Vision Keeping

February 7th, 2010:  Muchas Gracias, Universe

Before I knew what had happened I felt myself falling.  It was slow motion.  I couldn’t move my feet and I was going over, down, down and bam, hit the rug.  I looked up at the dogs and my daughter sitting on the couch.  She said, “are you all right?”  I said “yes, but damn what happened?”  As I got up to sit on the couch I couldnt help but feeling like an old woman who you could blow over with a slight gust of air.  I was vertical and then on the floor.   Favorite daughter Meredith pointed out that I had bent back her laptop screen and it wouldn’t close.  Evidently I had unknowingly grabbed for something on my way down and it had been the $2,700 laptop.  Jesus!  Plus the number 9 key had come off as well.

Of course I immediately asked myself what this was about.   I create my own reality…nothing is an accident and this was really jarring.  What is being said to me?  But this wasn’t the time and Meredith was not the person to engage with on the subject.  We clearly had to get the laptop to the emergency room, and so it was.

I had been feeling rather anxious for a few days.  Frustratingly so and I couldn’t put my finger on it.  This morning I woke and had a thought that I should do a focus wheel (look to a previous entry on the how-to’s of focus wheels) on feeling more connected to my inner self, my inner Connie.  As I began doing the writing I knew right away that this was pay dirt because I was feeling  soothed right away with the idea of connecting with little Connie.  I had been doing so much focussing on understanding that the greater part of me is Source Energy and feeling powerful in that knowing that somehow I had left the physical Connie behind and was feeling unbalanced.

As I said when I began looking and focussing on loving the physical me and giving tender attention to the me inside that needed some direct attention, mothering if you will, I had a bolt of insight.  I had a vivid flashback to me falling on the floor yesterday in front of my daughter and injuring her most prescious piece of communication and I understood that it was a metaphor of my own disconnection with myself and not communicating with my own child within.   

Besides that’s sexier than feeling like a nursing home patient tripping over a dust ball in the hall way of “the home”.     And if anyone out there can connect the #9 key coming off let me know.  That one has me stumped.

I just love guidance.  At a time when I needed some affirmation that the Universe does indeed have my back, I got it.  Muchas Gracias, Universe!

With Love, Connie

February 6th, 2010:  Embracing Contrast?

Abraham (see side bar reference) calls what we do not like in our world, contrast.  They (the teachers called Abraham) say that we create from contrast and that without contrast there would be no eternity because there would be no new creations.

Sometimes I feel like I just want to spend the rest of my life on a beach but then I realize that may get boring.  In fact, I went to Tahiti last year and our guide was saying the people that lived on the remote islands who woke up to the same beauty every day without much interruption have a difficult time keeping their sanity.  They often turn to alcohol.  She said you had to be really “zen”, her word, to be able to cope with the uninterrupted sameness even if it is beautiful.

So, after having the best string of days consistently feeling a freedom I’ve never felt before, except perhaps in childhood, I’m feeling some contrast.  Contrast in my case is feeling anxious and frustrated and impatient and doubting.

I must remind myself that in these moments I am actually creating more of that which I’m wanting.  Back to Abraham again…when we are experiencing something not wanted we automatically “shoot rockets of desire” , their words, for that which we are wanting.  So, in this case, while I’m feeling anxious and frustrated, I’m creating a future in which I’m feeling much better.  So I’m constantly creating a vibrational future every day from contrast and my Source in answering by amassing this future for me in what Abraham calls “vibrational escrow” waiting for me “allow” that vibrational escrow to manifest.  That’s why when we go through bad patches in the road, when we emerge we feel better than when we began the journey. 

And it seems like the worse the situation, the better we feel when we find our way home again.  We have created that better future by vibrationally shooting it out ahead of us and then finally catching up.  We are constantly growing, expanding beings.  That is our nature.

I must remember this when I’m feeling frustrated and anxious.  I’m just creating an even better tomorrow for myself.  And it very well could be tomorrow.  At least I know I’m not wasting my time.  I’m creating for God’s sake…literally.

