Through the Eye of the Needle

What do the following plot devices (or spiritual practices) have in common?

• Alice stepping through the Looking Glass
• Dorothy transported over the Rainbow, from B&W to the colorful Land of OZ
• Star Wars rebels or the Star Trek Enterprise popping through Hyperspace
• Robert Conway rounding a Himalayan mountain pass, to descend into the verdant Shangri-La
• Rumi spinning as a whirling dervish to explore the heavens of his departed Teacher, Shams
• Near Death and general Out of Body Experiences
• Magic Eye art that transforms 2-D images into 3-D hidden objects
• Transitioning from waking consciousness into your Dream world awareness

There is a common thread running through these devices listed above, which I will call traversing “through the eye of the Needle.”  The commonality of this theme occurring in fiction as well as in accounts and techniques of spiritual exploration speaks to the naturalness of the underlying phenomenon of seeking and achieving higher consciousness awareness. 

I call attention to this phenomenon of traversing through the Eye of the Needle because it is a central aim of most human experience to transcend the mundane, to elevate one’s experience of life to its highest potentials and to discover and explore what lies Beyond.   Meditation, centering prayer, contemplation, and even daydreaming—all of which rely on cultivating our imagination—allow us individually to transcend any life experience, to gain higher understanding and wisdom. 

When I first began to study spiritual topics and to practice contemplative techniques some 48 years ago, my goal was to eventually be able to shift between states of consciousness “at will.”   I now realize how this is a natural human capacity, but we do benefit from developing this capacity with conscious awareness.  For example, we gain much more from our dreams by focussing on utilizing our dreams to help understand daily life as well as to plomb the depths of spiritual understanding (e.g. see The Art of Spiritual Dreaming, by Harold Klemp, about which I am currently in a discussion group).

But the real reason this topic is important to me right now is because I have recently rediscovered—for me anyway—a wonderful “transport” device, at the local gym!  When I ride a rowing machine, I am able to close my eyes and enter into a contemplation activity that absolutely allows me to approach and traverse through ‘the eye of the needle’, to explore consciousness states at will!  I think this is similar to the whirling dervish activity of Rumi and the Sufis, who likewise use the spinning and internal prayer to transcend the physical body to higher states of spiritual awareness and exploration. Something about the regular physical activity as with the rocking of the back and forth motion of the rowing machine, I find frees my imagination to soar! 

images are from pixabay.com

The benefits of traversing through the Eye of the Needle, howsoever you choose to do this, are limitless. Being more mindful and aware of whatever we choose to focus our attention on allows us to consider our options and choose, or repair if need be, our course of action.

Better Endings to All!

Message in a Bottle

Beached. En route to a Far Country, my small ship was caught in a storm and tossed to the shore, breaking under the wave that brought me to land on this remote island. Enough to subsist on—shellfish, nuts and fruit—but my voyage suspended, I long to proceed to my goal: the three mighty mountains, perpetually snow-capped, pouring forth with the light of a thousand suns and the sublime sounds of heavens rarely won.

On the horizon line where sky and water blend into foam, something bobbing. As I strain to hold the energy to keep this illusion in view, to manifest the ideal, gradually, wave by wave with the incoming tide, the form of a bottle washes to shore, with—yes—something like a rolled canvas inside.

I retrieve the bottle, offer up my gratitude to its Source and essence; uncork the weathered bottleneck, use a flexible green twig to coax the canvas, swelled too large without love, toward the aperture. With delicate care—I have all the time in the worlds—I hang the bottle from a low limb, wait for sun and wind to dry the canvas until it shrinks in upon itself, enough that with my twig I can finally, days later, extract the rolled canvas from its vessel.

It is tied with a leather thong. There is a gossamer seal, a fine golden stamp to hold the thong around the canvas. Do I break the seal? Would it be but hubris to presume the message so lovingly bound might be for me? Mayhap I should replace the canvas, cork this bottle, find some strength to thrust the vessel far beyond the horizon again with the outgoing tide, so it may reach its intended one? But it is here; my dreams have manifested this harbinger of truth, this message in a bottle.

