Heat wave May 15, 2008

It’s hot. There’s really no other word for it. I’m sure people who live in Texas and Vegas would find this comfortable, but I am a fully acclimated San Franciscan and it is hot. It never dropped below 80 degrees in my apartment last night and we’re supposed to have highs near 100 today. I’ve been trying to catch back up this week, but it’s been tough. When the temperature soars, my energy plummets. So new plan–today I’m using my morning hours to be active and I’ll spend my afternoon in air conditioning, exploring places like the library and the mall to their best advantage. One of these days I’ll get back on track, but in the meantime, I’m using being off-routine to help bring any resurfacing old thought patterns off their normal routines as well. I’m practicing what I preach, recognizing that any situation can be turned around and found to be positive. Wish me luck!

I’d like to leave you with a little inspiration that came to me this week via email. It’s a geeky self-improvement message–right up my alley and hopefully yours as well. Namaste.

Installing Love

Tech Support: Yes, how can I help you?

Customer: Well, after much consideration, I’ve decided to install Love. Can you guide me through the process?

Tech Support: Yes, I can help you. Are you ready to proceed?

Customer: Well, I’m not very technical, but I think I’m ready. What do I do first?

Tech Support: The first step is to open your Heart. Have you located your Heart?

Customer: Yes, but there are several other programs running now. Is it okay to install Love while they are running?

Tech Support: What programs are running?

Customer: Let’ s see, I have Past Hurt, Low Self-Esteem, Grudge and Resentment running right now.

Tech Support: No problem, Love will gradually erase Past Hurt from your current operating system. It may remain in your permanent memory but it will no longer disrupt other programs. Love will eventually override Low Self-Esteem with a module of its own called High Self-Esteem. However, you have to completely turn off Grudge and Resentment. Those programs prevent Love from being properly installed. Can you turn those off?

Customer: I don’t know how to turn them off. Can you tell me how?

Tech Support: With pleasure. Go to your start menu and invoke Forgiveness. Do this as many times as necessary until Grudge andResentment have been completely erased.

Customer: Okay, done! Love has started installing itself. Is that normal?

Tech Support: Yes, but remember that you have only the base program. You need to begin connecting to other Hearts in order to get the upgrades.

Customer: Oops! I have an error message already. It says, “Error: Program not running on internal components.” What should I do?

Tech Support: Don’ t worry. It means that the Love program is set up to run on Internal Hearts, but has not yet been run on your Heart. In non-technical terms, it simply means you have to Love yourself before you can Love others.

Customer: So, what should I do?

Tech Support: Pull down Self-Acceptance; then click on the following files: Forgive-Self; Realize Your Worth; and Acknowledge your Limitations.

Customer: Okay, done.

Tech Support: Now, copy them to the “My Heart” directory. The system will overwrite any conflicting files and begin patching faulty programming. Also, you need to delete Verbose Self-Criticism from all directories and empty your Recycle Bin to make sure it is completely gone and never comes back.

Customer: Got it. Hey! My heart is filling up with new files. Smile is playing on my monitor and Peace and Contentment are copying themselves all over My Heart. Is this normal?

Tech Support: Sometimes. For others it takes a while, but eventually everything gets it at the proper time. So Love is installed and running. One more thing before we hang up. Love is Freeware. Be sure to give it and its various modules to everyone you meet. They will in turn share it with others and return some cool modules back to you.

Customer: Thank you, God.

Photo: “Stay cool,” originally uploaded by Alexander Kaiser

Unprocrastination March 8, 2008

I’m not sure which pattern of mine I would consider most debilitating. Is it my perfectionism? My habit of living in the past or for the future? My procrastination? Or are they all distracting enough to warrant constant vigilance? The degree of success I have in shifting my behavior in relation to these patterns definitely depends on the day.

Today was all about unprocrastinating. I realized a couple of days ago that I’d allowed a lot of paperwork and phone calls to pile up over the course of the past few months. For someone who puts considerable effort into living in the present, I’d allowed a whole whallup of past to build up until it had become a palpable burden, one that needed short-term relief and long-term realignment. I got to practice some of my recent success in mindfulness as I sorted the mail, paid bills, made phone calls, ran errands, and did laundry, which meant I had ideas bubbling up all day for what to write about, new things to try out, classes to teach. And I also had a beautiful sense of release, of being in integrity, of aligning with the order and harmony I desire to manifest in my home and my life.

