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ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: “How Far is Your Reach?”
Here’s Rosemary’s commentary on her weekly video I posted yesterday:
Entrepreneurs will be thinking of their businesses when they see this question. A Mom might think of the impact her parenting will have on the future of her children. A doctor might be considering the families of patients they have treated. What are your thoughts about your reach?
None of us lives in isolation from others. We are all connected. People often feel disconnected from others and alone, but this is the illusion that our minds create within us. You are never disconnected – you might only believe, mistakenly, that at this moment you are not connected to any others. But this fallacy masquerading as the truth will only cause you to isolate yourself further.
Do you have family members? You are connected. Do you have neighbors? You are connected. Did you ever go to school? You are connected to classmates no matter how long ago you were in the classroom. Do you have a doctor? Dentist? Insurance agent? Friend? Book Group? Favorite restaurant?
Every person with whom you come into contact has a connection to you. The Hawaiians call this an ‘aka cord,’ a silvery thread of energy that is created when you connect with someone. Sometimes these cords are powerful energy connections and sometimes they are weak. Some have positive effects and others are energy drains. They can last a very long time.
In my coaching/counseling work I am often helping clients to cut these cords and reclaim their own energy, their power. But the cords that support the highest good of both parties get energized and enhance the connection.
Even when you are not aware of a connection to a particular person, you are connected to all of humanity. When you took your first breath of life at your birth you became a human being and a part of the human consciousness that lives on Mother Earth. Your actions have consequences. Your thoughts have effects. Your energy emanates outward, whether you pay attention to that or not.
Think about someone you love and your heart opens up and the energy can reach out 50 feet from you. I recently demonstrated this at a talk I gave about our energy bodies. My subject was my husband, Richard [a good sport!] and I asked him to think about a problem he was working on. Then I measured his energy field with dowsing rods. It was very close to him. This is the brain energy field. Then I asked him to open his heart and send out Love. The building was too small for me to back up enough to reach the end of his energy field, the energy emanating from his heart center.
Now, think about how, if you open up your heart before you walk into a room, you are sending out Love energy for 50 feet ahead of you. You can connect with everyone in a room this way, with the wonderful, high-vibration energy of Love.
If you interact with people from a place of Love, especially when you start with Love for yourself, your connections will be strong and energetically beneficial. When you spend any time with thoughts that are not at this vibration, you are hurting yourself more than anyone else or any other situation. This is why the power of positive thoughts is to benefit YOU!
You have connected with people from all walks of life, from many different locations, all ages, beliefs, nationalities. And those cords that connect you reach beyond space and time. Keep only the ones that are for your highest good. Cut those that no longer serve you. But know that there are others around the globe who are radiating Love and you are connected to them.
This might sound tricky and I’m happy to help you make sure your own energy field is clear. Just remember that you are not alone on the Planet Earth. Monitor your thoughts and the energy radiating from you. Make yourself a beacon of Light and Love in the world. And know that you are also the recipient of Light and Love from many who wish that for you!
I know I wish you to connect with Light and Love!
PS: Have you ever attended an event with Rosemary? Have you ever visited a medium? Here’s your chance! The last Conversation with The Other Side of 2012 is this week, Friday, December 7, at 7:00 PM Eastern. It’s a Video Conference call, no need for you to travel! Just use your internet connection or even a phone!
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: “Gratitude and Loving Yourselff”
Here’s Rosemary’s commentary on her weekly video I posted yesterday:
In this season of Thanksgiving and holidays we focus on being grateful for the blessings in our lives and for the people who are sharing our journeys with us. But have you taken the time to move into gratitude for yourself?
What traits do you have that you can feel grateful for? What aspects of yourself do you need to learn to love? Gratitude for yourself in all your parts is the first step toward loving yourself.
Most of us find it very easy to be grateful for the friends we have in our lives. Some of us can be grateful for our families, or at least some family members. But what about YOU? We are so good at analyzing ourselves and finding fault when we would give someone else a lot more leeway. Have you ever felt self-critical? Do you catalogue your mistakes or the things you wish were different and focus your energy on these things? Do you find it easier to focus on what you don’t like about yourself rather than those aspects that you do like?
