In our pivot into the present moment, and letting go of emotions with everything at the level of the mind, thoughts, feelings and everything in the body related to the present, the primary place where everything is still residing is in the body.
Creating financial freedom is an area I thrive in helping people achieve because ultimately, it offers the power of choice. It provides flexibility and the ability to live a life you love, doing the things you love. The importance of financial freedom extends far beyond the numbers in your bank accounts, savings and investments. It’s about creating Real Wealth - a profound sense of freedom in all areas of your life. After all, you can be what I describe as ‘rich but empty’ and have all the material wealth, yet still feel a deep sense of unhappiness.
light through the eye of a needle.
A Question to Walk With: Tell the story of a time when you felt the Universe move through your heart. How did this effect you? Describe your journey of finding others in your life.
This is from my book of poems in progress, The Tone in the Center of the Bell.
I've Been Thinking...
As I was watching the news the other night, I listened as the anchors discussed the court appearance of the Highland Park mass murderer. They said he was “completely unfazed“ when he appeared to hear the charges. I paused, took a breath, and thought to myself, “Wow, how can anyone be 'unfazed' these days, much less someone who decided to murder innocent people at a July 4th parade?”
Human beings made a bad bargain when we gave up our wholeness. Every other living creature takes wholeness for granted, meaning that bacteria, ferns, horses, and chimpanzees survive and thrive simply by being who they are—they have no other choice. The material processes, from cell to tissue to organ are the foundation of their existence.
What is Karma Yoga
Karma yoga derives from the Sanskrit word that means “action or doing” and is based on engaging in selfless acts for others. It is about removing the egotistical question of “what do I receive through doing this?” And about simply acting without focusing on gain or result. Karma yoga is one of the four branches of yoga and is an ancient practice that draws on the law of Karma to help make you a more compassionate and loving person, as well as to make the entire world a happier and kinder place.
1. You start losing interest in “yourself.” You find yourself less and less interested in your story. You know who you really are, you know that you are NOT your story. And as a result your taste for the drama that comes along with it starts falling away. You lose interest in drama. Drama simply gives you a false sense of aliveness. When you are in tune with your real self, you are connected to the source of aliveness, thus you are fulfilled. You no longer need drama as a superficial way to try and feel alive.
2. You become less judgmental. The world we live in is a realm of duality. As you grow spiritually you begin seeing beyond right and wrong. Right and wrong is a perception based on your ego’s conditioning. It’s subjective based on the collective cultural agreement. As you grow spiritually you free yourself from the prison of your identity and you move beyond duality. You start seeing life from a higher perspective. As a result, you are more able to see the whole picture and able to honor each person’s soul evolution. You realize that EVERYTHING is perfect for your own soul’s evolution even if it doesn’t seem that way at first. You may still feel the feelings that arise but are able to see the inherent perfection and not get stuck there.
The only thing that really troubles us is that our attention doesn't belong to us. Presently, something calls for us and claims our attention. Every errant thought and feeling that passes through our psychic system commands that we attend to what it tells us to. We are made captive to whatever our negative attention has clung to.
Our work, in terms of reclaiming our right to be in relationship with what we choose, begins with being able to see that we suffer because choices are made for us by this unconscious thought nature. This is unnecessary suffering. The mind has produced commentary on the moment, and then has an automated response to the messaging that makes us miserable.
It was abundantly clear how passionate he was about a personal growth seminar he attended many years ago. Every time I inquired about it, he remembered some fantastic experience or insight. Many of them made sense to me intuitively and logically, and many had been experiences I could relate to in my own way.
One specific experience stood out hands-and-feet above the rest though…
The homeless man with no legs crawls on his dolly like a snail while the world keeps whizzing by. No one wants to lose their legs, to go that slow. But sometimes, we’re forced to stop in order to empty ourselves of everything that’s in the way. Love can stop us in our tracks just as swiftly as suffering. It’s up to us to choose love before suffering takes our legs out from under us. In truth, every time I thought I was going somewhere, I began to speed up, and then began to feel behind, then lost, and then I felt a failure of sorts. Until I was loved or broken in place. And being rid of all I imagined and wanted, I rediscovered the wonder of just being here. This seems a cycle of human seasons—from want, to hurry, to feeling urgent and behind, to feeling lost and then a failure, to being stopped in our tracks, so we can rediscover the bareness of being. Now, my want is to accept this endless practice, which we call being human. We keep going, though there is nowhere to go. We keeping wanting, though there is nothing to own. We keep breaking, so that love like light can flood every break. I drop some coins in the legless man’s cup, hoping that you will drop a pebble of light in my mouth, when I have lost the urge to run.
