequently. Examples: I appreciate you for helping Kevin with his spelling last night, I appreciate the way you look today, I appreciate your sense of humor.

SUPER-CONSCIOUS LOVING

We’ve found that it’s possible to take a rapid ride to hitherto-unimaginable relationship heights by adopting one very radical concept and practicing one very simple technique.

The Concept

Stop focusing on problems, difficulties and issues for a period of time (a month is a good period of time to start with) and instead, focus only on expressing appreciations to your partner (or to anyone else you want to be close to, such as children or co-workers.) At the end of the period of time, you can always go back to focusing on problems if you want to. However, most people find that expressing appreciations clears up even long-standing, recurring problems that nothing else has budged.

The Technique

Step One
Choose a heartfelt commitment to making the expression of appreciation your top creative priority. In other words, choose to regard thinking up and delivering appreciations as your highest art form. A year or so ago, I (Gay Hendricks) chose appreciating Katie as my highest priority art form. Until then, I regarded my writing as my highest priority art form. I decided to put as much time and energy into noticing things I appreciate about her, thinking up ways to appreciate her and delivering appreciations to her as I did to my writing. To my delight, our relationship took a quantum jump (it was already great!) to absolutely transcendental. To my great surprise, my writing became even more fun and productive.

Step Two
For one month, put your focus on one major activity: Think up and deliver appreciations as often as you can, but at least ten to twenty times a day. Focus mainly on verbal appreciations, appreciation-by-touch and telepathic whole-body appreciations. Use material appreciations sparingly if at all.

At the end of the month, evaluate the level of positive energy that’s flowing between you.

© The Hendricks Institute.

Power Lounging

Power Lounging
by Gregg Levoy

Last year I saw a movie called City of Angels. In the opening scene a little girl dies in the emergency room of a hospital and the camera slowly pans away from this scene until we're looking down a long corridor in the hospital, with a light at the far end. The little girl is walking down the corridor, toward the light, holding hands with an angel played by Nicholas Cage.

Halfway down the hallway, the angel turns to her and asks, "So, what did you like best about it?" Meaning life. And the girl says "Pajamas!"

I've posed this exact same question to several thousand people in the last few years in my "Callings" workshops. I've asked them to imagine that they're walking down The Corridor toward the proverbial light, holding hands with an angel-----or with Nicholas Cage if they prefer-----and the angel asks them what them liked best about it. And not one person has ever said work.

They say good food, they say walking along the ocean, they say love in all its manifestations. They say laughing out loud, music, gardens, skiing down a mountainside, the thrill of creativity, the sheer physical beauty of the Earth, and someone usually says chocolate. But no-one has ever said work. And I have to assume that in a roomful of 100 or 200 people some of them do love their work. But no-one ever says work.

And yet, most of us----myself included-----spend the vast majority of our days on Earth working. If you live to be 90 years old, you'll spend 30 of those years sleeping, and of the remaining 60 years, you'll spend 30-40 of them working-----and a lot more if you define working broadly to include all our doing and achieving and pushing and juggling and busyness and trying to make those confounded ends finally meet and running from one intensity to another and another and going at warp speed most the time.

We refer to our work as our occupation, but we forget the double-entendre of that word occupation: it also means to be taken over, as in an occupied country. But we like being occupied, even as we complain about it. When we say, "I am so busy!" there's just a whiff of self-congratulation in there, a bit of quiet admiration for ourselves, even if we're keeping ourselves so busy that we're in danger of flaming out.

But even Sisyphus was granted a rest once in awhile. Sisyphus----whom I consider the patron saint of workaholics----is the guy who was condemned by the gods to push a huge boulder up a mountain, but just as he reached the summit, it would roll all the way back to the bottom, and he had to start all over again----the archetype of endless and futile effort.

The true instruction of Sisyphus' life, though, in my opinion, is that every time his grindstone rolls to the bottom of the mountain, he is granted a rest while he walks back down to get it. According to the myth he has to work for all time, but he doesn't work all the time.

