Vision Keeping

January 15th, 2010:  Happy Birthday

Today is the 25th Birthday of my daughter.  She has been the greatest single teacher of my life.  This week there is much to celebrate because she is taking steps towards manifesting her dreams and that makes a mom happy.

I remember being terrified in my early twenties because I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life.  She has had her share of anxiety about her future.  In a way things have been more easy and more difficult for her.  More easy because she has parents who are willing to be patient and trusting in her process even when she doesn’t and providing a safety net for her.  More difficult because there are many more choices for her than there appeared to be for me.

It was assumed that I would go to college, perhaps graduate school and find a ‘professional career.  There was never any doubt about my education.  Daughter Meredith was a different story.  She had about 2 and 1/2 years of art school before calling it quits and then time working at non traditional jobs where she felt she could keep her sanity.

She taught me to be patient and to trust that she could and would figure out what her passion was and allow it to lay a course for her.  There were times when I had fears about my parenting…should I have kicked her out?  Was I making it too easy on her?   All fear based thoughts and feelings on my part.  I watched as my friend’s children finished college, found great, well paying jobs and are standing firmly on their own.  My baby was at home still germinating.

I continued to remind myself what I believe.  And that was that my path as well as her path would reveal itself as we are ready.   I had to keep telling myself that she was not the only hold out in the Universe that would prove this wrong.

And so let the celebration roll today, the day of the 25th anniversary of her entrance into this world.  Her pathis lighting up for her.  She’s happy.  Mom sure is happy too.  We will both create the lives we want.  2010 is looking good.

With Love, Connie

January 13th, 2010:  Kissing the Ground

I’m continuing to dance with Rumi’s words, “Humans are not for seeing distances.  In one hundred ways, I kneel kissing the ground.”  I’m moving in on being in the present moment, kissing the ground.  I know that the more I can do this my need to control the future will disappear.  Those two vantage points can’t co-exist.

Living in the present moment also is freedom to me.  I want to feel like my eagle brother skimming the lake in northern Wisconsin.  Sometimes I imagine being the eagle and looking out on the lake through eagle eyes.  It’s exhilarating.

So, waking and remembering Rumi I began to make a list of the many ways I kiss the ground during the day.  I listed all that my spirit and body engage in every day from breathing to tasting to remembering to praying to listening and the list got longer and longer.  I so enjoyed making the list and in doing so I realized how rich my days are and what a miracle life is.  I got a sense of what people who have had a brush with death speak of when they talk about savoring life.

There was so much on my list I let go of my sense of what “being productive” means.  What it really means is somehow by my behaviors and actions I can justify my being alive because I accomplished a and b and c, things usually outside of me.  But my list is just me being alive and how rich that is.  It was wonderful to write and feel each word on my list.  Abraham (see sidebar) says that when we are feeling good that our path lights up for us.  I am feeling that.

Then in direct contrast I just opened a letter from my insurance company which rejected a claim I had submitted for several hundred dollars of reimbursement.  I was furious and wanted to pound walls and stage a sit in at the insurance office chaining myself to the door and calling Chanel 4.  Then I began to write this entry even though my heart was no longer in a calm place.

As I wrote and changed my focus and I began to re-experience what I was writing about my feelings changed, my need to strangle a warm neck fading.

I will deal with insurance tomorrow.  What I know for sure is that being human on this planet, kissing the ground is what is important.

With Love, Connie

January 11, 2010: 

Monday mornings used to have their own kind of terror.  A going away from what is home.  I loved my job but many Monday’s had me in its grip and I would sit at my desk waiting for time and the day to pass and with it the fear as well.  I sometimes thought of Mondays as a collective energetic separation anxiety because it was beyond my ability to comprehend.

So now Mondays can have the flavor of an eccentric, marginalized “older” woman thrust into a strange sort of holding position.  At least I don’t have a cat.  Nothing is as I thought it would be.  I’m not in a home with a husband waiting on imminent grand children.  I’m not still at a job I love with time to plan my next move and the celebration of leaving a legacy.

I woke up this Monday feeling the fear and loss of what I just described.  And then I remembered having the nerve last week to write  about embracing my uniqueness and I thought it was an excellent time to do just that.  Put you money where your mouth is, Girlie Girl.

So I return to what I absolutely know about me and about my Source within and I gradually begin to feel my boat turning and going downstream.

