Tag Archives: release

A Call to Healers to Change the World

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New Year`s Morning

What an unbelievable week.

Like all of you, I lost my footing when I heard about Monday’s bombing at the Boston Marathon.  Besides having friends and loved ones running in the race I was just exhausted by the sheer enormity of pain and suffering involved.

This is pain and suffering of a global nature.

I’m not able to cast blame. I’m not able to seek revenge. It’s no longer in my nature to see the world as Black and White, Good or Evil. I see us all as humans in need of love and compassion and healing. 

Without those things, we allow pain and suffering to continue.

I know that such suffering is world-wide. It’s an epidemic. This is what happens when countries are at war over ideologies and beliefs that are not ours to “own.”

Healers. It’s imperative you do your work in the world.

Lightworkers, clear your energy, ground yourselves and continue the work you’ve begun. The only way to stop this madness is to focus on the light.

Stop denying your worth. Refuse to play small, or hide out because of fear. Fear perpetuates more fear and suffering. It’s in the light that we heal.

Lift up those you find irritating to the light. Let them be seen as reflections of the Divine. When you can heal those small irritations in your life, you can, absolutely start finding the healing in the world at large. Once we’re each, individually, clear and peaceful, the world will be made peaceful. It all starts within.

photo by: Anne J.

You Can’t be the CEO of Your Own Life if You’re Trying to be CEO of the World ~

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Who would you be if you weren’t taking care of everyone else?

This sense that we need to control the world is often referred to as co-dependence.  At least that’s what I’m told.

I’ve denied the co-dependent moniker my entire life. It just wasn’t me after all. I believe that people should live and let live. I’m turned on but the idea that we’re all doing the best we can with what we’ve got.

In theory.

In practice, I’ve been running around like some crazy air traffic controller – trying to direct all the lives in my orbit. What does that look like? Well, in my head, it’s a smooth stream of orchestration – war-gaming outcomes that will have the most positive effect on everyone else in my world, and by extension – the world at large.

For more than 40 years I’ve been trying to make someone I don’t even KNOW feel better about herself. I’ve been working hard to make everything okay for my birth-mom. Add to that my need to make my parents, siblings, friends, cousins, co-workers “okay” (whatever that is) and it because a pretty heavy bag to lug around.

The wild part is that I didn’t consciously accept this as my truth.

I’ve been spiritual journeying for a while now. I’ve been to the self-help section of the library and bookstore thousands of times. I’ve participated in the healing work and I’ve agreed to “Let Go and Let God.” So it didn’t enter my mind that I was on this control-freak mission to be the CEO of the world.

In the meantime, being CEO of my life took a back seat. So far back that if you asked me 3 months ago (as someone did) what made me happy, I’d look like a deer that was just asked to calculate Pi. I had no idea. the need to control things was disguised in my mind as my need to help others. You and I both know this is classic “healer penalty” stuff and I’d fallen right into the quicksand without a second thought.

That’s the thing about life – there’s always something new to learn if we’re able to get present.

Not being present is a great way to come up with excuses and duck out of our responsibility to ourselves.

I’m willing to keep up the journey to self-awareness and truth. Even when it knocks me for a loop. The thing is, whenever I clear this type of inner misunderstanding up – my outer world clears up too.

So I ask you – who would you be if you weren’t trying to be CEO of the World?

 

Miracles and Manifestation – Why doesn’t it work for me?

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A couple times a week I get an email from someone who wants to know what they’re doing wrong.

They’ve been on a spiritual path for a little while (anywhere from 3 weeks to 30 years) and they’re reading books, taking classes, learning various healing modalities and esoteric arts and they are doing what they believe is RIGHT.

Still, things aren’t where they want them to be.

Maybe that means they’re still in a job they hate, or they’re dealing with family members that won’t stop nagging them.  Maybe it’s a health issue or infertility or lack of love or lack of money.

Some days are better than others, and they are doing EVERYTHING they’re SUPPOSED to do to change things up and take responsibility and own it and be spiritual – but they are not seeing results.

To make it worse, they run into people throughout their travels who seem to say one prayer and voila! they get a really cool sign from the Universe that the prayer was heard and the tides are turning.

This makes my writers fume.

Sure, they feel guilty fuming, but still, the fume is there.  With a little underlying “why me?” and a decent shake of “God doesn’t love me, or I haven’t apparently earned peace, yet.”

Is it true?

Are there people who just “get” miracles and instant manifestation because they’re better, while the rest of us have more hoops to jump through (because we were made fundamentally flawed in some way?)

Think about it for a minute.

Now FEEL about it.

Does your heart tell you that there are people who are more than and others who are less than?

Not your head – your heart.

While you might be able to wrap your head around the idea that “hard work” is necessary for success, or even the idea that some of us are just naturally born at the back of the pack, your heart can’t fathom it.

Your heart is right.

What is true is that if you’re feeling ‘left out’ of the MIRACLE happenings – your head is running the show.  Your head has a list of what is an “acceptable” and an “Unacceptable” miracle.  Your heart sees everything as miraculous.

What most of us miss (oh boy, I’m guilty of this) is that miracles are occurring even when you’re not seeing shooting stars, or finding feathers or coins or whatever else you presume to the “sign” of your miracle.

Some miracles are in the space you’ve been left to find your way.  Sometimes not having something happen is the gift and manifestation.  Nothing happens without Divine timing.  Our timing is rarely Divine – and it’s almost always rushed and on a deadline.

The thing about miracles is that they are both everyday and Divine. Miracles happen in their own way and look the way they look (or sound the way they sound) without any direction from us.  Over time you might get more and more specific about your signs,  but your miracles occur when you RELEASE YOUR ATTACHMENT to how – how they look, how they show up; how they work.

