My father gives all kinds of wisdom to us kids with sparkling eyes, specific ways he moves his hands to underline a point and just the hint of laughter in his voice  sometimes followed with the infamous “horse bite” where he’d grab a knee with his hand and squeeze.  I’m betting that the saying “reaping the harvest of hard work” must have come down the line at some time in my life from him.  When I was younger, especially when I was a teenager, a lot of the life lessons he taught me were received with both of my eyes rolling at a real or an imaginary audience but his point usually did hit home even if I’d have been damned to show anyone that it had!

This week, mi padre is visiting for the Thanksgiving Holidays along with my brother-in-law.   Tonight we all got together for dinner and had a really nice conversation and time.  It was especially nice for me to be able to hold some kind of semblance of an informed political conversation with my Dad (he’s a retired USAF Col) sharing some of the ideas and knowledge that I’m receiving from the political science class that I’m taking this semester.  What is especially heart-warming is that I want to hear whatever experience, strength and hope my father shares without fearing being offended or irritated by what he says.  I think the gift of my being able to have an open heart is largely in part because of having done a lot of deep soul searching work and taking all kinds of steps towards the life I want to live and have.

It’s taken me 275 words to risk receiving the same response from you  that I used to give my parents by sharing that if you do the really hard work  and invest time, attention and action into doing your best with family, friends and work you will reap the benefits I promise you.  It’s just that sometimes the rewards for all that we’ve put into our selves and our lives definitely doesn’t happen on our time line (instantly) nor does it always come in the form or fashion that we expect (fame, fortune, insert your expectation here).  I realized I was reaping the harvest of hard work tonight because of how I felt spending time with my family.  I felt happy, sane and calm.  Really!?!  There would have been a time in my life that if you had asked me how my family time was, much less around a holiday, you would have never seen “happy”, “sane” or “calm” in my description.  Today, most of the time there’s a good chance you will.

Maybe this thing about hard work and reaping the harvest somewhere down the road seems like a no brainer to you.  Perhaps that completely makes sense to you but for me, especially in this instant everything kind of world, that wasn’t what I wanted to hear.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that every lesson and everything that you learn and work to improve in your life has to be hard work, not at all. What I am saying is that if you sometimes feel hopeless or wonder why the hell you put forth the effort to improve yourself and/or make a difference — you will reap the rewards of your efforts today somewhere down the road.  I believe there is a universal law at play here that has to be reconciled with your input.

So take some time today to think about where you’ve put your intentions and efforts and know that the universe is paying attention.  We don’t always know when or how the universe (I call it the Divine) will respond, but have confidence that there will be a response.

Having an “attitude of gratitude” puts us in the frame of mind to be looking for people, circumstances and places that we can feel grateful about.  I used to hate it when the people I was hanging out with or being mentored by would suggest such a thing to me.  It just sounded like another one of those platitudes that everyone says but don’t really mean.

And it might be a platitude but when I have an attitude of gratitude it works.  Imagine that.  A platitude that actually works, who knew?!

The best time to come up with things to feel grateful about are especially when it seems like there is absolutely NOTHING to be grateful about.  Your head hurts, you lost your job, you’re broke, you are divorced, your loved one walked out on you, your car broke down, you don’t have a car….the list goes on and on.  One thing we’re really good at doing is coming up with a list of what is wrong, especially if you’re recovering from any number of addictions (alcohol, drugs, nicotine, food, sex, money, insert-your-drug-of-choice-here).  For the past couple of years, I’ve been making it a point to focus on those things that make me grateful and just like “they” tell you—-the more you focus on something, the more you’ll see it.   Why, today I have so many things to really feel grateful about.  Like my husband, and my friends and family and my health and the Pistachio  Tree in our backyard whose leaves look like glinting gold in the sunlight.

Something I’ve been doing lately during my commutes back and forth to school is listening to one of the radio channels here in Austin which is playing 24/7 comedy.  I have a feeling that this great comedy will only be around until  someone purchases the air time and creates a new station (not being negative, just realistic) but for now it sure is making a difference in my attitude.  They happen to play some of my favorite comedians over and over like Jim Gaffigan. Here’s his skit about “Hot Pockets“.   Obscure comedy, my favorite. Before listening to this comedy show I was listening to ranting talk shows, some music and lots of news.  Talk about a way to get yourself as far away from grateful as possible! I mean, I’m all for you knowing what is going on in the world around you; however, we surely don’t need to be watching/listening/tweeting/absorbing everything news all the time unless we’re the President and even then we’d probably have someone whose job it was to just give us the cliff notes.

