Vision Keeping

February 28th, 2010:  Cruise Countdown

It’s time, it’s time.  Time to switch gears from flying my vibrational self through the turbulence of this past week into the sun of looking forward to a cruise.

Last year at this time I had worries that I would not be ready/able to go on a cruise to Tahiti so great was the emotional crisis at the time.  So one year later, getting the “anniversary reaction” out of the way a bit early and I’m ready to ride the waves!

The cruise is 7 days in the Caribbean aboard Holland America’s Eurodaam and attending an Abraham seminar on ship all week as well.  I love cruising with Abraham (see side panel).   I don’t worry about traveling/flying but I think with Abraham with us we definitely will get back to port.

My cruising preference has been Princess but Jerry and Esther Hicks seem to like Holland America.  I must say that the staterooms are bigger and the beds really much better.  Cruise lines are known for their horrible beds but HA has some of the best!  I haven’t been on the Eurodaam but it’s a newer ship and a bit larger than the Westerdaam which I’ve been on before.  God, I’m beginning to sound like Cruise Critic.

Being in the presence of Abraham is nothing like I’ve ever experienced before.  Abraham is the name of a group of non-physical teachers who speak through Esther Hicks.  The amazing story of how this came about is available through their website at www.abraham-hicks.com.   Esther receives Abraham’s energy and translates blocks of thought from them.  Abraham is clearly different from Esther’s personality and being in their presence is an experience in itself. 

The first time I went to an Abraham seminar was in Chicago nearly three years ago.  I made sure I was sitting near the front because I wanted to be as close as I could to them.   Esther closes her eyes, relaxes, and allows herself to receive their energy.   After they “arrive” she opens her eyes and begins to speak for Abraham.  Their energy is at a much higher vibration and I allow myself to receive it as well.  My body was literally buzzing and I felt so good I didn’t want to move.

After Abraham gives opening remarks they invite questions from the audience.  On the Tahiti cruise I was able to be on the stage with Abraham and that was a truly amazing experience.  Being that close to them and having them focus on me…my teeth were buzzing!  No to mention I was so nervous I thought I’d mess myself.

So, I’m off to talk with Abraham in the Caribbean.  I’m creating my conversation with them now, picturing myself with them, hearing my question so that I will fully be prepared energetically to be with them.  Believe it, be it.  Athletes have been doing this for a long time.  During the Olympics these past two weeks I watched the athletes preparing for their performances and they are clearly visualizing their jumps, the ski runs, etc.  This is a common technique.  Visualize the perfection and become it.  That is deliberate creating.

We can do this deliberate creating every day of our lives.  It just takes knowing what we want and then focusing our energy.  But rather than be the deliberate focusers that we are we mostly allow whatever is around us dictate how we feel.  Slopping focusing says Abraham.

I’m continually focused on feeling as good as I can.  That means I didn’t see The Hurt Locker.  I’m not up to it.  But I loved watching the Olympics and I’m going to love starting to pack for my cruise in the Caribbean.  There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than on a beach in the Caribbean.

With Love, Connie

February 25th, 2010:  I am not my feelings

OMG!  Press release.  We interrupt this program…  On Tuesday after my last entry I had an epiphony in my therapist’s office.  Good place for one.  She happened to drop in the idea that feelings are not facts.  Oh, really.  Let that one just marinade in there for a minute.  Feelings are not facts.  Something internally jumped on that one and it not only stuck but began to dislodge an idea so ancient it was part of the infrastructure.  Feelings are not facts.

That evening every time I thought of that sentence I felt an internal freedom not felt before.   I wasn’t really understanding it fully but as I thought about it, I could just envision a jail cell door standing open.  I’m still sitting in the cell but I know I can walk out at any time.  My view of myself in the world was gently picked up and put down in a different place.  Paradigm shift!

Now I love a paradigm shift as much as the next gal but what goes with the territory is a “disturbance in the force”.  Let me back up a minute.    Anxiety has played a large part in my life and I think that’s enough said without Law of Attraction taking me to places I don’t want to visit.  Actually fear has been with me since my landing on the planet and has been so woven into the texture of my life and directed some way early life decisions to the extent that I don’t realize it’s still there…until I have a life crisis.

I always believed there was something intrinsically wrong with me.  God’s shit end of the stick.  Passed over.  Genetically fucked.  Pick one or come up with your own.  There are plenty of us out there.  Anxiety was so loud that I assumed that it was just a part of who I was and am, not really understanding that if anxiety is not a fact then it’s not who I am but something that I feel occasionally.  And as my life progressed it was less and less frequent.  Until crisis time.  One year ago I was frozen with anxiety as I left the agency and then at the one year anniversary, anxiety once again jumps out of the brain bushes and says, GOTCHA!

