Creating a Legacy of Peace

Just when it looked like life might hold some semblance of normalcy, news of murder and powerful protests are being flashed around. Anger and grief have given us an opportunity to reconsider our life choices. We could say this is a time like no other, but that is not completely true. We have been living with pandemics, racism, sexism, wars, and other assaults to our wellness. What is different this time around?

Earth is at a perfect angle or a tipping point that allows light to reach our deepest wounds.  Most of us have had a devastating awareness of our world’s pain. Trauma from all the past years is being relived. Our heartbreak is real.

In the past several years, we have witnessed a growing number of voices calling our attention to the causalities of indifference, fear, and ignorance. We have groups that speak out for the rights of animals. Others stand up against racism and sexism. People have been stepping up and taking action for the collective all over the world. At the same time, we have groups desperately holding onto a world that lives in a state of crisis. They want to control the water, breath, and lives of others. This has created a knot of tension and anger on earth. Outrage and violence have reached capacity.

We are being guided to dismantle the untruths and free ourselves from the affliction of fearful thoughts. Our lesson is to learn; compassion has no boundaries.

Love and Order

“To bring about change, you must not be afraid to take the first step. We will fail when we fail to try." – Rosa Parks

I've Been Thinking...

It was just a few short weeks ago that I wrote that I didn’t think we were going back to “normal.

At the time, it had dawned on me that the pandemic had uprooted us in ways big and small and that those yearning to go back to the way things used to be were in for a surprise. I had no idea how uprooted we were about to get.

This past week, millions watched as America’s streets and cities erupted across the nation. Huge peaceful protests called for an end to police brutality and for overdue systemic change. For a moment, the message seemed to get drowned out by images of violence and looting, which left people deeply shocked and shaken. Elected officials called in the National Guard and imposed mandatory curfews. Meanwhile, citizens in these cities stepped in to clean up the mess. More importantly, though, citizens stepped up to show us the opportunity and the importance of this historic moment.

The Divine is Here Now so Let us ‘Serve Life First’

I hope and trust that you and your family are safe and feeling comfortable. All of us in Humanity’s Team are here for you and with you during this challenging time. 

As we enter the third month of the global pandemic, people have many questions on their minds about health, finances, safety, and, in general, what the re-opening of the world will look like.

None of us have answers to those kinds of questions. But as the old saying goes, time will tell.

This question, though—the one I’m hearing being asked with both sincerity and anger—is one I believe I do have an answer to… “Where is God in all of this?”  

Some are saying that since we don’t want anything to do with God in our schools, at work, and in public discourse, God has retreated.

I heard one version of that sentiment that goes like this (and please forgive the overuse of the male pronoun)…  

He, being a gentleman, has deserted us and left us to our own devices. If we don’t want anything to do with God, He says “fine” and departs our life. We are now left alone to fend for ourselves during the pandemic. 

How does that sit with you?

I believe the idea that God has left us is the furthest thing from the truth. 

I believe the Divine is very present now and is speaking to each of us who are willing to hear.  

I believe the Divine actually has always been present sharing messages of love, hope, and possibility but we’ve mostly been too busy to really hear Her/His messages.  

Now, as many of us find ourselves less busy and more available, there is an opening where we can take time for silence and really listen for and hear the Divine speaking to us.  

What's Really Essential?

The other day, I found myself thinking and reflecting on life as I took an evening walk through my neighborhood.

“When this is all over, what will I remember?” I pondered to myself. “What thoughts and images will be seared into my brain? Who will I be when I am no longer told to stay at home?”

Will I go back to the same schedule I had before? Will my work and voice in The Sunday Paper be needed now more than ever, or not at all? Will my work at NBC News be the same, or will it change now that every show has been cut back? Will I go back to being on a plane all the time, rushing from coast to coast?

Will my work at The Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement survive in a post-pandemic world? Will people still want to fund research into women’s brains when millions of Americans are struggling to eat and pay their rents or mortgages? Will people want to be educated about brain health and Alzheimer’s prevention when one of their most pressing concerns is protecting themselves from the coronavirus? I wonder. 

Triggered by News and Social Media? Try Mindfulness

We live in the age of the 24-hour news cycle. It even leeches into our social media feeds if we’re not careful; we may crave peace-loving memes and photos of our friends’ four-legged companions, but every time we take the bait and click through to read a heartbreaking news story or the latest political fodder, the algorithm gods take note and feed us more of the same. Being tapped into the digital world can become downright overwhelming for many of us — but we don’t have to just brace ourselves and take it.

Take a moment to answer these questions for yourself:

•  How are your physical, mental, and emotional states faring when you are constantly tethered to news and social media feeds?

•  Do you notice yourself feeling tense or angry — not just when you see or read an upsetting news story or social media thread, but throughout the day as you’re thinking about it?

It really is tempting to stay connected to the world’s ever-evolving storylines and dramas, but if they are compromising your sense of wellness and inner peace (and they really are for many of us), it may be time to consider a change.

Relax, You’ve Arrived

Are we there yet?

The Practice
Relax, you’ve arrived.

Why?

We spend so much of our time trying to get somewhere.

