Category Archives: new thought

06.03.24
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The Freedom to speak

I have often been taken aback during a conversation with a friend…or for that matter a casual conversation with a stranger…there can be one phrase that will mentally remove me from the conversation as I attempt to define exactly what was said, often as I slowly open a squeaky window into judgement.

During my childhood years, the words or opinions from my parents were soaked in as gospel…perhaps not the canonical gospel….but the absolute last word on the subject. As I matured into my teen years and young adulthood, I was often taken in by the verbiage of others my age…it was new, fresh and helped me sort my opinions about clothes, cars, social and world events. I have often later ruminated about particular conversations that did not feel comfortable within my belief system. I always have the right to release ties to a relationship.

Now many years later, I recognize that I still put value on my friendships by how we relate in opinions. I feel I give and receive a lot of grace as I accept and often absorb other’s values and opinions because I actually never know when there is something new that will change my perspective.

Fast Forward to this morning in 2024, A discussion about the acronym SRO in a book. “He” asked me what I thought it meant and I said “School Resource Officer” which came from my many years working in the law enforcement community. “He” looked it up to find the definition SRO as “Standing Room Only” which was obviously the context. It’s so much healthier to acknowledge, to learn perspectives from others. There are always going to be contrasts. WE have all lived different moments and built our individual belief systems. Thus the steadfast arguments revolving around abortion, legal euthanasia, race and religion! It’s not my job to agree or change anyones mind, it is my job to allow a difference of opinion in the moment and understand that life lessons will either harden or open the mind to a new way of thinking.

and so it is…..

05.24.23
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Like a nice breeze on a spring day..

I’ve been practicing “understanding” and “releasing what doesn’t serve me” for the last 5 years. (This, after 60 years of trying to rationalize my unhappiness, frustration and anger). I, now, recognize that my mind usually grasps for must-know what will happen in the next moment so that I’m safe. Relying on the illusions in past experiences to determine the worthiness of other humans…the judgments, love/hate/right/wrong about people/things while living from my head rather than my heart. I still struggle quieting preconceived notions about how I’m supposed to live and love…right and wrong…acceptable and unacceptable.

What I know in this moment is that I THINK TOO MUCH. I “think” because I “fear”. My expectations, my never ending scenario building, my panic when faced with the unknown seldom comes to fruition….

I have been mentally exhausting myself staying busy…doing, doing, doing…after awhile it turns into resentment, resentment, resentment. But don’t we need to keep “doing” in order to be productive happy humans…or at least to make others happy humans? NO!

I first had a whisper of what was going on a few months ago when I said out loud, I am so sick and tired of living by the calendar. Why do I continue to over commit myself doing things I might enjoy doing if I had time to enjoy them…but instead believing I must stay busy to be valued.

It hit me yesterday as I took my walk amongst the trees, watering the flowers and the garden, sitting on the deck reading with a cool beeeze while the sun warmed my skin. I realized I was doing something…exactly what I wanted to do. My heart was happy, my brain was silent and I understood the beauty of the heart vs the brain. Doing nothing is doing something…attending to myself from my heart instead of my mind/ego feels courageously gentle.

until next time….

05.15.23
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Just in……Bombshell

It came to me from behind the curtain…my view from behind the veil…and then the curtains slid back and all was revealed….starkly…in black and white…the understanding.

The Daily News of the world presented for our consumption brought to you by the “human reporters” predicting the future and enhancing the past in order to inject fear into our lives. What causes us fear is the stories we already tell ourselves about our perception of the next second, minute, day, lifetime. It works because we are programmed to react…..to fear and the great unknown!

If we examine our lives, we tend to live in the future…when they say this, I will say that…. What if this happens…..I heard they are going to do this ….what if we lose our house….what if that car behind me doesn’t stop…what if (name that soul) gets sick and dies….remember what happened last time.

This human scenario is what happens each time we glob onto what we hear or read from the “pick your opinion media” or “did you hear…” Constant expansion and retraction based on the future as explained by a human with an opinion vs facts. Because FACTS have not happened yet….and quite frankly facts are interpreted quite differently depending on how we filter these facts through our personal human event center…

Each moment our personal thoughts bleed all over our reality….and reality honestly only happens in each individual present moments of our lives. No one has all the pieces to predict what will happen in the next moment nor how each individual soul will perceive what just happened. Politics, war, pandemic, what medication will kill you, the next mass shooting, whether the United States will fall because of the debt ceiling drama. Stop the heartache of what might happen especially when it is being delivered to you from someone who really has no idea; but just reporting on the odds rather than the fact. The bottom line with the news media is it all comes down to who can instill the most fear gets paid the most money.

Until next time….