If you answered ‘yes’ you’re not alone. But consider that every single aspect of you is important to the WHO YOU ARE at this time in your life. Every bit of you is lovable, whether you believe that at the moment or not. WE asked you to come to Earth to be a part of the process of the unfolding of the Plan of the Universe and you agreed to join us. Thank you.
So if you are perfect right now, in this present moment, and your role is to learn lessons and to help everyone around you to learn their lessons, then every thing that you have done and every aspect of who you are contributes to all of the lessons being learned. Just as you are grateful for those around you, be grateful to yourself for being just what you agreed to be.
Everything that you see as a fault in yourself has some purpose, even if you don’t understand it at the moment. If you wish to change something about yourself, then change it. But do so from an energy of gratitude for the lessons that you have learned and from the space of not needing to be that way in the future. This is a much higher energy than to be in disgust or frustration with yourself!
Each of us is on a path of personal growth if we are living a conscious life. We are constantly moving forward by assessing our lives, changing that which we wish to change, lifting our awareness to higher perspectives and moving on to the next level of being. We are learning lessons all the time. Whatever we see in ourselves is serving a purpose or has served a purpose on our journey. Being in gratitude for ourselves is the starting place for loving ourselves.
Accept yourself and every moment of your life up until this point. Every backward glance over your timeline can carry with it an appreciation for all that you have learned. Some lessons came clearly and easily and others were difficult or tedious to learn. You might still be in the midst of some tough lessons or you might be in a more peaceful moment in your life. And every single lesson has brought you a step further on the path of personal growth. Every aspect of your person has been a loving contributor to every lesson. Be grateful. And love every aspect of yourself.
Loving yourself is not just an emotional thing. It is an important step along your personal journey. I declare today ‘Love Your Wonderful Self Day’! I love you just as you are. Now take that to the mirror and say, ‘I love you!’ to the reflection you see there. And express your gratitude for at least 1 part of you. Smile. Congratulations!
PS: Did you know you can get these video messages and my commentary directly by email every Friday? When you subscribe I also include a GIFT as a thank you for joining my list: a professionally recorded 7-minute audio recording to help you relax and de-stress. Subscribe Here
“Writing” a Commentary from Richard
Have you reviewed the video and commentary by Rosemary from her FREE weekly MuseLetter? I posted them over the past couple of days; if you want to receive them directly you can subscribe here. And today here are my thoughts on the support Rosemary offers for living a conscious life and her theme of the week, Writing:
As I’ve written here before one of my practices to seek inner guidance is from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. In her book she recommends several practices; the key one I’ve adopted is to write 3 pages of “stuff” long-hand, every morning; these are called “morning pages.” I’ve actually been following this practice for many years; I have stacks of notebooks filled with my scrawl! And, no, I don’t get to this practice every single day. And there are stretches of time when I lapse and don’t write for days, even weeks. But I do very much benefit from the practice when I am disciplined in doing it.
I don’t always get to my practice first thing in the morning either; today it was 3:00 pm! But I do know that the day goes much better after I write so I do most days get to my writing position after yoga, qigong and tea in the AM.
I make a ritual of this practice and embed it in other rituals. Rituals are like good habits; they are both comforting and support the discipline. I light a candle on my alter (see my post last week) and I light incense to clear me, the alter, the space and the writing (including my decks of cards for divination). Then I sit cross-legged with a pillow to support the notebook. I also use a nice fountain pen; this is obviously not a requirement but I like fine tools!
I sit and write the three pages straight through. The content is not always noteworthy; in fact it rarely is! This is not the point; Cameron’s point in doing this practice is to clear the mind, clear the clutter from sleep, dreams, any junky thoughts, unprocessed emotions, mental cobwebs that might otherwise get in the way of clearer, more creative writing. Most often my pages begin with a dump of this kind of mind-trash. But I’m finding with the years of practice this often only takes a page or even some days just a few lines. Then I can get down to more meaningful inquiry.
