Just in time for celebrating the High Holidays, my husband and I watched the PBC Masterpiece movie, “God on Trial” which was inspired by the legend that a group of concentration camp prisoners conducted a mock trial against the Almighty God. From all walks of life, a physicist, a glove maker, rabbis, a law professor and at least one criminal weigh the evidence and offer thoughtful arguments taken from history, science, theology and personal experience.

Needless to say,  afterward we washed our brains out with two back-to-back episodes of “Modern Family“.

Don’t get me wrong, “God on Trial” is an excellent movie full of all kinds of  beliefs and feelings worthy of exploring, it’s just you can imagine that it is pretty intense.  Earlier today, I interviewed prominent teacher of healing and shamanism, Llyn Roberts about her newly released book, “Shapeshifting Into Higher Consciousness“.  Llyn holds a Master’s Degree in Tibetan Buddhist and Western Psychology and has undergone extensive training with traditional Andean healers as well as having been initiated into shamanic circles by Quechua peoples in South America and Siberia.  And earlier this week I met Rennie Davis and learned some of what he is offering in his workshops on Earth Whispering training.

It seems no matter where you (and I) look today, we will find people asking questions and talking about all the changes that seems to be afoot from the changing weather conditions (drought in Texas, other States and countries, extensive rains, etc.) to political regimes either in turmoil or completely reforming into something completely different.  Where I want to focus my input right now is to those peoples who are looking at this time as one of possibility, one of hope, one of remembering the magic that surrounds us all as one of Llyn Robert’s shamans told her.

The movie, “God on Trial” explored the various beliefs of several of the Jewish concentration camp victims in their most desperate of times. It seems that we humans are compelled to share our beliefs and thoughts mostly when we experience fear and pain.  It’s very easy for me to go back to sleep in my consciousness and be lulled into complacency when all is well.  Not to say that I don’t explore my beliefs when I am feeling good, but to remind myself that when situations do arise that challenge what I believe that is when I am more likely to know what I truly think and also to feel where the gaps are in my trust.

All reason enough for me to keep doing those things I do to keep growing in my awareness and investigating what I do and don’t believe.  Taking care of ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually by eating good nutritious foods in moderation, exercising, handling issues with the help of counselors or a trusted spiritual adviser, meditating, enjoying the world around us are all deposits into our insurance policy of — well, I would call it faith but you may call it something else — so that when things around us are changing at a rapid pace we have a deep unending resource within us that keeps us going.

Really, when you come down to it,  this life on Earth thing it is not that the God of our understanding (or misunderstanding as it were) is on trial but it is more that our perspectives and beliefs are up for examination under a really big and bright mircroscope.

What kind of deposits are you making into your spiritual bank these days?

Today while I was talking with my mentor I realized that I “know” more than I think I know (not to be confused with “I don’t know what I don’t think I know”).  Over the past couple of weeks, we’d been throwing around the idea of either leading a teleclass together (workshop done over the phone) or I’d offer one on my own. On occasion, we’d also talk about my offering a retreat again.

The last time I offered a retreat was two years ago and that particular one was at a very expensive place that ended up costing me (in fact, I had to pay to attend my own retreat).  It was a humbling experience and a learning experience for me being as how it was the first retreat I’d lead where I lost rather than earned money.  So I put leading retreats on the back burner.

When my mentor prompted me to see if I would commit to leading a teleclass, I realized that what I really wanted to do was offer a retreat and when she started asking me questions about the retreat (that I had just committed to), I soon realized that I already “knew” what the retreat would be about, what materials I would use, where it would be, what it would cost and within a relatively short period of time I knew when I would have it.   I knew more than I thought I knew.

I bet all of us have examples of times when we found out that we knew more than we thought we knew.  When has that happened for you?  What happened for you to realize you already had the answer?

There are times when I take so for granted the many avenues I’ve traveled down to expand my mind, expand my awareness of self and the world to understand what we’re doing here.  Do you care about expanding your mind?  When I was younger and more susceptible to following my peers, I thought mind expansion primarily happened through the exploration using various drugs.  I suppose, in a way, my mind did expand through the use of them but not in the way I had thought it would.  Instead of having that ah-ha hopeful feeling that I saw many of my friends having, I tended to get really hyper-sensitive and uncomfortable (okay, paranoid!).