08.14.22
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Oh the fear!

Every now and then I get a glimmer of how this whole life thing works when fear is released and I am able to experience the one precious moment…….right here and right now.

I have a history of making myself miserable in thinking and in action taking care of everyone. I have caused myself a lot of work and grief and resentment ….. with the best intentions, obviously…but living blindly thinking I know what is best for my friends and family and then proceeding to do everything in my power to see it through to be sure everyone is happy. I know this is a learned behavior from my childhood…if someone is unhappy, hurt or angry, I feel the need to make it ok…..it’s exhausting!

Being human, I still often think I know best. It’s those moments when something unexpectedly just work out and I have not had an opinion, judgement, fear or hand in it, that I realize this is how it works. It’s not easy to release control when fear is served up frequently. Digesting fear and reacting from fear gives the illusion that somehow I actually have control. Nope, nope, nope.

Staying in the moment. Not reacting from judgements of the past. Not spinning the dial to figure out the next move for the future. Quite the contrary… just stopping and feeling the right now. Centering with 5 things I hear, 5 things I see, 5 things I feel. Right now…being in the present…where this is no fear of the next minute and no history to react from.

No planning, no commitment to do better, no promise to stay in the moment…just being aware when my small self starts thinking and planning and judging. That’s the moment it’s possible to just stop and center!

namaste

07.11.22
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I’m having “not living in the moment” episodes

Why do I think everyone else’s life is better than my own?

I know that these thoughts usually only settle in when I am feeling irritable without a cause or irritable with a cause. So…irritable.

Or when I’m feeling sorry for myself…without a cause or with a cause.

Or when I have committed or not committed to do something in the future that I am often unable to follow through when the moment is now. Actually this particular situation has taken care of itself, for the most part, because I am learning the lesson of NO.. just say NO because it is not something I want to do at this time. Often after I have said NO….I feel very empowered. Standing up for myself…even if I can’t respond immediately because in the moment I don’t know if it’s a yes or no, I do understand that in the next second I may have an answer. I’ve accepted that I have quite a vocabulary and a mouth and I know how to use them.

Often when I’m driving in a new neighborhood, city, state, country – especially on a vacation – I think..ya..I like this area, I could live here or No…I don’t even want to eat ice cream here. Those memories seem to live in my consciousness so I can pull them out when I’m feeling irritable, sorry for myself, put upon, not appreciated. I USE THEM to compare my present moment with the illusion of the moment in my memory. It’s hard to remember the difference between fantasy and what I’m experiencing in the present.

But then…I can find myself when I’m sitting in solitary on the deck watching the water ripple on the pond, see the gentleness of the geese skimming across the water, an occasional ruffled feather, hear the birds tweeting in the wren house above my head, feeling the sun on my skin…reality sinks in and I know that I wouldn’t trade THIS or my life for anything. Which has me questioning sentence number 1 above:

Why do I think everyone else’s life is better than my own.

Namaste

03.03.22
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Changing life one coffee shop at a time

There is often a huge crevice between expectations associated with our choices and Reality… Capital R – Reality. Simply put, I’m in the drive thru of my favorite coffee shop, waiting for my turn to order, I make a snap decision and choose to get a large calorie laden coffee with caffeine, sugar and real whipped cream rather than my usual healthier choice of a regular decaf brew. In that moment of choice, I may set into motion a day of regrets and negative self talk because of the one moment (monumental?) decision. I’m hung up on the little jagged edge in the crevice as the the self talk…the disappointment in my choice…. morphs into the inner voice screaming why did I do it and why do I always make the wrong choice….this negative self talk and self irritation continues on and on even into the next morning as I step on the scale, not knowing that this one little coffee choice may be forgotten, but has become a building block for the next second, day, year, lifetime.

Sounds a little over-dramatic that a cup of coffee could set your life on spin but how many times do we make a choice, a decision that seemed right in the moment, but find out as life happens that it might not have been the best decision…..but…..oh how we fear intentional change…we fear the unknown. Like the wrong career choice, the bad marriage, the wrong investment, the wrong doctor. These “moment” choices can set our life on a trajectory of angst, hardship, anger or mental self abuse? When, actually, in any moment, we can make a different choice. Life doesn’t happen to us…We choose in each moment and each breath! We can step back and ask ourselves….hmmmm, “How is that working for me?” and then make a change, or a different choice by ordering the planned regular decaf brew!

The way we view our life is one drama after another drama or a sitcom after sitcom or an entire How-to HGTV day perhaps seeing other colors to use as our background. The choices and decisions are ours to make. In my life I have lived many stories. I’ve told myself and edited narratives while identifying with each story while also including play by play -free of charge- to anyone who would listen. It’s not an easy habit to break, but I realized that I created the monsters and the beauty of realization is that as soon as I “open my eyes” the monsters disappear. Until I actually believe they are real, they do not belong to me!

