Vision Keeping

December 13, 2009:  Creating on Purpose of by Default

 We are all creating our lives all of the time.  There as a wonderful book and a movie with the same title, “What the Ble@P Do We Know?”  The authors explain how this is scientifically so and I can’t recommend them enough.

 The crucial point here is to become aware of our thoughts and feelings so that we can consciously create rather than create by default.

 Creating by default is what most of us do when we wake up in the morning and just run from one thing to the next and at the end of the day wonder what we have accomplished and wonder sometimes if this is all there is.  Creating by default is getting what you’ve got but not knowing how you got it.  Luck?  Hard work?  It’s more than that.  It’s your expectations and beliefs about what you will get.

Your beliefs about who you are, what you deserve or don’t deserve, what you want and what you focus upon drive outcomes.  It was really interesting working with women who were involved in the criminal justice system.  I asked them what they did not like about their present lives.  Most of them talked about having probation officers, having no money, not being with their children, dealing with addiction.

 When we began with each not wanted thing and asking them how it is currently serving them in some way and what negative beliefs they have about themselves that support their current circumstances, it is often an extremely revealing experience for them.

 It is very empowering to know you have control over your life in ways you never dreamed of.  It truly provides hope for an exciting future and ways to attain your heart’s desire.

 To help me more consciously create I think about my intentions for the day every morning and write them down.  Like I want an uplifting meeting or I want to allow my feelings without judgment, or I want to appreciate what I’m experiencing and look for positive things to focus upon, or I want something fun to happen.  I think about each thing and write it down and then think about why I want it.  Thinking about the why’s adds the creative “punch” to the thought energy.

Doing this has changed my life.  During the day I continue to do intentions.  Abraham (www.abraham-hicks.com) calls this segment intending.  I get in my car or on my motor cycle and ask for safety, I ask for parking spaces.  Asking for parking spaces is fun and produces tangible results.  Of course the key is that you must believe that the parking space you envision will absolutely be there and remember it takes 17 seconds to create a potent thought.

 At night I look again at my day’s intentions and journal about what I appreciated during the day and what I would like during the night like a good nights sleep and sexy dreams, or whatever and how I want to begin the next day.

 Becoming a conscious creator takes knowing your intentions and becoming aware of what you are focusing upon.  I decided years ago that TV news and even the newspapers were far too negative to give my attention to.  I love an interview with Bette Midler that was done years ago.  She said she never watched news on television because every time she did she had to go lie down!

 Focus on what feels good to you!

 With love, Connie

December 11, 2009:  Creating my own reality can suck!

 If we create our own reality that must make us pretty powerful.  Marianne Williamson says, “We are not afraid that we are powerless.  We are afraid of how powerful we really are.”

 There is also this saying along that like that says, “Be careful what you wish for.”  Along that line we get what we focus upon.  According to Abraham (www.abraham-hicks.com) it takes about 17 seconds to create a thought powerful enough to begin the creation process.  Remember Law of Attraction:  That which is like unto itself is drawn.  In other words, you get what you believe.  If you believe that life and people are basically good you are probably an optimist and notice the good things around you and that your cup is half full.  If you believe that somehow you were born on the crap end of God’s stick then you are more likely to be pessimistic and tend to be drawn to what is going wrong.  Your cup is definitely half empty.

 The majority of the women I worked with in the criminal justice system definitely believe they missed any sort of blessing from God, do not feel worthy of success and keep validating their personal truth with criminal behavior, while at the same time feeling victimized

 In fact their beliefs of personal lack are so strong that they are most vulnerable for relapse when they begin to do well.  Receiving what they want goes so against their personal beliefs that they must screw up to feel like themselves again.

 Most of us do something similar.  We have that old ugly overcoat of pain and ugliness that we can slip into from time to time.  It feels awful but strangely familiar in a way that is validating.  And it doesn’t lead to us going to jail.

 I have a deep belief that my personal needs will not be met by the world around me.  That triggers a need to control people and conditions so I can be safe.  I was reminded about my personal power and my negative beliefs in my battle with Walgreen’s vs. my insurance carrier.

 I gave Walgreen’s a prescription for something that was definitely necessary to my well being and feeling particularly vulnerable adds to the mix.  Day number one Walgreens said my insurance would not cover the medication even though I had been receiving it from another pharmacy.  Then there was day two and calls to Walgreens and my physician.  Then day three, and day four pass.  By day five my anxiety and rage were through the roof.  Doesn’t anyone hear me?  What about me?  I felt so victimized and jerked around.

