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Gratitude and Happiness
We just finished one holiday here in the US; some call it “Turkey Day” – affectionately because turkey is the traditional main course for the meal. And we held up our part of the tradition with turkey and all the trimmings at our niece and nephew’s home. It was good to be with the family and I am very grateful to be part of this loving and close extended “Robertson Clan.”
There is a lot of gratitude going around now. I wrote about two of the people I am most grateful for yesterday. My goal is to be grateful and demonstrate that gratefulness every day of the year. As we move deeper into the holidays, already in the spirit of Hanukkah, moving toward Solstice and then Christmas, the 12 Days, a New Year and then Epiphany, I grow ever more excited, contemplative, boisterous, quiet, bustling, restful, high and low. I like this roller coaster ride for the emotions. If I really want to get myself pumped up one of our traditional holiday movies will do it every time.
It is easy for some to remain in gratitude through the holidays. Many give and receive gifts. Our family drew names today for our “secret Santa” gift exchange. We keep it simple just giving one gift to a member of the family and receiving one from our surprise Santa on Christmas Eve. I am grateful we keep the tradition of gift giving and keep it simple; it eases the stress of finding just the right gift for a long list of family and friends.
What are your traditions? Are you happy with them? If they bring stress into your life it might be time to evaluate those traditions and make some adjustments. The rule here is happiness and self-care. Traditions don’t have to be hard and fast rules.
I am on a journey of happiness. I have frequently written here on this blog about transformation. We are on a long road of transformation and it doesn’t necessarily look much like I expected. But I know we are on it for all the bumps and curves coming at us at high speed. Have you noticed?
Is your journey smooth and straight? Are you cruising at a moderate pace, comfortable with the ebb and flow of your life? Be grateful; be happy!
I am adopting the attitude that happiness can smooth out the bumps and open up the tight curves we hurtle toward; and it can even ease the speed. Happiness is a choice. Happiness is a practice. Happiness is the journey. Happiness is the transformation!
As we enter the sometimes hectic, sometimes stressful holidays I am taking Rosemary’s advice: Let’s make this year the year of truly ‘Happy Holidays’ no matter what your personal circumstances might be!
I am choosing this Journey of Happiness! Join me?
Stay Happy Through the Holidays – Richard’s Commentary
Today, the holiday festivities all begin with the day we set aside here in the US to give thanks. I’ve been giving thanks, writing notes of gratitude in my “morning pages” this week. I began my thank you notes, giving deep gratitude for my incredible partner, wife and love of my life, Rosemary. And if you have been following our blogs and reading our posts you know what a talented and resourceful woman she is. Her advice for conscious living and spiritual evolution are profound and creative. And her advice for the holidays is no different! She suggests:
The first step to staying happy through the holidays is to do a realistic and honest assessment of this time of year for yourself.
This may sound superficial but do you move into this time of year with a perspective of staying happy? We have all heard the stories of people who are alone, who dread the holidays because they don’t get along with family, who feel bad because they can’t afford to give elaborate or expensive gifts, who party and drink their way through the season. Perspective is an all-important first step to be happy in every moment.
Next Rosemary suggests:
Consider a new way of operating through the holidays this year.
Everyone around you is struggling with their own life lessons. Somehow the holidays come with Hallmark Cards and Norman Rockwell expectations that nobody really experiences. If you put self-care at the top of your agenda, IT IS NOT SELFISH!!!! Let me repeat that – Self-Care is not being self-ish!!!
Self-Care – in other words, give yourself the gift of looking out for you! Attend to your health, prepare wholesome meals for your celebrations, if you drink alcohol moderate your intake, stay warm and especially keep your neck and throat protected and warm, keep moving with yoga or qigong or another body practice, take time to meditate and if you don’t meditate this season is a great time to start, celebrate the special holidays in your tradition – make them Holy, honor everyone you meet as learning their lessons just as you are – they are you!
