Places to go

Last night as I was getting ready to meditate, I had the idea to read some of my SoulCollage cards as part of my practice. I chose the following four cards, flipping through my deck to see what stood out to me. As I write this, I’m kind of amazed that my reading was coherent as I did it while Precious the cat, whom I’m socializing, was lounging all over me and the cards. This is what they said …

I am the one who has places to go … I will not always be where I am.

You will move on. It’s the right thing to do.

I am the one who is compassionate toward all living things. I am the embodiment of love in the world.

I am one who longs to be of service to others.

You will get your chance. You will open many doors–this is just the beginning.

Your heart is very large–expansive and expanding. You have much to offer the world. You will send your message of love and courage out all over the world, and it will be blessed.

This post is illustrated with my SoulCollage cards New Journeys, Understanding + Two Paths, Opening the gate + Fawn totem–5th chakra, and Hope + Bird totem–4th chakra. 

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How to give good advice

This weekend, I was asked for advice about what might seem to be a common dilemma. There is a glib, easy, fairly well-accepted answer to this dilemma. But I have my doubts about whether this answer is correct in all cases. Contrarian that I am, the advice I gave was unconventional.

Giving advice is easy–but good advice? That may be a bit more difficult. A few thoughts about how to do it well …

1. When people ask for advice, I like to respond … but not necessarily with the reinforcement they’re sometimes after. Sometimes offering love and support is all you feel sure of, and I think that’s enough. The friend who asked me for advice asked me to tell her what she already knew, as well as what she didn’t know. I thought that was a great way to ask for advice, because it acknowledges that …
2. No one person knows everything. It’s very rare to understand the other person’s situation so well that you can recommend unequivocally doing x, y, and z. My response was to mention a couple of perspectives on the issue that might be a bit different than what she was thinking … to turn the question around and examine it from a couple different angles. But ultimately my advice was to go deep within for her answers.
3. Far from replying with a stock answer, I even supplied a couple of new questions! If you’re like me, you don’t have all the answers to other people’s problems … but if you stick around for awhile and pay attention, you can pick up on a few good questions. One such question is, which way feels like fear, and which way feels like saying Yes to life?
4. I believe the Divine and an unlimited perspective is within each of us, and that nothing could be more worthwhile than accessing our own deep wisdom, and asking it the most pressing questions we have. I find it helpful to remember that the person asking for advice already has the answers. Perhaps not consciously, very true. But they have access to the facts and emotional truth of the situation (which they may be filtering for a variety of reasons), and usually you the advisor do not. They also have access to their own inmost desires, moral compass, and gut instinct, as well as the ability to attract what they want and need. In other words, every possible tool and resource they need to solve the problem at hand.
5. So I believe the role of the advisor is to provide support to the decision-making process. Your role might be to relieve the pressure of conventional wisdom, prevailing mores, or the opinions of others … to create some space in which the advisee can begin to take a fresh look at the issue in their own light. You may need to help clear away whatever is obscuring the person’s own truth.
6. Should you give advice about a situation you’ve never experienced? Recently I was taken to task for doing just that. To me the key is to remember, and this is true whether you yourself have been in the exact situation or not, is that in the vast majority of situations, only the advisee can know what is truly right for them. In this weekend’s case, I hadn’t experienced the exact set of circumstances. But I have been in similar situations, and understood her agonizing and disgust and desire for decisive action very well. I’ve been there, I get that.
7. I think it’s not imperative to wait to be asked for advice. If you have something you think might be helpful to share, I think it’s fine to offer it. “You know, something that has sometimes been of help to me …”
8. And of course, you must be completely prepared to have your perfectly good advice ignored or discarded. Give it freely, no strings attached. Perhaps the time may not be right; perhaps the person isn’t really ready to deal with the issue. Perhaps the advice isn’t close enough to where the person is to allow him to grasp it. Whatever the reason, it’s critical to remember that you can only give advice–you can’t implement it. Implementation is entirely down to the advisee.
9. But, love sent into the world is never wasted.

This post is illustrated with the SoulCollage card I made today, Understanding + Two paths.

