How to live a charmed life in 2010

I'm going to share with you the simple sentence that made all the difference to me. In one decade, it has taken me from willing my own death* to leading quite a charmed life.

It is the simplest thing in the world. Yet I find it to be tantalizingly difficult.

Ready?

I mean, are you really ready?

OK -- here it is.

I already am all that I seek.

That's it! Feel charmed now?

Maybe I should say more.

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In the early 2000s, I began studying energy work under a modern-day mystic named Ethel. My classmates and I became intimate friends and supporters of each other, and we continued to meet and learn for 5 years. I am convinced that my time with Ethel and these women made the difference between the devastating '90s and the uber-blessed '00s.

Too often, in our prayers or meditations or supplications, we dwell on what we DON'T have. Implied or explicit, when you say, "I want health. I want an end to money woes. I want fertility. I want success. I want love," you are coming from a place of lack. You feel powerless, at the mercy of God/fate/the Universe. You are small and alone and limited.

But there is another way, a way that doesn't come from lack, from limitation, from the small you. Instead, it comes from abundance, from the Unlimited, from the big, connected You. Which is, I believe, the REAL You. (I wrote briefly about about small lori and Big Lori here.)

My previous prayers were prayers of contraction. "Please let me get this job. Please bring me a soul mate. Please give me a positive pee stick. Please make me healthy." Oprah and The Secret may espouse the Law of Attraction, but know that in drawing something to you, you are pulling in, contracting.

Contracting takes place in the realm of duality (healthy/sick, employed/unemployed, BFP/BFN). Expansion, on the other hand, goes up a level, if you will, to the realm of unity. Contraction assumes what you want is separate from you. Expansion acknowledges that nothing is separate from you –- it is only unmanifested because of limits to your ability to live consciously.

How about in 2010, playing instead with expansion? With how connected you are to all. How about realizing -- or just preTENDing to realize, at first, that you already are all that you seek.

Notice that it doesn't say you already HAVE all that you seek. This thought is not about doing, about acquiring, but about BEing. Being the Big You.

So get a bunch of sticky notes, and write the phrase on them. Stick them on your mirror, your dashboard, your kitchen cupboard, your computer monitor. Let it seep into you by osmosis, effortlessly. Become acquainted with the thought.

Next, just pretend. Play what if. What if your heart's desire was not separate from you? What if You are so big that nothing is separate from you? What if You already are all that you seek?

And if you already meditate or do yoga or set intentions, try this one: It is my intention to remember that I already am all that I seek. Dwell on this for a few minutes daily.

Commit to this thought for 2010 and see what happens.

Here is an expansion meditation I wrote about early in my blogging days. It is aimed at the adoption wait, but it can be applied to any situation where you wish to manifest what you seek by simply acknowledging your awesomeness, your bigness.

Consider yourself charmed.

* you might recognize this as the Creme de la Creme 2009 entry of my other blog, Drama 2B Mama.

Image: Clint Sprott's Fractal Collection

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Festival: Judgy McJudgerson

Marni's version
My version

I was bothered by our night at the Festival even as the next morning dawned. Regarding our interloper, I was incensed. I was indignant. I was irritated way out of proportion to anything Marni had done, any fallout that came from our interactions with her.

So why the lingering, massive annoyance? The only thing Marni may have been guilty of was an astounding (but harmless) ignorance of social boundaries. According to me.

As I drove the kids to school, I mentally listed her transgressions:

• She made arrangements with Tessa rather than with me.
• She smoked.
• Her boyfriend was intoxicated.
• My children viewed their affection as a prelude to "doing sex."
• Once we got moving, she delayed us with popcorn.
• She left her kids in my care. Twice.
• She bought things for Tessa and Reed that I would not have bought them.
• She indulged my children at every turn.
  

And yet. She was nice. She was guileless.

Hers were sins of a young, eager puppy -- untempered exuberance. A zest for life. What's so wrong with that? Living in the moment is something I strive to do. I meet someone who does just that and...?

