Light, Love and All That Is – Page 4

Voices of Wisdom Within

This morning while I was lying awake, I heard a male voice softly call my name.

It got my attention and I answered. Yes?

No answer. I was disappointed. I wanted more. I wanted a replay of the full-blown conversation that occurred years ago as I drifted between wakefulness and sleep.

I was a captivated participant in a profound conversation that was going on in my head between myself and an unseen male voice. He was a wise teacher; I was a naïve student asking kindergarten-level questions. Even in my naivety, I knew that I was privy to something very unique and very special.

I awoke with a sense of awe, feeling unconditionally loved by an unseen being who knew my name and cared enough about me to pay a personal visit and take me under his wing to teach me for a while. Though I vividly remembered the event, I had no recollection of the words exchanged. What stood out above all else was that this unseen being was patient, kind, understanding, gentle, and loving. He never responded to my simple, childlike questions in a way that made me feel small, insignificant, or stupid. I was treated with great respect and dignity in spite of my naivety.

Both the voice that softly called my name today, and the one who was my teacher so many years ago were clearly audible. The “reality” of those voices lends credibility to the words, and makes me yearn to hear them more often, more clearly. Maybe someday.

Meanwhile, I must rely on the unspoken words that come to me by way of impression rather than expression. Clearly, I am still a student, still in a classroom where I must acquire the ability to discern the differences between the many voices of the personality and the Truth within myself. It is a trial and error process. Sometimes I get it right. Sometimes I don’t. But always, I get to repeat the class until I ace the course.

This morning’s voice was a welcome reminder that we are blessed to have wise teachers as guides, Elder Brothers who have graduated before us and moved on to higher realms. Perhaps it is such a one who called my name, ready to hand me another assignment.

Today I realize that today’s assignment is that I must remain calm and stay strong in the eye of storm and reach out and grab ahold of a hand that will help me stand steady amidst the turmoil. As I reach out for help, I must also reach out to another, the one behind who struggles to keep up.

Who is this that calls me by name? Perhaps it is the voice of God, or the Soul, or Spirit, or Jesus, or the Higher Self. Whatever the name, when it calls, will I answer? Will you?

Note: The photo above is courtesy of New Waves of Light, a website designed by anonymous individuals around the world who share the intention of bringing light and love to a world of darkness and chaos. (newwavesoflight.org or NWOL.us).

Woo Woo Camp Saves the Day

It’s another race around the clock. This weekend I am in a livestream woo woo workshop for the spiritually minded. A friend calls it woo woo camp. Like yesterday and the day before, I have three hours before it starts, and if I don’t push the publish button before it begins, I’m sunk. Oh, the pressure!

As I sit here in my Lazygirl waiting for inspiration to strike, I wonder if today is going to be another struggle. Then it dawns on me that struggle is a outcome of a dysfunctional belief system. If I sit around wondering whether it’s going to be a struggle, it will be. Struggle becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy by virtue of my faulty beliefs.

My blog-writing game plan is to push publish before 10 am daily, but I missed my deadline for the first time yesterday when I doubted my ability to do so before an early meeting. I thought I couldn’t do it. And I didn’t. I flunked button-push. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

Self-doubt strikes again. Blast!

See? Now that’s a perfect example of a faulty belief that hijacked my game plan and knocked me off track. Bummer. So off I go, back to the drawing board to reassess what went wrong.

Woo woo it may be, but this workshop reminds me about where I have gone awry and what in-flight corrections may be in order. It has jogged my memory and given me some grist for the upgrade mill. I ain’t done yet. Drat.

So far, I have been reminded about the power of thought and the importance of paying attention to what is going on in my head, lest I manifest something in my world that I would rather not. My belief in struggle, for example.

This brings up another question. Am I placing my faith in my head, or in my heart? Is it in the ego part of myself that thinks I am so smart that I can do it on my own? Or is it in the hands of a higher authority that has my best interests at heart and stands ready to provide all that I need to grow, thrive, and be happy?

I am a self-acknowledged slow learner and it may take me a while to figure things out, but I get there eventually. One thing I know for sure—when I think I am so smart that I can do stuff on my own, I invite myself to fall flat on my face. But when I remember to turn the hard stuff over to my Higher Self, or Soul, or God, or whatever one might want to call it, struggle vanishes and the road rises up to meet me.

Today I chose to put my faith in my heart instead of my head. The result? I still have an hour and a half until woo woo camp begins. Woo hoo! Yay God!

What’s in a Lifetime?

It’s 7:35 a.m. and I’d like to push the publish button by 9:00 a.m. so I can start the day by attacking the stack of papers that grow in the night and taunt me in the morning. Is anyone else experiencing a bout of laziness and/or procrastination during these days as shut-in’s, or is it just me?