What might have been

… Look for the road that everyone’s on, and don’t follow. –Robert Downie

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope. –Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dear Nicole,

Earlier this week I read your blog for the first time, with pleasure, and the next morning when I woke, I wanted to respond to your post about what might have been.

Perhaps most of us have had those moments in our lives when we look back, and realize that the choices we’ve made, and those that seem to have been made for us, the things that worked out, and all those that didn’t, have carved out the path of our lives, and left many other possibilities behind in the dust.

I love old houses, and I like to think of lives as being like them. I can’t have every feature I love in one old house. I can’t have an English cottage-style house (which I do have) with a red tile roof (which I don’t). In the same way, we can’t cram everything into a single life … we can’t have every experience every time out of the gate. That’s what I tell myself when I think about the experiences I haven’t had this time around–yet. Some doors are now closed–but of course, so many possibilities remain open.

When I read your story, what came to my mind is this … as a new chapter of your life beautifully opens, its blank page ready for you to write it … what if what you and your soulmate have accomplished thus far is exactly what you came here to do? If you could see the plans you both laid out right now–and I assume you did lay them together–what if you’ve passed every test with flying colors? Done exactly what your souls intended?

Now I don’t know, of course, what your souls intended–there’s a lot I don’t know about what my very own soul intended. But to me, this seems like a real possibility. What seems like futility to our finite eyes may not be at all. Sometimes we choose to build the muscles of the soul in unexpected ways. I do know this–what we do with love is never wasted.

I think it’s so important to look back at key junctures, and mourn what might have been, but isn’t. It seems to me a crucial part of being able to freely move forward into the future, leaving the past right where it belongs.

As you close this chapter, though, it seems to me that it might be fair to write at the bottom of the last page–Unqualified success.

This post is illustrated with the SoulCollage card I made this past New Year’s Eve, My path (2014).

How to go with the Flow

I remember when I first started reading about the Law of Attraction, in books by Esther Hicks/Abraham and others, one of the first things that struck me was the emphasis on ease–the implication being that life shouldn’t be a struggle.

But my life was a struggle. I fought for everything, and always had. I thought that’s how it was done. (Maybe you think so too.) Every day I felt like a salmon swimming upstream. I decided I’d like to try living life a different way.

I started setting positive intentions for experiences I wanted in my life to flow to me, using intention to align myself with the Flow, and the Flow with me. I figured that if I did this, I’d no longer feel I was swimming against the current.

This turned out to be quite true.

If you find yourself struggling today, here are some ideas that may help …

1. Be sure your purpose is aligned with the Flow. You may notice that striving for things that are, when you come to examine them, actually unimportant, feels like an uphill battle. After all, there’s nothing natural about a lawn without weeds–or even a lawn, full stop. Maybe there’s a reason you feel like giving up when you try to please a difficult person, or lose those last five pounds, or climb a ‘ladder’ someone else invented. Instead, try getting in touch with the Love inside you, and find a purpose–even a very small one to start with–that springs from that place of love. Then turn your attention to this purpose that’s in alignment with the Flow, away from the goals that aren’t.
2. Plug in to the Flow by getting out in nature. Take a walk. Plant something you find lovely in your garden. Feel the beautiful life Force all around you. Inside you.
3. Be creative–just like the Universe. Cook something delicious, or make a collage. Look at your handiwork, or taste it. Observe that it is good.
4. Try a guided meditation that makes you feel 100% better, and puts you in touch with your higher Self.
5. Listen to uplifting music that raises your vibration. Anael is a favorite of mine.
6. Keep a gratitude journal to help you become aware of all that is right and beautiful and Flowing in your life.
7. Ask a favorite saint, angel, or ascended master for assistance. You may just be amazed at the results. (Doreen Virtue’s Archangels and Ascended Masters is a favorite resource of mine. My copy is seriously worn.)
8. Set some intentions that align you with the Flow, and the Flow with you.

This post is illustrated with the SoulCollage card I made today, One with the Flow.

