Occupy Yourself.  Sound a little flip?  I bet if we had the ability to measure our souls on a meter, a good percentage of  our meters would read that we have our souls way outside of our bodies instead of minding the ship in our minds, hearts and bods. We probably “assume” that there is just an automatic pilot button that clicks on to operate our bodies when we’re out of them. And for many of us we’ve been able to get away with living kind of untethered to our world but some of us do get caught—-remember that lady in the YouTube video falling in the fountain?  Her soul must have been way outside of her body if you ask me.

of texting and all the technical things we do now days to “stay in touch”, we’re really not.  Which may sound hypocritical for this blogger to be writing but I really don’t text that much even though I write quite a bit.  Okay, I admit one of the reasons is because I do not have very great fine motor dexterity so it turns out it’s much easier to just pick up the phone and call someone then to text them.  But there is something about talking with someone either face-to-face or over the phone that keeps me more in my body then when I  text.   Think about it,  if you’re uncomfortable with having to say something to someone so much so that you would rather text them then you’re missing a great opportunity to get to know yourself better by inquiring within to find out why you are feeling so uncomfortable.  That and getting to connect with another human being by using your voice.   It’s not a good thing to allow your voice to go on automatic pilot. Trust me, I’ve tried it and the craziest things end up rattling off of my tongue.

Today the PoliSci Professor talked about taxes in the U.S. and economic theories. He also threaded his own conservative view points in and out of various facts he was teaching us about taxes.  It was pretty scary to be sitting there and hearing only a handful of other voices, other than my own, asking questions and expressing varying points of view.  Granted, when I was the age that most of my fellow classmates are now, I can’t think of a more boring class that I could have taken back then than taxes.  But today it is relevant to me.  And for the handful of classmates sharing their voices, it is relevant to them too.  I bet they’re mostly occupying themselves.  Can’t make a difference in what is going on in the world if you don’t pay attention to what is going on around you and learn what your opinions are, how you feel and where you stand when it comes to weighty subjects such as the economy and taxes (just to name a few).

I was a good 15 years older than many of my classmates before it ever dawned on me to wonder what companies our 401K monies were going to for investments. Did I believe in them?  Were our values in alignment with each other? And I was only aware of these questions because I happened to be in a job that employed a lot of social workers who asked these kind of questions. Get to know yourself well and understand how you tick so that when you do put all of your energy into a direction for a purpose it is laser sharp aligned and can make a difference.   There is something very “victim y” about putting the blame on corporations, other people, etc. etc. (I’m guilty of this too) instead of knowing yourself so well that you can purposefully point yourself into a direction with an outcome in mind.  Then you don’t have to wait for others to come to your rescue. Instead you have others running to catch up with you to align their mission with yours.

Give yourself the gift of reconnecting with yourself…..Occupy Yourself! Where will you say “I can” next?

One of the things I appreciated about the story of Billy Beane (Oakland A’s General Manager) as depicted in the movie, “Moneyball“  is how he handles his  superstition  about effecting the outcome of the game if he is on-site rather than in the underground gym watching it on the screens.  Boy can I sure relate to that belief.  Early on in my therapeutic exploration of my past, they called my idea of making sure everything happened perfectly the way my eleven year old brain wanted it to, by touching every other fence post and hopping over all the lines on the sidewalk, as bordering on obsessive/compulsive.

And I swear whenever I deign to watch a Cowboy’s game with my little brother, they slide into losing until I leave the room. I have to be out of the room for them to win—hence I do not watch anymore Cowboy Games (but they still lose!)

Perhaps a good healthy does of superstitions is a way for us to listen/see our fears in a creative way that we can process and digest but taken too extremes, of course, it can get in our way.  Take for example that I am offering a weekend retreat (December 16-18, 2011) at one of my favorite places outside of Wimberley, Texas (The Red Corral Ranch) to explore my friend and best-selling author Janet Conner’s book, “Writing Down Your Soul“.  I love this book and the process and when I offered some weekly meetings a year ago to explore the book–people loved it!