Build a fire, toast nuts and cook the shellfish. Sit on a water pounded rock by the edge of reach of the incoming tide. Chant a mantra, purify my thoughts, quiet expectations, still the wayward hopes and fears. It is time, feels proper, in harmony with the emptiness without and within. Now to break the seal gingerly, loosen the thong, allow the canvas to unwrap itself, feeling its own freedom as it expands to breathe the warming air by the fire, mist from the tide falling lightly on the canvas and on the beach around the rock; the bottle on the sand, canvas unfolded in my open palms.

The message: “Be-long toward Being.”

That is it; I am that It IS. Close eyes, look more deeply Within. Open the Heart of Being: Here-Now! The mountainscape soaring; all IS Love.

images are from pixabay.com

******

Better Endings Story Seed:

Message in a Bottle

Imagine you are a castaway on a remote tropical island. A bottle washes in with the tide. There is a message inside, meant for you alone. Contemplate and journal about the meaning of your being a castaway in relation to your life right now. The message is for you. What does it say?

Make Every Day a Good Day

My waking dream this month is from a book called Wisdom of the Heart, by Harold Klemp:

“…life does not give rewards for good

or punishment for evil. It merely gives

results. Life is what you make it.” (pg. 26)

The same author says, “Make every day a good day.”  I found this gem a few days ago and have been using it like a mantra. Each day has been a gem of its own so  far, with new connections, insights and positive motion forward with responsibilities and creative projects.

Starting over–ostensibly alone but for my pet family–carries a full load of worries or trepidation as well as excitement and adventurous, fresh opportunities. Mainly I am faced daily with choices: everything from what Medicare plan to enroll in–as I turn 65 next month–to when it would be best to start social security allotments, how to address health matters, and how best to follow through with new local connections and with my writing and service ambitions.

I am approaching every new day as like a time capsule, using lists to keep me focused on what I need to do each day to fully ‘move in,’ to conquer immediate fears or anxieties, and to shape my new way of life in a new environs. A move is such a golden opportunity to establish yourself in a manner that accords with your current state of consciousness and intentions.

images are from pixabay.com

I find I truly am now, mainly, gratefully, “living my Dream, Now!” every day. That does not mean everything is smooth sailing. In fact, to move forward consciously requires attending to my habits and thoughts, to choose wisely that which will continue to allow this Dream to unfold naturally and with beauty.

I welcome YOUR Story and Comments!

Love Equals Love

 

I meant the first post for this month’s Topic of Life Lessons to be a general introduction to the topic, which I have already written. Instead, I have had a three-part dream this morning and realized while driving to work this morning how it conveys a major life lesson for me: Love Equals Love.  Along with this, Acts of love are Heroic!

In my dream I am visiting all day with a lifelong friend. Since my friend’s gender in the dream is ambiguous, I will call my friend here Dona (Donna/ Don). In Part I of this dream Dona is visiting me and we share some experience together like attending an event or a class, but I do not recall that segment. After that activity, Dona drives us back to her/his location and I ride in the car, talking familiarly with my friend and grateful to be in Dona’s presence. We arrive at Dona’s place and sit out on a portico (that is the word that comes as I write out the dream), suspended over a gorge with water below.

After talking awhile I realize I have brought my orange tabby cat Emily with me on the visit but did not bring a litter box, so I say maybe we should be leaving. (This often happens in a lucid dream that some element of a physical-world concern can intervene and shorten the dream experience.) Dona says–I believe not wanting that I should leave so soon–that visiting animals often use a fenced area down in the gorge below for their needs.

Sure enough when I look down to the gorge (where previous to this I had looked and saw a large dog in a region beyond a further fence), Emily is already down there and does relieve herself. One and then up to three or four other ‘local’ cats have gathered just outside the inner fenced area where Emily is. I mention this to Dona.

