2015

During these last 48 hours or so of 2015, two words have been on my mind: “love” and “gratitude.”   There’s a lot more to say on both counts, and that will have to wait for next year!

For now, I just celebrate the fact that I think under the radar, these two qualities have actually gained in power and visibility in the world.  If our feet seem to be unsteady, on shifting sands, it may be that there is literally an eruption of love rumbling around, trying to break through the surface.  There are so many extraordinary humans on this planet, doing amazing, love-and-passion-filled things, and our condition keeps evolving and blossoming. I think more people than ever feel the awe and thankfulness of being alive, and are celebrating life in new ways.  Let’s not ever lose sight of the miracle of that, even when things sadden, frighten, or worry us.

As for me, my overriding emotion today is gratitude.  I think I'll look back on 2015 as the year I was really born, when I finally had the courage to speak. This is the year when I found my inner home and started to believe I am worthy of an outer one. This is the year when I really began to understand what love is, and how to focus only on it. This is the year when I began to grasp my calling. This is the year when all the scattered puzzle pieces finally came back into one picture.  For the first time, I know without a shadow of a doubt that I can hold an energy of alignment in the face of any challenge.  I have a long way to go in learning to express love and in learning to embrace it.  And I have a long way to go in learning to give and become grounded.  But with all its twists and turns, I wouldn’t trade 2015 for anything.  Many of you have taught me a lot -- a profound thank you!

Now, 2016!  Have a wonderful new year, everyone!

Room at the Inn

For the past thirty years or more, King’s College, Cambridge has commissioned a new carol to be sung at its Christmas Eve service, which is broadcast on public radio in the US.  This year’s, by Richard Causton with words by George Szirtes (who came to Britain many years ago as a refugee), is incredibly powerful but may not become a crowd favorite.  Even for me, who was basically taught 12-tone theory and composition at Smith instead of traditional music theory, the piece was somewhat hard to listen to, both musically and in terms of the words, which explored the parallel between the biblical story of “no room at the inn” and the current refugee crisis.  The musical setting was at times atonal, almost a musical cry for help.  I can’t help but think that it might resonate not only with refugees, but also with others of us who are “homeless” for other reasons.  The refrain:

"May those who travel light

Find shelter on the flight"

Christmas has almost always found me far from home.  Only twice in my life (Christmas of 1980, when I was studying for my MMus at the University of London, and last Christmas, 2014) have I been in the country that I consider home.  Sometimes I think I’ll never understand why it has been so very hard to find my way there permanently.  When I try to channel my highest self, the answer seems to be that there was a life lesson I could not have learned any other way.  If it’s the lesson I think it is, I’m finally making sense of it.  I also think in the past I believed it would be hard, and so the law of attraction responded by making it hard.

I know one thing. Once I get back there and have a home of my own, I intend to create a guest space so that I can periodically welcome other mystics or spiritual seekers to spend time with me.  They will have full access to all my spiritual books, my art supplies and my kitchen.  I’ll take them around to cathedrals or abbeys or historical spots – or leave them to their own devices while they birth their own challenging yet important callings.  Yes, at times over the years I have experienced “no room at the inn,” and it has been devastating. The shriek-y sounds in that carol resonated because I have felt that same painful despair.  But often, most recently at several stops between last Christmas and this Christmas, strangers or friends have been astonishingly generous and welcoming. I have been at the receiving end of unconditional love and uncritical acceptance, and learned what it feels like to be welcomed with open arms.  Such a gift!  I am so thankful!  Having finally embraced that I am a mystic, I realize how crucial it is for people like me to be in the kind of welcoming, safe, silent setting that promotes intense spiritual growth. My dear friends have taught me well, and now I yearn to return the favor, to be the one with a temporary home base to offer other deep seekers.

I think I’m entering kind of a hermitage phase of my life, so I don’t plan to open a big retreat center.  No, this will be a “monastery” with room for just one or two wandering mystics at a time, while I continue to love, write, research, paint and sing. (There seems to be a grand oeuvre percolating.) How I’ll find the right people or they’ll find me, I don’t know yet.  But somehow, law of attraction will do its work, and there will be room at the inn.  

Holy Night

Just checking in, because those of you who are reading this are truly family.  I had tons to say, but it's the day for blessed stillness or glorious music or just fun, so instead -- may you have a holy 24 hours or so, whatever makes it that for you!  Back in a few days...love, Liz

"Material Girl"

I just wanted to report a small amount of success in becoming a more material girl (I probably would have said this without Madonna, but thank you, Madonna!)

