Here is the bitch of it: for all my understanding and faith in a higher power – life is still not fair sometimes. Negativity and depression beat a path to everyone’s door at some point – so tonight join us on Indie Spirit Blogtalk to learn tools to learn from and transcend negativity and depression.  Chat, laugh, meditate – feel BETTER.  Tonight 6 pm MST

Are you running into the same old Patterns?  Instead of getting stuck in a negative spiral of, “Why me?”  Discover how to ask yourself, “What for?” and find real solutions.Join us tonight on http://www.blogtalkradio.com/indieonair for solutions, meditation, laughs and you just may learn something.  Also discussing Mercury Retrograde and You!

What is the difference between loneliness and solitude?  One is an experience of sorrow and the other replenishment.  Why?  Simply – you.  Yupe, it’s not pretty and you may want to rebel, but it’s true.  You create your reality through choices and the thoughts/beliefs you focus on each day. 

But here’s the good news – you can make a shift.  Being alone doesn’t have to equal lonely.  Here are a few tips to help you connect to the rejuvenation found in solitude.

1.    Rest.  I bet you are exhausted and you don’t even know it because you have always been this way.  Lay down on the floor or grass and feel your body supported by the earth.  Close your eyes and breathe in deeply.  Shift your legs gently from side to side – feel yourself really connected to the earth.  Rest.

2.    Read.  Not a magazine, a book.  Fall into another world and give yourself a break from reality.  Explore the world from your favorite armchair…

3.    Journal.  Write about anything and everything.  Instead of keeping your thoughts, fears and dreams locked within – let go.  Thoughts spinning in your mind can trap you into fear, but brought into the light – things can be hashed out. 

4.    Arts.  Draw, paint, play musical instruments – be creative.  When you participate in the arts, you allow your incessantly thinking mind to stop.  If you believe you can’t draw – get a coloring book.  Relax and play.

5.    Nature.  Go for a walk or hike and really examine the path around you.  Do you see any animals?  Are the leaves falling?  How does the ground feel beneath your feet?  Can you smell the changing seasons?  Sink into this moment with all your senses. 

6.    Meditate.  Meditation is a pathway to transformation – changing your thoughts does change your life. 

7.    Garden.  Nothing is more grounding or nourishing then hands in the dirt.  Just because the weather has shifted does not mean the growing season has ended – bulbs.  Plant bulbs outside for spring and indoors for beauty.  Try paperwhites and amaryllis in glass vases and enjoy the magic of new life unfold right before your eyes.

8.    Be still.  Sit by a window and see what is happening in your own backyard.  Does the yard need attention?  Are there any animals?  Birds?  How do you feel within as you look out?  What thoughts pop in?  Are they lifting you up or pushing yourself down?  Can you gently, kindly make a shift?

Of course there are moments when we may feel lonely, but when these moments stretch into a way of being – unhappiness and isolation are the result.  It does not have to be this way…It begins with you.

Something akin to the hell found in the movie Groundhog Day.  Every day is spent making beds, cleaning bathrooms, freshening towels, vacuuming…I have either slipped into a twin 1950’s marriage or I am in fact in hell. 

More exciting than the hell of cleaning, is the buyers - who have discovered it’s a buyer’s market and some of whom would like to steal your home.  I never understood how the foreclosure market would negative affect the prices until now…

What I have discovered in the process of selling our home is responsibility.  Have you ever read the book, The Little Prince?  It is one of my favorite books because it speaks to the responsibility of taming or loving something.  Once something becomes yours, you are responsible for taking care of it.  If you can no longer take care of it, you must find a way for someone else to care for it.  That is our home.

If we were to accept one of these low-ball offers we would hurt the energy of our home.  Foreclosure houses tend not to have good energy – how could they?  Too much stress and anxiety locked inside.  Hence I have all these buyers wanting to buy my house at a foreclosure/avoid bankruptcy prices – they see it as the same house physically.  However they are not the same houses – you get what you pay for.  There are no deals, because you are buying a life.

Look at the history of a house – how many times has it flipped?  Foreclosure houses tend to flip a lot – the ‘deal’ the buyers got on the front end will be their problem on the other side.  It could be as simple as placement.  Is the house at the top/end of road?  Interestingly this is a horrible energy pattern – the energy of the road flows directly into the house constantly.  Hence the house/inhabitants can never get grounded enough to make it work…

Our house is a home.  It is energetically excellent with color, scent, layout, comfort and lush, abundant gardens.  It has been the support our family has needed to refresh, cradle and ultimately launch us into another adventure that is something akin to stepping into a fairy tale (more about that in a few weeks…) 

It was the same for the previous owners and I will not give this house less.  Our buyers are not looking for a steal, but a home that will cradle them.  In this safety, dreams unfold and manifest into reality.  Here in this house, our family began living an enchanted life, unbelievably blessed and magical truly (got the medical miracles and passport vacations to prove it!)  So we wait, knowing the new family is coming - we are just holding their place a little longer…Frankly I can’t wait to meet them, because I know what waits for them…peace, warmth, beauty, family, love, healing, laughter and abundance.  And so it is.

