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“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
ROSEMARY’S VIDEO: The Steps to Balance
Here on the East Coast in Mayland we can certainly use “steps to balance”! As major storm, Sandy, roars through the area we are all being challenged to remain centered and resourceful. The storm combined with a full moon is really taking a toll on emotions! Breathe, remain alert, present and resourceful! And take the advice of Rosemary’s video here:
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’?
ROSEMARY’S VIDEO: How to Avoid Flip-Out
OK, I’m coming back to this blog that I’ve been neglecting for too long. It’s time to get “regular” again. And with shifting season as we move into the dark times, the quiet times, the inner times, it’s a good time to not only reflect but to offer back what has been churning around inside.
I’ve been motivated in part by partner, Rosemary’s review and renewal of her work. She has shifted from a fairly standard weekly Ezine format, published for well over three years now, into a more active, video format. She publishes the weekly MuseLetter on Fridays (you can subscribe here). And last Friday she published a video and commentary that inspired me to get the word out to a wider audience! So, without further introduction here is Rosemary with an important message. I’ll be back tomorrow and on Monday with commentary.
A Review of “The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic” by Martín Prechtel
I recently finished reading Martín Prechtel’s latest book having preordered it and received it on its publication date. My long anticipation of the work and excitement to devour it in wholly massive gulps was only tempered by its importance and my savoring each bite as I moved through the elegant prose poem word by precious word treating each one as a seed for growth and understanding. This is a giant of a book unlike anything else out there. This work is itself an instruction manual for humanity to find an “unlikely peace” in this post-modern, post-everything chaotic world we are waking up to.
In the interest of full disclosure I first met Martín in 2002 at the Minnesota Men’s Conference. I had at that point read his first book, Secrets of the Talking Jaguar, published in 1998. I have since read everything he has written multiple times and will continue to read his books for the rest of my life. Each is built of many layers of information, knowledge and wisdom. And I am currently a participant in his school, Bolad’s Kitchen, in his third group known as the New Sprouts.
That said, The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic is Martín’s most important work yet. It offers me many additional readings as I absorb each layer of the stories and the wisdom much like an archeologist peeling back the compost heap levels of ancient communities to reveal the underlying meaning and cultures that instruct us in ways to build a new community and a new culture in order to keep the seeds alive! These seeds are our seeds if we can find them. In fact these seeds are us. And they are vital to the very survival of humanity.
At first blush the part of the subtitle: The Parallel Lives of People as Plants, sounded a bit strange to me, and intriguing. Martín explains his meaning here very clearly, again in the extraordinarily multivalent way he has of bringing together complex thoughts and concepts into juxtaposition to deepen the understanding of his meaning. Read the book to discover for yourself how true this exploration of people as plants is!
As I read this book I found myself chuckling at the humor in the stories and anecdotes from his time in Guatemala. More often the tears would come as I went through both grief and inspiration as the words sank slowly into my psyche, almost at once plunging me into the depths of despair and rising to the heights of confidence and optimism as I with Martín consider the human condition and our future.
If you have had the privilege of meeting Martín you will hear him, see him and sense his very presence as you read his words. It is so good to have him close, just here on my shelf! And if you have not yet met him this is a wonderful opportunity to begin your journey toward an “unlikely peace” with yourself and your fellow humans! You will meet Martín on this journey.
The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic ended much too soon for me. The work is totally satisfying and certainly complete meeting all the promises of the delicious title and the enticing Part and Chapter titles. I just wasn’t ready to let Martín go; I wanted to keep his voice in my head. So, I went back to his earlier book: The Toe Bone and the Tooth (now published as Stealing Benefacio’s Roses) to again savor that sumptuous feast and retain his voice echoing through my whole body down to the very core, that seed within!
If you have any sense that the indigenous cultures of humanity have something to teach us, if you are interested at all in how we can resuscitate a culture from the mess we are now in, if you have ever prayed for peace, if you love stories, if you are intrigued by the title, if you find yourself wondering where the human family is going, then read this book. It is important. It is powerful. It will make you cry – and laugh. And you will love yourself just a little bit more for having read it!
Greetings from far away and yet so near!