If you’ve been following along for the past several days, you may have noticed a thread of self-doubt running through the pages. Me too, and do you know what? I’m sick of it. Enough already. It’s old news, it’s boring, and it’s time to move on to lighter and brighter things.

Okay, I’m struggling here. Why isn’t this easy? What am I doing wrong? If this is an assignment and I’m willing to do it, why is it so hard? You know me—I always want everything to be easy. Easy suits my lazy nature.

The clock is ticking and I’m nowhere near completion. Whoa. Now there’s a profound statement if ever I heard one! Will life run out before I’m finished? It’s enough to poke me in the derriere with a hat pin and get me moving post haste.

Dear one, no one said that it would be easy. Anything worth doing, being, or having is earned by virtue of the willingness to apply oneself to the task at hand. For some that is easier than others, based upon the soul qualities that one chooses to work on at any given time.

Yes, well willingness is one thing. Application is another. In my case, I’m loaded with willingness, but I have the attention span of a gnat.

We beg to differ. You may think that your attention is limited, but We would like you to review what you have accomplished during the course of your lifetime. By keeping your eye upon the donut, as you like to say, you have marched steadily toward the achievement of your goals and desires, even though at times you may think otherwise. Your evolutionary journey toward enlightenment is furthered by your willingness to accept this assignment. We know that it is not easy, and it is not comfortable. We have asked and you have answered, and for that We are grateful. From your limited perspective it would appear that progress has been slow to the point of being imperceptible, but viewed from a distance We see you standing strong amidst the growing cadre of global lightworkers. Hold the torch high to help light the path for others who struggle to find their way out of the dark. This, indeed, is your assignment, and We thank you for your acceptance of it.

No, thank You, and you are welcome. And thank You that it’s 8:42 and I think that I’m finished. Well, at least for today. A lifetime is another story.

My TV Myself

Nestled comfortably in my cozy Lazygirl I stare at a blank TV screen, blacker than the highway to hell. That’s an assumption, of course, since to the best of my knowledge, I have never actually traveled down the road to hell, though sometimes I wonder if I might not be headed in that direction. Come to think of it, maybe I’m a current resident there now, but too dense to see it. Hmmm . . .

In the midst of my reverie it dawns on me that quite possibly, I might just be sitting here staring at a picture of the workings of my mind. Uh oh. Blank.

With the touch of a button I have the power to bring it alive. It is a world unto itself, rife with stories, news, fantasy, sports, profundity, stupidity, truth and fiction. It is a magnificent bearer of both beauty and horror, and of love and hatred.

Within and behind that blank screen lies an entire world that is not real. It entertains me and offers escape, distraction, and welcome relief from the gnawing fear of what is to become of us and of the world that we once knew and loved, a world that seems to deteriorate in bits and pieces day by day. It magnifies that fear by spewing ugliness into our world with news and fake news or whatever else there is to tempt us into believing that our world has gone round the bend into raging, complete and utter, full-blown insanity. Nuttydom, I call it.

Here is my mind mirrored back to me in sound bytes. Here is my mind giving me the rich opportunity to decide what to watch – or not – the perfect mirror of the meanderings of my mind.

I stare for awhile at that blank screen in my head and realize that it’s up to me to decide. I decide what I do with my mind. I decide which channel I tune into, and I have the power to change what I wish to see in my mind’s eye at any given moment. I can tune into what brings me a greater sense of peace and calm, and joy and happiness, or I can choose anxiety, anger, frustration, or powerlessness in the face of a world governed by leaders who put their personal interests ahead of those they supposedly serve.

But beware! A choice for love isn’t easy. It requires diligence, vigilance, determination, intention, and perseverance–just a few minor little attitude adjustments. Without those, a love-chooser easily becomes prey to the tricky uncanny antics of an ego intent upon surviving it own annihilation in the face of love. Wth any luck, perhaps the planet and its inhabitants will survive annihilation as well.

Maybe one day I’ll write about those crafty little ego antics, but for today, I’m going say goodbye to the blank screen and hello to the light. Today, I focus on choosing love.

Potties, Plaques, and Plagiarism

This morning the universe very kindly presented me with inspiration courtesy of plagiarism and bathroom wisdom. It makes me wonder what, if anything, these two subjects might have in common but who knows—there may be a lesson lurking in here somewhere and with any luck I’ll find it. A day without a lesson is a day without sustenance. Food. Coffee. Sunshine. That sort of thing. Wine. But those days are over. Who knows—maybe it’s about the seat that’s up. All I know is that I didn’t do it.

