Life is precious.
Remember to smile.
Pets giving unconditional love.
Remember to smile.
Family and friends, and few strangers now.
Remember to smile.
Birds singing Hu-u-u
Remember to smile.
Sun in the Sky.
All is Love,
Remember, and Smile.
images (except Sri Harold Klemp) from pixabay.com
For a final week of probing the topic of Acceptance as a pathway to genuine happiness, I am left with the awareness that what I cannot or should not accept is important too. To clear space and time for creative or productive activities, sometimes it is helpful to remove clutter and to improve existing conditions. This calls for right discrimination or practicing discernment and then acting to correct or sometimes to detach from situations or conditions which are creating clutter or ‘noise’.
Agency is the capacity to act in accordance with one’s awareness and understanding of life conditions. Agency is a causal property of the individual, a matter of being Cause rather than effect, a matter of accepting responsibility for one’s choices and acting accordingly.
It is not always easy or even graceful, for me at least, to know when to bend or when to release so that growth can occur. This seems an appropriate topic for the autumn season. Trees in the area I live in now are at their peak of fall colors, releasing their beautiful leaves to prepare for enduring the winds and storms of winter.
I am reminded of St. Francis’s famous poem:
Serenity
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change those things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
images are from pixabay.com
“Before you can do what you want,
You must know what you do.”
A therapist shared this quote with me many years ago, from a psychologist I am unable to find online today to attribute the statement to. Such wisdom here. As I contemplate the principle of Acceptance this month in pursuit of a larger quest for understanding how to manifest and sustain true happiness, I have realized so far that one of the things I do that limits happiness is to accept things as they are, for the most part, but without clearly expressing what I am READY to accept; that is, how much more abundance I am ready to allow in order to open my heart and consciousness with a greater capacity. At the same time, I am also realizing this month how we may also need to be clear about what we are NOT willing or able to accept, either in ourselves or our outer world of relations and life conditions.
What am I / are you READY to accept? I invite you to compose a list of positive affirmations (one or more actually) of the form:
I am READY TO ACCEPT ____________.
For example, I will share a small portion from my own list.
I am READY TO ACCEPT:
images are from pixabay.com
This year I am probing an annual quest. For me this is about manifesting true happiness; I encourage you to choose your own Quest. Each month we are probing a subquestion of the larger quest. This month I am contemplating “acceptance” as an aspect of achieving or manifesting happiness.
Already I am realizing that Acceptance is two-pronged:
What am I willing to accept?
What am I ready to accept?
This is a personal breakthrough to recognize this second level of acceptance. I have long held to a princiople well expressed in the statement:
“Your state of consciousness
is your level of acceptance.”
–Harold Klemp
To me I have understood this to mean to be able to accept whatever happens, to accept what IS, in order to grow through direct experience. Acceptance in this sense is not a passive state but rather it allows you to confront or accept present conditions in order to respond actively in the process of creating your own positive conditions and learning lessons along the way.
But today I am seeing how my state of consciousness also means to be open to receive and accept bounty, blessings, abundance. What am I ready to accept means what degree of magnificence am I open to receive! How much beauty, truth, love am I ready to accept? The more I can accept, the higher my consciousness may rise from the sheer abundance of spirit.
images are from pixabay.com
So this week I will be focusing on this question of what am I ready to accept? I invite you to do similarly or to pursue your own Quest segment.
I welcome your comments and story.
My question this month is about releasing: how best to release my hold or grip to allow life/Spirit to take Its own course. After relocating, I find this is a necessary phase for moving forward with new life conditions.
The image I have is of a formerly wounded or captive eagle being released to the wilds after being tended to by a caring healer. After protecting the bird in a safe space to allow it time to heal, now the Healer first prepares the eagle for eventual flight and then the day comes for the eagle to regain its liberty.
Releasing an eagle or other animal acknowledges the Call of the Wild. The call of the open air and unbounded energy of the natural environment certainly appeals to a denizen of the wilds more than being held within a caged or domesticated life.