All of a sudden Dona gets up and DIVES off from the portico over the cliff! S/he transforms into a cat on the way down so that s/he lands on her feet and then transforms into Dona again, to save Emily from the cats that might have attacked her. After realizing what has just occurred, I (with I think my sister Cheryl) go down a trail to the bottom to check on Dona and Emily.  A younger woman with blue and pink  hues, blonde, is coming up as we go down (angelic?). We get there and Dona is lying down, okay but needing to recuperate, enclosed in a blanket or even a protective tube to help him/her to regenerate from the hard landing.  Emily is fine and I have her in my arms to carry her. We will bring Dona up in the tube, but meanwhile Dona is talking about how this will make for a great story to tell later. Quite a story, Indeed! Dona says this is about the need to take bold action on behalf of others; that this is a sort of action often not taken in today’s world!

Driving into work after this dream this morning I was replaying the dream in my mind, trying to comprehend and interpret its meaning for me. What came to mind almost immediately is:

Love = Love.

I had been thinking of a spiritual expression I like: Soul = Soul. But then came this slight emendation: LOVE EQUALS LOVE. I realized then how the dream itself was about the love that comes with lifelong friendship; and as well, Dona’s leap into the gorge off from the portico to protect my cat Emily (whom I also love) was an act of love as much as an heroic act of itself!

So yes, a Life Lesson:

Love Equals Love !

Dream Reflection: Whatever form love takes, it IS Love. And love, to be love truly, is always reciprocal.  Love engenders Heroic qualities on behalf of the Beloved.

images are from pixabay.com

I hope that some of you reading this story can relate to this Life Lesson of Love = Love. It is a beautiful affirmation, for me, of the magnificence of Life itself:

(for, Love = Life = Love).

I welcome YOUR Story and Comments!

Prepare Well for Your Departure

 

Every one of the incremental phases of a Hero’s Adventure (click here for the Monthly Topics tab) holds an archetypal Frame of its own, meaning it is embued with a special power by its categorical/ culturally patterned nature. Departure is a ‘thing’ as well as part of the longer process it initiates. So let’s consider here how does one successfully Depart?  I would say from experience that a good Departure requires a mindful, spiritually and psychologically deep approach in order to facilitate a highly successful Adventure.

Some 39 years ago in 1978 I initiated a Departure from everything I had known. I would take a leap into the Unknown by moving West, from Buffalo, New York to Tempe, Arizona to enter graduate school.  I was leaving so I could study Native American languages and cultures in the Southwest setting so appropriate to that objective. I was to leave family, friends, and all my familiar Eastern environments and weather to go to the Desert and start anew.

The preparation for departure was quite a long process of nearly two years.  I first took a cross-country bus trip with a dear spiritual friend, Grace. And such an adventure that trip became!  The bus broke down so we were rerouted through Sedona, a mecca of sorts for me at the time as my spiritual group had land there we got to visit.  Plus I met new friends and together we faced the possibility of there being a murderer(signaled by a police woman’s warning) who boarded in Albuquerque, causing me to sink into one of the deepest contemplations of my life—altering my consciousness altogether by the time we arrived in Sedona. (He got off in Flagstaff with his traveling partner, saying: “Goodbye, New Mexico, forever!” To me, when I addressed him after spreading the rumor around the bus as to whom he might be, he had said: “So, how do you feel about YOUR life?”)

This trip primed me for a love of the Southwest, and I spent the next year in Buffalo preparing for the Big Adventure. I plastered beautiful photographs from Sedona Life magazine all over my office wall.  I asked questions of my Inner Guide nightly in contemplations, e.g.: “Should I really make such a big move?” “Will I be okay?”

Every night then I would dream and in the dream I would be shown an answer to my question. For example one night I asked, “But what about Chela (my beloved Cat companion)? How can she make such a long trip in an overcrowded car with me?”  That night I dreamed I was driving a van across country to Arizona, and in the back, stretched out contentedly on a blanket covering a Player Piano that was musically soothing her, was Chela.

One morning about six months prior to my departure to the Southwest, I woke with a musical ditty on my mind:

I’m leaving

But there are a few doors left to close

Before I get over there.

For the next six months, that lyric and melody became a daily mantra for me. I came to realize I needed to smooth out some rough edges in my relationships, for instance, and this ditty helped me do that mindfully and with clear intent.