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to visit a major mall.  Now, this is an interesting spiritual exercise when you really cannot spend any money.  For a number of years, I have avoided malls almost literally like the plague, and on the rare occasions that I set foot in one, my whole soul and body would scream “no.”  No to the commercialism, no to the (to my eyes) unattractive clothing, no to the chain stores and huge quantities of stuff.  No to spending money.  No to making the money so I could spend the money. Just plain no.

But I was determined this time at least to enter the place with a different energy.  After all, look where all those “no’s” have brought me.  Some grand adventures, but not much in the way of solidity.

I was determined, if nothing else, to look for things I liked.  For some interesting reason, the only “material” items that really spoke to me were some extremely high end purses and wallets in the window of a store I didn’t dare even walk into.  But I stood, with my nose pressed (almost Victorian child-like) to the glass, looking at these gloriously attractive leather handbags in a variety of colors, thinking, I would genuinely like one of those.  And that.  And that too.  I mean, it sounds absurd, but it was liberating just to want something tangible, and to say it to myself without immediately contradicting myself!  For me, it was quite revolutionary, after decades of training myself not to desire material things.

And I genuinely appreciated the mall’s variety and life. I appreciated the man who helped the woman with a cane getting off the escalator, the visibly efficient and hard-working staff in several stores, the guy who said “God bless you” when I sneezed but never took his eyes off his cell phone as he strode down the hallway, the colorful shopping bags, the neat poster of a labyrinth in the coffee shop.  I spent a mere $2.53 in that mall, on an iced coffee, but upon leaving, I realized that I genuinely had not had a negative reaction to anything the whole hour. And I guess anything that is not a “no” is a “yes.”  Perhaps I am finally saying yes to life in a way I wasn’t before, which, for a wandering mystic who wants to stop wandering, is progress.

My inner landscape is transforming by the hour.  It’s the kind of progress that might be invisible to a lot of people, but things are moving.  In this deep midwinter, in the stillness, it’s happening, like a creaking glacier, like the cracking of the ice around the Essex-Charlotte ferry in February.  Erratic and slow.  But welcome.  I am grateful.

 

Comfort and Joy

The next two weeks are the holiest ones of the year for me.

It isn't, I'm afraid, because of the birth of a savior 2,000 years ago.  Even as a child, I could not quite grasp why we were not all considered "holy children." And I don't get the notion of needing a savior -- all in all, I think humans are extraordinary.  I can't explain my passion for cathedrals and Lessons and Carols services, and the music, mythology, architecture and imagery of my particular heritage, except that they bring me joy and are an expression of joy that seems to transcend doctrine.  It's a mystery.  But not the whole reason for my late-December bliss.

Solstice makes this time of year holy for many people.  I often attend solstice events and appreciate it as an alternative, focusing on this dark time as a gift of nature, and an expression of a more female aspect of the Divine.  But I haven't found a permanent spiritual home in these practices, and the other major world religions and traditions don't resonate with me in the least.  As far as I know, New Thought/Law of Attraction teachers don't attribute any special significance to late December.

And it's not about Christmas shopping.  Except for a few years in my 20's, I've rarely had any money to spend on presents.  The whole commercialization of the season has completely passed me by.  If someone were to thrust $1,000 into my hands today, and say "go, buy some presents," I wouldn't know where to start.  I'd need someone along to help me.  Clearly if we're all spiritual beings having a physical experience, I've been a bit slow at the latter part (!) This may not be the right venue to do it, but I apologize to all my friends and family for the fact that I have given so few presents over the years. It is my intention to be a bit more grounded, and material, in Act Two!  I know that many people find joy in shopping, and the giving and receiving of material things, and I'd like to open my heart to learn how to experience that.

So that leaves us back at square one.  Why are these weeks holy?  I think it's because the darkness is so mysterious and rich.  It's the one moment of the year when our connection to this whole endless expanse of universe seems most powerful.  The Christmas lights, the candles on the table, link us to the stars.  The light does shine in the darkness, and "the darkness comprehend[s] it not."

It is the time when I truly do feel "tidings of comfort and joy."  Comfort, from finally understanding (in my head, at least) that all is good, all is love.  The little children who shook with fear over the epic struggle of good versus evil can come out now.  The struggle is over.  We can start to breathe now. 

Joy is the heart part of the equation, when you feel in your heart the all-encompassing love. I still only feel joy for short moments from time to time, but at least now I know what it is, and am beginning to know how to extend the moments out.  Joy just seems more accessible in this dark, snowy, breath-taking moment of the year.