The lovingkindness meditation

The limits of our goodwill form the ultimate boundaries of our peace of mind, for we cannot achieve peace while aversion is present. –Josh Korda

The lovingkindness meditation is a beautiful–and challenging–practice in which you offer lovingkindness first to yourself, and then to others … those who love you unconditionally, your loved ones, beloved pets, acquaintances, strangers, all sentient beings, relatives, and those who annoy you greatly. (These last two categories can overlap. OK, these last two categories do overlap.) I find it especially easy to offer lovingkindness to those who are now on the other side, as they are now even more purely loving than they were when they were here.

I’ve found in the past that serious resistance can arise to offering lovingkindness to those who seem to be doing their utmost to make my life difficult, or to those who’ve seemed to do so in the past. That’s why I’ve really enjoyed following Beth Terrence’s May is for Metta, which really eases into the lovingkindness practice, and helps build a strong foundation for it–to get in touch with your loving heart energy before you begin.

These are my favorite phrases to use during the meditation …

May I be safe.

May I be happy.

May I be at ease.

May I be peaceful.

May I be healthy and strong.

May I have a calm, clear mind, and a peaceful, loving heart.

May I experience love, joy, and wonder in this life just as it is.

And today may you experience love, joy, and wonder in this life–just as it is.

This post is illustrated with the SoulCollage card I made to represent my 4th chakra companion, a joyful bird, and also to celebrate Hope, that thing with feathers.

How not to judge

A couple of experiences yesterday clearly reminded me how little I like being judged. You know how when you’re on a diet, you start noticing foods that are unnecessarily caloric? I think it may be similar when you’ve released a lot of negativity and judgment … when you run into it, it really starts to stand out in stark relief. It makes you uncomfortable, and it’s clear that it has no value or really, useful purpose.

I was on my way to a friend’s alumni association crawfish boil, stopped at a light, when a woman gestured to me to roll down my window. Generally when people do this, it’s to convey some kind of useful or at least well-intentioned information, like that one of my tires is low.

This time was a bit different. Based on my bumper stickers (“Hope, not fear”) left from the 2008 election cycle, she inquired about my support for the President, and then yelled, “I just wanted to see what stupid looked like!” She then closed her window quite promptly, clearly uninterested in (or perhaps afraid of) my thoughts on her thoughts. I shook my head and muttered to myself that I hadn’t wanted to see what ignorant looked like.

When I arrived at the event, even before I could park my car, I immediately noticed great enthusiasm for wearing the school colors of purple and gold. My friend hadn’t said anything about this, but since purple is one of my favorite colors, I happened to be wearing purple shoes, eyeshadow, lipgloss, and (known only to myself–and now you!) purple underwear. This, it turned out, was insufficient, and others at the table (also alumni of other schools, but unlike me, forewarned) let me know of their superiority in wearing the school colors. Ah, joy.

In the back of my mind for probably months now, I’ve been thinking about how I want to renew my own commitment to eliminating judgment from my life. These experiences were catalysts in helping me decide that the time to do that is now.

I grew up in a family and a church that absolutely prized judgment of others. Though my family read the Bible through each year, Jesus’s words “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matt. 7:1) seemed to register with no one. I remember puzzling over them, trying to imagine what that meant, how that would work.

I became really interested in releasing judgment from my life about 7 years ago when I read Wayne Dyer’s The Power of Intention (published in 2004). He mentions briefly the work of the late Dr. David R. Hawkins, who measured various vibrations, such as those of documents, books, people, and so on. Dr Hawkins’ work indicated that higher vibrations are very powerful, and that one person vibrating at a higher level can balance the negativity of many lower-vibrating people. I found this idea quite exciting, but there was just one problem. I knew I didn’t meet the criteria for the first level. This is what I read …

• One individual who lives and vibrates to the energy of optimism and a willingness to be nonjudgmental of others will counterbalance the negativity of  90,000 individuals who calibrate at the lower weakening levels [which basically consist of fear and lack of integrity].
• One individual who lives and vibrates to the energy of pure love and reverence for all of life will counterbalance the negativity of 750,000 individuals who calibrate at the lower weakening levels.
• One individual who lives and vibrates to the energy of illumination, bliss, and infinite peace will counterbalance the negativity of 10 million people who calibrate at the lower weakening levels (approximately 22 such sages are alive today).
• One individual who lives and vibrates to the energy of grace, pure spirit beyond the body, in a world of nonduality or complete oneness, will counterbalance the negativity of 70 million people who calibrate at the lower weakening levels (approximately 10 such sages are alive today).