The time came. I packed up my ’66 red convertible Buick Special that my father had gifted me, packed with all the belongings I would carry, and my dear Chela. A friend, Cathy, accompanied us, as she had friends in Mesa, Arizona I would stay with temporarily until I could get situated near the campus at Arizona State University.  We only made one stop along the way, in Colorado Springs at the Garden of the Gods, where I walked Chela and admired the red rocks there which are so similar to the red rocks of Sedona. (Fourteen years later, guess where I moved to teach after graduating with my doctorate? Yes, Colorado Springs, where I have remained ever since.)

The move to Arizona went exceedingly well. I cried one torrential outpour of tears about two days after reaching there, releasing my pain and fear and grief over leaving everything and everyone familiar to me up til then. But then I met new friends—several of whom I had been shown in those premonition dreams back in Buffalo—and I embarked upon my studies that helped me eventually build a successful, exciting career as an anthropologist.

images are from pixabay.com

So consider, how shall you PREPARE for your DEPARTURE?  Give this pregnant phase of your Adventure all the loving attention and all the time and dreaming you can invest.  Contemplate where your departure can take you. Prepare for the life you are creating for yourself with this golden opportunity.

Then, Go with Spirit, my friends!  Enjoy your most beautiful Adventure!

Departure: A Double Entendre in Current America

This month I am sharing about the phase of the Hero’s Adventure known as the Departure. It is a response to the Call to Adventure and must be undertaken mindfully, with good intention in order to bypass Threshold Guardians and Cross the Threshold of Adventure as you embark upon your Quest that only you can fully accomplish!

But as I attend to the news in this unsettling era of American conservatism in the White House, I recognize that “departure” is a word with a double meaning. The first meaning is as described in the above paragraph. The second is darker, more foreboding. A Departure can also be a turning AWAY from everything one has valued or known to be true for themselves. Where this new administration is going–or trying rather forcefully to take us to–is an extreme departure from much of what I value dearly and hold to be true based on the evidence of science and the witness of my heart.

Climate change; Native American sovereignty rights over reservation and cultural resources; immigration and an open heart for refugees fleeing violence, poverty or corruption; racial and religious equality and freedom of choice including a woman’s choice over her own reproductive rights: suddenly all of these appear imperiled.

The first sort of departure, acting on the intention to embark upon an Adventure in pursuit of one’s Dream, is positive and it can bear much bounty of a profound, heroic nature for all concerned. The second, a reversal of value-orientations developed over decades or even centuries in our democratic nation, feels ‘negative’ and disheartening to me. I feel disempowered by this second-order form of departure from the course the vast majority of people in my entire country have been pursuing toward achieving our collective American Dream.

So, the first departure, you must hold to, even in times of radical change and upheaval. Never turn back from your Dream!

As to the second, darker seeming reversal (or any such external sort of reversal of charge threatening to obtrude within your world), do what you can, of course. Step forth, speak out as that becomes available for you, march, sign petitions as an active citizen who does have rights of free expression and whose values DO MATTER!

Perhaps the collective good will ultimately triumph over the narrow nationalism and bigotry we see paraded about before us daily. The political comedians and newscasters are doing their best to stem the tide. Activism IS bearing fruit and will continue to do so. If that is the departure you are now being called to or in addition to the positive path you are set upon, all the best to you.

But my core message here for you is to not let the Threshold Guardians–any would-be naysayers or fatalistic pessimism itself–deter you from heading out on or continuing forth with YOUR Adventure.  Joseph Campbell would remind us that every successful Hero’s Adventure, both in the pursuing and in the realization of one’s Quest, one’s Dream, profoundly benefits not just the individual but the Universe as a Whole.

images are from pixabay.com

We need to support one another in our joyful pursuit of our Dreams, perhaps Now more than ever.

I welcome YOUR Comments and Story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DEPARTURE—The Separation Phase of Your Adventure!

Every Rites of Passage adventure consists of three phases of ritual activities: Separation, Transition—I like to call this, Transformation—, and Reintegration. The initial SEPARATION phase launches the person or group of ‘ritual passengers’ into their Adventure. It is usually marked in a formal rites of passage cycle by distinguishing the Adventurer in various ways as no longer in her/his ‘old’ state but not yet in the ‘new’ state s/he seeks to attain as the Quest of their adventure.

