Hurray for YOU!

On these dismal Winter days, I'm reminded of the soccer matches I used to attend when my youngest was playing "the beautiful game".  They always seemed to take place on the coldest days.  Rain didn't stop them.  The kids would be in shorts and t-shirts soaked to the skin, sliding around in a field filled with mud puddles.
I was surprised at the attendence.  Soccer is not a huge draw, like football, but there were a stalwart few who came to every game, cheering the kids on, win or lose.  Parents, pals, girl or boy friends, extended family, there for some lucky kid, even if he or she spent more time on the bench then on the field. 
We became a positive force, all of us, joined together to hearten our team and each other.  We'd laugh, share food, groan at the mistakes and go nuts at the triumphs.  At the end of each game we'd provide the intangible warmth of our love and and more concrete warmth of a cup of hot cocoa and a dry blanket to throw across their shoulders as we trudged through the sludge towards home.
I think that this is why I'm writing this blog, to cheer us all on through the rain and mud and defeats of our lives, and to remind us that, even when all we seem to hear about is man's unhumanity to man, we need to notice and praise the thousands of examples of compassion that we see on a daily basis.
We are all in this together, and whether we agree with each other or not we are all trying our best to make it through our days happily and safely with our friends and family by our side.  We share our love, our comfort, our joy, our sorrows, and our courage; which encourage and inspire us all.
So hurray for YOU.  Hurray for the joy you give by just being you.  Hurray for the truth of your being, and your huge and loving heart.  Hurray for your willingness to extend the hand of friendship and love to others.  Hurray for your humour that lightens our load, your wise counsel through the trials and tribulations we all must face, and your unwavering light through the darkest night.
I may not know you, but I know that for everyone there is someone in their life who is their cheerleader and loyal supporter.  I know you must be that for at least one other person, and for that service I say:

Hurray for YOU! 
Love, Kristine

Found in a mud puddle in the Kindergarten playground.

Egg Yourself On to a Better Life

I didn't expect to find much in the way of Messages from the Universe as I walked the dog this rainy morning. It had been wet for days, so there weren't a lot of people about who might drop something. Further, since paper was the most common form of litter, I was not optomistic about finding a paper message from that wasn't too dissolved to read.

Pixie the wonder dog went sniffing under a tree, and nestled next to said tree was this.

These cards are part of some mysterious game the kids play, so I have no idea what this image represents vis-a vie this game, but it happened to be the symbolic image that most represented what was going on for me right that minute: broken eggs.

From the larger tragedy in Haiti, to the sense that our own country was veering wildly to the political right, to my boy's car accident (he's fine, car's totaled) it seemed to me that my secure little world was cracking.

The egg, obviously, is the symbol of potential life.

There are a lot of folk sayings regarding eggs that make effective morality tales. The first one I thought of was "don't put all your eggs in one basket". The story tells of a young girl who plans to sell her eggs at the market. On her way there she dreams about the money she will earn when she sells them. She has big ideas about buying another hen and therefore having more eggs to sell at the next market and, eventually, the girl fantasizes about a hugh chicken farm from which great profits will flow. She gets so wrapped up in her dreams that she doesn't pay attention to where she's walking. She steps on a stone in the road, stumbles,and breaks all the eggs.

At first, I thought that this tale meant that one must not be greedy, and that she should have left some eggs behind for safe keeping. Then I thought that it meant to diversify your efforts. She was all about the chickens. Maybe she should have had more arrows in her economic quiver, a more diverse portfolio, if you will.

But no, I think this tale is about the wisdom of staying in the moment. And It's not just about security or economy, it's about trusting life.

We carry in our basket (Our mind) so many ideas and plans. We assume that by focusing on an idea, by planning ahead and following our plan, that we will find safty, happiness, and prosperity.

Life doesn't work like that. Our plans and dreams often are often dashed by an unexpected event or tragic accident. When that happens (as it can--this is our life, after all, not a scripted TV program) we are thrown off balance. Then the potential life we so hoped for--built on the fragile platform known as "the future"-- is destroyed. All our eggs are broken and we're left with nothing.

I think that life has it's own plan for us; Not a grand plan, but a small and personal one. It's simply this:
Life wants us to live it.

Find those things that make you feel like you are really engaged in your life, that excite and inspire you, and DO them.  When you do those things, that means that you are living your happy life NOW, not waiting for some mythical future.  It really is just that easy: look around you, find something, anything, you enjoy, enjoy it, and feel alive! Sure, dream about your future, but live the moment!

