You bet. We call it irony!

Remember the bad dream I mentioned in my last post? Well the next day I got to live it! Isn’t that ironic? I figured the car fire was, in a way, a good thing. I’d call the insurance company – they would write off the car as being too old to warrant repair and I’d get something more reliable. As it happened, the deductible was ‘way more than the repair and the repair was ‘way more than I could afford right now. So just when I thought I was catching a break – I was actually getting another smack upside the head. What was that about? Well, one thing – it wasn’t about the smack – it was about the punch to the solar plexus that was about to knock the wind out of me!

When I called my insurance broker who I have dealt with for nearly 30 years, I was feeling the full force of the financial bind I was in. Not being able to sell my house over the past nearly two years has been a test of trust that the universe would unfold and somehow I wouldn’t get pinched in the creases. The best advisors, well meaning friends and I, myself, agree that I gotta go. But, I’m sure I’m not sharing anything of great incidence when I say that this economic meltdown has dominoes falling the size of Stonehenge! The fallout has us all affected.

My broker K, in Eeyore drawl, said, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.”

“Hunh?” I responded.

“Marilyn I told you years ago about XYZ who would give you a (huge) line of credit based on your equity and you didn’t do anything about it.”

“Hmm tell me again – I’m listening now.” I certainly don’t recall – but he might have told me just when my husband died and I was not making major banking decisions at that time – or actually thinking at all.

“I’ll have the agent call you and we’ll have this in place in no time.”

Wow the clouds parted and the sun shone and my phone rang. It was V the agent. He reminded me we spoke some time ago and I didn’t get back to him. Mmm – same ‘excuse’.

“Let me take down a little information and we’ll have this done today!”
He took all the info and then as he was finishing up said, “Of course you have a good credit rating…”

“Actually,” I said, “You’re going to have to pull a few rabbits from the hat on that one. I have a lousy credit rating because I have been in survival priority mode and late lots of times.”

How can I explain that there were sometimes weeks that I didn’t pick up mail – let alone open it. There is no entry on the form that says when the polestar of your whole life is extinguished your universe shifts and things take more than a little time to regain a cogent orbit. Anyway, he was as efficient in delivering the bad news as he was in promising the good. The irony? If all my affairs were in order and I didn’t actually need them – I would have gotten the green light!”

My ’score’ was off by a few points and he said, “I wish you’d called me six months ago.”

“Yeah, well, I wish my husband didn’t die. But there you are. Stuff happens.” I couldn’t resist reinforcing the obvious.

Wow that was a quick ride between hope and despair.

Despair? Why despair? My worst case scenario is better than a lot of people’s best case dreams. And what does this have to do with happiness, fear, irony and a bad dream? Just this:

The path of enlightenment or spiritual mastery is the path of freedom – to the simple values of love, peace, and happiness. Love is the energy of all of creation. It is all there really is. Peace is the state of calm no matter what circumstances you experience. And happiness is the tiny pulse of joy that is sometimes glimpsed for short moments, but mostly suffocated in all the ’stuff’ we think is more important.

I asked for this mastery and so I am learning it. Some years ago, just before Georgie died, I was studying the yoga sutras (sacred texts) and my beloved teacher told us, “Remember, when you begin this study, your life will offer the experiences to illustrate these lessons.” My growing up was full of many sudden and tragic losses and separations. My grandfather, my adored aunt, and dear ‘big’ brother all took their own life. My mother was hospitalized when I was three and she didn’t come home until I was nine – the same year my aunt died. So when George got sick, I was in abject terror.

I think I tried to bargain with God to exchange a million little fears for the one big one. How could I possibly lose the man who once said to me in a time of self doubt: “ I know you better than you know yourself and I will love you until you love yourself.” How could this mountain of protection crumble? But he did and my mastery over fear and the first steps of enlightenment (lightening up) began. So in the grander scheme of this – how does a credit rating really rate?

However, K, my agent, seemed to sense my dismay as an invitation to give his opinion of all I should have done that I didn’t do. He finished off by saying, “You’ll just have to sell the house and get a condo, pay your bills on time and learn to live a different life style!” I wondered what lifestyle he was referring to. It sounded like the one where I drink champagne in my spare time when I’m not buying shoes. It certainly wasn’t the one that I’m more familiar with. However, the truth notwithstanding, I could feel all the joy in my many accomplishments draining from my soul like blood from a wound. The irony that everyone seems to miss is that it was the banks’ abuse of credit that caused this collapse in the first place. And here nearly two years later we’re still feeling the seismic after effects.

The dramas we live and play out are never about what they are about. They are about unveiling our weaknesses and polishing our strengths. The marines say, ‘be the best that you can be.’ and to get there they put a cadet through rigorous training to winkle out any negatives that might come out at the wrong moment (they do that) and endanger the soldier and all who depend on him.

So yesterday I spent the day doing the things that I could do to solve my immediate problem. To do that I had to ask for help – which is to admit that I can’t do this by myself. It is a lesson in humility. There is a solution and it may be different than what I expect. A lesson in detachment.

This morning I woke up thinking about this writing and before I knew it my throat began to close up. My heart was pounding and I was racing toward a full blown panic attack! What was this about? I did three things before I was calm enough to see what these past days were for. One; I got hold of the runaway mustang of my mind racing to join the stampede of thoughts of doom. Second; I took some Dr. Bach’s Rescue Remedy (where would a new mother or bride on her wedding day be without it?) and third, I got down on my yoga mat and began my series of sun salutations. I took a moment longer and did some reflexology on my hands and feet to release the stress in my neck. And then began to bring some objectivity to this drama. Again, its never about what it seems to be about. It’s inevitably about our own mastery and to get caught in the drama is to miss the whole opportunity.

Yesterday I found myself recounting the family suicides to a friend who didn’t know. I wondered why I did that. Then I realized it was this month that my brother died. Our souls recall anniversaries so that we can heal residual emotions. Clearly this was all sparked by the fear of ‘losing’ my home. My fear is hooked into all the latent losses and grief that I somehow still hold and it is interfering with my happiness. My fear really had nothing to do with the actual experience with these two agents. The fear was in me and the experience drew it out into light. I have so much to be grateful for and so much to look forward to. But I had slipped into an unconscious choice to believe in fear.