I love the scene in the very first Star Wars movie (Episode 4: A New Hope) when Luke Skywalker stands on a hill at dusk watching the double sunset and feeling the desire to depart the way of life he has known to embark on a greater adventure. This is the beginning of Luke’s Call to Adventure. His Departure begins shortly thereafter, first when he departs his uncle’s compound to find the renegade R2D2 and encounters his Mage Teacher, the Jedi Knight Obiwan Kenobi. The second stage of the Departure is when Luke leaves his home planet, but perhaps we will come back to that set of scenes as Crossing the Threshold.

Luke is marked for Departure by his show of restlessness with his uncle and aunt just before his longing gaze into the double sunset.  When he (upon his second departure on the Millennial Falcon) receives his weapon of the Light Saber from his Teacher, this separates Luke from all others as he is from then on in training to become a rare spiritual warrior of the Jedi Order.

Very common ensignia of Separation accompanying the Departure stage of an heroic adventure would be donning a uniform or cutting one’s hair (e.g. for a military boot camp, or Yentl’s shearing of her feminine identity in cutting her hair in order to be able to study as a Hasidic scholar). One sheds their old identity and prepares to confront the ordeals of the transitional/ transformational Passage.

As I approach retirement in a few months over a year from now, I have already begun the Separation process so as to allow and to prepare well for this Departure.  I am on sabbatical from my professor role this semester, which is a form of semi-retirement (though busy, as my retirement will also be).  I do not hold myself to the same normal schedule of a regular workaday semester. I wear jeans more than not even at the office. I close the office door unless I have a known appointment. All of these mark my intention (to myself and coworkers and students) to shift identities; no longer Chair of my department, now I begin a more liminal, transitional passage.

images are from pixabay.com

It is helpful and important to MARK yourself as being in Separation from your earlier way of life if you are to step boldly into the next phase of your adventure. The more clearly and distinctively you can separate yourself from your normal routines and activities, the better!  As you mark your Separation you create at least the shell or form of your new identity. You must shed your Old or outmoded way of life in order to move confidently into the New mode you aim to achieve that will bring you Fulfillment of your deep aspirations.

What new Adventure are you aiming to undertake that can help orient and launch you in an appropriate direction to Live Your Dream, Now? How will you MARK your Separation as one ready to Depart?

I invite YOUR comments and stories!

 

THE HOLOGRAPHIC ADVENTURE OF YOUR LIFETIME

Where do you go when you imagine following your Call to Adventure? What image or scene comes to mind when you envision feeling a sense of utter fulfillment?

Your Call to Adventure may come as an IMAGE that beckons and pulls at you like the “thin biting call of Soul.” Ron Neary’s vision of the Devil’s Tower butte in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, for instance, or the memory of Shangri-La that won’t let Robert Conway be happy anywhere else after he has found his fateful oasis of the Soul in Lost Horizon are two great fictional examples.

I remember from high school and early college years that I would often close my eyes and imagine rowing a boat to the middle of a lake, then I would set the oars to rest and settle back to read a good book while floating on the lake, listening to the rhythmic lapping of the water under the calm blue sky. Sometimes in this reverie I would nap and my boat would drift until it came to moor on a deserted island shoreline.

Many years later I will soon enough be retiring to a lakeside community. I intend to explore the lake with a kayak and maybe a rowboat. Was my youthful daydream then a trip in spacetime to a future I could already imagine?

Your Call to Adventure evokes more than a desirable place or a future activity, though this vision might signal the context of your greater Life Dream.

This past week I had a thought while walking university halls to teach yet another class, this time a five day, 40 hour “winterim” with 33 students that turned out to be a delight because of our combined enthusiasm for the material. The thought that came through one morning was:

Is my life a hologram?

The more I consider this profound possibility, the more probable I find it to be. Quantum physicists have been entertaining this notion, too, it turns out. Some venture so far as to suggest our entire reality is but a holographic projection along the event horizon of a black hole!