The excitement we feel as we plan some future event is a great energy builder, but in between that future and this moment are all the other events, good and bad, that make up our lives. Don't miss these moments! When you truly enjoy your present, a few broken eggs on your path might make a mess, but they truly are only a blip on the radar of your well-being. 

Love, Kristine

Taking Refuge from the Storm-the 6 of Cups

The card I pulled today was the 6 of cups.  I call it the nostalgia card, and I used to think that it wasn't too important, and possibly even  a bit negative, when it appeared in a tarot reading.  I used to believe that this card indicated a romantic and  illusory idea of the past, a dream of life as a child that is lost or no longer a part of the present. 
I think of people who mourn for the "good old days".  When I think of my good old days, my mind returns to my life as a kid or a teenager, and I realize that what I long for is the lack of responsibility I had then.  I didn't have to worry about having a job, making money, providing for dependents, or putting food on the table.  My folks took care of all of that.  Those were good days, for sure, but along with no real responsiblity came a lack of personal power.  When I lived with my folks, I had to abide by their rules.  When I moved out, I became a freer, more powerful person who assumed responsibility for my own life choices.
Would I really like to trade the life I've created for myself with dependency?  No, of course not.  With all the mess and complications of adulthood, the rewards of independance are rich.  This being the case, what does the 6 of Cups signify for me now?  How have my ideas for it changed?  The events in Haiti combined with the stresses and changes that our poor economy has brought to our country, has caused me to look at this card more deeply.
I think that this card speaks of refuge.  It encourages us to find the feeling place of our greatest happiness, and to look for that feeling place in the life we're living now.  It even hints at how to do that.  It tells us that when we give of ourselves to others we will find the joy we are seeking.  Let's look at this card's specific symbology and see how we get there.
The cups are a sign of emotion, so we are asked to be emotionally honest.  The white daffodile specifys the emotions that are our truest source of  happiness, the ones that we can give unstintingly for the most rewards.  They are: regard, unrequited love, and joy.  The buildings symbolize security, thus the cards are hinting that the security we seek depends upon how solidly we build our lives upon the attributes of our best selves.  I think the qualities of our "best selves" are perfectly defined by Buddah's 6 paramitas, the "perfections" or virtues: generosity, self-discipline, patience, effort or energy/determination, concentration or insight/mindfulness, and compassion.
So how does this all dovetail into finding refuge from the stressful place in which we find ourselves at the beginning of 2010?  This card seems to indicate that giving to others what we ourselves want is only way to get what we want back: a life of effortless joy and peace.  In truth, our shelter from the stressful storm of this time is not to wish for the mystical past, but to create a path towards a more compassionate future. 
Somewhere, the bible says "cast your bread upon the waters and it will return to you sevenfold".  At this time of scarcity and fear, we are asked to be generous.  Sometimes we think that when we give what we have we will loose what we've gained.  The card, with its 5 cups available even as the boy shares one with his companion, tells us that we are richer then we know, and that we have much to gain by giving.  If we can't give material things, we can give our hearts, our compassion, a listening ear and a helping hand.  When we give to others, we give ourselves the richest gift: the gift of an open heart.

How Haiti Opened Hearts and Minds

Wow.  So much in the news to recoil from!  The disaster in Haiti was a blow for all of us.  How can we put our faith in the wisdom of the Universe when something like this occurs?  Of what benefit to ourselves and to our world is the tragic death of so many and the unimaginable grief of their friends and relatives? 
We've discussed the idea that we are all one, and that, perhaps, we are, literally, an energetic part of our world and each other.  How, then, can we use that idea to make sense of what has happened?
Seeing ourselves as a metaphore for the world at large might provide us with some clues. 
How many times are we shaken awake in the middle of the night by fears and worries?  Our attention is drawn to the intensity of this energy, and we see it as something we need to get rid of or suppress so we can continue to sleep.  Acceptance is far from our reach.
Usually, we have a circumstance to point to that has generated our midnight anxieties, and we see our negative emotional reaction as the only way to be with this energy.  We use our intellect to try and figure a way out of our troubles, often increasing our anxiety as our focus on the problem makes it seem too big to solve. 
There is another way to deal with these issues.
We could change our focus. 
When Christ said to "turn the other cheek"  if someone strikes you.  He didn't mean leave yourself vulnerable to being hit again.  I think he was encouraging us to take responsiblity for our part in that negative action.  He is asking us to look at our behaviour and to notice that there is an area here where we need work, where our energy is compromised.  Let's not look at the person who struck us, let's look at what we're doing that might be contributing to a problem.
So how does that help us with Haiti? 
Perhaps the destruction in Haiti is one more signal for us to open our hearts and acknowledge our connection with one another, and I think that we're finally getting the message.  The outpouring of sympathy, help, aid, and relief is amazing.  On facebook, in the news, on the radio, the plight of these people has clearly touched us in a deeper way than ever before.
People like Rush Limbaugh, with their comments about how, somehow, the Hatians "deserved" this tragedy now stand in high relief.  It was such a tone-deaf, compassionless response!  The result is that we can see the stark contrast between the truth and the lies they are telling, and we can therefore more clearly recognize the small dark shadow of hate and fear that they cast on the bright light of love and concern that engages and energizes the rest of the world.
As ever, the response to comments like these, to people like these, is a fierce blessing. 
"May all those that maintain that an angry and spiteful god is behind the tragedy in Haiti have the truth and power of Universal love revealed to them in such a way that their hearts will finally be softed and they will forever act and speak with loving kindness."
Blessings, too, on the people of Haiti. 
"May their recovery be swift, and their country healed and bettered in the face of this destruction."
Love, Kristine
                              