So, I do use these pages to go inside, to meditate through the use of words, to let my mind go and my writing to follow the thoughts as they come. While Rosemary is a clairaudient and a clairvoyant my information comes through word flow; I don’t hear the words or see them, they just seem to form almost of themselves when I am in that clear space of receiving. I wish I could say this happens for me every day! But it does happen often enough to be extremely rewarding.
After I write out my three pages I then draw two cards from two decks of cards, as I’ve written here before. I write a half-page of notes about each card, what I think it means for me and the energies of the day. This fills my fourth page of writing for the day and these paragraphs are always meaningful (I’ve cleared the clutter with the pages). I use a separate, slightly nicer journal to record these divinations; and I use a better pen (more of the ritual).
And some days I am motivated, inspired to write a poem – a third writing practice I use. And on Mondays I’ve begun sharing some of my poems here on the blog.
I’d love to hear from you about your writing practices. What works for you? Have you tried “morning pages”? Please comment!
Meanwhile, “write-on.”
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: Write Your Way to Success
Here’s Rosemary’s commentary on her weekly video I posted yesterday. She continues her exploration of tools for accessing our inner guidance, this time focusing in on writing as one such tool.
Rosemary writes:
This is the time to decide what ‘success’ means for you. For most people on the spiritual path, success is not measured by the numbers in the bank account. What is ‘success’ for you?
We’re not talking here about writing a best-selling book that makes you lots of money, although it is fun to be a ‘Best Selling Author,’ but about the kind of writing that comes from your heart. Journaling, meditative writing, channeled writing, letter writing, poetry composing, music composing, drawing, notetaking. So many ways to write!
Let’s talk about letter writing. When is the last time you wrote a letter? I’m not talking about typing an email, but taking pen in hand and actually allowing the words to flow from your mind and heart onto the paper through the pen. When is the last time you received a handwritten letter or note? It feels good to write a personal note on a birthday card or sympathy card. And when did you last send a handwritten thank you note?
When you tune in to another person as you focus on them while you write you are making an important energetic connection through the space-time continuum. There really is no separation in space and time so taking the time to connect through letter writing is a special energetic that can support both parties.
And what about problem solving when there is an issue or conflict between parties? These are the times when you want to be deliberate and take the time to re-read what you have written before you send the letter. You also want to copy your letter so you have a record of what you wrote. Most importantly, though, you want to take the time to make sure you are being congruent with your values before you send a letter in the heat of the moment.
When you write, connect first with your inner guidance to get into harmony within yourself. Then connect to the intended recipient of the letter, energetically inviting the connection for the highest good of all. Do all of this before you put pen to paper.
And sometimes ‘forgiveness’ comes into the picture. Do you need to forgive yourself or someone else before you write that letter? Remember that forgiveness is not about excusing behavior that is hurtful. Rather, forgiveness is saying, ‘Although I have felt hurt, I refuse to allow this energy to stay in my energy field or physical body. I release all energy associated with this and hold myself in gratitude for the lessons I have learned.’ Sometimes it can help in this process to write a letter and then burn it as you release the hurt and choose to stand in your own power. Forgive yourself, too, if you are focusing on having missed the mark in something. Give up the energy of feeling bad and decide that you will hold gratitude for lessons learned.
Sometimes journaling can be a great tool for self-knowledge that can support your success. Try journaling at different times of day to decide when you best connect with your inner being.
Writing is a good way to connect to your inner guidance, too. Your guides are always ready to speak to you when you quiet your mind-chatter and listen. If you hold a pen in hand and invite them to write to you, you can find that the pen captures the thoughts and the words write themselves.
Ask questions and write the answers. Ask about relationships, finances, business, life. The answers are inside. The pen brings them out and places them squarely in your conscious awareness.
Try it! And while you are at it, try writing a poem or drawing a picture or making up a story. Let your creativity flow through a pen or pencil or marker and watch how the clues to your success emerge.
