November is Renunciation

Welcome to November!

It would have been Tyler’s 28th birthday today. It is always a tender time on the holiday’s and birthdays of those we no longer can hug in the physical realm. We find ourselves really missing our loved ones more as each year passes and missing the joy of seeing them grow and change.

When reflecting on love and loss, we realize the impermanence of life and its circumstances is the very fabric of our experience. We have to learn to love what is, as much as what was, or what we imagine will be.

And this impermanence holds one of the most powerful spiritual practices we possess.

Gratitude.

As humans, we tend to have an appreciation deficit. Our brains developed with a bias to identify what is wrong with our environment in order to keep us safe. Its a very helpful skill, this critical eye. If we are in danger.

But on a normal day, it tends to be a joy suck.

When our critical inner voice runs rampant we can feel the negative energy it creates. Our macchiato has too much cream, we spilled on our leather seats, our belly is too full of macchiato.

Its ongoing. And it will become the dominate thought pattern if we don’t bring intention and mindfulness to practice gratitude for our abundant blessings.

This is why nothing can stay. Because the more we understand that each person, experience, moment of this life is fleeting, the more we appreciate what is happening right now.

Our daily thought habits can train our minds to notice what we love. What we value. What makes us feel the way we deserve to feel. And nothing feels as good as gratitude.

Don’t worry. We can’t over do it. Appreciation is like spiritual Miracle Grow for our lives. It always helps, it always adds, it always enriches.

In contrast, criticism should come with a warning label. Like most toxins, it should be used with extreme caution and only in cases of emergency.

November is the month of renunciation. Letting go. I let go of the pain and grief of my son’s transition and choose to celebrate the 19 years I was lucky enough to spend with him. I let go of my desire to have a different past, in order to fully appreciate the loving “present” I receive in each mindful moment.

Today I choose to release all criticism of my experience, replacing a peaceful acceptance for this impermanent and precious moment of life. I breathe in gratitude and breathe out criticism, clinging, and grief over the past.

The holidays are coming, but each moment is holy in gratitude and appreciation. We can transmute our pain into purpose through the renewing of our minds. We can create a more abundant and joyful life through the commitment and intention to notice each blessing and to treasure the gift of the present. And so it is…

Eight Months. Cheers!

*The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.-Warren Buffet

I am 8 months sober today. 

I am so grateful for learning and growth that comes with this choice. 

I am so hopeful for all the goodness and beauty on this path that is yet to be discovered.

With God’s help I am through reaching for more of what doesn’t work, what doesn’t help, and what doesn’t last.

I have all, and I mean ALL,  the emotions and I can handle them. 

I might handle them from the fetal position, but it still counts.

I can feel pain and I can feel bliss. 

I can identify boredom and how it ignites impulsivity.

I can sit with the pain of impermanence and sticky clinging of attachment and observe what happens when I call them by name.

Sure, I can’t tell anyone I love them without weeping. Its awkward but I now know its really the courage of vulnerability. 

Sure, I feel overwhelmed with compassion and bewildered by the cruelty of the human condition, occasionally to the point of nausea. 

Those feelings have a purpose and I refuse to run from them, hide from them, or try to tell them to shut up. 

My feelings are a part of me, and they are all worthy of love.

I am learning to welcome all of me home.

The sober life has so many gifts to offer.

Addictions are just habits that got grooved into our neural pathways through repeated practice.

The hope of humanity is that we now know these can be changed. We were designed with neuroplasticity and an endless opportunity to take the pathway less traveled. 

The current wine culture tells us that we will be isolated in our sobriety. 

Being left out hurts so badly.  It takes courage to face the fear of being judged as the stick in the mud, the buzzkill, the one nobody wants around in moments of joy and celebration. 

Sobriety teaches us that we don’t have to party when we ARE the party. 

Our joyful spirits can and will bring the energy of celebration to ordinary moments. But not if we’re drunk or hungover.

You only have to watch two drunks interacting to see that no real connection can occur in this state. This is why the Buddhists call the addicted, hungry ghosts. Not being able to get enough of what we don’t really need.

Your addictions cannot fill you if you’re not whole, and you cannot become whole with an addiction. 

Who knows exactly how and when habits turn into full on addictions. Lets not find out.

Lets just know our intentions, our purpose, our potential and our worth, and choose pursuits from the menu of self love.

Here’s to mindfully choosing what leads us to greater and sustained peace, enjoyment, and connection.