A HIGH COST ITEM

Part of what we're up against in letting go of the grindstone is exemplified by something Tom Peters wrote in his book In Search of Excellence. He said that excellence is a high-cost item and you must give up things to achieve it. And what he said you had to be willing to give up for career and material excellence is "family vacations, Little League games, birthday dinners, weekends, lunch hours, gardening, reading, movies, and most other pasttimes." In other words, many of the activities that make life enjoyable, keep you out of divorce court and away from the doctor, and lend life some modicum of balance and grace. A lot of the activities that you're going to be telling the angels about when they ask.

What Peters calls excellence, though, is just another word for workaholism----which, broadly speaking, is simply the compulsion toward busyness. A job, in other words, is definitely not the sole focus of workaholism. You can work yourself silly----and sick----at just about anything: caretaking, ministering, housework, socializing, retirement, vacations, spirituality, saving the world, childraising, and increasingly just being a child. And then we wonder why our obituaries look like nothing more than posthumous resumes.

KAROSHI

I was travelling in Mexico some years ago, and one afternoon I watched an eagle dive-bomb into the water of a bay in the Sea of Cortez and thrash around violently on the surface. He'd rise a little and then get yanked back down, almost underwater sometimes, by some unseen force. This went on for nearly a minute. Finally, he rose up with a huge effort, clapped his wings loudly on the surface, and lifted a fish out of the water that was almost as big as himself.

I know for a fact, though, that the outcome of these contests isn't always predictable. Sometimes the fish dives and takes the eagle with it. I recently read the story of a fisherman who caught a halibut that had two eagle claws embedded in its back, the rest of the bird having long since rotted away.

We, too, can sometimes be tenacious to the point of self-destruction, can sometimes take on too much and be pulled under by it. In a short story by Leo Tolstoy called "How much land does a man need?" a man is given the opportunity to own as much land as he can run around in a day. So the man runs and runs and runs and at the end of the day, having run himself to a complete frenzy, he collapses and dies of exhaustion, proving that all the land this man needed was about six feet by three feet.

The amount of land there is to run around, the amount of work there is to do in life, is inexhaustible. We, however, are not. And it's imperative to know when to stop, how much is enough, how much is too much, and when to say "Enough is enough!"

The Japanese have a word for what Tolstoy's character experienced: "karoshi." It means "death by overwork"----and you don't get a word like that in your language unless there are a few statistics to back it up. And whether you love your work or not, workaholism has all the earmarks of an addiction----trying to control life, anaesthetizing yourself. The experts just call it a process addiction instead of a substance addiction.

But even if all your works are good works, even if all your busyness is in the service of worthy and noble causes, when the means to those ends is an addictive process, the end result is a loss of soul and a depletion of spirit. In other words, you can violate your own true nature as readily by overworking as you can by refusing a calling altogether.

THE SPIRIT OF SABBATH

A few years ago, I decided to take a sabbatical. Or perhaps it was decided for me. I had just finished my first book, after 15 months of 12-hour days, and reached a point of burnout, which is usually what it takes to get me off the hamster-wheel. Some kind of meltdown, some experience of being drop-kicked into consciousness. And having reached that point, I took the spirit of Sabbath and extended it to outlandish proportions by taking four months off, living off savings, and for a relatively brief period there in the middle of my work-life seeing what it would feel like to simply not work! To make time for the kind of creative idleness that an acquaintance of mine calls "power lounging."

What it felt like was a head-on collision----the car stopped but the passenger didn't----because a lifetime of working sets up a tremendous momentum that doesn't end just because the work ends. And this is what set the tone for the first half of my sabbatical: an absolutely maddening restlessness that routinely propelled me back into my office----despite my policy statements to the contrary----in a kind of trance state. And this is precisely what we're dealing with here: a trance of monumental proportions. And if trying to reprioritize your life feels like you're pushing a boulder up a mountain, it's because the workaholic trance is not just a personal trance, but a cultural trance, and increasingly a worldwide trance.

The whole Protestant Work Ethic, in fact, is a kind of trance----the idea that hard work and material success will earn you the key to the cosmic washroom, or secure you a place in heaven, among God's elect-----which is absolute horse-puckey. Spirit can certainly come through one's work, but you don't work your way to heaven. Heaven is not Studio 54, with God standing on a platform outside the club picking only the successful and the cute and the rich people to get in.

The fact is, there is a juggernaut of a machine in the boiler room of this culture that pumps out a very powerful and insistent message: "Work!" Value adheres to what you produce and you are what you do, and if you're not doing something then you're not of value. So we're constantly doing something.

