It’s all about perspective.

The other day someone asked me how I see their life. I found this a difficult question to answer. How I see their life is about me and has nothing to do with them. How I write my story is about me and would most likely be very different from how others would write the story of my life. Why? Simple, it is all about perspective. I would write the story of my life based on who I am at this very point in time and the perspective I have of my own life. Come back in 5 minutes or 5 years and the way I tell my story may be quite different. Why? This is because I may or may not have the same perspective.
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Love, Earth, and Me.

I recently began taking classes through the Academy of Awareness offered through miguelruiz.com. One of the homework assignments asked us to reflect on our connection with the earth, what it gives to us, the beauty and wonder of it, and what we can do in our daily lives to give back to the earth. As I was reflecting on what they had written about “mother earth,” I found myself remembering a children’s book I still read to my son, who is now 30, and have read to several of my adult friends. The name of the book is On the Day You Were Born.
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R E S P E C T, Find out What It Means to Me

For the past few days, well maybe longer, I have been thinking about the whole notion of respect. I found myself remembering the chorus from the old Aretha Franklin song RESPECT. However, when I read the lyrics to her song, I realized that while respect might have meant one thing to her, at least from the lyrics, it meant something completely different to me. As her song says, find out what it means to me. For me, respect is an expression of love. It is about love for myself and love for others.
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I am who I am

I have been thinking about this art interpretation thing since our love and inspiration gathering last Sunday when I shared my copy of La Confidance with the group. At some level, I think I wanted them to be as taken away and moved by this painting as I was. Their not being moved did not affect my experience of this painting or the memory of the first time I saw it. Rather, it reminded me of a chapter in don Miguel Ruiz’s book The Mastery of Love where he talks about this man who did not believe in love, who then thought he found it, and then became disillusioned when the woman of his dreams did not share the same exuberance about something he did.
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La Confidance and Me

Perhaps it has been all the artistic images I have looked at which were referenced in The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, however, I have been thinking about how the infinite is an artist and my life is a piece of art. There have been paintings I have seen in my life, one in particular, La Confidance, which spoke to my spirit in a way no other piece of art has. As I have been thinking about this, I came to realize I am one of the instruments through which the Infinite is expressing itself. Everything I say, feel and do is a work of art. It is as though I am a work of art that is ever evolving.
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Lies, lies go away and let the love come out and play.

Perhaps it is that we are in this spiritual season in a number of faith traditions, which has led me to this space of cleansing and decluttering in my life. Perhaps it was a conversation with a friend this afternoon, which helped me tap into a lie still floating around in my heart. I guess it had been there for so long that I did not even realize it was still there. It was then I remembered that the lies could only survive if I believe them to be. The minute I stop believing them, the minute I stop acknowledging their existence, is the minute they cease to exist.
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I keep waking up!

This whole week I have been thinking about waking up. Not that physical kind of waking up, although I have been waking up with more physical energy then I have had for a while. Maybe that is related to my physically reawakening my body and making myself walk every 90 minutes whether I like it or not. It hurts and sometimes I can’t wait to get back to my chair, however, I know this is all good and it is all about my intentional journey to wholeness. My physical wellness was one of those areas where I could honestly say I was not doing my best.
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Because I am

I learned this amazing lesson the other day. Sometimes there is nothing to say. Sometimes there is nothing to feel. Sometimes there is nothing to express. Sometimes when I become thoughtful and quiet people want to know what is wrong with me. Sometimes it is just where I am. Recently, someone asked me why I was being so quiet and I said because I am. They were upset with me and left because I did not give them the explanation they desired. I guess because I might not have given them what they needed, but it was.
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It’s not about me.

Coming to the place of knowing it is not about me has been a journey. I have had to work at knowing how to not take things personally. I can remember a time when I took everything personally, and that was definitely about me. Whether someone said something positive or negative would have an impact on how I saw myself or how I felt. I was allowing others to control my sense of self, rather then owning my own life and the direction and experience of it myself.
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Parasite Removal

I was lying in bed the other night nursing a sinus headache paying attention now and then to the television in the background. Sometimes the commercials are more entertaining then the shows and sometimes there seems to be more commercials then show, but I will save that for another time. last night, it was the Terminix commercial that resonated with my spirit. Not because we have termites, at least I do not think we do, but there promise of how they can come and remove all the termites from your house, keep them away, and if their treatment does not work they will pay for the damage. As I was sitting there watching this commercial, I found myself thinking that it is too bad there is not a parasite removal plan for our lives.
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These are my vows to me.

For the last few weeks, I have been spending quite a bit of time reflecting on the agreements I have made about perfection. It has not always been easy, but it has enabled me to release some things I did not know were still part of my agreements. It also enabled me to see how much I have grown, how much I have already discarded, and what I still need to work on. What I had come to realize is that this image of perfection sets me and everyone else up for failure. Once we are domesticated then we are not perfect for others or ourselves. Nobody is perfect in our eyes and we are not even perfect in our own. As I came to think through this, I came to a new understanding of what perfection is for me and that is love.
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Taking my masks off.