What we think about, what we talk about, what we focus on is what our lives end up becoming.  Still haven’t figured out how to manifest a Mazda RX-8 for myself (because I think about them all the time), but I sure do see them driving up behind me, to the side of me, pulling out of parking lots, backing into spaces in front of me so I suspect its just a matter of time before I will be driving my own!

I like to play this game with gratitude sometimes where I’ll sit outside and look into my house when the lights are on (except not for in the winter because it’s cold) kind of like I’m stalking myself but it puts me in a place where I feel like I’m looking at my life through the eyes of somebody else.  And I really like what I see.  Or I notice that I mostly like what I see but I really need to take the slip cover off of the sofa and wash it.  I’m still grateful though,  I mean I have a sofa so there’s that.

As we head into the season where many of us focus on what we have or don’t have, decide to capture an attitude of gratitude.  For two weeks before you go to sleep, list 5 things/people/places/ideas/etc. that you’re grateful for and each of those days for that two weeks the list has to include at least 5 different things.   I kind of got panicky when I first did this and thought ahead because I was just sure I wouldn’t be able to list that many things but when I realized I could even get as simple as being grateful for breathing and my heart beating, then I realized that I had this gratitude game covered. Try it.

What’s on your gratitude list today?

Breaking away from any pack is quite a conundrum for me because I love to be right in the middle of a big “puppy pile” and yet, I have realized that in order to find the right “puppy pile” for me….I have to first realize what pack it is that I’m breaking away from.

For all of my international readers I apologize for thoroughly confusing you by throwing out these references that you may or may not be familiar with.  In this case, “puppy pile” means a group of friends, colleagues and or acquaintances who I enjoy spending time with and “the pack” refers to the people that I find myself surrounded by.

Right now we are smack dab in the middle of November, which means, for many Americans we are heating up for our biggest “holiday” season of the year.  Even though our eyes have been opened up over the last decade or so that there are other holidays going on in addition to the traditional Christian one of Christmas, no matter our religion anyone living in the U.S. has been under the heavy influence of great marketers for all of their lives.  By the time October rolls around, the shopping frenzy and anxiety about not meeting unrealistic expectations (real and perceived) begins.

However, I am grateful to tell you that it is possible to break away from the pack so that you can figure out how you want to celebrate and/or acknowledge your particular holiday. It turns out that I have friends and family members who have taken the leap to break away.  One couple we know has a fabulous Winter Solstice party every year and invites all kinds of interesting friends who are fun to talk with as well as cooking amazing food for everyone. If gifts are exchanged at all, they are usually of the homemade or something-you-can-eat variety.

  For several years there, I was miffed about how I felt about celebrating around this time of year partly because I still celebrated the faith tradition I was brought up in and partly because I had no idea how to celebrate in the new faith tradition I had adopted.  All that and the added bonus of the extreme marketing campaign memes that run through my head about how “one” is supposed to look, feel, act, behave, decorate, celebrate and give.  Whoooowh.  I had a Jewish boss years ago who used to stay at a very nice swanky hotel in Hawaii with his family. They’d leave around mid-December and not return until after the first of the year.   Seemed like a  pretty sane idea to me.

Slowly my husband and I have created our own version of celebration.  We definitely enjoy spending time with friends and family taking the time to gather, talk, play games and have fun.  For many years, because my husband is from another faith tradition then me…I felt sorry for myself and would not decorate in the way that I grew up in a traditional Christian household.  Slowly but surely, I’ve come around to figuring out what kinds of decorations I want to have because I want them….not because of any expectation of what I am supposed to have.  I bought three poinsettias from a friend’s daughter a few weeks ago and am looking forward to having them to add their festive color to our home.  I’m pretty sure that I was clear with the Universe, at least subconsciously, about wanting Christmas decorations for a tree because somehow over the years I actually have accumulated enough to decorate a nice mid-sized tree.