Each of us confronts stress every day, and how we choose to deal with this has a direct effect on our happiness and well-being.  Often our emotions cloud our ability to make good decisions and unwittingly we continue a negative pattern of stress-management.  Use these five easy suggestions to improve your capacity to handle the stressful events that come your way and begin living more contently today…

 1.       Breathe.  When stressful events occur, often our first response involves an involuntary level of panic; blood may rush to our faces, stomachs drop, breathing quickens…By stopping yourself and focusing your attention on three deep breaths, this allows all of your senses and self to become fully present in the situation.  From this present place, better decisions are made.  Clarity is achieved when you can detach from an emotional, automatic response and shift to a perspective of ration and reason.  

2.       Don’t blame – including yourself!  No matter how you slice it – here you are and there is something for you to learn right now - what is it?  Here’s a hint; it’s all about you.  How someone else is behaving may not be appropriate, but strip the extras away and it is still all about you.  Instead of pointing fingers at any one else or even yourself, what do you need to do right now?  What is your part and how can you make it better today?   (Warning: be careful not to fall into victim thinking – “I’m so bad” – that it keeps you from moving forward.  It’s not about blame, but opportunity.) 

3.       Ask for help/support.  If you are feeling stressed, sometimes one of the best things you can do is seek the counsel of a wise friend, therapist or spiritual advisor.  An outside perspective can illuminate personal blind spots that may be tripping you up over and over…

4.       Stay present and flexible – don’t spin out.  A thinking mind can be a dangerous thing – imagining the worst-case-scenarios can be almost intoxicating to obsess over, but stop yourself.  It is likely none of these worst-cases will come to pass and you have wasted all that time and energy as to be prepared – just in case the worst-case happens then you’ll know what to do…Stop.  These are future concerns, shift back to what can I do right now and keep your options open.  Rigid thinking of “if this happens, then…” traps you in repeating the same cycles over and over. 

5.       Focus on your desired outcome.  It is very easy to identify want you don’t want, but shift your focus to what you do want or how you would like your reality to be.  Whether you are having difficulty in a relationship, with money, family, it doesn’t matter – spend a few minutes each day thinking about how you would like your relationship to feel, or what it would feel like to have enough money, love…Your thoughts have power.  When you change your thoughts, you change your life – new doors open and opportunities appear…Try this for a week and watch the surprises bloom.

 Of course, the most essential tool and what frames all of these tips, is an unshakable sense of humor.  I am the first to say I have a gallows humor, but it has served me well to laugh at myself and the ridiculous situations I have found  myself  in at times – completely of my own making.  Just remember – if it doesn’t kill you, well then I guess you’re not dead…or the other answer, you GROW stronger. 

Here is the bitch of it: for all my understanding and faith in a higher power – life is still not fair sometimes.  How can this be?  Where is my God from the 1^st Testament?  A righteous and violent God who punishes those who sin?  He will cast out the unworthy, right?  Then I remember rainbows. Later in the 1^st Testament, God gave up leveling the ‘fallen’ or debauched communities with floods and plagues to punishment them.  He became the God of boundless Grace.  I like to think he matured, he grow-up and discovered you can’t punish someone out of bad, but you can love them out of it. 

According to the Bible, rainbows became his personal sign of his infinite love for each of us.  However personally, some days I long for the Bad-ass God who likes to smite the wicked.

When I am caught in the unfairness of a situation or with a person, I try to comfort myself with the belief, “I can only see in part, You (God) see all.”  Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t.  I am reminded of Jesus on the cross crying out his last to his Father – have you Forsaken Me?…I know that desperation, the fear of being abandoned as you know in your heart you have done all that has been required of you, yet still you hang on the cross, waiting.  How can this be?   “I can only see in part…”

“Gentle” doesn’t come easily for me.  I was raised to work hard – achieve.  There isn’t a whole lot of room for ‘soft and gentle’ when you are in competition, even if the person you are competing against is yourself.   

I wonder though is this a part of our culture too?  A couple years ago as I was watching the Olympics with it’s random interviews of the athletes.  I was surprised when a ping-pong champion was asked, “Why hasn’t ping-pong taken off in the States?” 

“Well, Americans don’t like things to be soft.  They want to go outside for their sports.  Hard,” she said.  How right she was!

Maybe it’s because America began with immigrants trying to make a better life - as they still try today.  Competition is a naturally outcrop of this path.  Or maybe it’s because we have so much already, organized competition has to be hard.  Or maybe it’s because Americans are driven to get their slice of the pie…

My grandfather came over from Ireland when he was about twenty and he was hungry.  Hungry for food, hungry for money and safety, hungry for love, hungry for a place be.  Unfortunately, he stayed hungry his whole life and passed this hunger, this ‘not enough’ feeling onto his children, my mother.  She too passed this message onto me, and my other siblings through her own words and deeds. 

And here I am today with a choice, “Do I too pass this hunger onto my children?  Do I continue the cycle of ‘not enough’?”  Of course the answer is easy, no I won’t pass it along…but do I anyway?  Through my own thoughtless deeds and words?  Sometimes horribly, yes.

