Author: cborsello

Jersey Girl, born on the beach.

Passages

My roommate’s best friend stopped by today to pick up a decrepit rug which has lined the concrete carport for years. In fact, I’ve been somewhat amused to park my Volt on a rug for the past few months of living here. Her husband sat in the truck while we hefted the rolled-up rug into its bed. No longer shy in my crone years, I wondered aloud if he could help, but she said he’d injured his arm when their donkey decided to go left as he went right. This is the same donkey which brays loudly & thoroughly from his pen on the far corner of town. Many mornings, I hear this particular snorting, hoarse ‘call of the wild’ as I’m waking up. Fortunately, my timing seems to be opening my eyes just before the alarm. This donkey, however, was not the one who sang along with the Easter Service in April. That one was a different donkey who lives on the opposite side.

Just about every morning when I wake, after the donkey-calls, I hear someone banging their trashcans from atop the hill – which means the sound carries down & across our town-in-a-valley. Since the few of us who have trash pickup own a black plastic wheelie-bin, I wondered who had metal cans & why they’d bang them every single day at 5:30 a.m. I finally figured out it’s the horse that lives with the singing donkey beating his own drum, sending out a tattoo about breakfast now, please.

On the days I walk east, often there are two black dogs who clamber over the broken stone fence to rush me, snarling & barking, hackles raised. So much for the leash law – but we have no police here anyway to enforce it. I’m not an animal abuser, but I do sometimes wonder how much a Taser would cost, & if I could secrete it in my clown clothes worn for workout. Best not go there, tho, eh?

Living mostly off the grid does require tolerance for the unexpected outdoors. Like the cow sleeping on the road under the mailbox as her calf (or the back half of it) blocks the westbound lane. Or the brown horse making her way sidewise down a steep hill to come over for a scratch. Or the determined tarantulas crossing the street just in front of me, or the rattler in front of the post office steps after rain.

I love to walk in the morning. In Missoula, where I stayed at The Wilma for a short time, we had an old fella who’d stand at one end of Main Street to holler “HEY!” from about 5:45 to 6:15 every morning rain or shine. Amazing how sound carries at that hour. Perhaps this was his Sun Salutation.

Once I read about a man who put up a sign along the edge of his farm telling people that this was a farm, that animals lived here & his animals did what animals do, unashamedly, in “flagrante delicto” & not to be surprised at their activities, their smells, their unabashed enthusiasm for physical life in all its forms & functions.

(Which reminds me about the time I took my girl scout troop to the zoo where a monkey was delightedly pleasuring himself in his cage…we should have gone to the Snake House, I guess.)

Today I met a man standing in the field next to our B&B, with a coffee cup in one hand & a cig in the other, who smiled & said he was standing out there at dawn as he was trying to quit smoking.

So I guess this blog doesn’t really have a specific point, moral or story. I’m just telling you about my favorite time of day & some of its delightful surprises. I mean, any morning that includes all this deserves to be written about. Why not here?

I’m always talking about how wonderful it is to be able to paint, but just give me a thousand words & I’m happy.

 

 

 

 

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ALL MY RELATIONS (Mitakuye Oyasin)

Tell me something, have you ever looked around at your family and taken it one step further to feel like you don’t even belong on this planet?

Well, you’re not alone.  So don’t get all comfortable in your misery here. I am here to help you to understand: you ain’t alone, baby. In fact, you are part of every living thing on earth … the world and everything in it is related to you.

I didn’t feel much like I “belonged” to my family. I have one powerful childhood memory that I dash around the corner every chance I got, where I’d sneak in behind a low bush and wait for my tribal family to come and get me. I envisioned them riding up in feathers and robes, leading a spare pony just for me. I always wore a piece of clothesline tied tightly around my waist. This wasn’t usually a problem, except the days I was in crinolines for dress-up & the parental unit would get cranky about having just ironed the dress… then things got a little Italian around the house.

So many of us feel estranged from our immediate family and it’s popular to say “your friends are your family” or, as I’ve seen it recently: “God gave us friends to make up for our relatives.” But time has proved to me that Desmond Tutu put it well when he said, “You don’t choose your family, They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.”

After being on Starship Earth for a while, we begin to see there are common threads that bind us all together. Our foods are different, our languages, our clothing…but that’s all detail. Basically, the same emotions apply: Who doesn’t want material success with a place to live well & in good health? Who turns away from good luck, plenty of money? Who doesn’t complain about their politicians or the rebelliousness of their youth?

In my online world, I keep seeing the phrase “Unity Consciousness” to denote this common thread of thought. We want fairness to prevail, we want to be safe in public places, we want our taxes to make a noticeable difference for PEACE in the world.

The continents may be drifting apart, but the regular people on them are uniting together insofar as their thinking less of war and more of peace.

The original title of Charles Darwin’s 1859 bestseller was On The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.  Its primary topic was the scientific theory that populations evolve over generations through natural selection. This was not acceptable to the Church of England which felt species were unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy and that humans were unique, unrelated to other animals and, unfortunately, many times to other humans. While Darwin says ‘survival of the fittest’ twice in that book he uses the word “love” 95 times. I’d say that’s a terrific basis for a theory of evolution and one which is proving out!

He wrote:  “Let it be borne in mind how infinitely close-fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other.”

He also spoke of inter-species cooperation. If you think about it, our pets today prove that out. And not too many years ago we all lived with animals; if you kept chickens you got to have an egg hunt daily. If you wanted to go anywhere off the property, you saddled up the horse or hitched up the buggy. Our wake-up call was cattle lowing in the barn to be milked. We looked to our four-legs as co-workers, as guardians, as helpers and even as our mental health professionals as they’d listen to a lot more than we could tell anyone else… One life supported another, just as one life fed another.