I feel superior to her.

Slowly, the accusatory finger that made me feel so self-righteous began to point toward me. What about my sins?

I may have seemed, in contrast, to be a snobby, uptight, fun-dousing wet rag. My sin was one of arrogance. Yet she didn't judge me.

After I deposited the children at school, I reviewed the evening in my mind, this time from Marni's point of view.

And doing so gave me clarity.

I concluded that the nagging feeling I'd carried into the new day wasn't due to Marni's behavior. It was that my sin far outweighed hers.

And once I was able to coalesce that thought, to bring out that feeling with awareness and examine it in daylight, I could forgive the sinner inside me.

And be grateful to my interloper.

Show & Tell: Kindness comes in handy

This Show & Tell was inspired by Mel's Gentle vs Wicked post, and supplied* by my long-time teacher (of energetic healing and conscious living), Ethel. These are two of the many wise women in my life.

The message that goes with this video reads:

As long as you are kind and there is love in your heart
A thousand hands will naturally come to your aid

* Ethel made me aware of this video; hers are not any of the hands :-).

See what my classmates are showing and telling at Mel's Show & Tell. And show something yourself (if you're not already IN the class, you can join -- we're a very nice group).

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The Space Between

I got the message loud and clear that I need to learn to deal with suspense.

If I were more dramatic, I might have titled this post, "My son does not have a brain tu.mor."

Now YOU have to deal with suspense.

The lesson started benignly enough. A company asked to put a product link on my blogs for a fee. We negotiated a price and I put up the link. I gave the company my PayPal information to collect payment.

It didn't come.

It didn't come.

It didn't come.

Hmmmm. I thought. What could be going on? My mind then went to all the things that could have happened. The company backed out. They were fooling me. I messed up the negotiations. The CEO was arrested as part of a scam and now my blog would be implicated.

Hmmmm. I thought. What was really going on? Not with the situation, but with me. I was hurtling to conclusions. I was projecting. I was, perhaps, creating realities I didn't want simply with the power of my thoughts.

I decided to be more conscious about it. I really don't know anything became my mantra whenever I began to feel unsettled about the missing funds. An even deeper inner voice also told me to learn to be in the in between place. And that this is very important.

The next day, I had another chance. An article I'd submitted has been accepted to a magazine I read and respect. In fact, the editor wanted me to ADD to the piece. She asked via email if the piece was still available and if I would consider lengthening it. If so, she would send additional questions.

I responded immediately. Yes! Please send questions and I'll rework.

A day went by.

No response.

Another day.

The mind-chatter began: The editor changed her mind. She found a better article. The magazine folded. I had a typo in my response and the editor vowed not to work with anyone who doesn't proof their emails.

The calming voice kicked in. I really don't know anything. Except that I am in the in-between place. I'd better get comfy here. I will keep being presented with this lesson until I master it.

The email arrived. We are on track.

Time for the SAT of cosmic lessons (there's a reason I'm shying away from the more obvious metaphor of a "final exam").

Reed complained of headache Friday night. Intense, "stabbing" headaches in the back. No other symptoms, no fever. Just a headache that woke him from a deep sleep that night. Twice.

Early Saturday morning I got an on-call nurse on the line who told us to bring Reed in as soon as Urgent Care opened. Rob did that while I stayed home with a sleeping Tessa.

I did the stupid Dr Google thing (why can we not refrain from doing so?) and thus commenced the mind-chatter, which sounded like this:

• it'snotasinusinfectionbecauseifitwereitwouldbeinthefront
• it'snotanyotherinfectionsbecauseifitwerehewouldhaveafever
• it'snotdehyddrationbecausewehadhimdrinkwater
• it'snotsunstrokebecausehewasn'tinthesun
• itmustbesomethingreallyreallytrulytrulybadthatwillchangemylife
• irememberthatoneguywhosedaughterdiedofabraintumorwithindaysofdiagnosis
• iwouldwanttodiekillmenow
• idon'twanttobecomeacausecelebreinBlogWorldbecauseihavetragedyinmylife
  
• andhowcouldIhavetweetedjustyesterdaythatmylifewassowonderful?
• hahathegodsarelaughingatmyhubris

I began to quell the voice, repeating my mantra, I really don't know anything. I had some success; I found some mind silence.

