Vision Keeping

January 6, 2010:  The Catch In Praise

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With Love, Connie

January 5, 2010:  Joy Rising

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With Love, Connie

January 4, 2010:  Did I do that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With Love, Connie

January 1, 2010:  Another Look at Reality

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy New Year!     Love, Connie

December 30th, 2009:  Making Peace With Where I Am

Patience is not a virtue of mine.  That has been a strength and a challenge.  Having a child rounded some impatient edges.  It was either that or go to prison for child abuse.  Being impatient was sometimes good while being an executive director of an agency.  I could facilitate getting things done NOW if that was needed.  But in retrospect the getting things done NOW was probably my sometimes desperate attempt to give myself the illusion of control in a system with far to many moving parts to have any kind of control.

So, it’s nearly 2010 and while I’ve come a long way since last summer and I have begun this tome which has helped me (and I hope someone out there too) and I know 2010 will be amazing but I would like more evidence of things to come, evidence of things unseen.

I was listening to Abraham (see side bar) on a CD this morning and was reminded that if I’m not where I want to be it’s because of my own resistance, my resistant vibration.  Sometimes, like now, I can actually feel the resistance and it feels like I’m not ready yet for whatever and that I am, actually, doing the most I can for myself right now.  But is it enough?

And that is where I get in my own way because of course it is enough or I would not be here.  Of course it is enough because it’s all that I have.  And I am also reminded by my teachers that in order to release resistance I must make peace with where I am.   When I make peace with where I am I’m in a position to allow the next step.  If I’m not at peace with where I am I’m in a state of vibrational resistance, a wad.  I’m not going anywhere but wadding.  And that’s how it feels…wadding.

One way to make peace with where I am is to make a list of positive aspects of where I am and all that I have done.  That is very powerful and I will do that tonight.  Just get your journal or a piece of paper and list everything positive about your present reality and then make a list of everything you have done in a past specified block of time that is positive.  It may take a while but I promise you the lists are there.  Positive aspects are always relative.  A positive aspect for me may not be what would work for someone else.  Depending on one’s state of mind a positive aspect would be that I got out of bed.  For someone else it may mean I took a trip.  It doesn’t matter what it is, it’s what it feels like and that is a very individual thing.

I need to remind myself over and over and over to make peace, make peace, make peace and it’s well worth the reminder because every time I do it, I feel better, the wad relaxes, and energy flows.

With Love, Connie

December 29th, 2009:  Deliberate Creation

For 60 years I lived in a  reality that says that what is all around us, that solid, tangible stuff that looks so real, is all there is.  I remember in my early adulthood in the 60’s and 70’s that the Buddhist’s believe that life is an illusion.  At some level that had some credence for me but I could not elaborate.

Then along come people like Louise Hay and the teachers called Abraham just to mention a few who say that we are energetic beings.  Quantum physics explains that the smallest molecule of matter is thought and your thoughts can change matter.  Now this is getting really interesting.

There was a Japanese Scientist, I believe, who did a very important experiment with water.  He set up several separate, large vats of water all from the same source and labeled them with different emotions like anger, joy, etc. and placed these vats in a public place.  After a period of time the water was examined and the molecular structure in the separate vats had changed after their exposure to thousands of people looking at the emotional labels on the water.

Think of the implications for humans.  We are roughly 80% water or somewhere close to that.  We tend to allow circumstances around us dictate how we feel and not think too much about it.   And this allowing of ourselves to be pulled this way and that way because of outside circumstances in turn drives our “creating by default”.

Our thoughts create our reality and since I’ve come to know that I’ve also come to appreciate my ability to focus my thoughts where I want them to be…where I can feel the best.  And when I don’t feel good, I can reach for a better feeling thought that allows me to feel better.

Knowing we’re vibrational has also given me a much more fluid and changing feeling about our so-called reality.   Just because something is “real” doesn’t mean it deserves my attention.  Just because it’s real, it need not infringe on me unless I give my attention to it.  And just because what I’m feeling in the present moment isn’t so hot does not mean that it won’t change in the next hour, minute.

So, every morning of trying to get some traction emotionally I look for a better feeling thought and ask for Guidance.  This morning I was reminded that we are Source energy and we have chosen to put this energy into physical form on this planet for awhile.  I thought about my mother who made her transition back to non physical in 2004 at the age of 94 and a close friend of mine who made his transition at the age of 33 just two years ago.

Their energy is available to me.  Just because someone has passed on does not mean they are gone…indeed they can be more fully present in energy form…if one can allow that energy.  So I thought of my mother and my friend in their purest non-physical form which is love and I imagined them close to me and relaxed into that thought and those feelings and I felt an expansion and a comfort that was very helpful.  And I want to continue to explore this connection. 