As to the whole gift giving thing, I’m still not the Martha Stewart that I wish I was who would grow and make enough things that I could whip together into fabulous unique gifts.  Truly, I do have this image in my head.  I have to stay away from all those magazines in the doctors’ offices that have great ideas for how to make gifts or even buy gifts for under $$ (enter number here).  I’ve finally gotten honest with myself about this in that a.) obviously my calendar speaks volumes of where I put my interests and b.) having a very limited budget takes care of all kinds of worry cuz you can’t do what you can’t do!??

So what I would encourage you,  my dear readers is if you live in a place (like the U.S., U.K., etc.) where most people kind of go bonkers around this time of the year, to think about how YOU want to celebrate your particular holiday or season.  How do YOU want to let people know that you care about them.  Turns out, it may be just as simple as giving someone a bit of face-time.

May I be able to break away from my pack and you be able to break away from yours so that we can find each other in that free space away from the frenzy!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock this past week, you’ve heard/read/seen the news about the winning-est football coach in history, Joe Paterno of Penn State  being fired, along with Penn State President Graham Spanier in the wake of a sex abuse scandal in which authorities said they failed to do enough after learning of it from an assistant Coach.  Now before I piss off a whole bunch of you, I want to say for the record that a.) sex abuse is never okay and b.) sex abuse is especially heinous when it is perpetrated on a kid and c.) sex abuse is never okay.

I’m telling you all that because I want you to remember it when I tell you what may piss you off which is why this whole media hoopla has got me up in arms and it’s not just because of really gross negligence and awful sex abuse allegations that seem to be torn from the pages of a Law and Order Special Victims Unit script.  It’s because so many of us are missing so many huge points. It’s like we’re all just a huge litter of Pavlov’s dogs ready to jump at the first threat that the media and press throws out to us with our very surface opinions on whatever the matter du Jour is (enter unruly taunting Monty Python character here)…

French Taunting Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Yes, the whole situation with Penn State and the alleged situation with the children is horrendous.  Yes, it is extremely sad that such a great hero such as Joe Paterno is being driven to his knees so late in life after all that he has done for so many.  And do you really think that this kind of sex abuse situation where some people know and don’t really shake the bushes about it to put a stop to it is rare?  Really? Can I say Catholic Priests?  And not that there is anything the matter with Catholic Priests, but not too far back if you rifle through most cities’ Daily Planet rags you will find headline news about the sex abuse allegations of many Catholic Priests being hidden for decades.

Witch hunts only make certain that witches will hide.  Ye gads people do you really think that burning famed figures at the stake because they preferred to throw the hot potatoe to the next person in line and ignore what happens is going to make someone in a similar situation in the future pause and say, “hmmmm, I remember what happened to Paterno and Spanier so rather than passing this to someone and then focusing on what brings glory and fame and money to many, I’m going to risk losing it all by following the whole chain of command and shaking a lot of bushes to make sure things get done”? Really?  Well, I want to be part of that world where most people would respond that way but unfortunately probably what most of us would do in that situation is try to make it go away as quietly as possible.  I mean, I think I would raise all kinds of hell if it was me but I don’t have as much to lose as Paterno and Spanier did either.

One of my favorite blogger/tweeter CEO/Consultants, Peter Shankman, wrote a recent article entitled, “Why Most People Are Full of Shit“.  Suffice it to say that I don’t believe I’m digressing too much by referring to Peter’s article because he’s saying that 99% of the people you meet in the world are full of shit. And then gives examples of say two people bumping into each other and saying “they’ll have to meet for coffee” with really not having any intention of meeting in a dark alley at high moon much less sharing a cup of Jo with each other.  Okay, so a few of those FOS (full of shit) people were blasting the airwaves yesterday on one of my favorite talk radio shows (KLBJ AM – Jeff Ward) pretty much saying that Paterno should be hung out to dry along with a whole bunch of the higher ups.

Sorry,  not going to really be able to take in your sincerity of opinion because I know that you are really an FOS person who is used to talking out of both sides of your mouth.