Maybe if my moments of joy, reasons for joy, and expression of joy can overlap for just a few days with your moments of joy, reasons for joy, and expression of joy, the world will become a better place.  Maybe when we hear the carols and the peals of bells, then look out at the twinkling stars, we can imagine that they are singing back at us.

Good morning

Good morning.  Yes, another day where I've deep-sixed my original blog idea. This one was about the worst career (and life) advice I ever received.  It was probably advice that would have served me well on a practical level, but it was advice I simply could not follow from a "do unto others as you would have others do unto you" standpoint.  And my essay was great, except that I would have had to print those words here and put them out into the world, and, in that sense, further "imprint" them in all our hearts.  And I couldn't do that.

So I'm winging it. 

And returning to, I guess, what has become the theme of this Liz path.  Love. Just general, learning to feel it, learning to know what love is and what love isn't, and just taking the old chisel to that blocked up pipeline to the Divine and letting a tiny bit more in every day.  The last few nights, I've gone back again and again to the amazing Abraham-Hicks video on YouTube called "Votre Quete Sans Fin." Don't worry, she speaks in English and this has been posted by a French speaker who has given it French subtitles, but I haven't found another version of it.  Essentially, the gist of it is, it is our never-ending quest to "flow" love out into the world, and also to love ourselves.  Really to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror every day and feel how profoundly the Universe/God/Source loves us.  I'm sorry I don't even know how to share the link, but definitely, find it and listen to it during this mystical deep December.

And in a related note, I watched a rather silly and yet strangely touching movie last night called "Penelope." Without totally spoiling it, I guess I can say that this young lady has been the recipient of a family curse, and all involved have misunderstood how the curse will be reversed.  It only happens in a way that is, yup, relevant here.

That's all for this morning...

Spirit of the Season

Just a short one.

Here's my prescription for getting into the spirit of the season.  Take at least one day in December and:

• Spend it in wildness, as far away from a big city as you can get.  Watch the pale December sun and the slight movement of brown grasses and stark trees.  Watch the sun go down and a distant set of colorful tree lights come on through the woods.  Watch the stars before you go to bed.
• Don't buy anything, online or at a store. See what it feels like.
• Listen to music of the season, or any music that touches your heart.

Have a blessed weekend, friends!

Money I

I have wanted to talk about money almost ever since I started writing this blog this summer.  It has been so central to my journey, from the moment I arrived into a family weighed down with financial tension, to today.  In an odd way, I think of it as having been the catalyst for my entire spiritual journey.  Notions of "worth," "abundance," "love," "work," -- money touches on everything, doesn't it? 

It complicates matters having in recent years become a complete "believer" in the law of attraction.  When you know that focusing on the negative will only bring more negativity into your life, the old tendency to analyze, assess problems, and write histories has to be, itself, re-assessed.  Every time I sit down to write a blog about money, I sink into the mire.  This past weekend, I even thought I had come up with an "aha" that might explain (even more than the umpteen other "perfect storm" reasons) why my life in this regard has been so gut-wrenching, and yet (of course!) when I went back to read the essay, I felt that yucky feeling.  And when I analyze or criticize "the system," the same thing happens. Ah well, at least I'm proud that I am beginning to register what I am feeling. 

Perhaps I can say this without attracting too much negativity...my whole life, I have felt like a being from another planet, plopped down into an environment where this strange form of payment is used, and that they "didn't use that where I came from" and I don't get it.  It's actually rather humorous, when I can laugh about it, how very foreign, almost archaic, the whole construct feels.  I know that there must be people out there to whom it all makes sense, and at least some to whom money comes easily. There must be people who can spend money, even a dollar or two, without inner turmoil.  I know that for some people, money is a positive thing, but try as I might, it hasn't felt like a net "love" construct to me.

Thanks to all the work I've done the last few months, I feel increasingly focused and confident about who I am and what gifts I wish to use moving forward, and yet I can't seem to bear the thought of "charging money," per se, and putting others through the pain I have experienced.  And to return to the paradigm of doing 40-hour-a-week work inappropriate to my skills only for the sake of money seems absolutely contrary to my calling at this late stage of the game.  Be myself, or make money. This is the seemingly impossible crossroad I have encountered over and over on my path, pockets empty and spirits flagging. Is there a third way?

Well, yesterday, I came as close as I ever have to that third way, a potential compromise.  At least for me, right now.  It would make me so happy if it helps you at all in your relationship with money.

I'm making the following commitments for Act II of my life. 