And when you're busy doing you don't have to be busy feeling; feeling that maybe you're burned out, or you need a change, or your heart isn't in the work anymore, or that work itself, which normally gives you a sense of control over your life, has instead made your life feel like a parody of being in control, like you're frantically trying to shovel coal into a furnace that 's burning it up faster and faster. Working in that condition is like bitten by a rattlesnake: you panic and run and work harder and harder and it only causes the poison to travel faster through your system.

VEGGING OUT

I've learned in my own work-life that motion is not necessarily progress or productivity, any more than noise is necessarily music. People use the term "vegging out" to describe not doing anything, just hanging out, taking it easy. But I learned something important a few years ago about the absurdity of equating vegging-out with inactivity, if not uselessness:

Off the coast of French Guiana, on the Atlantic side of South America, is a place called Devil's Island, which used to be the world's most notorious penal colony, a place where the French sent men they wanted to disappear. Ten years ago I visited that island, about 40 years after the prison was closed down and abandoned, and in that time the jungle had almost completely reclaimed it, torn the buildings limb from limb with its vines and roots, and rotted the iron bars clean through with its humidity. In barely 40 years it reduced that prison to rubble.

When I think of the term "vegging out" or "vegetative state," this is clearly not a description of not being productive. A vegetative state is a very productive state, the vegetable section of the supermarket is called "produce," and "vegging out"----doing nothing----can also be a very productive state, especially if we're talking about work addicts, or anyone trading off health for productivity. For them, not-working is definitely progress, because when you're standing on the edge of a cliff, progress can be defined as taking one step backward!

A FRIENDLY UNIVERSE

The brute fact is that taking this step backward is much easier said than done. But I don't think it's more work that's going to help us feel secure enough to do it; reaching some ideal state of security and achievement. It's a little more faith, a little more trust.

This may simply be trust in your own ability to survive and adapt to working less, or it may be the kind of trust that Albert Einstein was referring to when someone once asked him, "Of all the questions you've posed about the mysteries of the universe, which question do you think is the most important?" And Einstein responded, "Is the universe a friendly place or not?"

How you personally answer that question may determine your willingness to trust in life enough to occasionally unharness yourself from the plow and let yourself just wander in the pasture and graze. And the act of stepping away from the plow is an act of trust, a way of communicating to your own soul that you have faith in its intimacy with the creative force of life.

It's also a way of acknowledging that half of success is simply noticing it! Stopping long enough to notice it, to partake of it, to understand and act on the knowledge that life is meant to be savored and not just worked at.

© Copyright Gregg Levoy.  All Rights Reserved

Your Posture, Your Attitude and Your Health

Your Posture, Your Attitude and Your Health
by Tara Caroselli

Transformation can be achieved once we have awareness.
We can change anything. It is within our power to change
because we have freewill to make choices.

Self Observation Assists in Awareness and Transformation

Lets take a walk together and have a look at ways we may be holding undue stress in our bodies. Often it is our habits that do not support our ease of movement and overall health.

Below is a checklist. Do not to be critical of yourself. The idea is to self-observe and become aware of what is going on in your body. Have you ever noticed any of these actions? What messages are we receiving about the actions we are performing that are not working for us?

• Do you experience numbness anywhere in the body? Neck, arms, hands or feet?

• Do you stand with your knees locked straight?

• Do you have tension in your neck and shoulders at the end of the day?

• Do you walk leading with your head? Is the rest of your body just coming along for the ride?

• Do you get headaches?

• Do you have a hump at the base of your neck and at the top of your spine?

• Do you stand or sit with your arms crossed? Legs crossed?

Posture is our inner attitude reflected outwards to the world.
Change your attitude; Change your life.
Change your posture; Change your world.

Emotional Beliefs about ourselves, which may not necessarily be true, is an example of the way our inner attitudes can affect us. What the mind thinks, the body does. For example, "People will like me if I am shorter. I don’t want to stick out so I will try and be small."

Flight or Fight is another inside and outside influence. Our bodies are not designed to hold these modes for long periods of time. Short spurts of action and adrenalin are fine. We are designed to run from the saber tooth tiger when necessary. But once the chase is over, we are to let go, shake it off and relax.