If my life is a hologram, what this means to me is that every Moment (as only Now is Real and therefore All of life experience is “in the NOW”) is a microsegment of the Whole projection of a lifetime. Remember that in a hologram, the Part is embedded in the Whole such that the Whole is always present in every fraction (or, fractal) of Itself. I “live” (have my physical attention and sense of ‘being’) in the “present” projection of our illusionary three dimensions of timespace, yet from higher dimensions (4th and beyond) I can perceive the Whole of my complete lifetime and perhaps zooming further Beyond with spiritual awareness I can even see the broader context of THIS lifetime in multiple lifetimes, multiple universes, and a limitless expanse of Cosmos.

So then future and past and present are all ONE, and the Whole is so much greater than the sum of its luminously integrated Parts.

all images are from pixabay.com

I realize with this Life is a Hologram perspective, then, that I/you/Soul can EXPLORE the Whole from ANY location within the holographic Whole, at any “time.”

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the Stream;
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is BUT A DREAM.

Try it, I invite you. Close your Eyes and DREAM! I welcome your Comments and Story!

Proclaim Your Inner Idealist !

 

What are your ideals? It’s “open mike” for your Idealist archetype Ally part-of-Self to proclaim your highest ideal values.

I invite you to write or speak a list of IDEALIST statements or affirmations you would love to share. As an example here are some affirmations from my own IDEALIST point of view:

“Never Give Up, yet always give UP (Surrender to Spirit and be willing to Accept ITS bounty)!”

“Aim for the Heavens in all you do; you do not have to “nearly die” to get Here!”

“Trust.”

“Honesty.”

“Faith.”

“Dream, and then ACT on your inner Dream Guidance.”

“Sit still and Do Something!”

“There are no strangers; all are cut from the same cloth.”

Now then, all you need to do is take some ‘time out’ and LISTEN! Allow your own highest Ideals to guide you on your journey, day to day and moment by moment. Your IDEALIST will support you always and will remind you of your own highest nature.

So ask yourself:

“What are My highest Ideals?

How can I allow these ideals to steer Me along a more positive life course?

How can my Ideals lead Me to define My Life Dream and to Live My Dream, Now! ?”

******   ******

I welcome your insights and stories!

 

 

 

 

The Call of the Mystic

As a gift of synchrony this week, I was struck by the following quote shared by Theresa from the Soul Gatherings blog “Today’s Quote” (March 10 2015):

 

“If something burns your soul with purpose and desire,
it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it.
Any other form of existence will be
yet another dull book in the library of life.”

~ Charles Bukowski ~

 

The Mystic in each of us is a Visionary who  brings purpose and desire into our hearts. And in its manner,  the Vision may indeed sear the mystic visioner.  Many turn away from the full  vision, their Dream, if it appears too difficult to practically achieve. These may then find a way to sublimate their vision into a form that still can fulfill some aspects of their dreams, e.g. through parenting or travels, and that is good. Others who feel driven by their vision as a genuine calling must proceed, regardless of social skepticism and despite the indefinite time or social sacrifice it may take to bring their Dream into fruition so it can benefit the Whole.

I am reminded of Langston Hughes’s poignant poem:

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die,

life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams go,

life is a barren field, frozen with snow.

 I find myself at this phase of my life in the category of the  visioner who must push on despite the searing nature of the quest. In this case there is a concrete goal to accomplish, and guideposts along the way to maintain productive progress. But some dreams—including some of my own spiritually; and yours?—are greater than one can expect to fulfill even in a single lifetime.  Even so, such dreams propel a lifetime forward by incremental “small steps” of  unfoldment which either the Soul will continue beyond this earthly sojourn or which others may also continue once that original soul-journeyer has passed beyond.

 

Recently science and science fiction are exploring the idea of interstellar travel as the sort of vision that may take generations to fulfill. Is this a Mystic Quest? You bet it is! It is a Vision that speaks to the continuation and advanced evolution of our varied earthly species as a whole.  Our very lifeforms, according to some of these ark-like visions emerging today, may be transformed in the process of securing our physical survival in the vast expanse of perpetual existence.

So, live your visionary dreams, no matter where they lead. Trust your inner mystic  to lead you Home.

