Category Archives: Gifts

April 2, 2014 · 6:24 am

Defy Gravity with Caroline Myss

I just finished reading Defy Gravity: Healing Beyond the Bounds of Reason  by Caroline Myss but I don’t think I will ever be finished with this book.

Myss is a long-time practitioner of intuitive healing who is, also, well-respected within the traditional medical community.

Myss is also an amazing writer with an extraordinary talent for taking sometimes difficult and obscure teachings on self-healing and translating them into concepts that are clear and concise.

That doesn’t sound like much lot but it is.  In fact, it’s a huge accomplishment because it makes these otherwise arcane approaches and methods readily available to anyone who has 20 minutes a day to read Defy Gravity!

Teresa of Avila, Muhammad, Buddha, and Saint John of the Cross are all woven into this tapestry of intuitive understanding and healing.  Myss doesn’t espouse one spiritual approach over another; she moves through them, finds common ground within them and expands their sometimes parochial meanings into universal truths

Myss may well have found the path that Joseph Campbell spoke of when he said religions in the 20th century would NOT be able to help anyone until all religions found a way to bring their myths into the modern world — the world in which you and I live, work and try to get along.

There was so much to learn and think about and play with while I was reading this book that it’s hard for me to choose what to share but here are some of my favorites:

Forgiveness is NOT releasing the aggressor nor is it telling them that what they did was okay and all is forgiven.  Forgiveness takes place inside where my disappointed, abused, angry ego confronts my soul and releases its hold.  The goal of forgiveness is shattering the myth that maintains that suffering is deserving of recognition, reward and/or righteous vengeance.  Understanding the essence of forgiveness is one of the most deeply healing and liberating gifts you can give yourself.

Working in harmony with the universe influences all life; dominating just one life destroys you.

See clearly. Recognize illusion. You can visit your wounds now and again (like we all do), but you can no longer, mentally or emotionally reside in that place, continually processing wounds that are decades old.

Keep your soul intact at all times.  Look for God or the Universe in the smallest details of your life.

Stay where you belong, in the present moment.

This one is mine – born in the crucible of my own search for joy and peace:

All of the stories of my life – the ones I tell myself, my friends, my loved ones – are ingrained but….when I drop them I can see the beautiful world all around me – right in front of me – in the present moment.  And I can, literally, breathe in joy and peace.

Buy the book; borrow it, read it and just feel yourself opening up to the universe and all the potential for wonder, love and joy that are already inside you!

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February 18, 2014 · 6:27 am

Einstein in the 21st Century

There is a young man living in the Southwest who is too smart for college simply because they cannot teach him anything!

This 19-year-old is in process of changing how we use nuclear fusion. He has a vision of a pure fusion energy but is in process of building small reactors that will not fail and contaminate like the 50’s style currently in use.

Taylor Wilson built his first nuclear reactor at the age of 14 but if his mind finds a way for pure fusion, it may be our path way to the stars and beyond.

He is a prodigy. He’s working with a professor at a school for the exceptionally gifted who said, after working with the student for a while, that he “…has never encountered a smarter person than this kid. yet he is so down to earth.”

In this student, live mathematics and science and the vision to see and understand both.  He may just be our gateway to the unknown.  He may just open up a future where coal, oil, fracking and all the other ecologically destructive practices for grabbing and using energy are no longer needed.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/21134540/vp/52207962#52207962

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January 11, 2014 · 5:28 am

The Creative Adult is the Child Who Has Survived | LinkedIn

I have long thought that each and every adult has the opportunity, every day, to help grow a child’s imagination and dreams or at least keep the spark of the dream alive.

Unfortunately many adults don’t even know they have this power.  They blunder through their lives wounding young souls, stepping on dreams, breaking small hearts.

The very first time I thought this, I was walking to work.  I was on 11th Street  when I heard shouting.  A big, burly woman was leaning over a tiny child, screaming at him that he was stupid, that he was worthless.

I walked over to her, got between her and the little boy and told her to find someone else to hurt.  If she wanted someone her own size, she could try me.

Time stopped for a moment.  Her eyes glittered in her angry face which was inches from mine; her fists balled up and rose slowly.  The little boy’s face was upturned, fear struggling with wonder at what was happening right in front of him.  I waited.

Suddenly all the bluster went out of her.  Tears welled in her eyes. Her hands dropped to her sides.  She talked about her lost job, her failed marriage, her fear, her sorrow, her anger.

I put my arms around her and  held her while she cried.  Slowly, we both realized that the boy, her son, had wrapped an arm around her leg and an arm around mine and was holding on, tight.