If we are in a flight or fight mode and we do not drop it and get back to neutral, we then carry that tension into our next task. This holding is called "Stress." We have all heard about how stress affects us overall and wears out our bodies.

Breathing is another thing that is affected by flight or fight. When in this mode, our breathing becomes shallow and we get only small amounts of oxygen--not a lung full, which would be optimal for the body to function at its peak. Oxygen is one of our major life forces.

We don’t have to hold onto tension. We can get into a neutral zone where we do not react to everything around us. We respond instead. We respond with ideas, solutions, and right actions. We do not have to take the stress on. We have a choice. We are not victims of our environment. We have freewill.

Our posture is the silent message we give to people on how we see, relate and interact with the world around us.

Posture has become a dirty word. We hear all the old voices saying, "Sit up straight." Or "Sit back in you chair."

We were born with natural balance and poise. Over time, we can lose this by misusing our bodies, or holding on to inside and outside influences. Transformation comes from the release of old behavior habits and compensations. We were born with natural balance and poise, and we can regain it again.

The human body is a miracle. It seeks out balance and healing from the minute we are born. We just have to get out of the way.

The importance of good posture is a thousand fold.

• Good posture allows free movement of energy, blood, nerve impulses, and oxygen. This, in turn, assists the body to work more efficiently and heal more effectively. Good Posture allows our inner body to be free of blocks and tension, to assist in optimal health

• Good posture is a fluid adjustment of the moving body, through a changing environment.

• Good posture is a fluid action where the body is moving in union with all the other body parts with out holding onto stress. The body is always seeking balance and self-healing.

Natural balance, poise and ease of movement are our birthright. Only when we become aware, can we change things. We had it once, we can have it again.

Copyright © 2002 by Tara Caroselli. All Rights Reserved.

Get the Monkeys Off Your Back!

Get the Monkeys Off Your Back!
by Robin L. Silverman

When you were little, you probably made a lot of wishes. So did I. Unfortunately, it always seemed to be a hit-or-miss proposition: sometimes they came true, but often, they didn't. So when I became an adult, I decided to see if there wasn't a way to smooth out the process and make it more reliable. By reading and experimenting with a combination of spiritual and scientific practices, I found that there are a few "secrets" that may be of use to you now.

Are you walking around with a monkey on your back? Most of us are. "Monkeys" are worries, regrets, anger and guilt that never keep quiet and refuse to sit still. They are born from the more than 50,000 thoughts each of us think each day, largely about things we cannot control, do not wish to see happen, won’t have time to experience or can’t let go. When it comes to mind and spirit self-improvement, monkeys are what hold us back from thinking clearly, reaching our goals and feeling more peaceful.

I know a lot about mental monkeys because I often feel like I am carrying around an entire zoo. "Go here!" one screeches. "No, go there!" another insists. They chatter on about my weight, my undone laundry and the garden I haven’t started. Depending on the day, the setting or whoever’s present in the room with me, they may remind me incessantly that I’m about to miss a deadline, a train or an important piece of the conversation because I’m still stewing about something someone said a dozen years ago.

Mental monkeys, unfortunately, sabotage all other self-improvement methods. If I set the alarm clock to work out, I hear, "I don’t want to get out of bed." If I try to meditate, they start talking about breakfast and the staff meeting at 10:00. Even trying something as simple as watching my breath is a challenge, since they’ll laugh and say, "You’re not doing it right!"

I’ve done my best to get rid of my monkeys, but it’s not so easy to do. No one else wants them. Have you ever seen the eyes of your friends or your co-workers glaze over when you try to give them some of what’s bothering you? I’ve tried ignoring my monkeys, but they just pop up in the middle of the night and, like infant children, scream until I’m awake enough to feed and comfort them. Soothing them with positive thoughts is only a temporary salve for their restlessness. Counseling silenced a few, but in time, their places were filled with new monkeys. I’ve thought about choking them more than once, but somehow that feels as if I’m suffocating a part of myself. I know lots of people who are carrying around dead monkeys on their backs, and they’re not happy about it.

Ultimately, I’ve come to realize that when it comes to mental monkeys, there’s only one thing to do: play with them. When I do, something very interesting happens. They stop annoying me and start adding tremendous fun and energy to my life. When they call out one of their usual negatives, I simply answer, "Well, what do you want to do instead?" The answer almost always turns out to be something that increases my personal freedom, helps me to grow, or brings me a moment of joy.