In my dream I was willing to be shot in the heart rather than live with fear. It was a portent for another leap toward the love, peace and happiness I dearly desire in a simple and free life. The reason I created LightBeam in the first place was to offer people the means to solace and wellness in natural therapies and practices. I share my own experience in such detail (‘open my kimono’ as Georgie would say) to give others a light. I’ve witnessed the suffering and needless tragedy of hopelessness. Sadly we live in a world that thrives on hopelessness. To rise in spite of the naysayers and find happiness is an act of will and intent.

To get to that learning, however, I needed a catalyst and that was played by my insurance broker. The last words K said to me were, “You know what’s going to happen? You’re going to go into what they call financial depression – and then you’re going to get sick!” Sweet guy. He hung up saying, “Keep in touch.” At least he had the restraint not to say “Have a nice day.”

Technorati Tags: "Dr. Bach's Rescue Remedy", actualization, courage, credit, desire, freedom, Happiness, health, heart's, intent, mind, peace, rating, reflexology, will, yoga

Do You Have Time To Be Happy?

It was about 4 AM when I woke this morning. I laid in bed inviting sleep back and felt the nameless dreads lurking in the corner of my mind. What’ll I do about selling the house? What’ll I do about the car that caught fire today? Why am I clenching my teeth? I finally resorted to my trusted remedy – a few drops of lavender on my pillow and twirled my nano to a meditation and away I drifted.

However I ‘drifted’ right into a very nasty dream. I was in a large car dealership reporting to the sales manager. I was their outside agent and doing very well at bringing in corporate clients. The owner – a sleazy menacing man came over and said never mind the manager – I was to deal directly with him – at which point he began to molest me. I raised myself to full height and told him to drop dead – didn’t he know who I was? But that didn’t stop him and he began to overpower me. I (in the fashion I was taught dissuades unwanted aggression) started screaming for everybody to see this creep and what he was doing.

No one paid any attention. Even a group of young women employees looked at me and then looked away. I realized I was completely vulnerable in this cavernous space that he owned and where he had paralysed everyone in the place into fear of retribution. I got free and made a dash outside to my car. It was now after dark. The parking lot was huge and offered no safety or hope of intervention either. My car was the only hope. But! I discovered I had left my keys on the sales managers desk. I faced my fear and ran back in. The creep let me in and out again and I knew he was sure of his victory and was playing with my fear.

I made it to my car but couldn’t lock the doors before he jumped into the passenger seat. I careened out of the parking lot keeping the car off balance. In the street which was busy with shops I jammed the car into park, leapt out the door and into a large and busy store. As in true dream fashion it was a Hallowe’en costume store full of women lined up to buy fluorescent wigs and such. The creep followed me in and now in a rage began attacking and punching in earnest. I screamed to draw attention and help but all the women looked and then looked away. I shouted at one woman that I couldn’t let this man frighten me and make me fearful in the future. She said that judging from the rage in his face I now had someone who would never let me alone. I was frantic with fear! He knew where I lived!

I ran back to my car and got away – only to have him shoot out the tire. In a flash I pictured a life plagued by this stalker who meant me harm – but worse, meant to torment me with fear of harm. In that second I realized I would rather die than live in fear. I jumped out of the car and opened my coat so he could shoot me in the heart. And then I woke up.

Usually other people’s dreams aren’t very interesting if you’re not a Jungian, but I recount this as I think in a way it is everyone’s dream. And I know it was spawned by the conversation my Sweetheart and I had that afternoon. I was waiting for a friend who I had driven to an appointment at Sunnybrook Hospital. S had come to wile away the time with me and we found a quiet place at the back of the hospital property. We sat on a stone wall with our legs dangling over the edge and a formidable drop down into the treed valley. High up in one of the trees a racoon lay curled and sleeping. A hawk swung in lazy swoops between trees. And a creek was beginning to emerge from its snowy banks. It was peaceful and warm in the springlike sun.

We were talking about this and that – how my car caught fire and all. A dear friend of mine had died this week at 90 and I felt sad for a long life lived in duty and not joy. This gave rise to the question of why humans are conscious. It seems rather cruel to have a physical body and a physical life only to know that we are destined to die. What is the point in that? Neanderthals weren’t troubled by that presumably. So why this development of knowing? Does it give us meaning or does it give us fear? Or both?

Being a student of the spiritual path – in many forms – I opined on co creating and evolution and a greater meaning. But S in his usual fashion asked me what difference a hereafter really made to this life now. Before I got too huffy, he went on to say that so many near death experiences included the white light tunnel and the feeling of immense love. Tap into a 100 year old coffin and once you blow the dust away and pick up the skull you can ask it, “How’s the white light working for you now?”

I started to laugh because that is absolutely true. We have constructed our whole world out of the need to have meaning beyond this life. But this is the only life we have going at this precise moment. We have created a society and a culture around things – structures, objects, laws, and businesses that keep us safe and alive and busy thinking about keeping ourselves safe and alive. And then there are all the businesses new age and ancient around assuaging our worried souls that there is a reason for suffering and things will be clear “on the other side”. But what about here – now?

S and I sat in the sun on the edge of the wall overlooking a lovely creek and valley. Except for a few cans and bottles and a couple of blue buckets, it could have been hundreds of years ago. Our back was turned to the century stone house behind us. Beyond that were rings of construction fencing leading up to the huge complex of Sunnybrook growing in our very presence. Beyond that is the fifth largest city in North America – Toronto. The biggest buildings are churches, hospitals, banks, insurance companies. Save your soul! Save your life! Save your money! Save your house! Identical malls sprawl within blocks of each other clamouring for consumer attention. To feel this – buy that! To be this – wear that! Belong or be outcast.

