Happy New Year

Tonight begins Rosh Hashonah, the Jewish New Year. It is one of the holiest days of the year, and my favorite holiday. It is a time to reflect on your past year, to seek forgiveness, and a time of renewal.

When I was younger, the blowing of the shofar at temple ushered in the excitement of a New Year, being with family, and my mom's delicious Noodle Kuegel. I loved Fall and the hope of new beginnings. Preparing my notebook with colored dividers and buying new PeeChee folders, I felt the hope of a fun year ahead in school. A clean slate. A fresh start.

Today, as I reflect on my life in the past year, I am seeing my courage in creating a new beginning in my life. After raising my children, and living in that city for 15 years, I decided it was time to leave. My sons had already moved on; graduating from college and thriving in their grown up lives. Now it was my turn. This past year has been filled with a lot of adapting and creating a new life for myself.

About halfway into my year here, I realized, as Mary Tyler Moore's opening theme song said, "You're gonna make it after all."

The road hasn't always been easy, but I'm still on it, fortified by my faith and the love of friends and family, excited to usher in the hope of a joyful, prosperous and loving year ahead.

I am grateful for all that I have. I am wishing you and yours all of the sweetness life has to offer. Happy New Year...

Catch and Release

I've been getting a lot of junk email lately. About 25-30 junk emails await me every morning. It was getting annoying and taking up my time. Then it occurred to me I could do something about it. I took a look and discovered that my junk email filter setting had been turned off. So I reset the filter to high. Now the software will automatically screen emails for me, filtering out the "bad" spam.


Then the light bulb went on. Voila! I can write about this in my blog! The junk email is symbolic of our negative or critical thoughts. Unwanted incoming clutter. It keeps coming in, piling up, until we take notice. Maybe there is something we can DO about this. Maybe we don't need to wake up to the negativity every morning. Yes, it exists, but we don't have to give it the time of day. It is this awareness that causes our shift to inspired action.


Wouldn't it be nice if we could set an automatic feature within us, that filters out our "junky" thoughts and deletes them? Well, we can. They don't serve us, and they take our energy away from more delightful thoughts. We can rid ourselves of them with intention. We can ask the Universal Manager to help us catch and release our negative thoughts. We may be exercising a new muscle here, but over time, IT (catching & releasing) becomes strengthened into a habit of choice. I choose to catch and release my negative thoughts.



Care to join me?

I Look to You

I watched the second part of Oprah's interview with Whitney Houston today. I am not a big fan of Whitney, although she has a beautiful voice.

She made her "comeback" debut today, and says it is more a "come through."

I know she had a lot of turmoil in her life, with drugs and an abusive husband. I must admit, I felt judgemental about her whenever I heard the gossip. "She is wasting a good life that God gave her," I thought to myself.

I am sorry that I judged her. Now I see she was going through a Divine experience. There was a higher purpose. Through her 7 year absence from the public eye, she asked God for strength and God answered her prayers. It was her faith, and being surrounded by people who loved her and believed in her, that pulled her through.

On her new CD she sings a song, "I Look to You," about looking to God for strength. It was written by R. Kelly 10 years ago. Whitney said, "everything has it's Divine Time." She was referring to why R. Kelly's song came out so long after he had written it. But I felt it also was a reference to the time it took for her to "come through." Divine Time.

Whitney said she wasn't concerned about losing her voice when she was down and out. She always had it. She was singing to herself even through those challenging years. But she said she was most concerned about losing the Spirit behind her voice.

At the end of the show, it was evident in the lyrics of the song, "I Look to You," that Spirit never left her:

"I was not built to break [my mother told me].

I didn't know my own strength.

... Now I know my own strength."

God Bless you Whitney and thank you for the poignant reminder - God did not build us to break...

A Thought from Source

Last night at bedtime, I wrote in my journal, "I am connected to Source while I sleep." I was woken up in the middle of the night with a message to share from Source:

"Get. Get. Get.
Gimme. Gimme. Gimme.
Give. Give. Give.

When we shift from asking, 'what can you do for me?' to
'what can I do for you?' the world-at-large and the world
within become a bit more healed.

Give. Give. Give.
Because you can...
...and we'll all feel a little bit better."

Where can you give today?

On the Wings of Angels

Today is the day we honor the memory of those lost on September 11, 2001 and send love to those left behind to mourn. If you watch the news today, you will probably see those images etched into our minds forever.

