Take a Page from the Page of Wands

Ah, Spring when a young person's fancy lightly turns to, well, just about anything new if you're like the Page of Wands.  He's an explorer of the path less traveled, and pursuer of the newest idea, a visionary and truly creative spirit.  He reminds us of the range of possiblities that are available to us. 
As Abraham says, "Your choices of action may be limited--but your choices of thought are not."
The Page of wands encourages us to think big, think vast, think loose and free!  He wants us to shake the cobwebs out of our brains, do a thorough Spring cleaning of old and outmoded thought patterns, and get busy creating a new life for ourselves.
My daughter and I are (I blush to say it) hooked on "What Not to Wear", a Lifetime program that changes the style of a select woman to "match" who she's become. The hosts of the program assess where the lady is in her life, and whether or not her "look" is in harmony with that. 
It's amazing to see the transformation that occurs just by her changing her clothes.  You can see how stuck in a style a person can get, but once they are encourange to open their hearts and minds to a new way of looking at themselves, they buy clothes that seem to free them.  They become happier, lighter, more confident.  It's not just because they look better, although they usually do.  Quite a bit better.  It's because they've allowed themselves to be bigger then they thought they were.  It's like watching a caterpiller transform into a beautiful butterfly.
The Page of Wands gives us the same kind of wake-up call. 
"Hello," he seems to say "you've been in the cocoon for long enough!  Break on out and spread your wings!"
It can be hard, after all that self-inflicted confinement, to break free of what we think we are and begin afresh,  rethinking ourselves and our abilities without the old holdbacks and habits. 
We're so used to the comfort of discomfort.  We might think that our confinement within a certain way of being keeps us safe, but actually it keeps us stuck.  Not only that, our desire to self-limit is really a cheat.  Not only are we cheating ourselves out of our true potential, we're cheating each other.
As a mother, I know that nothing is more inspiring then watching someone we love grow, evolve, change, and progress.  Babies do it so easily and naturally.
As we grow older, we have a harder time.  We tamp ourselves down to please others.  We worry that if we change, we will no longer fit in with our peer group.
We may not, but there is a new one waiting for us that will fit our needs and our new self more perfectly, where we are encouraged to be our full selves rather than asked to be less than we are. 
The more we live our true selves, the more we'll feel fulfilled, at peace, holy and whole, and the happier we will be.  We'll also create a safe space around us for others to find their freedom as well.  As more and more people let their light shine and become the lights in the world that we all are, the world will become a brighter and lovlier place.
Spring is the perfect time to create heaven on earth.  Go forth and blossom!
Love, Kristine

Who Do You THINK you are?

This week the universe gifted me with I.D. tags; the ones that dogs have on their collars.   Here they are:

It made me think about the nature of identity. 

Dogs don't "know" who they are.  They're dogs.  I bet they don't think to themselves:  "I'm a terrier.  I'm black and white.  I'm gaining weight and need to go on a diet.  I live with some nice people in a good part of town.  I've been to Obedience Training and have a certificate that says I'm a good dog.  And I AM a good dog.  I come when I'm called, unless I'm chasing a squirrel.  I sit, I stay (for a little while) and I'm a good companion."

Dogs are, well, dogs engaged in the act of being dogs.

We are another story. We don't know who we are either, and that's because we believe in our labels.

Often we let them define us.  Our color, our clothes, our income, our education, our religion, race, country of origin, country where we live, people we work with, people we socialize with, etc. etc. all are often used as personal definers.  If we cling too much to our defined identity, we can become rigid and closed off from all the other possible ways of living and being.
 
An extreme example might be a person who says they are a vegetarian, and are so militant about it that they starve to death instead of eating an animal.  They are so tied to a mental construct of what the "right" thing to be is, that they ignore the life events that surge around them that might makes their choice "wrong".  Or, for example, the parents who won't let the medical establishment help a sick child because they don't believe in doctors, and, as a result, the child dies. 

These are very extreme examples, but in small ways we, too, might be sabatoging our best choices at the moment because our ideas about who we are are in opposition to that choice. We are not flowing with life, we're trying to live life based on mental constructs.

