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?

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Can you name the dragon that feeds on your health and happiness?

Today was a bad day. It didn’t start out that way but a series of events – innocuous, small, some positive, some negative, started tripping me up and the next thing I knew I was on a spiral of dark feelings. I didn’t want to be alone with myself and I didn’t want to be with anyone – especially the one who loved me. I thought of calling a friend to see if she’d like to go to a show last minute, but decided she just might and then I would either be pretending I wasn’t bleak or else I would be dumping out a load of useless whining about not being good enough!

Gawd!! I grabbed my coat, shoved my phone and wallet in an inside pocket and headed for the door. My son asked me where I was going and I called over my shoulder that I was going to a show.

“Alone?!” he called. “You can’t go to a show alone! I’ll go with you if you want”

“Uh unh.” I was not fit company – even for myself – and I was going to plug into a big screen comedy and shove popcorn in my mouth. I’ve never actually been to a show by myself and I was a little surprised to find myself alone in the theatre on a Wednesday night – sipping water and jammin’ popcorn. I was early even for the trailers and sat listening to Johnny Mathis. I had a vague notion that life was easier when that song came out. “You’re gonna miss my lovin’” But that was no more true than the ‘truths’ my inner beast was dishing me since mid afternoon.

I couldn’t grab hold of my usual assurances and just concluded for the evening that it was so much easier to be negative than positive. That the chances of things turning out badly in spite of positive affirmations was so much more real than things turning out well. That somehow good outcomes took more energy – more discipline – than bad. I felt I just had to ride out this night and a good sleep preceded by a glass of wine would find me back to rights and my sunny little self in the morning.

My phone battery had gone dead – natch – and after the film I called my Sweetheart from the pay phone. I was sure he would find my disappearance odd. He is in the city and I was in the netherworld half way between the city and my home. S answered the phone and offered to meet me for coffee. Consistent with my mood I halfheartedly tried to deflect his offer – “Are you sure you want to…?” What a little girl! Anyway, I was glad he overlooked my lameness and said he was on his way.

Times like this are not alien to me as I am sure they are not for most people from time to time. But I do know that when one is consciously reaching for a higher level of awareness and connection with spirit, the frequency might lessen but the intensity strengthens. Through my writing lately I have been dropping into a deeper place of remembering and integration of past events and their purpose and significance on a soul level. Clearing. Lightening. Ridding myself of what does not serve me.

I have also been studying iridology and herbs and discussing the physical plane of heredity, environment, emotion and spirit. In fact the piece I had been working on all morning had me thinking about the many layers we might use to interpret our state of balance in body, mind, and spirit. We are like phyllo pastries of information if we only knew how to read it. Iridology is one way, reflexology another, and of course all the Chinese medicines read the body like a finely charted map.

Because Iridology looks at the eye (ultra simply) as a pupil, a ring depicting the colon, and the iris which informationally spokes out to parts of the body at different minutes around the clock. The colon is the base line for health. If the body doesn’t efficiently process nutrients and eliminate all waste, stuff builds up, accumulates in corners and crevices and becomes a breeding ground for all sorts of nasties.

Betsy our teacher, showed photos in a book of the shape of ‘waste’ as it moves through the bowel. This was all very scientific and the photos showed ‘way more information than I cared for – but it’s good to know what we are looking for when we do an herbal detox. No sense being alarmed. However….

Once the body is in optimum health and not a fit environment for parasitic, mucous or bacterial flourishing these organisms move out – as it were. Betsy showed us a photo and explained what people sometimes evacuated. Of course we were incredulous. Betsy went on to say that all manner of worms, parasites and odd fellows thrive and grow in a toxic environment and sap the host body of nutrients, and energy until the depletion leads to weakened systems inviting other biological predators. Candida for instance thrives on sugar and utilizes it for its own aggressive growth throughout the body that it sets in motion unshakable cravings for sugar. And cancer loves toxins. Any one who has done a cleanse will know also that things get worse before they get better. The nasties fight for survival and you might have skin eruptions, headaches and all manner of symptoms. Many abandon the cleanse mistakenly thinking that it is doing them harm – or they just don’t have the stamina for the fight for control. Health vs. Illness.

The soul also has such beasts. As we take in the information of life from the moment of birth, we ingest nutrients or toxins. We take in information that serves us and are left with emotional byproducts. We are pre-judgement at the outset, and by the time we may be questioning an external authority, often the parasite of negativity – in shame or unworthiness – has lodged safely in the dark of the mind and the soul. It feeds on negative emotions and grows stronger as it goes unchallenged. In fact we set up circumstances to recreate the scene or script as it was laid out unconsciously because it is what we become familiar with. Just as a beaten child will often choose his abusive parent over a kind stranger, we are obscenely comforted by what we know – even if it hurts us. It is familiar and unchallenged and somehow speaks to us in a voice that sounds true.