Currently three good friends of the past 26 (and more) years have been facing “terminal” illness conditions. One has passed two weeks ago, another is in hospice as I write this, and the third is prepared for moving on, sooner or later. Release is important, both for my friends and for their closest friends and family. Release from the confining limitations of an ailing body certainly is a Call of Spirit to transcend the earthly and bodily limitations to ascend to the freedom of pure Love (so I believe).
With summertime easing into Fall where I live in the Finger Lakes now, trees that have had rich green foliage begin to shade into yellows, reds and oranges as they prepare to release their leaves to the fertile ground and transition for yet another Winter.
images are from pixabay.com
Life energy flows through their roots and the veins of the leaves and so I ask, where does all that leaf energy go when it is liberated and converted into pure energy again? The smell of Fall in the air carries their energies of transformation, pervading the atmosphere and reminding me, all of us, that All is Well.
Last Sunday around 1:30 AM I discovered a “room of requirement,” right here in my new home! Immediately I recognized this was a waking dream confirming my emerging insight this month, that Love Matters (answering my monthly question: “How Can/ Does Love Really Matter After All?”).
I was in bed with my two pets Sophie (a Shorkie dog) and Emily (my orange tabby cat), looking forward to a restful sleep after being up late the night before. Sophie started barking; I listened and heard a ‘drip, drip, drip, coming from the living room. It was raining outside, and when I got up to check it out I found my sliding porch door had sprung a leak, endangering the new wood flooring!
My first effort to plug the hole was to use a roll of “magic tape” I found in a kitchen drawer. This prevented the drip temporarily, but I knew it would not hold up through the night. I live about 30 minutes from the nearest store that would be open 24 hours and have sealing materials and I did not wish to go out.
I went into the guest bathroom to use the toilet while asking inwardly, what could I do? For the first time ever, suddenly I noticed a door behind the bathroom door that I had never seen or been told about. It was a linen closet. Inside were not only extra towels but also a large red emergency kit. In the kit was an unopened package containing a roll of “absolute waterproof tape”!
I recognized this immediately as a gift of love from Spirit/ the Universe (call It what you wish!) in my time of need. This reminded me of the Room of Requirement from the Harry Potter saga.
The Absolute Waterproof tape worked to seal off my interior leak through the night. In the morning then I went to a store and came back to seal the sliding door both outside and inside. Mission accomplished.
images are from pixabay.com
So What’s Love Got to Do With It/ How Can Love Matter? I believe “Soul Exists Because God (/the Universe…) Loves IT.” In times of need, when you ask, even with the smallest of need as also with the greatest, It CAN embrace you and bring real solutions or balm for your anguish. Sometimes, as I have found, we just need to be open to ACCEPT the love that Spirit brings in the Moment.
As my Better Endings story for this month of April 2019 then, I simply acknowledge:
Love Matters!
Because of this, I am okay, no matter what, wherever I am and whatever circumstances or conditions I encounter. Gratitude for all good things received and trust in the goodness of Spirit can lift our hearts to soar with the angels and is ever with us in times of need.
I welcome YOUR Story and Comments!
A few days ago I was stressing out about my next direction after the big move I have recently undertaken. I found myself reading my Cancer horoscope, which is something I have not done in quite awhile. Here is what it said:
There is a part of you that is not your body. It is not your thoughts, your words or your feelings. This part of you is doing something mysterious and exciting. Let it be. Give it space.
I take this horoscope message as a waking dream, one way that Spirit or the Universe communicates and brings about daily miracles. In this month of focusing for this blog on the Life Theme of Spirituality, it is wonderful to be gifted with such a message. It helps me to accept where I am at and welcome the new possibilities open before me after this Big Move.
Soul IS doing something mysterious and exciting. Is it so for you as well now? It is good to remember who we are NOT, so as to remember and better come to appreciate what IS!
images are from pixabay.com
I welcome YOUR Story and Comments!