 

A Portal to Other Dimensions

 

Blogging has been a great blessing to me in and of itself. I thank all of you who are reading these posts. They have become for me a new kind of journaling as a conversation with Self and Spirit (including the spirit in You). This year’s process of combining positive life metaphors with monthly archetypal profiles and dialogues has been truly alchemical for me already, as conducting these blog posts engages me in deeper connections with my own archetypal inner assembly.

This week’s pairing of the metaphor Life is But a Dream with the archetypal orientation of Teacher has opened a portal to a profound realization for me, so I hope some of you will also apply the techniques to arrive at your own realizations.  What I have realized this week is how the recognition of “life is a dream” provides access to other dimensional levels of awareness!

Here’s an example. Last Saturday night after putting up the blog about The Learner–where I dialogued with Rumi as an inner Teacher–I had a dream in which I was simply petting my cat in bed, yet when I looked I saw that the cat I was petting was neither Loki nor Emily (my living cats), but it was Arthur, my cat friend that I lost to dental surgery a few months ago. Not just that, but this form of Arthur that I was petting was a little lion cub! His hair was bristly to the touch and he had a short mane forming. The reason this is significant is because I had ‘felt’ after Arthur passed that he may have been in this life here to protect his petite sister Emily, and that he was meant to go on after this life to become a lion in the veld. Arthur, you see, never seemed to me to be fully happy as a domesticated house cat; he was always more the loner type of feline, except for his dinner tidbits and delightful brushings that he could not resist!

So perhaps Arthur came back within my dream state for some loving attention that he remembers from me as he is “now” in a wild lion embodiment.  Never mind about dimensions or time frames being simultaneous since time is an Illusion.  My personal insight is that because I recognize that this waking life is as much a ‘dream’ as is the substance of a nightly or daydream, this very awareness opens a portal BETWEEN these alter-dimensions. That is, there is less of a divide and rather a continuum of consciousness that you can shift between, seamlessly.

 

I am grateful. Arthur, you are welcome in my universe of consciousness, any time!

I welcome YOUR insights and stories!

A New Year’s Better Endings Double Inspiration

This week’s weekly prompt list is for reflecting on Better Endings outcomes from your Significant Life Events. In addition today though, since it is New Year’s Day in America,I also want to offer you a New Year’s special invitation.

First then, to the List of Prompts. Significant Life Events are those situations or memorable interactions in your life that have “influenced the person you have become”. The following list represents a set of possible kinds of memorable events. I invite you to select one or more of these–or choose your own–and either journal, talk about, or actively contemplate about this or these events in your life, one at a time. Describe the memory vividly or go back imaginatively to experience it again. Ask yourself, Why was this such a significant event in your life? How has it impacted or shaped aspects of the person you are now? And then ask, no matter how difficult or ‘negative’ (or by all means, positive!) this event may have been, what POSITIVE outcomes do you recognize that are either directly or indirectly related to this event? Here’s the list:

• your earliest vivid memory
• a key family experience
• a memorable travel event
• a breakup
• NOW
• a health situation
• a relationship moment or situation
• school related
• pet related
• a loss
• a move
• a significant dream
• a time of great happiness

Please feel free to submit your story about the Better Endings outcomes or impacts of one of these or of another Significant Life Event from your life. Send it in for inclusion in this Sunday’s Story of the Week!

A NEW YEAR”S INSPIRATION:

What Is Your Life Dream?

Do you have a New Year’s list of resolutions? Okay, but what about a Life Dream? If you were  expressing all that you can be and giving all that you desire to give, daily, every day of your life, what do you envision yourself DOING / BEING? The aim of Life Mapping is for you (and well, heck, for everyone and anyone) to LIVE YOUR DREAM, NOW!

For this New Year’s Day, I invite you to reclaim or to excavate your Life Dream. Describe it in one clear phrase or paragraph. Put it somewhere visible to you so you can remember it daily. If you like, choose an image from a photograph or magazine or online site that clearly reminds you of this life Dream, and pin or post it with your Life Dream statement.

The weekly Better Endings Life Mapping activities (right sidebar and weekly Friday discussions) will be offering many opportunities for you to focus on and in fact to develop ways to fully MANIFEST your Life Dream. So, stay tuned!