Well, the superstition enters in because although I have had some very successful and fun retreats throughout the past ten years (I believe retreats are so important to offer women to take a rest!)  because of one lone retreat where I got in over my head due to the cost of the accommodations and had to PAY to attend MY OWN retreat….I have not offered one for the past 2 or 3 years until now.  Almost immediately upon announcing this retreat and inviting people to attend, I began hearing from those who wanted to join me.  In fact, I already have one person paid in full already (all that is requested now is to turn in the $75 deposit and pay the remainder by November 16) to cover the cost of the accommodations and the retreat itself.

But I’m having that Dallas Cowboy game kind of a feeling about returning to those people who said they were interested to  button that up with them (you know, giving them detailed info about the hows and wheres etc.).  Can you imagine if CEOs of companies out there allowed themselves to be swayed by their superstitions?!  Some might fare well in spite of themselves, but I doubt very many would thrive with the restriction of superstitions.

It’s great when a person like me can make connections about cause and effect and see above, beyond and around what many cannot in order to connect the dots. However, when the connections are taken too far off in any direction….well, it is no different then if I had photo shopped my own imagination.

How about you? Do you ever allow superstitions to get in your way?

The song that played in my head today as I walked out of  the broadcast programming class into a sea of students was “Mrs. Robinson“.  Some of us who were over zealous with bravado volunteered ourselves last week to sign up to create a “Pitch” for a show that would fit into the time slot of another show that had been yanked  (Big Brother—because our class voted it off).  I’ve been toying around with the idea of writing a pitch for a show revolving around an older (really older!) returning student etc. etc.

Of course you know that song by Simon & Garfunkel came from the movie, “The Graduate” but did you also know that Ann Bancroft, who played Mrs. Robinson, was only 36 to Dustin Hoffman’s 30?!  Okay, so it’s really funny to me that I’m older than Ann was then!  And yet, here I am in a time of my life when I feel more confident than I’ve ever felt before. I made the decision this year to let my hair grow as long as it wants to grow.    For years many people knew me for my hair or “my mane” as they would call it.

In my early twenties, my locks conspired with the Texas humidity to kidnap me and take control of my life (I didn’t go to a stylist and certainly didn’t know about “products”) which made me very self-conscious.  One of my co-workers at the time used to describe me walking down the hallway at work as “there goes Lynn and her hair” as if my hair was its own separate entity.  I was convinced that if I cut my hair to my shoulders, let’s say, that it would have surely kinked up so that I looked like a giant human Q-tip walking down the street.   So I bore the burden of unruly hair.  When it was “good” hair, it was very good hair but when it was bad….

Then when I hit my forties, the voices of the shoulds got ever so loud in my head.  When you’re 40 something “you should” cut your hair into an appropriate style, “you should” not be overtly sensuous, “you should” be sophisticated or glamorous or at least professional and for heaven’s sakes “you should” be contained.  So, I cut my hair to above my shoulders. But I felt like Samson loosing his mane.  It was like my hair was my own very special “pet” that helped define my spirit and now that pet had been stuck inside of a kennel never to see the light of day again.

Well, if the 40′s is the decade of listening to the shoulds then my 50′s are turning out to be the decade of “why not?!”

I’m breaking all kinds of real and perceived “rules” such as returning to school to complete a degree I recklessly abandoned years ago…just because!   And I’m letting my hair grow out and, oh by the way, I curl it and let it fluff out.  It’s actually been complimented by a couple of students, and of course, my friends–which is nice but I don’t have to have anyone’s approval today to be who I want to be.

So there I was wearing a great outfit today that my mom-in-law bought me at a fine Israeli boutique with all my hair hanging down my back and instead of feeling like an invading grandmother in class, I felt a little bit like Mrs. Robinson only better because I know how to put that secret smile on my own face today.

How about you?  Where are you standing up and out by just being “you”?

What? Me pause when agitated, are you kidding??! Not on your life could I pause when I was agitated for many, many years.  Ugh, it was so not a very fun way to live.  I could go from -3 to 105 in as fast as my synapses could misdirect my brain chemistry to the rage sector.  We still have a mark on our pantry door from over eight years ago when I threw a glass across the room to underscore how I was feeling and it miraculously bounced on our Satillo tile floor back up to bam into the door.  Thank the heavens above I don’t have to live that way today!

