It never ceases to amaze me how God hears and answers prayers. Several years ago, I experienced a change in my life that caused me to really evaluate my life. It became clear to me that I was going to have to make some changes in my life. One of the things I was praying about was whether or not to continue writing a column for a local newspaper. I told God, if I am supposed to continue doing this, then please let me know. Send me some sign that my writing this column is really making a difference. Let me know that somebody is actually reading it. Let me know that this is still one of those things that you are calling me to do.
Read moreEnlightenment
Italo Calvino said: The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.” So what enables us to become enlightened and why, or does this, create an oozing of ghosts? To become enlightened is to develop the ability to give spiritual or intellectual insight to self, and some would say to others. Being enlightened is about being present. it is about developing the spiritual practice of releasing our attachment to the material world and all things which seek to cling to us or to which we seek to cling. It is about becoming in tune with all human experience, which enables one to understand our connection to all of life and humanity.
Perhaps that is why this image was selected to go with this quote. One can look at this house and see it as empty and free of anything which might challenge us to become attached materialistically. At the same time, one can look at this house and see life being restored, an air conditioner, fresh air circulating through, rugs to be laid out. Whichever way we choose to look at this house and experience it is about us. We are free to determine our own lives and our own reality. This image is nothing more then an image. What we see in it and how we experience it can affect our understanding of reality. Like with anything else in life, we can experience things in a way that cause our understanding of reality to expand and contract. It is like breathing, our lungs expand and contract as we inhale and exhale.
Read moreSpiritual Friends, Partners, and Counselors
I rarely write an informational column, but lately I have felt confused by the titles which people are giving me, others, and themselves about what we do in life. In my life, I have spiritual friends and my spiritual partner, but not a spiritual counselor. I may need one at some point in my life, but not at the present.
I love having my spiritual friends and spiritual partners and have had several over the decades. They are both wonderful, but very different. My spiritual friends care about me deeply. They worry about me, especially when I am going through, but they have a hard time being neutral or not expressing their opinion about the choices I am facing. While I love my spiritual friends, there are times that in my own journey, I need to share with someone who does not feel in vested in me making one choice over another.
That is why I have always loved my relationship with my own spiritual partners.
Read moreWhat story are you creating?
don Miguel Ruiz once said, "You know the word 'Toltec' means artist. When I talk about Toltec, I’m really talking about the entire humanity, because we all are artists. Even if we don’t have the awareness, we’re always creating. The biggest art that we humans create is a story – the story of ourselves, the story of our life. It looks so real, and we live in that story... We give a meaning to every single word that we use. We give our personal power to knowledge... and knowledge creates a massive piece also, which is the main character of our story. Which means it creates us, what believe we are..."
Read moreHave you been burglarized?
In the last month, two people I know have had their homes burglarized. Sadly, for both of them, this was not the first time, nor will it most likely be the last time. Fortunately, for both of them, they were unharmed and/or not home. However, they did lose possessions and one of them reported that their basement was a mess. So what would you do if someone burglarized your home? My guess is you would call the police and report that you had been burglarized.
Now, what would you do if someone broke into your life and robbed you of your blessings? What would you do if the person who was burglarizing your life was you? We may have limited control over whether someone breaks in and burglarizes our physical homes; however, we do have control over how we burglarize our own lives.
Read moreReplace Fear with Love
I have long believed that the opposite of love is fear and as a friend once told me fear is false evidence appearing real. Love is real, fear is not. Fear just appears real. Yet fear is like a self propagating weed which seems to take over an entire yard. It continues to keep coming back until you are able to dig them up by their roots and permanently remove them.
The soil in which our fear is planted is in our mind. Our mind is like fertile ground where these weeds exist until we have stalked them down to their roots and removed them. We have a choice as to whether we plants weeds of fear or seeds of love in our minds. When we are impeccable with our word, which is the first agreement in Toltec Wisdom, then our mind is no longer fertile ground for weeds of fear; it is only fertile for seeds of love.