Species cooperate in the wild pretty readily: In the southwest, pronghorn antelope regularly grab sage with their teeth to tear off leaves for lunch. When this happens, the sage sends out a chemical signal which triggers the tobacco plant next to it. The tobacco plant then breathes out – and it emits an odor that the antelope don’t like. In protecting itself, the tobacco plant is also protecting the sage. With such a beautiful and complex dance of life, it behooves you not to declare for your limitations by focusing only on the box step. Think your way out of that particular construction, pretty please!

Where does life come from? Is it just conception and procreation that brings in new living beings? In the early 1900’s, many experiments were done in Russia which proved out that life can arise from nonlife, and the cooperation of life with life is ever ongoing. Gurvisch was one scientist who was intrigued by plants growing upward no matter what. He theorized that there is a “life force” which was  undeniable, and enormously powerful. He saw plants growing even through concrete so he decided this life force came out of the TOP of the plant. He experimented with onions. He pointed the top of one onion top at the side of another, while running a low electrical current through them both. He was amazed and gratified to have his theory proved out when the onion being pointed at started to grow a big bump in response to the pointing onion. This gives me hope we can get to the life-level of onions. That we can point to one another, send the electrical current of our thoughts and the higher-voltage current of our prayers, at each other and create new life.

In the 70’s, I read a book called The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Chris Bird. You may have heard of it? Some of the book is based on the research of a man named Cleve Backster who was an interrogation specialist for the CIA. On a day at the lab when he didn’t have enough to do, he hooked up the polygraph to a dracaena plant. Amazingly, the plant registered on the polygraph with a spike on the readout tape. So he started talking to the plant. He began a kind of whole earth movement toward “biocommunication” – play music for the plants, tell your plants you love them and then stand back & watch ‘em grow!

Tompkins & Bird took Backster’s data a little farther and hooked up houseplants to an oscilloscope. Later, they proved that if you gave a plant a way to generate an electrical current, it would open your garage door for you when you got home.

You’ve probably heard about the researchers who set up cameras to find out what pets do at home all day. What they discovered was that when the owner THOUGHT about heading home, their dog went to sit at the door to wait. (Cats, however, headed for their food dishes.)

In 2000, Professor Pacheco (a neurobiologist) heated beach sand to luminescence, killing all lifeforms that might have existed in it. He poured this sand into a test tube partially filled with distilled water. He sealed the tube & autoclaved the test tube as a double measure of killing off anything alive in it. He placed this sterile test tube next to one with DNA in it, ran a low, 7 Hz current through them both – that same 7.3 Hz current Gurvisch ran on the onions. After 24 hours, a thin layer had appeared on top of the so-called “sterile” beach sand water – and the scum was filled with DNA! There are other experiments on the books as well, primarily out of Russia, which have also shown a case for this. It’s called “spontaneous generation.”  And Pacheco was replicating prior experiments. He wasn’t the first to do this.

I claim firsthand experience with spontaneous generation when the last banana in the basket births an entire cloud of flying dots which seem eager to be inhaled, for some reason. There are a number of experiments which proved life generates from non-life, they just didn’t agree with the mainstream belief system – remember the Church of England blinders? Power structures don’t like challenges.

Nature’s SO not stupid. The bacteria that form spontaneously in nuclear reactors eat radiation. Microbes form where they are needed. There are microbes in 99.9% of all space dust. What does that mean? It means what we have supposed is cold, empty, dead space is alive with potential.

We stand on one rung of the evolutionary ladder. We like to think it’s the top rung. I’m not sure it is. When I see the poetry of a horse running through a field, or the fabulous understanding of a service dog in the pediatric ward of a hospital, or even a flock of starlings wheeling in some grand ballet against sunset sky – I have to pray we can achieve this kind of Unity Consciousness. If you think world peace is a challenge, try getting people to agree on the channel to have on at the Laundromat!

Kinesiology (muscle testing) can show us that thinking a negative thought about someone weakens them. Even something as simple as, “I don’t like those shoes!”  Even when that person doesn’t know about the thought. If negative thoughts disperse energy, guess what the positive thoughts do? There’s a reason the Pope waves his hands towards him…and the Dalai Lama waves them away, redirecting that appreciative energy back to his audience.

I don’t think Mother/Father God made us and then wandered off. I think when we found out just how powerful we were, we shooed them off, saying “We wanna do this ourselves now! You can go.” But it’s now time to invite the divine back into our lives and recognize each other’s divinity. Recapture that unqualified recognition that a loving parent has for even the most stubborn child. In order to do that, we need to acknowledge ourselves, each other, our beautiful world, from the vast ocean whispering a lovesong with every wave, to the smallest junco whistling a little song before grabbing up a seed on our patio. We need to start hearing the beauty of the world, tasting the glowing colors our eyes see, speaking to others the words we would ourselves love to hear someone say to us.

It is up to our generation to start. Somebody has to be the first to beat that sword into a ploughshare, after all. There’s a reason we are called to speak living words.

I have every faith we can shift the entire world once we acknowledge our relationship with its every aspect.

Feel free to test the world’s relationship with you. I took a two-mile hike once in a forest. About the time I ran out of energy I also ran out of trail markers. I stopped to figure things out. And because I trust the world is looking out for me, I looked up and told God “I need a sign here.” Two seconds later the tiniest yellow moth wobbled by, going left. I said, “Thanks!” and turned left. The parking lot was fifty feet away. Let the world show you, let it be your active ally, not just scenery out there. Trust your perceptions!

