I went to Cassadaga with my pal Theresa Hudson yesterday.  Even though we were just delivering the October Horizons magazine, we made it into an exciting adventure.  We both agreed that one of our favorite things is to go on a road trip.  The last real road trip I did was in 2006 when Beth Head and I visited the Monroe Institute.  I used to spend a lot of 3 day weekends out of town, but I don’t make time for that now.  Plus there’s no where in particular I’d like to go.  I could use some new ideas.  From 1997 until 2002 I owned a house in Murphy, North Carolina, which was bought as a retreat home to share with friends. The first year I had it, I began going up for 7-10 days each month to play in the Smokey Mountains and take a break from my work- work -work schedule. Of course, I worked from there also – as a one person business, I work a little each day – but I mostly goofed off. I caught up on reading and did a lot of writing. I hiked and wandered through the national parks. It was nice having the cell phone not work in the mountains, so my hourly urge to check phone messages was tempered.
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The Mighty Pho

The last few days I have been talking with my friend Barbara Nowak about cooking.  She lives in an area of Georgia that is not known for its Asian cuisine, and we were looking for a restaurant with a Vietnamese pho soup on the menu.  That made me start thinking about making the soup from scratch.  It’s a lot of work and cooking down animal carcass is not my favorite thing to do, but I wanted to see if I could duplicate the taste of my favorite pho restaurant.  So when I woke up Monday morning, the first thing I had on my mind was to go buy some beef leg and knuckle bones.  I figured Publix was as good a place as any to look. Continue reading →

Yesterday I wrote about Valerie Saurer’s Prosperity Project *  $1,000 More Each Day.  The project is one of those fun writing games that gets you to delve deep inside yourself and see what core beliefs you are operating with. Specifically, the idea of the game is to get used to the idea of having, spending, and enjoying money. You start small, and every day increase your allowance by $1000. The process is –> here.  Gradually, you will be able to easily picture yourself having larger and larger sums of money.  That idea won’t seem entirely ridiculous to you, because your dream grows incrementally over time. Continue reading →

Conventional marketing tells us how we need to target our market, use specific headlines, run an ad more than 6 times, as well as a long list of other marketing ploys. However, thanks to Abraham-Hicks, we now know that the success of advertising, as with everything else, is not so much dependent upon the action that is taken (designing and placing the ad) as it is on the consciousness from which the action is taken. That is, what you think about your business, about your abilities, and about what you have to offer. That also means you take charge of your internal dialogue. Continue reading →

I took a nap Saturday and woke up about 4:00pm with a sore throat and congested sinuses. At first I couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t just allergies clogging my head, and snoring that gave me the sore throat.  But a few hours later, I could tell it was a headcold coming on.  I’m pretty good about washing my hands frequently, especially if I’ve been to the market or post office and been handling money and mail.  I immediately created a nest in the living room, next to my new Big Puffy Chair.  I had my bottles of water there, packets of Emergen C and Breathe Easy Tea and Throat Coat Tea.  I’d gone into my arsenal of cold remedies and read up on Tips to Treat Colds and Flu the ‘Natural’ Way and learned the importance of Juicing for the Common Cold.  I began using my neti pot to irrigate my sinuses, and I made sure to not eat any mucous causing (acid) foods: meat and bread is as mucous forming as milk and cheese, although most people don’t know that.  I put apples and oranges at the nest also, along with throat lozenges, a liquid decongestant/ antihistamine, boxes of kleenex and my vitamins.  I had some Guaifenesin – Generic Mucinex, so if I was going down for the count, I’d be prepared.