As I grew up and matured, I found safer routes (for me) such as exploring various spiritual and religious paths.  I was blessed to meet some life long friends during my stint with a popular magazine.  During that time, a very special group of us formed and I learned all kinds of tools to add to my spiritual tool box from the way of the Red Man (Native American) to Self-Realization Fellowship (Hindu/Christian).   Along the way, I took all kinds of classes and workshops that explored a variety of ideas, techniques and tools that I’m sure if I listed them out here they would terrify some of the more conservative members of my family if they happened across this blog.  To me, the intention of learning them was for the connecting and healing of others, but I realize that some of my ideas for expanding my mind might trigger all kinds of fear for others.

To each his own in terms of how you expand your mind.  I just happened to be very grateful today for all that I’ve learned along the way and all that I know I will continue to learn.

Last night was no exception.  A good friend of mine meets with a group of special friends once a week who come together to share the various learnings that they have gleaned through their explorations.  This time when my friend picked me up she asked me before hand if it’d be okay if we picked up the main speaker/presenter, Rennie Davis, who was in town to conduct a very special workshop that would offer “Earth Whisperer Training”.  She went on to say that Rennie was one of the main guys protesting the Vietnam War (I’ll say!  He was one of the Chicago 7) and other then he was on a spiritual path that she was very interested in and had written a book that she had but had not read yet, she didn’t know much else about him.  Were we in for a treat!! We got 20 minutes with Rennie in the car on the way to the meeting and 20 minutes back.  You know for this interviewer , that exclusive time with him was close to Valhalla!  Suffice it to say Rennie is up to some big stuff in regards to teaching/training us on how to help heal the planet (and ourselves and each other) so if he is ever in your neck of the woods….go see him.

I would be remiss if I didn’t make a nod towards returning to school, by the way.  So many pieces of information that I’ve been walking around with un-tethered in my head lo these many years and missing pieces of facts that are all beginning to come together. I was actually fascinated with what I was learning today in the political science class g_d forbid!  It began to make sense in regards to the connections between the 10th Amendment and opinions that were written way back in the 30’s by various Justices who were opposed to Federal Government having too much power over Commerce laws and preferred putting that power back into the States’ hands.  Who knew that I’d actually one day grok some of this? Certainly not me.

But sometimes you never know where your mind will end up expanding too.

How about you?  What are you doing now to expand your mind?

The Keys - Maharaji

It took listening to coverage on NPR about Kurt Cobain (inspired the Grunge movement, died as a rising star back in 1994) for me to finally consider getting really intentional about my work (coaching, writing, web radio interviewing).  I mean, don’t get me wrong, when I was working in an 9-6 job going 90 to nothing recruiting people from all over the world and attracting new clients I had “to do lists” all over the place. And I did quite well. And made good dinero too!  I realize now, that I was using my “to do lists” also as my intentions list.

So back to Kurt. In the story, they talked about how successful Kurt was and, of course, how he wrestled with his fame as well. One of the practices that Kurt did everyday was to write down what he intended to do with his songs and music. And he was very specific about it.  I don’t know, maybe it’s the rebellious spirit in me (smells like teen spirit) but for some reason just knowing that Kurt wrote down his intentions/goals and was specific about them (and very successful, did I say that? very successful) was enough for me to begin writing down my intentions/goals again and getting really specific. I figure if Kurt could do it, I sure can too.

Although I’m very connected on social networking sites and I use my Android all the time, for me, there is nothing better than writing down my days intentions on a yellow legal pad. And the ink has to be blue.  I put dashes out to the side of each intention and check them off as I get them done. I also label the top of each page “TO DO” and date it.  What I don’t get done, I transfer to the next day and re-prioritize.  As I’m doing my day if an idea pops into my head for something that I want to get done, I write it down on my list.  If there are phone numbers/emails/addresses to go with it, I put that down too. Yes, I know it would be much more efficient to use a program in my phone but for some reason I really prefer writing it out.