Negativity generally cautions us against failure, blame, embarrassment. It sounds so protective – a warning voice. It does this by telling us to be quiet, don’t speak out because you might be wrong. Don’t love because you might be hurt. Don’t trust because you might be betrayed. Don’t be different because you might look stupid. Negativity keeps you safe. It also keeps you prisoner – and worse, it will eventually bring to bear all the circumstances it kept you ’safe’ from. Negativity tells you to be like this person or that person because they are famous, successful, rich, beautiful – ergo ’safe’. Of course you can never be just like anyone else so your negative voice will jeer at you for failing.

Once you begin to detox through therapy or practice – psychologically or spiritually, you get lighter. The beast is not so easily integrated into your personality. It becomes more obvious when it lashes out. As you gain in strength in your own light of authenticity, the beast begins to writhe in its death throes. It even tricks you by staying really quiet until you begin to tip the scale into autonomy and authentic expression. With this comes confidence and esteem and self value. The dragon hates that. It can’t compete with true pleasure. It cannot thrive in love any more than cancer can in an alkaline host. Cancer needs an acidic body. The beast needs fear and shame. Like a rat cornered, the beast fights to the end.

Unless we slay the dragon, it will go into remission and find some cranny of negativity to sustain it until it gains in strength. It will move us subtly into wrong decisions that if we are not watchful and aware will trap us in a cycle of disappointment or victimization. When we default to living unconsciously – reactive rather than proactive, the dragon rises up and the familiar voice will chide, “I told you so.”

When I met S for hot chocolate after the movie, he said that my words on the phone had frightened him. I had said them ‘unconsciously’ but of course, it was the dragon speaking. They were words of fear and failure at the very time when I am being most successful in my heart’s desires. It was the indication that the dragon was raising its ugly head in final assault and just like cancer – if given quarter would annihilate its very host. I realized even as I took myself off to a show alone I avoided the one who with love would hold the light for me. The dragon was in control.

So tonight I slay the dragon. I – who carry spiders outside – will slay the dragon. It’s not what ‘nice’ girls do, but I’m done with pain. I choose pleasure.

As I write I reflect on the past week. Three days ago I said to my son in the morning, “You know, I am finally living the life I always dreamed of.” It was that statement that sent the beast of negativity and unworthiness into stealth and final ambush today. Now I get it. In a way the dragon coming out so ferociously in daylight is good. It proves that I and ‘all that I might be’ – is alive and well and the dragon is a myth of my own creation.

A myth is a belief system that forms our life. Either this one will steal my joy, pleasure, success and health or I will destroy it once and for all time. My truths are daggers and my love is fire. The dragon dies!

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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.

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How to take the good of Life’s lessons and dispose of the rest.

Yes, I’ve done this too – eaten the artichoke that is. I was nineteen at the time and in a very posh restaurant in Montreal. I was in university on the East coast and very attached to my boyfriend in Toronto. He was my first love and very handsome – like a young Michael Caine – actually Michael Caine was young then too. I would send soppy letters of longing home and he would respond with a carton of cigs and Ziggy Stardust album closing with the line: “Wish you were there”

I finally took his advice and that is when the College Bowl was on TV and he happened to glimpse me in the stands wrapped in a big red plaid blanket with a hunk of a mountain man from New Hampshire! Who knew? Anyway true to the nature of many men, what looked like it might go missing became more valuable and desired. Along came his letter with the ticket to Montreal and a heartfelt plea –
“Wish you were here.” And, like many young women, I finally got what I asked for and it wasn’t what I wanted.

Anyway, Montreal is Montreal and I thought it would make a nice change for him to pitch me for a bit and I could ditch him. So off I went on my post romantic adventure. I only remember two things: His very satisfying suffering that I was no longer ‘his’ and the feel of a slice of artichoke in my mouth – leaves, hairy stuff, prickles and all. I instantly knew I had made a gaff – or how could artichokes be so popular? But there I was being all haughty and cool with my new found power of resistance and I had a mouthful of sharp cardboard- with hairs! It wasn’t a moment to laugh off my own silliness – a very useful trait I have since developed. I can’t honestly remember how I discretely disposed of the mess in my mouth – but I do recall the lesson: Swallow the good stuff and spit out the rest.

All too often we bite off something in a job, relationship or other commitment and it doesn’t feel so good. But this much I will guarantee – you are being called to learn something about yourself. If you are cheated – you can learn discernment. If you are betrayed you can learn forgiveness. If you have been humiliated, you can learn courage. Strengthening character is like any muscle. You have to hit the weights until you get strong.

