Vision Keeping

May 18th, 2010:  Focus, Focus, Focus

I’ll bet most people just looking in would think I’m talking about a camera.  And the fact is most people don’t think purposefully about what they are giving their attention to.  We just bop around and are pulled this way and that depending on what is in front of us.   It isn’t in our psyche that we should be careful about what we are taking into ourselves.  But, just like we wouldn’t give our bodies a diet of junk food, we need to pay attention to what kind of diet we are feeding our minds and our spirits.

Basically if it doesn’t feel good focus somewhere else.  Why?  Because how we feel, or how we vibrate so will we attract.  The Law of Attraction.  That which is like unto itself is drawn.  But because this just may seem like such a change from normal functioning most people don’t take this focusing thing on.  It does take effort and commitment.  And unless your life is on the line in some way it may be interesting to think about but not worth changing, literally, your view of the world.

But, and fortunately for me, my life was on the line.  I was seriously depressed after leaving my job/life for 32 years that it was either learn to focus or seriously wanting to end my life.  After hanging around with Abraham (see side panel) and Louise Hay (side panel) I believed that if I changed what I was giving my attention to then I could finally achieve the joy of being that I had always wanted. 

Over the past year I could feel myself gradually emerging.  Still, there were so many times I doubted.  Does this stuff really work?  Will I ever feel really good without crashing again and again and again?  Well, I’m here to tell you it does work.  I have never felt better in my life.  Seriously.  And I can tell the difference between “crashing” and the normal negative feelings life brings up.  Before, I had an underlying belief that I could not sustain being happy.  Maybe I thought I didn’t deserve it, that life is just pain, that this is just the way it is.  Probably a bit of all of that but I have succeeded in focusing myself into a different way of being. 

And the neat thing is that the better it gets the better it gets.  Because I’m feeling good I’m attracting great people to talk with, interesting ideas are occurring to me, I have manifested a community for myself and I am feeling  joy in just “being”.   And another great thing is that there is no ceiling on how good I can feel.  It will just keep getting better.  We are expanding beings and can choose to keep up with the expansion or not.

Actually I don’t think focusing is an either/orthing.  You might begin with not watching television newscasts.  They are the absolutely the worst sorce of bummed out feelings I can think of.  Newspapers too.  The front page.  Forget it.  It’s 95% negative…except when Obama won the election.  I liked that one.

Try developing an awareness of what you are giving your attention to and whether or not it makes you feel good or not.  And if it doesn’t, then consider choosing something else.  That’s a great start.  Just becoming aware of the fact that you have choice.

I’ll never go back.  I’m vigilant about what goes into my focus.  And I take time to purposefully focus on things that feel good.  Focusing positively can and will change your life.  Some of us don’t want to focus for fear of that change.  I get that too.

Hope your week is going well…Love, Connie

February 21st, 2010:  Still Abiding

It’s only been two days since I got back from Chicago.   I believe that seeing Oprah was very impactful for me in ways I wasn’t aware of at the time and there was a place of vulnerability emotionally and through that place of vulnerability rushed some backed up feelings and a somewhat early anniversary reaction to my leaving the agency one year ago…blah, blah, blah.

Could I have a vitamin D deficiency?   I’m going to have my levels checked.  For many medical professionals sadness is something to be fixed.  Even though I had been feeling quite well a week ago, if I say I’m not feeling well, then there is something to fix.  While I have great issues with the medical profession, a quick vitamin D check would be okay.

I’m feeling a bit impatient and I guess I would like to fix me if I could.  I forget so easily everything I know…and this is just since this morning.  In trying times I just have to be with myself more intensely, more compassionately, more intimately.

I was listening to Oprah interview Thicht Naht Han on the radio this morning.  He’s a Buddhist monk who speaks of mindfulness and fully being with yourself in the moment.  He advises embracing the feelings and going deeply into them, and through the being will come the peace.

I’m more into an unconscious pushing away stance…like an arms out pushing.  I am shifting back to putting the arms down or better yet than holding them out in a pushing motion, putting palms up in an opening up motion…embracing.

At times I become my own emotionally neglectful parent.  A little love is okay but anything more is coddling.  Learning to love myself without conditions is a new thing for me but well worth my taking note.  I believe Thicht would agree.

So I will take Dudie (bff dog) for a walk and be with myself in deeper compassion and genuine wanting to invite myself into my own heart…not just an empty gesture but a sincere offer.  I also need to remember to ask my larger self, Source, for help as well.  Guidance, please!

