Archive
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: What’s the ROI for Staying Stuck?
This is a good question to ask yourself when you feel stuck in some area of your life and confused or unsure of the next step for you to take. Staying stuck IS an investment that you make, every day, until you decide to take some action to get unstuck and to move forward.
Every marketing seminar that you take will have you look at the Return on Investment (ROI) for various choices that lie in front of you. You’ll then be guided to take the road with the greatest ROI. But most of the time, when someone is using this term, they are actually measuring money. Is that really the only commodity that matters, though?
Think about your work or your job in terms of the hours that you are investing in it. Look at your time on the job as well as your commute time or the time outside of work when you are thinking/worrying about work. Are you focused on living your Life Purpose? Are you giving to others only the hours and energy that you have left over after your working hours? Are you being compensated for your real measure of your contribution to work?
If you’re working 40 hours a week and commuting one hour each way and all you are left with monetarily is enough money to pay for child care, then maybe there is not a good enough ROI for you and your lifestyle. Maybe there is, but don’t you want to assess that so that you are making a conscious choice to spend your hours and energy that way?
If you are in a relationship that does not support your personal, spiritual, mental and emotional growth, why are you staying in that relationship? Sometimes there are other benefits or payoffs but, if you are living a conscious life, it’s important that you be honest with yourself about all of your relationships. You don’t have to measure tit for tat, give and get in equal measure, but if you are investing in a relationship that does not help you to live your Life Purpose, then examine your reasons for staying.
You can make a conscious choice about every investment that you make – financial, emotional, mental, spiritual. What thoughts are you investing your time in considering? Do you tend to worry, investing time and energy in focusing on what you do not want to have happen in your life? Do you realize that there is a huge ROI on investing in these thoughts? You attract that which you energize. Why invest here??!
Examine your thoughts throughout the day. Catch yourself investing that energy where the ROI is not what you want to receive in your life! Then turn your thoughts onto the investment in what you DO want to receive.
Have you examined your limiting beliefs, the ideas you might have embraced as a child that no long apply but that your unconscious mind holds onto and brings up whenever it serves you as it has in the past? Were you told that you are ‘not good enough’? Were you picked last for the sports team and so started to believe that you are not good at doing sports? Did you have a teacher or classmates who belittled you so that you became afraid to speak your truth? There can be insidious beliefs that you are investing in by allowing them to continue unexplored and unchecked. They bring an ROI of unwanted behaviors!
Become conscious in your life. What choices are you making? Do those choices support you in living your Life Purpose? Are you free to explore new possibilities so that you can choose to invest in something that brings with it the positive ROI that you seek? Are you investing in staying stuck and losing out on investments that you would rather choose, those with the ROI that you seek?
Do the work. Your personal growth work is the best investment you can make in yourself and your life. The ROI is tremendous – Joy, Peace, Harmony, Happiness, and, yes, even Prosperity and Abundance!
Choose your investments wisely!
MONDAY’S POEM: The Dance of Time
Another Monday. The moon wanes, the month wanes into the third third and time marches on! Shortly we’ll be a third through 2014. With time on my mind here is a Monday poem I wrote in 2011 (about three years ago):
The Dance of Time
The passage of time is a spiral dance.
It weaves
It floats
It rises
It falls.
It is a multi-dimensional wave.
And like a wave it is stationary.
It moves
It calms
It comes
It goes.
It is a mystery beyond space.
The passage of time is music for the dance.
It sings
It plays
It beats
It rhymes.
It is the rhythm of my heart,
The song of my soul,
The symphony of my spirit.
©2014 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
Settling In
This phrase has been popping into my life since the New Moon and New Lunar Year. It seems it comes to mind every day as I write my Morning Pages. I catch myself writing it and wonder, what’s this about…
And I realized today, as I wrote it once again, that I am settling in. There are many aspects to this, not the least of which is settling in to the new energies coming in with the New Moon and New Year. It’s different. Is it just me who is feeling and sensing the difference? Do you sense it?