The world is here to heal you. Won’t you return the favor? If you think about your relationships with your family and feel they may not be either friends or well-wishers…don’t give in or give up; simply reach for a good thought, even if the best you can muster wouldn’t win any Nobel Peace Prizes.

The beautiful name for an intelligent cosmos which constantly adapts to life is “Auto poetic.” The truth we have been taught about life only being available through evolution-based reproduction, or some random mutation effect is only a small part of the information available now.  Be vigilant for your world. Pay attention so that your ears are the first to hear God’s message through the world directed to you, and your heart to be the first to perceive its wholeness.

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Unfoldment – A Unity Talk

‘A time will come when your innermost voice will speak to you, saying ‘This is my path, here I shall find peace, I will pursue this path, come what may’ If you will persist and are patient, and above all never lose faith, your path will lead you unerringly to your goal’

~ White Eagle

My Mom worked nights a lot when I was growing up. My brother and I would make prank phone calls when she was out of the house during some of those evenings. I don’t feel that old, but this was the era after party lines and before caller ID when one could get away with such things. Anyone here remember those days when telephones all rolled thru Ma Bell, looked like a prop in THE MATRIX movies, only came in black & sat on that little telephone table in the corner of the living room where nothing else but a pole lamp would fit? They had short wires, so you had to sit like you were at your desk in Catholic school, dial the number and wait for an answer. And somebody was always home at night, yea?

So me n Joey would open the phone book for a local number. We’d point to a name and one of us would dial – yes, DIAL – a number, listening for that answering voice. We’d already be giggling and shushing each other – this needed quiet to pull off rightly.

“Hello?” would come the nice voice from thru the receiver. In his best and deepest voice, Joey would ask quite seriously, “Is your refrigerator running?” When the puzzled reply came back, “Well, yes, as a matter of fact it is…” he’d deliver the punch line: “Don’t you think you oughtta go catch it?” (Now this was the time when TV was still live, comics never said a bad word, and Ed Sullivan ruled) So I can only apologize for the vast humor we found in such stupid tricks… The next night we might call the same number to ask: “Does your nose run? Do your feet smell?” Sometimes we’d get a squawked “who IS this?” but most of the time we’d get a straight reply. If the poor innocent answered yes, we hollered out together: “You were built upside down!” before snorting with laughter and banging the phone receiver down.

Aren’t you glad the world has changed so much? Aren’t you glad I have changed so much? Or have I? My jokes have gotten so much better, but that’s because I take notes on others’ now.ar

For all our technology, it is still not that hard to take someone’s day apart. It’s just harder to do it anonymously. At the center where we live our truest life as spiritual beings, we are very tender creatures. We need to handle each other with care. We need to handle ourselves with care. But often as we unfold, we rip off the beautiful petals we grow to litter the battlefields where we fight.

All the words spoken on this platform here at our little Unity are about love, no matter what the topic for a Sunday may be. As Unitics, we just don’t muck around in judgment and defamation. Our God is more internalized, less “out-there’ish” Our God doesn’t have to anoint us with oils, for we are ourselves the beautiful essential oils perfuming heaven itself. Our good deeds, our helpful natures, our firm reaction of love in the face of fear all feed the loop that runs from our inner Godself to those of our relationships. Animals, gardens, foods, heaven & earth & especially our bright loving souls form the firmament of a heaven we dream of so seriously. Our conception & hopefully, our perception, of God are not the exclusive of master/subject in either direction. Rather it is the co-creative, procreative, energetic presence of God which infuses our lives with laughter, goodwill, thanksgiving, health & togetherness. If we say, all for one, we mean God at our center. If we say one for all, we mean God at our center. Every day we discover the God in our lives to be closer than we ever thought, deeper than we could ever know, more loving than all the great hero stories we’ve heard. And we love our hero stories, no?

My worst-case scenario is guilt. Hey! I come by it honestly. I was raised a Catholic and my first mother-in-law was Jewish. One day I woke up to a great way to externalize my inward mental yelling at myself. I had asked for a way to neutralize that little drone-voiced, green-shaded accountant in there going, “Uh huh, now you’ve done it!” Whatever “it” was.

I figured out that just about all the people who had yelled at me in my life pointed a finger at me first. So when I yelled at myself, I pointed at myself. Well, this was much like the old jokes I used to pull. It was too funny not to laugh aloud at. So I pretty much overcame yelling at myself for stuff. One of my husbands used to get SO MAD at me because I never apologized. I had read in some book early on that I AM are the God-words, so to say “I am sorry” was giving up in a peculiarly wrenching way. He got over it after the divorce.

Recently a modern-day philosopher I follow, Neil Kramer, said, “We live in a hit and run society.” I found that particularly descriptive. But after years of observing this development, I have also brought about a change in myself and how I play the blame game. I call it “unfoldment.”

Think about it: Your life is all about unfolding. If you watch an infant sleeping, they unfold with every breath. Children unfold almost explosively – they can go from zero to sixty in five seconds. They unfold in the light of a loving parent’s eyes. We grow in the light of a loving Creator who looks deeply, expressively, into our eyes each time we see a relative, a friend, a four-leg, or even a leaf opening on our favorite plant or tree. I watch trees all the time. Delaware is the greenest state I’ve ever been in with lots of open space where green grows. Daily, I drive past fields which are unfolding in a panoply of colors. Daily, I marvel at the face they show me that day. Our magnificent ocean is always unfolding, isn’t it? We call this unfolding “waves.” Each time you go to the beach, there is that moment of kinetic growth – the wave crests – when all unfolds into surrender on the beach. So we, too, rise on currents of lovingkindness to bathe another in our sheer-light beauty – one human unfolding to another.