Then Tessa woke up. And the voice INside my head became a voice OUTside my head.

"What will happen, Mama? Will he get a shot? Will he die? What will we do if he dies?"

This was actually good for me. For I said, out loud, "We really don't know anything. Let's just sit with what is and we will handle what comes."

And, I breathed. I stayed present. Right at this moment -- the only moment there really is -- I was breathing and loving and aware of my family. I really don't know anything.

After about 2 hours of being in the space between, Rob called to tell me that the doctor said that sinus pain sometimes telegraphs to the back of the head. Mo.trin and some allergy medication is all that was called for.

My boys came home and I gave them both the biggest hugs of my life.

I don't think the outcome was good just because I passed the test; I don't believe it works that way. Rather, I think that I had, at a soul level, asked for opportunities to play in the space between, to get a little familiar with it so that I won't freak out every time I find myself there.

And I got my wish.

***

Another day, another chance to vote for Weebles Wobblog. Please click on the blue button, scroll down to the Most Inspiring category, and vote for this blog, currently in 4th place. (You can also vote for Luna in the same category, and for Eden in the Most Provocative Blog category and now Melissa in the Blog I've Learned The Most From category.) Rock the ALI vote!

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Perfect Moment Monday: Solstice*

(Perfect Moment Monday now posts on Sunday evening with links accepted through Tuesday.)

Perfect Moment Monday is more about noticing a perfect moment than about creating one. Perfect moments can be momentous or ordinary or somewhere in between.

We gather here once a week to engage in mindfulness about something that is right with our world. Everyone is welcome to join. Details on how to participate are at the bottom of this post, complete with bloggy bling.

Please visit the links of the participants at the bottom.

Here's a perfect moment from my week. I hope you'll share yours, too.

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Solstices and equinoxes make me mindful of the cycles of nature, the rhythms of the earth and the heavens. It is all so outrageously big, so brilliantly designed, so cosmically perfect, and *I* am a part of it!

(Reposting my thoughts from a previous solstice.)

From Latin: sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still).

The sun stands still. Today there is a brief period of suspension, like the planetary version of the top of the breath after a 6-month long inhale. And tomorrow the sun reverses into a 6-month long exhale.

Each summer and winter solstice, I think back to a class I took while I lived in Japan. I filled my weekends that year dabbling in shiatsu, cooking, Japanese language and macrobiotics.

I've remembered the most about the macrobiotics class. As the sensei introduced us to the way of life, he explained a few fundamentals. The one that goes with solstice, in my mind, was this:

When something reaches its zenith, it begins to become its opposite.

This, to me, is profound. We reach the peak of summer, and we then head toward winter. Once the darkest part of the night passes, day advances.

There is a constant ebb and flow. Happiness and sadness. Abundance and scarcity. Even life and death.

When something reaches its zenith, it begins to become its opposite.

*At 11:45 pm Saturday night, MDT.

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Once you make a Perfect Moment post, you can place this button on your blog.

I Capture
Perfect Moments.

Now. What Perfect Moment have you recently been aware of? Be sure to visit these moments and share the bloggy love.

***

Another day, another chance to vote for Weebles Wobblog. Please click on the blue button, scroll down to the Most Inspiring category, and vote for this blog, currently in 3rd place. (You can also vote for Luna in the same category, and for Eden in the Most Provocative Blog category and now Melissa in the Blog I've Learned The Most From category.) Rock the ALI vote!

Here's a button if you'd like to help me make a good showing against some fabulous blogs. Not that I'm competitive or anything. OK, maybe inspiringly competitive.

