We have all experienced being hurt, betrayed and angry with someone. It doesn’t matter if it was one person or a group or if it was someone who was close to you or whom you didn’t even really know. It could also be you. It doesn’t even matter what they did. What matters is how you feel and how all consuming those feelings of hurt and rage can be.
Something happened to me a couple of months ago that threw me for a loop and left me feeling like a wounded animal. I just couldn’t believe that someone I had thought was my friend could up and disappear in a heart beat and never look back. Not only did I miss this person but it made me ask myself how I could have so misjudged that situation and what I’d done wrong. I was judge and jury, defense and offense all rolled up in one. I’d be driving along on a beautiful day and suddenly I’d realize that I was thinking about the whole situation and feeling bad. My thoughts had a life of their own and were magnetized toward wearing even deeper ruts in my brain and heart.
Since I am wholeheartedly committed to personal and spiritual growth and to seeing what-ever happens as an opportunity for learning, I couldn’t help but see this situation as an intensive course that I knew would leave me in a very different place.
I have learned a lot and more continues to be revealed. The main message that has been coming through loud and clear bears repeating over and over and over. When you are ready to hear something, you know how the message keeps reappearing in all kinds of forms and places as if the universe were also really committed to you’re getting it and getting it right?
Last week I was watching an Eckert Tolle DVD with friends. He was talking about forgiveness. He said that forgiveness is really about seeing others as unconscious and, like Christ said, “knowing not what they do.” It doesn’t mean what they or you did was right and doesn’t have consequences. It means that you can know that they came from a place of being asleep to their true natures.
When we continue to hold onto anger, we become just like the people we are angry at – unconscious. Forgiveness unleashes energy. When you forgive someone you let go of your negative judgments. You lay down your weapons and armor and proceed onward. You lighten up.
I received a daily quote from TUT, The Universe that sums it up with a smile:
“You can rest assured, Anne, that those who have hurt you had absolutely no idea of what they were doing and what was really going on.
It never occurred to them that you’d become even more magnificent. That they’d be invoking your sympathy, adding to your compassion, and increasing your “sparkles.” And it will still be eons before they can grasp that you actually welcomed them into your life and played their little games for some of these very reasons.
Love you with all my heart,
The Universe
This message is also for you. I hope that it inspires you to think of someone (including yourself) that you have not yet forgiven – to whom our heart has been closed – and allows you to bravely let go of your judgments and experience a fresh rush of love and a return of energy to propel you onward.
I saw “Yes Man” yesterday. It made me laugh. The message was right up my alley so, in the darkened theater, x-tra large bag of popped corn on my lap, I whispered to my friend, “I’m gonna blog about this.”
I’m all about positive energy, keeping the focus on what I want and climbing into the feeling of it all having already happened. I would rather say yes than no to what the universe presents in unfailing abundance each and every day. In fact, one of my intentions for the New Year is to welcome everything that happens as GOOD. I have a ways to go!
What got Carl (the hero/anti-hero) into trouble was saying yes automatically, no matter what he was feeling. In the beginning it’s sometimes as matter of “acting as if”, “faking it until you make it”, and showing up the way you’d like to be to over-ride centuries of negative programming and default settings on “No.” Often times your feelings catch up with your actions: – smiling and putting on a happy face can result in the world treating you like a happy person and into your actually feeling happier or choosing fruit over an Eskimo pie even if you’d rather have the ice-cream. It’s a crossover dance that gives you a chance to have a new experience and jumping over the rut you’re in.
But once you’ve jumped the rut and know what fruit and ice cream have to offer and how yes and no feel and are “at choice”, it is really important to check in with your feelings. Sometimes it feels better to say yes and other times it feels better to say no or, as the movie suggest – maybe.
The most sure-fire way to be, do and have whatever our little hearts desire is to picture being there and then power-up our visions with heart. The Law of Attraction is constantly reminding us that our thoughts are the engine and our emotions are the fuel that keeps us moving us toward the fulfillment of our dreams.
Saying yes when our hearts are in our dreams is the countdown to blast-off. Saying yes when we are still really unsure, afraid or blocked simply doesn’t work. It a message to take a look, do some inner investigation, clearing, cleaning, howling at the moon so we can get clear, lined up, tapped in, tuned in and turned on.
Carl found this out and instead of being compelled to say yes and afraid to say no, he was able to choose and take it from there. It’s a happy ending.
What do you do when your 19 yr. old calls you sobbing from Sicily: ATM card doesn’t work, no one speaks English, dead computer power cord, too much bread and I wanna go home?
Well, if you’re anything like me, you clutch your stomach, feel your heart start to race and unleash a million thoughts ranging from panic -my- baby’s -in- trouble to resentment, anger, worry and back again – the lower end of the emotional guidance scale for sure. I heard the baby out there wailing and,like the mourners at tribal funerals, I started to wail in sympathetic concert.