Namaste

02.20.22
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Where do I go from here….

I call it working knowledge…all of the encounters, judgements, observations and a lifetime of the resulting lessons that I draw from over this lifetime aid me in traversing through this human experience as I navigate the cube I live in.

I choose the word CUBE here…like ice cube. Throw an ice cube in a glass of warm water…it eventually melts into something else….liquid form…but while in the glass together with other cubes, we trust and rely on each other’s energy to sustain life as an ice cube a little longer. Eventually though, we morph into another form…water….liquid…we have no idea where or how our journey continues… nor do we have any control….in that moment, we are BEING an INFINITE drop of energy….a drop of water.

Namaste

01.05.22
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Playing with building blocks

Recognizing the emotion. I remember myself and my history as having 3 recognizable emotions and I knew what to do with them…Sob/cry, let it all out laugh, and that feeling in my forehead of rage which I would not normally let out. Everything else (the initial build up) just felt like discomfort…and most of the time I was able to distract myself from that feeling by eating…yes eating….that always felt good….

It wasn’t until I learned and started applying “new thought” “Unity” principles to change the way I think that I began to notice the uneasiness that normally preceded one of the described emotions. The little tickle of laughter as I began to smile was easy because I could belt out a loud laugh that could be heard round the world (it used to embarrass me because it was loud). Second came recognizing the irritation and anger….that was also easy because I carried it around so often and for so long before it burst….but the uneasiness that would make me cry…that was different.

The uneasiness of violence (perhaps because of my mother and the yardstick), witnessing sadness in my beloveds and the world, witnessing murder and death of animals (this is actually the most difficult for me). This uneasiness I felt this morning watching the geese on the frozen pond and thinking…just stop….it’s time to go where it’s warmer…why won’t you go?

It brought that feeling of fear, uncertainty, grief, this doesn’t feel right to my heart. I snapped this picture, stepped back and was grateful that I was actually able to identify the feeling/emotion so that I could stand with it a moment and release it rather than letting it be the first block in the tower of emotional blocks that could/would stack up in my day until I burst free with sobbing, laughing or screaming about something that had nothing to do with anything!

If you are doing the work…working through habits and emotions…you are not alone….sometimes feelings hurt but ignoring them does not make them go away. Eventually they burst forward!

Namaste

10.30.21
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Meme your understanding

The good news is I’m starting to understand…understanding my little habits and attachments that eventually cause me pain and negativity and dis-ease. Actually I feel like this is a big step in the big picture of my life in the 6th decade… Just because I learned it as a child…perfected it as an adult and continue just mindlessly riding the wave …. does not mean I cannot change my thinking, my attitude, my habits!

So the Way I see this is it’s all me…it’s all my choices….its all the difference in my thinking…or lack of thinking. I either live life big and in the moment or I continue doing what I have been doing while lamenting the unfairness of life.

and I must say that once again I have been pulled into memes on social media including those that I just liked but did not take the time to check sources….but I decided to use this even though apparently Albert Einstein did not say it….its a mantra I have been rolling with for a couple years now and in my mind, it actually says everything that needs to be said.

Namaste

10.25.21
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MATH IS HARD….but so is life….

It seems I may have dumped a lot of something in my dream state last night…I woke up recognizing a clarity I have not had for the last few weeks…it’s not like I haven’t realized where my irritation, anger, judgement, hopelessness, and fear were percolating from…but, quite frankly, the more I rationalized and gave my thoughts a safe place to “think” the more miserable I was….and I knew it…I knew what was going on.

I don’t know if Albert Einstein actually said this but this life changing phrase was shared from someone’s consciousness and I am grateful!

A few years ago, I took a wild kinda route to changing my experience. I packed up and moved from everything I had ever known. I recognized I was circling the drain physically, mentally and spiritually a few years ago….and I also knew that if I continued struggling my way to air every single day…trying to make the same thinking work in a different way, I would succumb to becoming a lonely bitter old woman with negative, joyless and angry thought patterns just like my mother taught me. My breaking the glass to escape moment was not easy but I believe it was much easier than daily doing and thinking the same hateful, destructive thoughts. Fear of doing nothing finally became the worst possible life scenario.

If we are strong enough to get outside our head and breathe where we are planted….that does seem like the most comfortable route…but often that is not possible. The knowing is within…the solution is there and We know what the solution is….but the remedy of kicking away the blocks, of changing from the inside out can be daunting….until you know in that second that there really are no rules except of our own making and those rules manifest from fear that keeps us locked in and locked down.

namaste