Now, with that said the kind of people I will listen to very intently are the ones who have suffered at the hands of someone like Sandusky.  I know you’re coming from raw experience.  And I’ll listen to someone who has been in Paterno’s shoes and learned  some hard lessons about sweeping stuff under the carpets.  I won’t give someone like Sandusky any attention at all; however, I might listen to his wife just to find out how it could be possible to be in such total denial of someone you are married to for so many years.  That’s a case study in itself.

What I’m trying to say here is GLASS HOUSESSSSSSS!  We have an opportunity with a case like this to really look within ourselves so that we can become willing to grow and learn.  We can look into yet another freaking broken system to see how we can handle things differently.  We can learn to be willing to look into the dysfunction going on in our own lives, families, work, friend situations and let the healing begin with us.

I can almost guarantee you that there are so many more people responsible for what occurred and didn’t occur then has come out in the press thus far.  A sick situation that has lasted so very long has a whole lot of people in agreement, whether consciously or unconsciously, to keep things status quo.  I bet there’s a lot of aching necks from looking the other way for so long.  And not very many of us can be found without some kind of dirt on our own selves because dirt like this flings far and wide.

It’s a very sad situation that is being played out all the time, all over the world by so many people so the thing that we need to do is look to ourselves first for how we can clean up our side of the street and then look out in our own lives to see where we can shine the light and bring in some awareness and healing.

It’s really easy to get on top of a high platform and yell out the injustices at the top of our lungs. Sometimes, in fact, it’s a very good thing to do this.  But what seems to be our kryptonite is accepting our own humanity with all of our perfections and fallacies so that then we can then accept the reality of what is, and then decide the best response and action to take.

How will you show up in your life today?

If you let yourself just take that in for one minute, “everything is alright, everything is okay”, doesn’t it make you feel better? I mean, even if you were already feeling alright, sometimes we’re just not aware of all the stress, tension and control we are wound up in until we hear (or read) a soothing voice telling us that it’s all going to be okay.

Back in the “day” when I used to smoke mary-ju-juana, I was one of those people who partook because I wanted to not feel sad, afraid, hurt, angry, worried (insert issue here).  I spent the whole summer after my freshman year in college, high.  Or as close to it as I could.  And you know I didn’t get a thing done such as going to summer school or finding a job.  But I did discover a whole bunch of really good ways to combine food and eat sugar.  What I didn’t know then, but I do know now, is that I needed to discover that peaceful place inside of me that has a never ending fount of encouragement and feeling peaceful.  Somehow I didn’t make it into an Ashram, church, synagogue, counselor’s office or 12-step meeting then.  I guess I was still living my story and adding chapters of experience for figuring out later down the road.

When I finally did make it into all kinds of spiritual rooms, counselor offices and self-help groups I set down my weapons of rash dysfunction to my brain and walked around feeling pretty exposed for awhile there as learned to understand myself and who I was in the world (see Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search For Meaning“).  I will be forever grateful for the therapist I saw during this period because of many reasons but most certainly because she had such a soothing way about her from just her disposition to her voice.  I think it was more the way she loved me to health rather than any great psychology that helped me get to the place of feeling that everything was going to be okay—although there was good psychology too!

It may seem disingenuous for me to tell you that even with the state of the Economy around the world, war, disease, and pestilence,  that everything really is fundamentally okay…but it is….really.  I’m thinking of even the worst times in my life when I’ve been hurting physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually (and there’s been a lot of those times) that in the center of each time, I was okay.  The “I” that cannot be measured.  The “I” that has a body and a soul and all kinds of things that we attach to ourselves to say to the world, “this is who I am”. But really that “I” of us is that place you can find, if you have the desire to find it, that is in the center of us but can’t be measured. It can be felt but not seen.   Meditation has definitely helped me find that “I” so that sometimes all I have to do is sit somewhere calming to me (like outside in the swinging chair on our back patio), disengage from all the things that are troubling my mind and soul and allow the “I” to float forward.

Sometimes though I need to run through the countryside or swim in the ocean….move my body till I can let go of what I am holding on to so that I can allow in, me.

No matter what is going on now for you, you too can find that calm within so that you feel the truth that everything is fundamentally well.

The journey may be long and the road may be rocky but the bliss is so worth it.

What are you willing to do today to feel the bliss within?