Until I heard the wake up gong of my inner guides shaking me out of my vibrational swamp and reminding me that: “To hold someone as your object of attention while you’re connected to Source Energy, is the greatest gift that anyone could give. When you’re not happy, you don’t have anything to give…” (Abraham-Hicks)
So, in order to become “mom to the rescue” it took Abraham-Hicks to the rescue, and Byron Katie to the rescue along with Eckhart Tolle to the rescue. They are all on my team – like a fabulous string trio gently guiding me to keep my focus on feeling good, being here now and reminding me that without my stressful thoughts “all is well”. I can see so clearly that tossing and turning and churning isn’t doing my daughter or me a lick of good. I know that staying calm, focusing on the outcome I want for my daughter and on how I would like to be feeling as I deal with the details – is the best way to float downstream toward getting everything straightened out in an easy and relaxed manner. I can continue to enjoy my life, be productive and this will help my daughter refocus and enjoy being alive and well in Italy. What a radical concept!
I love being steeped in all this radical paradigm shifting energetic gymnastics. It’s a great metaphysical workout. I don’t have to get myself to the gym because I am always in the work-out room of the universe throwing balls, lifting weights, flexing my muscles and becoming ever more flexible and able to stop on a dime and pivot like a prima ballerina.
My daughter will or will not have a great time. I can only create in my own arena but I know that how I am has a big impact on her and that my good vibes are contagious and call the same forth from her. As hard as it may be to maintain my set point when she’s down – I know for sure (like Oprah) that it’s the formula for me to be the the best Law of Attraction Mom a girl ever had.
It’s a government holiday here in the Virgin Islands. There are parades and happy children in Puerto Rico, Spain and in the Barrio’s of NYC. Epiphany also happens to be one of my favorite days and I never really understood why until today.
I just discovered that Epiphany comes from the Greek word meaning “to manifest” or “to show”. As a Christian feast day it celebrates the revelation of God in human form and I’m adding it to my Law of Attraction vocabulary right now. Its a chance to celebrate the manifestation of our thoughts into things – that “fall down on your knees in awe-ful thanks” for what has been revealed and made real.
It also takes me back to when we got a television way back in the 50’s. The first program I ever saw was a production of “Amahl and the Night Visitors” – the delightful operetta by Gian Carlo Menotti about the visit the Three Kings paid to a poor family en route to Bethlehem. I listen to it every year over the holidays and I always cry when Amahl, the poor crippled boy-hero decides he wants to take a gift to the child and accompany the Kings as they follow the star. When he offers his only possession, his crutch, he discovers that he can walk, dance, jump and sets off with the Kings in song.
So, today is the day when we arrive at the place where the miracle has occurred. Our thoughts have taken on form and we are bowled over and bearing gifts. A crutch, myrhr, gold, frankincense, a bicycle, a wing and a prayer. Let us honor the manifestation of all we desire in baby form with love and tenderness and with our gifts of love. It’s an after birthday party and we are all invited.
The holidays are drawing to a close. The kings are almost at the manger and our celebrations of light, birth and renewal are giving way to days that are growing lighter and to our focus on what’s new and next.
It’s so easy to get lost in goal setting and resolution making and breaking that we forget that the secret of being present and giving thanks is the richest fertilizer for the soil in which our dreams are already taking root. It’s a mind-bending paradox that suggests that the best way to position us to achieve our goals and fulfill our desires in the imagined future is to be fully present to our lives right this minute. It’s the old Be Here Now of Baba Ram Dass, or The Power of Now (Eckert Tolle) or “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (The Bible).
One of my goals for ’09 is to be present as much as possible. What this means to me is that when I notice that I am driving around ruminating about this or that or worrying about him or her and dwelling on past events that have bugged me or future events I am concerned about – that I stop, take a deep breath and bring myself back to the moment – look around and realize that without those thoughts, life is pretty good and I am fine in ’09. When I can quiet those “monkey mind” tapes that are the constant background chatter going on in my head, I get a glimpse of a very peaceful and beauful place in which I live and exist – inside and out. So much so that I think, “What was all that fuss about?”
Last year I enjoyed a visit from college friends and we tooled around the island and spent hours sitting on my deck celebrating our long time enduring friendships and laughing a lot. One day when we 3 had left my house and were sitting in my car, I realized I had forgotten something in my cottage. I got out of the car, walked back to my front door and put the key in the lock. When I turned it and opened the door I was struck by how my one room cottage glowed in its fresh coat of buttery yellow paint mixed with sunlight and the sea. My little poodles were already set for the day sleeping, and the place had a feeling of deep peace and silence. I didn’t want to disturb anything so I got my forgotten item and tip toed back to the car. I was laughing as I said to my friends: “Wow, my home is so peaceful when I’m not there!” It felt like a little moment of enlightenment and I have remembered and treasured being hit by the peace and light of my home in my heart.
We all have a peaceful place full of buttery light that nourishes and refreshes us and reminds us that there is nothing to be, do or have. We just have to take a deep breath, turn down the volume on our constantly chattering minds, look around and tip toe into our place of joy and enlightenment – even if its just for a brief moment to start with. It’s the pause that refreshes and transforms.
I wish you a year full of such moments; a year full of inspired actions rather than frantic TO Do Lists. My wish for all of us in this New Year is the gift of being present and of realizing that YOU in the NOW are the best gift you’ll ever give or receive.