A Question to Walk With: Describe your urge to run and your urge to stop. Which has your attention these days?
This excerpt is from my book in progress, The Signature of Being.
During a recent interview I was asked: “What was my favorite book as a child?" I didn’t have to think too long about the answer. Two books came to mind almost immediately, and both ironically have the word “magic” in their titles.
The first one is Spooky Magic, a Scholastic book written by Larry Kettelkamp, first published in 1955. It’s filled with instructions and illustrations on how to do magic tricks for your family and friends.
Unbeknownst to me, through the habitual use of this expression, I created a “stock phrase” used to personalize my presentations. Audiences, in anticipation, would look forward to my blurting-out, “Why is this relevant?”. In my mind, I turned this lemon, the “tic,” into lemonade, I came to see it as expression of something new, a “verbal” punctuation mark.
“I don’t know about hope, but I know about love…. Our job is to love.”
—Robin Wall Kimmerer
In this time of heartbreaking political tumult and ecological grief, where do we turn for wisdom or comfort? For a reason to continue, in spite of how the world looks? This past weekend, I had the great honor and blessing of attending a program with Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass. She is a botanist, professor, member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and beyond all else, a wise and caring soul. Repeatedly, during those three days, she asked the question: What does Mother Earth ask of us? Not what can we get, but what can we give? We are living in a time of shifting focus: from taking to giving, from self to community. Earth herself teaches reciprocity and connection. This is our heritage and our guidepost, if we pay attention, if we drop the cloak of self-centeredness and don the cloth of humility.
Long before it’s possible for us to be spiritually reborn, we must first awaken to ourselves.
Awakening is the sudden realization that somehow or other what I took to be the only world isn’t the only world..
But in a true awakening, I recognize that there’s a world beneath me. And the way I know there’s a world beneath me is that I can feel something pulling on me. Something wants to drag me down into depression. Something wants to pull me into anger. Something wants to move me into a state of myself where I can justify my agitation. Then, as I start to get irritated, angry, impatient, something else says, “Uh-uh. And it isn’t some moral platitude that’s been pressed into my brain. It’s an actual understanding that, “This hurts and I don’t want to act from it!”
We are now moving to a point in our evolution where we need to be consistent in our state of being no matter who you are, or who you are with or what you are doing or what’s happening. Recognize that you are the one that is denying yourself the experience you wish to have and that you are allowing other people, or what’s happening in the world or what’s happening in your life to do that.
Living paycheck to paycheck is probably the most common reason that prevents people from living a life that they love. This financial barrier can feel crippling and I understand how challenging it can be to pull yourself out of what can seem an endless cycle. The answer is creating financial independence, which I assure you, can be done wherever you’re starting from!
So how can you break through the barrier and start to live that love you love? In today’s article, I’m going to offer some tips that will get you on the road to Real Wealth and financial freedom!
the heart can live in it.
Ξ
A Question to Walk With: Describe as aspect of home that your mind has dreamt and built. How are you living in that dream now that it is built. Which do you like more: dreaming what needs to be built or living in the dream once it is built? Why?
Tiffany consulted with me because she was unable to control her anger. Anytime someone told her what to do - someone she was in a close relationship with like her mother, her husband, or her best friend - she would instantly respond with anger. She was struggling with serious marital problems when she first consulted with me.
Let’s talk about choices today … Being able to make choices … you have a right to choices … creating choices … how to find that truth within yourself to make the choice that is for your best and highest good.
So, all things, CHOICES 🙂
Here’s my question to just start this off … Have you ever felt in your life like you didn’t have a choice? Like literally, you have no choice. Have you felt that way in your life?
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” —Viktor Frankl
A few years ago, after a serious bout of vertigo actually landed me in the ICU, I was instructed to start practicing my balance. “Stand for at least one minute on each foot,” I was told. “It’s important not only to regain your balance, but to keep it so you can move forward.” Great, I thought to myself. Here’s that balance thing again.
As a young journalist and mother, I often heard that I should pursue “balance.” It was the holy grail. Being told to achieve balance while juggling four young kids, a career, a marriage, and aging parents left me feeling anything but. What I felt instead was unbalanced, unsuccessful, and unseen.