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Earlier this year I liquidated an investment to pay off a few thousand dollars in credit card debt, and felt much freer and lighter after doing so.  I’m not a big shopper and I rarely use credit cards. I feel blessed to have little debt except my home and car, because I have friends who have $30,000 – $100,000 in credit card debt *yikes* Of course, these same friends have the latest computer equipment and the newest electronic toys and a much more social lifestyle than I do. They also earn less income and, interestingly, they also talk lots about how money is tight and they often tell me to visit websites like https://www.carringtondean.com/debt-management-plans/ to secure my own finances, which in retrospect sounds like they are talking to themselves. It reminds me when I made lots less income in my 30’s and I had to have the newest everything. Even if it was a hardship to get it. Having said that, my credit card debt back then never exceeded $5,000, although at that time it seemed like a whole lot. I bought lots more clothes back then, and they often ended up in the back of my closet, unworn. A few years of that and I caught on that I was shopping to fill something within me, something that was never filled by shopping. I’m glad I got the lesson early. I’m excited now, I love having everything paid off – it’s like having a fresh start… infinite potential! Now I’m getting excited about saving up a nest egg, and it’ll be fun to see how much I can get it to grow and to plan really fun things with it. Continue reading →

People often ask me how I keep my life in order while being involved in so many projects, where I find the time to do all that I do. I always tell them that I decide what I want to do, then I make time for it and stay focused on it until I achieve it. Easier said than done, I know. I’m asked so often that I thought I’d share a few thoughts with you.

DAILY PRACTICE
We spend much time daily doing things we look back on later as such a waste of time, so why not turn some of that time to good use? Daily practice is, for me, the key to so many things. Steady, focused practice on a regular basis. Practicing what, you ask? For me, that’s a variety of things. I do my morning meditation at 4:00 a.m. every morning.  Sometimes I am still awake then, other times I wake up for it.  This private, quiet time alone is invaluable to me.

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I always have friends who are ready for change in their life, and they ask for suggestions to accelerate the process.  That’s a catch 22 – if you’re asking to accelerate the process, you’re not savoring the Now moments.  If you’re not savoring the Now moments, you can remain stuck where you are for, well, a lifetime.  What works for me every time is to find new fun things to think about, even before changes are made.  What anyone could do who is ready to make a giant change in their life is the following 11 Steps Guaranteed To Initiate Change And Get You Unstuck. Continue reading →

The Haunted Chair

Last night I went out to shop for a recliner. I got rid of my last one in 2006 and here is a story about “the haunted chair“:  October 2006: This month, galpal Beth Head and I are doing the Gateway Voyage at The Monroe Institute. We’re driving there and taking the week long residential program. We’re excited about our adventure! My interest was peaked by the books of the founder, Robert Monroe, in Journeys Out Of The Body, Far Journey and Ultimate Journey. Although the institute will tell you that the purpose of the Gateway Voyage is not to give you an out of body experience, they say, “The out-of-body state and tools that may be utilized to achieve this particular state of consciousness are covered in the Gateway Voyage®, but that is only a small part of the program’s overall scope.” They describe the Gateway Voyage as “an on campus six-day intensive program designed to provide the participant with tools that can enable: development and exploration of human consciousness; deeper levels of self-discovery; expansion of one’s awareness; willful control of that awareness; communication with and visits to other energy systems and realities.” Being an explorer of consciousness and having experienced many different dimensions of reality, including the out of body experience, I am excited to take it to the next level. Continue reading →

I just got my copy of Eat, Pray, Love in the mail. I get so many review copies that I seldom buy books, ever, but I wanted to see what everyone was so fired up about.  Eat, Pray, Love is built on the notion of a woman trying to heal herself from a severe emotional and spiritual crisis.  Author Elizabeth Gilbert “wanted to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two.”  I enjoyed the book and, as a former devotee,  I enjoy reading about ashram life.  I spoke with Sharon Kumuda Janis, author of Spirituality for Dummies, and Secrets of Spiritual Happiness, who first contacted me 1998.   She told me since her memoir Never To Return describes her decade living in and serving with the same path that Elizabeth Gilbert wrote about in Eat, Pray, Love, she thinks the time is right to re-release an updated version of her book to ride the wave when the movie  Eat, Pray, Love is released next year. Sharon recorded a version of the Guru Gita, which played a part in Gilbert‘s story, and the Diamond Sutra as well.   I told her I’d be glad to help promote her. Continue reading →