1-30-16 Post: Listening to your inner wisdom.

Question/Comment: There are always people telling me what they think I should do even though I don’t ask their opinions. How can I tell people to mind their own business without being rude or hurting their feelings?

Response: I’m guessing that if people are offering their opinions, it is because they care about you. Could you politely let them know that you appreciate their caring and interest in you while also letting them know that you have your own way of making decisions and choices for yourself?

This is a matter of setting and maintaining appropriate boundaries in a loving and kind way. At the same time, you might ask yourself if you are listening to your inner wisdom and following through with appropriate action in your self care and in your decision making for your life. What ever the situation, it is imperative to listen to your inner guidance and then weigh options and information with intelligence and clarity.

No one knows what the right path is for another. We each have to determine what our talents and skills are as well as the most joyful way to apply and use them in life. What is a right path for one may not be a right path for another even if they have similar goals, talents and skills. We each are unique individuals with our own soul directed trajectory.

It is also important to know ourselves well so that we don’t make choices out of anger or revenge or fear or rebellion. Meditation or some other means of knowing yourself is very helpful in this process. Know who you are and the emotions motivating your choices and actions. 

If you take a course of action because it brings you joy, you are probably right on track for your personal path. If your dread your life or some aspect of it, you may be off track. Listen very deeply to your innermost self and at the same time treat others with love and respect. 

I am not advocating abandoning someone you have an obligation to: I think there is always a way to work out the situation to meet your needs and theirs. And, in a relationship between two adults who are together by choice, when one changes, the other has the option of allowing that choice and embracing the new. 

1-11-16 Post: When do I have to consider myself old?

Question/comment: Everywhere I turn I get messages that I’m old. I don’t feel old and I don’t appreciate others attempting to limit me by their beliefs in old age. Although, I must say, I do appreciate senior discounts.

Response: Something I learned from Dr. Wayne Dyer’s 2016 calendar: Never let an old person inhabit your body. How you think will definitely determine how you live your life. If you believe you can’t, you won’t even try. If you believe you can, more than likely you will. 

Will you do a thing at age 70 the same way you did it at age 30? Probably not. That doesn’t mean what you do is not as good; it is just different. Leave out the criticism and judgmental attitude. If you want to travel, travel. If you want to dance, dance. If you want to start a new business or a new relationship, start it. No one can limit you but you. 

Accepting assistance from others is not admitting inability to function independently. If someone offers you help, take it. Maybe their perception of you as old spurs them to make the offer but accepting their kindness does not make you old. By accepting the offer, you are simply allowing love to come to you. 

You can even make clear to the person, that you could manage on your own, but it is so delightful to receive such a kind gesture that you would never turn it down. Everything is in the interpretation. Appreciation is everything.

If you feel youthful, you will be. If you love yourself, feel gratitude and take the best possible care of yourself that you can (physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and psychologically), then you will have a life of joy regardless of age. Let love, joy and kindness flow to you from you and others. Life can be more and more joyous the longer we live.

If your body has a difficulty it did not have at a younger age, love it even more. Take even better care of your body and be gentle with it. Don’t push and demand a performance from your body causing damage and pain. Lovingly appreciate your body for what it can do and focus on that.   

12-23-15 Post: Is It Right for Humans to Love Unconditionally?

Question/Comment: I hear a lot about unconditional love and I think I understand the idea but I’m not sure I want to apply it in my life. There are too many times when someone is acting in a way that is harmful to me or others. I can’t just exude love and let it be.

Response: Unconditional love is an ideal, an archetype perhaps. It can be something we aspire to and something we receive. We are told by many people of their experiences beyond the daily facade of life where they return saying that our Source is unconditional love. They talk of experiencing this unconditional love when on the other side of the vale. 

There are many different aspects to this question. A personal quest to be and exude unconditional love does not mean forgoing appropriate action in life. If we see harm being done, we do what we can to stop the harm from continuing. 

Love comes into play when we attempt to help both the victim and the victimizer to heal. The trick is to love and totally accept the victim and the victimizer exactly as they are while stopping the harm from happening. If we step back and take a clear look, don’t we see that both have lessons to learn about love and compassion? Would they be involved in the situation otherwise?

We have the right and the duty to protect and take the best possible care of ourselves. The better care we take of ourselves, the more we have to offer others and the better example we set for others. The question here is can we take our appropriate action without condemnation or hate or anger?

Can we step in and stop the harm from being done to ourselves or others without condemning the one doing the harm? Even if physical action is required to stop the harm or if incarceration is required to stop someone from harming others again, can we do it by discernment, by judging the harmful behavior, not the soul or the whole being? 

I think these questions are the top of the iceberg and each individual will have to answer many of these type of questions for themselves. We each have an inner guide that will let us know what is right action, right thought, right directions for us at any given time. We each have things we have come here to learn, to teach, to accomplish. We are each individual energy expressions of the Source.