Fitness clubs have the greatest income from unused memberships. It is not human nature to seek out the difficult and discipline ourselves. We only get ‘religion’ when we’ve gone too far. The dress doesn’t fit and the party is next week or we have a heart attack. Life in it’s natural yearning and push to higher evolution, provides the impetus for we humans who would avoid discomfort. We could develop strength, courage, peace, happiness, health and vitality by choice – many do – but more don’t. Life crooks its finger and beckon to us. We, in response say, “Who me?” and look over our shoulder. “Yes,” Life says, “it is time to learn courage – you will need it later”, and sends a bully to kick sand in your face – a bully, a boss, a wife – someone for you to stand and face in your own goodness and power.

There is a lovely children’s story by Neale Donald Walsch, and I paraphrase like mad, but it goes something like this: A little soul had never been to Earth and was hearing stories about the delight of forgiveness.

“God! I want to learn forgiveness! Can I go? Pleeeease?”

“Okay” said God “but you can’t go alone”.

“I’ll go with Little Soul”, said L.S.’s best friend.

“Goody!” said L.S.

“But you know, Little Soul” said Best Friend, “When we get there I will have to do something to you for you to forgive. When I do – just remember who I am.”

I love this story because it so simply illustrates that people and circumstances in our lives help us to be all that we can be. We all are born with our unique and fabulous mix of talents, competencies and desires. Our potential is boundless and only diminished by the limitations of our own mind and our latent abilities, talents and strengths. So many whisperings by teachers, parents, and sadly our religions form our expectations long before we are of a discerning age. As we grow we grow according to the expectation of others. Sometimes – often – we are unaware of the underlying sabotaging script to our own powerful potential.

That is when Life’s steps in. List all the qualities of life you think are desirable. Happiness is top on my list because it means all else is in harmony. I don’t mean manic happiness as in “I laugh in the face of danger!” but a ‘default’ setting to happiness that ensures that I can ride the waves of joy and sorrow with equal grace. So what are the qualities you desire most to form your life experience? Courage? Creativity? Vitality? Peace? Bliss? Now think on the various circumstances and experiences of your life and see how each might have offered you an opportunity to achieve a measure of those values.

This is not the same as getting slugged in the head and deciding not to venture into that neighbourhood at night. It is not about taking the tough stuff on the chin and sighing in resignation saying, “I know there is a lesson in this for me.” It’s not Life saying “I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget!” It is not about punishment in any way. It is all about freedom.

Freedom to be exactly who you are in all your creative abandon and joyful expression – as a dancer, an artist, a salesperson, a parent or a bank manager! If you are just exactly who you are – you can never get it wrong! No one can criticize or judge you because you are being a perfect expression of your whole potential. Sometimes we hang onto relationships, jobs or possessions because we have a misguided notion that to let go is failure. But sometimes those things have fulfilled their purpose in our lives and can be discarded.

The beginning of wisdom and self actualization is to get this. It helps you understand the notion that we are to see the divine in all people. Seeing the divine doesn’t mean a rapist isn’t a rapist – really. It means that there is a deeper soul agreement at work that is moving toward consciousness and evolution. If you balk at the example of rapist, just remember that Life as creator is eternal and infinite. There is no death – it only exists on the physical plane. There is nothing that can truly harm the soul. “No fire can burn it. No water can wet it.” Life will use even death to open our eyes to the beauty of our full human potential.

When you know this you will have a very different perspective of a difficult passage or person. What part of yourself is better for this experience? Which of the qualities that you most desire are closer to you now? Now the important part is to take the gem and drop the painful experience. You may never forget it, but it no longer has an emotional hook to trip you up. Continuing to be outraged by a painful betrayal is to stay heavily attached to something that has outlived it use to you. Keep the lesson of discernment, trust in your own intuition (that likely warned you but you didn’t listen), and the courage to call it like it is.

The emotions of the hairy prickly stuff of Life experience are: resentment, guilt, fear, anger, rage, depression, trepidation, self consciousness, doubt and anxiety. Do you really want to carry these heavy feelings with you of a day? Are these the energies that you want attracting circumstances and people into your life? It’s not tough to let these lower energies go. The way is simple: you can’t focus on two things at the same time. Be conscious of your thoughts and choose to enjoy the gem. It’s valuable and you earned it! Then you can enjoy the lovely, fleshy, nutty green joy of eating artichokes and toss the hairy bits and prickles in the compost heap – they’re just fertilizer!

Cheers!

Here is the wonderful book The Little Soul and the Sun by Neale Donald Walsch, the amazing author of Conversations With God. It’s a simple story with a power packed message. It is wisdom that we are never too old to learn. This beautiful and artistic book is a lovely way to reinforce your teaching of higher values with your little ones and to share skills to manage Life’s challenges. My children are grown up, but I keep beautiful books and toys for little visitors.

I heartily endorse this book and hope you will click through to Amazon and buy a copy. Any purchase you make through LightBeam helps endorse our work to expand awareness of holistic values and natural healing practices.

Thanks for your support!

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