The mother and I smiled at each other. We smiled at him.  She knelt down, held him and said, “I’m sorry.”  His face turned toward me, his eyes wide and his smile wider.  When she stood, she leaned toward me, smiling, and whispered, “You have God in you.  Thank you.”

I hugged her back, told her that if she ever needed help, I came by this way 5 days a week and would be there, for her.  We turned in opposite directions and walked back into our separate lives.  But there, on the corner of 11th and Filbert, outside the Greyhound Bus Station, the two of us had worked a tiny miracle – we gave love and laughter back to her young son.

I never saw them again, this mother and child, but I know that things between them were different after that day.

I always thought that moments like this one hold the power that each of us carries, within.  I know that one word, one touch, one smile can make a change.  Now, someone has written about the power of one adult to hold one child and help them reach for their dream.

I hope you enjoy this post.  And I hope all the people in homes and schools, on street corners or buses, people everywhere understand that words, which we use so easily and hold so cheaply, can keep a child’s dream alive just as easily as they can kill it.

Think…before you speak, please. Speak when your words can help a child.

The Creative Adult is the Child Who Has Survived | LinkedIn.

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January 1, 2014 · 9:24 am

Preparing for Your Inner Journey | The Chopra Center

Sometimes things happen that we think are random.

But most of the time, it’s the universe, speaking clearly to us.

As you may know, I have been taking Deepak Chopra’s and Orpah’s 21 day meditation. Once I finished, I started receiving emails with gifts – 7 days of them. One was for a new meditation series – Awaken to Happiness, which I started today.

This series is free, too. Each lesson takes a week of learning…growing and starting to see – beginning with exploring happiness and identifying your true source of happiness.

Today, the first day, the universe sent me to an article by Caroline Myss – an article about taking a journey inward to learn more about my self, my ego, my reactions and my life.

Since it is the first day of a new year and since I consider this article to be a gift from the universe, I wanted to share it with anyone who wants to begin a new year with a new journey – one that can quiet the noise of always needing
“…just a bit more” whether it’s stuff, money or ego boosting.

I wish everyone the best in 2014 and hope that you might want to join me as I begin to journey into what really makes me happy – who really makes me happy, as I begin to discover the wonderful spirit that lives inside my skin — my soul.

Namaste

Preparing for Your Inner Journey | The Chopra Center.

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December 18, 2013 · 5:32 am

Geoffrey Canada Knows How To Save Education

And Geoffrey Canada knows how to save children and parents and communities.

I’ve written about Mr. Canada before – one of my Project 365 heroes.  But I think this man, his Harlem Project and the incredible success he has had with rescuing children, educating them and sending them off to college deserves to be revisited.

Perhaps it’s because I just finished Canada’s book – Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence.

If you want to know how to save our children, how to make our schools better, how to change, grow and heal our communities, read Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence. Then get out of your chair, get in your car or on your bike or even on your skates, go to the nearest school, step inside and volunteer to help change the children’s worlds.

Geoffrey Canada is the man behind the Harlem Project. His mind, his drive, his desire to help children, parents and the community made the Harlem project a reality. And Geoffrey Canada knows his audience; he lived in abject poverty, the son of a single mom in a neighborhood where value was assigned based on how well you fought.

Geoffrey Canada’s approach points the way to saving all the children who live in neighborhoods owned and operated by drug dealers, drug users, robbers, muggers, burglars and rapists — killers of every description. My take on his core thesis is you cannot change children who live in these communities just by working inside the 4 walls of a school; you MUST change the community, reach out to the parents, help them where they are so they can reach out and change their own worlds, one step at a time, one day at a time.

Working in one of these schools in one of these neighborhoods, I see  “throw away” children every day.  On a good day, these kids are raising themselves; on a bad day, they are being turned into mules, snitches and sometimes, enforcers.

I could stay home.  I could turn a blind eye.  I could be one of millions of people who sit at their table every morning and bemoan the ignorance, the violence the destruction being wrought in our communities and schools.

I won’t.  I get up and go to work in one of these schools every day.  I reach out to touch these wonderful middle school and high school children, talk to them. offer them   If I can make a difference in the life of just one child, I have done a good job.

So to everyone who thinks this is someone else’s problem, here’s my advice. This holiday season, give a gift that cannot be bought in any store.  Get up. Go to a troubled school.  See how you can help!

These children did nothing wrong but to have the misfortune of being born poor.  They don’t deserve to die – physically, emotionally or mentally.