12-9-15 Post: Roles we play in life

Question/Comment: I hear people talk about people in our lives being our teachers, especially the ones that we have the most conflict with. Can you address that issue?

Response: What you have written is true but not so simple and clear cut as it might seen. We each have multiple roles we play in our daily lives and over a lifetime. We also have roles within roles and meta roles. 

Our everyday lives entail roles such as mother, daughter and life mate. Within those roles we have sub roles such as cook, house cleaner, chauffeur, lover, dishwasher, teacher, guide, wage earner, business owner and so on. Over arching or under arching those roles we may have other roles such as victim, victimizer, way shower, teacher and student.

Our roles also change over a lifetime. The roles we play as a child are usually somewhat different from roles we play as teenagers, young adults, middle age adults, older adults and much older adults. Some roles stay with us for a life time such as victim, victimizer, over giver, or user (unless we make an effort to remove those roles from our drama). 

These are the roles that people say we can learn the most from. I suppose this might be true due to the intensity of pain we cause ourselves with these relationships. The pain draws our attention and with that attention we can see our patterns and learn from our experiences. We are then in position to make new decisions and change behavior.

Each of us lives our own drama. We attract others to play specific roles in our drama and if the person we attract does not exactly fit the role we have them assigned to play, we do our best to mold them into playing the role more perfectly. For example if someone has learned to play the victim and attracts a person who is not a victimizer, the victim will learn how to push and irritate the other person until s/he becomes so angry that s/he becomes a victimizer.

That is not to say the victimizer is excused from abusive behavior. We are each responsible for our behavior and choices. The one who is pushed into being abusive has “written” that role for themselves into the drama they are living. We each have our dramas we live that overlap the dramas the people in our lives are living. If a person’s drama does not include a personal role for being a victim or victimizer, they will not stay in a relationship with, a friendship or an acquaintanceship with a person who does include those roles in their personal drama.

We don’t have to have pain, conflict and uproar in our lives to learn and change. We can choose to look at our behavior, choices, relationships and note what is making us happy, what is advancing our goals and what is not helpful. We can make conscious, clear choices about what to keep the same and what to change. By the way, the changes are made to ourselves, our thinking, our beliefs, how we choose to feel and what we choose to do. When we change from within, our outer expression of our drama changes automatically.

12-2-15 Post: Respect and Appreciation

Question/Comment: I would like to begin treating everyone and everything with appreciation and  respect. Do you have any suggestions on how I can keep myself focused on this?

Response: Sacred Touch as taught by Dr. Ann Marie Chiasson is a very good vehicle for this practice. She teaches focusing on gratitude, reverence and compassion while touching someone or something. Contrast that to the usual types of thoughts we hold in our minds when we touch ourselves, someone else or something else. In answer to your question here, we can even extend this idea as far as interacting with someone or something even if there is no physical touch. 

For most people when touching or interacting with someone we would have thoughts of irritation, stress, needing to hurry, self-questioning, self-doubt, wondering what the person wants, thinking about what we want from them, what is going on in the world, what someone said to someone else, something we said, things we have to do and on and on. Even if we are thinking gratitude thoughts it is usually about a particular thing rather than a general focus on a thankful feeling. 

How often are we distracted or in a hurry when we touch or respond to a child or a pet or a loved one? How would life be different if we focused on compassion and understanding instead? What if every interaction happened while we were focusing on the object, being or task at hand while also mindful of the Divine Source taking form as this person, animal or thing?

As you begin this practice start with yourself. Focus on the you that you know yourself to be. If you usually criticize yourself, begin the appreciation and respect practice with you. Then move to what is nearest to you, a pet, a family member, the chair you are sitting in. The more quiet environment might be easier in the beginning and then you can take your practice outside for a walk and then to the grocery and then to work and so on.

Written reminders in strategic places might be helpful. Place notes for yourself on your mirror at home, on the dashboard in your car, on your desk at work, in your shoe, wherever you will see it. It may take a while to get the hang of this and it may seem strange at first. Keep on and if you forget, just go back to it. Let me know how your practice goes.

11-24-15 Post: Meditation 

Question/comment: What is meditation and what is it good for?

Response: This may seem like a clear cut topic but many people may have a different opinion from mine. Please, explore different opinions from many different sources. By meditation you can find out for yourself what meditation is about and what the benefits are.

To answer the first part of the question, according to my understanding the process we call meditation has four stages. First comes learning to concentrate. It is very difficult for many people to focus on any thing for even a few seconds without becoming distracted. So learning to focus for a sustained period takes practice. Here I might look at a rose or a candle flame. Every time my mind wanders, I bring it back to the object in front of me. 