Here’s to sparkling water in a wine glass.

Cheers to finding authentic, healthy connections that fill our souls and quench our true thirst for grace, goodness, love and light. And so it is…

Recipe for Creating Magic

In speaking to some recent graduates it seems

some people think that being an adult sucks. But I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t have to.

As we pack up to make the transition from childhood to adult, we might come across an old, hand written recipe marked “Magic”.

We need to put this one in a safe place and hold on to it forever. Because using this formula accesses the most wonderful part of being a human; our ability to create.

Within each of us is the gift of our imagination. And our imagination combined with faith is what we have come to call, magic.

Magic gets a bad reputation because we start connecting it with trickery or illusions. Life was full of Santa Claus and birthday candle wishes until someone decided we were old enough to know the “truth”.

They talked us into believing that not only does none of that stuff exist, but we were being fooled, tricked into believing it. We feel disappointed, disillusioned and distrustful. Some of us make a decision to join ranks with the non believers so that we can be smart like them.

Don’t be smart like them.

At a certain point in our spiritual journey we begin to see that the truth is not necessarily The Truth.

In order to live a joyful life we need magic.

We need to know that the world we currently experience with our five senses is the world of the past. It was imagined and created in the past.

We are beings sent to create the future.

In order to do this we must open the door and go into our imaginations as often as possible. We need to spend time with the artifacts of our lives and contemplate how they came to be. Each and every material and immaterial object we behold began in the imagination. Someone just added a bit of faith and poof! It appeared. Just. Like. Magic.

As official adults, we may think it undignified to spend significant time and energy dedicated to childhood pursuits such as attempts to fly using an umbrella, invisibility, teaching our pets to talk, or seeking reliable public transit for the city of Nashville.

That is all wrong.

As adults, we now have more resources to add to these pursuits. We have access to information, money and possibly, engineering degrees. Also, we can stay up as late as we want. Adulthood is the ideal time to lean in to the concept of magic and see what happens next.

The world we currently see is what seemed impossible to generations past. Each generation goes forward to create the things that only those with the wildest imaginations would be able to make manifest. Go out to the edge and keep on going. Our imaginations are infinite for a reason. Nothing compares to the thrill of a vivid and wild ride through the universe of our own imagination.

Scripture says simply that it is given to us according to our faith. Faith is a basic element of magic. The more you have, the bigger the magic.

Most of us have learned by now never to enter the imagination without a full tank of faith.

Imagination combined with faith creates magic; imagination combined with fear gets you a prescription for

Lexipro.

As adults we get to choose our own tribe. If we seek magic, the easiest way to find it is to join with others who seem to be having a really good time. Magic only happens in conjunction with happiness and joy. A lot of despair, depression, and drudgery exist to show us we are in the wrong place. Find the people who delight in ideas and traffic in possibilities. Do exercises that strengthen the faith muscles.

The hallmark of a bull-shitter is how committed they are to their own belief that they know the truth.

Nobody on earth knows how it is. We are all just in the brainstorming phase of human evolution and it’s obvious that we are easily susceptible to repeating mistakes. We can find ourselves in a complete cluster cuss of mostly really bad ideas. We can recognize the good ones by the way they make us feel positive and alive.

When we are feeling the exhilaration and joy of faith, combined with the excitement, and childlike wonder of imagination, we will be ready to create our own unique, one of a kind, brand of you-magic. And isn’t that the Truth of why we are here? 

Rachel Weeping…

“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted,

because they are no more.”-Jeremiah 31:15

I made it through the dreaded day. July 17. Four years.

The autopsy report said you died on July 16th but the day I dread is the day I found your note.

The day I was told that you were gone.

After four years the worst and loneliest truth remains.

I don’t get to know where you are.

And that is torture for a mother who’s most important responsibility for 19 years was keeping tabs on you.

When I was little I had nightmares where I opened my mouth to scream for help and no sound would come.

I feel that in my waking hours sometimes.

Oh, how many times have I swallowed down screams when someone tells me I will see you again.

That doesn’t help me.

I tolerate helpfulness because I am patient and polite but I understand how unhelpful it is.

I don’t think they understand, I can’t find my baby. I don’t know where he is.

He’s in heaven? He’s in my heart? He’s always with me?

I just want to beg them to stop.

I don’t want to play some effed up spiritual shell game.

I just want to be with you now. In this lifetime. I want you where I am.

