MaXIMIze - Drawing in the Light

It is all about where you choose to focus your energies. You attract the vibration in which you are dancing. @EkhowBarnes from Twitter

Whatever you worry about, find its contrast. This is what you want to think about. - Marion Ross

Whenever insecurity raises its ugly head, we need to stop and look at what is really in play there. Why did it raise up? What was the trigger? How do we really want to be, feel, react instead of how we did?

Each one of us is worthy of every good thing we want in our lives. What holds us back is ourselves - our assumptions, our insecurities, our lack of belief that we are worthy and deserving of all the riches in the world, our focus on the outer things instead of the inner life.

So many of us focus on being fulfilled by people and things outside of ourselves that we forget we have to love and accept ourselves before others can do so! What we project out into the world is what we draw back to ourselves from the world.

We need to believe we are good, loving, beautiful people before others will. Each of us has the unending capacity within ourselves for love, and therefore is loveable. Each one of us has a deep inner beauty and therefore is beautiful. Each one of us has an immeasurable well of good within us and therefore can share that good with the world.

We each have our own beautiful, unique and treasured light to share with the world. Some of us, however, choose to hide that light under a bushel of insecurity, of fear, of not feeling like we are enough.

Each one of us is enough, right here, right now.

When you believe, you can achieve - so what is stopping you from believing and achieving right here, right now, today?

MaXIMIze - Bringing Things into the Light

If the shadow is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected, and it can burst forth at any time. ~ C.G. Jung

When I read this quote, I immediately thought of my own insecurity issues and how I need to bring them into the light and face each one of them head on, looking them square in the eyes and letting them know they are not going to control me any longer - I will live up to my potential to the true best of my ability.

What shadows do you need to bring into the light and deal with right here, right now so you can truly live your best life?

What is stopping you from doing so?

What is there to truly be afraid of - what is the worst that could happen, really?

Each one of us is worthy of living our best life right here, right now - especially you!

MaXIMIze - By Resting

A friend recently pointed out that when my life is good or I seem happier my writing drops off. I don't know if that is true for this most recent furlough - although he is right, I am in a better place than I was a few months ago when I started this blog - or if the lack of recent writing is part of the peaks and valleys of life.

Life is about cycles - spring is when everything comes back to life after the deep sleep of winter, just as morning follows night - activity follows rest. A few months ago, my life was a flurry of activity - some yin, some yang - and I wrote a lot to deal with particular parts of the flurries. Now my life is more even keel and the muse has been enjoying a well-earned rest.

As anyone who farms or gardens knows, the ground we plant in needs time in the rotation to lie fallow and gather nutrients to feed the next crop planted there. So too must we honor our own personal cycles of activity and rest, for if we do not allow the time for rest and rejuvenation we will drain our energy to such a level as to invite illness and disease into our lives.

As stated in the book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter Three, Verse One - to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven - so there is a time to be active and a time to rest. So, discover and honor your cycle of rest and activity. However, take care not to rest too long, for there is still plenty of live to be lived!

Namaste

MaXIMIze - Dealing with Feeling Alone

Over the course of the last week, several potential blog topics ran through my mind and my notebook, however the one that stuck out the most was dealing with feeling alone. For me, it is the dawning realization that I have never truly been alone in my life - I lived with my mother until she passed away, I had two children before she left us so I raised them and had a third (who is nearly 20 now and probably going to fly soon) since then, and I've had a variety of relationships and roommates over the years. So, this is the first time I truly have to face being alone without another human soul to turn to at times. And it is scary at times, to know that I am all there is. But am I, really? Or, are you?

Being alone is difficult now that I have to truly face it - I have nowhere, no one to escape to anymore - all I have is me, myself and I. So right now, when the aloneness overwhelms, I walk until I find a water feature - either the one in the creek in the park that is now my backyard, or the one by the historic church near the Amtrak station about a ten-minute walk from my apartment. Then I sit there, close my eyes, and just listen to the sound of the water as it moves over, under, around, and sometimes through the rocks and remember that I am truly enough, right here, right now. And I am reminded that I am never truly alone.

Water cleanses and polishes, sanctifies and blesses. As I listen to the water passing over, under, around, and through the rocks and other impediments to its path, I am reminded that the aloneness I feel is false, for I am never truly alone. I have the blessings of Nature all around me, and my soul is full once again.