The second stage of meditation is meditation itself. With an object or concept as the focal point my thoughts are directed on aspects of that thing. For this stage I might begin to think about a rose and all it’s qualities. Rose is a flower that is often red. Red, red lipstick. Ups. Back to rose. Red petals of the rose. They are soft; I like to touch soft things. Ups. Back to rose. The soft petals of the rose repel water. I remember seeing water beads on a rose petal. I had an aunt Rose. Ups. Back to rose. Rose petals smell of a fragrance only roses can give off. I wonder what the cellular process is that creates the rose’s scent? I wonder what chemicals are involved in the rose scent. Ups back to rose. Some roses have thorns. Ouch. Blood. Ups. Back to rose. Some roses grown in hot houses don’t have a very strong smell. I’ve heard that florists spray flowers with artificial scents because commercially grown flowers don’t have much scent. Ups. Back to rose.

The third stage is contemplation where the mind ceases to think about the object or concept yet remains focused on it. This process allows insight to dawn in awareness. It is a more direct knowing without thought. It is more experiential. This is when a person can experience Samadhi which is both a kind of seeing beyond the norm and a very ecstatic feeling at the same time.

The fourth stage is Turiya. Turiya encompasses all other stages and moves beyond them to unselfconscious observation of being. Observation is of one’s own consciousness as the observer and all else all at the same time. The limitations of time and space are seen in perspective and known to be useful conceptual tools that don’t really exist. The really tricky part of this state of awareness is to retain it while functioning in every day life.

When viewed from an aspect of brain wave frequencies we can note that our normal frenetic waking state of what has been called “the monkey mind” emits the Beta brain wave frequency. When we concentrate we begin to produce Alpha brain waves which are the same ones we produce when we are in the creative process or relaxing or day dreaming. In the meditation phase we emit Theta brain waves which are the same that we produce while dreaming in REM sleep. The difference is that we are doing it in full consciousness.

In Turiya, as I understand it, we produce all the brain waves at the same time and to the same strength or volume with full awareness. So in Turiya we produce Beta, Alpha, Theta and Delta all at once. We might say at this point we have a fully functioning mind as opposed to a mind that is usually partially functioning at any given time. 

To answer the second part of the question, every person who practices the process of meditation probably does it for their own individual reasons. Examples could be that some people use meditation to relax. Some use it to learn to focus their attention. Some use it to reach Samadhi. Others use it because they are seeking enlightenment. Some people may be seeking their own true nature, and so on. 

Regardless of the initial reason for taking up the practice of meditation and what ever the stage of expertise a person reaches in their practice, meditation is a worth while activity. There are no down sides to the effort as far as I can tell. The discipline gained from practicing meditation can be put to good use in every aspect of life and the increased mental abilities gained by a person can only be a benefit.

It is very important to stay in the moment with meditation. At any stage of meditation focus on you and your current experiences and abilities. Be grateful for the practice its pleasures and its benefits. Any comparison you might make to what you experienced in the past, what you hope to experience in the future or how skillful someone else appears to be as a meditator will distract you and might discourage you from continuing your effort. Enjoy each session as an individual experience. 

11-12-15 Post: Stalker

Question/Comment: What do I do about a person who will not let me alone. She seems completely fixated on me and the more she pursues me the more I want to run from her.   She shows up at my house unannounced and uninvited. She tries to wheedle her way into my life by telling me what I need to do and then offering to help me do it. It has gotten so bad that just the sound of her voice causes me to cringe. I think I have PTSD from her harassment. Now I am really angry that I have to spend my time and money to heal from this person’s harassment and I still cannot get rid of her. (Original comment has been edited to shorten and hide identities.)

Response: Have you called the police? You may need to get a restraining order; do you have witnesses to the harassment or videos? Then if she harasses you in public, you can show the restraining order to the business owner or the police and have her removed. Do not take physical action yourself. You do not want to get suckered into doing something that will ruin your life. Get legal help.

I am assuming that you have spoken to her before this point and told her clearly and definitely that you don’t want any contact with her. It is very important to make clear to such a person that her plans for a relationship with you will never happen. It is possible that indirect hints and behavioral clues will be totally missed or ignored by some people. There are also those people who will ignore very direct no nonsense communication as well.

I would also suggest that you may need a few sessions with a therapist to explore your reactions and thoughts on this issue. If indeed you have developed PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) from this issue then definitely see a counselor. It may seem unfair to you for you to have to spend your money on therapy because of the actions of someone else but you might ask yourself if this indication of victim thinking on your part? A few well used counseling sessions can benefit just about everyone.

A person doing the kind of stalking you mentioned may have a personality disorder at best. There isn’t enough information here to know about this person but there have been some cases of people who were psychotic and believed they were married to or in a relationship with someone who was a stranger or who had at least never agreed to or entered into such a relationship with them. 

If you have stated your desire for no contact with her clearly and she persists, then at least to some degree she not be fully in touch with reality. She may also enjoy the power of being able to frighten you or illicit your anger. Like any child or child part, negative attention is preferred to no attention. Clearly the person you described has mental health issues.

Request assistance from the police if necessary, get some counseling, take loving care of yourself. Make certain that you do not focus your time and energy on this stalker. What we focus on we get more of.