With love, Connie

February 4th, 2010:  It’s good to feel good!

I have to remind myself that having my #1 priority is an okay thing.  In fact, it’s more that okay, it’s the prerequisite to getting everything I want.   And, well, not to mention that I’ve wanted to feel good consistently all my life.   

So, now that I’ve had I taste of  that feeling of freedom, emotional and spiritual freedom, I want it forevermore.  It’s simply better that any high one could achieve and it’s free and it is our birthright.

On my spiritual journey over the past 35 years or so, I’ve heard that we have come here to remember who we truly are.  I believe I’m remembering because the feelings of freedom I’ve had have been so emotionally powerful that it resonates with something beyond my physical self. 

In the remembering, when I’m in that space, I absolutely know that I’m held in the arms of my Creative Source and that Creative Source runs through me and all is definitely well.

So when I’m not in that space it’s becoming more important for me to get back to what feels so deliciously wonderful for as long as I can before I’m thrown out again by irritation or disappointment.  I’m becoming more sure of my ability to be able to get back into that all-is-well space.

When I’m feeling free I’m taking in life as if I’m on a thrilling skateboard ride.  Easy does it but there’s a gusto and a movement and of course I’m in a park and Dudie (bff dog) is running happily by my side.  If I hit a bump and fall off, I’m learning to get back on and hopefully my times riding will be longer than on the ground.

One lastest Oprah note…I applied again for 7 dates in March and was turned down 5 hours later at 2:13 a.m.  Those people!  Maybe it’s just this Oprah robot.  So, I will not be denied!  I went on the website today and applied for last minute reservations for February 11th, a date for which I was first turned down.  So, if I get this reservation for February 11th I should actually get a phone call from a live Oprah person.  I think I can be cool but what if I mess myself??

With Love, Connie

February 2nd, 2010:  My Bad Phoenix Self

Yesterday really was the worst day I’ve had in a long time.  Even when I went to bed I was still feeling crappy.  This morning I felt teary, angry and blank.  Thank God it’s therapy day.  So I started to do a focus wheel.  Check back and see how to do a focus wheel in a previous entry.  I swear by them.  I began writing and I remembered that when I was feeling so wonderful and free last week I really do think that this is the way we intended to feel.  I truly believe that freedom and joy are our natural states but we get pulled away so early in life by the people around us who want us to make them happy.  I thought about the strength of all of us who agree to come here to this wonderful planet and we all endure being pulled away from who we are and how strong we all are to come and to journey.

Perhaps in another 100 years our parenting and schools will be more tune with the individual needs of each tiny being and that they are not here to make us happy nor should we expect them to conform to so many external expectations.  But I digress…

This morning I was just thinking about the strength of spirit and then I remembered that the greater part of me is non-physical energy, Source energy, with some of that energy focused in the physical body that is me.  I got a sense of my strength and it resonated in me that this strength and power is the God Force in me.  When I allowed that to settle in I felt SO GOOD!  Any sense of doubt about my path, my worthiness evaporated.  Gone!  And I felt great all day.

Plus, I put in for more Oprah tickets.  If you remember I put in for Oprah tickets a couple of weeks ago only to get them, fuck up and lose them.  So I’m on this ticket thing like white on rice.  I have a good feeling.  I am God Force after all.  I’ll nail those babies.  I barely saw the notice…those ticket people are sneeky.  There was just this little blip and only a few hours to respond!  Sneeky.  I should know soon. 

Remember feeling good is your most important job in creating the life you want!

With love, Connie

February 1st, 2010:  Tantrum time

I just got back from a long walk with my Dudie (bff dog).   I thought it might do me some good.   I don’t feel good today.  After feeling like I had found the keys to the kingdom I’m experience grief and anger.  And I’m angry that I’m having those feelings.  GO AWAY.  I’m sick of you.  I want the good stuff back.  As I write I’m picturing me lying on the concrete floor of my loft kicking my arms and legs in a full blown tantrum.  I DON’T WANT THIS, I yell.  BRING ME WHAT I FELT LAST WEEK!  NOW!!  And then, of course, I begin to doubt that my path will unfold, that I will indeed have my heart’s desire, blah, blah, blah just kill me now.