(To those of you with the button: I really won't hurt the cute puppy.)

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Perfect Moment Monday: Saluting the Sun

Perfect Moment Monday is more about noticing a perfect moment than about creating one. Perfect moments can be momentous or ordinary or somewhere in between.

We gather here once a week to engage in mindfulness about something that is right with our world. Everyone is welcome to join. Details on how to participate are at the bottom of this post, complete with bloggy bling.

Please visit the links of the participants at the bottom.

Here's a perfect moment from my week. I hope you'll share yours, too.
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It was a glorious spring day, 72 perfect degrees. I had one more hour before my children would be home to finish up some work and then do some sort of exercise.

I scrapped the work. It would wait.

I put on my iPod (with a great new CD I'll review on AllThumbs soon) and headed to a flat spot in the backyard. Without a yoga mat, I guided myself on the grass through some vinyasa flows, where one yoga pose flows mindfully (with the breath) into the next.

Image: aishazahir

The blossoms are just out on the trees. My lungs are clear, and I have no hint of the hay fever that plagued me as a child. The scent was intoxicatingly sweet as I breathed in the very fertility of nature around me and grounded my hands and feet into the spring-soft grass.

My skin felt caressed by the warm sun. I took in the blue of sky above and the verdant earth below. Birds chirped at me, annoyed that I was interrupting their worm collecting efforts. I heard two squirrels chasing each other up and down a blossoming tree.

I saluted the sun several times, adding in variations to focus on all my body parts. I was wholly me AND wholly an integral part of the vast All.

Moments of heightened awareness and bliss. And I noticed them. Sa-weet.
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I Capture
Perfect Moments.

Now. What Perfect Moment have you recently been aware of? Be sure to visit these moments and share the bloggy love.


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Show & Tell: These are a few of my favorite things

...all mixed together.



My love for Weird Al and the Brady Bunch are legendary. I also love this tune by the one-hit-wonders, Men Without Hats (remember them?)

Follow-up to my last week's Show & Tell. Yes, Mr Roads could have been more encouraging of my (very) latent artistic talent. I should have made more clearly this point: I allowed Mr Roads' message to implant an untruth that grew in my psyche for 30 years until I finally examined its veracity. What a shame that I lost out on years of pleasure because I let someone else's opinion of me trump my own.

See what the cool kids are showing and telling over at Mel's.

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I'll have mine in June 09.
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For my friends who wait

There is a lot of waiting and anxiety in our community right now. Today I have what I hope is a calming passage, a way to rise above the daily disquiet and see that there IS a big picture that is being composed moment by moment.

From Chapter One – A Mystical Path to Motherhood

Enter a little puff of smoke.

As the sun finally set on the summer solstice that year, we stood before the snapping pine in the fire pit, about to enter the sweat lodge again -- only this time with no demands for a solution. An energetic healer had told us to make the list, burn it and have faith. On that paper was written our wishes for a child:

1) a spiritually advanced soul
2) a soul with something to teach us
3) a soul we have something to teach
4) a soul with enough flexibility to enjoy and benefit from our lifestyle
and one last wish for all three of us:
5) the financial needs for this family to be met

Letting go of the physical need to have biological children sent a swift pulse of liberation through my body so suddenly that my eyes twitched. Watching those wishes go up in smoke, everything at last made perfect sense. I’d always felt destined for a more mystical path to motherhood.

George looked at me and whispered, “Did you feel that?” I had: a slight pulling sensation from the smoke floating away.

“You know,” I whispered back, “I’ve been thinking about adoption my entire life.” George closed his eyes and inhaled a deeper breath than he’d taken in months. His sigh captured the unspoken truth that stood between us -- his desperate guilt and my hidden disappointment -- and released it into the fire. We were moving on.