We keep ourselves from spiritual stagnation – another phrase of Kramer’s – when we do that which is ours to do. Like the lotus growing in a water meadow, the petals of our sacred consciousness unfold. Hindu how-to books will tell you the crown chakra, the spirit connection to higher states of consciousness in the universe consists of a lotus with ten thousand petals. Ten thousand! Do you think that might require some unfolding?

The acorn is assuredly not an oak tree, but it will be when it finishes unfolding. Our DNA unfolds us as surely as our Yoga teacher tries to. Whether we wish to unfold or not, whether we want to or not…the saving grace is to bring humor into it because a laugh will save us faster than anything else.

Unfolding is seen as a guerrilla tactic by the ego which wants everything to stay just the same so it can tell you you’re boring, unbeautiful and ten thousand other untrue things. At this age, ego & I arm-wrestle every day. That’s how I got this crooked elbow, y’see? It’s been hard! But I won every time I got a giggle going and since I’m the easiest person to laugh at I know, it’s been a little less taxing for me along the way, I think.  Ego is so perfect, it wants to run in place. While only showing the good profile side. We get exercised, but we don’t get any new scenery in the viewfinder. Allowing ego to call the shots is like putting an Evinrude in the bathtub. The agitation gives some cheap thrills, but you really don’t get anywhere. Ego serves a purpose, but “serves” is the keyword in that sentence. Ego is the servant of your spirit. If we can keep our ego out of the driver’s seat, we hold the space for our heart to steer the way.

How will you encourage your heart and soul to unfold? What can you do to make it so? What will make you feel bigger, better, faster, more? We all have a personal candle lit inside of us. There’s an old saying that a candle loses nothing when it lights another. Don’t wait for a stroke of lightning to enlighten you. Pick up your journey-staff and walk out to the road to meet the world.

Try it. DO it. Allow yourself to simply unfold into Who You Really Are. It’s just beautiful!

 

 

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Talking to Myself

I think I talked to myself constantly as a child, discussing the weather, listing my possessions, reading aloud to hear the story, too. I recall it being a reassuring commentary, full of exclamation points. It was sometimes a litany of guilts to bring to Confession. (No life lives without sin, the Church assured me frequently.) I rehearsed what I’d say to my Mom when I was late getting home. I muttered impressions of innocent passers-by. I used curse words spoken under my breath upon those who stepped in front of my bicycle just as I was getting to speed. I implored saints, angels, God & Mary to help relieve whatever powerlessness currently being experienced…

When sent to my room, I breathed imprecations at life’s unfairness.

Fortunately, now a so-called adult – ahem – senior citizen, I consider aloud all the reasons why I left my shopping list at home while searching the food aisles.

Sometimes people stare sidelong at me when I whisper an emphatic “Yes!” upon recalling some item. But I hear them reading the cereal names out loud while pushing their carts up ahead.

I’m sure I’m on tape everywhere, mouth moving, reciting something or other or laughing at an internal joke.

My morning coffee brings on a lively discussion of the day with the steam rising from the cup. I find nomenclature a great source of satisfaction: enjoying the bright weedy wildflowers out loud as I walk, croaking back to crows, commenting on shapes of clouds. I ask my feet to be careful walking over cattle guards (which mildly freak me out to walk across.) I greet the stone angels as I pass the cemetery.

Oh, Lord. If you’re going to send the guys in white coats, make sure they’re packing a size Large net, ok?

My roommate laughs when she hears me walking to the kitchen “aloud.”

I talk back to the hungry cat, tell the howler next door to “just shut up, will ya?” I sound out my life under cottonwoods while above, the turkey vultures spread their papery wings for takeoff.

Attempts to curb this enthusiasm seem doomed to end unsuccessfully. I’m recorded on every government listening post with some ongoing life commentary. I know the trolls with their headphones are yawning when they hear the tapes. It doesn’t get much more ordinary than me, after all.

Last Friday, I was an hour early for my Yoga class, forgetting the schedule had shifted. When I arrived back home, walking in the door announcing, “I’m home!” to my roomie, I heard her talking away to herself in the shower: “Ow! It’s cold! It’s really cold. OMG, the weather’s changing so fast…”

I rest my case, ladies & gentlemen. Nothing to hear, here, just keep moving along, please.

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Miracle Thinking – A Unity Talk

MIRACLE THINKING

When I am asked what I would like to talk about, often the words come from my mouth before I can plan them. When I asked if I could speak on 12/6, the question returned: “What will you talk about?” I immediately typed “Miracle Thinking.” Then I looked at my computer, and said to myself, “miracle thinking?”

But, ya know, I’ve been doing this for a while now. Of course I wasn’t always like this. Somewhere the switch flipped from negative to positive & it ain’t never going back. I know that now. Some years ago you wouldn’t have convinced me of any reality about positive thinking even with a hypnotist in the room waving a watch, saying “you are getting sleepy.”

What’s a miracle? The Spanish word for sight is “mira”, so could a miracle simply be a different way of seeing things? I think it must be. I know once I move out from the surprise, kind of back up with the camera, a really wide angle emerges. When I can get the panoramic view, I have it made. The water changes to wine with a snap! And with all my experience, I’m still surprised to drink from the glass.