As we enter another week my loving thoughts are with all of us.   Connie

February 16th, 2010:  OMG  Oprah!

I have 24 hours to get my ass to Chicago to be in a taping of the Oprah Show.  God, the drama never ends around that show!  I’ve been trying to get tickets and it’s just been this roller coaster ride and just when I was about to say, Fuck You Bitch, up pops an email saying  you and your guests have 5 minutes to get yourselves to the studio. 

I called a friend who is going with my daughter and me and there is complete silence on the other end of the line.  Like now we have PTSD from the whole thing.  I said, Linda, are you there?  She said…yeeesss!

All my daughter said was, good, you’re paying!!

I have truly manifested something I was needing and I really had asked my Source this morning to help me TODAY.  Now I have something to focus my brains on which will be fun and keep myself off of that hamster wheel in my mind.  OMG, what to wear!

I have to go to my therapy appointment now.  I almost feel like it’s a rip off because I’m in Oprah overdrive and can’t really focus on my pain.  Maybe I can ask for half price since she won’t have to work so hard or we could get into a deep discussion about why I won’t wear a dress to see Oprah or for anyone for that matter.   That could reap some grist for the mill.

I’ll be in Chicago tomorrow night, the taping is on Thursday and I’ll be back that evening.  I know it will be hard for you without my guidance…be brave.

With Love, Connie

February 14th, 2010:  Valentine’s Day Revenge

I didn’t plan to want to take revenge today.  But most feelings are not planned. 

It all started at an indoor bike show yesterday.  Looking at custom bikes I ran into a friend who actually sold me my beautiful Sportster.  We chatted awhile and afterwards I noticed I really didn’t feel good.  I just couldn’t shake feelings of “being stopped” is the best way to say it.  Being stopped and feeling inadequate, shamed.  Didn’t feel good and I was irritated because I had been just feeling so great.  But I went on with my day.

This morning came and with it the same negative feelings.  But morning waking also has a portal present which is a space between sleep and wakefulness through which insights can flow.  I’ve had some of my greatest insights and ideas in the shower.  Anyway, along with remembering yesterday I also got glimpses of other situations where I’d felt similar negative emotions and they were all connected to men.  Bingo!  I’m really steaming mad and the tears just bust through.

But this time I also know that negative emotion is the stuff of creation of something more wanted and feeling much better and I decided to use Abraham”s (see side bar) emotional scale.  Emotions run the continuum from anger, grief and depression all the way up to love and joy.  You can’t go from anger to joy in one move but you can move up the scale to revenge.  Revenge feels much better than anger because there is a sense of power and control.  Now hopefully you won’t act on your revenge and you won’t even be in revenge mode too long but it does feel better than feeling angry and victimized.  Also, once you’ve moved to revenge you are on your way up the scale.  Really this does work.

So, feeling very justified I locked all my perps up, in my mind of course.  I concocted a great plan for them and it did help me feel a good deal better than feeling victimized…which is so unattractive to me.  I may stay in revenge mode until tomorrow or I may move on to just being angry later today and then from anger I can move to frustration and from frustration to hope.  Once I’ve hit hope then it’s an easier ride to belief and then to joy and love.

We do have control of our feelings.  No one else is responsible for them.  Most of us just don’t have practice with using tools to help.  Not to mention that we live in a very blaming culture.  I love the emotional scale.  It can be a powerful tool.

So that’s my Valentine’s Day present.  Get on your way to love, Connie

December 21, 2009:  Connecting with Source Within

 Coming home to the Source within is definitely making a difference with me.   My mornings have a totally different character.  Rather than waking up and bracing myself at some level for the morning’s dismal playground of the mind and figuring out how to do damage control on my own negative self talk I’m beginning to know that it’s time to re-boot with Source.

 At night we return to our non-physical beings and refresh ourselves from being in physical form all day with all of the stresses we place on ourselves.  But waking up entails a focusing into the physical body again…a kind of rebirthing every morning is going on. 

So, with the knowing that I need not judge the process and allow myself to just wake up and re-boot I’m more curious rather than negative.  I woke up this morning and just felt blank…a tabula raza.  I let it be.  Then I began looking for the connection which is a feeling…any kind of feeling.  It’s kind of like looking for breadcrumbs to follow to the connection.  I knew there were tears somewhere in the mix but not strong and I began to journal, listen to some music and wait.