Time for some Fierce Blessings

We've been talking about love. Now it's time for action, but how do we actively love?
It only takes one person to love, and it might as well be you. Do you remember the song :"let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me." It speaks to the responsiblity we all have to live the life we want to live, to be the people we want to be, and to love with no reason in order to create a better world.

How do we activate love, then, towards people who seem hell-bent on destroying the world we live in? Don't we need to be in opposition to people like that?

I don't think so. I think opposition creates more rigidity in the opponent, and a stronger opponent, when we're talking about the survival of our planet, is not the direction in which we want to go.

Opposition also buys into the notion of duality, that we are not one, that there is an "I" and a "you" and if your ideas are contrary to mine, you are not just a "you", you are an enemy.

Not very loving.

So how do we actively love in these circumstances? I think Carolynn Casey has the right idea with her concept of "fierce blessings".

Here's an example: Let's say that an oil executive is intent on drilling in a Polar Bear habitat. The fierce blessing might be "May he realize and understand on a gut level his connection to the environment so he will radically rethink his priorities."

You see what I mean? To actively love, we must assume that even people that we don't trust, that we dislike, or are irritated or frightened by really are us. Further, we must assume that they have the same ability to change as we do.  A fierce blessing sends the energy of the change we would like to effect on both the offending party and ourselves.

It's a bad idea to send negative words toward anyone, for several reasons. First, those words tend to bounce back on us, and, more importantly, a blessing feels so much better than a curse.

And a fierce blessing feels so very effective!

There's power in words, and a curse is powerful, but if, as I believe, love is stronger than hate, and light is stronger than darkness, how much more powerful is a blessing than a curse!

There's a Wicken pledge that says "Do what you will, but hurt no one!", and despite what our mothers said, sticks and stones can break our bones but words can really hurt us.

Let's stop hurting ourselves and others with our negativity.  Instead, let's bless each other and shine the light of love onto every problem.

And may you be blessed in your fierce blessings!

Love, Kristine

Let's Talk about Love

Many of us, especially women, see love as a way to escape the drudgery of dayliness.  "Some day our prince will come" and we'll be rescued from our desks and cubicles and wisked away to perfect happiness by the side of the partner of our dreams.  Then we discover that our rescurer also needs to be rescued, and our illusions are shattered when we find just a human being by our side with the same problems, insecurities, and worries as ourselves.

That leaves us with the problem of having just one more aspect of our lives to blame for our unhappiness.
I was walking with a friend of mind who was talking about her son.  She said that he's been with his girlfriend for many years, but still doesn't think of her as "the one".  She sighed, and said that she believes that there are lots of "ones" for everybody.  She felt that if he decided she was "the one", she would become that for him.
I jokingly said that it's like Michaelangelo finding David in a block of marble.
 
Sort of, she said, but the difference is, Michaelangelo made David a perfect image of a man in marble.  You can't make someone loveable, and then love them.  You have to take the block of marble that's your heart, and find Aphrodite there. When you find love in your heart. you can love anyone.

Sure, you've chosen the person you're with and you probably have lots of reasons why you made that choice. On bad days, you can probably find just as many reasons to be annoyed or angry at the person your involved with.  One problem with that: when you love with reasons you are loving with your mind instead of your heart:  The mind changes. The heart just loves.

The question really is, can you love someone for no reason whatsoever? These are murky depths.  Negotiating them takes focus and practice.  My walk with my friend was a crash course in the emotional trickiness of love.  Then, I looked down on the trail we were hiking on and I found these:

Yep, two fish.  How weird is that?  Has to be a message from the universe!  With their inspiration, I remembered the story of the fish who didn't know what water was.  It was all around him, but since he'd always been surrounded by it, he didn't consider it a thing seperate from himself. 

