Vision Keeping

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

November 19^th, 2009:  Rethinking Vulnerability

 I woke up again this morning with the usual anxiety followed by the usual tears.  This has been going on for several mornings – just feeling ragged.  The day just feels so immense and out in front of me and I have no immediate distractions.  This is the one time of my life when the thought of my 24 year old daughter getting knocked up just doesn’t sound that bad.  That may be just what I need!  But I probably should not even toy with those thoughts!

I make phone calls to friends or appointments that are necessary.  But most importantly I journal and listen to music.  That gets me to focus and I believe that when I’m quiet my Inner Self, Source, Guidance, God, can speak to me.

In my groggy morning state of tears and through a void can come some amazing insights or ah-ha moments as Oprah would say.  I’ve actually had some of my most profound revelations in the shower.  But that was when I had to get up to go to work.  Now I get up, make coffee and go back to be with my tears, my journal and my Dudie, the Wonder Dog.

While I’m writing I have a separate piece of paper upon which I write my intentions of the day.  I got this daily calendar from the Abraham-Hicks web site.  (It’s a great site:  www.abraham-hicks.com.)  For awhile I would write GUIDANCE PLEASE over and over.  I and would get it – in a thought, on a CD, on the radio, in the car, in a telephone call.  But it does come.

I’ve been feeling so vulnerable and raw emotionally.  I can feel overwhelmed with the thought of having to make a couple of phone calls or needing to check my email and then knowing I’m having trouble with my computer and where am I going to get it fixed and then I’m flattened for sure.

Because feeling vulnerable doesn’t feel especially good I realized I was thinking that it was a “not good” feeling and one that I should just get past somehow.  So then, without knowing it I was basically trashing myself for feeling vulnerable and judging the crying, etc., as a we-better-get-past-this kind of thing.

Because I create my own reality,  how I think about my vulnerability is important. So  I decided today to reframe it and see if I can find a more positive take on it.

When I did, I immediately felt a shift internally and somewhere from within came the knowing that this vulnerability is an act of surrender and one of strength and courage.  My vulnerability is me standing naked and saying, “Here I am, world.”   All I can say is that I know this to be true and I trust it and so I can see this piece of me with more loving, less critical eyes.

As if the Universe were affirming this conclusion of mine, I turned on one of my Abraham CD’s (Law of Attraction teachers at www.abraham-hicks.com) and Abraham promptly said that we don’t need a return to the innocence of childhood but rather than a moving forward to innocence.  I know that my vulnerability contains my innocence as well.  It was my ah-ha for the day.

With Love, Connie

Having all the time in the world can be terrifying.  Especially when it rolls down to me and my furry companion dog.  I told Dudie (bff dog) that he had no idea what he was getting himself into when he came to me.  It has reinforced the idea that there is definitely reincarnation for dogs as well because he is the perfect partner for me – he listens to every word, cuddles every tear, doesn’t crab for food, doesn’t shed, smells wonderful and has a bladder of steel.  I tell him constantly how amazing he is.  He also is my connection to the world when I’m absolutely feeling shitty.  When I’m wearing sunglasses because of eye bloat, people still come up to us with love and say “Oh, he’s soooooo cute?  Can we pet him?”  Sure, I say confident that I can actually feel normal because they are focused on him and we all get our needs met…a win/win/win.

My husband of 27 years and I have amicably separated and my 24 year old daughter lives with him in our house for now so it’s me and my loft walls or my own personal retreat as I have dubbed it.  The perfect place to create my new, amazing life.  And I’m fortunate to have a good friend/mate extending a welcome matt to me in our house and who would do absolutely anything he could for me.

I don’t have that many distractions. This might be someone’s idea of a great vacation but in the stillness of my loft/retreat I fact my demons of unworthiness, self doubt and most of all doubting my king pin belief that my path will emerge as I imagine it will.

I have wonderful support.  Team Connie as one friend has dubbed us.  Friends, coach, therapist all helping in the launch.