 I think I’ve become really good at not judging my tears at this point because I do know their value as a connection to Source and at least a starting point from feeling blank.  So as I have coffee and just enjoy the luxury, the ability to sit and wait for that conscious connection on a Monday morning, I closed my eyes and in the quiet I felt something, a quickening you might say, or a higher vibration pass through my body from my head down.  It wasn’t mind blowing but it was definitely there and I felt it.  The Connection.  The ramping up.

 I wrote out my intentions for the day and reminded myself that I would look for better feeling thoughts when ever I can today because that process of letting go of whatever is holding you and releasing it to something that feels better, that process is the centerpiece of creation.

 And as I write this I want to really get a good run on that thought and fill it out next time.  Have a wonderful Monday, Brave Ones.

 With Love, Connie

December 16th:  My primary intention for my new life post 32 years at Horizons is to create the life I want by imagining it, and allowing it to emerge by reaching for the knowing that it will, reaching for the feeling that I already have it.

I’ve also told myself repeatedly that I will act only out of inspiration and not out of motivation (see previous entry entitled Inspiration vs. Motivation) and that includes not doing things out of fear or guilt.  I will do things that “fit” for me and that feel good to me and my faith says that what I want will begin to emerge.  Ask and it is given.  I have no set idea of how or when or who or what.  I’ll let the Universe deliver just the right thing and it is really an interesting ride waiting for the next thing to appear.

My blog was an inspiration which has been very satisfying to create and I’d like to announce that a new car has manifested for me!  Yes it has.  It’s not like the fairies brought it in one night and set it down for me.  It was the opportunity that emerged and I acted.

My daughter was in a relatively minor car accident in her father’s old subaru.  She was fine but the car was too banged up to be fixed.  So her dad bought my car and with the money from that exchange I am leasing a new Hyundai Genesis Coupe.  It is a car I have been imagining for years…very sporty, 6 speed manual transmission, sun roof, XM radio, premium sound system, gangsta wheels.  I’m in love.

This tangible dream coming true is just on time.   The dream wasn’t birthed as smoothly as I would have liked.   In retrospect, I felt about getting the car like I felt before I began publishing the blog.  It’s what I really wanted to do and I was very anxious about it to the point of feeling physically ill. 

Now I know that those feelings arise out of “do I really deserve to get what I want?”  “What will other people think?”  Even looking at these questions now they seem ridiculous but at the time they sure had some clout. 

How easy it is to talk ourselves out of our dreams, to discard, to run from them as if they were an unwanted lover.

I’m glad I didn’t run.  I just won’t let myself now.  I know too much.

With Love, Connie

December 15th:  Two days ago I was having an exceedingly bad day and even more frustrating was my seeming inability to not beat up on myself for not being able to pull out of it, just do something for God’s sake.  And all of that is so unattractive.

And then I was thinking well, you create your own reality and if you can’t do any better than this then you’re fucked!

I arrived at my house, home to my husband and 24 year old daughter and went on line to post a blog and noticed I received a comment on a previous blog  from someone I did not know.  That really lifted my spirits and I was very pleased and affirmed that someone had actually found this site out there in cyberspace.  What a gift to me!

Then the three of us went to see Invictus, a movie about Nelson Mandela and the Rugby World Cup series in 1995, I believe.   It is a wonderful movie and extremely uplifting.  It is about your beliefs creating what is wanted.   It is about forgiveness and healing.   It is about a man who knows deeply what it means to be in charge of his own soul.   Just what I needed.

The Universe gave me two special gifts today at a time when I was needing them most and I was reminded of how connected I am to the world around me…intimately connected.  This is a new thing to me having felt so islolated much of the time.  I was reminded that the world around me will give me what I need.  I felt “given to” and was uplifted in that knowing.

Those gifts allowed me to expand into the person that is much more attractive to me, the person that I am becoming.

With Love, Connie

December 3, 2009:  Just do the next thing

 Change your thoughts and you change your life.  This is Louise Hay’s mantra.  I found Louise Hay nearly 3 years ago.  I was on a personal retreat and in a bookstore her face was staring at me and I was taken in.  At that point in my life I believed I had totally tapped out therapy…no more rocks to look under and Louise suggested that I could re program my brain which sounded utterly reasonable to me.