So, I am settling in to this New Year, the Year of the Wood Horse, or Green Horse. In the Chinese Medicine Five-Element system one of my dominant elements is Wood. With the New Moon we left the Water Snake Year of 2013 behind and moved into Wood Horse. There is an energy about this Horse coming in; some have said it is galloping in! And the Wood energy is hitting right on top of my Wood tendencies. What this means is lots of energy for me and I am finding myself needing to dampen it down; adjust. I am settling in to this New Year and I expect it to take more time. After all the Chinese celebrate the New Year for two weeks, until the Full Moon, which is still a week away. Maybe it takes the two weeks to settle in to the new energy.
We are also still setting in to our new home. We spent some time yesterday moving filling cabinets so we can more easily file and re-file paperwork for the business, church and personal lives we lead. We are still finding places to put things and still looking for things misplaced! Settling in.
And it occurs to me that this is what life is really about. We are always settling in. Do you feel this way? And it’s a good thing. Settling in is becoming present. It is sensing our environment and getting comfortable with it. It is getting in touch with our bodies and settling in. It is examining our emotions, our heart-feelings and settling in to whatever arises: joy, sadness, grief, gratitude.
There is also a settling in of our mental state as it ebbs and flows from alert awareness and high functionality to drowsy calmness as we get ready for sleep. I even find myself settling in to the rhythm of time, adjusting to what seems to be shortening days (can they really still be 24 hours long?).
And spiritually I am becoming very settled. No, not complacent nor dogmatic, not fixed in anyway but very open and always questioning. Yet at some level I am accepting that I will likely not find the answers to my all my questions in this life. I’m not settling for this as a final conclusion, but I am settling in to this possibility.
I have a greater sense of calm around this notion of settling in. I’m in this for the long haul – and it could be very long, if the reincarnationists have it right! So, why not settle in and enjoy the journey!
This phrase seems to be following me everywhere. Even in my yoga class last evening we were led to “settle in” to our bodies during shavasana. And I knew just what to do.
I hope you are not settling for anything. But do find some peace and settle in to your life; it’s so much easier that way!
Have a great weekend!
MONDAY’S POEM: The Most Popular from 2013: Karma
For the end of 2013 I did a scan of poems I published here on Mondays and discovered the most popular one, by the number of “likes” was Karma. Here it is again; and thanks to all for your following and reading through the year!
Karma
There’s always more to burn:
Fuel to feed the great fire.
Travels through life in the mire
Lead to more lessons to learn.
Brothers of three generations
Differ in extraordinary ways.
Their life-paths twist through a maze;
Destinies driven by their limitations.
Karma is complex to unwind;
The source is a tangle of lives.
The weaving together of so many tribes
Forms a patchwork, one of a kind.
When love is the thread for the stitches,
The patterns emerge in fine hues.
The patchwork of reds, purples, blues
Renders a tapestry depicting life’s riches.
©2013 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
And, have a safe, wonderful, happy and prosperous 2014!
PS: Next year will be wonderful! How do I know? Because I listened to a message from The Divine Feminine channeled by Rosemary on the Winter Solstice; and they offered guidance and advice on what we might expect in 2014 and how to approach the year’s upcoming energy. Expect more change! The transformation continues! If you missed the message it is now available as an MP3 recording for a modest price; check out the details here: Winter Solstice Message
The Echo of Truth from the Future – Richard’s Commentary
I love this kind of talk! I have been a futurist for most of my life. My first love in reading is a good SciFi novel, some wonderful, imaginative projection into the future of the possible.
So, when words like “truth from the future” come from Rosemary’s channel I also perk up and take note! Here are the key thoughts from her message this week:
Humanity is constantly evolving. Human Consciousness is always growing and expanding. Human Awareness and Understanding grow with each human experience. Truth must constantly be re-evaluated as consciousness evolves.
When we hear that ‘the new truth comes back from the future’ we must understand that, as humanity evolves, we are growing into the New Human, the human of our future.