One of the first “promises” I remembered from a 12-step meeting I began going to in the 80′s was “we will pause when agitated”.  Today, I can finally do that after lots and lots of clearing away of mental rubbish, various healing modalities, giving up alcohol, drugs, caffeine, nicotine, flour and sugar and learning how to meditate.  Oh, and finding the right combination of medication to take via a psychiatrist who really knows his stuff and who I trust implicitly. Also in my faith tradition I say lot’s of prayers and keep in contact with a higher power of my understanding.  It’s very frustrating for those of us who are off chemically to do so many things to try to help ourselves and find that nothing quite works until you take the right pill.  It’s like taking a step with your right foot and then tripping yourself with your left.

It’s amazing to me that in the year 2011, many of us are still so ignorant when it comes to medication for depression.  Because I choose to engage in the world, I knew that isolating in my home was not going to work for me as a way of coping.  For years I grappled with low self-esteem issues and un-checked anger flare ups.  Impulsiveness was my nemesis.  I remember a friend and I admitting to each other a long time ago that we were scared to death to be anywhere really high because we felt this uncontrollable urge to jump.  Except what I didn’t tell him is that fighting that uncontrollable urge was something I did everyday not only about jumping if I was up somewhere high, but also in saying things out loud that I knew should not be spoken (or at least not in that way or at that time or to that person). Deciding to get on medication was a very difficult decision for me because, at least in the beginning, I interpreted it as meaning that I was less than.  I also loved the way I felt when I felt good. It’s just the bad was staying around a whole lot longer.

Today, because I have the ability to pause, I can think about what it is I’m feeling and then choose how or if I want to respond.  All the energy that I used to expend bursting out can now be re-directed into all kinds of creative endeavors as well as enjoying my friends, clients, animals and life.  It’s kind of a bitter-sweet realization that the reason I was able to finally consider talking with a professional about getting on meds is because of a very special therapist who I saw for several years who suggested to me that I was doing everything I knew to take care of myself well so why wasn’t it okay to see if medication would help?  It’s bitter-sweet because that very special therapist was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease a little over a year ago and there isn’t a way that I can let her know how much she helped me with that one question.  Somehow I hope my prayers touch her.

Such a simple thing for us to be able to pause when agitated. I wonder how many wars would never have started and arguments never accelerated if we had just been able to pause.   My good friend Vickie S. used to say, “if you gotta, gotta say it or you gotta, gotta do it then you probably don’t need to do either”.

How about you?  Do you pause when agitated?

Just downloaded a free music app on FB called Spotify and am jamming to the Black-Eyed Peas “Imma Be“.  I love the technologies that are available to us now…when used in moderation…and when we remember to put everything down or turn them off once in awhile to go outside and just enjoy the sun on our face.

I have no idea what “I’mma Be” is about…I just like the beat. But then again, I’ve always been that way with songs where mostly I don’t know what the words are (or at least a good portion of them), I just love the rhythm and beat.  Unless it comes to songs where the whole point of them is to listen to the words.

If I was going to switch around “I’mma Be” to “what I’m about”  it would be such a lovely mixed bag. Which is a good thing. There was a time not too long ago when I could not have even told you what my favorite color was (depends on how I’m feeling, but always love blue) or what kind of music I preferred (really does depend on what kind of mood I’m in).  I’ve gotten pretty good at not worrying about what people think of me (my friend’s Q and M like to say “what other people think about me is none of my business”).   Why just last week when making a presentation about a show I recommend off of the FX network (Justified) I forgot to worry about what would the other students thought (who were mostly all young enough to definitely be my offspring) as I talked about the lead character played by Timothy Oliphant as being very sexy.  Some of my older friends have helped pave the way for me to be confident at any age. Especially my friend Ty-Ty who is 70 something going on 20 something.  She takes on life, whips out her smile and catches rose petals falling in her path, knowing that they always will because they mostly do.

What I’m about is helping others to help themselves so we can help each other and so on and so forth.  Really, my personal motto turned out to be “I help others so they can help me so we can help each other”.  About five years ago, I was taken through a process that helped to figure out your own personal motto. Well, of course, I broke the process because I figured out while being asked the questions how I wanted my answers to sound and it made the end product come out too wordy and definitely did not easily slip off the tongue.  Luckily, the Coach who took me through the process was a very gentle and patient person who was able to coax the real intentions of what I’m about out of me sans too many words.  By the way, “others” represented people, animals, plants, fish, etc.  See what I mean?  It can get really complex quickly.