I believe love for us is like water for the fish.  It's the air we breathe.  We are it, we are surrounded by it.  We make it so complicated and hard, and we think we have to seek it out for the sake of our happiness, but  we actually swim in it like the fish through water. We don't recognize it for what it truly is: our natural element. Indeed, love is what we are made of and who we are, nothing more or less than that. In order to love, all we have to do is tap into who we truly are.  We only have to find ourselves, and we'll find love.

The Dahli Lama wrote: "I love you. It's that simple". And it is that simple. Simply love.

Love, Kristine

Are You Normal or Natural?

We have been carefully trained to be "normal". 
Most of us have been raised and socialized by our well-meaning parents to behave like everyone else (normally) rather than as our full and complete selves (naturally).  Our parents wanted us to fit into our respective societies.  The way they did that was to reach back into their history, remember the things that hurt them, and try to shield us from those things.  They told us what to be afraid of: strangers, being different, the opinions of our peers and culture, breaking the law (no matter how ridiculous the law was) and God.
There were all kinds of ways to behave that were "proper", and all kinds of ways to behave that were "improper", or just plain bad. 
What all this training and these instructions did to us was leave us little room to experiment and play with life. Living this way, with so much tension and doubt, not to mention the necessity of hiding important parts of ourselves from one another, is like walking on the edge of a cliff: one false step and over we go, falling to our doom. 
What most of our parents neglected to do was to encourage us to fall in love with life, and to fall in love with ourselves.
How could they? For the most part, they weren't taught to do that, either. They were taught that life was hard and dangerous, and that falling in love with yourself was conceited, egocentric, and selfish.
This approach ultimately caused us to loose touch with our true nature. Normal behaviour often clashes with what is natural to us, yet we've been taught that "normal" keeps us safe. "Natural" is dangerous.
As frequent readers know, what I've been pondering lately is the "fitness" of ourselves to live the life we're living. My conclusions have been that we ARE completely able to successfully and happily negotite the life we find ourselves in, but only if we learn to behave naturally. How do we return to our natural selves, full of the joy of life and happy with who we are?
First step is to try, just one day, to only do what pleases you.  This, amazingly enough, is really hard, but it's important to try it.  You have to coax your natural self out of hiding, and doing this will help.
You won't trust it at first, it will feel selfish and wrong, but persevere! As you allow yourselves just one day of following your joy, perhaps you'll notice a stirring, a release of tension, a feeling of aliveness and wholeness, as a being wakes up within you eager for life. When this happens, you're on the way to recognizing your true purpose, for your feet are on a path that resonates with your heart. 
We really need to begin to prioritize our happiness over anything else. Why?  Because this is the way we learn what we value, and when we know that, we begin to know who we really are. 
If we don't know who we are, we can't give of ourselves to anyone else. We truly have nothing of value to offer, no matter how much money we stuff in the poor box, if we don't know or recognize our true selves.
When our natural selves emerge, rescued from the prison of "normal life" we start to appreciate our value. We learn that our unique richness of experience, satisfaction and fulfillment are our gifts to the world.
Having satisfied our own long-unmet need for personal, natural, authenticity, we're happy to give.  More importantly, we start to fully understand our true connection with life, and realize that giving to others is the same as giving to ourselves. We therefore WANT others to be as happy as we are.
We are, right at this moment, on our way to creating a heaven on earth, one enjoyable moment at a time; a world full of contented, satisfied people, happy with themselves and with each other. 
And it all starts with you enjoying just one day. 
Enjoy your day!  It's important that you do.
Love, Kristine

Raising young 2010 to grow up strong and free.

The new year has begun, as well as a new decade. A friend reminded me of the numerological significance of the number "3" which is the number you get when you add the numbers in 2010 together.

I looked up "3" on a numerological site, and they describe the 3 personality as "the most playful of all the numbers".

Now that sounds like a year I want to live in!

It went on to say that 3 people are "creative, socially active, artistic, very positive and optimistic, playful, happy and fun-loving, inspirational, imaginative, motivating, enthusiastic and uplifting." Better and better!

On the down side, a 3 person is disorganized, irresponsible, a scatterer of energy, directionless, and has no follow-through. Apply that to a new year, and that makes it sound pretty scary at first. Fun, but scary. Then I realized we're at the right on the cusp of a new beginning.

In other words, we're in a baby year.