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December 8, 2013 · 8:46 am

On the Path To Self Knowledge with Oprah & Deepak Chopra

In Oprah’s 21 day Desire & Destiny meditation series Oprah and Deepak ask us to answer three, simple questions:

Who am I?

What do I want?

How can I serve?

Small, aren’t they?  But I think they are the toughest questions you can ask and answer.

Each question is part of one week’s exploration.  Each builds on the other and helps you to slowly but surely understand who you really are without all the noise that people, life and even you, yourself, have heaped on the small, brave spark that waits for each of us to listen, again.

As I wrote in my previous blog post, one of the biggest things I have learned about myself is that what I really want (Day 8) is to live from my heart in peace and joy.  Today, I learned something I knew, we all know really,  but tend to forget.

In this whole world, teeming with billions of people, there is only one you.

Read that again.  There is only one you, one me, one unique person.  And if we dare to follow our path up the mountain, if we follow our bliss, each of us has within us the power  to change the world.

Don’t believe it?  Nelson Mandela changed the world — from a prison cell where he lived for 27 years, this one beautiful soul reached out and broke the back of apartheid.

How about Geoffrey Canada?  His Harlem Children’s Zone rescued thousands of children and families, rebuilt a neighborhood and reformed education forever in Harlem, New York.

What about Shirley Chisholm?  She  became the first African-American woman elected to Congress.  She fought not just for her constituency but for all people in need of a better life and she won.

Take just a moment, today, to ask yourself those three questions then listen, really listen.  The universe will send you the answer and it might surprise you.

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November 30, 2013 · 6:14 am

Meditating with Oprah & Deepak Chopra

Like hundreds of thousands of other people, I signed up the Oprah’s 21 day Desire & Destiny meditation series.  She introduces each day; Deepak Chopra leads the meditations.

Like hundreds of thousands of people, I am having joyous moments of peace, eye-opening moments of realizing I am the only person holding me back and amazing moments of insight into who I really am and what really makes me smile.

One of the biggest things I have learned about myself is that what I really want (Day 8) is to live from my heart in peace and joy.

Yesterday, I learned that something that happened to me almost 20 years ago was real!

It was Day 12 – Inspired me – the me who steers from her heart.

While meditating a thought shot straight into my brain about an experience I had in 1996, also while meditating. I was deep in meditation when a voice, clear as a bell said, “Rescue me.”

It was so clear that I came up out of a very deep meditation, slipped out the side door of the house and walked the 2 acres we own, trying to find the bird, rabbit, kitten or dog that had called to me to rescue it.

There was no spirit out there in need of help but I took it to mean that I was to write about animal communicators.

I did tons of research but I was just not convinced that this phenomenon was real – that people could hear and talk to animals. And I put the idea away. Until yesterday.

I believe that I am to write a book entitled Rescue Me with an author who I met through her book, “Blessing the Bridge: What Animals Teach Us About Death, Dying and Beyond” a book that helps us ease the transition of our pets from here to the next plain.

I say I “met” the author, Rita Reynolds, but I didn’t really meet her for 6 years. During the first 6 years, we corresponded via email. Our friendship grew out of words flying through the ethernet.

Two years ago I met her and we were so very surprised at how alike we were, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. She ran an animal rescue – saving old dogs, throwaways that people were tired of and didn’t want to support as they aged and died.

And yesterday, more than 15 years after I was called to “rescue”, I believe I discovered why Rita and I met, maybe just one of the many reasons we met. I believe we are to write a book about rescuing living spirits and helping them to finish their lives in comfort, in peace and surrounded by love.

Yesterday, because of Deepak and Oprah’s Desire & Destiny meditations, I didn’t hesitate. I sent her an email about the idea, right away!

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December 24, 2012 · 5:57 am

A Short Lesson in Perspective – The San Francisco Egotist

I am so tired I can’t remember what I ate last night.  I have no energy to do any of the things I know I love –  ride my horse, sew, plan my garden.  I want to sit and absorb hours of mindless television then take two Tylenol PM and go to sleep just to get up and do it again.

I am working again.  And I am doing it again – jumping into the job with both feet, trying to fix everything, manage all the moving bits, save the children and do battle for truth, light and the American way.

Did I mention that I’m tired?

So, I was trying to think what kind of message could I write here that would be uplifting, that would convey the importance of showing up, of being in the harness, of “….getting it done” while simultaneously saying…happy holidays, merry christmas, happy Chanukah, merry kwanzah…get a life.