Maybe writing out my goals enacts a chemical release in my brain much like crying tears releases chemicals too. Who knows? I just know writing down what I want to do and accomplish helps me to get things done.

How about you?  What intentions can you be specific about and write down/type up?

I’m going to have that Cake song, “Going the Distance” in my head which is not entirely a bad thing though it does tend to stay around for awhile. Going the distance popped into my head as the title for all the thoughts circling in my head.   These thoughts were inspired by two movies I watched recently, the first one was “The Conspirator” which is about Mary Surratt who is the lone female charged as a co-conspirator in the assassination trial of Abraham Lincoln. As the whole nation turned against her, she was forced to rely on her reluctant lawyer to uncover the truth and save her life.  The second movie  “Of Gods and Men” is about  a group of Trappist monks, under threat by fundamentalist terrorists,  who are stationed with an impoverished Algerian community and must decide whether to leave or stay.

On the surface, these movies may seem totally unrelated to each other as the first one is set in the United States and deals with the assassination of our President and the second one is set in Algeria and follows the lives of a small group of Trappist monks under threat by fundamental terrorist.  The commonality that I gleaned from both of these movies was the struggle of a person to follow their conscious in spite of the repercussions and even death that may follow.

There have been more than a couple of times in my life when I have gone with what the group (or highly regarded individual) thinks or says instead of following my inner guidance.  In a recent interview with Healer and Reikki Master Shannon Ogg on Blog Talk Radio’s Hope42Day I learned that a rash of panic attacks and anxiety about scuba diving over the last several years may have resulted from vestiges of grief that I have been carrying around since 2001 when we were on vacation in Cozumel and my 14 year old Cairn Terrier, Breakfast, became suddenly ill.  What I did was stay in Cozumel and talk back and forth long distance with a good friend of mine who knew Breakfast and a lot about medicine. This friend worked with the vet to see what could be done for Breakfast and ultimately I had to make the decision to put her to sleep.

In my gut of guts during that time what I wanted to do was to abort my vacation, get on a plane and return home to take care of my dog.  Instead, I was not there to see what was going on and make the hard decision based on that and so my grief was all bagged up like full water balloons within my chest for quite a long time.  On top of that, I added my guilt for not going home to be with my dog and for staying on vacation because, after all, “she was just a dog” and this vacation was had already been re-scheduled due to 9/11 when we had made our first attempt to leave.  What I know today is that no matter what anyone says to me, I’m the one who is going to have to live with me and the decisions I make.   Yes, I have learned to forgive myself and yes, I have let go of beating myself up about this particular incident.

I wanted to share this with you as an example of going the distance for yourself and your own conscious. In “The Conspirator”, the defense attorney decides to go the distance for his client, Mary Suratt, because of his belief in a fair trial by jury and his dawning understanding of why he fought in the war.  In “Of Gods and Men” each of the monks have to wrestle with their own conscious and crisis of faith to make the best choice for themselves that they can live (or die) with.

We make decisions about following our conscious or not all the time, every day and most of us will never have to make a decision based on life or death.  But don’t you think that every decision we make that we follow our conscious on is one tiny building block to who we are and will become? There was one monk in particular who I really related to regarding his crisis of faith because as he struggled through figuring out what decision he needed to make, there were times that he felt like he prayed to God and no none answered.  I so  know that feeling when you’re in utter despair or desperation and really asking for guidance from something/someone/anyone (God, Angels, guides, ancestors, etc.) and it seems like you can hear the echo of your voice going on in waves through the vortex of time.

In my experience, that is usually because I already know the answer that I need to make for myself, but I’m hoping I can return it for full money back with no questions asked.

What conscious decision are you willing to go the distance for today?

Breakfast Kindler

We went to see the opening night movie, “Moneyball” starring Brad Pitt, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jonah Hill, Robin Wright and a slew of great actors.  Our household gives it a four thumbs up for sure.  It is based on a true story about  Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane’s successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players.

