Don't Make Assumptions

January 27, 2014 Sharon Jacobson

My friend Jane, who I mention quite often in my gratitude journal and who inspired our affirmation card ministry, send me a funny story which is all about what happens when we make assumptions. This is her story.

My friend, Ingrid, and I made these candleholders. We made 6 in total. They are put together like building blocks with glass vases, bowls, plates etc. to get the desired affect and then glued to stay in place. We’d been collecting glassware from second-hand shops for a while and it took nearly a whole day to make the 6.
We decided to give the three largest to Patience’s Mum, Sylvia, for Christmas, as they looked great in a cluster.

Tapping into your Divine Wisdom

January 20, 2014 Sharon Jacobson

n my work with others as a spiritual partner, I so often hear people say things like, “I tell my children that all the time” or “I say that to my friends all the time.” We have internal wisdom we have learned over time and been taught by those who came before us. We so willingly share it with others, but when it comes to our own lives, we do not always tap into our own Divine wisdom.

I began thinking about the powerful lessons I have been taught by those who have come before me, learned through my own study and have also had to learn to digest and embody in my own life. This list is those things that I strive to remember each day and the nuggets of wisdom I share with my inner child when she needs to hear them, and sometimes when she does not.

Taking a Vacation

January 15, 2014 Sharon Jacobson

I am taking a vacation from blogging this week to do some intense spiritual work on myself. Be back next week.

You are somebody

January 9, 2014 Sharon Jacobson

I was having a conversation with someone recently and they talked about how they were somebody because they were raised in the “right” school and in the “right” neighborhood. This made me wonder what if you did not go to the “right” school. What if you did not grow up in the “right” neighborhood? What if you grew up on the “wrong” side of the tracks? Does one context make you somebody and the other make you a nobody?

This whole conversation got me thinking about how much of our society is constructed in a way that we value one difference over another. As sociologist Allan Johnson argued, it is not that difference in and of itself is bad, but the valuation of one difference over another. The contexts of our life (where we go to school, work, grew up, etc.) should have nothing to do with our value as a human being. Society may have constructed beliefs that one is better then the other, but that does not make it true. It is only true if you agree it is true.

The Top 10 Read Blogs of 2013

December 30, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

It seems as if no matter where I am online at this time of year, I am finding someone’s top ten list of something on their sites. So I thought it might be fun to look at what have been the top 10 blogs of this year and repost the links here for your perusal. These are the top 10 blogs from my three areas: Inspiritual Reflections, The Zenful Kitchen, and Stirring my Spiritual Waters. It will be interesting to see if any of them are still on the list at the end of 2014. So in reverse order, here are the 10 most read blog entries of 2013.

Embracing Your Inner Wisdom

December 24, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

I came across a quote recently by Wendell Berry from The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky’s Red River Gorge. He wrote, “The world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground of our own feet, and learn to be at home. It is a journey we can make only by the acceptance of mystery and of mystification – by yielding to this condition that what we have expected is not there.”

Have you ever had one of those experiences that turned out to be far more then what you expected? A colleague of mine tells the story about going out to pick cranberries. She had walked this trail many times before in her life. As she tells the story, she found herself becoming tangled in her inner mind and emotions.

The Sunshine Award

December 18, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

Dear Readers,

This morning, I was nominated for the Sunshine Award by Hope, Honor, and Happiness. I thank God for this blessing and Ariffa as well for nominating me! Thank you so much, Ariffa!

So, one of the rules of this award is to tell you ten things about myself. So, here I go!

I am good at time management skills. For example, if I have 30 days to read a book, I divide the number of pages by 29, then read that many pages per day. This way I have one day off should something arise.

Tis the Season to be Defiant

December 16, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

It has been a while since I have preached or even written a Christmas message. I try not to because for me there more then one Christmas. There is the commercial secular Christmas, the religious Christmas with its story about the birth of Jesus, the cultural Christmas, which has its own ways of being celebrated around the world, and the one I personally celebrate – the defiant Christmas. My celebration of the defiant Christmas was inspired by a Christmas card I once say hanging on a professor’s door. The outside of the cover had a brightly shining star surrounded by darkness, an evergreen tree surrounded by trees without leaves and then there was a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger in a messy stable. The inside of the card said, “Wishing you a defiant Christmas.” While something about the card resonated with me, I knew I did not fully understand its meaning.

Time, Discovery, and Patience

December 9, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

Have you ever had the privilege of watching something transform before your eyes. Perhaps you did not see this transformation immediately, but slowly and over time. This morning, I was reading a selection from Mark Neepo’s book The Book of Awakening. In his reflection for today, he wrote:

I recently learned that the first form of pencil was a ball of lead. Having discovered that lead, if scratched, would leave markings, people then wrestled with large chunks of the stuff in an attempt to write. Through the work of many, the chunks were eventually shaped into a useable form that could fit the hand. The discovery became a tool.
I am humbled to confess after a lifetime of relationship that love is no different. Be it a lover or a friend or a family member, the discovery of closeness appears in our life like a ball of lead – something that is wrestled with, will leave markings by which we can understand each other.
But this is only the beginning. The work of love is to shape the stuff of relationships into a tool that fits our hands. With each hardship faced, with each illusion confirmed, with each trespass looked at and owned, another piece of the chunk is whittled and love begins to become a sacred tool.
When truth is held in compassionate hands, the sharpness of love becomes clear and not hurtful.

Getting to know you

December 2, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

It was years ago now, but Julie Andrews sang a song in the movie The King and I called Getting to Know You. It is a song that she is singing to her students about how they have enriched her life. However, what if we were to sing that song to ourselves. What if we made this song about getting to know ourselves for who we are?

Getting to know you,
Getting to feel free and easy
When I am with you,
Getting to know what to say

What is my intent?

November 26, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

Everything we say and do in our lives is about choice. Our thoughts, words, and behaviors are all actions. It is through these actions that we create our stories, our belief systems, our perceptions of others, and contribute to others engagement in our dream and the dream of the planet, as don Miguel Ruiz argues. . The dream of the planet is “What Toltecs call the combined energetic structure of beliefs, rules and concepts that all the humans on our planet simultaneously dream and project onto our conjoined reality.” (Rosenthal, 2005, p. 321)

Replace Your But's

November 18, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

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.

Enlightenment

November 12, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

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.

Spiritual Friends, Partners, and Counselors

November 4, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

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.

What story are you creating?

October 28, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

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..."

Have you been burglarized?

October 23, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

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.

Replace Fear with Love

October 14, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

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.

Holding onto Stress

October 7, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

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.

You are Worthy!

September 30, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

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.

Press Pause

September 23, 2013 Sharon Jacobson

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.”

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