We are unequivocally living in a construct of fear. And where is the happiness in that? Where is the creativity as we ding like pinballs around the obstacle course of our lives? We distract ourselves with things to divert us. If we have heartfelt pleasures we often hurry through them to get back to ‘all we have to do’. Or worse, we save our pleasures for when we have time – which we rarely do. We fall in love and then wrench the tender shoots from the earth to see if it is growing like everybody says it should. We have or acquire a child and then wear it as an accessory. Will it walk before one, talk before two and read from a book at three? If the child rebels can we give it Ritalin? We create a song, a poem or a dance and then offer it up to be crushed and ridiculed by millions nationwide.

We have completely given over our heart’s desires to a collective unconscious. We have chosen to stay
distracted by often nameless fears from the very thing our consciousness provides us and that is the awareness of our own eventual death. Why should we be preoccupied by death? We shouldn’t be preoccupied or fearful of death – only aware of its inevitability. It is this awareness that defines what is actually precious and of value to us. We die without ever really living. No wonder we fear death. It is the final confrontation that we have spent our lives guided by anything but the truth. And what is the truth? Whatever makes you happy. Truly – heart light happy.

Happiness comes from the well of the heart and the heart is fed from the font of creation. True happiness comes from acts of love. The love of science, nature, commerce or humanity. As long as we are true to ourselves we can never be wrong. And then we can die fearless and at peace, in the white light of our own creative accomplishments. Our legacy to a world that no longer holds us.

Technorati Tags: actualization, consciousness, courage, death, desire, freedom, Happiness, heart's, meaning, mind, peace

How a simple reversal of perspective will give you the life you desire.

But first I have to share a word with you that is so significant to our health and happiness it is the only key to our personal joy and to the flourishing of the Earth and the Universe she rests in. So mystical is this word that it frightens us and wakes us in the night and causes war among brothers. So magical a word that when we say it with understanding we are liberated from all fears – forever. This word represents a gift of creation so powerful that it rivals the miracle of our birth. And that word is DEATH.

Birth and death are the parenthesis of our life on earth. And what transpires within those brackets – into the world and out – is our life. Life can be short and meaningful as a Japanese Haiku or fraught with the drama of a Greek Tragedy in multiple acts. Because we fear death more than revere it, we live our lives as if we might somehow avoid it altogether. Illness, accident or old age – the vehicles of death always seem to take us by surprise – as some sort of mistake in judgement or wrong turn. If only she hadn’t smoked, if only he had made a full stop, if only she had taken her vitamins. Death is, at once, the ultimate certainty and the ultimate mystery.

The fact is that as surely as you are reading this you were born and as surely as you were born you will die – sooner or later. The journey to that final door marked death is your true life purpose. Forget ‘What is my life purpose?’ You are living it even as you search. Forget, ‘When I have my own apartment, car, million, Cessna I’ll be okay. Forget, ‘When my children are grown, when I have enough money, when I retire, I will paint, write, garden. Replace the word ‘then’ with the word ‘now’. Take a deep breath. Exhale out loud and listen to that exhalation. That is you breathing. That is you alive.

When the stork dropped you, he dropped you with a sack of goodies. Rudimentary supplies to get you started. Girl, boy, black, white yellow. The soul of a poet, the mind of a mathematician. It is an intriguing mix of potentialities. Your mother’s eyes, your father’s walk – immediate stuff. But you also have a blend of their blend. Going back just two hundred years or ten generations to 1811, one thousand and twenty four people had to have intimate encounters for you to be here now. If you multiply 1,024 by the number of genes – both latent and dominant then you have a staggering complexity of possibilities in your makeup. To follow your line back to the beginning of time – well, you have to think in terms of stars and galaxies to grasp the limitless possibilities.

But that’s not all! Your baby sack got dropped into a garden, concrete jungle or war zone. And your family either thought it was a good thing or not a good thing that you were born and they cried, smiled or cussed the day you were born. Now imagine rising up at lightening speed above your crib until you are amongst the stars looking down and see all the living beings on the planet – nearly 7 billion – and how their thoughts and actions tilt the world mood and outcome like a teeter totter between Nirvana and Armageddon. Now you have a sense – kinda – of the potential influence of heredity and environment.

But heredity and environment is only what is in your bag. It is not YOU. Your body is the physical draping around the spark of Life that is your pure potential. The oak within the acorn. Your brain is the recorder and processor of information and your conscious mind – awareness – is your connection with all of Life. Consciousness is not a connection in the sense of a thread or umbilical attachment, but rather like cupping your hands under the water of the ocean. Your body is the physical envelope if you will, but the whole of the creative Life force fills you and surrounds you and ebbs and flows. It is in you and all around you at the same time. It is in you and every other person, mineral, plant or planet.

Your life began with a choice and is continually micro directed by every subsequent choice. The first choice was not the obvious one of ‘him’ and ‘her’ or all siblings would be identical. The first choice that defined you was this sperm and that egg. Now depending on how quickly you individuated and made your own conscious choices the sooner you took charge and shaped life according to your deepest desires. You might have been allowed to pair orange and purple as matched socks when you were little or your mother still picked out your shirt and tie for your first job interview. Whichever the case, your heart’s desires were either expressed or repressed.

If you have had a difficult life or are enduring a patch you don’t like, you might complain that you didn’t choose to be born. No person in their ‘right mind’ would choose to be born to a drug addict mother or some other unfortunate circumstance, but your mind didn’t do the choosing. In its desire for evolution and creation, Life chose to be born through you. The difference between an animal or rock and a human being is that the creative Life force called Nature continues to make the choices. You, the human being, on the other hand, have awareness that you are conscious and so have the will to move with and express Nature through your choices and actions or override and repress Nature.

So what does that have to do with your mixed bag of heredity and environment and your eventual death? And what does this all have to do with health and happiness? Well, only this – everything. It really may seem with all the infinite possibilities in your makeup, that finding a thread and being solely responsible for creating your life tapestry might seem too complex. There are just too many outside influences and responsibilities and on top of all that the world is in chaos. What can you really do? You can’t change the world chaos any more than you can hold back the tides or stop the Earth in its orbit. And if you believed you could – how would you manage those choices?