I’m a sucker for a good story about baseball and this one was no exception.  I understood exactly why Billy could not show up at the live baseball games (superstitious about being bad luck for the team) and why when his team was playing he would turn on the television but turn the sound off.  It’s just too much too bear the thought of losing.  By the way, Brad Pitt proved he is not just another pretty face anymore–he’s a really good actor.  Spit into the cup perfectly!   But I digress, the reason I’m blogging about this movie is because Billy Beane’s story felt so familiar to me. You know—wondering if you made the right decision even when your gut tells you that you probably didn’t and everyone around you is telling you that you did.

Spoiler alert if you don’t know Billy’s story………………………

It’s about knowing that you made the right decision even when everyone tells you (or thinks) that it was wrong and turning down a whole bundle of money to boot!  I love that Billy had the courage to follow his dream or at least what he believed is/was his dream (to have the A’s win the World Series).  We come into this world alone and we go out of this world alone and in-between we’re sitting within ourselves alone a lot of the time so it’s a good thing when we can believe in ourselves enough to go for the dream no matter what.  To stand by what we value and what we believe in.  To not sell our souls to the highest bidder because that’s what “everyone else” thinks we should do. See?!?!  There I go off on a romantic tangent about baseball and I’m the girl who was terrified to even play softball because of what it could (and did) do to my fingers and face when I couldn’t catch the ball right!

It’s because  the story of baseball is one that we can all climb into some part and relate to in our own lives.

Tonight, I’m going to really be thinking about the message that the highest point of my brain put a flag out in recognition of tonight.  That winning is not all about the money and yet it’s also about taking the money that you’ve earned. The thing is that bar inside of us that tells us “we’ve earned” something is just that…a bar inside of us. That means that no matter how much someone may tell us that we’ve earned something, unless we feel that bar inside of us—we’re probably going to walk around with a nameless weight inside of us because we don’t feel that we’ve earned the money, attention, recognition, etc.

What is your ultimate aha in life right now?  How do you know that you’ve reached an inner goal?

Lately a whole lot of people have been talking about allowing your creativity to come through authentically no matter how weird it may feel or be!!  Seth Godin wrote a recent blog about “Being Weird” and the vunderbaugh author Sarah Bird sent out a tweet today containing a you tube video cleverly promoting her next event–it was all about creativity. and of course one of my all time favorite authentic creators, Mitch Ditkoff, blogs about creativity on a regular basis (and with a very offbeat approach as well!).

This semester as I inch toward actually seeing the end of the tunnel for education journey I embarked on awhile back, I am taking a Mass Communication’s class (taught by Dr. Tim England) which is teaching us all kinds of information about radio, television, broadcasting and programming (yep, it’s right up my alley).  It is amazing, simply mind blowing how far we have come in such a short while when it comes to communication. Talk about creativity!!  History is being re-written every 5th of a second I’m sure.  Now anyone of us can be a programmer and broadcaster with free web radio and YouTube.     What is happening now is that who will really stick out are those of us who really let go and step out there and be who we are…..wonderfully weird and all.

Look at Lady Gaga.

Here’s the Brainy Quote definition of “weird”

Definition of Weird Weird

Fate; destiny; one of the Fates, or Norns; also, a prediction.

A spell or charm.

Of or pertaining to fate; concerned with destiny.

Of or pertaining to witchcraft; caused by, or suggesting, magical influence; supernatural; unearthly; wild; as, a weird appearance, look, sound, etc.

To foretell the fate of; to predict; to destine to.

There certainly have been many times in my life when family and friends  have called me as weird and now is finally my time to embrace it…but in a good way. In a truly wacky good way.   In a truly creatively, wacky, authentic, double-somersault weird way.

The other morning I was talking with my mom (who is one of the wacky hilarious people in my life) and I warned her as I pulled up into the line to order my coffee that I would have to order pretty soon but that it would only take a minute.  Well, wouldn’t you know that the voice that came out over the speaker was just about as unexpected and wacky as you could expect to hear at 9:30 in the morning.  My mom started giggling uncontrollably because she knew that I knew that this girl’s voice sounded like we had stepped inside of a bar on Star War’s. In fact, that is what my mom whispered into my ear as I was trying to repeat my order to the voice.  Then we, my mom and I, collected ourselves and continued our conversation until, of course, I drove up to the window to pick up my drink and the person with the voice repeated my order again and handed me my drink.  At that point I was really trying hard to be polite and not crack up laughing  because of my mom laughing since she heard the voice again.  What I was seeing that of course my mother could not see over the phone, was the person that the voice was coming from so did not match  her voice. It was definitely weird. Not the girl, bless her heart,  just the whole situation of us with our off kilter humor and her voice at that time of the morning.