I know that my power lies in accepting my uniqueness and recognizing the gifts that lie in what makes me different from everyone else.     I can imagine seeing these gifts as jewels and as I pick each one up I can examine their interesting facets and their brilliance.

The confirmation of the truth of this comes from how I feel when I write these words.  I feel good.  That means that the Source within me agrees as well and that’s all the confirmation I need.

Now my day has turned downstream and I did that and it was rather easy to do once I remembered to do it.  I can do this over and over as many times as I need to to feel better.  This is a powerful tool and knowing I’m getting better at it feels good as well.

Happy Monday, Friends.  With love, Connie

January 10, 2010:  We’re All Doing Time

Most of us are in prison…doing time.   And when our lives are thrown into upheaval for whatever reason…illness, death of a loved one, loss of a job…we have a chance to escape.  The prison walls have become shakey and we can see light if we can look.

That’s how I feel about my job loss are resulting emotional meltdown.  I’m grateful for the chance to become more free.

My morning wake ups have gone from fearful and tearful every day to only occasionally and when I do have a tearful morning I am genuinely curious about what there is to learn because it never fails to come.  The other morning I woke up frightened and empty.  Rumi, the wonderful poet actually said something like this.   He said, “I wake frightened and empty.  It’s not for humans to see the distances.  There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”  I feel so good to be in such esteemed company.  If Rumi’s scared, I can be too.

In thanking the ground I find my freedom.  The ground is here and now.  Sometimes I have this tension in my body.  It’s as if I’m completely covered in a heavy wool army blanket and I must hold up my arms straight out in front of me to see the light and to see where I am going.  And I can’t put my arms down even though they are tired because I won’t be able to see.  I don’t have choice, it’s a survival issue.

But I can put down that heavy dark musty blanket.  It’s not for humans to see the distances.  My Inner Being, my Source knows where I’m going so I don’t have to take on that job and can just kneel and kiss the ground.  Putting down that burden of having to know when I can’t know anyway feels like freedom to me.  I don’t have to take “reality” so seriously.  I can trust that the Universe has my back. 

And my power is in the present moment.  I can reel in the parts of me that have gone on a scouting expedition into the future and reel in other parts of me that I’ve left beating the drum of what has gone wrong or what was and I can feel all of me now.  As I do that I feel more clear eyed and crisp and whole.

With Love, Connie

January 8, 2010

Owning my power is owning my uniqueness.  It’s not giving a rip about whatever the peanut gallery thinks.  And this is a challenge for m0st of us.  We kill people because they are different.  We are anxious if our kids aren’t the same as everyone else’s. 

As I think about the new year ahead and what it will bring me I’m both excited and afraid.  I know it will be an amazing year because at the end of every year I always look back over the year just finished and am in awe of everything that has happened.  Every year is like that and this one will be no different.

I’m excited when I think of the possibilities for me this year.  Abraham (see side bar) says every subject is two subjects, that which is wanted and the lack.  I’m afraid that I won’t get…whatever.  To stay with the excited end of the stick I have to step into my power and not only know my uniqueness but trust my uniqueness.  Embracing what makes me who I am will bring me what I want and bring it faster.  That’s that Law of Attraction.

We worship at the feet of sameness to the extent that we are numbed to how we feel about it.   It’s too dangerous to think about not liking and doing what everyone else is liking and doing.  Better to just suffer and stuff it.

I think there is this wave of apocalyptic thinking in our culture because our religion of sameness has finally pushed the other side of the subject which is difference to such an extreme its as if we feel the energy around us stretched to capacity in some way.

Something’s gotta give.  And for me I’m committed to allowing my differences first and then developing a greater acceptance of the world around me.   Accepting what is and even appreciating what is.  If I don’t like what I see, I can allow it simply by not focusing upon it and turn my attention to something that feels better.

Now can I apply this to the muffin top I see in the mirrow with the jeans I put on today!

With Love, Connie

January 7, 2010

Therapists say the scariest things.  Two days ago mine said, “Do you know how talented you are?”  Without hesitation I said in a rather low voice, “No.”  This has had me thinking like a stick that just keeps poking at my brains.  Poke.  Poke.  Poke.

Why should that be so unsettling?  I’m feeling better.  I’m doing some work which will be posted on this site in a couple of months.   I’m able to visualize a future doing something I like.  It’s not like I believe I’m a loser and have just cheated the system all these years.