It is actually sublimely simple: What do you desire? The energy of Life starts within and works outward. The oak is already in the acorn. When the acorn falls on the forest floor and takes root, all its energetic focus is on being what it is. An Oak. It reaches into the soil for nourishment and water. It reaches skyward toward the life giving light of the sun. It takes up the space in the earth, in the forest, in the air to fulfill its wholeness. Lichen on the rock beside it, or a tiny plant of wintergreen sprouting waxy leaves and red berries fulfills the ’self’ same mandate of all that it can be. There is no competition or desire to be other than it is. Each has its own space and influence on the whole of its environment.

As human beings, our ‘oak’ of Self – actualized is within us and requires our conscious participation – our free will. We choose how we root into the soil of our physical environment. How we create and share in the abundance that surrounds us in our community, and ultimately how we influence the world we live in. As humans we are born with basic propensities within a environmental context. Infinite possibilities. How we play it out is entirely up to us. Pleasure or pain – joy or sorrow. Only in following the inner wisdom of our heart’s true desires will we know how to ride either/or on the buoyancy of good life well lived!

When we lay our head down on the pillow for the last time, not even then knowing exactly when we will exhale for the last time, what will be running through our mind as important? The thing is: as we look at the infinite odds that conspired in our unique blend of genes to become us – the microcosm – and then look up to the night sky and imagine those trillions of stars and galaxies – the macrocosm – we glimpse the actual significance of our personal life role in the scheme of the whole of the universe for all time. The only thing that matters is what our life meant to us.

Do you love? Are you loved? Are you fulfilled? If your name is called tomorrow – are you ready to let go? Up until that last breath will you have been all that you might be – and know the blessing that you are?

Please follow me on twitter for upcoming posts on my experience with various therapies and other thoughts on Life.

If you want to enjoy optimum health and wellness – please join LightBeam Community.

Technorati Tags: actualization, creativity, desire, evolution, freedom, Happiness, heart's, mind, peace, personal, potential, power, self-respect, soul, Vitality, wisdom

How to reclaim your heart.

(Part three of three)

The dragon must die but to vanquish it, it must be lured from the cave into the light. All this drama of heroes, damsels, dragons, heart, and self, courage, and fear is the stuff our our daily life on Earth. Applying the archetypes only facilitates in understanding the active energy of these forces as they motivate or limit us from within, and as they attract external circumstances and relationships to perpetuate and feed the momentum of self deception – the dragon.

We can all relate to the interplay of these forces in our personal evolution. Whether we are born onto the sunny coast of California or the broken streets of Beirut, our personal story unfolds and undulates in response to internal and external influences. We are reactive or proactive and as we strengthen within the forces without are mitigated. So the dragon we slay is the force of limitation on our personal evolution. And what exactly are we limiting? What is our personal evolution? And how does that impact on the world we live in?

My own learning began with a quest. It was a quest to avoid pain and suffering and to live without fear. I wasn’t even thinking in terms of happiness, creativity and personal fulfillment in those days. I just wanted to come up to a base line. The actual circumstances are immaterial, as the relevance lies only in the cumulative affect on my psyche and the ultimate claim for release. I did not want to be another statistic in my family of depression or suicide or penitent to a moralistic belief. And I certainly didn’t want that kind of influence on the children I was bringing into this turbulent world.

Consequently, I have been a passionate student of all ways of healing. Spiritual, energetic, nutritional, physical and intellectual. My own search for answers and the subsequent trip of healing, through tragedy, betrayal and disillusionment into lightness, comprehension, and reverence is the foundation of my vision of LightBeam and all aspects of my life work and contribution.

I was a seeker for many years until I began to study the ancient teachings of Patanjali and the Bhagavad Gita. They were very obscure to me and my Western mind had great trouble in interpreting the texts. However, my most beloved teacher, Gita, assured us that if we followed the lessons in our own time and did not rush, understanding would come. She also made a very portentous observation. She said, “Just be aware that when you study sacred texts, your life will draw in the circumstances to illustrate the lessons.”

That has been absolutely true and the way – though rough – has been resplendent with growing awareness for the subtle and sublime Life force that imbues every creature, rock and star in this wide universe. The more my understanding expanded, the less division there was in this way or that way. This doctrine or that dogma. Life began to express itself in a sense of extreme individuality and uniqueness – no two snowflakes alike – and at the same time, the amazing unity and interdependence of all living systems – molecules or galaxies. I found confidence in my own voice humming my tune and delight in the collective voice of all who wished to sing along with me.

I began to use the mantra, “I create the world I want to live in and it is populated with people I love and respect.” This is indeed unfolding and that world is pretty small but it is vibrant and full of colour, laughter, friendship, creativity and accomplishment. I’ve lost my way a few times, but as I described in The Dragon Dies and Dragon’s Teeth, those missteps become more quickly evident and corrected to bring me back to peace and confidence.

In this world of instant everything, we tend to believe that we can read a book, take a course, visualize or will a state into existence. We can most certainly be transformed by any of these. But the act of personal evolution is a lifetime of awakenings and glimpses of all that we can be. We then experience this awareness on all levels – body, mind, emotion, soul and then anchor it into our consciousness. It is in this deep integration of healing on all levels that we truly effect the the world we live in.

Our life purpose is to fulfill our own soul destiny. In this way we are truly co-contributors of Life’s evolution. We are the very cells of Life’s creative body. As we take in information, process it and express it in our daily lives, we construct a world of deeper understanding, interdependence and interconnectedness. We are manifestations of the Nature and the natural order of Life as surely as the trees and galaxies. The difference – as far as we know at this moment in time, is that we are conscious and can exert our conscious will over our actions and processes.