PS: If you are enjoying these written messages you may be interested in my Monday calls when I channel The Divinine Feminine. These are FREE calls for your support and guidance through these fascinating times approaching the Winter Solstice of 2012. The calls are scheduled at 8:30 PM Eastern Time every Monday. Sign up here for the call details
“Tap into Your Inner Guidance” A Commentary from Richard
Have you reviewed the video and commentary by Rosemary from her FREE weekly MuseLetter? I posted them over the past couple of days; if you want to receive them directly you can subscribe here. And today here are my thoughts on the support Rosemary offers for living a conscious life:
Rosemary’s Video and “Exploration” this week offer an excellent way to gain insight into our life, the direction our life is taking and even a method of acquiring that guidance, like our GPS systems acquire the satellites to help us navigate along the highways. And she makes it sound so easy, doesn’t she!
Well, for men this isn’t always the easiest thing to do. In Taoist understanding men have a lot of yang energy, active energy to go out and get things done (even if we are unsure of what it is we are to do at times!). Women have a lot of yin, passive energy to go inside, go quite and seek answers to “what is to be done” – and then to be receptive to what comes in the way of guidance. Taoists teach balance and seek balance between yin and yang energies – receiving and acting. And this is the core of Rosemary’s teaching this week.
It’s important to seek this guidance for a number of reasons; the most prominent is to be sure we are on the route of our “Soul Purpose” our raison d’être. Rosemary throws this out as a given…that we know what our Soul Purpose is, and that we seek the inner guidance to assure ourselves we are on the correct path. But sometimes what we have to seek is that Purpose itself!
Do you know your Soul Purpose? Do you know the answer to your “Big Why?”
Perhaps the answer to this question is the first one to seek inside.
In her commentary Rosemary offers a way to go inside and to get the answers to the big questions. Breathe, tune-in, stay quiet and listen. Listen for any answers, signs, symbols, that come up. Assess these. Separate out the ones that seem judgmental, are coming from ego rather than some deeper place. Note the yin approach to this inner inquiry. It often works quite well for men and women alike.
There are also yang approaches to gaining the guidance our soul urges on us. Rosemary has offered to share additional tools in future videos and commentaries. I look forward to these! Meanwhile I’ll share an approach that has worked well for me.
A number of years ago I read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I can say that a few books have changed my life; this is one. I follow a practice recommended by Cameron to write out three long-hand pages of text every day, preferably first thing every morning. Cameron calls these “morning pages.” This practice works for me. And it is a way for me to “tap into my inner guidance.” Note the yang, active approach to this method. The guidance comes as I empty my mind and simply write what comes. In a way it is like “following the breath” in meditation practice; I follow my pen…
There are many ways to seek inner guidance. Active, passive, with words, symbols, studying our dreams, following our breath. The key is to first quiet the mind, the ego, to do the listening, active or passive; then to trust the guidance and follow it. And this is why we call it “practice.” It’s a life-long pursuit!
PS: In addition to the many tools to tap into your inner guidance there are ways to determine and expand on your Soul Purpose. Rosemary offers an incredible and comprehensive approach to this through Scientific Hand Analysis. If you are unsure of your Big Why? check out the details on Rosemary’s Website
Men and Emotional Health
The recent videos by Rosemary and our commentaries have been about health and balance. Balance is achieved by bringing all four of our bodies, Spiritual, Mental, Emotional and Physical into both a healthy state and into balance across them.
Examining Emotional Health and Balance I have presented how Taoist Chinese sages work with emotions by transforming them into virtues. I have previously addressed Anger and its counterpart virtue, Creativity (Resourcefulness). And I have looked at Anxiety and how it might be transformed into Connection and Joy. Today I address two additional emotions: Fear and Worry.
Working with Fear is to transform it to Wisdom. Fear is probably the most primitive, instinctual emotion, therefore most deeply seated. It is an emotion of the ego and the ego’s job is survival. Fear triggers the fight or flight response, the reptilian brain component designed to keep us alive. Through inner work it is important to transform Fear into Wisdom and Empowerment. We move from the primitive, instinctual response to an Enlightened response. Frank Herbert, author of the Dune science fiction series, wrote that “fear is the mind-killer.” Exactly! When faced with survival it is easy for the mind to shut down and move into automatic response mode.