Read moreHolding onto Stress
I received this forward a few days ago and wanted to share it with all of you. Not sure of the original source ...
A young lady confidently walked around the room while leading and explaining stress management to an audience with a raised glass of water. Everyone knew she was going to ask the ultimate question, 'half empty or half full?'.. She fooled them all ..... "How heavy is this glass of water?" she inquired with a smile. Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.
Read moreYou are Worthy!
What are you worth? A few years ago, I was reading this article about a man in Australia who had sold his entire life on eBay for slightly less than half a million dollars. He was tired of his life, the way he was living it, and so decided to sell everything and start over. Reading this story, it really made me think about how one decides what one is worth. Just for fun, I did a web search to see what others were saying about how you determine your worth as a human being. Sadly, I found a website called www.humanforsale.com I went through the process because I wanted to see what questions they would ask and to get a sense of what they would tell me I am worth. I never finished it, because they required information I was not willing to share (my name, address, email, phone, etc). In the process, I did learn that I have an IQ of 142 (www.free-iqtest.net) and that I am smarter than 61.5% of people (www.am-i-dumb.com ). While I found that information interesting, I don’t think it makes me worth more or less in this world then anyone else.
Read morePress Pause
Have you ever felt like the older you get or the more you go to school or the more you try to understand people, the less you understand? Do you miss the days when you thought you understood it all? I know I do. But I have come to this place in my life when I realize that there is so much in life that I do not understand. In fact, the more I learn, the less I feel I know. The more I read, the more questions about life I have. The more I work with people, the less I understand about humanity.
This lack of understanding used to drive me nuts. I used to feel like I needed to understand everything and have all the answers and I didn’t. I found relief in a scripture from Isaiah 55:8 which states, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.” This scripture gave me permission to be okay with this sense of not understanding. Ironically, it was a piece of paper that I found left behind in a photocopy machine one day that made me understand, that this lack of understanding was actually a sign of growth. It said “NOTICE! We have not succeeded in solving all your problems. The answers we have found only serve to raise a whole set of new questions. In some ways, we feel we are as confused as ever, but we believe we are confused on a higher level and about more important things.”
Read moreYou can fly!
This morning I was sitting on my porch and thinking about what I wanted to write about today. As I was looking at the sky and praying for inspiration, this flock of birds flew by. As they did, it reminded me of a story I first heard an African American pastor, Rev. Moss, in Chicago tell. Moss saw this slave tale as part of his story. In some respects, however, it is part of all our story.
It is said that this story has been passed from mouth to ear somewhere among the sandy palmetto dunes of South Carolina, a story passed down from West Africa to the North Atlantic, and trickled down the generations to the coast of South Carolina. It is the story, a unique story, of the people who could fly. And as stories go, with each telling the story gains a little different twist.
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How Big Are Your Margins
If your life was a piece of paper, how big would your margins be? Would you have one inch margins all around your paper? Inch and a half? Two inches? Or is your life so overflowing with stuff that you HAVE to do that you are not even sure you have any margins. If you do, then maybe they are like 1/100 of an inch.
As I have learned the hard way in my own life, some of us have gotten so used to living life without margins, that we do not even know what they are. While we might like the idea of having more time and space in our life, we have no idea how to begin to function in a world where that might even be possible. Some of us have lives that are so filled to the brim with stuff we have to do, especially this holiday season, that there is no room to squeeze anything or anybody else in.
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Seeing Compliments Differently
We all have something that we struggle with, but it seems as if most people that I know struggle with one simple thing – receiving a compliment. Many of us find it hard to accept a compliment from someone. For many people, when we hear a compliment there is this little voice in the back of the head that negates the positive and affirming words that someone just shared with us. We tend to pay little attention to the positive and affirming words of others, finding it much easier to unquestionably accept the criticisms of others. For many, these criticisms seem to be affirmations of the belief that we are not worthy; that there is something inherently wrong with us. Many of us have become experts at self-rejection. We have come to the place where we believe that we are unworthy until proven otherwise, rather than believe that we are worthy and to question why others would criticize who we were created to be.