 Wait a minute!  It dawns on me.  I create my own reality.  You mean I created this shit?   Yes I did.  I was in a dance with Law of Attraction.  Even my doctor said, “I can’t believe this.  This never has happened to me.”  Actually, when I thought about it that made me rather proud.  Yes, I bad!  The light bulb went on.

I do not believe that if I ask for those really, really important things that the world around me sees me or cares, particularly insurance companies or doctors, or pharmacies.  Bingo!

In that moment my energy shifted from not believing I would get the prescription to believing that it would come that day…and it did.

 That’s powerful and we are all involved in this co-creative process.

 With love, Connie

December 9, 2009:   Wanting too much?

 No two orgasms are the same.  Just like the snowflake thing.  And no two days are alike either.  That’s because we are energetic, vibrational beings who are constantly changing and expanding.

 When I’ve begun feeling good after a low period, I’m so glad because I’m feeling good.  And it seems that by the time I’m really noticing I’m feeling good I begin to feel a creeping feeling of watching for the down hill slide.  When is the other shoe going to fall and I’ll feel crappy again?  And because of my beliefs that this will happen and inevitably does, I curse my defectiveness at some level.

 But now that I have all of this daunting time on my hand and I have the luxury of being curious.  For the past several days I’ve noticed an upward swing and less morning drama.  I got my Tibbie (stuffed animal), new medication, and along with the emotional work I’ve done I believe I just may be on the upswing.

Then I wake up and feel the old fear and tears and I’m saying, what the hell is this?  I’m so frustrated with this.  Even though I know better I want to yell at myself and say, “What the hell is wrong with you.”

But wait.   I want to get curious and verbally abusing myself has never been particularly helpful.  I don’t need to be the embodiment of another critical mother.  I want to do better.

And then I receive the guidance with the thought that I have achieved, in part, what I had been asking for…feeling better, having some direction.  So now what?

And that’s it.  There’s the trigger.  I’m asking again.  I’m wanting more.  I’m wanting the next step and I don’t know what it is.  Is it all right to want?  Do I deserve more?

 So what if all of those times that I was feeling good and waiting for the other shoe to fall can be reframed into a natural receiving of what I’ve asked for and wanting something more.  Something more to think about, something more to grow into.   It’s the natural expansion of myself.

 A wise teacher told me, “Get what you ask for and shout for more.”  The more may be a new question, a new opportunity to have compassion for the unfolding of the process. 

 But I will say “yes” to asking for more.  Bring it!

 With Love, Connie

I feel like a squirrel preparing for winter.  As the days shorten, and it’s more and more cloudy and rainy I can no longer find some release and freedom being outdoors and riding my Harley-Davidson regularly.  It’s difficult to be depressed while flying through the wind and feeling like tough shit on the bike.

What will I do when I’m socked in with snow and cold and wading around in dirty slush outside?  Alcoholism is not on my list of activities but I can see why it is a problem in Iceland. 

 The blog is satisfying and something to which I’m committed but clearly is not enough.  On line dating!  There’s a scarey thought and a remote possibility.  I don’t believe I’m ready yet for that and the Law of Attraction would probably bring me someone who is unemployed and depressed.  I’m really wanting a wealthy, attractive man looking for a traveling companion.  He pays, of course.

 Something I plan on doing is polish a draft of a curriculum I have written.  Over the past three years I’ve been developing a curriculum entitled Awake and Inspired:  Creating the Life You Want.  I have used it with the staff in my former agency and then began teaching it to our consumers, women in the criminal justice system.

 It teaches the basics of how we create our own reality and practical how-to’s for getting on the journey.  For those who are ready it can be literally life changing as it was for me.  It can also just offer some practical help in feeling better.

My future may include using this curriculum in some way.  I’m already using its ideas and beliefs in this blog.   Because both the blog and the curriculum are coming from an internal place of inspiration, I am willing to allow the Universe to direct me as to their use and I’m feeling patient.

With Love, Connie

December 4, 2009:  Motivation vs. Inspiration

 Our culture is so action oriented.  We give awards and monuments to those who have done the most and to those who have literally died trying.  Somehow we have equated actions with results as in the greater the action, the greater the result.  So, we almost feel superior if our calendars are crammed and we have no time for anything.