I would like to share a different image...the one that stays in my mind. I have never shared the clairvoyant image I received after 9-11 until now. From time to time, and certainly during readings, Spirit shows me images. I relay what I am shown, and I'm told it can shed new light on situations.

After 9-11, I was shown a beautiful image. I saw a huge fishnet about the size of 2 football fields. The perimeter of the fishnet was being held up by Angels. Lots of them. About every 3 feet there was an Angel. Yes, they were the kind with wings. They placed the fishnet underneath the twin towers, and BEFORE the planes hit, the Angels held onto the edges and began flying upward with the net. As they rose up higher and higher their arms pulled the net up with them, gathering all those who were going to lose their lives. They were gently swooped up in the net, carried up together into heaven...on the wings of Angels.

"The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms."
~ Deuteronomy 33:27

Perspective Continued

After the Good Samaritan stopped the people from breaking into my car yesterday (see yesterday's post), one more thing happened that I wanted to share with you.

After the car incident, I tried calling a few friends, and my cell phone said, "failed call." I tried again later, and it still wouldn't dial out. I believe Spirit was keeping me from telling the victim story about the car, and putting energy into, "guess what happened to me?" calls.

So I went to the Verizon wireless store, and said a little prayer while waiting in line for assistance. "Thank you, Spirit, for my cell phone working again, and this getting resolved with ease, so that I feel good when I walk out."

The woman service rep that I was matched up with was competent and nice. She said the phone was a goner, it had totally died. I had the option to upgrade to a newer more expensive phone or pay the $50 deductible to replace the current one. Then she paused and said, "maybe I can waive the $50 deductible for you."
She went back and checked, and came back with a lovely nod of approval. She replaced my current phone with the same exact model, transferring all my contacts. Just as with Collin a few hours earlier, I gave her a hug of appreciation. I walked out happy, with a working phone, and not a penny spent.

This really is a minor event, in the grand scheme of things...but I KNOW that my prayer was answered, and after a challenging day, it was a good reminder that there truly are Angels amongst us.

PERSPECTIVE

I titled this, "Perspective" because I chose to see the events of my day from a positive view, rather than a victim consciousness, which I used to do.

Here's what took place. When I was leaving my house in the afternoon, a neighbor that I didn't know was pulling into my driveway. He told me someone had just tried to break into my car that was parked on the curb. He had stopped them!

He had been driving home, when he noticed a woman trying to break into my car, and a man waiting in "the getaway car." He yelled at them, "get out of here scumbags!" (in retrospect, this seems funny - what would you have said?) and she got back into their car. My neighbor drove off, and then it occurred to him, to drive around the block and return. Sure enough, they were still there, getting ready for another go at it. He yelled again, and they fled.

He told me his dad had been a neighborhood watch captain, and so had learned to notice things. Something didn't seem right, and he took inspired action. Good Samaritans still do exist. One of them is named Collin. I thanked him, and gave him a hug.

I was less upset than I would have been in the past. I was mostly moved by this man's actions on my behalf. I believe Spirit was watching over me, and sent help at the Divine time. Maybe the experience even helped Collin in some way. As for the "scumbags," I sent them love. I thought about what life circumstances might have brought them to that moment. I was grateful for the opportunity to see the blessings in this. I felt safe & I felt God was always watching over me.

Then I got in my car, and the song, "Hero," by Enrique Iglesias came on the radio.
The lyrics confirmed to me that God is watching over us, all the time, sending up messages of love:

"I can be your hero baby
I can kiss away the pain
I will stand by you forever
You can take my breath away

Would you swear that you'll always be mine?
Ooh, I just want to hold you,
I just want to hold you..."

(More on the rest of my day will follow...)

Weeds in My Garden

There is a small patio, on the side of my house that has been neglected. I decided it was time to have it cleaned up. Three weeks ago, I asked the gardener to remove the weeds and prune the dead plants in the patio. For some reason, he wasn't attending to it. It was starting to annoy me.

Then I realized the symbolism. A few weeks ago, just like the patio, there was also a small part of me, that I had been neglecting. The part of me that thought I wasn't ready for love again. Last night, I attended a workshop on Spiritual Dating, and released those "weeds in my mind."

Sure enough, the gardener showed up today, and pulled out all of the weeds in my garden.

Spirit is so amazing, coming up with such creative ways to communicate with us!

Do you have any "weeds" that need to be pulled? Ask Spirit to show you the way...