And that “human of our future” is calling us forward into that future. We have to embrace the truth of that possible future in order to allow ourselves to flow toward that future.
This is heady stuff. But it is not really as crazy as it might sound, especially if we suspend our western, Indo-European notion of time. One of the ways I do this is to remember back to my times with my most esteemed teacher, Martín Prechtel when I sat with him in his Bolad’s Kitchen. Martín teaches from many sources, but his grounding in Mayan culture and language comes through at every turn. The Mayan language has no verb form for “to be” so the whole notion of time in Mayan culture is completely different from our western notion of the linearity and vectored flow of time. This is not an easy concept to grasp when we are constantly reminded of the was/is/will be experience of time as captured by our western languages.
One way Martín offers to help get in touch with this other way to view time is to picture ourselves as islands in the middle of an ocean, the ocean of time. The past, present and future events are all part of this ocean. Events flow to us and away from us and influence us as we exist in the ebb and flow of time. Both the past and the future “echo” toward us as these islands.
And this is how Time Line Therapy® works. We can go backwards on our time line to heal wounds in the past, in a way we undo karma. We can then bring that healing forward to the present. Equally we can flow forward on our time line to embed events in our future so that when we reach that point the event is already energized. Using the analogy of the ocean we are flowing back and forward on the surface of the sea to receive information from both the past and the future. Past events can be healed; future events can be energized.
This is also the mechanism of the Law of Attraction. We can visualize the future we want to attract and actually influence that future.
The Divine Feminine as channeled by Rosemary during her Satsang event pointed this out clearly:
…focus on your dreams being realized, if you say ‘I usually handle this easily’ or ‘I always find the perfect parking place,’ then you are echoing a truth from the future.
You create your future with the thoughts you project. You experience ‘the new truth’ when you allow the future to manifest in this present moment.
What does the future truth that is pulling you forward have in store for you?
PS: Are you looking for advice from beyond the usual, maybe the future, through a gifted Medium? Join Rosemary for a Conversation with The Other Side at 7:00 PM Eastern, November 1 – All Saints Day – tomorrow evening. If you are in Maryland, join us in person. From a distance join us by tele-video conference or simply by phone. Learn more here.
INSPIRATION FROM ROSEMARY: Are You Holding Yourself Back?
Rosemary’s “Two-Minute” video for the week: Are You Holding Yourself Back?
PS: Are you waiting to hear from The Other Side? Are you looking for advice from beyond the usual? Join Rosemary for Satsang, this Saturday, October 19 at 7:00 PM Eastern. If you are in Maryland, join us in person. Or, join us by televideo conference or simply by phone. Learn more and Register Here.
The Language of Being the Natural YOU – Richard’s Commentary
In Rosemary’s article this week she channels The Divine Feminine who quote a favorite line of the followers of The Law of Attraction and their key premise: “Energy flows where attention goes.” Then Rosemary explains that attention is thought and thought is governed by language. Therefore to be who we came here to be, we need to use the language we came here to use to think natural thoughts, to express ourselves using natural language, to adhere to natural beliefs in order to manifest our natural selves.
I like this word natural very much. There are many associations I have with this word, like nature, native, indigenous. One of my teachers, Martín Prechtel, claims that one of our main goals is to become a natural human being: one who belongs where they were, fits their environment, lives a natural life. He also teaches that a good way to begin to understand how to live a natural life is to learn an indigenous language, especially one that does not use the verb form “to be.”
And this brings me full circle to my posts last week about the concept of time and how natural people typically have a very different relationship with time than “western people” with their heavy reliance on the Indo-European language use of the to-be verb form.
So, what is this natural language Rosemary urges us to adopt in order to get in touch with the inner light that we are? Do we all have to learn an indigenous language that does not rely on “to be”? Or is there an easier way?
When I ask myself questions like this I find myself almost naturally going inside to seek answers. And when I go there long enough answers usually come bubbling up.