If you were to come up with a slogan for yourself what would it be?

There are times when I take so for granted the many avenues I’ve traveled down to expand my mind, expand my awareness of self and the world to understand what we’re doing here.  Do you care about expanding your mind?  When I was younger and more susceptible to following my peers, I thought mind expansion primarily happened through the exploration using various drugs.  I suppose, in a way, my mind did expand through the use of them but not in the way I had thought it would.  Instead of having that ah-ha hopeful feeling that I saw many of my friends having, I tended to get really hyper-sensitive and uncomfortable (okay, paranoid!).

As I grew up and matured, I found safer routes (for me) such as exploring various spiritual and religious paths.  I was blessed to meet some life long friends during my stint with a popular magazine.  During that time, a very special group of us formed and I learned all kinds of tools to add to my spiritual tool box from the way of the Red Man (Native American) to Self-Realization Fellowship (Hindu/Christian).   Along the way, I took all kinds of classes and workshops that explored a variety of ideas, techniques and tools that I’m sure if I listed them out here they would terrify some of the more conservative members of my family if they happened across this blog.  To me, the intention of learning them was for the connecting and healing of others, but I realize that some of my ideas for expanding my mind might trigger all kinds of fear for others.

To each his own in terms of how you expand your mind.  I just happened to be very grateful today for all that I’ve learned along the way and all that I know I will continue to learn.

Last night was no exception.  A good friend of mine meets with a group of special friends once a week who come together to share the various learnings that they have gleaned through their explorations.  This time when my friend picked me up she asked me before hand if it’d be okay if we picked up the main speaker/presenter, Rennie Davis, who was in town to conduct a very special workshop that would offer “Earth Whisperer Training”.  She went on to say that Rennie was one of the main guys protesting the Vietnam War (I’ll say!  He was one of the Chicago 7) and other then he was on a spiritual path that she was very interested in and had written a book that she had but had not read yet, she didn’t know much else about him.  Were we in for a treat!! We got 20 minutes with Rennie in the car on the way to the meeting and 20 minutes back.  You know for this interviewer , that exclusive time with him was close to Valhalla!  Suffice it to say Rennie is up to some big stuff in regards to teaching/training us on how to help heal the planet (and ourselves and each other) so if he is ever in your neck of the woods….go see him.

I would be remiss if I didn’t make a nod towards returning to school, by the way.  So many pieces of information that I’ve been walking around with un-tethered in my head lo these many years and missing pieces of facts that are all beginning to come together. I was actually fascinated with what I was learning today in the political science class g_d forbid!  It began to make sense in regards to the connections between the 10th Amendment and opinions that were written way back in the 30′s by various Justices who were opposed to Federal Government having too much power over Commerce laws and preferred putting that power back into the States’ hands.  Who knew that I’d actually one day grok some of this? Certainly not me.

But sometimes you never know where your mind will end up expanding too.

How about you?  What are you doing now to expand your mind?

The Keys - Maharaji

I’m going to have that Cake song, “Going the Distance” in my head which is not entirely a bad thing though it does tend to stay around for awhile. Going the distance popped into my head as the title for all the thoughts circling in my head.   These thoughts were inspired by two movies I watched recently, the first one was “The Conspirator” which is about Mary Surratt who is the lone female charged as a co-conspirator in the assassination trial of Abraham Lincoln. As the whole nation turned against her, she was forced to rely on her reluctant lawyer to uncover the truth and save her life.  The second movie  “Of Gods and Men” is about  a group of Trappist monks, under threat by fundamentalist terrorists,  who are stationed with an impoverished Algerian community and must decide whether to leave or stay.

On the surface, these movies may seem totally unrelated to each other as the first one is set in the United States and deals with the assassination of our President and the second one is set in Algeria and follows the lives of a small group of Trappist monks under threat by fundamental terrorist.  The commonality that I gleaned from both of these movies was the struggle of a person to follow their conscious in spite of the repercussions and even death that may follow.