I have this relationship with Don Miguel Ruiz’s book that defies description. I can’t quite describe it as a love hate relationship because I never hate it. It is kind of like going to a psychological and spiritual gym. You go, you do the work, you feel good on so many levels, but there are some parts of the workout, which require you to work a little harder and dig a little deeper then others. This is how I have felt about his section on social masks. My initial response was – I don’t wear any social masks. That is too simplistic of an answer. Ok, so what social masks do I wear and how do I know when I am wearing them. One of the clues he suggests is when you feel false, frustrated, or dishonest. When are we faking the funk and being what we think others want us to be and not who we really are?
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Thanks Cousin Bruce

Dear Bruce, I just wanted to thank you for our conversation this past week. You said something that really touched me and got me thinking about how far I have come in my own journey. You talked about my aura and how it drew you to me and how you thought it drew others to me as well. I am not even sure if you will remember saying that or not. I can remember a time when I was probably more Eeyore and feeling like my whole world was woe is me. I had to work so hard on myself to look at how I was practicing a theology of sadness to get to a theology of joy. I had allowed myself to internalize other people’s lies and negativity. It had eaten away at my sense of self and the perception of my relationship with God. I had to remove all this from my spirit and replace them with those things I knew to be true.
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No more documentaries

Trying to undo all these years of internalized negativity and oppression is not always easy. I have clearly made progress in my pursuit of living the four agreements. I have made significant progress in terms of never saying anything negative about others. It seems like that was the easy part, although there are a few times when a student will say something, which I allow to get on my nerves for a moment. Then I have to stop and ask myself “why are you taking this personally, this is not about you?” This just happened to me recently and as I worked through it, I realized that I had internalized some fear from a conversation with someone a few years ago. I had to release the fear so that I could let it go. The thing I am happiest about is that I have learned how to make these moments commercials and not allow them to become full-length documentaries that take over my day.
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Releasing Judgment

One of the lessons I remember learning growing up was how we should not judge others if we did not want others to judge us. For some reason, I found that hard to believe as I figured they were going to judge me anyway. Now, I realize that what others do is about them. My judging is about me. What got me thinking about this was something don Miguel Ruiz wrote in the Companion Guide to the Four Agreements. “We judge others according to our image of perfection as well, and naturally they fall short of our expectations.” It made me stop and think about what my image of perfection is for those in my life. What is my image of the perfect partner? For my children (that includes all those who have adopted me as their mom)? For my parents, when they were alive? For my closest friends? For my brothers? For my relatives?
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Simply about Perfection

Recently a client asked me if I worked as hard on my own spiritual evolution as they felt they were. I found my heart smiling. I had to giggle because for the last few weeks I have been grappling with a single word – perfection. Don Miguel Ruiz wrote, “Our image of perfection is the reason we reject ourselves; it is why we don’t accept ourselves the way we are, and why we don’t accept others the way they are.” In his Companion Guide to the Four Agreements, he challenged me to think about what my image of perfection is. I could not begin to answer that question or any of the other questions he asked because I could not find the words to define perfection. There have been days when this single word made me wonder if I really wanted to grapple with it and was this challenge going to be enough to stop me in my journey.
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Valuing my qualities

Don Miguel Ruiz wrote, “The most important agreements are the ones you make with yourself. In these agreements you tell yourself who you are, what you feel, what you believe, and how to behave.” As I have been exploring this in my own life and working to become aware of my own agreements, I have been thinking about the qualities I was taught I should embody, those I think I embody, what others think I have and those I wish I had. Growing up, I was taught to be compassionate and caring. That came more from my mother then anyone else. She was a very loving and compassionate woman and they are qualities I continue to embody and embrace today. I think, or at least would like to believe that this is how others see me as well.
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Remembering when my roots grew deeper

I remember 1991 as if it were yesterday. Well actually, I think the winds started blowing in my life the year before. My mother had become increasingly ill, my long-term relationship was eroding before my eyes for reasons I did not understand, and 1991 was to be a year of major changes in my life. for the first time in decades I was living on my own, my mother was dying, my father was doing all he could to stay strong and care for my mom, I was back in school working on my fourth degree and felt as if what was keeping together was my commitment to just taking it one day at a time, sometimes one minute. My first semester in seminary I was told to leave my church, my mom died, my car was stolen, and my son had a near death experience.
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It's my story!

I just had this awesome conversation with my brother and it reminded me of how we each have the opportunity to co-create with the Infinite and with life. How I talk about my life, how I tell the story of my life is about me and it is a work of art. Nobody can tell the story of my life as I can. Your story about my life is your story and your work of art. I can observe it, but I do not participate in it. It is your story. How I tell my story, how I create my story is about me. I am the one who decides how to paint the picture. I am the one who decides how to explain what I perceive to be real. I am the one who decides how I am going to justify what I do or do not. It is my life and my story.
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