I don’t want to waste one more minute of my life on feeling crappy.   Time is a wastin’.  And then I must remind myself a bunch of stuff which I’m not sure I even want to remind myself of at the present moment.  I’m into the tantrum.  But after an internal check I’m not so invested in my tantrum that I can’t do some reminding so here goes…grrrrrrrrr.

• These feelings won’t last forever.  They haven’t yet and I’m 63.  If I’ve felt REALLY good I can feel just as good again because I cannot become less than who I am.
• I always learn something important which ultimately causes me to bless the tantrum.  I can only learn if I let go of my anger at myself for feeling bad.
• My feelings shift more quickly when I can fully embrace them even when I don’t like them.  Relax into the feeling and b r e a t h e.

I think the fear is that if I relax into my feelings and truly accept them then they will hang around…like the neighbor’s house when you were young with the cool parents.  Kids like to come and hang out.  I’m not wanting these kids to hang out.

But that hasn’t been my experience.  I have to trust my Inner Being who wants better for me and with a bit of help from me will gladly show me the way out when I’m not so fiercely hanging on.

I’ll keep you posted.

With Love, Connie

January 30th, 2010:  The Next Thing?

According to dear Louise (see side bar) all you have to do is what is before you and the Universe will guide you.  Do the next thing she says.  Just do the next thing.  That has been my mantra lately.

So, my other favorite teachers, Abraham (see side bar), say when you’re feeling good then your stream begins flowing faster and you will notice things beginning to happen.  I’m looking, favorite readers, I’m being attentive.  (Gayle King, on O Radio XM Radio, constantly calls her audience her favorite listeners and and I just had a flash of my favorite readers.  And so it is.  While I like Gayle, I recently sent her a message that I thought she would do herself and her readers a service if she commented less on other people’s personal business.  Not that my opinion counts in the least…I digress.)

So I’m watching for “the next thing.”  I had breakfast with a friend yesterday and I was telling her about the curriculum I’m writing.  It’s a teaching curriculum that takes the notion of creating the life you want and using the principle ideas of Louise, Abraham, and the Law of Attraction and puts these into an 8 session curriculum.  Out of this basic curriculum could come may different spin-offs…the one session overview, the weekend workshop, etc.  You are getting many of the ideas expressed in that curriculum in this column.

So my friend reminds me that her husband is a publisher and that I could meet with him to get his ideas on how to proceed.  Great! 

I realized, hey, that’s the next thing…maybe.   I’ll meet with him…maybe that will lead to other things or maybe it won’t but I will get some good information and it is a “next thing”.  I feel it.

With love, Connie

January 28, 2010:  I get it!

For three days I’ve been intending to sit down and write about keeping a gratitude journal as a way of opening up your world to a whole new level of appreciation.  But each time I sat down to write another subject was pressing at the time…my Oprah ticket drama.

But nothing is a coincidence and all has a reason.  This time I get the bigger picture of the delay.  I need to rename the gratitude journal and call it instead an appreciation journal.  Abraham (see side bar) talks about the difference between appreciation and gratitude.  They have very different vibrations and if you carefully stop to listen you can feel the difference.  Appreciation vibrates at the same rate as love and carries a very pure high vibration.  Gratitude carries the idea of having overcome a struggle and is a lower vibration.  So in that light appreciation does feel better to me.  I knew this but was going to call it a gratitude journal because that’s the more common name and more may identify with that.

But in the two days that I was writing about Oprah drama I came to know that I would write about appreciation rather than gratitude because it’s the best I can offer.  So keeping an appreciation journal will change how you perceive the world if you commit to doing it for at least 6 months but I would recommend one year.  If you have the resources get a blank book that appeals to you as well as a pen.  Actually any paper will do but I’m really into paper and like office supplies I guess.