 I’ve come to believe very differently and at the heart of this is the difference between inspiration and motivation.

 I believe that we have simply have forgotten how to live well.  Somehow living has gotten all mixed up with production.  It’s those people who have had an encounter with terminal illness or experienced some other life jarring trauma that tell us to slow down and take time to love and appreciate all that we have.

 We say we must do that and it does sound good but we only learn by doing and by experience.

 I thought I was living pretty close to the heartbeat of things…until I found myself unemployed and flat on the mat.  I did not realize how much of my identity and self worth were tied to being Executive Director and how much of me was identified with the agency where spent half of my life.  I was loving myself conditionally.

 And through the process of encountering myself in the stillness of my time, I’m learning to love myself more deeply.  I’m also loving the people around me more fully.  I’m finding my loved ones and even strangers more poignant, amusing, dear.  In learning to love me I can see others more clearly with eyes of love as well.

 I promised myself I would not abandon me to the push to find a new job.  I promised myself I would not be motivated by fear.  I would not squander this amazing opportunity by compromising my beliefs

 I promised myself I would act out of inspiration and not motivation.  Motivation may pump you up momentarily and it comes usually from an external source – an advertisement, a book, a “motivational speaker”, an idea from a friend, a New Year’s resolution.  But when we act out of motivation on really important things we are most likely going to fail when the motivation wears off, and motivation usually wears off.

Inspiration, on the other hand, comes from within.  It is spirit whispering to us or shouting at us in some cases and we simply feel the call to respond.  Motivation can feel like pushing ahead.  Inspiration feels like we have to act and the action does not feel difficult, it just flows from the inspiration.  It is the soul’s calling.

 And we can trust inspiration.  Motivation can be fickle, a slick salesman.

 So I’m committed to acting out of inspiration for my next steps and so far so good!

 With Love, Connie

November 30, 2009:  Telling a new story

 If you don’t like your current situation then you better start telling a new story.  We are vibrational beings and the Universe doesn’t understand lack.  There is only one current of Well Being/Love that flows.  So if you are broke and want more money and send messages of “I want more money” but your feeling or vibration behind that is “I have no money” then the universe will give you “no money”.  It only registers the vibration you are feeling/sending

 So, if I want to feel better I cannot get there by focusing on what doesn’t feel good.  You get what you focus upon wanted or not.  Haven’t you noticed how complainers just get worse with age until they begin to actually look rather mean and unhappy and prune like.  Happy people age more gracefully.  I vote for that.

 If I want a different reality then I can’t just look at what I’ve got and feel badly.  So I’ve begun to stretch my eyes and brains to the horizon and beyond.  What do I want?  What do I want today?  What do I want in 6 months, in a year?  Well, I don’t want to wake every morning crying and feeling afraid.  Good.  But focusing on what is not wanted is still re-creating the same old, unwanted energy.

What I do want is to wake up feeling positive about my day.  Before I go to bed I get a picture of that in my head and I journal about what I’d like that to look like the night before.

 Still I wake up crying and afraid.  But, and this is a big but, I can feel a shift in my energy in the morning.  Since I realized my morning shtick is a primary need for connection I am moving ahead in my day more readily.  It takes me less time to literally move me out of my wake up mode. 

 Plus now I have some context about my current situation, my emotional self map, whatever.  I’m noticing I feel a lot steadier in the day time.  I would say that this is definitely progress.

 Today I actually had the ability to look out ahead of me in the coming year and see a different story with some knowing it is going to happen.  What “it” is I’m not sure but I don’t have to know.  I trust the Universe, Source, God, to know what is to be my next step and I’m beginning to have more confidence that “it” will emerge.

Launching this blog is a big step.  I have no idea where this will take me but doing this has already had benefits for me.  I’m able to focus my thoughts and energy more sharply than journal writing would have me do and I’m creating something I would not have thought possible months ago.  I’m telling a new story.

 Some of the ideas I’m expressing in this blog are from a curriculum which I have written and have used with the women and staff where I had been working as Executive Director.  The curriculum is entitled, Awake and Inspired:  Creating the Life You Want.  I realized that my current situation is the perfect way to live what I teach, to tell a new story.  Can I really create my heart’s desire like I kept telling everyone?   Put your money where your mouth is, Miss Thang.  (More information about the curriculum will be posted on the blog in the coming weeks.)