The trick here is to catch our reaction to an event or an object which triggers fear, to pause and breathe into the fear, and then to examine if this thing or occurrence is truly something to fear. These days we rarely encounter saber-toothed tigers to which the flight/fear response is appropriate!
There is a Korean Koan practice that helps me in these potentially fearsome situations. The practice is very simple: pause and ask “What is this?” Go inside to find an answer. And then ask the question again, this time of the first answer that comes to mind. Continue the practice until the questioning comes to a satisfying conclusion. This is a way to transform Fear to Wisdom.
Worry is often a wasted expenditure of emotional energy. I prefer to transform it to Centeredness. Next to Anger, Worry may be the next biggest emotion Western Men have to deal with. While Anxiety is about our place in society, Worry is more about our place in the Cosmos. Who are we; why are we here; what is life all about anyway; and is there any purpose to any of this, to my life? And these questions extend to health, security, and general lack of well-being. To counter Worry it is good to go into our stories for insight into this emotion. How has Worry affected us, influenced our decisions, guided our choices? How does Worry feel on the inside? What color does it have?
Worry transforms to Centeredness and Ecology. When we sink into our own Inner Space, our Wisdom, we become grounded and wholly present. We connect here with the All, the Universe. And from this deep place of wisdom we begin to understand our connectedness to everything and everyone; this is different from the transformation of Anxiety to Connection which is more about our human connections. This is broader and deeper. And the result is a deep appreciation of everything, all of creation, including ourselves! Within this context there is no room for Worry. We are part of something so much bigger. And we begin to see where we fit in the overall Ecology of the Cosmos. We see ourselves at the microcosmic level fitting neatly into the overall picture of the Macrocosm. There is great peace here and the beginning of balance.
Wisdom and Centeredness. These seem so much more appropriate responses than Fear and Worry! Try them on. Pause and ask: “What is this?” Breathe and move inside; find your Center. Everything in the Universe radiates outward from that Center. You are a key piece in that Universe!
PS: for my next post I will examine one more emotion that men need to pay particular attention to: Grief. Stay tuned!
“How’s Your Health?” A Commentary from Richard
Have you reviewed the video and commentary by Rosemary from her FREE weekly MuseLetter? I posted them over the past couple of days; and if you want to receive them directly you can subscribe here. And today here are my thoughts on the question Rosemary asks:
In her Video and Commentary this week Rosemary asks a broad question about health. On the surface this may seem to be a simple, straightforward question. For the most part when we think of our health we immediately scan our physical bodies for anything that may be signaling a pain or illness. But probing the question of our health is a much deeper subject than that first reaction!
We have four bodies, at least! And Rosemary addresses each of them in her commentary posted yesterday. For optimum health we need to “treat” each of these bodies and balance them. For men this can be a real challenge!
Last week I wrote of the emotional body and one emotion I am particularly familiar with, Anger! In Taoist philosophy the ancient Chinese identified five primary emotions and their correlating virtues. For example Creativity is the virtue corresponding to Anger. The other four emotions are Anxiety, Worry, Fear and Grief. Treating these emotions and moving them, transforming them to their virtues is the work we must undertake at the emotional level to achieve a healthy emotional body that in turn supports the physical body’s health.
Today let’s look at Anxiety, a serious emotion affecting so many of us in Western Society. Here in the US we are nearing the end of a polarizing National election. And in the Northeast US we are cleaning up and recovering from a devastating storm, Hurricane Sandy. This election cycle has seemed to go on forever! And with the long prediction of Sandy’s potential as an historic storm, it seemed larger than any storm could live up to; yet for many, it did! Just holding the energy of these two intertwined events is sufficient emotional strain to give the healthiest person a severe case of Anxiety!
What do we do?