Every test to gain permission from local, state and federal authorities to adopt a child was as anxiety-ridden as a prenatal exam. Yet there was no due date to plan the rest of our lives around. We were strapped to an emotional roller coaster: filling out forms; waiting; more forms; more waiting; being judged on paper as to whether we were fit to parent. The waiting required absolute submission to the divine, for adoption is a manifestation of the soul, a birth of the heart. You consciously will a child into your life, and there is magic in it.

Mysteriously, that little puff of smoke found its way from the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming all the way to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

-- Kari Grady Grossman, Bones That Float

Since I've excerpted the excerpt, you can read more here.

Sending you wisps of peace. You know who you are.

***

Tomorrow's the last day for limerick entries. Voting begins soon so get rhyming!

Snippets from a college reunion weekend

So if you read last week's post, you know I brought Tessa on a 7 hour drive to a small town in Kansas for the biennial Swedish Harvest festival and my college's homecoming.

Before I share random thoughts, I would first like to thank the zit that accompanied me. The last time such a sub-dermal chud erupted on my chin was several years ago, so it clearly had been saving up for this special occasion. Its timing was perfect -- at full bloom the day of the alumni parade. It made me feel not so lonely. Thanks. Really.

1. I kicked Tessa out of the car at a truck stop.
Tessa did well for about 10 of the 14 driving hours. But one time she got so upset (from boredom, in spite of the bag-o'-activities I packed) that she wouldn't stop wailing and complaining, which was really annoying to our fellow traveler and to me.

So I pulled over at a truck stop and did some Love & Logic. I got her out of the car, got back in myself and locked the doors. I told her she was welcome back in when she calmed down and was ready to be pleasant. It was 40 degrees and she was in short sleeves, so I thought it would be quick. But Tessa is nothing if not stubborn.

Every 3 minutes or so I'd crack the window and dangle her sweatshirt, asking if she was ready to calm down. She'd step away and glare. And then resume wailing.

It took about 20 minutes for her to say she was ready to be pleasant.

I held her for awhile, and she WAS pleasant the rest of the trip.

2. A former beau
On the way out, I stopped to see a guy I dated my junior year, Tim. I last saw Tim about 10 years ago. Despite the fact that I was (and am) happily married, at that time I imagined how my life would have been had things worked out between us. And I imagined he did, too.

But this time I didn't. My life is engrained now, grooved. It is what it is, and I realize now my life could be no other way. I imagined he felt the same.

I enjoyed catching up -- he's looking mighty fine. His daughter and Tessa are now BFFs.

3. Old insecurities
I watched the harvest parade with a group of alums. Most of them graduated 2-3 years before I did, and I didn't feel quite "in" with this group of about 50. I didn't anticipate feeling like an intruder, an outsider. Nothing anyone did made me feel that way -- just my old patterns.

This says a lot more about me than about anyone else, I think.

4. Aging
Everyone else looked so much older than I do! And I bet each person thought the exact same thing. Our own perceptions are so unreliable.

5. Another road not taken
I stayed with my dear friends Jen and Jake, two people from bigger cities who met and married during college and remained in Lindsborg. I got a glimpse of what it would have been like to build a life in this small town, a place where you don't lock your car or home, where you get just one TV station, and where it takes 20 minutes to walk a couple of blocks because you stop to chat with each of the neighbors you see. A place where your kids are safe from fast cars and strangers.

It was charming. I could see me doing it in another reality.

6. Twang.
When I lived in Lindsborg for 4 years, I didn't even notice the country twang. Like the extra Rs, as in "I was warshing my truck the other day." Or the drawn out cadence, as in "HOW ya LIKin' LIFE in DINver?"

7. Mean Mommy
The afternoon of the big football game, Tessa accompanied me to a wireless hotspot in the campus cafeteria for a brief check of email. But apparently I took too long because she slid into a tantrum. I packed up as quickly as I could, but she was too far gone. She wouldn't come with me, so I headed across campus to the car, knowing she would follow me and my rolling laptop.