I strongly suggest picking the same time every day to write in your journal so it can become a practice that is built into your daily schedule.  Hopefully you will look forward to it.  The idea is to write five new things every day for which you are appreciative.  The key word is “new” here.  The first day or two it is easier to find 5 things to be appreciative of but then after that  you have to begin to look more closely to your days to find things that you enjoyed or noticed that you appreciated.  Now are you getting the idea.  After 6 months or one year of 5 new things every day you get to go deeper into your life and put a magnifying glass on to see of the texture of your days.  It really does shift your view and awareness.

For example to day I’m appreciative of:

• I’m appreciative of a meeting with a friend and we shared a lot of good talk and ideas
• I really appreciate his dog who is so sweet and loving and I loved him in my lap
• I’m appreciative of an opportunity my daughter has for a shift in her future job situation and that she called to tell me about it
• I loved coming back to my loft/home this evening and feeling grounded and truly “at home”
• I’m appreciative of the taste of dark chocolate with chili flavoring because it is so unusual and tickled my taste buds

That’s a sampling.  Of course everyone’s will be different.  Sometimes when I was beginning I felt so badly some days that I was just appreciative that the day was over, appreciative of sleep, of darkness.  Whatever.

I’ve talked with a lot of people who enjoy doing this and it shifts your focus to more of what you like rather that what you dislike.  Remember, what you focus upon brings you more of that.  So if you focus on things that feel good to you you get more of that.  If you are a complainer, you will notice more things to complain about.  That’s the way of the Law of Attraction.

With Love, Connie

January 26th, 2010:  A O F U  …or…After Oprah Fuck Up

Yesterday evening I checked my email prior to writing my very perky, no doubt, blog.  It was there I discovered I had been given 4 tickets to attend a taping of the Oprah Show only to look at the next email from obviously my good friend, Oprah, to learn that I no longer had tickets because I didn’t confirm within the deadline.

I think they are running a sweatshop at Harpo keeping people chained to their desks 24/7 because I was not expecting to hear from them until at least today but they responded to me Saturday afternoon.  C’mon, where’s the Best Life in working on weekends?  I truly had no idea the hive would be buzzing on Saturday.  And not only that but we were given 42 hours to respond or lose the tickets.  It’s the ticket Nazi’s.  I’m telling you.  I emailed them practically begging.   Okay, I really was begging them to reconsider, but after my heart felt outpouring this morning I got a form note back…”due to the large response”….blah, blah.  I had a flashback of my executive director days getting a rejection letter from a foundation.  “Due to the large response…”

This morning I woke up and immediately remembered that I SCREWED UP MY OPRAH TICKETS!  I felt crappy and my feet hadn’t hit the floor but, and this is a big but, I knew I could work myself out of feeling that way.  I was ready to let go.  I didn’t want to carry it any more.  So I got my focus wheel paper and began to draw and write the wheel.  If you don’t know about the focus wheel, look up my entry about the focus wheel so you can know what I’m doing if you want.  I began by stating with writing what I was actually feeling at the moment.  At 1 o’clock on the paper I write “I’m feeling like I fucked up the tickets and feel bad about it and am angry and frustrated.”  Then in my circle in the middle I wrote the opposite idea/feelings of what I wanted to feel at the end of the exercise and I wrote, “I know the Universe has my back and that I can create the feelings I want.  I’m feeling confident and know the future hold my heart’s desire…blah, blah.”  That’s pretty close.  Then I go back to 2 o’clock and write “I know that my loss of the tickets was not a personal one, that Harpo and Connie have very different points of view.  Then at 3 o’clock I write “I know my feelings can change quickly and as I write I’m already feeling a bit better” and so on and so on to 12 o’clock and feeling good again matching the feelings I wrote in the middle of the circle.  It’s a way to inch your way up the emotional scale.