• I commit this Act to love.
• I commit myself to loving the people I love, and at the very least, blessing the people I cannot fully love.
• I commit myself to doing, as much as possible, only activities that I truly love.
• I commit myself to being in a place that I love.
• I commit myself to welcoming "pay" or support of any kind given out of love or genuine appreciation of who I am and what I do from a place of love.
• I commit myself to start loving "things," and embracing being a physical being on this planet who wants to be surrounded by beautiful things, who wants a home.  I commit myself to accepting the role of money, at this time in history, in the modest acquisition of beautiful things.
• I commit myself, as much as possible, to spending money only on things I love, and loving the things I spend money on.
• I commit myself to supporting the people and causes I love.
• I commit myself to expanding my heart enough so that I don't dread or fear spending money. I commit myself to being thankful for the goods or services I have bought, and for the people who brought them to me.
• I commit myself to genuinely greeting and loving the guy or girl behind the cash register.  I have been there. They are me.
• I commit myself to leadership, when it becomes clear how I was meant to lead. I commit to remembering, when I do become a leader, what it was like to be on the "bottom."
• I commit myself to everyone's following of their path of love, so that eventually, there will be no "bottom."
• I commit myself to knowing that I can't see all the ways that the Universe may choose to share abundance with me. I commit to gratitude and open-hearted awe at the possibilities.
• Most of all, I commit to loving myself and this amazing river of life energy that I am a part of.  Maybe I was ahead of my time or "onto something" about money, and maybe I wasn't.  Either way, I am here in a society that uses the stuff, I believe I chose to be here at this time and place, and I commit to loving my path, and to never giving up!

Intuition

As has happened several times recently, there was another blog post planned for today, and yet it’s an active moment and I’m going to take a different path.  I sense, intuitively, that it’s the right thing to do.

And so, that’s the topic.  An online popularized version of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was sent to me a few days ago.  Initially, I thought, why take this again?  I’ve done it several times, and always get the same result – Introvert and Extravert almost equal 50-50, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving.  But I had never done an online version of this, and while it wasn’t the official Myers-Briggs assessment, I tried it.  Nothing has changed over the years, except one thing.  On this particular assessment, my “intuitive” score was 85, and my “sensing” one a mere 15.  I’ve seen so many different wordings of what this means, but I think what it basically reveals is my natural tendency to address the world via my inner guidance rather than via what I am seeing and experiencing on the outside.  I spent most of the day yesterday trying to take in what it means to operate that intuitively. 

I mean, it didn’t surprise me.  Almost everything I do really well, I do quickly and intuitively, and usually without instructions.  Mix colors/paint.  Sight read music, harmonize, or sing along with music I have never heard before. Cook with no recipe. Create needlework and other crafts without patterns. Writing this blog is highly intuitive. Back when I was at Smith, I practiced about an hour a day for my senior organ recital, while friends were practicing hours and hours.  The recital went brilliantly.  When I follow my intuition and values, timings can work out almost magically; the downside is that such a journey may appear disorderly, even chaotic, to some, and routines and structures easily become boring for me.  My way of functioning is that, when I reach a crossroad, I decide on the next step based on my gut feeling of what would lead to the deepest learning experience.  Almost inevitably, when people suggest that I “get serious and work on a life plan,” I burst into tears.  The suggestion is so contrary to my way of operating, it causes me physical pain.  However, I understand that the reverse is also true, that my way of operating causes many people at the least, perplexity and irritation. Our culture is based on a slow, step-by-step, goal-oriented and institutionalized model, one that is almost literally impossible for some of us.  Intuitive and introverted people can easily become hermits in order to escape this paradigm, a path that even tempts me from time to time. 

So at this particular crossroad, what do I “do” with finding out that my intuitive side is potentially even stronger than I thought?  Life coaches say to work with your strengths, not at cross purposes to them.  I know that even though I have largely operated in alignment with my strengths, I’ve also carried a huge amount of shame, assuming that being me was “wrong.”  Ridiculous. Unsuccessful.  I mean, it has often seemed to be all those things.  I can see why I have often tried to undo my own natural leanings.

However, all of the 16 Myers Briggs “types” are considered equally valid, and I have to assume that the answer now, more than ever, as I have been concluding for months, is to be more fully me.  Look within for guidance more and more.  Follow my intuitive leadings more quickly.  Love and respect that inner wisdom, and operate from it ever more fully.  As an introvert, spend as much time as possible alone, thinking, writing, researching, creating – then attend that cocktail party or art opening, or communal music making experience, and lead by example. Let my extravert out from time to time. Feel my feelings and express my perspective on the human condition, and, as a “P,” stay open and flexible.  Love myself and the way I am, and stop fighting her.  I am the way I am for a reason, as we all are!