That’s when I say…”What the fuck is wrong with me!  And that’s when a good therapist says feelings aren’t facts.  I’ve got a get out of jail card free.  There is nothing wrong with me except I have a whoppingly good emotional range and sensitivity and did not get the tools to understand, navigate, care for my equipment.

You create your own reality.  I believe that and so now I’ve created another opportunity to get this vibration straightened out and I believe it’s definitely a worthy vibration to straighten out.   I had been feeling like I was going too fast internally and while much of it was good feelings, I felt I was getting tired and even thought that getting a virus might my be helpful for just an excuse to shut down for a few days.

I created that opportunity for myself with my one year anniversary replay of my life crisis.  I have been feeling “floppy”, unfocussed, tired and also very solidly hopeful on a deep level.   I’m glad I can now say, “I did that!”

With Love, Connie

February 23rd, 2010:  Redefining Normal

Dammit!  I want my own normal.  I believe in anniversary reactions.   That’s when you feel the same things one year later post whatever tragedy/loss you experienced.  It’s eerie the way it seems to work…like your cells have memory, and they do, and somehow when that memory gets tapped by the trigger, it’s as if your body re-experiences the feelings again of the incident. 

My daughter experienced a violent assault a few years ago and the next two years on that date were very difficult for her and for me.  After I experienced a rather serious motorcycle accident I went in to have the staples removed from the suture, oh ick, and I nearly fainted.  I’m not a fainter and it just came out of the blue.  Cells have memories.

So, I’m coming to believe that what I experienced after my Oprah taping return somehow triggered an anniversary reaction to a very scarey emotional time for me one year ago when I left the agency.  But there are always nuggests of gold to be sifted and sorted out of these experiences.

This is a chance for me to really look at how I’ve always been afraid of myself at some level…like I’m too much, too emotional, something’s wrong with my brain chemistry, too sensitive.   In short I have scared the hell out of myself at times in my life and that possibility remains lurking in my expectations, I’m convinced.

So this is a time to clean up that vibration as Abraham (see side panel) would say.  First of all I know I expect far too much of myself.  I have been on the mat at times over the past several days and I expect myself to just focus wheel myself out of the mire and I’m unable to do it at times.  I have half done focus wheels…a focus wheel grave yard…on my bed.  I was trying to make too big a leap from where I was feeling and fell through.

Then, I want to be able to look my fear when it emerges, straight on, and tell myself I’m okay, I’m not abnormal, nothing is wrong with me.  In fact this is normal for me at this moment or I would not be experiencing it.

I watched Temple Grandin on HBO this weekend and it was excellent.  Claire Danes is wonderful.  Temple Grandin is autistic and a magnificent human being.   People with autism are extremely sensitive their surroundings and they have a very different perspective of the world.  That is normal for them. 

After watching that movie I began entertain the idea that I have a very sensitive view of life and that my range of emotions is very wide and can be very loud.  Growing up in a family that didn’t express emotion gave me no role modeling for how to handle my emotions, no tools for making friends with them, no practice with acceptance.

These days of feeling afraid of myself again are a chance to love myself more with fewer conditions.  This is another key piece on the path to freedom, which I have tasted and definitely want more of.  (Dangling participle…fuck it!)

With 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 20th, 2010:  Abiding with Me

This day is a very challenging one.  In my daily appreciations or gratitudes for the day will be getting through it.  And I know I will be getting through it.  And I guess that is something.  As I mentioned yesterday this has been the lowest on the scale I’ve felt since one year ago.  But with one large exception.  I’m not afraid.  I can experience the grief surrounding loss without fear this time.  I was so frightened last year, I felt so paralyzed.

I may be having an anniversary reaction to the trauma of last year, I don’t know.   I kinda think so.  Growing certainly is not in a straight line but I had no idea this was coming.  I was feeling so great last week so this is frustrating.  But there are certain things I know for sure:

• I feel my Source holding me and that feels good.  I know that I have grown to the point where I can trust the Source within and I don’t feel abandoned.  This is really big, folks.  I feel held and loved from within.  When I begin to doubt I get quiet and return to the stillness within and know.
• I trust that this process is needed to get me to a better place…a place where I am wanting to go. 
• I know that this is not a permanent place…just like my place of joy is not permanent as well.
• I know that this is a place of creation because as I sit with my tears and wanting to feel better I’m creating a vibrational/energetic picture of me that waits for me to catch up.  Thought forms are at the basis of all there is.  I recommend Ask and It Is Given by Abraham/Esther Hicks.  Everything exists vibrationally before it materializes.