Paramahansa Yogananda

When the Eckhart Tolle’s book, “The Power of Now” came out a handful of years ago, I so resisted reading it.  It just seemed to “book du jour” to me.  E V E R Y O N E was talking about it from Oprah to people I sponsor in 12-step programs to random people on the street.  In fact, a couple of friends who I admire from two different areas of my life even gave me the book to read and it still took me 1/2 a year or more to get around to it.

I don’t remember now, but  have probably written about it in previous posts, when I actually picked up the book and read it but HAZZA  almost upon the first few sentences I was struck by the energy that came through the words that Eckhart had written.  I totally related to the example of when an emergency happens how everything slows down and you are so in the moment during that time (ask me about being in the moment as I woke up from a drunken stupor to see my car heading off of an overpass….).

Needless to say, this book and the teachings—or re-teachings of what we already know–have stayed with me.

I’ve been thinking today about how we humans seem to enjoy freaking ourselves out about stuff.  Like the whole pandemonium that is going on around 2012 and OCCUPY Wall Street, etc. etc. etc.  When I contemplate these reactions and how sometimes we only seem to get in the moment when the sky is falling then I realize that really, really what is happening underneath it all is we’re just searching for the NOW. The What IS.  The connection to ????? (insert the G-word here?)

I found out today that someone I knew from way back in high school days had just learned on a seemingly routine annual exam that she has a rare aggressive form of cancer.  This is a gal who had her ups and downs in childhood (as many of us did) but by and large had a whole lot of really great things going on throughout her life and BOOM there it is. The Now factor.  What we’re all searching for sans the cancer.  And I got blown into NOW by my heart because I immediately felt the tears coming up with a love that I hadn’t realized that I felt for this friend. Not that deeply.  It was nice albeit painful.  We played telephone tag today but I felt the connection with her in our voice mails.  Once again I’m being reminded to pause and be alive.  To feel the love that circles in and around and throughout all of our lives that we tend to swat off like an irritating swarm of gnats who dare to bug us in our busy days.

I’m amazed today when I hear someone tell me “I’m bored”.  I totally cannot grok what they are saying and quite frankly I have no interest in pursuing why.  There is just so much to explore and learn and experience that if we spend the rest of our lives being alive in the now of that we will never realize them all.  Being bored is boring?!?! And self-centered. Hello, yes I’ve been this person (a bored person) and I bet I was pretty boring to all around me in my self-absorption.

Being in the now can be scary because you might think about something that you’ve been denying or you might realize something that you don’t want to accept or God forbid you would feel feelings that you’d rather not feel…but here’s the deal…when we allow ourselves to be in the N O W, then we can take down our neurotic staircase to avoidance.  And clean up what we don’t want in our lives so we can allow in what we do want.

How will you allow yourself to be in the N O W, now?

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve probably heard or read something about “Occupy Wall Street” or “Occupy–insert-your-home-town-here”.  I just read an interesting blog today about Occupy Los Angeles by Ryan Torok.  I think this might be one of my favorite write ups about Occupy info thus far because it reveals a response to our question “what the hell are all these people talking about” re: Occupy insert-name-here.  I’ll leave it to you to read Ryan’s blog or watch his video interview to get the message.

Out of the five definitions I found for the word “occupy” on Dictionary.com, my favorite was this one:

For those of you who may be ignorant to the whole scaling of the gums procedure, it is when the Periodontist cleans your teeth and gums down to the root. Usually, such as my case for example, your dental hygienist/dentist will recommend that you visit a Periodontist for their opinion if you’ve got some deep pockets (where the gum  pocket is deep and exposed around the tooth).

Why, you may be asking, is this Life Coach blogging about a gum scaling procedure from hell?  Well, I would reply, that is such a good question.  One of the topics of coaching that comes up almost immediately is “how well are you caring for yourself”.  You might be surprised to know how many people, very successful, intelligent, competent people, who do not care for themselves….very….well.  One area that very busy executives can allow to slip by is their teeth.  Now once you’ve realized the error of your ways and get into a regular dental regime of brushing twice a day and flossing at least once a day plus getting your teeth cleaned by a professional twice a year…..well….let me put it this way…you become hyper sensitive to those around you who do not. I won’t even go into the kissing part…bleh, bleh! bleh!!!