We might fall in love with someone of a different race and/or religion, but be unable to marry them because of our, or our families, prejudices. We may agree with a presidential program, but be so vested in our party's beliefs that we ignore our better judgement for the good of our political group.  We may shun another person that we secretly like in order to please the peer group that we identify with and yearn to belong to.

All this is self-sabotage.  When we do this, we teach ourselves that we can't trust ourselves. 
In order to truly know who we are and live our truth, we have to ignore what we've learned to be and follow our hearts to our true nature. 

Lose your ID tags; the ways you define yourself, and find your heart.  Get to know yourself as you would a new friend, and find our for yourself, without outdated identifiers, who you really are moment to moment, now and now and now. 

Ask yourself, "Who am I?"  and answer that question without using some sort of label.  This takes practice, but as you do this you start to feel firmly grounded in the essense of yourself.  When you feel comfortable in your own skin, ask "What does the I that I am at this moment want to do, be, or have.

When you answer the first question, you've truly found YOU.  When you answer the second, you'll experience exactly what it is to flow with life.

Love, Kristine

THINKING ABOUT THINGS

Working as a freelancer, I feel the winds of financial change blowing cold at my back.  If I'm not careful, I could easily give into the fear of losing what I have and begin longing for the security that comes with having lots of money.  I wonder how I can increase the abundance in my life without losing the freedom I cherish.   Will having more mean I have to work harder? Abraham says action is not the answer. In order to create the abundance I seek I need to simply raise my vibration through positive thought.  That's hard work too.
Perhaps I should just trust life and see where this downturn leads me.
I pull the King of Pentacles from the deck.  Talk about perfect!  He is the king (literally) of material abundance.  I study his card and first see the richness of his life.
The King sits on a golden throne above an elegant city.  His garden is fecund and bursting with vegetation.  At his feet, and to his right and left in silver and gold, is the image of the ox, symbol of the hard, focused laborer who tirelessly plows his field day after day until the enevitable abundant harvest. 
Then I notice that the king's back is to the town.  Is he isolated in his wealth and power?  The ivy that grows so lushly on the wall behind him looks, due to the pattern on his kingly robe, as if vines are choking him. Does his wealth keep him where he is, limiting his freedom and flexibility?
Plus, he doesn't look happy.
We think that having lots of money will solve our problems and make us happy, but (old story) it doesn't.  I learned on the Life program (on the Discovery channel) that research shows it's the satisfying and meaningful quality of our interactions with others that makes us happy.
Knowing that money can't buy happiness, or even security, I asked myself what in the world I wanted.  Here's what I came up with:
I want myself, my family and, really, everyone, to live in comfort. By that I mean everyone gets a roof over their heads, enough to eat, meaningful employment, and satisfying social interactions. This sounds so simple, but so many don't have even these basic needs met, much less a decent health care system.
I think we live in a world where meeting these needs, for everyone, is possible. Why haven't we been able to do this so far?  Annie Leonard's "Story of Stuff" has an interesting answer to this question.
In the mean time, life for many of us in this economy is looking grim indeed.  It feels like one of those curves on an unfamiliar mountain road that hides what's coming up ahead. You have to trust that there's more road to come, but your heart is in your mouth a bit wondering what it will be like.  Are you driving off a cliff, or coming to your heart's desire?
Then I realize that, rich or poor, no one ever knows what's coming.  Better to enjoy what you have than worry about not having.  You can never predict what will happen, miracle or tragedy, so just live in the moment, don't worry, be happy.  Difficult?  Of course, but it's really the only sensible thing to do.  The message from the Universe today is "Live your life in eager expectation because a life filled with dread is no life at all."
Love, Kristine

THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGING, THANK GOD!

I found another Kindergarten worksheet.  It was an April Fool's "what's wrong with this picture" kind of thing.  There were flying picnic baskets and trees growing lightbulbs and all sorts of unlikely things happening.  I meant to pick it up, but it was floating in a puddle and pretty wet, so I let it lie.

It's been feeling kind of like that these days. So many unlikely things are happening. 

There's the Tea Party, of course.  They're pretty nuts, but in a more complicated way, health care passes, and that's great, but it means that the kids might be paying more on their insurance so their grandparent's health care costs don't go up. Yet most of the kids that I know are having trouble finding a job.  How are they going to afford health insurance in the first place?