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Respect–A Key Ingredient for Better Endings

As a first principle for manifesting Better Endings, respect goes a long way.Catherine mentions as this week’s guest blogger how important respect can be for an entire nation to advance. Respect for difference on a collective scale allows innovation to thrive and fosters a climate of shared abundance instead of petty conflict or divisiveness. I always tell Anthropology students that the degree to which we respect diversity at home is a measure of how well minority cultures and languages, e.g., will be maintained for the sake of the development and sharing of different sources of adaptive knowledge and values on our planet. Variation is a key to the continued evolution of an entire species, including ours.

With regard to our weekly topic of relationship changes, mutual respect for one another’s goals, needs and talents is vital for fostering growth and success for one another. For both partners  to thrive, respect must flow in both directions, supporting each other’s dreams and providing a refuge from external challenges.

Self respect is also a top ingredient for creating Better Endings in our lives, which benefits not just ourselves alone but those we serve. Healthy self respect engenders patience and fortitude to stay the course on a project you believe in, even when others haven’t yet caught onto the idea. Aim your dreams toward that Star that others will not even see or appreciate for its beauty until it is fully risen.

Answering this week’s Life Mapping prompt of ‘What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?’ allows you to give respect to your own Life Dreams. ARE we ever really “all grown up”, anyway? People who answer this question as they would have as a child and then Now often tell me they are so much more practical now. But what do we give up in the process of settling into our ‘grown-up’ lives? That’s why I keep posing this question, especially to adults. Never give up on your dreams! Cultivate your creative goals and follow your inspirations, though they may come from a part of yourself–your childhood, as you might call that–that has been suppressed or neglected. Your imagination is your gift to use for the benefit not only of your own “spiritual evolution”–as Catherine alludes to–but also to all those you care about and to the world as a whole. Everyone has dreams to unfold. Whether it is that next best cupcake design or a way to deflect asteroids, respect and nurture your own ideas and ideals.

I tell each of my pets (and sometimes friends): “There has never been and there never will be again in the entire history of all creation another being that IS YOU!” Each of us has unique capabilities, viewpoints and experiences that we can use to benefit the whole of creation. So accept and respect your Life Dream, and you can begin to Live It, Now!

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Why ‘Better Endings’?

Change a story, change a life…Yours!

Better Endings is a principle, an ideal that reveals the highest capacities of the human heart and Spirit.  It is inherent in our Soul’s journey, I believe, to strive to overcome adversity, to approach and slay (or, tame) our inner Dragons, to triumph despite apparent setbacks or restrictions.

“I can do it!,” says the Littlle Blue Engine in a childhood story of encouragement.  “Reach for the unreachable Star!,” says a beleaguered Man of La Mancha. There are no impossible dreams, for our dreams lead us inexorably forward, so long as we allow ourselves to follow.

Thirteen years ago, during a time of self-questioning about my own life purpose and goals, I literally woke from sleep one morning to the clear vision of a bold, black lettered sign or placard pasted right between my eyes, that read:

YOU HAVE THE RESPONSIBILITY

TO REALIZE YOUR DREAMS,

NOT JUST FOR GETTING BY.

This message has become a credo for me ever since. It has led me to develop, over twelve years of research and development, the Life Maps Process, which is a personal growth and development toolkit that allows you to reconstruct and reflect upon patterns, themes and chapters in your life to Now so you may better equip yourself with your own archetypal Strengths and Cross the Threshold to a more consciously envisioned future. Live Your Dream, Now! is the better endings mantra you can realize through the art of Life Path Mapping.

Better Endings says to all of us to “Never Give Up!”.  As long as we can exercise and stretch our human faculty of Imagination we CAN Realize our Life Dream instead of Just Getting By. This is true regardless of your circumstances; while yes, some paths may be blocked to you due to irreversible circumstances, yet there is always a better endings scenario you CAN fulfill, or at least a ‘best possible’ one.

I invite you to a year of Better Endings!  It is yours for the price of sharing–inwardly and outwardly, if you so choose–so ultimately you can reclaim and Live YOUR Dream!

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