And I was stuck.  Nothing, nada, no brilliant phrases, no unquenchable urge to write, to tell this story.  Then I read this article.  And I got it.  And I hope that this holiday present from Linds Redding fits you like it fit me.

I have to work, yes.  But I have to find and keep the boundaries that let me live, too.  Thank you Linds!  And happy holidays to you wherever you are now.

A Short Lesson in Perspective – The San Francisco Egotist.

 

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January 13, 2012 · 7:18 am

Project 365 – Teach A Person To FIsh

What is that old saying, “Give  a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life.”

I think that’s why I find what Heifer International does every day, across the globe, to be world changing.  And yes, I have written about this organization before but when there are so many lives changed, so many communities lifted out of poverty, I cannot ignore them.

Heifer International deserves all the attention it gets.  Why?

You can read all about the organization.  Or, if you’re into short stories, watch this brief video clip to find out.  (Heifer has been doing this so long and so well, it can explain how it works in exactly 1 minute.)

So, this organization doesn’t arrive with boxes of food and measuring cups.  They arrive with livestock – goats, cattle, water buffalo, chickens, ducks, even bees.  And they don’t just drop the animals off and drive away.

Heifer works with the community, creating a development plan, choosing recipients carefully and providing all the training needed including animal husbandry, water quality and ecologically sound agricultural practices.

People who receive livestock are also expected to raise crops needed to feed their animals, to become self-supporting. And all recipients become donors – passing on offspring to other members in the community or village. The objective is  to help feed hungry people but also, to create sustainable growth.  (They’ve got a short video about this, too.)

Heifer is truly teaching men and women to fish.

Started in 1939 by a relief worker named Dan West, Heifer International has helped more than 12 million families and a total of 62 million men, women and children.  One man’s simple idea –giving families a source of food rather than short-term relief — hasn’t changed since he took the first shipment of cattle to Puerto Rico in 1944.  It is alive and helping people in 128 countries around the world including the United States.

That’s why I love this organization, I support them instead of typical relief organizations and, yes, I write about them.  But they are literally changing the world.  For as little as $20.00 you can buy a flock of chicks or ducklings and start changing the world, too.

If you know any  other people in your town or city who are helping others, please send me the name of the group and any info you want to share and I will do the rest.

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January 11, 2012 · 8:32 am

Project 365: Education At The Frontlines

Sticking with education because it is so important to our children, to our lives and to our future, there are a man and a project in Harlem that deserve to join the ranks of those who are changing the world.

Like Sal Kahn, Geoffrey Canada believes in the power of education so much that he has given his life to it.  Unlike Kahn, who uses the internet to reach as many people as possible, Canada’s quest is more focused and more personal.

Canada is the man behind The Harlem Children’s Zone Project (HCZ).

Founded 20 years ago as a program to address problems that poor families in this drug-riddled neighborhood were facing —  crumbling apartments, failing schools, violent crime and chronic health problems, HCZ grew into a life-changing force.

At the outset, the project centered on classroom education but Geoffrey Canada recognized early that this approach was not working. What they were teaching children inside classrooms just couldn’t counter what those same children learned about in the street, every day — drugs, shooting deaths, dire poverty.

That realization led Canada to look at the whole picture, the child within the community. It also led to expanded efforts to include after school services to kids as well as programs on parenting, early-childhood development, mental health counseling and drug and alcohol counseling for parents and care givers.

Understanding that education alone would not save these children from repeating their parents’ history, one of the  primary objectives of the overall project became “…to create a critical mass of adults around them who understand what it takes to help children succeed.”

Dubbed, “…one of the most ambitious social experiments of our time” by the New York Times, The Harlem Children’s Zone Project started with one block in that city; today it covers 100 city blocks and touches the lives of 8,000 children and 6,000 parents.

Based on HCZ’s data that show that it’s  impossible to separate education in the classroom from education in the streets, Harlem Children’s Project has also become the template for President Obama’s Promise Neighborhoods program.

Geoffrey Canada is definitely changing the world, one child at a time.

On a personal note, as someone who pays an enormous amount of school taxes, as a person who is in the process of being disenfranchised by the autonomous school board in our district, I will say here, now, that I would gladly pay my school taxes to help support a Promise Neighborhood program.

I would even pay them to support HCZ because I know that the dollars going into these programs help teach children and adults how to live better, healthier lives.  The dollars in our district seem to go to larger administration buildings and bigger salaries for the people who work in them.

By they way, if you know a group or an individual that is helping to change our world for the better, please share their story with me so I can share it with my readers.

 

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