I don’t know how any of this works.

Nobody does.

Feelings I endure each day include helpless, hopeless, useless, impotent and the two for one mad/sad combo pack that leaves me repellent to almost everyone I know.

And now divorced.

Again.

More loss, God?

Really?

Its so hard to tolerate when someone tries to impose their belief on me that we will all be together again or that there is a god who is is somehow in on this shit show.

I don’t want to hear it because I used to have beliefs too, Now they have been exposed as hollow, fragile, bubbles of hope that have a center that cannot hold.

I can choose any belief I want and I choose nice ones.

But they are no replacement for you my darling sweet boy.

And then there is all the time I get to be alive without you.

Such a long, long time.

Everyday I chose again to live.

Because your dying didn’t do shit, baby.

It didn’t accomplish shit, and I say that with love.

You were a beautiful thing.

The most beautiful thing.

And now this earth is spinning with one less beautiful thing.

And I won’t be shamed because I can’t feel good about that.

And I won’t be shamed because I still need to talk about it.

And that every time I read or hear about another beautiful soul who took this same ugly detour down this dead end road of despair and pain

it feels like another boulder is added to this heavy load I am carrying.

And I still love you. There’s that.

And I always will.

Wherever you are, I hope you know.

Tell Me What You Want (what you really, really want)

I want something.

I mean I REALLY want it.

I struggle for the words to express how delighted and grateful I am for the return of this feeling after 3 years of the deepest, darkest, scariest, most soul crushing despair imaginable.

With that despair came a morbid ambivalence that left me waking up each morning with dread and already looking forward to going back to bed as soon as possible that evening.

Whatever happened in between those hours was just something to be endured. Enjoyment was fleeting and elusive, impossible to hold in my tired body, shattered heart, or my scrambled brain.

I learned to cry silently, stealthily and always uncontrollably. It was an adjustment to accept the new normal of crying every single day. Once, standing in line at a comedy club and the tears came out of nowhere.

Crying in gas station rest rooms, the garage, on the treadmill, and always the shower or the car.

I learned that if I bent over at the waist, my tears would hit the ground instead of running down my face. Then I wouldn’t ruin my makeup and frighten the civilians.

Being a buzz-kill was never my thing so I pasted on a smile and did the zany routine to dazzle the ones that could be fooled.

None of my real people bought it and I could see in their eyes the pain of empathy and the appreciation of the shallow performance I was offering. Sometimes they characterized it as “brave”. But I knew it was just self consciousness and desperation.

I came to accept it because there was nothing I could do and no energy to do it.

I didn’t want anything except another hug from my dead son.

Since I couldn’t have that, I just didn’t care.

I had no desire.

And it felt like death.

I think desire is an underappreciated human characteristic.

We have come to relate it to greed, lust, and gluttony which are a different thing entirely.

According to Charles Fillmore, “Desire is the onward impulse of the ever evolving soul”.

It serves a holy purpose in leading us to our highest and best good.

We all have it so it must have been implanted by our creator.

When we don’t allow ourselves to listen and follow the desires of our hearts, we turn to overindulgence in unhealthy substitutes. I truly believe that if we struggle with any of those addictions it is because we stopped listening to our true desire.

I think we all have the wisdom within to fulfill our ultimate joy and happiness but we have had it conditioned out of us.

We try to use our heads and figure out what we should want. What it is reasonable to want. And then we try to want that.

That is bass ackwards.

The first step is to go within and feel our true desire of the heart.

The thinking part is secondary, to help us figure out how to get it.

My spiritual teacher Edwene Gaines says you don’t have to justify your desires. It only has to make sense to you, no one else.

She is the first person who ever gave me permission to want what I want.

Anyway, today I am going for what I want. There is risk. I may not get it.

But there is hope that I will.

And there is a new appreciation that whatever the outcome, I am here, I am alive, and I am not finished yet.

I now respect the desires of my heart as holy guidance to my happiness and well-being. I now release any unskillful thought, belief, or action that would prevent me from reaching my highest and best good.

I am truly grateful for the energy of desire, that pulls me toward the abundance, wholeness, and joy that is the only will of Love, which is another name for God.

Thank you God for my life, for my desire, and for the energy and faith to speak it and believe it into being.

And so it is…

What’s Your Major?

Relationships can be some tricky business.

The greatest desire of our hearts is to enjoy loving and harmonious relationships, but a lot of us still struggle. We want to see peace on earth but some days we can’t even create peace in our own homes, or worse, our own minds.