Here are two compelling statistics offered by Dr. Hawkins in his 29-year study of the hidden determinants of human behavior:

1. One single avatar living at the highest level of consciousness in this period of history to whom the title Lord is appropriate, such as Lord Krishna, Lord Buddha, and Lord Jesus Christ, would counterbalance the collective negativity of all of mankind in today’s world.
2. The negativity of the entire human population would self-destruct were it not for the counteracting effects of these higher energy fields.

As I read this, I felt I was doing fairly well on the optimism front, but I knew very well I wasn’t nonjudgmental. But I was willing to try.

I started writing in my journal every day my intention to be willing to be in non-judgment of others. I found that this really made a profound difference in my life.

I really love the “willing” part of this statement, by the way. It seems to open up a space where–just like thoughts during meditation–judgment may come up, and then you can meet it with the willingness to release it and be in non-judgment. And as with thoughts during meditation, with practice, judgments become much less frequent.

In my view, releasing judgment doesn’t mean that you’re not aware of what’s really happening … that you don’t understand it, that you don’t know when you’re dealing with someone who’s as trustworthy as a rattlesnake. My interpretation of non-judgment is that you do notice all of these things, and act accordingly–you just don’t feel the need to judge them. Two common responses of mine when judgment comes up is, “We’re all doing our best” (which is so often true) and “No one asked me to judge.” This is also quite true. No one with any moral authority has invited me to judge anyone else–nor will they.

Now I want to take this practice to the next level. I’m not sure yet exactly how I’m going to do that, but I’ve decided that when judgment comes up, I’m going to reiterate my intention then and there …

I want to be willing to be in non-judgment of others.

This post is illustrated with the SoulCollage card I made today, Willingness to be in non-judgment + personal Witness. This could probably also be considered a Waterbearer card. The water and water jug are meant to represent the life-giving nature of creating a higher vibration.

How to be serene in the face of great provocation

Do you have someone in your life who irritates the living hell out of you? Someone who totally knows how to push your buttons? Someone you can’t ban from your life, or get away from, like a coworker? Or a relative who’s going through an awkward stage? Someone whose whole life, perhaps, is an awkward stage?

Your secret is safe with me.

I devised this little exercise, based on the work of Eckhart Tolle, a few years ago when I was in desperate need of it myself. It really made a difference for me, and I hope it will for you too.

1. Find a quiet place that’s conducive to meditation.
2. Visualize yourself in water … at one with the water, in your element, completely comfortable. Feel yourself weightless and transparent.
3. Now visualize the person who irritates the living hell out of you tossing something unpleasant at you. It can be whatever you like–rotten tomatoes, hand grenades, cow patties, what have you.
4. At first, despite the fact that you are now weightless and transparent, you’ll probably flinch, or feel some resistance, or both. That’s OK. Try again. The idea is to allow the unpleasant thing to pass right through you, making no impact whatsoever, not harming you in any way.
5. Continue until you can allow the rotten tomato or what have you to pass through you without feeling any resistance. Excellent!
6. Now, when you are with the person who formerly irritated the living hell out of you, call upon your new practice. Allow their unpleasant words to pass right through, while you remain serene and non-reactive. You can now respond effectively (or not–your choice), unhampered by anger.
7. Tell me it doesn’t feel fabulous.

This post is illustrated with the SoulCollage card I made tonight, Witness (one of the Transpersonal cards).

May all beings be at ease

When I opened my new issue of Shambhala Sun yesterday, I found this poem, which is also a prayer, and loved it. I hope you do too.

Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,

The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born,
May all beings be at ease!
Let none deceive another,
Or despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill-will
Wish harm upon another.

Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings:

Radiating kindness over the entire world
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.

Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down,
Free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this mindfulness.
This is said to be the sublime abiding.

