Connected and Committed

Here's an excellent snippet from Abraham

Here's an excellent snippet from Abraham.

I was screaming, "Yes!" in my car when I first listened to it.

Download Non-Quicktime version:

decisions

You can live comfortably and joyfully and resiliently and healthfully as long as you have desire that summons life through you. People don't die because they pass through time. They die because they don't allow this arena to stimulate decisions. The only reason people ever die is either because they have stopped making decisions about being here, or they have made decisions about being Non-physical

-- Abraham

Glad you made your transition, E.

blissmonger bracelets

I've been working on these for awhile, and now I've started posting them on Etsy. Here are the first few:























































I love working with these beads. Take a look at the shop if you've a mind to!

that old trap

This morning, to start off my day, I stumbled upon some information that in the past might have set me off in a tailspin of this-isn't-right! and why-don't-more-people-know-about-this? and what-can-I-do-to-save-the-world-from-this? I could feel the sense memory of that pushing-back in the face of a condition that I didn't like, couldn't change, and didn't want anyone else to have to endure either. Overwhelm, mild panic, get-on-top-of-this-now cortisol coursing through my veins. For a moment.
 
Then I sat myself down for a good ol' Abraham chat. I called up all of the relief line of reasoning that I could muster, and set to working my way up the emotional scale with arsenal in tow. I envisioned a Source perspective on what I perceived as a problem, and took comfort from that relief. I reminded myself what my job was in any given situation, and kept shifting and grounding there. I remembered that there are forces at play which I have no access to understanding, and that everything is just the way that it should be.

And it worked. The tension in my stomach subsided, the sugar-high feeling disappeared, and I felt much better. I realized that even though ol' Abraham does seem to have the same answers to every question we might have, we come up with more interesting examples of how our resistance gets us into trouble. And Abe doesn't push against what he/they are mitigating; he/they only send out the same message in hopes that we will hear it as often as we've heard the junk we're unlearning. Decades worth of conditioning takes some undoing.

And I am so very grateful for it. Thank you, Abraham.

russian olive

These lovely trumpets are wafting their sweet fragrance all over the landscape where I live. It's intoxicating and exotic and such a treat. I didn't know what they were til a few days ago, and now I see and smell them everywhere. Harbingers of summer's delights, I'd say, without even looking it up.

I'm in an active state of savoring right this very minute. This afternoon I purchased several things that completed my list of tools I need to accomplish many domino-like tasks, and ensures that those tasks are now an inevitability rather than a far-off like-to-someday. And this savoring state I'm in is sooooo sweet, as sublime as the scent of those flowers up there. I can feel how good it's going to be when I get my hands into the work fully, how much fun it's going to be, and how much I will learn and grow and discover and put into future vibrational escrow. I almost don't want to take the first step. I almost want to just sit here and revel in what will be, from this vantage point.

Almost.

So in a few minutes I will be putting on some music that will enhance the total experience as I begin to draw more life through me in the ways that only I could envision, only I am interested in executing, only I know how to do.

This has been an Abraham moment.

Go make your own, right this minute.

29 minutes

Thank you, whoever left the 29 minutes on the parking meter today in the spot I pulled into over my lunch hour. I appreciated not having to dig in my purse to find a quarter, and I really appreciated the glow I felt walking up the street to my appointed rounds of errands. You can be certain that I will be paying that generous gesture forward. It takes such little effort, time and resources to completely make someone's day, make no mistake about it.
 

nudges 5.27.08

I am so happy and very grateful for:

1) The mobility and freedom I have to go where I want to go and do what I want to do;

2) Fireworks;

3) Sleeping in three days in a row;

4) Fabulous food prepared with intention and with love;

5) Barkley the wonder dog;

6) Handmade paper that make my heart sing;

7) Starting on my video project;

8) Transcending time and space on truffles;

9) Russian olive bushes.

dragon

doing the speed limit

Last night as I was driving home from work, I set my cruise control to 64 miles per hour, as I have been want to do since I returned from my Adventure in the Plains. I notice that cars are whizzing by me, and I notice that I get where I'm going pretty much in the same amount of time and with a little bit more gas in my tank.

But last night I was so excited - that stash of beads in the last post or two were calling my name, and I couldn't contain my euphoria as to how much fun it would be to dive in and create with them. It was the same headiness of anticipating a first date. This state may have been fueled by the more-than-usual amounts of dark chocolate I ingested earlier in the day, since I was awake longer than usual last night too. But that's a small price to pay for joy.

So I did dive in, and I did create. And now I'm playing around with better ways to photograph and display my creations. It's always something.

beadaliscious

One of the many blessings from my recent foray into traveldom is this motherlode of beads, purchased in a place so out of a frame of recognizable reference that it makes it that much more special that I found them. The blissmonger bracelets I am making with them are so satisfying as I pull them together, working with the color and shape and texture until the end product just sort of appears. When I have pics posted on Etsy, I'll post a link.

wonder

fargopolis

Some of the coolest stores I've ever been in were open for my resonating pleasure this weekend, like the one above, ShannaLee. I asked if I could take a photo, and she invited me to sign her wall. Beautiful stuff in there; definitely worth a visit.