There are several major areas in life where humans find challenges: Financial, physical, emotional, spiritual, relationships, and Comcast.

Except for the last one, which is universal, the rest are sort of individualized courses of study, which is the “major” we selected when we came to earth school.

I am majoring in relationships with a minor in financial.

The relationship struggle for me is very real. No matter how controlling and nagging I become, I can’t seem to get all the people around me to act right.

And finances.

There are student loans and kind of a weensy shopping thing.

It hasn’t been easy for me to become the billion dollar entrepreneur of my fantasies with my pesky full-time teaching job getting in the way.

The thing about earth school is that some people seem to skate through. The rest of us feel like we may have accidentally signed up for advanced courses. But even though I feel constantly challenged by the material and some of my professors have been real jerks, I am still working hard and studying diligently and starting to see some progress.

I once heard a smart person say that you can use the areas you are strong in to help you make gains in your weaker areas. Figure out what you are doing right and then do it right in a different area.

This is coming in handy.

For example, I am blessed that physical health is my area of strength.

I easily stay a reasonable weight, and live almost completely illness and accident free. (If this is your area of struggle I can feel you flipping me off with the middle finger of your mind.) I work out every week, so I can save money every week. I can go on a date with my husband every week. See what I mean?

The point is, If we are successful in one area, we can be successful in another.

After decades of study, which are like semesters in earth school, I had a breakthrough that works in any area of struggle or challenge.

Trying as I do to avoid hyperbole, I believe I have made an Einstein-esque discovery that although controversial, will change the course of human development and possibly save mankind from complete and utter self destruction.

The formula is this:

smart choices

______________       = good results

time

We all know exactly what to do. We know that we should save some money, work out, make date nights, go back to school, or stop smoking. We just either don’t do it or we don’t do it for long enough to get results.

The consistency with which we don’t do dumb stuff is the key.

Its math. And it works. Every. Single. Time.

The smartest choices come from the heart. The choice to be loving to myself during my struggles is my saving grace. I don’t have to get straight A’s. I just have to keep showing up. I just have to find the faith to believe that I am worth loving, even when I don’t get it right and that in time, I will get better.

I am so humbled by the loving relationships in my life.I now enjoy a beautiful, loving, intimate and fun relationship with my darling husband. My relationships with my grown sons and step-daughter, my parents, my sweet sister, are the treasures of my life.

I have a small savings account and a debt reduction plan. I do mostly smart stuff now.

I’m so proud. I am doing it. I’m not straight A’s but I am passing.

And I still have the hope that I will graduate and that through grace, I will do it with honors.

Love After Loss

Step one when we suffer a loss is deciding.

We must DECIDE whether to let this loss change us for the better or for the worse.

If we perceive that we lost a person whom we deeply loved, we can still love them. Their physical proximity has no bearing on our love. Love is a non physical experience. Love is of the spirit. When someone we love chooses to leave, we can focus on the loving and forgive the leaving.

No one owes us physical proximity.

This is a big universe and loving means allowing the beloved to move freely as their heart desires. Loving means acceptance that everyone has their own soul’s journey to complete. It means appreciation for the time we were gifted with their presence, and the time we spent walking together.

Earthly comforts can become addictions and relationships can become dependencies. Neither of these has any relationship to love.

What tribute is bitterness to the beautiful love that we received?

We can only learn about real love through loss. Loss rips off all the earthly wrapping paper so we can experience the gift inside. It may have been prettier before, but now we have something we can actually use. Now we can decide. Can I love even if I won’t receive what I believe I want in return? Loss makes us squishy, vulnerable, and different. We are humbled in the presence of this experience that we cannot control. Loss allows us to exist with the impermanence of our present conditions and face the truth of our fleeting physical existence.

Love is the part that lasts. Love is the part that exists within, eternally available and omnipresent.

The time spent focusing on the perceived leaving is a distraction. There are so many beings on this earth who want our love. Love is always available to us, many times in the very next room.

We can practice the devotion of turning our attention to love with one second of decision.

This is the way. This is the practice. This is the truth.

We get to choose love in any circumstance and it always leads to heaven.

Because choosing love is choosing God.

I’m choosing heaven today. I’m choosing love today.

In this choice I surrender to the God of Love that dwells within.

And I understand that this divine love is impossible to lose.

And so it is…

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.