While the natural world expands and evolves, ebbs and flows, rises and falls on an ever undulating course, we conscious beings effect the expanding consciousness of the world. The collective emotion; the evolution of happiness over despair, peace over war, care over abuse. It is not difficult to see that the world is in chaos. There is starvation, torture, war, decimation, pollution, greed, anguish, suffering. The dragon of our collective unconsciousness is wreaking havoc. It’s is breathing poison into our water, ash into our air, starving our children, and singeing all our necks with the terror of uncertainty.

There is so much that people should be doing, could be doing to shift all this. Global prayer vigils, exhortations to God, blogs by the trillions, political and social activism. But all this activity – passive and aggressive – misses the whole point. The dragon grows in strength and power, not because we are focussing our attention and giving it energy, but because the dragon in our outer world is only the distraction for the dragon within us. The little dragon that would be safe stays safe because we ignore it to focus on the wrongs of the outer world. As long as we stay focussed on the evil, greedy conniving ‘bastards’ of the – name it – banks, pharmaceutical companies, governments, fishing fleets, fur traders, de foresters, munitions producers, we are neatly caught in the net of self delusion.

In turn, the collective consciousness is displayed in the world around us. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t like to live somewhere beautiful – a beach, the mountains, surrounded by love, and enjoying creative peace and serenity. We look at the world and wonder who made this mess? Clearly it is not our choice but here it is. The dragon of war, pollution, genocide, disease and poverty feeds on our collective delusion, our collective collusion to blame others, and it gets fat on our collective doubt and uncertainty.

In the acorn is the entire imprint for the oak. Given the basic conditions of clean water, fresh air, and nutrients from the Earth, the oak will flourish. Within the acorn is all the oak can potentially achieve. Drought and lightning may alter its shape, but within it remains all it might be. Likewise within us is all that we might be. If we are to be a musician, we will hear or see music and be drawn to its expression. Being human, our expression of our complete potential is not only effected by environment conditions, but also by conditions of consciousness.

As Life’s expression of conscious evolution, we are given the added ingredient of will. We don’t automatically evolve to the highest expression of our personal self. We must choose to fulfill our highest potential. Enter the dragon. The dragon is all that is not true about us. Before it outgrows the boundaries of our soul and leaps into the arena of the collective conscious, it feeds and gets powerful on self doubt. And how are we relieved of self doubt? By calling it out and looking it right in the eye. When we have the courage to face our fears – and sometimes we need help – we will see that they are not based on fact, but on false beliefs which have grown out of control and choke our potential for a creative, healthy and prosperous life.

Peace and love are our natural state of being, they are the stuff of our heart’s desire. They are always there – within. Sometimes deep in the cave – behind the fearsome dragon. Call the dragon out, see the lies in its eyes of what you believe about yourself that is not true and then raise the daggers of all your talents, gifts, and goodness of who you really are and slay it now. Each time the voice within you breathes the fire of doubt, shame, guilt, unworthiness face it down with another truth. Keep doing it until the dragon is silent. Then – puff! The dragon becomes magical and when it rises – and it will – it will be your ally – your reminder of who you really are!

When your heart is finally free from bondage, peace and love will fill you to overflowing and then the pulse of the world will change at last.

Please follow me on twitter for upcoming posts on my experience with various therapies and other thoughts on Life.

If you want to enjoy optimum health and wellness – please join LightBeam Community.

Technorati Tags: courage, creativity, desire, evolution, Happiness, health, heart's, mind, peace, personal, potential, power, release, soul, spirit

Do you feel the hot breath of self doubt on your neck?

(Part Two of Three)

I am as passionate about the nature of business as I am about the nature of the body and spirit. For me, a card carrying entrepreneur and risk taker, I devour books on business trends and strategies with equal pleasure as I do ancient spiritual teachings. I am as fascinated in how to develop a new market as I am how to reveal the inner spark of creativity. Actually its all the same to me.

Over the years my business has taken me into boardrooms with very powerful and wealthy corporate leaders. I have prepared investor memoranda, participated in corporate mergers, and facilitated strategic plans for integrating acquired divisions into a new corporate whole. I have witnessed a lot about business and learned more about human nature. One thing in particular.

And what was that? Everyone. Let me say that again. Everyone has a dragon breathing down their neck. I am using the example of business because we in the West have a notion that the rich and powerful are somehow also imminently confident and self assured. That as long as someone is at the top of the food chain, they have no social higher authority. No fear. No dragon.

Problems, challenges and disappointments aren’t dragons. In the dragon’s teeth, we are firmly gripped in the fear of exposure of our unworthiness, inferiority, humiliation, shame, and guilt. None of us is any different. It is just the degree of our public display as we grapple with our own beasts of self doubt.

Often people in the public eye – entertainment, business, politics actively seek out power, wealth and influence as an armour against the dragon. We may even believe that the dragon is ‘out there’ – the shareholders, the CEO, the constituents – the ones we have to assuage. The ones we have to stand up to with bravado and fearlessness. Never let them see the whites of your eyes, no fear, no weakness. We furiously brick up a fortress of protection – walls high and thick – fame, wealth, reputation, status, authority, even deception and coercion – only to find that – oops, the dragon is inside.

We may not know it until we are about to go on stage – take the podium or meet the new chairman. The dragon snorts and the fire is in our solar plexus. Our place of will and self esteem. The fire spreads down into our gut and reaches up to set our heart drumming and sears our mind. In that instant – before we repeat the affirmation, take the pill, shoot the Stoly’s, or otherwise submerge the dragon, we are caught aware of our own incompleteness. But – so what?

Dragons wreak havoc. When they are awakened and come out of the cave, snorting fire and swinging their spiked tail, destruction and incineration decimates the landscape. Just look at the recent banking debacle. Who hasn’t been effected by that melee of greed and avarice. Dragons on a feeding frenzy. But how can dragons be on the inside and the outside at the same time?

Dragons start out small. A little piece of misinformation in the psyche. Something your mother said when she was tired and you felt unloved. Something the kids said to you because you were different and you felt humiliation. Your teacher made an example of you in front of the class and you felt angry and powerless at the same time. Your father shouted and hit your brother and you knew fear. Someone you trusted touched you when you said no and you felt shame. Emotions. Potent currents of electrical and chemical surges through the body lodging in the cells and recorded in the brain. And like tiny magnets of energy they attract similar emotions. The event is over. Come and gone. Maybe not even witnessed by another. But its effect remains and gathers strength.