There have been more than a couple of times in my life when I have gone with what the group (or highly regarded individual) thinks or says instead of following my inner guidance.  In a recent interview with Healer and Reikki Master Shannon Ogg on Blog Talk Radio’s Hope42Day I learned that a rash of panic attacks and anxiety about scuba diving over the last several years may have resulted from vestiges of grief that I have been carrying around since 2001 when we were on vacation in Cozumel and my 14 year old Cairn Terrier, Breakfast, became suddenly ill.  What I did was stay in Cozumel and talk back and forth long distance with a good friend of mine who knew Breakfast and a lot about medicine. This friend worked with the vet to see what could be done for Breakfast and ultimately I had to make the decision to put her to sleep.

In my gut of guts during that time what I wanted to do was to abort my vacation, get on a plane and return home to take care of my dog.  Instead, I was not there to see what was going on and make the hard decision based on that and so my grief was all bagged up like full water balloons within my chest for quite a long time.  On top of that, I added my guilt for not going home to be with my dog and for staying on vacation because, after all, “she was just a dog” and this vacation was had already been re-scheduled due to 9/11 when we had made our first attempt to leave.  What I know today is that no matter what anyone says to me, I’m the one who is going to have to live with me and the decisions I make.   Yes, I have learned to forgive myself and yes, I have let go of beating myself up about this particular incident.

I wanted to share this with you as an example of going the distance for yourself and your own conscious. In “The Conspirator”, the defense attorney decides to go the distance for his client, Mary Suratt, because of his belief in a fair trial by jury and his dawning understanding of why he fought in the war.  In “Of Gods and Men” each of the monks have to wrestle with their own conscious and crisis of faith to make the best choice for themselves that they can live (or die) with.

We make decisions about following our conscious or not all the time, every day and most of us will never have to make a decision based on life or death.  But don’t you think that every decision we make that we follow our conscious on is one tiny building block to who we are and will become? There was one monk in particular who I really related to regarding his crisis of faith because as he struggled through figuring out what decision he needed to make, there were times that he felt like he prayed to God and no none answered.  I so  know that feeling when you’re in utter despair or desperation and really asking for guidance from something/someone/anyone (God, Angels, guides, ancestors, etc.) and it seems like you can hear the echo of your voice going on in waves through the vortex of time.

In my experience, that is usually because I already know the answer that I need to make for myself, but I’m hoping I can return it for full money back with no questions asked.

What conscious decision are you willing to go the distance for today?

Breakfast Kindler

We went to see the opening night movie, “Moneyball” starring Brad Pitt, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jonah Hill, Robin Wright and a slew of great actors.  Our household gives it a four thumbs up for sure.  It is based on a true story about  Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane’s successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players.

I’m a sucker for a good story about baseball and this one was no exception.  I understood exactly why Billy could not show up at the live baseball games (superstitious about being bad luck for the team) and why when his team was playing he would turn on the television but turn the sound off.  It’s just too much too bear the thought of losing.  By the way, Brad Pitt proved he is not just another pretty face anymore–he’s a really good actor.  Spit into the cup perfectly!   But I digress, the reason I’m blogging about this movie is because Billy Beane’s story felt so familiar to me. You know—wondering if you made the right decision even when your gut tells you that you probably didn’t and everyone around you is telling you that you did.

Spoiler alert if you don’t know Billy’s story………………………

It’s about knowing that you made the right decision even when everyone tells you (or thinks) that it was wrong and turning down a whole bundle of money to boot!  I love that Billy had the courage to follow his dream or at least what he believed is/was his dream (to have the A’s win the World Series).  We come into this world alone and we go out of this world alone and in-between we’re sitting within ourselves alone a lot of the time so it’s a good thing when we can believe in ourselves enough to go for the dream no matter what.  To stand by what we value and what we believe in.  To not sell our souls to the highest bidder because that’s what “everyone else” thinks we should do. See?!?!  There I go off on a romantic tangent about baseball and I’m the girl who was terrified to even play softball because of what it could (and did) do to my fingers and face when I couldn’t catch the ball right!

It’s because  the story of baseball is one that we can all climb into some part and relate to in our own lives.

Tonight, I’m going to really be thinking about the message that the highest point of my brain put a flag out in recognition of tonight.  That winning is not all about the money and yet it’s also about taking the money that you’ve earned. The thing is that bar inside of us that tells us “we’ve earned” something is just that…a bar inside of us. That means that no matter how much someone may tell us that we’ve earned something, unless we feel that bar inside of us—we’re probably going to walk around with a nameless weight inside of us because we don’t feel that we’ve earned the money, attention, recognition, etc.