And speaking of jobs, we hear that more people are employed, and then we find out that, yeah, one of the reasons it looks so good on paper is that the government has hired thousands of census takers.  Those are temporary jobs, so there really hasn't been much of an improvement at all.

It's been a confusing and devisive and contentious time; and I wonder who we can trust. Once again like bread crumbs leading me to my conclusions, the universe provided these as an answer.

First I found lip gloss, and then, a few steps later, lip balm.

I puzzled over these items for a while, and then I remembered my question: "who can you trust?" Lip gloss and lip balm help keep lips smooth and slick.  Immediately I thought about smoooooooth talkers and slick operators.  I realized that there really is no one outside of ourselves that we can trust.

I don't mean to sound cynical.  I don't feel cynical.  I do feel like critical thinking is essential right now.  We have to strap what we hear to our internal lie detector and feel our way into the truth. 

When a statement makes our world look hopeless, it's a lie.  We know there is always hope.
When a statement makes us angry, it's a lie.  We know that we're not hearing the whole story.
When a statement makes us afraid, it's a lie.  We know that, essentially, all is well. 

Our inner being knows that life is change and flux and flow.  What's here today is gone tomorrow.  Today's tragedy is tomorrow's opportunity.  We have to remember that we are not stuck anywhere.  It's like they say about the weather:  You don't like it now, wait 15 minutes.  It'll change.

Things always change, and that's a good thing.  And fast-changing times like these are perfect venues for creative thinking. I think that we'll be amazed at how the insolvable problems of today will be solved by some amazing person in the future.

So you see, I'm not cynical.  I believe in us.  I believe in our creative power.  Inventiveness is a huge part of our nature.  I believe we can trust ourselves to create the life we're wanting.  All we need to do is trust life.

Love, Kristine

History Lessons

Lately, days after Saint Patrick's Day, I've been finding Shamrocks.  I wondered if my message from the Universe was that I needed some extra luck, but that didn't feel right.  Instead, what came to me was a subject that has always interested me;  we use our history to predict our future. 
After all, the Shamrock is a cheerful reminder of a charming celebration. Finding some several days afterwards keeps me thinking of those good times.
So often the tendancy is for us to remember traumas from our past and allow those to guide our lives.  That urges us live defensively.
For example, let's say we go the baseball game.  We're having a wonderful time.  Our team is winning, we're with people we really like, the hot dogs and beer taste really good, and the weather is perfect.  Then, out of the blue, a pop fly hits us in the head.  OUCH.  The pleasant day is gone in an instant. 
We may choose to leave the game, and we might even decide, from that one incident, that we'll never go to a baseball game again.  Too dangerous.
In one fell swoop we've discarded all the good things that happened and just looked at that one bad event.  We then make a decision about baseball that colors the rest of our life: We'll never go to another game again.
This seems extreme, I know, but people make choices like that everyday.  They drag out their unpleasant history and use it as an excuse to eliminate certain  activities, actions, even types of people from their lives, as if  life events can be exactly reproduced from past to future. 
People, even mass-produced fast food hamburgers from the same venue don't all taste exactly alike. Far from it.
An old saying holds true here: "You can't step in the same river twice."
Life is flow.  It keeps moving, evolving, and changing, just as we do. 
Sure, we can keep creating misery if we go to the ball game again and EXPECT something bad to happen.  We might not get hit on the head again, but we'll spill our beer or it'll rain. When we push against what we don't want, we're sure to make more of it. 
Why not, if we feel we must use our history to define our future, take out of our memory banks examples of the great things that happened and focus on them.  Concentrate on the fun time we had the last time we went, the happy conversations with our friends, the taste of the dogs and beer, the loveliness of the weather.  Use that history.  Try to recreate that.  Sure, we won't get the exact same day again.  That day is gone.  But we'll get a shiny new one, a day that makes us glad to be alive because we'll be using that magical mind of ours to look for fun instead danger. Seek and ye shall find!  Ignore the weeds, find the shamrock!
Now that's the way to live.
Love, Kristine

Who is the Judge, and Who the Jury?

