New def: A racc-luse is a raccoon who stays in its own wooded lot.
Wiki: A recluse is a person who lives in voluntary seclusion from the public and society. There are many potential reasons for becoming a recluse, including: a personal philosophy that lives outside consumer society; a mystical religious outlook that involves becoming reclusive.

So lucky to have a mate who doesn’t mind when I get messages and texts at all hours – love me, love my mission! I was gonna write “occupational hazard” but it’s not a hazard at all, I love what has become my life’s work. It’s true, we don’t find our mission, our mission finds us. We send a thought out into the Universe to stick us where we’ll be of value and the mission creates itself and calls us to it.

The world is the best it has ever been.
The world is the worst it has ever been.
We get to choose which to focus on and come into alignment with.

Talked to Marie, they were concerned you never called after learning of CD’s heart attack earlier this year. They have not heard from your wife.  They hope you’re okay, they wish you happy new year.  I told them you’re at your dad’s.

As the year ends, think of making it right with anyone you wronged this year. Even small slights. This time last year, a friend and I were having friendly closure after disagreement. There’s such a release and relief with closure. Bless those strong enough to offer and accept it. To judge those unable to do it would only toss you outa your happy vortex. Start 2014 with nothing unresolved. Your world will change for the better.

RELATED:  Make peace with your past to quelch the fire
Come clean and see what the Universe rewards you with
Put only kindness in motion from this point forward
Her effort to clear up the past gave her a clean slate
Deal with the monster under the bed

I love having my privacy but I also love having space between my molecules. I just pruned back a few miles of coleus, ligustrum and arbicola from the front yard. I cut everything down low so I can see the street from my room for the first time in years. It makes it feel as though I have so much more space! I still have privacy from the street but can see everything. I even took down the drapes, blinds and blackout curtains.  Right now I see the neighbors on their sundown walk and the raccoon family wobbling out of the east woods. I positioned the outdoor lights so they fall on the critter path, so we can watch the nightly procession.  Across the street is a privacy fence, so no one else is in view. I love living in the midst of a neighborhood yet apart in my own little jungle of gardens and trails. Only in Paradise is Christmas week a sunny 80 degrees, lows of 55.

Jeff Brown

I used to judge people who didn’t want to work on their ‘issues’ and patterns. I questioned their emotional courage, their fortitude, their depth. To be sure, many of us – myself included – could do a better job of dealing with our stuff head on. But, at the same time, I now recognize that we cannot know how courageous someone else is by looking at their lives from the outside. Perhaps they are carrying around so much unresolved emotional material – their own, even that of the collective – that they do not have any energy left over for processing. Or perhaps they are working in the deep within in ways that we cannot begin to imagine – healing their unresolveds, quietly building the egoic foundation necessary to take on the next level of inner work. It’s so hard to know where courage lives.  Jeff Brown

When we see behind the mask

”People whose happiness comes primarily from doing good for others, rather than from hedonistic self-satisfaction, show a much more favorable gene profile, with less inflammation and better antibody and antiviral activity,” says lead researcher Steven W. Cole, Ph.D., professor of medicine at UCLA. No need to get lofty. “It can be a simple as investing more time with your grandchildren – whatever you care about.”
Janice Scott-Reeder agrees, “Now I understand why in the psychiatric office I would see people totally destroyed by a small injury and other people almost destroyed by a major injury, up and helping the others. If your focus is yourself, you will eventually destroy yourself with the bombardment of energy. If your focus is others, your body will follow the energy of your focus and get you up and out to help them. It’s simple physics. Focus a laser on itself and it will burn itself out. Focus it on something else and it will burn it and survive.”