In the opening post this month it came through that the Mystic archetype is that which is able to “find the Gold and bring it up” to the surface of your awareness. This is a part of you that sees through surfaces to what lies beneath; that perceives the true and the good—or their opposites—despite outer appearances. Such a valuable Ally!
It is important to pay attention to this Seer side of you. How can you tune in when your “inner tuition” is trying to alert you or draw your attention to something your conscious mind might be denying or blind to? You must be willing to connect with this ‘deep’ facet of your awareness in order to follow its promptings or to accept and acknowledge its truths.
People are often afraid of their own Mystic potentials. Perhaps it will reveal to you something you would rather ignore, like the actual state of a relationship or even an opportunity for significant change that will require that you take a step forward in a direction you may not yet feel ready to take.
So remember to pause, to ask, to LISTEN to what your Mystic Guide wants you to realize or understand. It may appear to you in a DREAM manifestation, as a Dream Guide or an elder Wizard or Teacher. Keep a dream journal and write in it often, then also review your dream entries on a regular basis to reflect on patterns and themes showing up in your unconscious dream promptings. Then once you acknowledge and understand your inner guidance, contemplate how you can ACT. I would encourage you to act in tandem with your inner Mystic, to allow it to guide your actions forward. It will lead you according to your deepest sense of truth and value, so it is unlikely to ever steer you wrong.
images from pixabay.com
I welcome your insights and stories!
On Sunday I blogged about Chefs as Elder Leaders bringing about a new fusion of cultural traditions in our globalizing world. Reflecting further on this theme, “change it up!” comes into focus as a statement about personal growth.
The Elder Leader archetype is a harbinger and often an agent of change. When you become too settled into established routines or habits, beliefs and attitudes, you can always call upon your archetypal Leader persona to set you forth in a new direction. This is because Leaders are Pathfinders. They are not content to stay in a situation that feels stuck or stultifying for very long. When you do resist change or feel hampered by limiting conditions, your Leader might “submerge” and cause a feeling of dissatisfaction—that is a Shadow leader trait—or else it will seek a new direction and set your course in the direction of exploration or, at least, envisioning a future set of possibilities.
I have been feeling somewhat impatient or hedged in about my own creative development lately. I have been getting plenty of things “done” to fulfill my responsibilities, yet now that some of these projects are completed I see a break in the “busy-ness” cloud and I have become more aware of what I wish would be happening beyond my day-to-day routines and workload. So it is a good time to enter into Archetype Dialogue:
LW: Calling Elder Leader; come in, please!
EL: Very funny. Watts’ up, Doc?
LW: Very funny in return!
EL: Droll perhaps, but hardly funny really. What can I do for you?
LW: I feel stymied.
EL: What is it you are wishing for?
LW: Are you my Genie in a Bottle, then?
EL: That is an apt metaphor, at least.
LW: Well in the biggest picture of things, I want to go Home!
EL: What do you mean?
LW: To find my place, my REAL place or space … you know? Where I belong, where what I do can be effective and reach those hearts I strive to connect with in a dynamic, helpful way…my Family (both literally and metaphorically). Where I can serve my kindred well and be progressive with my own Soul Journey.
EL: You wish to leave this earthly plane?
LW: No, of course not; you know that is not what I am saying.
EL: You want the world to change around you, to better suit your ambitions?
LW: Yes I suppose, I do want the routines to dissolve so that NEWness can enter. New conditions, new activity, finally proceeding to Live my Dream fully, here and now.
EL: What are you going to do about that?
LW: I thought you are the Leader, the Pathfinder for change.
EL: I am; You are!
LW: You seem rather placid lately; you lead me to act toward my goals but seem content with that activity (writing, resubmitting earlier today).
EL: Are we doing all that we can do, Now?
LW: On the level of basic activity and productivity, yes. But I sense there is more I COULD be doing that could facilitate the greater change. What is that?