For some of us, in spite of having good dental hygiene, you may have been dealt the cards for naturally poor teeth or gums like I have been.  I haven’t had to worry about deep pockets for at least 8 years, so I’ve been lucky.  I don’t know why when my hygienist recommended the Periodontist this time, that I didn’t remind her of the good one that I had seen previously. But I didn’t and I trusted their judgment.  Besides, the Office Manager said he was really cute!    How did things end up going down hill for me?  Well, for one thing the two Halcion tablets that they gave me before the procedure didn’t seem to be effecting me in the slightest (I was able to read an entire four pages about Steve Jobs in Time Magazine) so the assistant gave me one more.

The next thing I knew, I had my face completely covered except for my mouth and the Periodontist was shooting Novocaine into my gums. Now, I admit, the Dentist I’ve been going to for at least twenty years now is really, really good and spoils his patients wonderfully but I don’t remember the Periodontist telling me he was going to shoot my gums, nor did he gently give a little bit to numb the area at first and then give the deeper one.  Plus, he didn’t tell me that I was going to feel a tug.  It was very uncomfortable.  At one point I remember trying to grab his hand so he couldn’t hurt me anymore and him telling me (nicely) not to grab his hand and me telling him I wanted to hit him because he was hurting me.  Then I told him that he might want to watch how my Dentist does it because he never hurts me.  Okay, I know that was like committing hari kari suicide with this Periodontist. In fact, no one from his office has called to check up on me 24 hours later….

I’m sharing this with you dear readers not to scare you away from taking care of yourselves but rather to encourage you to ask a whole lot of questions of the doctor/periodontist before you have a procedure so that you can get a feel for them and then LISTEN TO YOUR GUT (or your heart, or mind) and pay attention to any little inklings that you get.

Oh, and they gave me some pain medication to take after the procedure that caused me to throw up bile twice this morning.  Not sure what that was about except that when I googled the medication it did say if you feel nauseous when taking it to take it with food.  Really, though I don’t seem to need any kind of pain medication today.  So that’s good.  I’ll give that to the Periodontist. My Australian Shepherd was beside himself trying to figure out how to help me as I retched into the commode.  Luckily, he has never seen me sick!

I’m happy to say that the doctors who I see for my general upkeep are excellent and make me feel cared for and heard.  I also realize that because they are  so good they have helped me to raise my standards in terms of medical care.  And that’s a good thing.  Hold out for the good ones but go see them when you find them.

Who do you need to make an appointment with today?

Today I am older, much older than the age my father was when he came to my graduation from boarding school.    In fact, it wasn’t until the last decade or two that I could even begin to understand what my parents were going through in their lives back when I was a nubile 18 year old. You know how it is when you’re that age…..there is nothing quite as important as being with the person you pine for—and for me it was about spending as little time as I could with the adults.

Boarding school had a deeper spin to it then partly because it was the first school that I had spent more than a year at since elementary school and mostly because I lived with my friends for three years.  You can imagine that we all went through a very tender part of our growing up years together.  And, for me, I totally focused on my peers and did not get very close to many of the adults although I certainly could have. When I tell my story in recovery meetings, I liken my boarding school experience to being similar to “Lord of the Flies”.  It was also a time period (mid-70′s) when we were able to get away with a lot even though the school was religious AND military for the boys. I returned to school years later to talk with the woman who had been the Dean of girls at the time (and who I adored) about how we could have gotten away with so much and she said that they just were very ignorant and naive about what was going on in the world back when we were kids.

Even with all the good and not so good memories, over the years as I’ve come to know myself and accept myself for who I am with all the bells and whistles, reunions have had a push pull effect on me.  I love seeing people who I haven’t seen in years and catching up with who they are now and how their lives have turned out but at the same time there are some that I have no interest in knowing at all.  I also feel quite a bit different from many of my friends from back then. I had no idea that they were so conservative and I was so independent!!  Who thought of politics back then? Certainly not me. I just followed what my father believed because I respected him so much.  Didn’t give it a second thought until I was out on my own.