Then I got a recommendation for reading Proust while standing in line to get a cup of coffee and a yummy chicken salad at Atomic Coffee, and while seated enjoying the gastronomic feast, I listened to a professional bassist employed at the university being interviewed for a newspaper article.

All this, in ol' Fargo. Who knew?

airport food

buffalo days

As well as a few other things, this structure seems to have shrunk since I was 8 or 9.

Ah, going home again.

goin' back to my roots

The next few days I'll be back in my old, old stompin' grounds, where I was born, saying goodbye to a relative making her transition and hanging out with those near and dear to her. It will be fun doing this with my brother - no spouses, no parents, no kids in the mix - just us, on an adventure in the most unlikely of places.

Pics to come.

unlearn, relearn, and center

A family member is in hospice as of yesterday, and it’s been very interesting watching what is coming up for me around how our clan is handling this event in our midst. It’s reminding me of how different I am from ancestral expectations, how much I've come into my own around who I am, and it’s also reminding me that people are doing the best they can with what they know at the moment. I’m attempting to sort through all the emotion and distill what is me, and what it is I want to do, as opposed to over-compensating, making other people wrong, or doing what I’ve learned to do and how to be in many situations. I want to unlearn, relearn, and center.

By tomorrow would be good.

this hair thing

Can I make it until July without parking myself in a salon chair and saying,"Please, just feather it and get these god-awful flaps out of my face." Cuz that's how it feels - I'm about to take flight, with wings.

definition of wealth

The measure of the degree of intimacy you are willing to share with your world.

dowsing rod

I've been noticing a certain pointedness, a certain directionality in people lately who possess either some unprocessed resentment or practice the hip cynicism that seems to pervade our culture these days. This energy feels like it's a dowsing rod to me, and instead of pointing at the person who holds this negative kind of energy, it feels like it points right at me, attesting to how everyone is a mirror for each of us, and how we are all here to help each other remember who we really are. There are cynical, resentful places in me that need some cyclical peeling away of the layers, so I am grateful for these reminders that also let me know how much I desire their opposite. Universe, you got it goin' on.

gerbers in a bowl

The best way to replace the effects of old, negative memories, is to make some better, more positive new ones.

But you do

The person that needs to do something is not that person.

The person that needs to do something is you! Some of those people in your life do not deserve your good thoughts. In other words, "They are bad. They are evil. They are wrong! They are inappropriate. They do not deserve your good thoughts," and you stubbornly are not going to give them any.

They may not deserve your good thoughts. But you do.

You deserve your good thoughts about them.

-- Abraham

*********

Ain't it the truth.

that hangover thing

I was sitting at my cube this afternoon when I noticed a strange sensation in my system - I imagined I was feeling cortisol rushing through my veins, with the resulting hangover, after having spent all day running from cube to cube, proofing other people’s web design work and bringing packets of ads that the print department creates to my desk, since it’s our busy season and we’re saving money, we didn’t hire a temp proofreader this year - I’m it.

Anyway, it’s been awhile since I felt this sensation. And that’s the weird thing about making changes in your life - you have to experience a taste of what your body and/or your mind feels like when it’s balanced, in order to realize that what you accept as “normal” now, ain’t necessarily so.

I used to feel this low grade anxiety all the time when I was teaching, all the time during my divorce, and off and on since then. This recent patch of blissmongering has helped re-establish the absence of what life feels like at 100 miles an hour. Now, the norm is about 30 miles an hour, and I get warning indications on the dashboard when I go any faster. It truly amazes me that I’ve gotten to the point where the ratio is in my favor - most of the time I feel great, and only a small portion of my existence is spent in the cesspool of fear and anxiety and worry and dread and doubt. Truly amazing. And all it took was about a million baby steps in the direction of Mecca.

So I kicked back the rest of the afternoon. Luckily my work load accommodated this tactic, and continues to do so. I am so blessed with lining up with my desires in that regard. Thank you, universe, for facilitating that. And tonight Little Man and I walked to the local Dairy Boy ice cream purveyor for some chocolate chip and cookie dough, and happily so. I think we will have a yummy weekend, judging by vibe fronts so far.

always

You are always molding yourselves into a better feeling place. And you will never get it done. It will never be completely finished. It will never be absolutely right. You will always have some dominant thoughts that are not a vibrational match to the newfound desire. But that is always what your work is. And it's time for you to just begin relaxing about it, and not make it a personal issue of your own valor, or your own value, or your own integrity. In other words, it's just, how many times have I thought this thought?

-- Abraham

Thanks, Abraham. I needed to hear this today.

Always is a very long time, and so is never. But if I'm always going to be on the way to a better feeling place, then I can certainly relax about certain things. So thanks again, dude. I'll be watching for how many times have I thought this thought.