Hello. I’ve missed you. I have been away for too long but the away time was well worth it. In early June Rosemary and I married some very good friends in DC. They live in Maryland but DC allows gay marriages and Maryland recognizes all legal marriages from other jurisdictions. I think the biggest hurdle in the whole arrangement was getting Rosemary certified to perform weddings in DC. All came off without a hitch; well, that’s not true exactly! The hitched couple is now on their honeymoon cruise!
Then last week I was in Ojo Caliente, NM mudding an adobe hall where I go to school: Bolad’s Kitchen. The great hall, we call her The Lady, was built and mudded three years ago. The entire structure, a free-standing (meaning no posts of any kind) building made entirely of mud stands about 20 feet high and is about a 40×50 foot rectangle. She has to be re-mudded every three years since she is made of all natural ingredients that weather with the passage of time. There were about a dozen of us and we put an entire coat of mud (half agregate, half adobe, a bunch of shredded straw and water) about a half inch thick around the entire hall during the week. It was hard work but a labor of love!
With all this activity I have neglected this blog. Sorry if there has been anyone out there impatiently waiting for my next post. But the marriage of friends and The Lady come first!
I will comment on this week’s Mystic Message from The Divine Feminine tomorrow. It is an excellent message that we all need to hear and consider. It’s titled “Reach for the Joy!” – you may want to read it in advance.
Meanwhile, be good to yourselves and do reach for the joy!
Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards: Maat and Isolt
Greetings on this fine Monday in Colorado: cool temperatures, bright sun and a nice breeze; it would be a sailor’s delight if we had any water! It’s also “remembrance day” (aka Memorial Day) in the US. When I was a kid growing up we also used this day to remember all of our relations who had crossed over, not just the war fallen. I still do that preferring to avoid the whole concept of celebrating war.
Rosemary and I leave for Maryland tomorrow to celebrate something very special, a wedding in DC! Since we’ll be out of town for this week, and then I’ll be in New Mexico the following week mudding the adobe hall (The Lady), the home to Bolad’s Kitchen, posts may become thin. I’ll keep Rosemary’s blog going and will at least attempt to post on Wednesdays here to comment on the Mystic Message. Divination using the Dr. Doreen Virtue Goddess Oracle Card may fall off a bit. So, these cards may be the guidance for the next couple of weeks.
Today the card I drew is Maat. But as I drew her from the deck another slipped out: Isolt. So, I retained her as well and took her emergence as part of the message and the amplifier to Maat. I did not draw a Grandmother Card today.
Maat’s message is Fairness; and she says: “This situation will be handled in a fair and just manner.” She goes on to define fairness and I really like this: “Let me suggest another definition for fairness: It’s when all parties surrender their personal agendas in favor of the greater good for the entirety of the group.” And perhaps on this Memorial Day this is a good thing to remember: for the sake of fairness we are called to surrender our personal agenda for the greater good. This doesn’t sound exactly like the current “American Way.” We have been so caught up in the rights of the individual and, especially, the rights of the corporations, that the “common good” is often completely ignored. Yet Maat would have us surrender these individual rights, these corporate rights for the sake of the group.
It used to be that corporations were granted their status and privileges by states to serve the people, the common good. And that certainly seemed fair. It’s not clear to me that corporations these days have the common interest in mind. In a perfect world the corporations would respond to their boards of directors which would respond to the stockholders who would represent the common good. How far have we come from that perfect world? And as we remember those who waged war to defend our democracy how far have we come from that democracy? Do we still have a government of, by and for the people, or do we have the best government money can buy?
Whew, sorry! Not sure where this is coming from. I guess the word “fairness” on this Memorial Day took me down a rather serious and dark rabbit hole! Let’s look at the meaning of Maat for ourselves and then take a close look at Isolt, who will soften this whole discussion – and calm me down!
“Maat is the Egyptian goddess of integrity, fairness and justice, who holds a scale that measures souls against a feather at the time of death to detect any heaviness from guilt.” writes Dr. Virtue. That is a beautiful and potent image! I would love to be able to claim that my guilt rests as lightly on my soul as a feather!
For me this week I will call on Maat to remind me to be fair; this will mean putting the common good before my own agenda. And this is in excellent congruence with this week’s Mystic Message from The Divine Feminine channeled by Rosemary. Check out the message and post titled Send the Judge on vacation and choose Compassion! I’ll comment more on this post on Wednesday, but note how this plays into “fairness,” into the message of Maat! And this takes me smoothly to Isolt.