So, what do I do with my days?  First I cry.  That was the title of a famous woman’s memoir of her battle with breast cancer.  I don’t have cancer and it’s actually not the first thing I do.  Really, if the truth be told, I’m feeling cold fear right after I open my eyes.  I do what I can with self talk, affirmations, etc. to mediate the fear. but I’m just too raw at that first waking moment to make inroads.  After the fear comes the tears which actually feel better.  I journal, I meditate, which takes the edge off and I plan my day.

Have I mentioned grief?  Oh, my good lord!  I truly underestimated the amount of me I had invested in my wonderful work.  How much of me was defined by being Executive Director.  I totally get why many men croak when they retire.  For a lot of us not having a job is not for weenies.  It takes guts to purposefully not have anything too distracting in the day.  At least telling myself that provides some dignity.

I try to have at least one activity during the day.  Something to give me some direction, some orientation, some minimal structure and nourish my soul since my activities usually revolve around people whom I love.

But I’m not ready for a lot of activity yet.  I’m exhausted from the last few years of survival.  I’m grieving the loss of a job, a marriage, a daughter who no longer needs me and who is growing her own life.  I’m also grieving the departure of my skin.  It decided to travel south.

But I’m also excited about possibilities at times, and of experiencing ah-ha’s and synchronicity and joy that tells me I’m moving in the right direction.

In my notes I hope to share my progress, my learning, my ups and downs, lord have mercy, and what I’m doing about it.

With Love, Connie

     Life is supposed to be fun.  Oh, really.  Good lord, that did not come from my mother.  According to her dear fundamentalist prairie self too much fun was right up there with sinful and that of course means there must be sex involved somehow if only in thoughts or words.  But that’s enough!  It’s all sin and climb into the hand basket!

      Nevertheless, I survived her view, probably in so small measure due to my “sinful” father, and I absolutely believe that life is supposed to be fun and probably would be except for the fact that as babes we were systematically trained away from our natural joy and wonder at the world around us.  At a spirituality seminar, recently, a participant asked the presenter, “my child wants me to ask you why are grown-ups so grumpy?”  Now that’s a thought worth considering.

      There really aren’t that many grumpy kids around.  Grumpy old men. Grumpier old men.  But not grumpy toddlers or grumpy children.  We’ve lost our way, most of us…but hold that thought while I lay this in.

      I’m living through a major life transition.  At 62 I recently resigned as Executive Director of a non profit agency for women in the criminal justice system where I have spent the last 32 years of my life.  I left out of necessity – for my own spiritual health as well as for the agency’s financial well being.  Life for me had definitely NOT been fun for some time and the organization needed the support of a larger agency for long term survival.  Non profit mergers are the new thing in the industry for better or worse…but I digress.

     So, I’m 62, unemployed and definitely not wanting to retire.  Even if that were an option I think I would lose my mind.  My soul definitely says I have stuff left to do.

      And now I’m back to life is supposed to be fun.  For most of the past 32 years I have loved my job.  During those years I’ve honed my fundamental beliefs and this definitely includes the idea that we are creating the lives we live by our beliefs and thoughts and through the Law of Attraction (I put this in caps out of respect for the power this represents).

      Now I have this amazing opportunity which I have created, with the time and the resources, including financial resources and “my people”, to create what I hope will be the best part of my life.  I can live my beliefs and create out of my thoughts, intentions and inspired action the most amazing life possible.

      Sometimes I’m excited and really believe that this is going to happen. 
At other times I just feel scared stupid with the accompanying words and ugly face telling me, “You/re too old to do all that and you are not even clear what that is yet,  you’re too old to have the partner and forget the great sex you are imagining, plus where do you think all of this money you want is going to come from?”

      But, OUT OUT bad thoughts!  I’m blogging my way through the coming year to record my progress, focus my thoughts and intentions and, who knows, build some community along the way.

 With Love, Connie