The first bit of inspiration came from a blogger who wrote about her concern over the plagiarizing of blogs. I’m too new at this point to even think of worrying or caring about that yet, so I won’t.

The second was an email from my friend Ginny Daly who sent me a copy of a lovely meditation by Richard Rohr.

“ I noticed today’s meditation has a similar version of my “like likes like.” And to think here I thought I’d made that up years ago as it applies to an advertising concept I was teaching at the time. How silly of me!”

It reminded me of a similar experience of my own.

I thought I made up a couple of things too, like “rom com” and “mani pedi”. Okay, I admit that mani pedi might have been around before I thought of it, but who knows? But rom com? When I first spoke those words to a very hip and knowing friend, her response was, “What’s a rom com?” Romantic comedy, silly. What else? Whether or not I actually made those abbreviations up in my head, or whether I plucked them right out of the universal pool of clever tidbits to be snatched is a question that will never be answered.

When I worked in a law firm with five floors each with a restroom, and each restroom with four stalls, I’d often find myself in desperate need of a bathroom while on the fly. I’d make a frantic dash into the nearest one of twenty stalls in such a hurry that sometimes I didn’t take the time to check out the condition of the seat.

I quickly learned that there are two sorts of women in the world—the sitters and the squatters. I’m a sitter. It’s those squatters that get me every time because their total lack of bathroom decorum manifests in a soaking wet seat as a gift for the next poor sucker with a frantic need for blessed relief. No wonder the squatters squat. They don’t want to become the victim of the last squatter’s gift. Heaven forbid.

Please don’t get me wrong, squatters. I’m sure that that there are the sweeties among you who clean up after yourselves in consideration of the person who follows you

But for those who don’t, I have a few words for you. Be considerate. Clean up after yourself. If not, be prepared to be faced with the possibility of some sort of nasty karma that may rise up and bite you in the butt.

By the way—apologies to those among you who are old-school ladies who think that butt is a dirty word—or at least an unladylike one. But it’s only an informal abbreviation of a legitimate word, right? Forrest Gump said it after all—except when he said it, it came out butt-tocks. Rom com. Mani pedi. Butt—not a big whoop, right?

Well so anyway, why don’t I wipe the seat, you may wonder? Duh. I don’t have time. I’m too busy trying not to wet my own self! When I have time, of course I check. When not, oh well . . .

In a fit of fury after one such encounter with a soggy seat, I stormed back to my office and flying fingers typed the words that fell out of my head.

If you sprinkle when you tinkle,

Please be a sweetie and wipe the seatie.

Okay, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I I made that one up. I taped a copy to the inside of the door in every restroom—all twenty stalls.

Twenty years later, I sat myself down on a seatie in someone’s home and—voila—I found myself staring eyeball to wall at one of those wood-carved plaques—you know—the kind you would find in a road-side souvenir shop that advertises the name of the town on everything that isn’t nailed down? There it was. A jagged-edged dark brown wooden plaque hanging on the wall in right front of me with the exact words I had written so long ago. Probably plucked right off of a shelf in some gift shop in God Only Knows What Town, USA.

Imagine my surprise ten years later when I wandered into the restroom of an elegant consignment shop and discovered a variation of the original hanging in all its glory before my very eyes. Yep—there it again—framed, hand-lettered, décor matched, and misquoted. It makes me wonder how many other versions and variations there may be somewhere out there in the world hanging around making money without meCome on! I mean, if you must plagiarize the plagiarizer, the least you can do is get it right, right? On the other hand, perhaps it was an intentional act on the part of the perpetrator designed to appear as if it might be an original thought. Hmmm . . .

Well now, as you might imagine, the discovery of these unexpected sightings conjured up some interesting and somewhat disturbing mind meanderings. Darn! Someone stole my stuff and claimed it as her own (it has to be a her, right?) Darn! Someone is cashing in on my creativity. Darn! Why didn’t I think of that? Darn! How dare she? Darn! I’d like to have a word with the sneaky little shedevil—if only I knew who she was. Darn! I wonder how much money she made that I didn’t?

Let that be a lesson to me.

Wait. What’s the lesson?

I don’t know, but I’m sure that there must be one in there somewhere. There always is. Maybe it has to do with not getting too attached to what I think is mine. Letting go. Finding humor. Forgiveness—not just for the perpetrator, but for myself for whatever I think I did or didn’t do that I should or shouldn’t have. I think I’ll just think about for a while and maybe I’ll get it figured out before I croak. On the other hand, maybe by then, it won’t even matter.

Hmm. That last thought makes me wonder. What does really matter?

Stay tuned.