We all have this resource available to us.  I need it now.

With Love, Connie

December 27^th, 2009:  Loving the Drama

 I’m experiencing  post Christmas let down.  I swore I had evolved to a better space that didn’t rely so heavily on outside conditions to keep me feeling good but then, splat!  That’s probably too dramatic and I’m getting my post Christmas bearings.

 I love the feeling of the positive energy at Christmas.  There is a certain drama about it and  Abraham (see side bar) says we love drama and that is certainly true in my experience.  And think about it.  Drama sells a lot of newspapers.  In fact drama drives our entire news media.  Those news clips can be funny if you or your family are not involved…i.e. “Don’t let an escalator be your stairway to death.”  Someone got clothes caught.  Or, “will tomorrow’s weather ruin you weekend plans?”   And on and on and on.

 I believe we have a need to have drama in our lives because we need to express the “bigness” of our spirits.  We need some way to mirror our personal power in a way that feels satisfying.

 If we had not been systematically trained away from who we truly are perhaps we would not have the pressing need to project our own power onto the world around us.    Everywhere we look something or someone is telling us  the world is so big and so powerful and we are so little and could get squashed at any second.

 Now if we can just differentiate between positive and negative drama.  There is drama fueled by fear and drama fueled by love.

 Since we create our own reality and the Law of Attraction will bring us more of what we focus upon, I vote for positive drama.

 Is positive drama an oxymoron?  If so, I’m redefining drama as that which expresses the expansiveness of who I am in a way that feels uplifting not only to me but to everyone around me.

 There have been two excellent examples of positive drama in two films recently.  Films which stretch us to who we truly are.  The first is Whip It, a wonderful film about a girl finding her unique sense of self and how her family must also stretch to love and accommodate this new identity. 

 The second is Invictus, a story of Nelson Mandela and how a white identified rugby team helps unite a country.  I wish more films could uplift us like that and to help us become more of who we are.

 So in my post Christmas mornings I’m reminded to create positive drama for myself, to imagine myself down the road living out my dreams and feeling what that will feel like right now.  Create the vibration within that feels like the future manifestation and then enjoy the journey watching Law of Attraction bringing it to me.

 This is not a one time event.  It’s a constant remembering to stretch into, move into that which I have become.  It really does feel good.

Happy Becoming.    

With Love,    Connie

December 24, 2009:  The Gift to Myself

I’ve begun to look forward to mornings knowing that I’m connecting with my Source, my Higher Power, the God within.  I’m amazed that my tears bring me home.

 As a child I was spiritually abused.  This was 1950’s Kansas with the “Preacher” yelling at us that we were all ugly worms, basically, and crawling ultimately and surely into the fires of hell.   I’m not kidding…one of the hymns has “for such a worm as I” in the song.  Only a small number of people went to heaven and even at 7 years old I definitely knew that I was not one of those people.  I hated being in church and I knew I was not going to heaven because I just wasn’t buying all of it and so my only option was hell.  I was terrified of dying.

One Sunday Mr. Preacher was vividly describing what it was like to literally burn alive.  He gave us a graphic blow by blow of the pain and what happens to your body and that this would go on for eternity.  Something frightened me and I remember yelling out in fear.  The congregation laughed but I just felt deep shame.

 And I was supposed to love this God who was surely damning me as I sat there because I knew I did not “believe”.  Loving God was an oxymoron for so many years.

 So now as I look forward to my morning connection with Source/God that is so immense and so loving that my human mind cannot grasp it, I fully know that God is love.  Any hell is our own disconnection with that love.

When my daughter was a toddler and in daycare I’d drop her off in the morning and she would cry when I left.  I knew that would not last long.   At the end of the day I so looked forward to picking her up.  But when I showed up for the loving reunion she ran away from me not wanting to go with me and sometimes becoming quite angry and teary when we finally got to the car.

I gained understanding about this from attachment theory in action.   For her to become close to me again, for her to be able to fully attach to me again, she had to go back through that doorway of pain through which she had left me.

I realize that my persistent morning tears now are the doorway back to my reunion with my Creative Source.  I feel it in my bones.  It’s a part of the homecoming.

 So, let the tears flow.  I’m Home.  What a great Christmas present to myself

 Peace and Blessings, Connie

December 23, 2009:  Finding the Way to Feeling Good

 Feeling good is my primary job now and I have the luxury to truly focus on that because, frankly, training the brain into a different paradigm is a challenge.  Sometimes attempting to focus on what feels good does not feel good because our dominant vibration wants to prevail.  We haven’t been taught to focus and we usually allow what is going on around us to dictate how we feel and that brings us more of what is going on around us which dictates how we feel which draws more of what is going on around us…you get the picture.  Law of Attraction in action.