Actually I believe most of us have difficulty really owning our talents and if we do own them we sure don’t talk about them.  God, how arrogant.  Women, especially,  have difficulty owning their strength and personal gifts.  Women identify themselves through their relationships and their connection to others while men self identify through their work.  And the truth is women fear that if they own their strengths and put themselves out there, that they will be abandoned.

And there is some clear truth to this.  Marriages are more likely to fail if the woman makes more money than her husband.   Women in public office are in the spotlight not just for what they say but how they wear their hair.  Historically millions of women have been killed for even the suspicion of witchery or some kind of power.

I have said this before but most of us are drawn away from our core selves at a young age in order to first please our parents, then our teachers, our friends, our mates.

So when I contemplate really finding my soul’s desire and participating in the world hitting on all 6 which will surely involve owning my talents, I can also feel fear in my belly at times.  Then I need to remind myself that I am at the controls and trust that the future will unfold for me as I become ready.  

And I remind myself continually that I’m not alone.  I have my village walking with me.

With Love, Connie

January 6, 2010:  The Catch In Praise

Today, for the first time in a long time, I woke up feeling good.  I don’t know yet if it will be a trend but I took note.  Frankly I’d like to get to the place of not caring how I wake up because of the judgement involved.

When I was in graduate school a hundred years ago there was an article I read by this kick ass social worker in the 1920’s.  The article was entitled “The Catch In Praise.”  I think I always will remember that article because I loved the title and because of the message.  There is a catch in praise.  If I am so pleased with myself for not waking up feeling crappy does that mean that I don’t like me when I can’t wake up in a good mood?  Am I less than when I wake in a good mood.  If I praise my daughter for doing something well, does she feel badly about herself when she cannot do well?

I spent a lot of time learning to be tender, loving and compassionate with myself when I was feeling like darkness had overtaken me and I don’t want to recind that now.  So it’ was nice to feel good this morning but when I wake up feeling otherwise I learn a great deal about me.  I want to fully and lovingly accept me in any shape or mood because if I can’t I just double the pain as well as miss out on the teaching.

I learned up close and personal about how we get separated from who we are by watching my daughter’s grandparents parent her.  My mother, the Queen of Shame, when observing Meredith in a less than charming mood would say in a critical tone, “You don’t want to ruin everyone’s day do you?”  Jesus, that’s a lot to lay on a 3 year old, the destiny of three grown-ups.

Her father’s mother had a different version of that.  When perfect grandaughter would be in a crappy mood Grandma would say, “Where’s my Meredith?  Where did she go?”  As if she is a one dimensional person who became obliterated with a change in mood. 

Of course in both situations I did intervene in order to tell the kid that she’s okay just the way she is.

It’s so much easier to not judge our feelings but just let it be.  Such a simple concept and so difficult for me to learn until my healing depended upon it.  I can remember being about 23 in my first therapist’s office.  She gave me a poster for my birthday that said, “Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits.”  Because I loved her so much and this was of course tangible proof of her love for me I had it framed and it hung on my wall for years even though I didn’t really get what it meant.

I think I was close to 50 to really understand it and then a few years more to be able to do it.

With Love, Connie

January 5, 2010:  Joy Rising

I was driving in my car today and enjoying one of the benefits of my new car…satelite  radio.  Yea!  I had it tuned to the Oprah channel of course and listened to the Black Eyed Peas sing It’s a Good Day.  God, is that a great song.  I believe this was from her first program of the season and the Peas had sung this song together with 20,000 people outside in the street at Harpo Studios.  Now that must have been totally amazing.  It’s probably on U Tube.

People in the studio were commenting on how this had effected them and one man said he felt like what he imagined heaven would feel like and described the feeling as “joy rising”.

I love that concept, joy rising.  I believe I am rising out of my storm and many times I can say that what I feel is joy rising.  It’s taken me a long time to reach this point.  I can remember a time when I wasn’t sure what joy felt like.  I knew it was more that “happy” but I wasn’t sure beyond that.  Thank God that was a long time ago.

I’ve been loving this sense of joy rising because there is no stopping point, no ceiling on how much joy we can feel.  That’s because we are energetic beings after all, vibrational, and this energy is essentially love.   This energy of which we are made is constantly expanding, we are constantly becoming more and there is no end to our ability to feel love or joy.  We won’t use it all up or run out.

Because of the Law of Attraction the better we feel the better we feel etc. and so I love milking a sense of joy for all it’s worth, just basking in that joy rising and let myself float on those words as if they are a warm thermal cloud I can just rest in like a Westin Heavenly Bed.