Compassion begins with yourself. Taking care of you is taking care of everyone. Recall Rosemary’s question in her inspirational video posted Tuesday: “can compassion for yourself equal compassion for them?” She goes on to suggest:
Look at your calendar for the rest of 2013 and decide what you will do for yourself. Rest. Relax. Pamper yourself. Watch movies that make you smile. Hang out with friends or go on a silent retreat.
As we approach the Winter Solstice, one of those special holidays we celebrate, it is a good time to go inside, to do the inner work of deep winter. The Ancients took this time to retreat, to look inward for the coming renewal. Deep inner work is another way to take care of yourself on the personal level and all others on the global level. This is true compassion!
Coming back to Thanksgiving I took Rosemary’s advice and turned inward to give thanks for me. I am grateful for my soul path, my spiritual journey back to myself, I am grateful for the health and strength to make this journey, I am grateful to myself for making the commitment, I honor myself for my discipline and I am grateful for all of the spiritual teachers and guides that hold me in their love and compassion.
Be grateful for yourself! I am grateful for you because I know you are supporting me on my journey.
Have wonderful, blessed and happy holidays!
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: Stay Happy Through the Holidays!
It’s that time of year when the stores seem to reach out to grab you to come inside and spend your money. The meals and parties get you focused on food and drink. You have to make sure you can get to all the events, have the right clothes, the right gifts, the travel arrangements. And for many it is a time of overwhelm.
For others, though, it is a very lonely time. You might be worried about finances and wishing you had more money with which to buy gifts. You might not have any family to visit or they are too far away. You might be looking at the holidays with no plans or parties or meals to attend.
And for a few you might have family gatherings in which to participate that you are not really anticipating with pleasure.
Even those who love the holiday season can have expectations that are not met and, thus, experience disappointment.
Let’s make this year the year of truly ‘Happy Holidays’ no matter what your personal circumstances might be!
The first step to staying happy through the holidays is to do a realistic and honest assessment of this time of year for yourself. Do you really need to buy everything that you usually do? Do you need to put as much pressure on yourself as you usually do? Do you need to attend every party? Every gathering?
What is your energy level now, as the holidays approach? Do you need more rest and self-care than you need excitement and company? Why not choose a different pattern to your holidays this year?
How are your finances? Do you get stressed out by spending before the end of the year and then worrying about the bills in January? Do you buy a lot of gifts because you feel you must instead of genuinely wanting to share?
The honest assessment leads you to understand what YOU need in this season.
Next, ask yourself if you really must spend time with people who upset and disturb you or if you can find time for yourself without that burden this year. This might even be your family. Are you looking forward to seeing them or do you dread the time you spend there?
Consider a new way of operating through the holidays this year.
Everyone around you is struggling with their own life lessons. Somehow the holidays come with Hallmark Cards and Norman Rockwell expectations that nobody really experiences. If you put self-care at the top of your agenda, IT IS NOT SELFISH!!!! Let me repeat that – Self-Care is not being self-ish!!!
Taking care of yourself might be limiting what you spend this season to what you can comfortably afford. Make some gifts. Give away something that’s meaningful to you and share its story with the recipient. Go to bazaars and thrift shops and find unusual items that will delight someone.
Look at your calendar for the rest of 2013 and decide what you will do for yourself. Rest. Relax. Pamper yourself. Watch movies that make you smile. Hang out with friends or go on a silent retreat. If you’re lonely, find a shelter where they need volunteers. If you’re overwhelmed with social ‘obligations,’ decide how to handle the schedule to preserve your energy for the activities that matter most to you. Ask for help if you need it.
Spend some time planning for 2014. This doesn’t have to mean the big New Year’s Resolution list, but pick a theme for the year that resonates with your heart. Delight yourself with your plans. Dream BIG!!!
Remember that everyone around you has something going on in their life that they are having to handle. Take care of yourself so that you can show up fully present to everyone else. Be CURIOUS . This helps to keep you focused on the mysteries and not on what upsets you. Have healthy boundaries. Eat healthy foods. Take care of your own health.
Everyone is doing the best they can with the resources they have at any given moment – even you!