She did, trailing and wailing at the top of her lungs, "YOU'RE A MEAN MOMMY!"

We made quite an impression, I'm afraid, on all the people heading to the stadium for the game.

And we missed the game in lieu of a nap.

8. Going unconscious.
It's interesting that I experienced homecoming weekend while immersing myself in Root Chakra (tribal) and Sacral Chakra (relationships) energies. For it allowed me to revisit a time when I was largely unconscious of my motivations at a time when I am becoming more and more conscious.

Still, though, I found myself falling into old habits. I hung back for fear that I would be judged and deemed too something or not something enough. I was more uncomfortable approaching a group of women than a group of men, because I naturally assumed the women wouldn't let me in. Haven't gotten to why I thought that yet.

I noticed a lot of posturing and in response I played the game, too:

Lynette: I left my tenured professorship 4 years ago to become a stock analyst at Hoity Toity & Associates.
Me: Really? I had a student from the Osaka Hoity Toity office when I taught in Japan.

Not to add to the conversation, but to show that I, too, had done something interesting with my life.

At least I am becoming conscious of my unconsciousness.

9. The real homecoming
It was good to come home. To Roger and Reed.

What I did on a dare...and it felt great.

I'm slow to the party, but awhile back Angela Klocke started her Triple Dare Tuesday meme. This particular week the Triple Dare was to do something totally new.

Which I did this afternoon.

After a workout at the gym, I walked to the adjacent Sunflower Market. I bought my groceries and walked back to my car with my iPod still playing.

Voices Carry by 'Til Tuesday came on (love, love, LOVE Aimee Mann). I sooooo wanted to sing along, but what if someone heard me? I'd be mortified! But I soooooooo wanted to sing along.

Have I mentioned I soooooo wanted to sing along? Ummm, loudly? It was a beautiful September day, in which a perfect moment could be had by singing to a great song with catchy lyrics and an up beat. But there were people around. What would they think?

I remembered Angela's dare and, the photo of her freewheeling cartwheel.

Inspired, I did it. As I walked through the parking lot, I sang, "Hush, hush. Keep it down now. Voices carry. Ooooh Ooooh Ooooh..." I wondered what I sounded like without the background music. I wondered what people thought. I wondered if I was breaking the law.

It felt really weird. And liberating. And joyful!

So now, I triple dare YOU (even though it's not Tuesday). Post your results here (and on Angela's blog).

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We start all over with Homestudy, Take Two on Drama 2B Mama.

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I'm off to a business meeting in California for a few days. I may not post, but I'll try to keep reading your blogs.

What I have craved

1994
What I have
A condo of my own, furnished with my own stuff.
A fascinating job as head of an adult learning network.
Good grades in grad school.
A lot of time to myself to read, write, think. Too much, maybe.

What I crave
The man I am to share my life with, if he even exists. Every morning I wake up wondering if this is the day I'll meet him. It's an obsession.

1999
What I have
A handsome, funny, smart, hardworking man.
Our first home together, a 1891 old Victorian that is filled with mementos of our adventures living and traveling overseas.
A politically charged job as an administrator at a state university.
Time with my husband to see movies, attend concerts, and travel.

What I crave
A child or two. Everyday I get more depressed about my fading chances to be a mom. It's an obsession.


2007
What I have
A handsome, funny, smart, hardworking man, who is also a fabulous Daddy.
A sassy 6 year old daughter.
A sweet 4 year old son.
A mostly happy home where we've only recently been able to bring out our breakables again, and which is usually very cluttered with library books, swim suits, Bionicles, tiaras and kiddie lipstick.
A patchwork of work-at-home jobs.

What I crave
Time to myself to read, write, think. It's an obsession.

You can see where this could go as the children grow and become independent. Should I be lucky enough to have continued health and safety for my family, I will once again have then what I want now, and vice versa.

Be. Here. Now. Lori.

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Please visit today's Drama 2B Mama post, Adoption School.