Anxiety is often associated with our place in society, our standing within our family, group, tribe, nation, world. It is about who we are; it is deeply connected to self-esteem issues. Using the Tao as guidance, the emotion of Anxiety is associated with the heart and small intestine; it is the Fire Element emotion. The virtues that correspond to Anxiety are Connection and Joy, clearly virtues of the Heart. Moving Anxiety to Joy is a natural transformation as we work on our place within the human family, recognize the importance of that place, our being in that place and the Connection we have with others from that place. And once we have that Connection, deep Joy is there for us. The process here is remembering our own connections. “It’s a Wonderful Life” that famous Christmas Capra movie, is an excellent reminder of just how connected we are in this life and how vital to the overall scheme we are.
The process is reasonably simple: breathe into your Heart Center. Visualize a ruby red light streaming in to your chest to cauterize the wounds inflicted by Anxiety and transform those wounds to Connection and Joy. We are humans, a connected species. We live in groups and survive through cooperation and connectedness. Anxiety is created through our sense of
disconnectedness. Breathing the color Red in to our Heart Center restores this sense of togetherness in all of Life’s experiences.
My 15-year-old granddaughter just came down to visit and to apologize for her over-reaction to an incident around the dinner table this evening. I accepted and in turn apologized for my own over-reaction! It reminds me of our connection; our heart-connection. Family, friends and neighbors, communities, cities, states, countries…we are all connected. We can transform our Anxieties through remembering all of our Essential Connections and taking great Joy in those Connections!
PS: Tomorrow, November 2, just in time for All Souls Day, the Day of the Dead, you are invited to a Conversation with The Other Side! Rosemary brings in the Energies, Loved Ones who have crossed over, Angels, Spirit Guides, all manner of extra-dimensional beings during this time when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest! Join me! Learn more here!
ROSEMARY’S COMMENTARY: How’s Your Health?
Balance and Health; they really do go together! In the video posted yesterday, Rosemary speaks of balancing the four bodies: Spiritual, Mental, Emotional and Physical. And this is the way to health as well! So often we think of health as a well body, our physical body. The physical level may be where a symptom shows up most prominently, but how often does a dis-ease begin at another level? Here’s Rosemary on Health. I’ll be back tomorrow (Thursday) with my own commentary on Rosemary’s MuseLetter (subscribe).
I’m writing this as I sit in a doctor’s office while my daughter sees a surgeon about having her gall bladder removed. It’s sobering to see your loved one in pain.
So I’m thinking about the pain that so many people have, every day, because their health isn’t what they would like it to be. Not just physical health, but also emotional health, mental health, spiritual health. It’s so important to be healthy on all levels that just focusing on the physical doesn’t lead us to the life of our dreams.
What’s the last thing you did for your emotional health? Are you looking at your life for keys to the blocks that you are experiencing? Have you mined the past on your personal timeline to learn the lessons of your experiences? Are you developing new tools for your responses so your knee-jerk reaction isn’t where you get stuck when something happens in your life?
How about your mental health? Have you examined the tapes that play in your head for their source and to decide whether to keep them playing or to change them? Do you know what negative thoughts are popping up and keeping you from growing into the person you were meant to be? Are you holding yourself back from your greatness because you think you can’t be great?
And your spiritual health is most important because the beliefs you hold affect all the other levels of your being. Your beliefs affect your thoughts which generate your emotions and, finally, present as physical health problems if you haven’t cleared them. Oftentimes, beliefs come from our childhood or our family tree or our environment [society, teachers, churches, etc.]. They have not been generated consciously but are sourced in the unconscious mind.
What do you believe about yourself? Might there be a belief that ‘Everyone in our family gets arthritis by the time they are 50’? How about ‘No one from this neighborhood gets to go to college’? These unconscious beliefs operate to restrict us whether we are aware of them or not. Have you examined what you believe and made a conscious choice about holding onto that belief or releasing it?
At the physical level, you must choose to live in balance with all of your other levels. Are you eating in a way that matches your beliefs about food and its sources? Are you making physical choices based on unconscious emotions or thoughts that conflict with what is best for you? Do you ask yourself questions about your life and its balance when something presents as out of balance?
Many people can look at stress in their life and see the imbalance that is caused there. Too many believe that they can’t do anything about stress. But what they are really saying is that they don’t know what to do about the stress that they can’t change.