When I get my monkeys off my back and hold them close to my heart, I find that they are actually very loving little creatures loyal to my happiness and well-being. Here’s an example. One night after dinner, I headed for my computer for a few more hours of work. A monkey piped up right away: "You shouldn’t be doing that!" I knew within half an hour, he would make me feel heavy and tired, killing both my concentration and my enthusiasm for the project. Instead, I let him lead me to an hour of snuggling in front of the television with my daughter. We all had a few laughs, and I when went back upstairs to do the work, he whispered all kinds of funny, inspiring things in my ear that I knew my readers would love.

The older I get, the more I realize how important monkeys are and why it’s actually a good thing that we all have them. Life is uncertain, which tends to make people very serious about it. Hugging a monkey won’t get rid of your illness, your financial problems or your relationship woes, but it will make your heart and arms stronger and your spirit a little lighter. Once in a while, it will free up a solution that’s been caged behind a wall of misery. When that happens, monkeys feel like miracles.

Hugging your monkeys is like playing with an adorable toddler who loves you unconditionally. It allows you to forget what you think you have to do or be. Hugging a monkey makes anything possible. Ironically, monkeys are sometimes the only way to get to the relief your mind and spirit have been craving.

Want to try it? The first thing to do is recognize when you have a monkey on your back. There are many ways to know for sure. One is to look at the scale. Are you carrying the weight of the world—or a monkey—on your shoulders? I often find that when I’m feeling stressed, it’s because a worried or fearful monkey has jumped on board. If I’ve gained two or three pounds overnight, I can almost guarantee that I’m carrying a monkey.

Another way to know if you’re carrying a monkey is to see if you can hear your own thoughts. When my mind is racing, it’s usually because a monkey is chattering away. Another way to tell is to listen to what is coming out of your mouth. If suddenly my comments turn negative or nasty, I probably have a misbehaving monkey somewhere.

A third way to tell if you’re shouldering a monkey is to check how tired you are. Some monkeys are very heavy, and will wear you out after a few hours. If you’re normally perky and suddenly find that you’re yawning all day, you can bet that a monkey has something to do with it. Nightmares, upset stomachs, chills and other symptoms of upset can also mean that you’re carrying a monkey. Learn to listen to your body, and you’ll know when one is hanging around.

You can also tell if you have a monkey by looking around at the conditions of your environment. Monkeys are messy little things. If you have clutter everywhere or experience embarrassing moments that are akin to slipping on banana peels and falling flat on your butt, chance are good that some monkey is banging on your head.

Once you’re sure you’re carrying a monkey, the trick is to get it off your back and go face-to-face with it. Don’t try to scare it off or ignore it. Monkeys may retreat temporarily, but they almost always come back noisier and hungrier than before. Instead, ask it what it wants. You will usually find that its requests are something your soul has been craving, like love, freedom, joy, growth or peace.

Once you know, ask yourself, "What can I do right now in this moment to experience that?" This instantly engages and improves both your mind and spirit. Look around, and you will undoubtedly see an opportunity. Grab it.

Come fully awake as you’re doing it. Experience it not only with all five of your senses (note: if you’re not eating anything, see if the moment has a "flavor"), but with your sixth sense, intuition. In other words, don’t just live the moment; feel it. Let its pleasure make every cell of your body come alive. Praise it with words like, "This is fun!" or "I’m happy to be with you." Listen as the new, brighter belief escapes from your mouth. When it does, see if you have more energy, more hope or more genius insights about your life. Realize, too, that the vibration of sound is extremely powerful. Our creator spoke the world into being: "Let there be light." When it appeared, it was blessed, "This is good." The source did not curse it with, "Oops! Forgot the land and the water!" So remember: take notice of the good you’re experiencing. Energize it with spoken words of praise or gratitude.

Then watch what happens when the moment is over and you "return" to the problem that caused the monkey to squawk in the first place. Chances are good that it has either diminished, disappeared or been delegated to someone else. Trouble has a hard time sticking to happy people. This leaves you room to approach whatever is yours to do with a more relaxed attitude, opening the flow of energy so you can receive not only your own insights and wisdom, but attract that of others.