Babies are all of those good things described above, and all of those "bad" things as well. The difference is that we don't take the negative stuff so seriously in a baby. We forgive the baby for being disorganized and irresponsible. They're BABIES. Of course they're like that. And we're patient with babies, and try to cultivate and encourage all the good stuff that they do.

I believe that we are definately in the baby stages of a new way of living. We can plainly see that our culture is rapidly becomming more creative, socially active, artistic, positive, optomistic, etc. etc, and that's a good thing.  We have to be in order to deal with the vast problems we face.

The problem is that we're not used to trusting our creative, intuitive selves. This way of being might freak us out a bit. After all, we've put so much faith into a more rational interpretation of life. It's hard to let go of the reliance on our mental states and open up to a broader way of seeing the world.

Therefore, we will need to be patient with ourselves, and allow ourselves the time to find our footing in this new decade. And we need to trust each other more, and be more compassionate and not so polarized. Let's find the seeds of agreement in every argument and focus on them so they might flower into new understandings.

Let's begin to play with life, and make this game of living something new, more open, and a lot more fun for the sake of ourselves, each other, and the world.

Since we're used to structure, we might want to have something in place so we will feel safe to make the changes we need to make. I believe that our intuition will lead us to forming organic, fluid structures that allow for change, growth, and differences. We might also be tempted to reject structure, since the crumbling structures of our schools, economy, and social systems in general have made many of us wary of setting up new ones that might be equally flawed. Nevertheless, we need to learn to understand how a society might work that is based on creative rather than economic force, that empowers us with faith and hope rather than seeking power over us because of  the irrational fear of change.

I believe that our differences are what will save us. They make us strong, and keep the life force flowing through us. Embracing our differences is the first step in trusting what is. Trusting what is is the first step in feeling safe. Feeling safe enables us to expand our creative wings and fly into the future with joy and confidence.

Don't be afraid to spread your wings and fly.  I believe you'll have lots of company.
Love, Kristine

Transformation

I used to think that transforming myself meant becoming "better".  After all, I'm certainly not perfect. I have lots of flaws that I'd like to eliminate from my character.  I've been to many teachers, healers, coaches, martial art's masters, etc., and each one has been pivotal in helping me become more of the person I want to be.  I've found their lessons and teachings useful, and they all served to open my eyes to a whole new world of ideas and concepts that led me closer and closer to feeling more fully myself.
Another thought came to me the other day, and that is:
Is it possible that I am, already, what I'm supposed to be?
Yep, that's right.  Flaws and all, am I already the person I'm wanting to be. 
It sounds so strange when I put it like that.  I was watching the tube the other day.  A video, I think it was.  A trailor for some movie or another about kids becoming artists, and one of the teachers said something like: "the thing you try to hide is the source of your power".
That stopped me in my tracks.  He wasn't asking them to take the thing they were ashamed of and eliminate it.  He was asking them to embrace it.  He was telling them that it was an essential part of their nature, so essential that they would become more than they are now by acknowledging and accepting what they thought of as their darkness.
It seems to me that we're taught not to embrace our whole selves.  Really no "maybe" about it.  We're heavily encouraged to be "normal" but normal may not be natural to us. Despite this, we get sucked into thinking that there really is a good or bad, light or dark,way of  being, and therefore we'd better be good for goodness sake.
Now, I'm not saying that killers and, well, that sort of negativity is OK.  What I think I'm saying, and this isn't a fully formed idea yet, but what I think I'm saying is that perhaps really negative behavior is a toxic mimic (as Carolyn Casey would say) of a natural behaviour that was shamed or suppressed by the experience of growing up in this crazy culture.
After all this training and imprinting, how do we discover our true selves?
The question we should be asking ourselves is not what behaviour is right or wrong, but what behaviour  intrinsically, beautifully and naturally expresses ourselves. 
It seems to me that it takes some courage to look at and find our unique selves.  Uniqueness is scary and discouraged in this conservative world.  However, I think our uniqueness is our GIFT!  Not only that, I think our uniqueness is essential to our survival as a species.
It's like we're a part of this body of humanity.  Each of us is a cell in the structure of  this body, and each of us brings something slightly different to this human experience.  Extending the metaphore just a bit, if too many of only one type of cell is present in the body, isn't that a definition of cancer?  Isn't it, therefore, vital, to be a bit different one from another, to have the courage to be ourselves so that the body of humanity can be vitalized and rejuvinated and made healthy by our unique presense?
It's something that I'm going to continue pondering. 
In the meantime, I wish you all courage in the discovery of yourselves, and in the doing of this vital work, I wish you all a fulfilling, creative, and happy new year!
Love,
Kristine