Shame, fear, humiliation, anger, powerlessness, unworthiness. Tiny dragons. They wake you up in the night. They begin to feed on your happiness. When ‘feel good’ things happen, they eat them up and ask for more. More food, more things, more attention, more control. Even dragons get quiet when they feed. So we keep feeding them, trying to keep them quiet and under control. But they are just getting stronger and bigger and they burst the seams of your psyche and create a life outside of you as well. Dragons poke you in your ‘wants’ and drive you forward. “A bigger house and I’ll be quiet.” “A higher position and I’ll be quiet.” “A faster car and I’ll be quiet.” “A younger lover and I’ll be quiet.”

But of course, dragons are too clever to let you see them first thing in the morning, scales, smoking nostrils and all. No, dragons outside of you act through your wife, your boss, your children, the media. Here is the secret to reveal the dragon. Anyone who you feel you need to please is the voice of the dragon. Material avarice is not the only language of dragons. Dragons roar equally loudly through the morally superior, the pious, the self deprecating, the intellectual.

The caveat is that the voice of the dragon is not the actual dragon. It is the magnification of the dragon. Its projection on the big screen. The real dragon is still safe, growing teeth and scales deep inside your soul. It will remain safe while you are distracted with slaying the dragon of your outer world. While it grows unimpeded within, it will never – ever – be vanquished without. Ultimately the dragon will lead you to the fullest expression of the seed that spawned it – humiliation, loss of love, shame, ruin. Just like the parasite it is, the dragon will feed on the host until the death of both.

To lead an epic life – worthy of heroes and heroines – is to slay the dragon once and for all time. Once this predator of happiness, self worth, pleasure, accomplishment, creativity is gone and no longer a fearsome ruler, you can enjoy all that is truly meaningful to you. Your light – the elements that make you uniquely you will be revered and loved. The truth that you speak and the love that you share will be all you need to attract a life you truly desire. A life that allows you to share your wisdom, creativity, and knowledge – your joy and happiness. A life that may be expressed in simplicity or in grandeur. You may be a monk or a king. A sculptor or mother. A CEO or a postal courier. You might build a school in Malawi or a corporation in Silcone Valley. But you will do it from the heart.

For it is the heart that is imprisoned in the cave of the beast. A heart pulsing in full expression of love, light and creativity dissolves the dragon. The damsel in distress is the frail self – our own innocent heart – beautiful, sensitive, loveable, – the spark of the Life itself, the promise of all that we can be.

How do I know this? Because yesterday the beast showed its face to me. In outer appearances I have it all. A beautiful home, my own business, regard amongst my peers, a loving relationship, two amazing, creative sons, and a deep spiritual life. But for all that I have accomplished and all that I enjoy, my default when I was tired or stressed was to anxiety, fear and self doubt. There are no actual facts supporting that. So where was it coming from? And what is the gain in maintaining it? There is no conscious gain. The dragon lives on unconscious acts. As soon as you begin to make conscious choices the dragon is threatened. As light floods in the dragon fades.

Once the dragon is released from the heart we truly do live happily ever after.

Please follow me on twitter for upcoming posts on my experience with various therapies and other thoughts on Life.

If you want to enjoy optimum health and wellness – please join LightBeam Community.

Technorati Tags: actualization, creativity, desire, evolution, freedom, Happiness, heart's, mind, peace, personal, potential, power, release, self-esteem, self-love, self-respect, soul, spirit, will, wisdom

Does your life reflect your heart’s desires?

When I hear the phrase, “You reap what you sow!”, I can picture my Aunt Myrtles’ piercing brown- black eyes and her mouth clamped shut in final punctuation. The meaning was unmistakable. It was all about punishment for misdeeds. And, man – I was guilty all day long! I didn’t say thank you. I didn’t smooth the pleats in my kilt before I sat down. I cried when she made me cut hair in a ‘pixie’ style. I refused to eat her lumpy burned gravy and it was decades before I ate parsnips again! (who boils them?) I was ungrateful, unmanageable, and ‘too moody for my own good’.

It hardly matters now when I reflect that she was probably flung into an emergency with her brother’s three children when their mum lost her grip and ended up in hospital – that hospital. She died before I was old enough to understand her or begin to forgive her. So she just lodged herself as my inner voice of critical reason, caution, and propriety. She doesn’t always ask permission to opine, but I have gotten firmer in telling her to button it up. Before you think I am hearing voices and am ready for the bin myself, let me just say that Aunt Myrtle is just a handy reference for the unexamined script that ran my life for decades.

We often don’t know where we got this sense of unworthiness. We might blame our genes – but this is not in our physical cells. This current runs through our emotions – the electrical charges. Can you feel it? I know I can right now as I remember. It reaches right across my chest and grips my two shoulders. I’m sure this is the path it took in my little body before it reached up my neck into my face as a blush. Then the tears of anger and humiliation. Potent mix! I was so often embarrassed or ashamed for just being me. I was never even really naughty. What a waste!

So what happened then? Aunt Myrtle died. My mother came home (after five years) and we cobbled our family back together with the tacks of blunted emotions. Were we different from other families? Only by degree or circumstance. I grew up in a neighbourhood where the parents of my friends had been in concentration camps and lost whole families. There’s another thing – I didn’t deserve to be upset or petulant in face of real tragedy. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Gilda Radner’s wonderful character, Roseanne Roseannadanna, said it best, “It’s always something!”

It really doesn’t matter what ’something’ cages us – horrendous circumstances or misguided goodness. If the bird of our soul is caged then it cannot fly. Often long after the captors of our spirit are gone we hobble along like the ladies of ancient China on their tiny bound feet. We have embraced our own crippled nature as if, in its familiarity, it is who we really are. The tether, long since severed in the physical, continues to bind us emotionally. The result is we transfer the power of the captors of our spirit onto other external ‘authority’.