What was amazing about this whole episode is that I realized that my feeling crappy the night before felt totally off and wrong for me.  I didn’t revert to that old worn overcoat of self loathing that was so familiar in a suckie sort of way.  It just felt wrong and “not me”.  Realizing that was big!  For the first time in my life, literally, feeling good is becoming a set point, a normal, and not feeling really good just wasn’t me any more. 

And learning that was well worth my Oprah tickets!

With Love, Connie

January 25th, 2010:  I need help!

I have just momentarily lost it!  For years I’ve been trying to get tickets to the Oprah Show.  Last week I went on line and discovered the window was open for all of February’s tapings.  So, I applied for all 22 tapings.

I just opened my email and discovered that my request was accepted!  Yes!!  Except that the deadline for confimation was this morning at 9 a.m.  OMG!!!  I”m in shock and emailed them directly.  They sent out the confirmation on Saturday afternoon.  I had already checked my email.  In the confirmation email they said that I had 42 hours to respond, which was not explained when placing my request.  Nor did they say they worked on the damn weekends.  Don’t those people ever go home?  I was not expecting to hear from them until tomorrow at the earliest.  Shit.

I am devastated and all my ability at the current moment to use all of my wonderful tools to feel better has flown out the window.  I just want to cry and pound my fist on something.

I promised myself I would make an entry today because I wanted to and wanted to do it before going to bed.  The entry was about a tool to feel better but I think I just want to feel pissed off for a minute or two.

Besides you know I’m human too and sometimes there is just nothing to do but let the feelings pass before I can move on.

Send some good thoughts to Harpo for me!

With Love, Connie

January 24th, 2010:  Tuning Up

OMG, feeling good is so important.  Feeling good means you are in sync for other good feeling things, people, events to come to you.  Feeling good means you are on the way to your dreams and really isn’t feeling good so much more preferable to feeling crappy or feeling blah.  Actually we have become used to feeling “blah” much of the time thinking that it’s just the way it is…..NOT.  Or at least it doesn’t have to be.  Some people just seem to pop from the womb feeling good.  There are those people in my life who are always up, always expect to find the parking spot and they DO!  It’s all about expectation.  But most of us have to learn to expect those good feelings and learn to expect those parking spaces.  I know.  I’m one of those people and I’ve done it.

So, there are several things you can do to amp up your feeling good vibrations and I practice all of them, some more than others.  I’ve already explained the focus wheel which is probably the single most powerful tool for me.  If you haven’t read that entry I invite you to do so.  Another thing I do almost daily is writing affirmations.  If I’m having a negative thought that is pestering me I can take that thought and turn it around 180 degrees and express that thought in a positive way.  If I’m fearful about an upcoming situation I can say to myself, “I know that the outcome of this meeting will be what is intended and I can relax and allow the Universe to be in charge.”  If I’m worried about my daughter I can say, “I know that she has a brilliant spirit and she will become who she is meant to be.”

There are endless ways to express affirmations and you will know if the affirmation is working for you literally by how it feels to you as you say it.  It will just speak to you if you get the right words.  Play with the words.  Words are very powerful in expressing energy and play with them until you get the feeling you are looking for of clarity and of knowing.  Louise Hay (see side bar) is the Queen of Affirmations and I encourage you to look at her material for further information and support regarding the use of affirmations.

The most important thing about affirmations other than it must be a “fit” for you, it must feel right, is that you must use the affirmation like a mantra.  When I began to use affirmations to reprogram some negative thinking I would say the affirmation over and over.  While I was walking my dog I would say a particular affirmation perhaps one hundred times.  Write it down and put it in a place you will see it over and over during the day.  Sing it in the shower.  Shout it in your car.  Say it in different rythms.  Affirmations are powerful, they do work, but they must become a part of you.

I have so much more to share with you and look for them beginning in the next entry. 

As I look back at even the past two months when I began this memoir I feel so much better.  I continue to have greater confidence in knowing that tomorrow may be even better than today.  And I promise you this did not come out of the blue.  I used the tools I’m giving you.

With Love, Connie