So today I am working on - gentle and being soft.  Not to hear words spoken to me through a filter of fear and pain, but through light.  To expect the best from everyone and not to take it personally if another does not want to behave from their highest self.  That is their problem, their journey – my focus is with self.  And with myself - I am gentle and soft.  So be it.

Recently a new door has appeared – an unexpected opportunity now lay on the horizon.  Unfortunately, at this moment, all we can do is wait – just staring at the door, trying to will it open with our desires…

I have never been good at waiting.  I am an action-oriented person, none of this “sitting around and waiting for life to tap me on the shoulder,” I’m already down the road.

Last night as we were walking the dog, my daughter asked me, “Mommy, when will this happen?”   I smiled and heard myself offer a very reasonable answer, “Sweets, only God knows that – we can only see in part.  All will be revealed in the right time.  Not to worry, everything is being taken care of.”  And like kids do – she bought it and shifted to a new topic.  Ummm, I think I’m supposed to learn something here.

When I am waiting, I try to distract myself with the knowledge that everything is happening in its right time.  I repeat over and over in my mind, “I can only see in part…”  The last time I used this mantra so fiercely was years ago when my son was suffering from multiple daily seizures and we couldn’t find any answers.  Interestingly, the healing happened months before the answers were revealed…So it’s good to notice this time we wait on our heart’s desires, instead of our worst fears…

I have come to believe in active waiting.  I like the old Arab saying, “Trust in God and tie up your horses,” because it implies a partnership with God and your future.  Discernment, sometimes you act and sometimes you wait – knowing the difference is the rub.

So today, we wait on the will of heaven, and pray for this or something better yet to be revealed.  So be it. 

article first published 8/08, waiting phase again.

My body is healed by flowing Grace. I release what has become hardened. Gentle purity fills body and soul. I feel the blessing of Grace-filled Life

For the past couple months I have had a plan to move our family to Costa Rica.  We have wanted to move abroad for about a year and while vacationing, we fell in love with Costa Rica.  We love the energy, the beaches/mountains, the climate (best in the world according to National Geographic!) and the people.  It is just fantastic.

We began thinking about moving to Costa Rica very seriously three months ago.  Things seemed to be opening in that direction.  I partnered with a wonderful new friend to run Yoga/Meditation Retreats in Atenas, Costa Rica this November.  I began researching and discovering all sorts of support already in place thus leading me to believe moving to Costa Rica was our path.

Six days ago I came down to Costa Rica to begin setting the retreats in motion and life shifted again.  The reality of being a gringo in a third world country become stunning disappointing.  Just by my white skin alone – I am assumed by Ticos (Costa Rican citizens) to be rich and the prices are automatically doubled.  By Tico standards of living (a family salary of roughly $12,000 a year) we are quite wealthy.  Anyone coming down to Costa Rica is considered wealthy by that standard, hence Ticos believe you can afford anything.

And here is the other cultural reality, they lie all the time because confrontation is frowned upon in this society.  Ticos prefer to make up stories, telling you what you want to hear, instead of the truth that very well may disappoint.  Ughh.  I’m not even going to go into their sense of service (sloooooooow) or time…two hours late is normal.

Have you ever read Eat, Pray, Love?  Horrible book in my opinion except for the part about different cultures and ‘taking advantage.’  Here in Costa Rica, Ticos double prices for gringos because they have so little – just try living on $12,000 a year…The doubling of prices is not an act of cruelty or malice, it’s really survival (think Maslow’s theory.) Although I understand this, for me, it is unacceptable to live in community where deception is status quo.  I would forever be on guard.  Ughhhh. 

For the past several years I have been connecting to more Goddess energy - softer, non-confrontational, peaceful resolution.  I want to be soft and loving, not on guard…Hence I have been very sad these past few days as reality meets the dream and the path can not be a permanent move Costa Rica at this moment.  Third world countries aren’t Disney and Tinker-bell isn’t flying through fireworks every night at ten.  So I have had to shift and accept the truth sometimes the dream cannot be reality…A tough pill to swallow at any age.

As my taxi this morning drove me to the airport I received a call.  It was my other driver, Walter, who had taken me all over Costa Rica with my new business partner/friend as we looked and found retreat spots.  Walter is amazing, completely trustworthy and honest.  He wanted to wish me well on my travels and let me know how kind/wonderful he thought I was…I thought to myself – what a great business man AND most importantly, I heard what spirit was trying to tell me – there are good people everywhere.  Here their need is greater then mine - things are muddy when people are hungry…and I can still see through the muck to the beautiful places and people that are the Costa Rica I fell in love with.  So I will be a forever visitor and not a permanent residence…Not such a bad deal.

Hmmmm, guess this means Spirit has other plans…can’t wait to see what unfolds!  With that, I’m off to Sonoma, Ca. this weekend for more business and pleasure.  This is an abundant life, warts and all.  How blessed am I???  Brilliantly!!!  Thank You GOD!

Morale: Focus on the good, be willing to shift if need be and Trust the path will open again.