That could continue to be our parents: “Forget being a musician – get a career!”, Our teachers: “You’ll never be a painter if you don’t paint this way.” Our religion: “The words to the prayer for forgiveness are thus.” Our lovers: “You sound so lame when you sing!” So we cut and prune ourselves and launch into the grown up world – right into the hands of the media. Too old! Too fat! Too bald! This car! That house! Our beer! We are so out of touch with who we really are, we grasp at anything that makes us believe we might fly. Viagra. Botox. Zoloft. Hummer. Versace. Smirnoff.

So. We plant a rose. Roses are good. Everybody likes them. Can’t go wrong with that. Except as beautiful as they are, and as sweet as they smell, it is not what we really want. Roses stand apart from us in a vase. To be observed and admired. It is not a rose that can satisfy our longing. Our desire. What our soul craves is a ripe fig. Split open. Seeds and juice spilling into our mouth and overflowing our chin. Messy but nourishing. Satisfying. Pleasurable. Succulent. Ohhh, but isn’t it a little embarrassing to be so outspoken about such sensuality? Isn’t it wrong or impolite to say what we really desire? How we really desire to feel? How we truly desire to be loved. Haven’t we been taught that what we really desire – our scruffy sweater, our ten year old car, our familiar and cozy house, a simple job that leaves our mind free – whatever – is not what we should want?

Hmmmm. It’s all a little confusing isn’t it? Lately there are more books, movies, CD’s and seminars about the law of attraction. It’s absolutely true. But the problem is we are attracting from the want and not the desire. Big difference! We want to fit in. We want to achieve. We want a yacht. We want a Mercedes. We want a villa on the beach. We want to win the lottery. We want a rose. The trouble with wants is they are like Chinese food. They fill us up but we are soon hungry again. Wants are the constant distractors from our soul’s desires. Wants always lay on the horizon of life. In the distance. As the want – the car, the house, the lover, comes closer, we pluck it up and see that the horizon is ever before us. And what is on the far horizon beckoning? A faster car. A bigger house. A younger lover.

What then? Well back to Aunt Myrtle, figs and purple velvet shoes. Oh didn’t I tell you about the purple velvet shoes? They had straps that could slip down behind the heel and big purple jewels on the front. They also had gold lining. I loved them! I’m sure they were pronounced gaudy and unsuitable. Anyway, I got saddle shoes instead and, at five, had to learn to colour white shoe polish inside the lines with that little dauber thing – all without spilling the whole bottle all over the newspaper – oh yeah, I did. Inevitably there were unsightly smears on the navy bits – testament to my clumsiness. That alone has stunted me in ways I fear to think! In rebelliousness, I would scuff my toes all the way to school! What a terror!

Forgive me, I digress. Back to desires. What are they and how do we know one from a want? Well, desires are yearnings of the soul for expression. Yearnings to connect with others that share similar desires. Even the simplest stroking of a desire has it purring in the heart as contentment. Desires are born of love and thrive in love. Our heart’s desires are Life’s yearning to express itself through our own unique and particular expression of it. We pick up a brush, put it to canvas and feel the colour even as we see it. We hum a tune we’ve never heard before and a song is born. We take off the suit of career and lay back to birth a child. We are released from an illness and devote our life to healing. We step out of the corporate harness and craft our own business. We sail around the world in a boat or on the internet. What we do makes a difference because we do it from love. And the joy of it all? When we act from love we are free!

In expressing our heart’s desires, we draw in the very love of self that has been our nameless longing, forever. As we fill with self love we embody self respect and self esteem. With these qualities we will never harm ourselves or another*. We will grow in confidence, creativity, and reverence for others and the world we live in. We will know peace within because there will be no other voice of authority but Love. That expression might be as an engineer or a dancer, a parent or bank manager. Desires by nature are nurturing and when we fulfill our desires, we nurture through our acts. A desire fulfilled is never wanting, cannot be criticized or judged and is always forever our own. A desire fulfilled is a magnet and attracts more and more to itself until we shine in our own light. A light that can never be dimmed or tarnished. We become alive because we are an expression of Life in its fullest – happiness, peace, beauty, joy, vitality!

Life (big ‘L’ Life) desires to evolve through us. When we sow from the heart. We reap Love.

* In honour of my husband’s birthday, today, I share this lesson of self-love that George embodied and shared with all who knew him.

Please follow me on twitter for upcoming posts on my experience with various therapies and other thoughts on Life.

If you want to enjoy optimum health and wellness – please join LightBeam Community.

Technorati Tags: creativity, desire, freedom, Happiness, heart's, mind, peace, self-esteem, self-love, self-respect, soul, spirit, Vitality

How to let go of depression and the other saboteurs of happiness.

The muses, for me, are like a child, predawn, on Christmas morning. They stand quietly near my bed and lift an eyelid and say, “Are you awake?” I roll over and try to ignore the gentle prodding and then there will be a whisper in my mind. Some image – grouping of words – an inspiration of something that might be shared. I promise myself I will remember it all in the morning. But no. It is now that the phrases begin to tumble forth and, well, I might as well swing out of bed and follow the little one in the Doctor Denton’s up the stairs. I can nap later.

So here I am in a predawn hushed house. The fire is burning and the Tiffany lamp casts a warm colourful glow. Living with two young musicians and composers, it is not easy to find the house quiet until ‘way late or in this case ‘way early. Even the dogs, Zoe, the Golden and Skye, the Siberian, are too deeply asleep to leave my room where ‘all us girls’ bunk down each night!

What has me awake? What is it I want to share with you? What is so urgent? Well, I want to tell you about happiness. How to coax it into your Life so it’s not just a once in a while -got the promotion – won the lottery – just engaged – kind of thrill but an abiding joyful state of being. Once happiness underlies all the inevitable detritus – okay – call it garbage – that we might be called to endure we become like boats buoyant on happiness and easily navigating this often tough and heavy world.