Read moreThe Blind Men and The Elephant
There is a Buddhist story I love and would like to share with you this week. It is, as the title suggests, about a group of six blind men and an elephant.
Long ago six old men lived in a village in India. Each was born blind. The other villagers loved the old men and kept them away from harm. Since the blind men could not see the world for themselves, they had to imagine many of its wonders. They listened carefully to the stories told by travelers to learn what they could about life outside the village.
Read moreT > I and C
Looking at the title of my blog for today, some of you might be thinking it looks like a mathematical formula. Let me see if I can walk us through this mathematical expression. Metamorphosis is the transformation that occurs in some animals as they move from one state of being to another, like from a caterpillar to a butterfly. Over the course of our lives, we have been in the process of our own transformation, physically and spiritually.
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The Razor's Edge
The journey to find the authentic self, the self you were created to be is not always easy. It is as W. Somerset Maugham wrote about like the razor’s edge. This novel, The Razor’s Edge tells the story of an American, Larry Darrell, who, traumatized by his experiences as a fighter pilot in World War I, decides to search for some transcendent meaning in his life. This is the story of a man who refuses to conform to the ways of the world, rejects conventional life, and searches for his authentic self. This is the story of one man's quest for inner peace and enlightenment. It is the tale of one person’s spiritual journey.
Read moreLove Letters
I have a dear friend, who I may never meet, who lives in Australia. I love Jane because it seems as if whenever I am thinking about her I get an email from her. The other day was no different. I was thinking about what I wanted to share about empowerment and how you can empower yourself, when up pops an email from Jane. She was at fair where her daughter-in-law had a booth when she came upon a booth “run by Ben Lee. He is a very famous Australian musician but resides in the US.” Ben’s booth was about Handmade Postcard Making: The purpose of this booth was to help “combat spiritual amnesia. Send yourself an important truth that you forget too often. A friendly reminder from your Self to your self.” He invited people “to take stock, think about your truth and what needs some work? Whatever it is, own it. Write it down. Make a postcard and send it to yourself as a reminder of what you have decided to let go of.” She thought this sounded like me and something we could do here at Inspiritual.
Read moreToday is a new day!
I was once taught that the most dangerous states to live in are the past and the present. Today is a new day! One thing so many people do is spend their entire lives beating themselves up for something, which they said or did or didn’t say or do years ago, but today is a new day. The past is the past and you cannot go back and change it. What you do have control over is today, so live it to its fullest, focusing on being the best you that you can be today.
Read moreWhat Makes us Beautiful?
A few weeks ago, I received an email from my friend Jane Patterson, who lives in Australia. I like to say that Jane is one of the most beautiful spirits I will probably never meet. Jane told me about a woman, Natalie McComas, who was doing a photographic series called Beautiful in this Skin. According to Natalie, this series “portrays subjects with dramatic, visible birthmarks and explores the effects this has had on their lives and psyches. This series celebrates these unique skin formations whilst also inspiring those, who may have a similar condition, to feel special and beautiful in their own skin.”[1]
Read moreGo with God, but Go!
Go with God, but Go! I wish I could claim the creation of this statement, but someone I know borrowed the phrase from a nun. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging that someone no longer needs to be in your life. Finding the words and the strength within to acknowledge this and act on can be quite empowering. As a mentor of mine once said, it is not the what, but the intent behind the what. There are numerous ways to tell people you no longer desire to have them a part of your present life. You can do so with an intent of hate or fear or you can do so with an intent of love.
Read moreYou are more then a number.
We had just finished healing harbor last night. I was feeling spiritually fulfilled that we had been able to provide healing to so many people. At the same time, I was physically exhausted, my body ached from the rain, my eyes itched from my allergies, and every cell in my being just wanted to crawl into bed. It had been a marvelous and enriching day and then one of my healing staff said something, which just made the whole day a little brighter. “I really like your hair like that.” All I could do was take a deep breath and say was “thank you.” The funny thing was that I have wanted to shave it all off again, but Zoe has been encouraging me to let it grow.
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