Author Archives: Andrea

A peaceful end to a roller coaster ride

A friend has burned another bridge, this time his mother as he leaves her in the lurch after having housed him and his girlfriend since February, with no help from them.  I’ve seen the violent outbursts firsthand and am glad she’s free of the financial drain and psychological abuse from them both. Being across the street I hear more than I want to hear. There is never an excuse to disrespect anyone as they’ve both done.  Never. I’m sure there will be an interesting spin on this story in their blogs, but I won’t be reading them.  I wasn’t even asking for the info last week when my spidey sense told me that I should out of the blue call his father, whom I’ve known 20 years.  Unknown to me at the time, he’d just had the blow up at home and stormed out to move in with his dad. My spidey sense “warned me” but I didn’t know of what. I just knew he was no longer at his mom’s, who lives across the street from me.

Continue reading

Turn your attention elsewhere and stop creating more karma

A friend complained to me about a “self described healer and teacher and student of zen” who is a sociopath, a habitual liar, has unethical business practices and doesn’t pay their bills.  I asked what his problem with it was. “Well, they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.”
Me: “Why make it your business? Can you turn your attention to something else?
Him: “But it will still be happening, it won’t stop because I stopped paying attention to it.”
Me: “But it will stop bothering YOU if you stop paying attention to it.
Him: “But that doesn’t stop them.”
Me: “You don’t have to stop them. It’s not your job to stop them.
Him: “So what’s my job? How do I fix the situation?”
Me: “You fix the situation by turning your attention to something else. You leave them up to the Universe to handle. You find fun and interesting things to focus on. You release them to their own karma. That way you stop creating more karma in your own world.”    Continue reading

Your astrology is more than your online horoscope

astrology-ciro-marchettiA friend reads the daily Facebook horoscopes and today’s concerned her: “Your path is becoming more difficult to navigate than you first thought.” Her situation is that she let her son and a friend live in her home for a year, with the idea to help her fix it up to sell. The bottom line is no one ever helped her as promised, no one contributed money, she finally put her foot down and they left.  All is well. Then she read her horoscope today and got worried again: “Your path is becoming more difficult to navigate than you first thought. Perhaps somebody is trying to dissuade you from your plan or even thwart you. Don’t give up – see it as a challenge and a test of your will. Defend your plans and push forward, or adapt your ideas to current circumstances.” I told her that nothing makes our path more difficult than we ourselves do via our repeated thoughts. We can make it easy and we can make it hard.  Whatever it is. Continue reading

I changed because I saw things that I needed to change

DB writes: “Change is ongoing and inevitable. We all change a little every day. Sometimes we make big changes. I have changed quite a bit over the past year or so. My changes are mine and mine alone. I changed because I saw things in a different light, because I saw things in my life that I needed to change, because I saw that there were habits that it was time to let go of.
No one can MAKE you change. You have to want to change for yourself because you see it is right for you.”

Ah, the day after Halloween

The candy that was the big goal and focus all month now lies strewn on the table and everyone is sick from it.  I’ve done that with so many things in my life, strived for a particular goal because everyone else did, then got sick of it because I wanted it to make me happy and it didn’t. But it’s a process of elimination and every year I learn more.

The only reason we don’t change water into wine or heal cancer with one touch is because our thoughts are scattered all over the place

A friend asked, “how do we stay focused on one thing at a time?” For me, I decide what to focus on, then I make myself cultivate an intense interest in it. So when I send a thought or a prayer out about it, I am focused ON IT, I am not focused on “the house is a mess and the kid won’t study and my husband isn’t speaking to me and the news is scary.” Just as you’re not using your segment of focus time to focus on, say, bowling, just the same, during this segment of focus time, you’re only thinking about your goal. Every other thought can wait. And the trick is that when you make those thoughts wait, you stop giving them regular attention and they fade away. Break the cycle of giving them regular attention.  If we knew how powerful our thoughts truly are, we would spend so little time on nonsense. We’d be so busy staying happy that we wouldn’t get involved in anyone else’s business and there’d be no conflict. It’s true. The only reason we don’t change water into wine or heal cancer with one touch is because our thoughts are scattered all over the place.  And now we will begin to schedule deliberate segments of time to focus on a goal.  Even if it’s just 15 solid minutes. Your life starts… Now.