Anyway, all this to say that I have had little vignettes of laughing at the absurdities of life all throughout my life thanks to my mom, my dad, my brother and several hand-picked friends who “get” (even encourage) my real sense of humor.

Let your creativity shine,  be yourself and for heaven’s sake embrace your inner weirdness!

Nanny McPhee

Warning, the blogger writing this post has a mind filled with conversations and information from Political Science class this afternoon!

On my very first day in boarding school at the tender young age of 15, I walked into my room with Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them” blaring from my room mate’s stereo.  That was the fall of 1973 and the song continued to follow me along my journey at the Academy.  Here it is a few decades later and this song popped into my head again while hearing the Poli-Sci Professor explain the “definition of poverty” and the disagreement and definitions between the Liberals and the Conservatives.

I realized again that “we” are getting all caught up in the us vs. them syndrome again.  For instance, it was said that “liberals talked about the near poor, those who would be in poverty without some kind of governmental benefit and the conservatives say that “the poverty rate only takes into account income and not assets such as cars, homes, etc.  Then we talked about welfare and for the first time since this class began, a number of students began to talk.  Some of the students had some pretty grounded opinions but others seemed to be parroting what they had been fed. At least, I remember that was how I was when I first began college lo those many years ago. I respected my father so much that I never stopped to consider how I really felt about what was going on around me politically nor cared to learn what it all meant.  So glad I’m in a different place about it today!

There’s examples of us vs. them all around us, we humans seem to know how to pit ourselves against each other really well.  Must be some kind of reptilian brain response to step out of the egg and on to someone’s head before they can do it to us.  But in the real scheme of things, in growing and expanding our beings as much as we possibly can…isn’t it really about listening to each other and finding a common ground to then find a way to work together better?  For example, there is someone who I’ve had long and involved conversations about Global Warming.  I realized soon into our first conversations that this person was very hot under the collar about what they believed (there is no such thing as Global Warming) and so no matter what I said to them, they were not going to “hear” (or care to hear) my point of view.  So, I had to step out of my own opinion about Global Warming and look at the bigger picture…set aside the labels.  I asked this person if they could agree that the major ice caps were melting (yes) and could they agree that Texas is experiencing a horrific drought (yes) and could the agree that the North and East seems to be having harsher winters (yes)…so then we could both walk in agreement towards finding solutions of how to either help heal or prevent the situations.

Let go of the labels.  Lean forward into understanding.

It’s not about us vs. them, actually it’s about the we.  Who can you lean forward into understanding better?

Shine on you crazy diamond!

Shine on you crazy diamond!!

Because you just might get it!  Haven’t you heard that before? As if prayer could be some kind of a threat to us?  I don’t believe that; however, what I do believe is that when we pray (and by pray that can mean very different things to many people from praying to the g-d of your understanding to a higher source to the voice within you to the great unknown, etc.) you set up an alignment of your energy with all kinds of combined energies which can then call things forward (to you) in your life.

What made me think of this is a discussion that we had tonight in Janet Conner’s “Plug in for Expressive Souls” class about finding and removing blocks to your creative soul.  Much discussion was made about various techniques/prayers/etc. that can be used to help remove those blocks including the very powerful, ho’oponopono prayer that comes from the belief that you (each of us) are 100% responsible for what comes into our lives.  That’s a very big pill for many to swallow.  That word “responsible” does mean so many different things to us and is charged with all kinds of meaning and emotion depending on how it has been used and abused by us/to us in our lives.