Sometimes miracles happen even when I’m clearly not in a state to anticipate them. When I graduated massage school in 1996, I was living with a woman named Nancy. I came later to call Nancy my roommate from hell & she kindly reciprocated by proving that out to me in no uncertain terms. Of course, Nancy was one of my best teachers.

Nancy knew a woman named Ruth. Ruth lived in Montana & wished to open a community for women healers. I had spent five months living in an intentional community in upstate New York & I loved the idea! And I felt I was a healer, hey, I just graduated massage school, yea?

Nancy & I shared a lot of fear & upset on that trip from Albuquerque to Montana. I had a vehicle; she didn’t. She sprained her ankle two days before we were to leave, I could climb on top of the car to pack stuff. She was getting unemployment while I had no visible means of support, having just graduated from being a starving student, to being a starving graduate. So after living together for six weeks in a room in Missoula, Montana, I finally got a job. In my LIFE, it’d never taken me six weeks to get a job. I knew Nancy was running really low on any desire to have me around and our disagreements were escalating. That second day I came home from work, which was third shift waitress at a diner, she said she wanted me packed, out, and gone by noon that day.

I listen to my Divine Planners & even then, I had had an inkling that things were going poorly enough that this might happen. Did I bring on an eviction with thinking those thoughts? Maybe. But my antennae were out & I had investigated renting a room. I just needed more money than I had in hand at that moment. Later, getting thrown out of our little apartment would become the best thing in the world for me, but in the thin moment of her telling me to be gone by 12 & slamming the door to go visit Ruth while I packed, I considered my options. I had $35 that I had made in tips over the two nights I’d worked. I’d given Nancy $5 toward what I owed her – totally a token payment, but I was six weeks without any cash & feeling pretty needy.

When I looked into renting that room, I found out I needed $130 to move in. So, I had $30. Now, one week earlier, before I’d scored my waitress gig, I’d written to a friend in Jersey to ask if he could spare $50 to help me buy gas so I could look for a job.

I was muttering to myself while I packed; I figured I at least had enough on hand to find a campground to stay in. After about ten minutes of mushing my stuff into big gray tubs, there was a loud knocking on the door. I was already aggravated, & got even angrier as I yanked it open, figuring Nancy’d forgotten her key, wanted me out on this abbreviated timeline & now was making me stop packing to let her in. I was astonished to find the FedEx guy outside who handed me a cardboard envelope & that signature device they use. I scribbled my name & ripped open the tab of the envelope. There was a $100 bill inside from my friend; no note, no words, just a Ben Franklin from someone I had not been the kindest to when I last saw him. So how much money did I have? How much money did I need? And I love telling this story because each time I do, I am beautifully assured that the universe loves me enough to rescue me from myself. And up until that moment in time, becoming homeless was my biggest fear in life.

Miracle thinking gets easier each time a miracle happens. I stopped calling it “universe” & started calling it “youniverse” right then.

Randy Peyser has written a great little book called “The Power Of Miracle Thinking.” It’s a book of stories, anecdotes & ideas about how to get over yourself by reaching out for the best that is out there every time. I’m happy to say that just about everything in here is something I’ve practiced at some point. I have had miracles greet me at every turn & I make so many wrong turns my GPS stutters its directions.

Randy’s first notation is choose to be #1. The Japanese call it “Ichiban.” Number one. Are you number one in your own mind? And if you’re not, I hope you feel really guilty whenever someone says, “Well, you have to put the oxygen mask on yourself first.” Because that is so TRUE! If you are not coming from a position of personal power that is rooted in personal worth your GPS probably isn’t going to work well at all.

From this internal strength & worth, from this place of belonging in the youniverse, you can ask for anything. If it’s right for you & if the timing is right for you, and if you have asked for it from a deeply felt understanding that it IS God’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom, it’s yours. Where is that worth & worthiness in you? If you had to understand it in the form of a standardized measurement, would you be living at 100%? Yes? No? What percentage are you living at? If you’re at 50%, how do you feel when you get half a miracle? Not me, baby. Recently I was at a dinner & when the hosts said they were having a raffle based on our ticket numbers, my first reaction was a mild, “wonder what I won.” My number was the first called & I won two tickets to ClearSpace Theatre.

Which leads to another of Randy’s premises: youniverse never says “yes…but” We say yes but all the time. We say, “Oh, sure I’d like to win the lottery, but that’ll never happen to me.” Or “I’d love to meet a terrific person in my life, but I don’t want my heart to get broken again.” 50% anyone?

You can’t find a miracle sitting in your easy chair, eating Doritos, watching TV & wishing for something different. Sorry, but you need to get off your duff & get out there & happen to life like you’ve wanted life to happen to you. You’ve gotta find the miracle you want by offering yourself up to it. And you have to allow the miracle. How many times has someone offered you something terrific & you’ve said, “oh, no, I couldn’t accept that!” I can’t tell you the number of times someone’s told me they’re hurting & could really use a massage so I say, “sure, come see me.” And I never hear from them. Of course the first reaction is money; but even when I say, just come see me, no charge! No call. It’s not an insult to be offered a gift. It’s often a need in the giver to even offer it out. I have had to retrain myself to simply say, “Why Thank You So Much!” when I am offered a gift in this way.

