I used to get irritated when at a restaurant and someone would order something custom-made not on the menu. As I made sure I gave my simple, easy-to-create food order, this customer asked for “lightly-scrambled eggs, with spinach, organic only, and some sautéed potatoes on the side…oh, and hot water with lemon”. She would receive the order with a smile and eat her breakfast with joy and satisfaction. I learned that we can always ask for what we want. Whoever impressed upon us that we can’t was as wrong as ice cream topped with pork rinds.
It’s a crazy cycle of doing things for others through perceived obligation, not taking care of ourselves, having our kids learn from this behavior and then wonder what went wrong. Even if we are feeding the homeless out of a feeling of obligation, they will receive nothing of value and we will feel empty.
EXERCISE: Ask yourself the following: “Am I taking care of my body the way I’d like my loved ones to take of their body? Am I being nice to others, forgiving them, and giving them unconditional love as I wish my loved ones would? Am I living in the heart and choosing from a place of love as I would want for my loved ones? Do I show my loved ones how to live in my fullest expression, fulfillment and joy?”
Go to where you are celebrated and not to where you are tolerated. Choose to leave a room if the level of vibration or energy does not lift you up. It’s your dream. You get to choose. Honor yourself enough to change your environment if it isn’t currently serving you. This is not the same as going into a space and you are feeling uncomfortable. This may be caused by fear or the ego. This can be pushed through into something beautiful. Know the difference between fear-based and energy-based feelings. You cannot struggle to joy.
EXERCISE: Energy Chess
- Enter a room, sit down anywhere, close your eyes and become calm. Feel the energy of the room. Ask yourself “How am I feeling when I’m in this room?”
- Now open your eyes, and mess up everything in the room (try not to break anything).
- Sit back down and close your eyes again. Do you feel different?
- Put everything back in its place and check again. Check from a different part of the room. You can try moving individual objects around in the room. You can also move everything out of the room and start by placing one object at a time in the room.
Find out what lights you up? You are not obligated to include within your reality any pain, suffering, fear and worry. The time for complaining about misuse, distrust, injustice, war, hunger…is over (if there ever was a time for it). It’s a trap which perpetuates the illness of humanity. If you choose to be involved in fixing through force of will, I honor it. It just isn’t my reality. This is a time for new beginnings, for creation of what we want and for what is waiting for us, once we align with it.
Your life, like a dream, is an illusion. You have faced the parts that you don’t want long enough. It is not virtuous to continue focusing on “reality”. It is fantastic to fantasize about what you do want. This is creation. Focus on what feels good and ignore what doesn’t.
It is so tempting to become involved in the news of the day. While staying at my Mom’s house, finishing One White Stone, there was more opportunity to watch the news. I haven’t had a TV (except to plug in a DVD) in over 10 years. There’s usually two or three “major” stories that get all the attention and are presented at every possible angle. It’s easy to get wrapped up into it. I asked myself “Why does there seem to be such oppression in government and the activities we see in the world?” I discovered that it is because of the way humanity has evolved. We are so powerful and are divine beings who have had this truth hidden from us. We can sometimes see this truth in little pieces and start to realize our divine nature through the amazing lives of saints, spiritual teachers and humans with abilities that seem out of our own realm. But, like crabs in a pot, the other crabs will pull the potential escape artist back down into the pot. There has always been this aspect of humanity and stories of humanity breaking away from it.