Part of this comes from our biological nature. To survive, animals – including us – have to be goal-directed, leaning into the future.

It’s certainly healthy to pursue wholesome aims, like paying the rent on time, raising children well, healing old pain, or improving education.

But it’s also important to see how this focus on the future – on endless striving, on getting the next task done, on climbing the next mountain – can get confused and stressful.

It’s confused because the brain:

• Overestimates both the pleasure of future gains and the pain of future losses. (This evolved to motivate our ancient ancestors to chase carrots hard and really dodge sticks.)
• Makes the future seem like a real thing when in fact it doesn’t actually exist and never will. There is only now, forever and always.
• Overlooks or minimizes the alrightness of this moment – including the many things already resolved or accomplished – in order to keep you looking for the next threat or opportunity. (For more on how the brain makes us stressed and fearful, see Buddha’s Brain.)

One of My Most Emotional Cases

Today, I want to talk to you about place memory. It’s the ability to pick up vibrations and detailed information, whether it’s seen, felt or heard, of a past event. The more traumatic the event—the stronger the impression.

The easiest way to describe it, it's is as if someone took a snapshot in time, and etched it in the atmosphere of the actual environment or the fabric of the building where the event took place.

Fortunately, most people don’t have such finely tuned psychic antennae to be able to tap into such memories. Otherwise, we’d all be walking around looking shocked and miserable every time we go near a disaster site. On a lesser scale, many people may walk into a room and feel an argument that just took place, or pick up on the atmosphere in a room that doesn’t feel right. We’ve all experienced this sometime in our lives.

In my case, I have the ability to go way beyond this feeling. My ability can literally be stretched over the canvas of time. It really doesn’t matter if it was yesterday, last week, or even hundreds of years ago. Scenes play out in my mind as I slip back in time, and often the clarity and detail is like an old movie that’s been digitally restored. I feel as if I’m actually there.

Tips to Embrace Mercury Retrograde

Yup, it is that time again! By now, you have probably heard someone say … “Oh, It’s Mercury retrograde”.

Mercury Retrograde is about to begin and many people are beginning to “feel” the energy shifts … possibly without even knowing it … as it moves in. Now, I’m not an expert in Mercury Retrograde … nor am I an astrologer. I’m a psychic medium and someone who is sensitive to energy … just like you. I notice when the energy shifts … especially the strong shifts. As I tune into the energy (and look at the calendar) I usually discover that Mercury is retrograde … and I take a breath, look up how long it will be in retrograde … and then plan to move forward at a slower pace … knowing that it always has something to teach me. Not that I always love this … but, I can either hit my head against the wall, pushing and forcing OR go with the flow of Mercury in retrograde … and embrace its teachings. Which do you choose?

Relax, You Are Already There

We spend so much of our time trying to get somewhere.

Are we there yet?

The Practice:
Relax, you are already there..

Why?

We spend so much of our time trying to get somewhere.

Part of this comes from our biological nature. To survive, animals – including us – have to be goal-directed, leaning into the future.

It’s certainly healthy to pursue wholesome aims, like paying the rent on time, raising children well, healing old pain, or improving education.

But it’s also important to see how this focus on the future – on endless striving, on getting the next task done, on climbing the next mountain – can get confused and stressful.

How Do You Say Goodbye to a Loved One

Goodbyes are never easy. Saying farewell to a loved one who’s dying can be one of the toughest things you’ll experience in this lifetime. No matter how ready you think you are, it’s never easy when the time actually comes. If you’re dealing with this at the moment, my heart goes out to you.

When my mom went into long-term palliative care, I received a small booklet by Hank Dunn called Hard Choices for Loving People. It prepared me to cope with one of the most emotional and arduous times in my life! I share the following excerpt in the hope that you’ll find some comfort in the words now or in the future:

There are two ways to hold on. We can grasp tightly as we would a coin in our fist. We fear we will lose it, so we hold it tight. Indeed, if we open our hand palm down the coin falls from our possession, and we feel cheated. The other way to hold on is by opening our hand palm up. The coin may sit there, or it could be blown away or shaken out of our possession. But while it is there, we are privileged to have it. We hold on with an open hand. Our hand is relaxed and we experience freedom.

Make The Most of Every Moment of Life (Inspirational Video)

Time!

As human beings, we all have one thing in common.

Time.

We are all born, and we will all die.

Yet when it happens, we seem surprised and ask WHY?

From the moment the universe exploded into existence as a cosmic fireball 13.4 billions of years ago….

Time stops for no one.

The Power of Timing in Our Lives

Not too long ago, someone asked me why I hadn’t published my book, “I’ve Been Thinking…,” sooner. After all, I’ve been writing these essays and sharing them in The Sunday Paper for years, so I could have easily published it a year or two ago.

But, as I told that person, and as I’ve told others on this journey, I honestly couldn’t have put it out any sooner. This book came out when it was supposed to for me. It came at just the right time.

I think so many of us are in a rush these days. We’re in a rush to get on with things. A rush to get over things. A rush to be where we think we are supposed to be.

But, if I’ve learned anything, it’s that stuff happens when it’s supposed to in our lives, not always when we think it should. At least that’s been the case in my life.

