Prayers for a sweet friend just taken off life support. Hard as it is, get used to death. When you understand it, you stop considering death a loss. God would not stop a caterpillar from becoming a butterfly, an acorn from growing into an oak, nor a tadpole from becoming a frog. That’s simply dropping one body and acquiring another. Would we keep a toddler in kindergarden or a 6th grader in elementary school? No, we let them graduate to the next phase in the process, so they can continue to learn and grow and become more of what they are meant to be. That’s all death is: going from one form to another. We survive in consciousness after the change called death of this physical body. Grief is work but it doesn’t have to be grim. When you check out of your physical body, your work is able to take on a new dimension.

RELATED: Hard as it is, get used to death
Her perception upon dying
A Friend and I Talk About Dying and Easy Transitions
Remember “we” survive after death of the body
How to forgive and find closure if the other is unwilling, absent or dead  
Why pretend loved ones aren’t going to die? Let’s get over the fear

The End of Death As We Know It: What The Crossing Over Experience Was Like, As Reported By Those Who Made The Transition

RELATED: Thich Nhat Hanh on death
RELATED:  Rumi on Death

In honor of administrative assistant’s day, I’m giving mine the afternoon off. Well, ok, so I am my own assistant but it helps if I pretend I’m 2 people. When the magazine editor delegates the administrative work to the assistant, that clears the editor’s desk to focus on the mag. When the assistant’s work piles up, I sit at her desk and do that job. Being self-employed and working alone, I sometimes have to employ tricks to keep myself motivated. I said I wasn’t going to do it again but I just set up a computer in the living room, this one for tarot and astrology. I try to share space in the magazine office but that doesn’t work well for me. It’s too easy to let myself be distracted. I work more inspired when I have dedicated workspaces.

Everyone will have the May Horizons this week. It seems I’m always waiting for somewhere to open so I can take care of business. By noon I’ve put in an 8 hour day. I like jumping into work as soon as I wake up. That’s when I have my most energy and am most successful at multitasking.  Because as a reformed type A personality, it’s all about how much can I get done all at one time, right? Is that because that’s how I measure success or is it simply that I justify all the staying in motion as something that needs to be done in order to move forward? I do feel the need to stay in motion and move forward although I’ll be the first to admit I spend a whole lot of time coasting.  But my brain and body have grown so accustomed to being busy that it’s the default program. That’s why I meditate twice a day, to remind myself I am more than this body, I am more than the thoughts that come out of this brain. So twice a day I have the opportunity to see whether I’m doing busy work or if I’m actually doing something that needs to be done.  Work? Play? I don’t always make the right decision. But twice a day I give myself a reminder and the opportunity. My mind is always subject to change upon evolution of consciousness.

RELATED: My meditation process and links

I just took the giant pruners out to the west woods to try cutting palmetto fronds away from the one above where I think yellow jacket nest is. Sure enough I cut the fronds away and there is a hole in the ground at the base of the one palmetto trunk. It is less than 3 feet away where the hanging zapper was and I don’t see any yellow jackets around it. I’m going to carefully and little by little clear out the pine thatch that has fallen into the palmettoes. That was what I was doing when I got stung a couple of months ago. Now I will be careful and do one small area at a time and be on the lookout for them. I will try each sunset putting the zapper up to see if I can find where they are. It’s no fun stomping around in the woods if I think they’re are yellow jackets hiding.

RELATED:  No yellow jackets yet

I wonder what he can see that I can’t see?

Did you ever have everyone around you see something you couldn’t see, and you were the last to know it?

Not everything is visible to the naked eye.

There is so much more than we know, waiting to be known.

It is absolutely astonishing to me that grown adults don’t know how to put a few sentences together in support of their position without blaming and name-calling someone else, and making mean spirited and derisive comments. Unfrknbelievable. And to all my Facebook friends who continue to blame Clinton and Obama for all the world’s woes, please unfriend me now. It got old years ago. Now you just sound bitter about everything and I know that’s not who you are. But I’m as tired of hearing it as I am sure you are tired of hearing my hopeful optimism. As you were.

Benny loves his new grooming mitt. See them here –>  https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01N9KSITZ/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1492646257&sr=8-2&keywords=pet+grooming+glove+cats

Just rearranged the contents of my freezer. Frozen fruit up top with lemongrass, ginger, chili peppers. Tv dinners 2nd shelf. Proteins 3rd shelf (chicken breast, fish, turkey meatballs, turkey sausage.) 4th shelf bags of veggies (green beans, peas, mixed veg, mini corns on the cob.) Lower pull out rack is for all the breads and frozen dumplings and raviolis (yeh, that drawer is way too full.) Afterward I looked and saw how straight it was and wondered why I’ve been thinking it was too crowded. Then I turned around and saw the one pound bags of culinary seeds that I’d taken out last night and not put back yet. They’ll have to go back in bottom refrigerator tray. More than half the stuff in my refrigerator is either condiments or pantry items. This is Florida, everything is subject to humidity unless it’s in an airtight container. My refrigerator is the most air tight container I’ve found.

If you are an adult living in your parents’ home and they’re paying all your bills, consider it a small price to pay to follow their rules. Do your best not to take advantage. Don’t put undue burden on them, don’t make them pick up after you, don’t make them have to remind you about chores, don’t request expensive supplies.  There are a million ways you can help around the house and yard, even if it’s just to be extra kind and ask if they need anything, help clean up after meals, keep your space clean and orderly. Don’t make them worry about you. If you don’t feel it’s honor enough to share time with your parents in their older years, think of them as two graciously generous roommates whose pleasure it is to provide for you when you asked.  Treat them with respect and gratitude no matter how they treat you. Karma will repay you in huge ways. Or, you can figure out a way to move out and do it on your own.

A Facebook friend gave another heck for posting an image of Buddha saying that is not in line with her typical posts about angels and God, that some things are not the same.  I commented, “I understand confusion over it. I am not a Buddhist but I lean toward Buddhist thought. I am not a Hindu but I have many Hindu practices. I don’t call myself a Christian because the evangelicals hijacked that word.
. . I grew up with Catholics and going to Catholic Church. I spent years in a monastic community that most would call a cult. I don’t consider the Bible the word of God since it’s been editorially suppressed and revised by politicians throughout all millenia. I know God exists, I know angels exist. I’m sure the above sounds like many different topics.
. . What I have found in my lifetime is that I am allowed to pick and choose from the different socially acceptable belief systems to find something that fits what I know to be true according to my own personal experience.
. . My meditation altar — my entire home actually — is full of Hindu deities as well as a huge poster and statues of Buddha, several pictures of Jesus, various Saints and other sacred art. I do not find that any of it conflicts with any other of it.”