I am still learning to be a good receiver & that being in receivership doesn’t mean I’m bankrupt at all. Need some practice? There’s an exercise offered in the Abraham writings by Esther Hicks where Abraham recommends writing fake checks. He says to get your abundance muscles going, work them out by using an old checkbook to write yourself a check for some wonderful amount, say, a million dollars. Then focus your attention on what you would do with a million dollars. Next day, write a check for two million. What’ll you do with that? Make a list! I got up to about 16 million before I simply got tired of giving away money. By then, I had the idea well-fixed that I wouldn’t be keeping much of it, so I figured I was copacetic with the idea. Do this! It will awaken your abundance in a real way that’s also a feel-good, fun exercise! There’s a story told that one night in 1990 when Jim Carrey was a struggling young comic trying to make his way in Los Angeles, he drove his old, beat-up Toyota to the top of a hill. While sitting there, broke, looking down over the city, and dreaming of his future, he wrote himself a check for $10 million, put in the notation line ‘for acting services rendered,’ and dated it for Thanksgiving 1995. He stuck that check in his wallet – and the rest, as they say, is history.

By 1995, Jim had seen the tremendous success of Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, The Mask and my personal favorite, Liar, Liar. His per film fee at that point had escalated to $20 million.

Visualize what you want. Sit still & feel how it feels to have what you want. World Peace? High-heeled sneakers? New golf clubs? How does it feel to be pulling those puppies around the golf course right now? Empower the feeling to bring it alive. Love the idea into being!

Always think in terms of this or something better. When I found the apartment I’m living in, the landlord said he had a few more people to interview before offering it, but he’d be in touch. Well, I felt pretty strongly in my gut it was mine – it’s the ideal size, it had absolutely everything on my list but one thing – remember the list, people? And when I make a list, I include everything on it. I even use a steno pad so I can have two columns. Still, when he said he had to talk to others, all my doubts rose up – did I make enough money? Was I ever going to get my own place? Apartments aren’t easy to come by near the shore, they’re either outrageously priced for a single person or simply not available. As I drove away from this gorgeous place what came into my head was the phrase: “this, or something better.” And I felt great again. I didn’t know what could be better than having an apartment over Derrickson Creek with everything I wanted, but I knew that it would have to be really spectacular. And I was comforted by that thought: Wow! What could be better? All right!

Another story: when I realized I wanted to travel cross-country, I wished for a van. I made a list of everything the van would have. The last requirement was that it be blue b/c I’ve always wanted a blue car. I had a small inheritance from my Mom to use. I focused on the van, I prayed, I visualized myself driving it, sitting up there over the road… no van. Weeks passed & the summer was ending & I had to get on the road soon and…no van. So I reviewed the list. I erased the “blue van” from it. Within a week I had a maroon van & the prior owner was a short man, so I didn’t even have to adjust the driver’s seat.

If you are stuck with a picture of something you don’t want, or if you are experiencing a health challenge, don’t hesitate to ask the Big Eraser to come in. My sister experienced this. When a loved one she knew sustained terrible, disfiguring burns, she went to see him in hospital. He passed away from his injuries, but Teri was left with an awful image of someone she dearly loved. One day when she just couldn’t seem to get this picture out of her head & was again choking up about it, a huge pencil came into her mind, turned itself over & rubbed out the image top to bottom. She never experienced saw her dear one that way again & remembers this person as the beautiful spirit he was. Youniverse will take care of you!

Bring Joy into your alignment with life. Youniverse likes a good target; make it easy to find you. “Hey, over here, good things! Yeah, me! I’m the one living rightly, I’m the happy person who found the pony in the room full of manure…c’mon down, I’m SO ready to be gifted by your presence.”

The best part is youniverse always has a bigger plan for you than you have for yourself. It isn’t about having the right answer so much as it’s about asking the Right Question. Lighten up & just do it: live your joy in life, don’t dip your happiness into the misery of another – that’s like getting the candle burning & dropping it into the sea.

If all this sounds like the impossible dream, stay awake.

So, take a deep breath & listen with both ears as I finish the story I started at the beginning of this talk. Here’s how one miracle fuels another. In the room of the house I stayed in after I left Nancy, there were many things Youniverse gave to me. A calendar of Ansel Adams photos – breathtaking. Books & cassettes which had been abandoned. Most intriguing to me was a pair of really good sneakers, but I’m a size 8 & these were 9’s. I kept them anyway, thinking maybe I could just wear two pairs of socks. These were expensive sneakers, well made, very sturdy. But after I’d been at the house for a few weeks, one day the phone rang & it was my dear friend, Ed & his good friend, Jerry. Ed asked me how much longer I was going to stay in Montana. I told him I had no plans to return – but what I didn’t mention was that it was only ‘cause I was mortally embarrassed to have made such a mess by moving there. Here I was waitressing the midnight shift, barely getting to do any massage. I couldn’t face going back to ABQ to tell my friends how much I had disappointed myself by leaving there. But when Jerry said “Ed, tell her WHY you called” and Ed said, “Carol, I have cancer. I want you to come back to work on me.” I simply said, “Ed, I’ll be there in two weeks.” And I started packing once again. I had lots to think about on those 1,100 miles. And I got to travel back through some of the most beautiful country these eyes will ever see, down through Utah’s Moab Valley, visiting Canyonlands & Arches National Park.

The night after I’d returned, I drove over to La Montanita for some health foods for the larder. A woman was sitting barefoot in the parking lot, begging everyone to give her shoes. “They took my shoes,” she said to me as I walked by. “What size?” I asked. “Size 9,” she replied. “Just a sec,” I said. And walked back to the van to get those sneakers.

I like to think Youniverse offered me the opportunity to be her miracle.

Think love, think empowerment & most of all, think MIRACLES!