–Buddha, from the Metta Sutta, translated by The Amaravati Sangha

This post is illustrated by my SoulCollage card Bronze Age hearth and home.

How to make a difference

Making a Kiva micro-loan is a fun way to make a difference in the life of another person you’ll likely never meet.

This is Kanyshbubu from Kurgyzstan, the woman whose loan I funded this week along with 22 other lenders (individuals, couples, and groups) from North America, Europe, and Asia. This is her story:

Kanyshbubu is 44 years old, married, and together with her husband is raising four children. Kanyshbubu has a higher education and works in a local school as a librarian. As a main source of income for her family, Kanyshbubu raises livestock, having begun 26 years ago with a livestock purchase of 15,000 som KGS. Thanks to her hard work, Kanyshbubu today has on her homestead: four dairy cows, one horse, and 35 sheep. Monthly income amounts to 13,000 som (KGS).

With the aim of further developing her homestead, Kanyshbubu applied to Bai Tushum Bank for a loan – to purchase calves to increase her livestock count. Kanyshbubu plans to invest income from the loan in further propagating the number of domestic animals, and plans to save money to purchase a plot of land. –kiva.org

Each translated story (you can also read it in the original language version if you’re fluent) is accompanied by a picture, and I use the pictures to help me make a decision. I’ve never had anyone default on a loan, so I consider my method successful–but defaulting is rare. I loan only to women–my way of helping to even the score–and only to individuals. I don’t loan to people who are scowling–this is not uncommon!–and I consider other elements in the photos as well. For example, in this photo, there’s a happy, well-cared-for animal (as well as a happy person),  both of which are right up my alley. When a retail establishment is involved (and there are many of those on Kiva), I consider aesthetics. I love someone who’s making the world a more beautiful place! I also consider other values, like the quality of the merchandise (will it last?), whether someone is buying organic fertilizer (like manure), engaging in reuse (like making discarded coconut shells into charcoal), and so on.

Those are aspects that appeal to me, but there’s something for everyone. Kiva has lending teams, some of which are based on shared affiliation or belief (alma mater, religious denomination, political party or candidate, etc.), and some lend based on theme, such as loans that are about to expire, green loans, animal-related loans, etc. I’m a member of the Women Empowering Women team.

The way Kiva works is …

• The website presents loans that have already been made by many different micro-lenders around the world. When you participate, you take over a portion of the loan (the basic increment is $25, and you can assume multiple increments of the same loan if they’re available and you want to), freeing up the original funds so the lender can make another loan sooner than they’d otherwise be able to. This allows them to help more people.
• Micro-loans do typically carry a higher rate of interest than you may be used to paying as they’re expensive to administer. However, all the evidence points to micro-loans being beneficial to those who receive them, and being an important stepping stone out of poverty.
• You assume the risk of not getting paid back, which is minimal on Kiva. This risk is associated with both the individual or group being loaned to not repaying the loan, as well as the micro-lender itself failing. Statistics on the associated micro-lender are available on the same page as information about the individual or group. So far, I’ve never had a loan default, though I’ve had a number where payments were late. Right now I have one that’s delinquent, but so far, these situations have always resolved themselves. I did once make a loan where the micro-lender was having difficulty, and I was repaid.
• If all goes well, and it almost always does, you get your principal back (the interest goes to the original lender), a bit at a time. You can then loan again, or get your money back (via PayPal). You can also give Kiva gift cards to others, so they can experience the fun of making their first Kiva loan.
• You aren’t required to donate to Kiva, but you have the option of making a donation to help cover operating costs each time you make a loan. Sometimes these donations are matched.

So far I’ve made loans to women in 13 different countries on 3 different continents–Africa, Asia, and South America. (I guess as I think about it, I’m reaching people in more locations than that with my blog–30 different countries on 5 continents as of today–hello, Austria! And thank you, widely-read English language.) I find it another exciting way to impact other women around the world–and I hope you will too!

(You don’t need an invitation to join Kiva, but I’d be happy to send you one if you’d like. Just leave a comment with your e-mail address. If you want your e-mail address kept private, just note that as well and I’ll take care of it.)