Case in point…today I feel good…doing my journaling, etc,.  Doing a good job launching myself into a new day feeling enthusiastic you could say.  Even Walgreen’s saying that my insurance company denied my prescription for a generic only mildly interrupted my mojo.

Then a good friend calls me and has to reschedule a meeting time from today until Monday and the parade came to a screeching halt.  Monday is nearly next year!   What about today?  Now I love this friend.   He’s been with me through thick and quite a bit of thin over the summer. 

 My dominant vibration switched from parade mojo to rejected wallflower which is a very tried and true vibration.   Maybe he’s tired of my ass.  Maybe he’s really not busy but just needed an excuse to not see me.  We have been seeing a lot of one another.  He’s so sweet he just didn’t want to hurt my feelings.   The stick poked through the balloon and I was dobbing my eyes.

 But I know too much now to keep myself there.  Constance, Dear One, I say to myself.  You are allowing old insecurities to take over.  You are not a pathetic loser friend and you can find the good feelings again and so here I am and I do feel better.  But I had to really focus on a better feeling thought.

 When I feel good I run into interesting people.  When I’m feeling good I get the green lights.  When I’m feeling good I can find the parking place I need.  When I feel good the check out line goes faster.  When I feel good traffic doesn’t bother me.  And most of all when I feel good I’m allowing the universe to deliver to me what I am wanting. 

 When I’m feeling good I become more of a vibrational match to what it is that I am wanting and so I’m allowing the Law of Attraction to bring it to me.  If I’m cranky I’m not a match to what I want.  If I’m angry I’m not a match to what I want.

 And so feeling good is not only just a better way to be in the world because it feels good to feel good,  it’s the way to everything we want.  It brings the saying that we are our own worst enemy to a whole new level.

 Peace and Blessings, Connie

December 22, 2009:  Be the Change you Want to See

 I think Gandhi or someone equally grand, said be the change you want to see.  That has new meaning for me now.

 According to the teachers called Abraham (see my blog site for more information) the creative process involves three steps.  The first step is to ask for what we want and we do this all day long both consciously and unconsciously.  For example we can daydream or consciously envision what is wanted or we can unconsciously ask by being flipped off in traffic and we automatically want other drivers to be more courteous.  At any rate the asking is a vibrational asking.

 The second step is where the Universe, Law of Attraction steps in and arranges everything we want vibrationally…like a vibrational escrow account for us.  And this brings us to step three which is the allowing of what we want to manifest in our lives.

 Step three, allowing, is where we get hung up for the most part.  We believe that in order for us to get what we want we have to MAKE it happen rather than trust the Universe to simply bring it to us.

 Example:  I’m in the process of getting my family’s health insurance transferred.  What an opportunity for a clusterfuck!  And I was experiencing them left and right.  Papers weren’t being sent, checks were lost, etc. and I knew that I was a player in all of that because I was feeling so vulnerable and also feeling like the world didn’t give a flying fuck about me. 

In the last week or so I began to feel a shift.  My energy is more positive.  I have a knowing now that my life is moving to something that I want.  So, when I call the health care benefits people today to ask about our insurance, the nice lady on the other end says, can you hold while I make a call and I say sure.  She comes back and says, wait an hour while your insurance company can reboot its system and you will have valid insurance.  That’s great because I need to go to Walgreens.

 Now this may be small to some but I know because my energy is aligned more positively with actually getting the insurance that it must come.  That is the Law of Attraction.

 Everything we want is imagined first.  What we want is first an idea and then as we see ourselves as having or being that which we want it begins to manifest.  (I highly recommend the book “Ask and It is Given” by Abraham and Esther and Jerry Hicks.)  We must be the change we want. 

 The bottom line is to feel good.  It’s good to feel good.  Not only that but if we are feeling negative we cannot allow the good that is wanting to come to us.  Many times the most simple of ideas is the most powerful.

 The Universe if full of powerful paradoxes of power and simplicity.  I love the Christmas paradox of one of our most powerful teachers and healers who some call the savior of the world being born in a manger.

 I love the Christmas energy which is palpable and created by everyone.  It’s a believing that this time of year is magical and loving and because we believe it, it actually is for most of us if we are not blocking it by being in a negative place.

 So, the absolutely best thing we can do in order to fulfill our heart’s desire is to get happy.

 Peace and Love, Connie