Of course when I do this I am following Rosemary’s advice explicitly! She says: “The Natural You is the being at your core, that center of Light that can brighten the world for others. Put your attention here. Focus on your BEING, not what you are DOING.”
But notice she is using the to-be verb forms here in this very suggestion! An interesting irony. Nevertheless her point is clear. And what I conclude is this naturallanguage is the language of being. We speak this language when we meditate, when we go inside. We use this language not so much to express thoughts as to let thoughts go. We use this language when we touch our true nature, that light-being at our core. We use this language when we speak to God, or whatever expression for the Eternal appeals. We use this language when we speak from the heart. Poets use this language when they are at their best.
This natural language is easy enough to learn. But it is very difficult to perfect. It takes a lifetime of practice to get it right. We can all speak it as natives. But few become fluent. The world would be an awesome place; it would be “Heaven on Earth” if we all strove to perfect our use of our natural language!
And, yes, this is a belief I hold. I express this belief in an Indo-European language using the to-be form here: “would be.” My natural language is not a written language. It is difficult to find written examples except in rare instances of near perfect poems and certain stories of the heart. I have heard some of those stories, translations of stories from natural people, like stories Martín Prechtel tells.
Do you speak a natural language? How do you get in touch with your inner light? How do you express your beliefs that guide you through this world? This is your natural language.
MONDAY’S POEM: Time is a Spiral Dance
I wrote this poem two years ago. As you can see my thoughts and concerns with Time are not recent. And my efforts to turn time into spirals rather than a straight line are not new!
Time is a Spiral Dance
The passage of time is a spiral dance:
It weaves
It floats
It rises
It falls
It is a multi-dimensional wave.
And like a wave it remains in one place:
It moves
It calms
It comes
It goes
It is a mystery beyond space.
The passage of time is music for the dance:
It sings
It plays
It beats
It rhymes
It is the rhythm of my heart,
The song of my soul,
The symphony of my Spirit.
©2011 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
Letting Go of My Obsession with Time
In my post yesterday I wrote: “I am learning to let go of this constant obsession with time.” This is not easy. As many of you readers know, one of my practices is “Daily Pages” as recommended by Julia Cameron in her Artist’s Way. Almost every day I begin those pages with some reference to time: the date, of course, how late in the week/month/year it is, how late in the morning I am writing, or how I had to skip pages yesterday because I was too busy. It truly is an obsession. And I wonder if it is getting worse as I get older.
So, I am working on this obsession. Yesterday I wrote in my pages on how I was going to let go. I was writing in the context of settling in to our new home and how it was going to take – TIME – of course! Here’s an excerpt:
It is clear that my relationship with time needs to change. I am very serious about this. I don’t know if I have to learn an indigenous language without the “to be” verb. I’m sure it would help. But this seems to be an intellectual exercise. What I need is to experience time as a native. I need to sink into time and live in it rather than through it.
Time is like a lake or a pond. It extends out in all directions. Events are like pebbles tossed into the pond. They ripple out, like echo rings. They may even bounce back when they reach the shore. And the pond returns to its serene state after a bit, smoothly available to the next event. I am the pond and I am the pebble. I am the ripple and the echo.
All this is inside, an internal vibration of consciousness. There is no beginning nor end to it. It is simply there as a phenomenon of awareness. It is all inside. It is nowhere else. It is a single note or an entire symphony, a cacophony of noise or a harmonious orchestration of experience.. It is up to the mind to filter and sort, to decode all the signals into a stream of intelligence.
But it’s all there, right now in this moment, to translate into meaning. Time is but one mechanism by which we translate the signal. It doesn’t have to follow in a linear fashion. It can spiral, it can circle or vibrate to and fro. It can echo and bounce. It is a matter of tuning the translator so we can grasp meaning from the noise.
My tendency is to stretch the noise into a straight line; I can look along this line and see a beginning and end. I take some comfort in this view. But I am uncomfortable with this notion of “end”! This limits time for me. It creates this notion of commodity that can become scarce and run out! This is precisely what I want to change.