Things happen. We react. Then we choose our response to the event. That’s what life is.
And if we can’t change the things that happen, then we have to look at our reactions and our responses. This is the first place to build up our took kit so that we can live a conscious life and choose wisely our responses to events. This FOLLOWS doing all the other work to bring our beliefs, thoughts, emotions into balance.
When I spend a Muse Day with a client, where we have a whole day together to clear blocks and make plans, we often spend most of the day on the clearing blocks part of the agenda, checking in on the spiritual, mental and emotional levels. Creating a plan for the actions to take in the physical plan is often the easiest and quickest part of the day because we’ve brought every thing else into balance before we start the planning.
Trying to plan without the balance brings frustration and much harder work. Trying to deal with dis-ease without finding the source of the imbalance makes the task much more difficult, if not impossible.
Our daughter will be fine. She’s been working through many levels of what is happening. I’m sorry she’s going through the proverbial ‘2 by 4 to the head’ experience but haven’t we all had some of those? We learn!
And I hope that you, too, will examine the levels of your being for where imbalances live. Clearing those can really help you move the pain out of your life!
PS: Halloween, All Saints Day, Day of the Dead…they are here! And to take advantage of this time, when the veil between this world and the next is the thinnest, Rosemary hosts a Conversation with The Other Side! Friday Evening, November 2, 2012. You are invited! Deails Here
“Are You Flipping Out Over Something?” A Commentary by Richard
As I indicated last week when I posted Rosemary’s video from her MuseLetter (subscribe here) I am posting my thoughts on that video on my blog. Without further introduction, my thoughts:
I was particularly struck by the topic this week: Flip-Out. In fact I too often find myself flipping-out and almost always over very small things. Computers suddenly running slow, or even worse, crashing for unknown reasons; a lost item, like keys; a negative checking account balance when there should be plenty of cash available; a credit card that inexplicably fails to work (and this is worst if it’s a client’s charge that won’t go through!); the dog’s 2:00 am need…the list can be nearly endless! Are these life and death issues; of course not. But in our hustle-bustle lives they do add fuel to the fire of an already hot burn life-style that keeps pace with a 21st Century clock!
Is it a particularly male thing to flip-out over small things? Rosemary goes through life at a pretty calm clip; her life is just as complicated as mine. She writes and speaks this week about a “Toolbox of Resources.” Well, I’m a pretty resourceful guy; I’m on the journey with her. And yet my fuse is so much shorter. But I’m ready to learn these lessons; the 2×4 upside the head is beginning to hurt, get through to me!
I am examining my tools and resources. In the last few months I have rediscovered the Tao, the ancient Chinese philosophy known as The Way. I have read fairly extensively about Taoism, studied it as part of my seminary program, practiced off and on through authors such as Mantak Chia, studied and memorized sections of Lao-Tzu’s Taoteching, consulted the I Ching, and practiced Tai Chi. And recently I found an excellent Qigong instructor who has brought me back to this Way. And there are some significant tools and resources to be found here.
Managing my “flip-out moments” is certainly a skill I am working on. An emotion I frequently reach for in these moments is “anger” in its various forms. I can too easily flash to a white heat over some relatively small irritation. I cool quickly and then realize the exaggerated reaction as an unproductive response to the situation. And I ask myself, “why the unbalanced reaction?” And, “why the wasted energy?”
The Chinese Masters identify anger as one of the obstacles to finding The Way. In addition to wanting to reduce my expenditure of energy on a wasted emotion, I want to overcome this obstacle. And, oh by the way, mastering anger will go a long way toward improving my environment!
In the Taoist traditions negative emotions, like Anger, can be transmuted into their corresponding virtues; in the case of Anger the work is to transmute it to Creativity or Resourcefulness. Wow! What if my wasted anger energy can be channeled into creative energy? What a concept!