Yesterday a dog peed on my leg.  Really.  I was out at the park with the pack of people and dogs we see at the end of the day, and one of the new males came up to me as if he wanted a scratch on the back.  I was about to oblige when he lifted his leg and peed on mine.
It was embarrassing and funny.  I also found myself taking it personally.  Did this mean that this dog was feeling dominate over me, or did he just mistake me for a tree? Neither analysis felt very good.
I ruminated about this for a while when I realized that I was judging the situation poorly and, since my judgement didn't place me in a very good light with regard to my self image, I was racking my brain in an attempt to find a way to view the incident in a positive light, stewing over something minor that had taken place over two hours ago!
This reminded me of the story of the two Buddhist priests and the lady. It goes something like this:
Two priests were walking from one city to another when they encountered a lady in a beautiful silk kimono trying to cross a stream.  A recent rain had flooded the footpath, and she risked getting her lovely garment wet.  One of the priests offered to carry her across the stream.  She accepted, he lifted her up, and the two of them crossed together.  He put her down on the other side and she thanked him for his trouble. 
The two men continued their journey.  The priest who had not helped was mulling the incident over.  In their sect, they were not allowed to touch women.  He wondered how his comrade could break his vows.  He worried about it for several miles until he could not be silent a moment longer.  "Why", he cried "Did you carry that woman on your back?  What about your vows to our order?"
"Oh, "said his friend, "are you still thinking about that?  I stopped carrying that woman long ago."
Judging our actions, our lives, our friends, a dogs behaviour, everything, takes us out of the moment.  We forget to appreciate where we are, prefering to analyze actions and conversations long past. 
It's as if we're building a case for an imaginary court.  We're so concerned with being in the right that we try to justify everything we do. Why do we do this? Who are we appealing to?  Who is hearing our case and making that decision?  Who is our judge, and who our jury?
We are.  We are making our own selves miserable. Who else do we answer to?  No one and no thing has any moral authority over us.  We are completely responsible for how we feel about ourselves, our lives, and our companions.
Perhaps it's time to give up all our judgements and just let life happen.  Don't name or blame or be ashamed of anything, and put down whatever you're carrying that causes you pain.  Leave it all where it belongs; in the past.  Let's step out of our mental courtroom, release ourselves from the jail of our judgements, and travel the broad, open path of moment-to-moment connection. 
I think we'll be happier if we do.
Love, Kristine

All Things Being Equal

It's the Vernal Equinox, so happy first day of Spring to you! At this time the night and day are equal in length. 
In honor of this, I want to talk about the concept of equality.  To help me ride this train of thought, I picked a card out of the Tarot deck.  What I got delighted me.  It's the 6th of Pentacles, which talks about equality in an interesting way: as seen from a distance and with a visionary turn of mind.
Consider this: as we move around the wheel of our lives, we find ourselves living all aspects of existence.  Sometimes we're prosperous and have much to give.  Sometimes we rely on and appreciate the generosity of others.  Neither position is better or worse.  BOTH sides of life can bring us satisfaction and contentment when looked at in a spacious and expansive way. 
We only need to remain open to the gift inbedded in each of life's aspects.  When looked at in this way, we see that both the "good" and "bad" of life are of equal import.  Sometimes they even switch places.  I'm sure you've had the experience of a disaster that became a blessing is disguise. 
Judging an experience leads to confusion, frustration, and pain.  For example, we can feel superior if we have much, or inferior if we have little.  These feelings and perceptions rob us of the ability to live life fully, to appreciate the ups and downs of existence, and most of all, to understand that the wheel of life continues to turn. 
What's up now will soon be down, richess melt away, youth turns to age. Our preferences may lead us to try and make time stop.  We want to hold on to what's "good", and push away whats "bad".  This stance of defensiveness and mistrust keeps us upright, but also uptight and out of life's flow.  As we learn to experience both "good" and "bad" with a sense of appreciation for the natural balance of life, our varied experiences of whatever stripe will feel more fruitful and benificial, no matter if they put us on the top of the wheel or on the bottom. 
When we master this, we've truly learned to dance to life's tune.  Around and around we'll go! After all, what would Spring be without the Winter?  The contrast life provides us gives us the material to seed our dreams in the fertile soil of our imagination. Welcome the contrast.  What seems like so much manure now is the compost for your future garden.
Have a fruitful Spring, and keep dancing!
Love,
Kristine