POWER

J. Ruth Gendler in "The Book of Qualities," devotes every page to a distinct human emotion, giving each a unique voice. What follows is my favorite excerpt about the essence of power. I hope you enjoy it.

"Power made me a coat. For a long time I kept it in the back of my closet. I didn't like to wear it much, but I always took good care of it. When I first started wearing it again, it smelled like mothballs. As I wore it more, it started fitting better, and stopped smelling like mothballs.

"I was afraid if I wore the coat too much someone would want to take it or else I would accidentally leave it in the dojo dressing room. But it has my name on the label now, and it doesn't really fit anyone else. When people ask me where I found such a becoming garment, I tell them about the tailor, Power, who knows how to make coats that you grow into. First, you must find the courage to approach him and ask him to make your coat. Then, you must find the patience inside yourself to wear the coat until it fits."

The Little Girl vs. The Grown Woman

I have become aware of an inner conflict. The adult me has been "duking it out" with the child within.

She wants to stay small, I want to grow.
She wants to be taken care of, I want to prove my independence.
She wants to keep the familiar limitations, I want my freedom.
She is comfortable being weak, I am strong.
She is afraid of her power, I love mine.
She denies her bravery, I am courageous.
She wants to play, I want to persevere.
She doesn't want to rock the boat, I am all about change.

So I asked my Spirit Guides how to resolve the struggle I am having with the little girl within...and their channeled response was:

"LOVE HER."

That is when I realized she wants to feel safe and loved...and so do I.

FEAR

FEAR

By J. Ruth Gendler, The Book of Qualities

"Fear has a large shadow, but he himself is quite small. He has a vivid imagination. He composes horror music in the middle of the night. He is not very social, and he keeps to himself at political meetings. His past is a mystery. He warned us not to talk to each other about him, adding that there is nowhere any of us could go where he wouldn't hear us. We were quiet. When we began to talk to each other, he changed. His manners started to seem pompous, and his snarling voice sounded rehearsed.

"Two dragons guard Fear's mansion. One is ceramic and Chinese. The other is real. If you make it past the dragons and speak to him close up, it is amazing to see how fragile he is. He will try to tell you stories. Be aware. He is a master of disguises and illusions. Fear almost convinced me that he was a puppet-maker and I was a marionette.

Speak out boldly, look him in the eye, startle him. Don't give up. Win his respect, and he will never bother you with small matters."

Whistling in the Dark

"It is a terrible burden to dislike people and to be critical. All it does is cover up a perpetual pain in our own heart. It is a whistling in the dark to keep up our own courage. How much easier it is to love people, to learn to forgive rather than to hold grudges. We should not go to bed at night until we have cleared our mind of every animosity. Love is the greatest healing agent on Earth for our body as well as for our affairs."

~ Ernest Holmes, 365 Science of Mind

Maybe next time someone is critical of us, we can recall this quote. Is it possible they are carrying their own pain, and "whistling in the dark" at us?

You may not want to read this part :-) but if people are coming across our path that are critical of us, there is a strong probability that it is simply a reflection of our own self-criticism. The Law of Attraction would say this is what's happening. We are always attracting what we are thinking.

Give a little whistle...

The Simpsons

In The Simpsons Movie, gloom and doom is coming to the streets of Springfield. You see the church a few doors over from Mo's Bar. With the impending dark cloud approaching, here is how the citizens of Springfield respond: the churchgoers dash out of the church and race into Mo's Bar. The patrons in Mo's Bar dash out and run into the church. HA!! I loved the social commentary!

Everyone has their own way to seek out comfort when the crisis is looming. Watching this movie the other day, I thought to share an idea with you - that it is important we each have a "comfort list." A list of things we can do to comfort ourselves in times of need. It may be easier on us to know we are prepared, so that if the occasion arises, rather than go into fear and upset, we can dash to our comfort list and feel relief.

Here is what's on my comfort list: call a dear friend, watch a trusted video, listen to Abraham to get back in alignment, get myself to the beach, go to 7-11 on an emergency run for some Ben and Jerry's, journal & do automatic writing, pray, read from a beloved Spiritual book to be reminded of the Truth, watch a favorite stand-up comedian on Youtube, have a dialogue with God, ask my Spirit Guides for insight, or listen to a Sanaya Roman Meditation CD. Not necessarily in the above order!

What would you put on your comfort list? You may want to write your comfort list on a 3 x 5 card and keep it handy. Feel free to share things from your list with us by posting a comment.

May you always find comfort...