This is not as easy as it sounds, however. But in my mind it is clearly worth the effort; I choose creativity over anger, calm over flip-out, any day! Rosemary mentions meditation as an approach to “hit the pause button” in the midst of over-reaction (or better yet before the reaction even occurs!). Qigong is often referred to as “Meditation in Motion” and I am finding this practice is a way to pull my energy and my resources, my consciousness, into the present moment when I can be fully aware of my environment, my reaction at any given moment to the environment and to then respond appropriately. When I am very, very present I can actually catch myself on the verge of anger and quickly seek a creative response, diverting the anger into resourcefulness! I have a long way to go to catch myself every time, or even often! But it’s good work for the journey!
Guys, Rosemary has many ways to channel the flip-out mode into presence of mind. Her toolbox is filled with fun things and even some neat toys! Sometimes it may seem easier just to go with the reactive emotion of the moment; but too often the consequences of the easy route bite painfully.
Flip-out reaction or creative response? The choice is yours if you are willing to do the work!
PS: Beginning today, Monday, October 29, Rosemary is offering you a new way to add to your toolbox! She is holding a FREE half-hour call of wisdom and guidance for Conscious Living; to support you Living Your Richest Life! As Einstein said: No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. Lift your consciousness and lift yourself!
Click Here for the call-in details; it’s FREE!
ROSEMARY’S COMMENTARY: Are You Flipping Out Over Something?
As I mentioned yesterday when I posted Rosemary’s video here, I am today posting her commentary on that insightful post. And on Monday I’ll post my commentary specifically targeted to my readers here! Stay tuned…
And here’s Rosemary:
It seems today as if there is always something to ‘Flip Out’ over! What has you feeling this way today?
I sometimes hear clients longing for simpler lives or less stress or at least less drama in their lives, but they are really wishing for something to change about their circumstances without a thought to how they can change themselves.
Flipping Out happens when we don’t have enough resources in our tool box to deal with what is happening in our environment. If you can reach into your Resource Tool Box and pull out just what you need to do in this circumstance, then you just do that and there’s no need to get too excited. But how often are you perfectly prepared for exactly what is going on?
Let me say here that I am not talking about going into denial and pretending that nothing big is happening! Sticking your fingers in your ear and singing, ‘La, la, la, la!’ won’t manage the stress of the circumstances, although, I admit, sometimes that seems like an attractive behavior choice. Denial invites the Universe to keep bringing the lesson to us, over and over again, with perhaps more severity each time until we learn what we are to learn.
What tools have you been developing to prepare you for whatever might come your way? Are you on a path of constant personal growth, seeking new skills, finding new opportunities to explore ideas? Are you committed to your own personal, spiritual growth as a journey of exploration? How you answer these questions will determine how well you can handle what happens around you.
Just as an athlete doesn’t wake up one morning and decide to win a gold medal in discus throwing without training for that exact sport, so, too, must you train for the circumstances that haven’t yet come into your life.
When the doctor says, ‘There’s something of concern going on here,’ or you get the phone call that, ‘There’s been an accident,’ how will you respond?
I pray that you never hear those words but it could be something else that throws you for a loop and the resources must already be available to you or you will find it more difficult to cope.
So what are you doing today, this week, this year to expand the tools in your Resource Tool Box? Are you taking a class? Working with a coach/counselor? Reading self-help books? In a group with speakers who teach you tools? Attending seminars and conferences with content-rich programs for personal growth?
This is not an activity that can be postponed indefinitely! Now is the time to prevent Flip Out!
Learning meditation can be a great start. Breathe, hit the pause button, take a moment to collect yourself. Allow thoughts to arise but to keep flowing onward, without attaching to the thoughts. Give yourself permission to focus on your breath and to let go of thoughts and emotions that come up for you. Give yourself permission to simply BE.
Sign up for a class on a psychological or spiritual topic that intrigues you. Read a book that someone has recommended to you. Find a group of explorers that you can join to study new ideas. Work with a coach who can help you to develop the tools that are best for you.
Fill up the Resource Tool Box and you’ll be ready if and when something happens. Won’t it be nice to have the confidence of knowing that, even if you never need to use the tools, you won’t have to resort to ‘Flipping Out’?
Men and The Goddess 