May you truly have Happy Holidays this year!
PS: Need help making it a happy holiday time? Looking for guidance and additional resources from beyond the norm? You can receive personal messages from Guides, Spirits, Angels and loved ones who have crossed over at Rosemary’s next event: a Conversation with The Other Side December 6 at 7:00 pm Eastern. Click for details
The Cycles of Life
This week’s theme in Rosemary’s blog was Cycles beginning with her video message on Tuesday. Yesterday I wrote about the primary cycle in human life, human consciousness: Death. And as we move now into the energy of the Summer Solstice here in the Northern Hemisphere I am once again reminded of all the cycles that occur in our lives, from the most minute, the life and death of a single cell (we lose more than 50 billion a day to apoptosis!) to the solar cycle through solstices and equinoxes and all the solar holidays in-between, to human death.
As I thought about Glenn Smith, his early-in-life transition (he was only 55) I drew two divination cards (a daily practice, usually with the intention of divining the energy for the day); I wanted to tap in and see if Glenn had any messages for me through the cards.
First I drew Butterfly Maiden from the Doreen Virtue Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards. No surprise as this card is all about “transformation.” This is what I wrote about the card, pictured here:
Death is the big transformation for humans, only rivaled in grandeur and trauma by birth. And in a sense these largest of events in our experience of consciousness are one and the same. They are each part of the human cycle, a circle which has no end nor beginning. Birth, Life, Death, around we go always becoming, renewing, rejoicing in the knowing! And not knowing!
The second card I drew was from the Aleister Crowley Thoth Tarot Deck; it was the 10 of Disks, “wealth.” This is what I wrote about the 10, pictured here:
Wealth. Fulfillment. The completion of human goals. Another “end-vibration” card showing me that endings are not only OK but need to be expected. We can never be sure when a life is fulfilled. Too often endings are abrupt and unexpected. A greater cycle, beyond human consciousness and understanding – the mystery – is playing out. We are but cycles within cycles adding our ounce of Oneness to the tidal ocean of consciousness. Rest, Glenn. We hold your ounce as precious!
We can measure so many cycles: the cycle of a cell’s life, the cycle of the sun as it appears to spin around the earth. But how do we measure the cycle of a man’s life? The span of time from birth to death, to fulfillment of one life, remains in the mystery. Yet there is so much to learn from each precious life.
I learned many things from Glenn in our too short friendship. He was such a gentle man and yet so deeply conscious. Read about him in the blog we wrote together: powerfulsensitivemen.com. And here’s something he wrote for Rosemary I want to share:
Having always thought I was a bit odd and different from the regular crowd, I was overjoyed to receive a message passed to me through Rosemary Bredeson that I was indeed ‘different’, during a group session I attended. In fact every message she passed to the twelve people gathered had some impact on me. The message I received could not have been more relevant for me even though I have had many readings by many different psychics over many years. Her joyful way of expressing heartfelt messages from The Other Side was a delight to witness.
This is how Glenn was in life; he always seemed overjoyed and delighted!
I went to my Svaroopa Yoga class tonight energized as I often am to take respite in my body, to bring my consciousness to my physical being rooted as I am in this life for now on the planet. For the evening’s contemplation my teacher used a quote from Aristotle:
Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.
Glenn was a happy man, passing to another phase of consciousness having fulfilled his purpose in this cycle on Planet Earth.
INSPIRATION FROM ROSEMARY: Exquisite Moments in Life
Here’s Rosemary’s video for the week: Exquisite Moments in Life
PS: There’s still time. There are exquisite connections you can make this week! On Friday, June 14, at 7:00 pm, either online (internet or phone) or in person in Annapolis, you can join Rosemary for a Conversation with The Other Side to hear what beings on The Other Side have to tell you. Angels, Guides, Loved Ones come to offer their joy! Get more information here.
Change, the Brain, and Life Force Energy—Richard’s Commentary
Change has certainly been on my mind lately—can you tell from my posts? Some of this change energy, maybe most of it, is coming from outside sources, including the influences of the planets, stars, heavens, recalling the quotes I used from my astrologer friend, Chris Largent, last week.