I want joy to feel more normal in my life, and claim my birthright.  We are naturally joyous beings.  We have just attuned ourselves to the prevailing vibrations around us and have made our “normal” much less that it could be.  We have turned ourselves away from who we are because of others around us.  From day one.  Fortunately we can change that.

So, I will take joy rising with me as a gift of the day and hang onto it.

With Love, Connie

January 4, 2010:  Did I do that?

After waffling for 4 months I finally booked myself on a Carribbean cruise with Abraham.  (See www.abraham-hicks.com and click on cruises.)  I’ve been on other Abraham cruises and they have been amazing but 1) I was employed then which means I had income and 2) I was not emerging from a “dark night of the soul” so I didn’t have to question whether or not to travel at all. 

But after I did it I knew it was the right thing to do because I felt so good about it.  That’s a major tip off.  My inner guidance is saying “YES” and jumping up and down.    Feeling good is something I just can’t get enough of these days and so I’ll take this.

I also feel like my sense of my own abundance is affirmed.  I no longer feel like my future lies with a shopping cart in the park and I know I won’t have to eat cat food while I watch the repo man take my car.  I can do something that is my heart’s delight and there will be more on the way.  That’s the way abundance works.  You believe in it and it is.  And the better it gets the better it gets.

And I absolutely love cruising.  I fondled the Princess 2010 catalog and looked at all the exotic cruises, like from Bangkok to Capetown, South Africa or their 103 day around the world cruise, and was whimpering with desire.  So with cruising there is the actual 7 days of cruising but then I actually have 10 weeks of anticipation which is just as good!  I can cruise in my mind for 10 weeks and 7 days.

Plus I can share the joy with a good friend who is equally as addicted.  He gets a cruise countdown clock from the Princess web site and it counts down the days until his cruise in a corner of his computer.  We’ve trolled the cruise critic web site today for news of the ship I will be on.   He’s vicariously going with me.   It’s “our” cruise.

And while I wait I can joyfully lose at least 10 pounds, lie in a warm tanning bed for that base coat, mentally begin packing…the fun never ends, does it.

The question I ask myself is… does this manifestation count because I did it myself?  It didn’t pop up as a prize won.  It’s not a gift from a friend or not some tickets just somehow falling out of the sky with my name on them.  I went on line and made the reservations.  But I would not have done it if I had not felt inspired to do it.  That is my mantra these days.  If it’s not inspired, don’t do it.  So I felt it and did it.  I would not have done it four months ago.  So I think it counts.  I received the guidance and acted and I’m glad I did.  So there!

With Love, Connie

January 1, 2010:  Another Look at Reality

I believe that reality as it has been largely defined is way too over rated and at this point SO last year’s news.  We are really in the process of expanding our sense of reality but this is a slow process.  I can remember in the 60’s when the concept of chakras and energy was really way out there.  Chakras what, who?  Now its common place.

We have barely scraped the surface as to the expansion of our concept of reality.  I believe that this is one reason that Harry Potter and the Twilight series is so wildly popular, especially with young people.  It touches something deep in us that knows there is lots more out there besides what our current sensory perceptions pick up

I had an experience yesterday having to do with a close friend of mine who died suddenly at the age of 32 about two years ago.  I believe that we can be with the energy of those who have made their transition into non physical.  It’s a more pure energy, not the personality energy of the physical person but their soul or Source energy which is the same but richer, a much higher frequency. 

I have been wanting to embrace Ryan’s energy in my life because when I can begin to open to it I, too, must be in that more loving space.  It was another teary morning yesterday and the thought came to me to bring Ryan into my space.  I can’t tell you the exact process except that I go into a meditative state and “see” him in his more pure form and I can feel an internal shift that can feel delicious.  I was successful with feeling good at least and in the end that’s all that really matters and whether or not it was really Ryan doesn’t matter so much as what I believe and I do believe that he was present.

So having him as a fellow traveler feels really good and I know he would get a giant kick out of it.  Again, many people commonly talk with dear ones who have left this plane and have talked about knowing of their presence and other people do not have the belief that it is possible .  All is fine.

My main intention is to open myself to possibility.  I like the sound of that and the concept of that for 2010.  The possibility.   Manifestation follows belief.  And if the possibility feels good then it’s a win-win.  It feels good and I’m on my way to possibility.

Happy New Year!     Love, Connie