 Louise is also the Queen Mother of affirmations which up to that point I thought were rather too simplistic or something but I was up against an emotional wall and ready to try anything.  So I began my brain reprogramming and one of my first affirmations was “I release all fear and know that I’m am safe in the Universe.”  I must have said this hundreds of times.  Like a soldier in a fox hole waiting for a bomb to drop and saying the Hail Mary, I said this literally night and day for days on end and I began to see results.  I was SOLD.  Louise, please adopt me and take me to your home.  I will do your laundry.

 Louise also says that all you have to do is “the next thing”.  All you have to do is what is right in front of you.  So when I become overwhelmed with life which doesn’t take much- checking email and making 2 business calls, and today having the Walgreens tell me that my insurance had been cut off can easily push me to the edge – and then I begin thinking of what I will be doing or should be doing, or should I sign another lease or how am I going to support myself a year from now, I remember.  Just do the next thing.

 I do believe that my life can and will unfold for me in amazing ways if I can just get out of my own way.

 Looking back on my life everything looks finely orchestrated with the right people the right jobs, the right connections all at the right time.  Now that I have the knowledge base that shows me how this is truly my creation and how things really work, why would I stop believing at this point?

The Universe has my back.  I can so easily forget or doubt that.

 Doing this blog at one time seemed overwhelming to me.  I’m technophobic for God’s sake.  I’m afraid of my laptop and secretly think it stays on “stand by” plotting against me, figuring out how it can totally piss me off and reduce me to impotence as a human being.

 And I want to do a blog?  How the hell is that going to happen?

 But then dear Louise is in my mind saying, “just do the next thing” and so I did.  I talked with my village who didn’t think I was nuts, we played with names, I did a google search, I began writing.  All of this was over a span of weeks, just doing the next thing when it felt right, listening internally for timing, not pushing.

I did the next thing and the blog is up and I’m enjoying it as well.  It’s given me a way to focus more clearly and that helps the creative process.  I’m thrilled if anyone finds this even remotely interesting or even helpful.  It’s helping me.

 With Love, Connie

December 1, 2009:  Ask and it is given…again

Back to this again but it says so much.  Asking implies a need.  How afraid I am at times to need!  I believe we are pretty much all running around trying somehow to avoid needing so we consume things until we have self storage units.  Self storage units when what we are trying to satisfy is the hunger inside of us for love and connection.  And that love and connection is not needed from other people.  It is a hunger for love and connection we seek with our own souls.

 That soft spot inside that will sometimes rather self destruct rather than ask.  And this is the conundrum.  The busier we are organizing our lives around consumption to fill an emptiness or to fill a perceived wanting from our children, the bigger the hunger inside of us gets.  It’s saying, “wrong way, wrong way.”

 I have gone to great lengths over my life to avoid asking and to even avoiding the need that would prompt any asking.  Much of this was unconscious.   Just stay busy, take medication, (which I am not opposed to) shop, talk, read, watch TV., keep those head phones on, those cell phones glued to your head.   Just distract, distract, distract.  That’s a good thing, isn’t it?  Wouldn’t want to feel anything that might be messy or, God forbid, unproductive.

 All to avoid making that step from my soft spot in the heart to yours.  It can be a frightening thing to contemplate.  So the easiest thing is to just not listen to the asking that’s going on from inside.

But I’ve cornered myself in a way.  After decades of tears I think I just may be understanding the persistence of the asking.  That’s the beautiful thing about the soul.  It will not cease the asking.  It just does not give up until the asking is heard, until the call of the soul is answered.

 And so, in that vein, I blurted out to my therapist yesterday very quickly lest I lose my nerve, “I want you to buy me a stuffed animal.”  Jesus, hide me now!

 She was delighted, and immediately pulled out a wonderful bear off of her shelf.  I had not seen this bear but he was obviously waiting for me and now I have Tibbie.  I informed Dudie (bff dog) that he is Mommy’s bear and not a chew toy. 

 I woke up the next morning with Tibbie in my arms and for the first time in months I had no fear.  I asked for him on behalf of the part of me that was too little to know that when Mommy leaves the room and you can’t see her, that she still is there.  What a relief to know she is still there.

 As difficult as it was to ask and as vulnerable that picture of me appears, I swear that this time the gloves are off.  No more hiding, avoiding, running from myself.  My life is on the line here.  No apologies.  Not any more.

 With Love, Connie