 My new story includes a lot more than being able to get up in the morning with a happy face on.  Although that is an excellent start.  Feeling good is the basis of creating what is wanted.  If I’m feeling good I’m thinking thoughts that make me happy and doing things that are pleasing and that truly is the basis of positive creation.

 My new story includes finding something to do about which I feel passionate.  It includes financial abundance, a life partner who shares my views and with whom I can co-create, and feeling confident, eager, healthy and excited about my life and my next creation.

 Right now I’m trusting that over the next weeks and months my life will begin to take the shape of my new story and I’m really curious to see what that will be like.  Today having a knowing feeling about good things to come is so wonderful.  And I have created this!

With Love, Connie

I had the best Thanksgiving dinner in memory.  Maybe it was because I was so hungry and have not been preparing lavish meals for myself.  Anyway, this Thanksgiving dinner was brought to us by Whole Foods and they did a great job.

I’m so appreciative of our little family…my separated good friend husband, our daughter, and two cats and two dogs.  The pack.

Thanksgiving has always been at the top of the list of holidays.  For years I cooked Thanksgiving dinner until I moved out of the house and it became a bit awkward with the in-laws.  This year is my first year without my work community in my background, waiting for me to return on Monday and I feel that loss sharply.

When people experience and death and dred the holidays I never got it until now.   Dred is perhaps too big a word but the holidays do not pack the fun and smiles of years past.  My community is gone.  The place where I feel like I belonged is gone, literally gone.  Even the deaths of my parents did not hit me like this.  Perhaps because my parents did not represent community for me.  My family of origin did not have that cozy sense of belonging that I needed.  So I created my community at Horizons.   It nurtured and supported all of us.  I didn’t realize how much of me was tied up there until it was no longer available.  I’m so thankful for all that it gave me and I will find community again.

Plus at this post Thanksgiving I’m in Twilight withdrawal.  This week I finished the last of the four volumes and I”m in mourning for my Twilight people.  I can go see New Moon but it’s not the same as curling up in bed everyday with the next installment.  I think what was so wonderful about that experience for me was the sense of possibility that was created, the sense of love and living in harmony.  And, of course, for me the creation of an amazing community that went against all sense of “what is”.   It adds a whole new dimension to diversity that I dig. 

So I look for the positive in the holidays, something to hang onto, and allow myself to mourn the loss of my communities.  Make new communities but keep the old…

With Love,     Connie

November 25, 2009 :  Ask and it is given

 As I wake up again to feel the fear first and then the tears I decided to make a connection that felt stabilizing and so I bravely called my therapist’s answering machine.  She said I could and even though I still felt pangs of shame I was brave and called anyway.  I was counting on getting the answering machine because if she had actually answered the phone I would have panicked and hung up.  This way I could weep into the answering machine and know my voice was going to find her and that she would hear me out there.  Knowing that was enough.  The connection made.

 This reminded me of friends who adopted an infant girl from China 9 years ago.  When they brought her home she looked rather depressed and so tiny for her 6 months.  She did not cry.  I suppose in orphanages babies learn not to cry because no one comes.  She only whimpered a bit now and then.  Months later her mother was so happy.   Her daughter cried for the first time.

 What an amazing event that was!  What an accomplishment. To believe if I make a noise that someone will hear me and respond to me.  This tiny girl found her voice and beginning to trust that she matters once again dared risking to ask for what she wants.  And someone answered, overjoyed that the risk was taken.

 I know I have infant memories, body memories, memories that I cannot recall but only feel and know.  At that moment I began to know that my tears now are actually a step forward.  I knew that at some level but now it is clear to me.  I’m hearing myself make a sound and I’m responding with love and with everything available to me.

 My tears were my earliest connection to the physical world.  Here I was, this amazing bundle of passionate energy being “born” into my body every day and evidently I had strong feelings about the situation which was not receiving me well.  I learned not to cry.   According to my dear mother, I was such a good baby because I never cried.  Just trying to do my part.  I am a quick study.  I learned very quickly what went over well and what did not and always was eager to please.  Obviously I decided that making noise was not a good idea.