(SPECIAL FOR EMPATHS AND HIGHLY SENSITIVE PEOPLE)

This week we are in the first week of the first Mercury retrograde cycle of 2018 which is a perfect time to retrace your steps and have a look at some of the ways in which you need to reaffirm your self-care. It’s also a great time to focus on ways to manage your experience especially if you identify as a highly sensitive person or empath. This particular retrograde in Aries is highly charged and can be quite combustible and combative. That said it’s also perfect for rigorous self-honesty, and really determining what you are enthusiastic about!

So, if you’re sensing the edge in the air and it starts to feel overwhelming you need to find a way to manage your experience. You don’t want to end up feeling like the energy of the world is assaulting you (and it really can feel like that sometimes.)

I’m going to include a video from Nick Ortner at the end of the blog to support you too since he has a great way to dial down anxiety. Bottom line is that intuitive people can suffer if they don’t have tools to manage their boundaries and feelings. (and they can also find it hard to release excess body weight, manage fatigue too etc. but that’s a whole other story)

What negative story do you tell other people about yourself over and over? Most of the time when we repeat our “shadow narrative” we aren’t aware of it, we can’t see that the telling of it anchors the memory deeper into the universe, making it a part of your current condition.

Take a minute to really think about this.  Do you see yourself in your story as always being disappointed by people you elevate? Do you tell a story of the world as a place you need to rebel against? Perhaps you tell a story about being a victim of other people’s issues, or maybe you tell one of you overcoming obstacles, always having to do everything yourself. Help never comes. (Sigh) Or maybe you tell a story of being pushed out, isolated by others, so you can continue to live in an illusion of being a victim, and so you can enjoy vicious gossip to vent your unprocessed anger.

Now, when you get older one of the things that happens is the change of the meaning of time, in a whole raft of ways. First of all, time gets short before you get ready to leave your body, and that has a certain way of ‘making it all more significant.’ Not that this is the last picnic, but I mean you just start to feel it differently. There’s this agitation and there’s a whole chemical thing in it that makes you experience time as moving faster. When you’re a child spring is a big thing, and summer is ‘summer’ and then, I mean, you know, the feeling of each season is really present. Autumn is going back to school, at least it was in my day, and for adults, it runs a pace.

We seem not to have enough time for anything, and then we get older, the years go by very quickly, and that’s one dimension of time.

Then there’s another interesting dimension of time when you say to friends, “How old do you experience yourself being?” instead of, “How old are you chronologically?” or, “How old is your body,” it’s, “How old do you experience yourself being?”

There are different kinds of responses. People like me would say, “No age at all, I don’t experience myself as age.” Some people would say,” I have always felt like I was 14 years old. I’ve always felt like a little girl up in a tree.” I think for the first 35-40 years of my life, I felt like I was a precocious child. I was a child who was living in over my head. This may be alien to all of you but bare with me. It’s just my pathology. Then I began to feel like I had gotten through puberty. I was about 40 and I started to experience this change in my psychological age. There were a lot of things that occurred in those years, of course, and I got up to the point where I started to feel that I was just who I was. I mean, I was this age at that time, 50-55, and it felt fine and comfortable. Then I went deeper, and I started to feel no age.

The new year has started and it’s time for a shift. Your intentions have been set and your resolutions made; you’re determined to finally make a change in your life. Making the decision is the first step – the hardest part – the wheels of change have been set in motion. Now comes the next challenge; being patient and giving yourself time.

One of the most challenging aspects of making a change in life is the time and space required for implementation. Things don’t happen overnight. All life changes take time.

After you take the first step to make a change the meantime period ensues. It’s the time between making the decision and it manifesting. During this time things may seem to move unbearably slow. It can be easy to get lost in time and turn back. This is the time when most people give up.

Life changes are a renovation process. You start a home renovation by first removing or tearing down the old stuff that no longer works with the new plans. There are pieces that need to be revised before the new pieces can be added and take shape. The same is true in life. When you disrupt the structure of your life it takes time for the changes to take shape. As the saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

It’s that time of year. A time when you think about your body… and wish it were different. Or … maybe it is always that time of year for you.

Cast your mind back, if you will, and consider the greatest technological change in your lifetime.

For most adults I’d suggest it’s the Internet. If you’re a little older, perhaps the cell phone. Older still, maybe computers.

Our lives are our Stories, and technological change has an impact on - freeing or limiting - the context of those stories. It’s a way of marking time, like the rings of a tree.

Let’s face it. Boredom has a bad rap.

Or, at least it had a bad rap with me for the longest time. I grew up thinking that there was almost nothing worse than being bored. So, I worked, and I worked, and I busied myself, and I did everything I could to try and stay two steps ahead of the old boredom curse.

For some years in California, a young man came to my lectures in a bed, brought in a bed. He was a quadriplegic. He could not speak. He was about twenty-eight years old. He was like this (laying back on a slant). His attendant could hold his hand over an alphabet board and there was just enough capacity to point at letters. That was the way he spoke. Each time he came, I went over to him and hugged him, and then I would wait while he spelled out some words. I felt in myself how reactive I was to the immensity of his deprivation state.