EL: Perhaps you are referring to the Law of Attitudes or Assumptions.
LW: Change my beliefs or postulates?
EL: Be open to all that which Spirit offers; do not hold back. Sometimes ANY small change is a step in the right direction, like rejoining the Y as you have done recently.
LW: Yes! Physical activity or “returning to fencing” has always been a way for me to shake off the cobwebs to make greater progress.
EL: Then do two things better: Contemplate better. Trust more.
LW: Thank You.
I invite you to open a dialogue with your own Elder Leader, whomever and however you might perceive that to be!
“It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens
(Alice had once made the remark)
that whatever you say to them,
they always purr.”
My mother Elizabeth, with her grandpup,
my Shorkie companion Sophie
I have been pondering all this week what is a First Principle of Better Endings associated with Family relations? And I have found the answer, at least for me; it is:
Enduring Solidarity
So I’ve been asking also, how does a family accomplish the principle of Enduring Solidarity? That’s where the above pictures are helpful.
Family is Forever. We know that from the start. It is unconditional love in action. This is what our pets also know; that we love them, no matter what. And they don’t even have to think to offer us the same, from the beginning.
Family members may not always be on the same side of some political or ideological issue. They might practice different religions, live in widely separated geographical locations, and vary in their unique experiences and extended family ties. I rarely get to even see my immediate family together any more at any one time, and my intensely busy life keeps my focus more on my life in Colorado than on keeping up adequately with my family, especially my cousins, aunts/uncles, and nieces and nephews. Nevertheless, Family remains a core value and when it is possible to visit or to speak on the phone, enduring solidarity is immediate and lasting.
How does a family achieve this level of solidarity despite diversity and change in our individual lives? In my family I think it has been mainly a matter of Acceptance. Beyond expressions of well intended care or concern, neither of my parents nor my siblings have ever tried to influence the choices of their children or siblings, about careers or beliefs, lifestyles or relationships. We have known from the beginning and somehow understand that a family encompasses diversity in the very Nature of things. Relating this to yesterday’s post, this value of acceptance of diversity in a family, I would say, reflects the underlying awareness that a Family is an archetypal asssemblage to begin with. We expect to see the growth and development of diversity within a family; in fact we welcome and value the differences that only serve to expand the greater whole of our collective experience.
Enough said. I am deeply Grateful for the Enduring Solidarity that has nurtured my own and All My Family’s individual and collective unfoldment. This includes All My Family at every level and offshoot of connections.
Animal companions are, to me, Better Endings incarnate. How can they not be, with their amazing capacity for unconditional love and acceptance? A pet is for Life, with the only hard part being that, as humans, we tend to outlive them.
My pets certainly bring Better Endings to work days or basically to any time away from and then returning to our house. They make of our household a Home, just by being there. Coming home to my beloved pet companions lightens my load and helps me more than just about anything else to keep an open Heart.
Sophie en route to New York to see her Grandmom
Loki (with Arthur above)
Arthur and sister Emily
Currently I live with four animal friends, three cats and a dog. Cats include Loki (8y), all white with golden eyes, and Emily (4y) and Arthur (4y), orange tabby siblings. Emily is petite and short-haired while her brother Arthur looks like a Lion. Sophie (3.5y)–or, Sophia Grace Jade Wattsida [that’s Zuni for ‘dog’, and a pun on my name]–is my Shorkie (Shitzu-Yorkie) buddy. She is small of height but huge in her energy and a totally loving character. I have driven cross-country 3 times already with Sophie. She is a magnificent, all-round companion who loves to vacation at “La Quinta!” hotels. I am humbled to think of how these Souls (Animals are Soul, Too) have sacrificed other possibilities to live with me; especially my “indoor cats” whose whole ‘outer’ life anyways is in our house with one another, me, and our sometimes housemate Gianmichele.