 I’ve had difficulty, like many of us, needing, wanting, asking- anything that required my reaching for something outside of me.  Crying is the earliest form of asking.  I get that now.  Crying without shame can be difficult in this culture.

 But this morning my tears feel like a badge of landing on the planet.  And rather than my tears spiraling myself into a wad of self pity, I actually feel rather proud of their strength and persistence in making a connection with me and the world around me.

 Welcome to Planet Earth, Connie.  We hear you.  I hear you.

With Love,  Connie

November 24, 2009:  Soul Soup

 My life mantra when I’m feeling crappy has always been, “I can’t do this.”  I think I discovered that one in infancy.  I didn’t have the words but I did have the feelings.  Want go home.

Our cells have feelings.  Cellular memory it’s called.  That really is deep.  So everything we’ve ever experienced we remember.  We mostly have memories after we have acquired language so we have something to hang memories on but before language the memories are there.  They are visceral.

 So when I have my morning bouts of tears but nothing to “hang them on” I know these are very early bodily, emotional, memories that can show themselves when I’m most vulnerable – waking.

 And if I can put words to those physical memories it would be “I can’t do this.”  So, I welcome my baby girl everyone morning to the planet again.

• Welcome to Planet Earth, Little One
• I love you and you are safe
• A lot of other people love you too and keep you safe as well.
• You may have a lot of feelings and they are all alright.
• You can feel all of your feelings and we will never leave you.

That’s a good word – safe.  I imagine my village gathered around my infant self and telling her how beautiful and cherished she is and how wanted she is.

Okay, my Little One is not very believing at this point but she’s willing to listen.  It does sound good.  And she likes the part about feeling whatever she wants to feel and not being abandoned.  That has a nice ring to it.

This is my soul soup.

With Love, Connie

November 20, 2009:  She’s Baaack

God, I’m so sick of Inner Child crap.  Enough already!  It’s so cliché.  But, dammit, it appears as if I have one and she needs my attention.  Shit!  Not this again.  Take this cup from my lips, PLEEZE!  I’ve inner child-ed myself into oblivion over the years and here she comes again.

Perhaps I over dramatize the issue but I have to say that when I began to look at some of my issues with a really good, I repeat REALLY GOOD therapist who has a wonderful spiritual grounding I can see that my morning weeping and grief are a manifestation of my kid calling me home.

And I want so badly to go home.  I remember seeing ET, the movie, and when IT says “ET phone home” I swear I lost it for days afterwards.  Lately I’ve been feeling like I can’t do this Planet Earth thing.  Just beam me up, Scotty.  And I realize that my job loss was a very large trigger for landing me on my butt wanting to go home.

But the true going home is the return to oneself.  We are so trained away and at such an early age from ourselves in order to please others around us.  First we had to please our parents, then our teachers, then our bosses. 

Interestingly enough, as I begin to say hello to my emotional self (I’m going to use that rather than inner child because it closer to the truth and adds more credibility to the “child”) my life is beginning to feel like it has some context, like I’m filling in a map or a puzzle.  And along with that my energy is shifting and with shifting energy my world will change as well.

We are energy and energetic vibrational beings as is everything around us.  What we believe is so solidly “real” is a perception of vibration and each of us sees things or interprets the vibrations/things/people around us differently.  We are different every day because as energetic beings we are constantly shifting, expanding, changing.  The Buddhists say that all is illusion.  That’s very close to the same thing.

Quantum physics says that the smallest particle of matter is thought.  Change your thoughts and you change the world around you.   There is such a blossoming of this idea in science and literature at this time that some have dubbed this amazing time in which we live “the time of awakening.”   We consciously create our world around us with our thoughts and so we can shift our thoughts and shift our world as well.

So today, after I shifted my energy to squarely face my emotional self I manifested the best day I’ve had in weeks.  I had great phone contacts, had lunch with my coach which was off the charts uplifting and then a computer guy actually came to my house and fixed my rebelling pc.  Get this…my internet connection was not working and I couldn’t access my email.  Now that is mind blowing to me.  My connection to the world was “down” but when I got connected with me I repaired my connection to the world around me.  I do not believe in coincidence.  This is the power of our energy,

I’m curious now to see if and how my mornings will shift now that my emotional self is on the radar.  (I admit I’m having a hard time letting go of the inner child thing.  Emotional self isn’t quite there for me.)

With love,   Connie