How to release bitterness

Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies. –Nelson Mandela

As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison. –Nelson Mandela

I well remember the moment I realized I was, in fact, bitter. My father had frequently accused me of it–akin to sucker-punching someone and then later accusing them of being bruised–but I didn’t take him seriously.

The moment came in my Jewish-American Lit class. I was an undergrad, probably about 20 at the time. We were reading Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus, and one of my classmates commented on the protagonist’s being bitter. I responded that no, he was perfectly normal, with just a little resentment about x, y, and z.

When all my classmates seemed to agree that Neil Klugman was bitter, and only I thought he was perfectly normal, I had an aha moment. Normal for me was bitter. I’d been marinating in bitter for pretty much my entire life thus far–it was my milieu.

I also remember very well the moment I decided that something had to change. It was years later, I was still explosively angry, and of course that anger had a way of showing up out of all proportion to the current situation.

I was at the big post office at the airport buying stamps (God love you if you’re old enough to remember when we used to have to buy stamps all the time, so we could pay our bills and write letters to people). When I left, my stamps set off the alarm. I took them back to the cashier to have the sensor deactivated. I then left again–and set off the alarm again. At which point I lost it–in a way that seemed quite normal to me, and was very consistent with what I’d witnessed growing up. But the wide eyes up and down the long line of those waiting for their own stamps clearly indicated my reaction wasn’t proportional to what had occurred.

At that moment I decided I was quite tired of carrying that much anger around, and something had to change. Perhaps you’ve decided that too.

The answer, of course, is forgiveness–but it’s not what you think.

For years I resisted forgiveness, because it wasn’t what I thought either. It seemed weak. Not at all–forgiveness requires strength.

Forgiveness is not letting anyone off the hook. I think the first, most important thing to realize it that’s it’s not you or I who has anyone on the hook to start with. Yes, you have been wronged. But (and hopefully you are relieved to hear this!) you are not the ultimate arbiter of justice.

My belief is that a universal and inescapable law of karma exists, bigger than you and me, bigger than all the wrongdoers and evildoers, bigger than this little planet where it all went down.

And that law says that if you hurt someone, there will be consequences for you. What you do will come back to you, no exceptions. When you throw someone’s life off course, there will be major consequences for you. Those consequences could last multiple lifetimes. If what you put out there is unpleasant, what comes back to you will be equally unpleasant–most likely even more so. And if you put love out there, it will come back to you multiplied. You either pay your karmic debts, or game over. Those are the choices.

The universe says, I got it.

So your concern is you, not the other guy. And it really all comes down to this–are you going to let what happened ruin your life and your health, or are you not? It is just that simple.

Forgiveness is taking your power back. If there is bitterness in your heart, that is like giving a piece of your power away to someone else. Someone who very likely should have less power, not more. Forgiving fully enables you to inhabit the fullness of your own personal power. And letting go of bitterness is a decision–one only you can make.

For me, the process looks like this …

1. Understand that you are bitter. That’s not mother’s milk you’re soaking in!
2. Understand that bitterness doesn’t serve you. It is not now, and never will be, your friend.
3. Decide to release it. I’m not going to tell you it’s easy, but I am going to tell you it is so, so worth it!
4. If you’re not sure how, ask for information about the right tool for you to flow to you. Information is abundant, one of the easiest things to manifest. Breathwork (sometimes referred to as rebirthing) is a tool that has worked for me in letting things go. I’ve done the therapy thing twice–once in my 20s and once in my 40s, once for each parent it seems–but for me it was a tool for understanding and making sense of things, not necessarily for releasing bitterness. Meditation is also a wonderful tool for letting go of unhelpful things like perfectionism and judgment, and brings you into the present and out of the past. I started meditating after I went through this process.
5. As you release bitterness, watch the importance of your ‘enemy’ shrink. What a small person he turned out to be!
6. Now that you have it back, get on with your beautiful life.

This post is illustrated with my SoulCollage card Forgiveness + Nelson Mandela. Nelson Mandela is a true hero to me, not least because he forgave so well. I was inspired by mindlovemisery’s Prompt 46–Bitter Loathing.