Possibly millions. But I'll try to change my story, today.

livin' the life

ancestral baggage

It's oh so very interesting to look down into a deep steamer trunk of ancestral baggage, when there's an immediate issue that makes all of your family's foibles so abundantly clear and you can see exactly why you are the way you are - oy.

But then to be able to step back and make different choices, not out of spite or rebellion or irritation, but because you know you can, that is huge. And if you know you can because you know life is supposed to be fun and you are supposed to feel good - that is freedom of the highest order.

Feelin' some freedom tonight....

zen

Shifts arrive.

Count on it.

Even when things seem like they are wacked to the max.

Maybe especially when things seem wacked to the max.

Maybe especially.

until it's not

I used to cry when I felt two worlds colliding inside me - cry from sheer despair at the impossibility of them ever lining up. Who I really am vs. who I've learned to be. Now I understand the struggle and what's actually going on. The old isn't letting go without a fight, but it is crumbling - otherwise there would be no contrast to experience. What I spent decades learning to say, do and think, it is so pervasive, so insidious, so metastasized, it's like peeling off skin sometimes to rattle loose its stronghold.

Until it's not.

sacred circle

a little slice of heaven

This is a picture of heaven on a cone.

Graeter's black raspberry with dark chocolate chunks ice cream.

I had to sit down while I was eating it because it was that good.

A valid reason to move to Ohio, just to have access.

up there

long hair

I've been growing out my hair since October, and this is a self portrait taken just after visiting the salon for a resizing. I see how askew my glasses are on my face most of the time. Hmmmm....

one delight among many from the weekend

The best times to do something

Synchronizing your day with the sunPosted by Lynne McTaggart on May 1, 2008 at 1:37pm

More than 50 years ago, Dr. Franz Halberg of the University of Minnesota discovered that many biological processes appear to run according to an in-built clock. Later experiments showed him that living things respond to the same 24-hour rhythm, in tandem with the earth’s rotation.

Halberg also discovered that living things keep in time to many other periodic rhythms; half-weekly, weekly, monthly and yearly cycles govern virtually every biological function.

The human pulse and blood pressure, body temperature and blood clotting, circulation of lymphocytes, hormonal cycles and other functions of the human body all appear to ebb and flow according to some basic, recurring timetable.

Initially scientists believed that the master switch for these biological rhythms was located in certain cells of the brain or adrenal glands. But in his eighties, Halberg made his final breakthrough discovery: The synchronizer within every living thing is not internal but resides in the planets – particularly the sun and solar activity.

In a sense, the sun is our metronome. These rhythms are a ready-made feature of organisms, not simply something learned or acquired – an inherent property of life.

Because of this, we have biorhythms for everything in our lives – times when it is better to do one activity than another. For instance, having a glass of wine at lunchtime makes you more woozy than in the evening because your liver is three times better at detoxifying the alcohol in the evening than at midday.

Here are the best times to carry out activities in your day:

7 am: The optimum time to have sex, when the body produces a surge in hormones and adrenaline. Testosterone levels rise during sleep and reach a peak in men after a night’s sleep.

8:30-9: The best time to eat, since blood pressure and your metabolic rates are at their highest. Hence, the old adage to ‘eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper’. A huge meal will put on less weight in the morning than later in the day.

9:30-11:30 am; The optimum time for test taking, when your short-term memory and brain power are at their sharpest.

2 pm: The perfect time for a nap. The worst time to drive or operate equipment, as it is most likely time for an accident.

2:30-3: The best time for recall or reminiscing; long-term memory peaks.

4-6 pm: The best time to exercise – your muscles are at their warmest of the day, your reaction time, hand-eye coordination reach their optimum.

6-8 pm: The best time for mindfulness meditation, when sensory ability is at its most acute, and also problem solving, as the blood flowing to your brain peaks.

7-9 pm: The best time to share with friends and loved ones, as cortisol – the stress hormone – and blood pressure drops.

10-11 pm: The best time to sleep, when production of melatonin, the hormone inducing sleep, surges, and heart rate, body temperature begin to wind down.

frustration

Oh. my. god. am I frustrated.

I consider myself a relatively intelligent adult. I've managed to get me a master's degree, although that certainly isn't a gimmee in the intelligent department. I've managed to get myself halfway around the world and home again several times, and I can figure out how to find information when I need it.

So when I was faced this morning with repeated demonstrations of my ineptitude while using a Mac mouse to try to execute a function as simple as "Move these highlighted files," I thought I was going to lose it. Four, count 'em, four consistent Mac users showed me the various ways this could be accomplished, and I was either able to duplicate their success just once, or I immediately went to the inevitable opening of files like so many pop-up windows, rather than moving them.

Please universe, let me remember this feeling, and the subsequent embarrassment I feel at not being able to do something so simple that a flea could do it. I'm sure the compassion that I'm not quite able to pull up for myself just yet will come in handy one day for someone else.