I need to retune my translator. I need to view time as a spiral that circles and climbs. Everything circles! From spinning subatomic particles to the spin of galaxies and the Universe, the circle is eternal. “what goes around comes around” – Karma! Does the spiral have a linear motion? Or is it an ever-widening series of circles? This returns me to the question of direction. Does time have one?
The Buddha would say there is no getting off the wheel of Samsara until all desire is eliminated. Surely the desire for more time is one of the first desires to go! And when it is released the notion of all time is here, right now in this moment, gives me all the time I ever need!
As with everything in life, this retuning of my translator through which I view this human conception, time, requires practice. It is an inner practice. I am fortunate to have a guide in this who sets an example of a different way to view time. Rosemary’s article, The Karma of Time addressed this subject this past Wednesday.
How do you view time? Is it straight or does it circle or spiral? Does it have a direction? Does it go anywhere or is it more like a pond, resting quietly, waiting for events?
The Karma of Time – Richard’s Commentary
I have had a life-long struggle with Time. No, not the news magazine! I am emphasizing the word to indicate the importance of this phenomenon in modern life, at least this modern life.
Do you have enough time? Do you “spend time” like coinage? Do you catch yourself wasting time? Or even worse, do you “kill time” when you are waiting for something to happen? How many ways do you look at time? It sometimes seems almost alive. Often it seems like a commodity. Sometimes it’s the rarest of possessions. Other times it slips through our fingers like sand.
My struggle with time is I don’t seem to have enough of it. And knowing that time is nothing but a state of mind doesn’t necessarily help me reconcile the need for “more time.” I have had many teachers help me with this concept of time and my sense of it as a commodity that I need more of. I’ll get to Rosemary’s article in a moment but first I want to examine time from an indigenous world-view.
One of my teachers about time is Martín Prechtel. Growing up in an indigenous culture and then working and healing as a shaman in Mayan society in Guatemala, Martín has a very different understanding of time. And he works very hard to impart this indigenous understanding to his students. There are many native (Martín would say “natural”) languages that aren’t based on the verb “to be.” Entire languages developed without this sense of past, present, future as a central theme, understanding, and therefore, world-view. For me this has been a concept I’ve wrestled with. Martín suggests the best way to grasp it is to learn a language which has no “to be” verbs. I have, as yet, not taken on this assignment. And maybe that needs to be my next step to better understand, and more importantly, to let go of my obsession with time.
For Martín and his indigenous family time is more like ripples in a pond, echoes on the breeze, a spiral dance of moments that swirl and evolve gently. It is most definitely not linear. Past and future both are echoes of now. It’s a beautiful way to look at time. And it is certainly more relaxing than never having enough, running out, spending it foolishly!
My other teacher about time is Rosemary. We have always had a different take on time and I have always both wondered about this and admired her understanding. She always seems to have enough time, just enough. She seems able to take the time she has, all of it. She doesn’t waste it or spend it foolishly. And she doesn’t seem to hold on to it or grasp for more. Rosemary’s NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Psychology) teachers, whom I studied with as well, described two types of people: “in-timers” and “through-timers.” The in-timers are people who seem to float along as if they have plenty of it; this describes Rosemary. I am a through-timer who seems to be constantly running to catch up, to be on-time, to maximize the use of time.
I am learning to let go of this constant obsession with time. Rosemary’s view certainly helps; her article helps. But I think there is more to my “learning” about her concept of time, of the indigenous concept of time than an intellectual pursuit. Time, after all, is nothing more than a human invention, a concept. So we can imbue this concept with attributes that are more to our liking. But we also have to experience it with those attributes we would choose. Experience must support the change, the learning, the growth.
“All time is in this present moment.” Do you get this? Is this easy for you to understand? I’m working on it because I think there is a vital key here to unlock a very precious piece of knowledge. And all I need to do is fit that key to the lock and turn it!
Men and The Goddess 