Elizabeth Griffin writes :”I have often had an image of myself as a monk in housewife garb. It’s a portrait that does not present any sense of struggle as much as reminding me of who I am within. I know my path is not a cloistered one. Still, I have always been interested in a hermit’s ethic. To my delight, I recently discovered the books of David Steindl-Rast. He is a Benedictine Monk, originally from Austria, who resettled in the States and lives in a Monastery in Big Sur, CA. He wrote a book called Music of Silence, in which he walks the reader from morning until night from the point of view of his religious order. The day is broken into parts that are accompanied by chants and prayer. So each segment of the day has characteristics on which reflection can take place.

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I didn’t raise kids, although we had custody of a stepdaughter for 3 years. She was independent, she was smart, she was street savvy. That was all good since her mother left her on her own so much from age 4 until we got her at age 10.  I had insights this year about why the new generation is like they are. Many of them have had to raise themselves. Many of them are under-educated and emotionally over-charged.  A friend has two children she’s left unattended overnight all year long as she spends nights at her boyfriend’s. They are used to raising themselves. Their home schooling leaves them unprepared and under-socialized, their peers and role models are on tv.  Each is emotionally halted at about age 10. Continue reading →

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 →

A 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 →

Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror.  Just keep going. No feeling is final.  ~Rainer Maria Rilke

Most of us have no idea of the power of our attention. Whether an object, a person or a situation, my attention to it breathes life into it, it activates it, it expands it, it amplifies it. When I gain power over my attention, I can be very powerful indeed.  Life improves the more connected and allowing I can be. As I attune myself to the finer frequencies, and train my senses to be more acute, more aware, able to pick up the subtle nuances of energetic flow, my life gets easier and I am more in the flow with many good things.   It’s all a matter of focus and attention. And I’m the one who is in charge of where I maintain my focus, how intensely and for how long.  You know that friend you have who always is so happy to see you, who gushes over you and makes you feel like the most loved person on the planet? The power of their attention causes you to expand into more of who you really are. Their attention causes your beliefs to stretch and become flexible, to allow in other possibilities, to access greater potential.  Or that furry friend that greets you morning and night, always thrilled to see you, delighted by your attention! Seek out the people who activate and expand you and test it for yourself.  Let the ones who contract you fade into the background. Then turn your attention back to the people around you, and know the power you have when you turn your positive attention on them.

I told Facebook that I love riding around at night under the stars when it’s quiet.  A friend commented that he’s a crazy bike rider and has been hit numerous times. “Good grief,” I said, “I don’t ride anywhere but around the hood and I get off the road if a car comes.” That’s a habit I’ve had since childhood. If I am walking or bike riding somewhere alone and a car approaches, I get out of the street.  When I was a kid, my dad would tell me to get out of sight when a car approaches so they don’t take me, to duck behind a tree and stop moving so they don’t see me.  When I was 15, the daughter of someone he knew was kidnapped so I grew up being on alert for it.   With that belief system, I attracted my share of stalkers and such.  When I realized what was happening, I morphed my belief system to cut it out. When I know better, I do better.  I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting during this Mercury Retrograde in Scorpio, which takes place in my 7th house of relationship.  That means all my unresolved relationship issues are laid out before me saying, “peek at me? visit me? resolve me?”  Coming out of the Sun square Pluto earlier this month and several squares and oppositions with Uranus, I thought that meant I’d be arguing with my partner.  Happily that’s not the case. He’s a chill guy, so the astrological “challenge” appears instead as me having old emotional issues surface in my mind and me working through them as they come up. Continue reading →

Paula Renee writes: Will You Be My Next Soul Mate? The idea of a soul mate is very romantic. To meet someone else in this world of billions who shares your same values, interests, desires, and goals is an exhilarating notion, don’t you think? It’s possible to meet someone who, at any given moment in time, is at the same place you are geographically and spiritually. But to think two people can remain on a joint wavelength over many, many years is, in my mind, a set up for failure. Yet, we continue to watch those silly movies that end in “happily ever after” and fool ourselves into thinking it’s real. Enter the narcissistic sociopath. A master at making the magic SEEM real just long enough to send you spiraling into a fog. The  narcissist as our “SOUL MATE” is cunning and knows who to select and who to avoid. He will come on strong, sweep us off our feet. He seems to have the same values, interests, goals, philosophies, tastes, habits. He admires our intellect, ambition, honesty and sincerity. He wants to marry us quickly. He fakes integrity, appears helpful, comforting, generous in his ‘idealization’ of us phase. It never lasts. Eventually Jekyll turns into Hyde. Continue reading →

All week I’ve been doing a version of my Paypal visualization. In these visualization sessions, I am opening the mail and stamping checks for deposit and making out the deposit slip.  I make myself feel giddy with joy that everyone who renews their subscription tips me an extra $3 or $8, so instead of a $22 payment, their check is for $25 or $30. I see checks with all sorts of 3 and 4 and 5 figure numbers on them, and I write them on the deposit slip.  So far this week, seven people overpaid me when renewing their subscription. Three sent me $25 and four sent me $30. It’s nice to attract appreciation.

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