Here’s an example. Let’s say your monkey tells you you’ll never get a raise or a promotion at work. Instead, it wants to make more money and have more fun.

You look around. It’s almost 12:30, time for lunch. You could work at your desk through the lunch hour, but you’d done that dozens of times before, and hadn’t received a dime extra for it. So you head for the door. On the way, you see your favorite co-worker, and ask her to go with you. The two of you spend an hour laughing and telling stories.

When you get back, you receive an Email from the boss talking about how people have been coming in late. Ordinarily, you’d be annoyed by this. But now, fresh from play, you find yourself offering the suggestion that instead of complaining or threatening, that he try giving each person a feather to glue on a huge sombrero each day they make it in on time. If the hat is covered within 30 days, he promises to wear it to work for another 30, providing that everyone still comes in on time. In fact, you say, you’ll lend him the one you wore at your child’s birthday party. Within 60 days, the department has a new habit, you have some great pictures for the company holiday party, and you suddenly find that people start talking about you as a possible manager.

So if you want to improve your mind, your spirit and your life, take the monkeys off your back and give them a hug. Let them bring you into the present so you can spend a few minutes or hours enjoying the life that is already yours. When you do, you’ll likely find, as I did, that some of the things you worried about or regretted simply slipped away when you took your attention off them. That leaves you room to welcome the wonderful thoughts, hopes and desires that you’ve held back for too long. Listen to those, and your monkeys will be happy to hug and play with you for a long, long time.

© Copyright Robin L. Silverman.

Writing and the Cosmic Shopping Mall

Writing and the Cosmic Shopping Mall
by Emily Hanlon

Writing from the creative unconscious is like walking into a cosmic shopping mall where each shop offers a different persona for us to try on, actually a different way of being in relationship to ourselves and the world. The only means of exchange in this cosmic mall is exuberance, fearlessness and a desire to share and be shared. Oh, and there’s a key to the mall, too. We all have it in our pocket when we arrive, even if we don’t know it’s there. The key is a desire to break out of the box of who we think we are, who our families think we should be. It is a desire to fly in a place that, as John O’Donohue says, “is full of the most melodious and nourishing and wild freedom. And everyone should go there, to the wild place, where there are no cages, where there are no tight rooms without windows and without doors, everyone should go to the free clearance places in their own hearts.”

And so, with our keys, we enter the mall. There, in every window we see amazing costumes. Here there is a multi-colored cloak of the finest silks, feathers and gemstones. The price: a desire to shine. Here there is a hat that reaches the clouds and is made of glittering stars and moons floating in what seems to be space itself. The price: a desire to expand consciousness. There are shops with nothing but wings: dragon wings, fairy wings, butterfly wings, lace wings, velvet wings, silk wings in all colors known and unknown. The price: a desire to fly. The shops go on and on, for they are as cosmic as our creative potential. And what is even more amazing, is that just the perfect shops show themselves to you as you walk by.

I believe each time we return to this cosmic shopping mall, we find different shops… shops beyond persona, shops of beauty, depth and mystery that we weren’t ready to see when we first arrived. Our eyes and our hearts were not open enough. We were not ready to allow our spirits such freedom of expression and flight. But amazingly, as time passes and we integrate these new parts of self into who we are, we see that there was no shopping mall at all. That we never had to pick or choose – all that magnificence was inside us all along!

As creative women and men, we are at home in such mystery; we carry those rhythms, colors and songs inside ourselves. Once this becomes part of our consciousness, we are on a path from which there is no looking back.

© Copyright 2009 Emily Hanlon. All Rights Reserved.