I needed to "buck myself up" today for a reason...my next blog will be on my favorite topic and greatest challenge, money.  If I announce that to you today, I cannot chicken out!

Invention

It has been another mystifying, horrifying week on a lot of levels, so forgive me for focusing on something totally different.  

I have discovered those round, robot vacuums that make their way around rooms on their own, with no human help.  Now, admittedly, vacuuming is my least favorite chore, especially in the years since an elbow injury made some traditional vacuums almost impossible to use.  Unlike dishwashing and refrigerator cleaning, which I love for some reason, I don't seem to really register the cleanliness results of vacuuming, so can find myself leaving it much too long.

However, I love delegating, and I love watching this robot in action!  Here I am, with my ridiculously high IQ, absolutely mesmerized by the thing.  When it hits the leg of a chair, it rotates a few degrees and tries to go in the new direction.  If it's blocked again, it may circle around 180 degrees, or 90, or even just slightly.  It seems to know when to circle around a table leg or doorway.  It seems to get itself out of all but the most impossible scrapes, and even then, a disembodied voice alerts you to the fact that it's in trouble and needs to be moved.  How, I wonder, does it "decide" what the next tack will be?  And how does its tiny little brush pick up so much dirt?

My lifetime has seen perhaps millions of new inventions, many of which are part of my day-to-day life.  And yet I have to confess that this is the first one whose inventors I can imagine in their lab.  I can imagine them busy at work designing, going through unsuccessful efforts, making hundreds of test runs, then cheering in celebration once they realized it worked, high fives all around.  I mean, I find myself cheering the darned thing! I'm kind of jealous of inventors of practical life tools...when your creative output is entirely of the musical, artistic and written nature, you're never sure how or if your efforts are changing lives. You may never get paid. You may never be sure if anything you have done has made people smile or do a happy dance!

But I sure am grateful for all the inventors out there, particularly of this funny little machine.  And may we all, when faced with roadblocks and discouragement, just kind of shift direction a few degrees and give the new path a try.  Silly whirring noise optional.

Palettes

Life gets rather "interesting" once you have gently released the whole notion of good versus evil.  I mean, it is so much easier, faced with all the craziness in the world and even in our personal lives, to play the old battle game, to put on the armor, pick up the shield, the sword, the crossbow (and modern equivalents) and run screaming into battle.  (OK, so I've been watching a little too much "Vikings"!)

Once you recognize only a force for "good" in the world, it's disconcerting at first.  You may have changed, but the world hasn't. You may be able to dimly see "that of God" in everyone (as the Quakers teach), but if a person's channel to the Divine is so blocked as to be, for all practical purposes, nonexistent, and they are still wreaking havoc on the world, the old temptation to do something is so strong.  You want to fight.  You want to criticize.  You want to rail.  You want to plead.  You want to march in protest.  You want to beg.  You want to shame.  You want to show them.  You want to show the world.  You want to make a legal case or a moral one. You want to teach.  You want to convert. You want to save. Yet somehow, none of it feels right any more.

I returned to oil painting the other day.  My attempt was rather lame, but it reminded me of something that may be relevant here.  We all know of ROY G. BV, the mnemonic for "red-orange-yellow-green-blue-violet" on the color wheel.  Well, in fact there are only three "primary" colors (red, yellow and blue) from which all other colors in nature and art are derived.  I am not all that partial to yellow, but if I arbitrarily decided to remove yellow from all my paintings, and from my palette, I would immediately lose all the variations on orange and green as well since they have yellow in them. Indeed, I'd be left with only half a color wheel.  As a painter, I know that opposite (complementary) colors are crucial to creating a rich painting, and that there is no way to permanently "eliminate" any individual color and still create art.

I'm not sure what this means on the international stage.  And I'm just barely "there" in person, grasping only that my personal "life painting" is the only one I can really control.  When a person or condition seems to be manifesting a hue that I'm not partial to, and I do not understand why they have chosen to be the way they are in my world, I'm at that point in life where I no longer wish to fight.  Instead, I remind myself that this is all part of my color palette, which is only the tip of the iceberg of all the colors in nature.  I can chose to use that undesired color as an undercoat or mixed with its complement, enriching today's blend of colors...or I just don't have to use it at all, and focus instead on colors I'm more fond of.  I'm the painter.  With each new painting, each new day, I can chose what colors to use, how to use them, and where to focus.  Faced with all that's happening in the world, it sure is nice just to have that little bit of power.