The energy that flows through the water and the wind and that is shared in the song of the bird and the leaves is the same energy that flows over, under, around and through each of us, making us all part of the great contiuum that is the life on this great blue ball we call Earth - that we call home.

Namaste.

MaXIMIze - Hope vs. Faith

As I was reading the May 21st entry in 365 Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes, it struck me that while hope and faith may be related, they are not the same thing.

When you have hope, you are waiting for something to happen - being passive instead of being active. You sit at the crossroads and wait for direction. With hope, you wish upon the star and wait for fate to happen. Most often, because no action was taken to ensure success, what you hoped for does not come to pass. And then you wonder why, never learning the lessons in order to grow and ensure success in the future.

When you have faith, you may rest at the side of the crossroads for a while to recover before choosing a path and walking firmly upon it. With faith, you have a goal in mind, and put in motion the actions required to gain that goal. Even if that goal is not attained, you will have at least made the effort to do so, and you will have learned what works and what doesn't to better ensure success for future endeavors.

And as the song says, "there are two paths, but in the long run, there is still time to change the road you're on."

So which do you choose - hope or faith? Passive or active?

It is one thing to be walking the labyrinth and finding your way out of the maze. It is another simply to be walking in circles.This is what happens when one continues to follow the same path and expecting different results.

MaXIMIze by Shepherding Your Being

I ran across this quote on Twitter today (@philo_quotes):

The human being is not the lord of beings but the shepherd of Being. – Martin Heidegger

With all that is going on – thinking I’m moving forward in life only to fall backward again and feeling like I’m stuck in the round about even though I know healing and moving on is truly an iterative process – this quote struck a chord deep inside of me.

How can I be a better shepherd of my part of Being?

Another item I read today – Joey Garcia’s advice column “AskJoey” in the Sacramento News and Review, 3 May 2012 issue – also struck a chord in me. In her column, Joey notes, “Every relationship is a invitation into spiritual evolution.”  She goes on to advise the questioner to dive into the waves of loss or abandonment that may move into her life, for beneath the waves is “…clarity about the amazing person you are.” She further advises the questioner to “…ride the [waves] and practice deeper self-love and compasson.”

And to cap that, on the same page in the print edition, the Meditation of the week is:

Everything that needs to be said, has been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again. – Andre Gide

The question following this quote is:

What voice do you ignore?

I would beg the question, what voice do you pay attention to?

To follow on to that thought, what voice should you pay attention to?

In other words, where should your focus be, really? The fear of drowning in the waves of negative thoughts and emotions? Or diving into those waves, going below the surface to see the beauty that lies beneath?

I’ll end this post with a poem that I wrote on the last day of April – which was National Poetry Month, by the way – that encapsulates the journey, the riding of the waves:

Ride the wave of pain
Until it dumps you on the shore
Pick yourself up, dust yourself off,
Slough through the sand until
The tide pulls you out
To ride the wave once more

You can substitute other negative words for the word “pain” in the first line – fear, grief, anger all come to my mind.

I would also add the idea that at some point, either the waves subside or they toss you so far up on the beach that you can easily scurry away from the sand to the forest and meadows above.

As I stated in an earlier post, a setback is at set-up for a comeback.

Namaste!

MaXIMIze - Resurrect Your Best Self

Wow - when things need to happen, they do. Like realizing you are continuing a habit that has outlived its usefulness. Or realizing that what you thought you ought to be feeling is gone. And for me, both of those things met at the crossroads this week and this intersection has created a reason for me to take a deeper look at myself and my life. Who do I really want to be? What do I really want in my life? Can I deem myself worthy enough to accept not only what others are willing to share with me but also to give to myself what I so freely share with others?

I found this quote appropriate for what I am going through right now:

"If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise you'll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you've already been in." - Anne Lamont

Right now, with these thoughts, what is the truest and biggest risk right now? The possibility I might lose a fear I've grown accustomed to feeling. And we all know, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. We also know that we should bring our fears out into the cold (or hot) light of day and really examine them. What do I have to fear in my life right now, right here? Nothing. Everything is new again, the slate is clean and ready to be filled again.

So with that, I can now do the work needed to rejuvenate my life, restore my sense of self and balance, reawaken dreams that have lain dormant, and resurrect my best life!

Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow! I can sense the petrichor in my life - the healing rain is nigh! What I need and am ready to accept into the plain of my life will begin to fall from the sky like tender drops of rain, and I will drink them up and be full and healed once more!

What a blessing, what a blessing indeed!