Thank you.

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Not Too Wordy – Just Some Ideas

I’ve lived most of my life between my ears. And much of that life has been lived between the covers of a book. As a child, I rode The Black Stallion with Walter Farley’s Alex for years. I hunted clues with Nancy Drew and the Bobbsey Twins. In the past couple of decades, I’ve befriended Jack Reacher, Bob Lee Swagger, Kinsey Milhone, Claire Randall, Diana Bishop, Sheriff Longmire and so many others. I read so much, I finally wrote my own book to contribute to the effort. Riding The Light was published in 2013 & Amazon still seems to be carrying it.

The thing about being an author is people read a whole lot faster than authors write! Storytelling resides in an altered state where nothing else plays in. It takes hours of focus & maintaining a “voice.” So if the story isn’t telling itself, there does not seem to me to be a way to coax it out. Force is definitely out of the question.

Many stories have begun telling themselves to me, but wandered off somewhere after a few pages. Once I got to eight chapters of a tale before the characters abruptly dispersed to other sections of the universe. I set out treats, played soft music & kept pens with paper handy all over the house…to no avail.

Creativity rises from a fountainhead which is subject to inexplicably low tides. I can scuff along the beach & pick up the tracks of where it has been, but it’s difficult to call it in on the ebbtide.

So when life gets to me, or so-called friends get at me, or dull routine buries me in the sand, I reach for pen/paper & get busy. It seems I can live life one-handed if I need to. Words are the one true truth to love for me…so glad you’re enjoying these alongside!

Loveya.

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When Friendship Sails Away

2 a.m. Thoughts

I am words melting from the pen

A soul setting out upon journey alone again

Watching for sinkholes in this new present

& tsunamis in this new future

On a horizon that quivers with change.

 

Life can be a lethal dose of hurt

Delivered to internal organs

Like the heart & liver

Like the lungs & sinus cavities

Like my wobbling brain you label “stupid”

You, someone I thought had my back

& a blanket of forgiveness to wrap around me

When I’m dragged from the floodwaters

Gasping

 

I didn’t answer the open-ended question rightly

“Do you know about the base?” she asked…

Well, I know where it is & some of what it purveys

In its deathly business-as-usual way…

But I didn’t have her answer. Nor wish to take up

Her standard of battle.

 

I didn’t remember a name out of context

So a blade of Damascus steel I’d not time

To parry was thrust into emotional vitals…

In aid of what? Why can there be no slack

Among old friends? Why does my perfection

Or its lack matter so much you must pull it from

The pole I had such a time erecting?

Does it serve you to trample it in front of me?

In your knowing, holy way…the priestess of

Right, the princess of who you think I should be.

 

I have held back so much from you of

Your perceived imperfections, in feeling

These thoughts would serve no purpose

But to wound.

 

Your definitions have no such compunction,

Eroding into attack, I must so deserve

For all I cannot do rightly.

 

You say to guard my inner child as you

Push her into an exposure beyond deserving.

What did I do to you?

 

I know. I know. I’m trusting in an almost comic way,

Like Peanuts trusts Lucy to hold the ball.

I sink for the third time as you remonstrate with

Me, while clutching the life ring, “You should have learned to swim

before you fell overboard!”

 

It’s ok. My heart has been renewed before.

It’s just an unexpected wound & hard to treat

With my limited edition first aid kit. Attack from

Any quarter can be unexpected, but this one caught me blind.

 

I wipe the raveled sleeve of care across my face

And tuck it under my head to sleep.

I wake from my own sighs,

To find life lost & love ground into

Such fine dust, I have no way in this moment

To render it to life.

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Seeing the Unseen

Wake up to the grave every day

Wake up to radical choices

Of health

Prosperity

Abundance

Because these are what the world wants us to have

And know that no other reason is needed.

If fear or complaint is your home page

Click on the menu called “Prayer”

Watch for the submenu “grace’ to use as a

Superglue

Eliding all extraneous borders into seamlessness.

Stretch for something you can walk forward upon

Something solid, not heavy like pavement,

But supportive & gracious to feet

Think on how long the wood speaks to us

After trees are made furniture. Think how it

May have longed to be a bureau or a stair.

We can no longer afford to waste even this

Intangible energy breathed at us…

Awaken to only THIS day, for none will ever be so again

Put out your super-natural antennae

Listen for hoofbeats, watch for omens

If you’re one to create your world, plan it for good

›_______________

I watched a short video accompanying a longer article about Jesus. In the video, He is shown as a man in white robes striding towards the camera. I am directly entranced by this video. I bookmarked it to watch again.

Towards me

I have a framed picture on my bureau:

A magazine cutout purporting to be Jesus

In a white robe with a red sash…

Walking towards me.

And this is where it will get strange for some people,

So, if you are even the least bit strange, stop reading here, please.

I knew this image to be so familiar for I had seen it in real life.

In my waking reality, once upon a time,

I saw Jesus striding towards me,

Pacing up the road ahead of any entourage

Eager to arrive at a home, to table, clean & at rest: a meal.

I knew that Jesus sent His essence out ahead of Him

I knew the first image was His wish to be with us

And that I still had time to prepare

For the moment He would fill His shadow

At my door,

Smile up at me, from my table

All of us, Arrived, at last.

›_____________

 

I’ve waited a long time for JOY to become my habitat.

I needed to recall that Joy is set up beyond earthly constructs

So as to be accessible at all times.

I needed to remember Joy is entirely individualized

Apparent only on those terms

Entangled in these constructs

Enabled by fearlessness.