The subtitle of the Isolt card is Undying Love, and Dr. Virtue has her say: “The love you have shared is eternal regardless of the situation.” The message of Isolt is one of healing, especially of the heart. And she calls on us to first heal the hurts inside ourselves by going to that inner space and examining the wounds, the places of grief, loss, betrayal, despair. Be patient and gentle in this process. Compassion comes from within and begins as compassion for one’s-self.
Isolt is the Celtic goddess who was caught up in a love triangle between her husband, King Mark of Corwall, and the knight, Sir Tristan. Her message is to balance all of our love relationships. “She reminds us that – regardless of the situation – our love is real, powerful, and undying.” And our love can heal all hurts.
It’s certainly an interesting time for me to draw Isolt as we prepare to travel to Maryland to visit family: daughter, son-in-law, GRANDCHILDREN, sisters, husbands, nephews, nieces; and friends. And we go to marry a beautiful couple, to join them in a bond of love. I will carry the message of Isolt in my heart on this trip and hold Love as my motivating emotion.
Fairness and Love. Maat and Isolt. They seem to go hand-in-hand. (Clearly Isolt slipped out of the deck as I drew Maat because she knew they belonged together!) How can we have fairness without love: the common good requires our love. How can we have love without fairness: compassion calls us to surrender.
Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards: Athena and The Teacher
Time is continuing to play tricks acting like Coyote with me. My Friday, when I like to draw oracle cards for the weekend, dissolved into activities and dinner with friends. Today has been similar, the morning dissolving into procrastination and dabbling with the iPad. Then I finally took some action and drew two cards.
I drew Athena from the Dr. Doreen Virtue Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards. Her tag line is Inner Wisdom, and her short advice is: “You know what to do. Trust your inner wisdom, and take appropriate action without delay.” Right! In other words, stop procrastinating and get on with your day! I get that. She goes on to say that this “inner wisdom” is right there; “to access this wisdom, you must quiet your mind. Surrender all worries and other concerns to the loving and almighty power of the universe. Close your eyes, and note the thoughts and feelings that come streaming into your consciousness. If you like you can ask me to give you a signal that you’ve heard your inner wisdom correctly.” The first meaning of the card that Dr. Virtue offers is “Stop procrastinating.” OK, I get the message!
So, instead of writing this blog I moved on to my to-do list which had garden work at the top . I needed to get the pond back in action which meant getting filter material for the pump and the normal spring cleanup stuff plus some new plants – a lily for Rosemary! It felt good to get on with the day and get that task completed. Our water-fall is flowing and falling again and the new plants seem happy.
And this is one of the many reasons I draw these cards; they get me going because they reinforce what I already know. I knew I was procrastinating; I knew what I needed and wanted to do; and I knew it had to be done today. The card gave me that little extra boost to get on with it! Thanks, Athena, Greek Goddess, daughter of Zeus. Although Athena is a warrior goddess, she does battle with wits instead of weapons.” She is a diplomat; we need more like her in our world!
The Grandmother Card I drew from the Megan Garcia deck is The Teacher of the Clan Elders. She say: “We have learned from the records of those who have walked before us, and we continue to preserve the understanding. We pass to the next generation the teachings of our ancestors. We see in our her-story/his-story the truths we need to continue as Humans. We challenge, communicate, and guide others on a path of discovery of themselves.”
And just as Athena advises, Grandmother says we need to walk the path of self-discovery. It is all inside for us to know, to learn and to reveal. Yes, I procrastinated this morning avoiding the simple tasks put on a list to get done. That was a small thing. I also procrastinate reaching for that inner wisdom; and when I do reach for it I hold it inside, or I write it in my journal, locking it away again. And I avoid the role of “teacher.” A true teacher elicits the inner wisdom of others. It is our combined inner wisdom which will save us, will show us the “truths we need to continue as Humans.”
So, as I conclude this post, I realize I am still procrastinating. I am avoiding my “writing chair” and my meditation cushion. I will devote more time to these “spaces” over this long weekend.
How will you go about seeking and sharing your Inner Wisdom?
Men and The Goddess 