What is your ultimate aha in life right now?  How do you know that you’ve reached an inner goal?

Moneyball 2011

Like right now for instance. Even if you’re just about to crawl into bed and go to sleep…you can start your day over.

During a great “My dinner with Andre” lunch with a good friend today among our topics of divorce, grief, depression, little life tests and more was the realization of how we write “stories” in our minds about what is going on sometimes without any investigation or research to see if our creations are valid.  As luck would have it, we’re also both writers so the fact that we create stories about pretty much everything in our lives guarantees that we will never run out of material to write about.

But it did get us to thinking.

What little worlds had we created out of the very thin air in our minds that we had no idea we had created AND were walking around reacting and responding to as if they were the truth?! Such as, for example, in my past if something negative were to happen to me first thing in the morning (and it could be something as simple as stubbing my toe on the edge of the bed frame) then that was a set up for my creating all kinds of other negative things to support the story that my day sucked.  All I really had to do was acknowledge that I had stubbed my toe possibly because I was still half asleep and not paying attention to where I was placing my feet AND that I could sit down on the edge of my bed (after I had done the jump around dance holding on to my foot routine), take a deep breath and start my day over. So simple yet so disregarded.

This morning I headed off to school earlier than usual so that I could take a test that I had missed while on vacation.  Where we had to take the test was in a different building from the class with a simply amazing number of stairs to take from outside to inside until you reached the class.  Now, I could have made up a whole lot of stories about how this day was going simply based on the fact that I still have a sore foot from a full tank of oxygen falling on it a few days ago and that I was having to walk up several flights of stairs to take a test….but instead I gave myself permission to take my sweet time climbing the stairs and then crammed with some fellow students while waiting for the Professor.  Somehow my morning was almost fun.

You can start your day over anytime if you need to do so, but are you willing?

And you thought you were having a bad day!!

Recently, I posted a comment about having had enough of the intensely hot and dry days we’ve been having for days on end in Texas and my friend Bob responded with, “I mean, there’s surrender and then there’s surrender”!!!!  And yet, I see the cardinals and other birds outside my window making the most of the precious water that I try to fill up some old dog bowls with so that they can drink and bathe.  I watched one bird this afternoon jump right into the middle of the smallest water bowl and swim back and forth and flutter her wings constantly—if birds could purr then this one was surely purring. Several of the little trees that David planted over the last two years are bright green from our frequent watering and somehow bearing the weight of the ferocious 107 degree heat.

I’ve experienced various forms of surrender in my life from surrendering to the fact that my parents were indeed getting a divorce and then surrendering to the fact that they would never get back together again.  Then there was the surrender and acceptance to the understanding that I process alcoholic refreshments and sugary foods much different than the average bear.  In all of these instances, surrender never came easy for me and acceptance only came after I was able to remove my last pinky finger muscle of control from whatever I did not want to accept as reality.  I suppose in a way I have surrendered to the fact that we’re in a record breaking drought and heat wave and most of the time I can accept it and then do what I can–such as watering the plants and animals.  But sometimes I do get caught in the grip of retaliation at what???  There’s really not a person or a group that I can direct my anger about the drought and heat at unless I wanted to believe some of the conspiracies I’ve heard out there such as a government entity is controlling/messing around with our weather. Even then, I still would be powerless over such a group.  I can’t really direct my anger at the sun because it’s just hanging out there being the sun like it has for millions of years now (I’d be like a tiny ant shaking her fist up at a huge magnifying glass). So what I end up bucking up against is that invisible invincible wall of denial of what is really going on.  Sometimes it’s easier just to crash on over to the side of unreality than it is to accept what “is”

Then again, I know that it is in times like this when our faces our being smashed up into a sheer wall of an overbearing reality that some incredible inventions, discoveries and ideas are created. When it seems like there is no way out then someone figures a way out that no one had ever considered or seen.  So were those people able to do so because they first accepted the reality of what was and then were able to back away from it to see what could be done about it or did they not surrender and give up?  I believe that it was after surrender and acceptance that other options could be seen and considered because the energy moves from being a push push push push push against something that you don’t care to understand or deal with into an energy of flow.

What about you?  What have you surrendered to lately?

Surrender