For me, being 100% responsible for what is brought into my life feels so much lighter than it felt a couple of decades ago and I believe that is because I’ve let go of a whole lot of beliefs (very co-dependent beliefs that I was responsible for everything and everyone) that were not serving me. Now you may be asking, “how can you be 100% responsible for what is brought into your life and let go of being responsible for everything and everyone?  It’s a control thing.  The only person that I can change is me.  The only thoughts that I can alter are mine.  There is a great release that happens for me today when I am able to say, “thank you” to every situation and person (mentally or out loud).  Now, this morning when I drove around the little squashed up parking lot at TXST for over an hour looking for a freaking parking place and some new little person who had just driven into the lot sped past me really quickly to score a parking place of someone who was walking to their car—I wish ho’oponopono was the first thing that had come out of my mouth…. and it is exactly the thing that would have helped to relax my heart and send that driver good energy to boot but what I said were some pretty colorful phrases that I’m glad no one could hear!  I did end up reclaiming the words I said in the privacy of my own little car and blessing the woman a few minutes later, so there’s that!

Sometimes it is not all fairies and sunbeams when we say ho’oponopono, at least not immediately. Like the time I was coming home late from a meeting and rolled past a stop sign in our neighborhood when out of the blue came the local sheriff who was young enough to be my son all resplendent in his freshly washed and ironed uniform.  I was nice and polite to him and admitted I’d run the stop sign (but it was 10:00pm and nary a human was about) handed over my driver’s license and paperwork and began to say “I love you, please forgive me, I’m sorry and thank you” over and over and over til he came back to the car and very politely admonished me for running the stop sign and to be careful yadee yadee yadda as he handed over the ticket for me to sign for $350.

Yes, the entire 3 minutes after that it took me to drive the rest of the way to my home I was fuming!??  I fumed the rest of the evening until bedtime when I did my meditation and prayers and asked for understanding.  Well the next morning don’t you know that I got my answer when I realized as I drove to the first intersection with stop signs that for quite awhile I had been rolling past that stop sign with just an ever so tepid stop before moving along through the intersection (that is in the middle of a steep hill by the way) and I knew that ticket was my wake up call. That ticket probably saved my life as well as someone else.

So, when I said the ho’oponopono words I was hoping for “warning” in the form of words without money involved but what I got was something that would for sure make me pay attention.  Wasn’t what I’d hoped for but actually was what I prayed for…help.

What about you? How deep are you willing to go with the understanding of your answered prayers today?

accepting responsibility....

Like right now for instance. Even if you’re just about to crawl into bed and go to sleep…you can start your day over.

During a great “My dinner with Andre” lunch with a good friend today among our topics of divorce, grief, depression, little life tests and more was the realization of how we write “stories” in our minds about what is going on sometimes without any investigation or research to see if our creations are valid.  As luck would have it, we’re also both writers so the fact that we create stories about pretty much everything in our lives guarantees that we will never run out of material to write about.

But it did get us to thinking.

What little worlds had we created out of the very thin air in our minds that we had no idea we had created AND were walking around reacting and responding to as if they were the truth?! Such as, for example, in my past if something negative were to happen to me first thing in the morning (and it could be something as simple as stubbing my toe on the edge of the bed frame) then that was a set up for my creating all kinds of other negative things to support the story that my day sucked.  All I really had to do was acknowledge that I had stubbed my toe possibly because I was still half asleep and not paying attention to where I was placing my feet AND that I could sit down on the edge of my bed (after I had done the jump around dance holding on to my foot routine), take a deep breath and start my day over. So simple yet so disregarded.

This morning I headed off to school earlier than usual so that I could take a test that I had missed while on vacation.  Where we had to take the test was in a different building from the class with a simply amazing number of stairs to take from outside to inside until you reached the class.  Now, I could have made up a whole lot of stories about how this day was going simply based on the fact that I still have a sore foot from a full tank of oxygen falling on it a few days ago and that I was having to walk up several flights of stairs to take a test….but instead I gave myself permission to take my sweet time climbing the stairs and then crammed with some fellow students while waiting for the Professor.  Somehow my morning was almost fun.

You can start your day over anytime if you need to do so, but are you willing?

And you thought you were having a bad day!!