It is important to be aware of these outside influences in order to react, reflect and respond appropriately. And this happens on the inside, the only source and cause of true change. We have to consciously step through that gateless gate!
I was still in the middle of all this rumination when I wrote my “morning pages” this past Monday. Here’s what I’d like to share:
Everybody seems to be on edge, maybe a threshold, balancing on that edge, uncertain, teetering forth and back, wondering, hesitant, angry at the hesitance, fearful of the advance. Yet, advance we must straight into April and lovely days ahead to celebrate wakefulness.
It is good to wake up. It is good to be alive. Yes, I have met with irritation today, my old friend. And he is as grumpy as ever, rasping about people in his way, people with attitudes, people not following the rules – his rules. I have met with him and asked him to leave. I have too much to do to deal with irritation. It is a pointless and wasteful feeling. He is gone and I welcome the clear, clean air of April.
And maybe I’m a fool to seek happiness and joy in all things. There is often good reason to be in irritation’s field. But reason doesn’t make it right. The foolishness of joy is not wrong. Maybe it is unreasonable but never wrong.
I will seek out joy today. I would much rather be in his company. Some days I would rather be happy and irrational, living with Pi and Phi, than living in my left brain with the thinker, too often stinker.
Flow, goodness, grace, Tao. These are the way. This is The Way, the Immortal Way. How can an irritable man ever be good company, live as an Immortal? This is not the way!
And so I write, I look for the change. The door to Immortality stands wide open. The threshold of that door is joy. Happiness lives beyond. The simple act of crossing that threshold concludes the Pursuit of Happiness. It is right there, a fool’s paradise, so easy to reach out to, beyond. Just beyond.
Is this an April Fool’s joke I’m playing on myself? Can it really be so easy? And what if it is? Isn’t everything I write about choice? I believe it is. Stepping across the threshold is a choice. And this door of the threshold? It is that gateless gate of Zen. It swings both ways. There is always the “anti-choice” of reversion to old ways, meeting up with irritation again! Why I would want to do that is a mystery but it does happen. But maybe with the support of Heaven it doesn’t have to be that way. Maybe I can stay on the grace and happiness side of the gate. Maybe the world over there is perfect, just as it is. There is nothing wrong on that side of the gate that needs my attention. It is all good, just as it is. All I have to do is see it that way. And maybe some would say this is looking through “rose-colored glasses”. So what? Those who say that covet the glasses!
Is there sickness, old-age and death on that side of the gate? Of course there is! All the people caught up in all their desires are still there. Those still pursuing happiness are still there. It is a gateless gate—there is nothing that gate separates! In this sense nothing has changed. They have not crossed the threshold. It is I who have changed. It all only bubbles up from the inside. The gate that is not a barrier is inside. The threshold of joy is inside. The choice to cross the threshold is made in silence, promised to no one, confessed only in the stillness of every moment.
Change is that simple. And this may be the most difficult vow I can take and keep. Is there any way that I can say goodbye to irritation, dismiss him forever? This is only one step to take beyond the threshold. And from that new place I can hope to say, yes to this promise. One step into the new current is all it takes. And the flow will take me in a whole new direction…I am willing to let that current take me.
This is the water of my life. It is moving now, spinning beyond the stagnant backwater I have been stuck in for too long. This pretty April day with Sun, high sky, light breeze ringing bells is a brand new day for this fool to let go of old companions of irritation and rules and head into the unknown space of happiness flowing with whatever currents will come to jostle, cajole, and rejoin me onward beyond joy!
…so it all came tumbling out! And in tomorrow’s post I’ll offer a sequel to this flow toward change, toward happiness I stepped into this week…
HAPPY NEW YEAR, 2013!
From RosemarySpace and my family we wish you all a very Happy and Prosperous 2013! May you live Your Richest Life!
Happiness is Family All Around!
Men and The Goddess 