Okay, so there you have a narrative slideshow of my family (the 3 photos together above are They). Pet stories abound in my life. I invite you to send some of your own along, too, so we can swap some Better Endings pet tales this week!
Today I explored the opposing attitudes of Expansive vs. Narrow. It was an amazing day! First, I woke to not being able to reply to folks who started “following” on Twitter by following these kindred souls in turn. Even though I had not reached a limit for following, I was mysteriously restricted from doing so: a contraction and narrowing of opportunity. So, I went to the office and dealt with some restrictiveness there in my role as department chair. I accepted both of these, figuring that with some patience I could eventually work things out. I acted to query customer service about the Twitter constraint, and I worked on a needed document to try to ‘open’ a matter at the department. Then, I went to write; my real goal for the day.Everything shifted in my attitude. The editing process expanded a chapter that was in need of a fix, and I found myself sitting next to a writing group whose members all had positive experiences to share around their writing. When I came home, I cleaned house a bit (another expansive experience), and when I checked email in the midst of cleaning, not only had the Twitter problem been resolved but there was actually an “offer to publish your blog as a paperback”! We’ll see what happens, but what matters here is that I experienced the clear difference between the effects of two opposing attitudes. By remaining neutral about the ‘negative’ side rather than reacting by ‘closing’ my heart, I was able to shift to the positive, and then it felt like the universe Itself followed suit! This demonstrates the Law of Attitudes, which is such an important aspect of creating Better Endings in our lives, yes?
With my life mapping interviews and coaching, I have seen how two people might experience very similar life experiences, yet their attitudes can lead them to very opposite responses which have very different consequences in their lives. John (pseudonyms used), for example, was an author who had felt “paralyzed” in his life since a car accident that followed a series of losses and setbacks in his life. Doctors had not found anything medically wrong. John’s Life Metaphor (his answer to ‘What is a human lifetime like?) was: “A tree stuck in the mud beside a flowing stream.” Ever since a romantic failure, every event John recorded in his Life Map seemed to dig for him a deeper and deeper hole that he had fallen into. John arrived at a fatalistic view of life, and all of his experiences appeared to validate that point of view.
Then there was Ambrosia. She had been dealing with a chronic intestinal condition for many years. With one outbreak, her condition was so dire that she ended up in a hospital. It was touch and go one night at the hospital whether she would live until the morning. As part of the life mapping process, I ask people to rate the relative impact of significant events in their lives, from “-5” to “+5” (or, one event could be rated as both positive or negative in its impact on “the person you have become”). When I asked Ambrosia to rate her critical night at the hospital, immediately she exclaimed, “+5!”
“But, why?” I asked, mystified.
Ambrosia told me of how she had experienced a profound vision, like a Near Death Experience, that night at the hospital. An Inner Guide appeared to her and told her she could leave (pass on) if she chose to, but he told her there was much she could still accomplish in her life if she chose to stay.
Ambrosia told her Guide that she would only stay, “If I could get back the passion for life I used to have.”
“You can!” he said.
“All that glitters is not Gold,” Ambrosia said to her Inner Guide.
“That is true; But anything CAN be,” was his sage reply.
“Okay, then,” she said to him, and then she awoke.
After that night, Ambrosia survived and, gradually, she healed. She did regain the “Passion for Life” she sought, returning to school for two advanced degrees since then and becoming a leader in her local spiritual community for several years.
John and Ambrosia have come to symbolize for me how attitudes can determine the “flow” of life experience. Quite often I find with these and other life mapping cases that people can experience a Sea Change in their life patterns when they allow themselves to shift their Attitude about life overall.
How? You may ask. Look in your own life for more examples. (Of course, feel free to share your stories here, if you’d like!)
I do find that almost always, a major positive shift in life pattern follows a profound change in OUTLOOK, whether from something like Ambrosia’s NDE or from a conscious move in a new direction; a choice to create a new condition.