While I had let things slide lately, I do have a variety of tried-and-true methods I recommend for the recovering procrastinator as you attempt to come into the present (and stay here):

* Do your least favorite thing first. Half the battle with procrastination is getting over the dread of what’s to come. If you start with the thing that sounds the least fun first, you quickly realize it isn’t as bad as you think and everything that follows flows freely. Sadly, I did not follow my own advice today and it was late morning before I realized that if I had just gotten the stuff I’d been dreading out of the way early, my morning would have been one heck of a lot more fun.

* Sort your mail immediately upon arrival. These days, more than half of what gets stuffed into our incredibly small mailbox makes its new home in the recycle bin. Newsprint advertisements from the local grocery store, political flyers, “you are already approved!” credit card applications. While I appreciate the validation, I definitely do not need more credit, thank you very much. These things can all be thrown out immediately. Everything else should be opened right away and filed into its proper home. I very rarely get bills any more since I pay mine online, so most of what I receive are things that can be displayed (i.e. cards), things that can be filed (i.e. insurance papers), and things I have plans to use in the relatively near future (i.e. coupons). As part of my recent organization efforts, I now have homes for all of these things, so I can quickly put them where they belong for easy access when I need them. FYI, if you’re interested, there are campaigns afoot for the reduction of junk mail so it doesn’t even make it into your inbox, like www.stopjunkmail.org. Sign up today and begin reaping the benefits!

* Just make the call. I don’t know about you, but my cell phone is a mixed blessing. I really do not enjoy talking on the phone and never have. I tend to leave it in my car or turn the ringer off or whatnot and when I pick up the phone I’ve missed several calls and have many voicemail messages. Half the time a quick 5-minute call is all it would take to take care of the business at hand. When I put them off, the calls pile up until I have a whole slew of them and I am dreading them, especially when they entail anything official. Today, for example, I had to call a former insurance agent. By the time I made the call I was so full of built-up dread that I felt a little ill. However, I set my intention beforehand for a smooth transaction and had taken care of my business very pleasantly within a few minutes. If only I’d called them days ago I could have relieved myself of the stress in the first place. Now I am remembering my motto, to just make the call–it is never as bad as you think it is going to be, and instead of allowing it to gum up the works, you can be in the flow of life again before you know it.

* Take care of your priorities first thing. Many of the things that are most important to me personally have a habit of getting shifted to the bottom of my to-do list when things that appear to be more important to the rest of the world get taken care of first. Meditation, walking, stretching, journaling, meal planning–you name it. What I’ve learned is that if it is a personal priority then I need to take care of it first. Not only does my day go more smoothly because I’ve started out on the right foot for me with my spiritual practice, but I end up being a lot more productive when it comes to the rest of the list. It’s a win-win for all!

* Life is too short not to spend it doing the things you love. My senior year of college, I had a lot of the required courses for my major out of the way and I began to explore the rest of what my university had to offer. I took art courses, feminist political theory, African history–not necessarily things I wanted to deep dive into but things I was interested in. I had so much fun, my grades automatically improved, and I actually retained much of what I learned. Looking back, I wish I’d understood that when I went into college. Education is about more than what you major in–it’s about exploration, trying things on for size and seeing how they fit, learning about who you really are when you take away the requirements and start to have fun. As adults we tend to allow our work to suck up so much of our energy we don’t have enough left over for our families, let alone our hobbies and our passions. How many people do you know who talk about traveling when they retire? That is not a way to LIVE, it’s a way to just get by. So start living your life today–sign up for that Greek cooking class, learn a new language, take a wildflower hike next weekend. Whatever it is you’ve been saying you didn’t have time to do, remember that this life is yours to truly live it, and there’s no time like the present to get started.

Nike’s famous “Just Do It” slogan has made them millions for a reason–it is simple and effective. What is it that you are procrastinating about in your life? What action can you take today to begin moving you away from surviving towards thriving? Why are you still here reading–go do it! And then come back and share what methods have you come across that help you to act instead of avoid so we can all learn the joys of unprocrastination. Namaste.

Photo: “just-do-it-blade,” originally uploaded by Brandon Baunach

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Step 5: Trust Your Intuition February 28, 2008

From the Steps to Learning How to Fly series.

Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need at every moment. This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light, every traffic jam, every obnoxious supervisor (or employee), every illness, every loss, every moment of joy or depression, every addiction, every piece of garbage, every breath. Every moment is the guru.
~Joko Beck

Have you ever had a feeling or a hunch about something that you just couldn’t rationalize? Did it end up being right on the money? For the longest time I dismissed those feelings, using my reasoning and rationalization skills to either come to the same conclusion or the opposite one depending on what I wanted to see. If I had learned earlier to trust those feelings, I would have saved myself considerable anguish in my life, but apparently it was a lesson I needed to learn the long way.

What I know now is that the universe and my inner wisdom are speaking to me all the time. When I pay attention to these messages, things fall into place with such ease I’m in awe. When I don’t pay attention or ignore these messages, things have a way of getting messy and tangled. So what’s the trick to getting in touch with your intuition? The good news is we’ve already talked about the two things I think are most important to pave the way: clearing the slate and conscious connection. When you reduce the distractions in your life and take the time to be still and listen each day, you are building the muscles needed in order to discern which of those voices in your head is your intuition.

As the quote above suggests, messages show up in a myriad of ways, and they are always coming to us. Sometimes an idea will just pop into your head, other times a book will fall off a shelf. Perhaps you turn on the radio and the lyrics to the song playing are the answer to a question that’s been bugging you, or you get an email from a friend telling you about how they just solved a problem you’ve been struggling with. Or it might be that you run out of gas in front of a building with a mural painted on the side, and the words in the mural are exactly what you needed to be reminded of. Once you begin to pay attention, you will see these kinds of messages everywhere!

You can consciously cultivate this process by doing things like using an oracle card deck or playing “book roulette”–play around with these ideas until you find a method that feels good to you. There are hundreds of oracle card decks on the market these days from a wide variety of authors and artists. My current favorites are angel cards by Doreen Virtue, which I discovered on a retreat to Sedona I went on last fall. One of my friends had a deck that she used each day, pulling out a card and reading its message. By the end of the retreat, the whole group was doing it. I had never been into angels previously myself, but these cards are beautifully designed and the readings to go with them are simple and metaphysical, and almost always exactly what I need to hear. “Book roulette” will work with just about any book, but I would recommend using one that you find to be especially wise. Some people like to use the Bible, others use The Science of Mind, by Ernest Holmes, known as “the textbook” to many Religious Scientists. I’ve had great luck with Sufi poetry–my favorites are Hafiz and Rumi. And my guess is Eat, Pray, Love would work wonderfully for me as well. Once you have a book in hand, formulate a question and then open the book at random. Start reading wherever your eyes fall on the page or use your finger to point at a passage.

Fear is also a wonderful route to getting in touch with your intuition, even if that doesn’t sound especially intuitive. The voice of fear is almost always telling you what you need to do in order to stay small, to stay exactly where you are and avoid changing and growing. I’ve learned that because of this, if I do what it is telling me NOT to do, I open myself up for great discoveries, or at the very least the opportunity to neutralize an old pattern. It can be as small as picking up the phone to call someone or as big as quitting your job. Last year, I spent a lot of time trying to “figure out” what I should do about my work. I got the message to leave my job over and over and over again, but I rationalized it away, saying that was just wishful thinking. The voice of fear kept reminding me that I needed a job for a million reasons, from money to having a hole in my resume to “what would people think?” The day I decided to give my notice it was like the dark cloud over my head lifted and the sun came out and I was light as a feather and filled with joy. It resonating so deeply within me that I finally recognized which voice was which and knew that it was the right thing for me to do.

Now that you’re ready to listen to your intuition, to those messages the universe is sending you, to the wisdom that lies within you, the next step is to learn to trust it enough to follow where it leads. Trust is a muscle, just like anything else, and it has to be built. Start with something that feels small, that feels like you have nothing to lose, like what to have for dinner tonight or what to wear to work tomorrow. Feel the difference between doing the thing your intuition tells you to do and ignoring it. For me anyway, once I started paying attention to what was resonating versus what wasn’t, it was easy for me to trust. It definitely feels better! As Nike says, Just do it–you’ll thank yourself later.

Recommended Reading:
Developing Intuition, by Shakti Gawain
The Gift, by Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky
Healing with the Angels Oracle Cards, by Doreen Virtue
The Psychic Pathway, by Sonia Choquette
The Soul of Rumi, by Jalal Al-Din Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks
Trust Your Vibes, by Sonia Choquette

Photo: labyrinth–avila beach, Originally uploaded by Moon Rhythm

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