Joy is light, it smells like reflected sunlight

when you pass through high grass, tasseled & be-stemmed.

Don’t waste a bit!

Always put it down in the exact same place…

Or set it up as your default state.

You see, first you get through Hope

Then Faith

Then Love

to Joy.

(Once you’ve Joy, all else drops away.)

›___________________

I declare a General Amnesty for myself!

I did all of it so far & didn’t even have the full story

(Conventionality wears off early

If you’re set aside young.)

Recovery isn’t to be trusted,

Fitting in doesn’t feel “organic”

Comfort = Alone.

I find my pardons along the roads I travel

And I’m open to bridges.

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Mind-Slip

In the last days of this year’s August, the world’s energetic disposition became stronger. Some would even say stranger.

For me, it became clearer. I mean a personal, scintillating clarity. I am becoming someone other than my working title, “Massage Therapist.”

This kind of personal clarity works startlingly well at my age when so often my eyes want to glass over at the repetitive conversation, the total lack of discourse.

I walked the “up” route one day. I had my dictation unit with me & I recorded my thoughts as I walked. I was lost in the new-minted daylight that moved all around me in a dance of its own making. I made a left where I usually make a right, hardly believing I was taking on another hill, this one in town.

As I reached the crest, I recorded, “A poem is like a communion wafer, moments on the tongue, drenched in Divinity that needs to be told.” This portentous but predictive thought trailed off as I reached the top of the hill. Standing to just the other side was a slender man in a long robe. He stood with his hands behind his back, looking at our Union Church (built 1892) with the fiscal help of our [then] local madam. (It was not to occur to me until I reached home that this was Sunday morning.)

Sometimes here on the backroads of New Mexico, a pilgrim will pass through town. One rainswept day, I saw a man pulling a red, white & blue crucifix with a wheel mounted on the bottom, head down, striding along the shoulder of Highway 152. In the roads near Chimayo, it is not uncommon to see bare-chested men flogging their backs with whips. Or men with thick knee pads “kneeling” their way along the road to the small miracle Church.

In the moment of starting downhill, finding & turning off my recorder, focusing on this man’s profile, I lost all rational thought. I took him to be a holy man passing through, leaning over a wrought iron fence to study an old Episcopal Church. When he turned to face me, I realized in a rush: “he’s dressed in the vestments of a priest.”

He walked forward to greet me, hand outstretched, a mild face overtaken by glasses. He remarked how nice it was that the weather had cooled & he was comfortable in the ceremonial layers. He mentioned he comes up to Hillsboro on Sunday to say mass at the old church. I admired his dedication as the only way to achieve a goal. We discussed what volunteers bring to lives. I lifted my index finger mysteriously & played him the poem just recited. He asked if I wrote it (a common question tho one would think too obvious to be anything but a conversational gambit.) I nodded, smiled, as free & open in conversation & aspect as I have ever felt in my life.

There was somehow a purity in this introduction, a sharing of what is divine to each of us.

As parishioners came up the hill, I impulsively grabbed the hand so recently shaken & kissed the back of it before saying goodbye & walking on.

 

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Local Roads

 

I feel like a solid rock sometimes, the indissoluble solid, mid-creek. Every once in a while, karma … or grace … approaches with a large lever & sets me into motion.  “The Lever” frequently is preceded by the sound of metal dragging across rocky ground: It foretells change.

I let this Lever upend me to where I live now. I moved from the ocean to live in the elbow of Percha Creek. In the running stream of consciousness that is my life, I taste everyone else’s. As they taste me & mine…it’s something Biblical (at least for me.) So, as it is with water, I am everywhere, as all of us are.

Books can be a Lever, as can movies & other creative works. For me, it’s been serial walkabout which has most changed my life. When the wind spoke in one ear only, I knew it was the way to turn when time came to leave.

Right now, I hear birdcalls, water running over rocks too big to put in my pockets, I hear the metal stanchions of the bridge quietly flexing.

With nothing but these in my awareness, I now also hear faint chimes of bells & bamboo, footsteps crossing behind me & a dog panting. These are bleed-throughs from a parallel time-stream, the “when” that these happened not mine to directly perceive. Yet they swell my awareness. So much is possible over magical running water.

Straight ahead of me rises a wall of sheared & shattered rock, sliced by centuries, a southwestern sculpture garden in the vertical.

To believe this now-miniature creek – Percha Creek – wore through this eternity of rock jumble is farcical, fantastical! Yet, since the glaciers left long ago, since the ocean formed & filled & fled, this creek has had full charge of wearing out the walls I look at, wearing them smooth & carving these edges. If there is a song from rock, there is only a chant in sharp whispers here.

Vegetation is sparse & spiky, clinging to a dust of soil & worn-down pebbles with scrabbling roots. Along the ridgeline, the yucca plants display their seed-stalks, like so many feathers in a headdress. The mesquite provides some variation to already roughened texture.

As I sit, balanced on a tiny chair & leaning one leg against the fence, lap desk astride, the sun beats down on me. The sun is the reason I am out here, as well as some sweet isolation & nature quality time. September offered itself on the breeze in last night’s windows. I want to be brown again for my birthday, coming soon.

Elsewhere & everywhere, the world wears itself into existential frenzy. Friend’s ships sail in different directions, one to sea & one to land. But here & now, I am aware of only the love that created this earth & this water to bring them to this harmonious co-existence. The shapes all interact & indwell with each other far from the tiny world of my perceptions. I am not of centuries; I am now. There is only this moment.

I’m ready.

 

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