Moon Times Jan Newsletter
Mood:  happy
Topic: archive newsletters

 

Subject: News from Moon Times;  News and SALE!! Products …. Please forward this newsletter to any friends, family or colleagues who may be interested!

www.moontimes.co.uk

Hi Ladies, This is a short newsletter just to highlight our Sale Items and let you know that Rachael gave birth to Dorothy Grace on 11th Jan (10 days late!) she was a healthy 8lbs 13oz- 4kg! We are slowly getting back in to the swing of things and managing to process orders within 7 days of them coming through. We are also phasing out the velcro fastening pads- replacing them with the press stud fasteners…we do have some velcro ones still in stock…if you specifically want some send us an email and we will let you know what we have left. Sale Items Earth Pathways Diary 2010. Spiral-bound. 21cms x 15 cms £10.99 or 2 for £20 http://www.moontimes.co.uk/shop/onsale/earth-pathways-diary-2010/ Moon Cycle Calendars Moon Phases for 2010- UK edition http://www.moontimes.co.uk/shop/onsale/mooncalendars/ plus teas, smudge sticks, some pads…check out the Sale Section http://www.moontimes.co.uk/shop/category/onsale/ I am finishing with a quote from The Pill book and a poem by Pam Chubbuck…. Take care, much love The Moon Times Team xxx

The Pill Book http://www.moontimes.co.uk/shop/books/the-pill/ “In Native American tradition there’s a beautiful saying that at her first period a girl meets her wisdom. Through her menstruating years she practices her wisdom, and at menopause she becomes her wisdom.” From The Pill: Are You Sure It’s for You? By Alexandra Pope and Jane Bennett, published by Allen and Unwin Blood time by Pam Chubbuck Finally ... Squatting ... Hovering over the moss ... I watch my blood Slowly drip onto the earth ... Drip Drop A glob of red ... I watch as I have never watched before... My blood. I breathe ... Smell the smell of it ... Fresh ... Alive ... Different than on a pad, old and brown... Or held within me ... Plugged up Inside Never to be seen Felt Acknowledged Flowed Celebrated Or allowed to be my teacher ... I see the inner juices of my body There on the living moss ... Soft Green Spongy, as I step Or sit or lie upon it ... Like the inner Uterine tissue lining - bed Which creates The possibility Of Spirit ... To take hold And turn to flesh. Blood Trickles slowly down my inner thigh ... I watch ... Time stands still Marked only by Drops of crimson as they hit the earth ... I enter dream-time ... The altered state of Blood-time ... This blood ... My blood ... Speaks to me ... Come into me And dance the dance of life It beacons ... You are Dancer Woman Powerful ... Fresh ... Feathered Hawk Woman ... Bleeding Time Woman ... I have mysteries To tell ... And power to unfold ... Listen with your heart ... Your blood pump of life ... As it moves The saline mother of all fluid ... Blood of passion ... Through your womanly body ... Come into me ... My blood calls ... I hold all things ... Known and unknown ... Come! See, feel, taste, smell ... Rejoice in! The secrets of your woman blood ... Pam Chubbuck is the author of Passages Into Womanhood: Empowering Girls to Love Themselves; What My Mother Never Told Me About Bleeding and Other Essential Stuff: Poems to Amuse, Enlighten, and Empower Women; and an audio book; Woman Spirit, a menarche myth, as well as several other books and articles. Passages Into Womanhood www.PassagesIntoWomanhood.com

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announcing the birth of Dorothy Grace
Mood:  happy
Topic: Positive News!!

The Soul Loves Intimately
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: Musings

The Soul Loves Intimately

The soul loves intimately, but the self is shrouded in fear. The soul knows that all things are facets of an infinitely faceted divine singularity; that each face you meet is, in fact, a unique expression of God. The self insists otherwise, mistaking each facet of God as a being separate from God and everything else, and envisioning a scarcity-driven, zero-sum world of competing selves forever condemned to a fearful and anxious existence. It isn't the soul that needs to hear the message of love, but the self. It isn't heaven that needs to be transformed by love, but earth.

"Why Angels Have Wings" Rami Shapiro

Shine Your New Spirituality Light
Mood:  bright
Topic: Musings

You are the light of the world. Do you not know this?

Everyone is, when they choose to be.

A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bushel. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.

In the same way, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and praise the beliefs which have sponsored them.

By this means you can help others span the chasm between yesterday and tomorrow, and close the gap between the comfort of tradition and the necessity of innovation.

For the world must now invent itself anew. Yet honor the past as you envision the future. Do not completely reject old beliefs, nor require anyone else to. Enlarge upon them, alter them where alteration seems appropriate, and invite others to do the same.

Let your New Spirituality be not the rejection, but the fulfillment, of all that your old religious laws and your ancient prophets have promised you. And when others ask what you are doing, say: Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.
The New Revelations
Neale Donald Walsch