Miracles are about LETTING GO.

The Miracle is your ability to let go.

Can you let go?

Can you find peace in the moment to lean into your heart’s desire?

I’m sure I’m not the only person to let you know that NOTHING outside of you will bring you peace or happiness.  However, you already have every single thing you need for peace and happiness.  It’s inside.  That’s the miracle.

 

Letting go of Stuff

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I have a love-hate relationship with stuff.

I’ve got part of my Mom’s sentimentality that can remember who gave me something and when and it brings back all the memories related to that point in time.

I’ve also inherited a good portion of my Dad’s practicality.  I can hold onto memories in my head, I don’t need to cart around boxes of stuff to have a connection in my life.

Michael and I just moved.  The move came faster than we expected.  I didn’t have two months to stress and moan about packing and how much I hate moving.

Let me back up a bit.

We’ve known for a  year that our lease would be up at the end of August.  We’ve known for 3+ months that Nat would be heading to college at the end of August.  So we thought we’d get a head start on looking for a new home, closer to Michael’s job and with more space for the dogs.

As we ramped up to this decision I meditated and prayed and spent time on my yoga mat setting the intention that THIS move would happen with ease and grace.  (No matter that I’ve moved more than a dozen times in the last 15 years – I’ve ALWAYS hated it).

Our realtor(r) set up a search and we found our perfect place in the first go.  We saw it the following weekend and put in an application that day.  The following Friday the Derecho moved in and knocked out power in our old place.  We signed our lease that Sunday. (yes, 2 months prior to our lease ending at our old house).  We slept on the floor for two nights because the new place had air conditioning, the power was out at the old house, and it was close to 105 outside.

It was hot and heavy.

Then we just started moving.  My brother in law pitched in on a sweaty Fourth of July and we got our bed and the majority of our furniture into the new home.

Since then it’s been a steady stream of packing and moving.  Trips in our cars, a rental truck and then another big thrust this coming weekend to hopefully finish the job.  (Still a month early – talk about ease and grace)

In the process, we’ve both released STUFF.

Desks, tables, Natalie’s girlhood bed, pictures, filing cabinets, and for me – more than 25 years of journals and notebooks.  Those notebooks were filled with repetitive woes and dreams.  In more than one notebooks I’d jotted down the same product and service ideas – year after year after year.  The thing is, after I wrote it down, I never moved forward.  The stuff was holding me back I think.  I thought I could “always come back to that” but I never did.  So I’ve released that stuck stuff and am committing to taking action.*

To the Next Home

We have a donor organization picking up the stuff tomorrow.  Although we needed to move it out of the house yesterday.  We neatly stacked furniture and taped boxes.  I started covering the stuff with plastic in case of rain and as I was doing so, the neighbors started coming round.

I left a note:

Dear Neighbors: If there is something you NEED, please feel free to help yourself.  However, our intention is to donate these items to people and organizations who are in need.  Therefore, please leave the pile neat and orderly so that the donor organization can easily take what you have left behind.  We thank you for the respect of these things.  Sincerely, Peggie and Michael

I woke up this morning realizing that what I intend is what happens.  So therefore my old stuff is now being lovingly appreciated by someone who can use it.

I realize that the stuff we left behind is only part of the story and our journey.

I’m glad to be in my new home that has more light, new appliances, a huge space for the dogs to play and plenty of room for my business and me to grow.

What about you? What can you release that’s been holding you back?  (and how do you feel about that?)

 

* Just so you know, I didn’t donate the notebooks and journals.  Those were hand shredded by me and left for the recycling company.

Freeing the Soul to Grow

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“Compassion needs space because love needs a place of unimpeded encounter between grace and nature.  In a world crowded by information, we need to find space for the soul to grow.” ~ From Compassion: Living in the Spirit of St. Francis by Ilea Delio, OSF

Finding space for the soul to grow?

Lately I’ve been in a Spring cleaning mode.

Could be the early onset of Spring here in Northern Virginia, or the knowledge that we’ll be moving at the end of the Summer.  Still, the urge to release what isn’t serving me seems to be stronger than I recall it being in previous years.

I’m taking time to look through everything that I’ve been carting from home to apartment to house over the past 10 moves and am really sitting and letting my heart release what no longer is needed.

Much of the stuff I’m releasing are clothes, jewelry and books.

These have been talismans for so long.

I’ve held onto them like Dumbo had his feather – believing that if I didn’t have that “lucky” shirt or book full of wisdom at my fingertips — that I’d somehow be ‘less than.’  As though my power and my value were determined by the things that I had.

I’ve also held onto gifts and doo-dads from people I love and have loved.  I’ve always had a deep attachment to things given to me, even casually, by those I love.  The cast off match box or the button found on a walk have been touchstones, reminders of the person.  Sometimes I hold the doo-dad well after the relationship has run it’s course.  Other times I know that I don’t need the lapel pin, missing all the shiny parts and the rhinestones to remind me of my Grandmother.  She is always with me, in the scent of rose that comes out of nowhere, somehow mixed with the scent of stale cigarette smoke.  The pin won’t be worn and it won’t be put on display.  It’s time to let it go.

Releasing in this way is cathartic and important.

It’s also a great stress reliever.  I never realized before how holding onto to so much – so many memories and naming myself the keeper of the flame was weighing me down.  The daily living with it all was so ‘normal’ that I almost didn’t realize that the stuff had more power in my life than I did.

Letting things go – consciously and compassionately is such a freeing process.

I realize now that doing it is freeing my soul to grow.

What frees your soul?