Dudie (bff dog) sits in my lap while I type.  I can sit back and put my hands in his fur.  I have so much to be grateful for in my life right now.  I’m glad to have this place to leave some thoughts.   If I can provide something to someone else that would feel very good to me.

With Lovc, Connie

February 19th, 2010:  Post Oprah Let Down?

We went, we saw, we loved her!  It wasn’t exactly what I would have picked to want to see…Oprah interviewed Andrew Young and his wife…you know the guy who said he was the Baby Daddy for John Edwards?  And then she interviewed the wife of the governor who went missing and turned up in Argentina visiting his soul mate.

Seeing Oprah was an out of body experience for me…I must have been rather disconnected.  I couldn’t quite believe I was there, and then in the studio and then, there she is, this woman who I have been watching as long as she has been on television.  I don’t think I could quite believe it.  Part of me was numb to it but I wasn’t aware at the time…or was I.  After the taping she looked at the audience…when she looked my way I waved at her and she waved back…that was my Oprah moment.

This morning I crashed…I’m not sure how or what or why but I haven’t felt this bad since last spring when I left the agency initially for a sabbatical before leaving officially.  I was afraid for my sanity and now with Dudie (bff dog) on my lap I just feel like I could cry the Milwaukee River up to my 8th floor perch.  I’m sure there’s a  connection with Oprah but I’m not sure what it is.  She gets to do her soul’s calling in such a magnificent way and I want to do that too?  Perhaps.  The loss of my 32 year run at Horizons which had been my life even more than I knew and now not even recognizing what it has become?    The agency I ran doesn’t exist any more.  That’s worth a chip off the brain block.

It seems as if this morning the portal opened to my pain pit and everything just came out like a geyser.  I’m trying to work this with everything I’ve written about here…ah, there’s a big thing that I haven’t done and it’s one of the first things to be done…Make peace with where you are.

Make peace with where I am.  But I don’t like where I am.  It doesn’t matter.  Actually it does matter.  It matters even more if I don’t like it.  Make peace with the messiness, the pain, the grieving, the doubting, the not knowing.  Make piece with all of it.  But how do I do that, she says.  Just start by letting it be, girlfriend.  Just let yourself be.  Okay.

With love, 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

February 13th, 2010:    Reality – You Choose

A belief is just a thought you keep thinking.  String a lot of beliefs together and you get a picture of the reality you live in.  Because you will focus or notice those things which confirm your reality and Law of Attraction will bring you those things which confirm what you believe and so a belief situation is perpetuated, good or bad, wanted or wanted.

Except…when you decide that you can change what you focus upon to consciously take in that which feels good to you. your reality shifts too.  The more you sift and sort what you want to focus upon according to what feels good to you, the more you feel good and the more of that which feels good comes to you and on and on. 

The better I feel, the better I feel and the more I notice what feels good to me and the less I’m interested in what doesn’t feel good to me.  I watch very little TV and for sure NEVER listen to the TV news.  That’s the most distorted picture of “reality” available to us.  It’s certainly not what we should watch before going to sleep.  The news in this country is corporation driven so it needs to make money and what makes money?  Fear.  So the news is geared to a fear based reality.  That’s not a reality I’m wanting to live in.  But I don’t think most people are conscious enough to make that decision.  It’s just in front of me so I’ll watch it.  It confirms the fears I have, so I take it in and I feel more afraid.  So I guess that’s reality. 

To allow something that is so external to my life experience to energetically impact, and in many cases confirm my fears until they just become my reality is something to think about.  Canada doesn’t have corporation driven news and, on the whole they are a much less fear driven society.

So, more and more I’m really seriously careful about what I give my attention to because that energy impacts me and draws more of same to me.  The fact that many of us take not feeling all that great as normal is mind blowing when you consider that it all depends on what you choose to focus upon.  In fact, our true normal is happy, curious, energetic, eager.  Just look at children before they are trained away from themselves.

Give yourself a Valentine’s Day Present.   Focus only on what feels good to you!  That is a gift of Love.

With love, Connie

February 12th, 2010:  Hittin’ on All Six

Today is a good day.  I mean one of those great days.  I feel fully me…and that feels damn good.  I also don’t want to jinx myself by saying more about it.  That sentence is worth a whole column but not today!  No, not today!

I just want to bask today in feeling good and let it go at that.

Happy Valentines Day, have a great weekend, hasta la vista, Connie