Better Endings to You, Now and Always! – Linda
“The Little Prince and the King” illustration by Carrie Neumayer
As a child, I was intrigued when I read the chapter in Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince where the Prince visits the planet of a king who has no subjects. He invites the Prince to become his subject and declares him to be his Minister of Justice. The Prince declines, asserting that he is a traveler and he must be on his way. The exchange continues:
“I,” replied the little prince, “do not like to condemn anyone to death. And now I think I will go on my way.”
“No,” said the king.
But the little prince, having now completed his preparations for departure, had no wish to grieve the old monarch.
“If Your Majesty wishes to be promptly obeyed,” he said, “he should be able to give me a reasonable order. He should be able, for example, to order me to be gone by the end of one minute. It seems to me that conditions are favorable . . .”
As the king made no answer, the little prince hesitated a moment. Then, with a sigh, he took his leave.
“I make you my Ambassador,” the king called out, hastily.
He had a magnificent air of authority.
I was impressed by the king’s flexibility, if not by his idea of dominion. So, let me relate this to a sample Better Endings story from my own life, about this week’s topic of Changed Relationships:
We grew apart. My spouse was a global traveler by nature, with parents from Italy who raised their family in Venezuela. It had only been a matter of time. I returned to Colorado from a road trip to visit my family in New York state. The forest home we had bought together and nurtured together for over three years stood silent and empty, over half of the furniture removed. I knew this would be happening, but still it struck me like a stone.
I was not alone. My two dogs and three cats cuddled around me that night on the bed, as if to show they understood their own relationships with me had taken a major turn.
That was over twelve years ago. I have not sought any human involvement since and genuinely feel I will be happiest never going that route again. That was ‘the One’, or so I had believed. Yet, in retrospect so many amazing opportunities have come my way since then; opportunities I would probably not have been free to fulfill as I have, had that relationship–or any romantic relationship–lasted. I have a stepson, also a global traveler, who spends nearly half the year as my housemate, so I have companionship and help with the house I moved to after leaving the forest. Four pets remain my closest family at home.
My story reminds me of the Little Prince’s encounter with the ‘reasonable’ King because my spouse and I needed to accept each others’ needs to pursue our own dreams in our own ways. It also reminds me of a black and white movie I once came upon on late night TV several years ago, called “The Man-Eating Tiger”. A mercenary during World war II was hired to rid an Indian jungle village of the threat of a man-eating tiger. A nurse at a clinic there had once been the undeclared love of the mercenary, but she married his best friend. This friend was now missing in action. The mercenary felt conflicted; he wanted to pursue the woman, to rekindle a flame between them, but he knew his friend might yet return. The scene I recall strongly involved the mercenary taking a long walk at night with an Indian woman, a servant or another nurse he had confided in about his conflict. The Indian woman said she had observed Americans “in love” before. She found that our concept of love was what she would call possessiveness rather than true, unconditional love. If one genuinely loves another, she told the man wisely, then one desires no more than the total happiness of the beloved. If that beloved’s life calls him or her away from the relationship, then one must accept that with humility and send the beloved on their way with gratitude that they will be achieving a greater happiness.
Like the Little Prince‘s king, we can establish relationships that are not solely constructed on our own terms. With unconditional love we can promote a win-win situation, bringing Better Endings for all concerned, so long as we are open enough to accept each other’s dreams and the necessary means to achieve those. Certainly the more desirable pathway to many peoples’ better endings is from staying in relationship rather than in separation, so I am definitely not advocating a quick release from your deeply established relationship. But life/divinity/spirit or the Universe brings us circumstances and reveals to us over time what is required for all of our advancement. We can grow and learn from all life’s lessons and benefit from each of the beautiful connections we forge along the way.
————
Practice your own Better Endings this week by journaling or writing about, or talking about or contemplating Relationship Changes and all that you have learned from them. Please feel free to Comment with your insights, or send in your story to be included as a Story of the Week (with your author’s byline, bio, and website info).
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