If I want to talk about happiness, why do I begin with the title about weeping? Because Life is a walk we take alone and it can be sad. We drop in at birth and ease out at death and in between we a la main left and a la main right with any number of characters, lovers, cheats, family, betrayers, gurus and frauds. Each one teaches us something about ourselves and ‘dammit’ the toughest teachers bring us our brightest lessons – closer to happiness. Some of these lessons we can experience on a higher level and see their importance, but many have swooped in and taken us at a vulnerable, unguarded moment. They have embedded themselves deeply in our soul and our mind just doesn’t pick up on them. These experiences are barbed with sharp emotion – usually shame, vulnerability, or guilt and because they don’t make themselves clear, they attract similar experiences. We are left wondering why we keep picking the wrong kind of guy, people cheat us, or we become ill.

My Life work – or vision if you will – has been a force of nature beyond my choice, in a way: to stop the pervasive sadness that wove its way through the family tapestry. How far back does it go? It doesn’t matter. I can swing a cat (gently) and touch a batch in my immediate family who suffer in a way that makes their lives go out of ease and balance. Responses include illness, depression, addiction, and self destructive behaviour. I include myself in that. Are we any different from every family? Any individual? No. When we live in ‘dis’ ease even joyful events are only fleeting. Glimpses of a happiness we desire but cannot sustain.

Global cataclysms, manmade or natural, send shock waves through the universe – or the world as we know it, but they are not separate from us. They effect us directly or peripherally, but they rise up from each one of us – from our collective unhappiness and out of ease-ness.

Healing begins in our own hearts. Our own minds. Our own bodies. Our souls. We can’t ask or expect peace in the world when we can’t claim it for ourselves. We can’t ask for or expect happiness for our children if we do not model it ourselves. We can’t expect an Earth in balance if we cannot heal ourselves first.

My mother didn’t cry – she wept. When I was little – nine or so, I would climb into bed with her when my dad was on a business trip. In the night, as I snuggled into her side, I would become aware of the deep shudders that she tried to keep still and then I would feel the wetness of her face as the tears cascaded endlessly, in silent heaving. I know some of her past and it would cause this sadness. I didn’t know her future then , but she would have much to weep for. (See The Story)

I too have wept in the night. Overcome by fears and worries – nameless dreads – a friend used to call the night thoughts. I have invited the dreads into my waking life. They were real. Loss of business, house, death, suicide. Lotsa junk. People I trusted who betrayed me. Keeping my chin up, ever plunging on, stepping over broken businesses, promises, lives. What are ya gonna do? S**t happens.

Well, stop crying about it for one. And then start dumping out. I like the image of defragging a computer. When I finally discovered the ‘clean up the disc’ button, a little box came up with stripes of all colours. They represented whole files and ‘broken’ files. Whole files function – like learned competencies and the fragmented ones (red) were broken bits of files deleted, but not all gone. They gum up the works. Slow things down and cause all sorts of problems- ‘way out of my scope to describe or fix – except to ‘defrag’. We don’t even know they are in there and they just act like sticks in our spokes. Things function after a fashion, but nothing really works well and smoothly and every once in a while – crash!

For me – as much as I am keen to be computer competent – noodling ‘in there’ is like doing brain surgery with salad forks. It may not be something you want to manage unsupervised – at least until you get a little more familiar. Healing our soul is much like that. Healing the soul is vitally important as it is the seat of expressing all our life force through body, mind, and spirit.

If you want health and happiness, vitality, courage and peace – begin on the inside. So many therapies are amazing facilitators for this task. Body work by a conscious therapist becomes soul work. Simple gentle touch by a caring person can pop open a soul like a ripe milkweed pod. When someone puts their hands on your body, they plunge their reach deep into your subtle energetic body. Even sex as an act of incredible intimacy is a blunt object (no pun) compared to the incisive effect of soul or energy therapy. It is very effective and very sensitive.

Many who suffer from the effects of a discordant soul may be reluctant to ‘do the work’ because they fear reliving what has caused them enormous pain in the first place. But unlike psychotherapy – although it too has its place – been there, done that (card carrying member of the Carl Jung fan club) some of the therapies listed here on LightBeam are more efficient and effective.

I will be writing on my experiences with various practices like yoga, psychotherapy, time line therapy, hypnotherapy, Reiki, Journeywork and many others that have helped me defrag and be happy! It’s not a mystery to me that I grew up with a default setting of mild anxiety and unhappiness. But I chose not to stay there and I choose to share my experience and this resource so others may find peace and happiness. We are not victims of heredity, genes or the past – but only of our own unexamined and un-freed soul.

Yesterday a friend dropped in. As we hugged in parting, she shared her experience as she prepares to re confirm her faith. She said that each time she entered the church her tears would begin to flow and flow. Prayer and spiritual practice are therapies, for sure, that allow us to let go. Her tears will flow until all she needs to release is released. And she will be lighter for it. I shared that I too had a similar release from some anger (okay, a lot) that I had been holding. I had felt betrayed and justified in my anger. However ‘true’ the betrayal may have been, the anger only hurt me. Continuing to carry it just weighed me down – stole my joy. I applied some strategies and consciously released a huge load.

‘Oddly’, once released, life events and circumstances almost immediately shift to a more fulfilling, constructive and effortless synchronicity. Each time I shed another layer, I see the result reflected in life experience and wish I had thought of it sooner!

Enlightenment isn’t just for monks. It is for all of us who chose to ‘lighten up’. Defrag, drop the load, clear the clutter of unpleasant, unproductive memories and emotions. They just sabotage your happiness. Take charge of your own happiness – it is your right! And weep no more.

Please follow me on twitter for upcoming posts on my experience with various therapies and other thoughts on Life.

If you want to enjoy optimum health and wellness – please join LightBeam Community.

Technorati Tags: body, depression, energy, Happiness, health, heredity, hypnotherapy, Journeywork, mind, psychotherapy, Reiki, release, soul, spirit, subtle, therapy, yoga