And then there are the friends who I loved and still love but who are still in to heavy drinking and even some “partying” as they like to call it with other imbibing accessories.  Really?!?!  It’s a good reminder for me of where I’ve come from. After all, it was after our five year reunion when returned to the local liquor store to buy some supplies that the owner recognized me from when we used to sneak across town to purchase liquor. I’m sure they thought we were college kids back then.  I was the one who would egg all my friends on to go get something to drink before a dance at school or to  just “take one more”. There used to be a restaurant on the edge of town that made delicious homemade/natural comfort food and served really good beer in pitchers.  Somehow, I got away with getting the taxis to take us out there and back without turning us in.  It’s just today there is so many interesting things to learn about and ideas to explore that I want all my brain particles working as best I can.

Going back to high school reunions is a pull for me because as mixed a bag of nuts as we were back then, all those kids and teachers and adults were my “family” for three years of my life.   I have kept a few of my friends from back then in my life today because they are people who I want to know even if we hadn’t shared our high school years together.

But just like family, when we’re good solid adults way into our adulthood, we get to choose who we spend our time with because “time” is precious.  It’s an opportunity for us to accept who we are and also accept who everyone else is as well.   Luckily, I’m in a very good marriage so I certainly am not looking to get laid and I don’t drink or do drugs so I’m not looking to score.  I really like my life today, so I’m not looking for a fantasy weekend get-away.  I suppose one of the reasons I still want to go to my high school reunion is because I want to understand who I was back then and who everyone else was too. It’s a time to compare notes about our experiences to fill in the missing puzzle pieces. After all, someday I just may get that screenplay written about my life story!

How about you?  If you feel a pull to go to your high school reunion, why do you? What is that pull?

Just in time for celebrating the High Holidays, my husband and I watched the PBC Masterpiece movie, “God on Trial” which was inspired by the legend that a group of concentration camp prisoners conducted a mock trial against the Almighty God. From all walks of life, a physicist, a glove maker, rabbis, a law professor and at least one criminal weigh the evidence and offer thoughtful arguments taken from history, science, theology and personal experience.

Needless to say,  afterward we washed our brains out with two back-to-back episodes of “Modern Family“.

Don’t get me wrong, “God on Trial” is an excellent movie full of all kinds of  beliefs and feelings worthy of exploring, it’s just you can imagine that it is pretty intense.  Earlier today, I interviewed prominent teacher of healing and shamanism, Llyn Roberts about her newly released book, “Shapeshifting Into Higher Consciousness“.  Llyn holds a Master’s Degree in Tibetan Buddhist and Western Psychology and has undergone extensive training with traditional Andean healers as well as having been initiated into shamanic circles by Quechua peoples in South America and Siberia.  And earlier this week I met Rennie Davis and learned some of what he is offering in his workshops on Earth Whispering training.

It seems no matter where you (and I) look today, we will find people asking questions and talking about all the changes that seems to be afoot from the changing weather conditions (drought in Texas, other States and countries, extensive rains, etc.) to political regimes either in turmoil or completely reforming into something completely different.  Where I want to focus my input right now is to those peoples who are looking at this time as one of possibility, one of hope, one of remembering the magic that surrounds us all as one of Llyn Robert’s shamans told her.

The movie, “God on Trial” explored the various beliefs of several of the Jewish concentration camp victims in their most desperate of times. It seems that we humans are compelled to share our beliefs and thoughts mostly when we experience fear and pain.  It’s very easy for me to go back to sleep in my consciousness and be lulled into complacency when all is well.  Not to say that I don’t explore my beliefs when I am feeling good, but to remind myself that when situations do arise that challenge what I believe that is when I am more likely to know what I truly think and also to feel where the gaps are in my trust.

All reason enough for me to keep doing those things I do to keep growing in my awareness and investigating what I do and don’t believe.  Taking care of ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually by eating good nutritious foods in moderation, exercising, handling issues with the help of counselors or a trusted spiritual adviser, meditating, enjoying the world around us are all deposits into our insurance policy of — well, I would call it faith but you may call it something else — so that when things around us are changing at a rapid pace we have a deep unending resource within us that keeps us going.

Really, when you come down to it,  this life on Earth thing it is not that the God of our understanding (or misunderstanding as it were) is on trial but it is more that our perspectives and beliefs are up for examination under a really big and bright mircroscope.

What kind of deposits are you making into your spiritual bank these days?