Tag Archives: personal growth

Daily Message. The new you and the frequency of doubt.

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I, archangel Michael, come in this message with all the love and cuddliness of this koala. Are koalas loving? Well, they care for their young in the safety of trees and give them plenty of eucalyptus leaves to eat. How does it get any better than that? Really. We say, what is it you are trying to make “better” about your life?

You have: 1. Shelter. Do you live in a shelter? Do you live outside? Do you live somewhere where you are covered? Ask yourself, where do I live? Is it “enough?” Or is it something you want to “change?” Does the koala ask to live in an oak tree instead of a eucalyptus tree? Is it what you can “live with” to love where you are now, knowing that things can change at any second of reality? You are the creator of your reality, but love yourself now, where you are now, and accept yourself now, too. It is the “key” to everything. 2. Is there sustenance in your belly? Are you hungry? How can you find food? There is always food available. It is spiritual. It is physical. It is there if you ask for it. Do you want different food? Well, love your food now, knowing that new food can come at any second, in any moment of your reality. But first, love what sustains you now. That is all. 3. Do you have clothes on your back? Are they keeping you warm? Are they enough? If not, where can you go to find warmer clothes? There are always ways. If you are warm, what stops you from loving your warmth now? What stops you from knowing that these clothes are enough now, in this moment, in this second of your reality? Love your clothes now, knowing that they could change in any moment of reality, any second of your existence. Love where you are now, knowing that it all could “change” at any moment. That is what a retrained “brain” does. We love you. We love you. We love you.

You say, “But a koala is NOT a human! We have desires. We want to make our lives better! We want stuff to make us comfortable, to make us free, to make us less fearful.” So, you want to be less fearful. This is what you are saying. The koala knows fear. It knows the dangers of its existence. It knows that it is not guaranteed, survival. And yet, it lives, it cares for its young, it eats, it mates, it “joins” with life and does not fight life.

You are new today. You have retrained your brain and are living in consciousness. So, you still experience the frequency of doubt and say, “But, I want more. I want security in all aspects of my life. I want freedom. I want “stuff” that is going to make everything easier!”

What is doubt? It is a frequency that pushes you forward, that pushes you to “look” for answers. It is a frequency that “makes” you ask questions. What are questions? They are sparks of energy that lead to growth and expansion and of “knowing” things in your soul. Always ask them. You may not find an answer immediately, as in right now, in this second of existence on earth, but you will find them. You will find them when you surrender to them. You will find them when you ask the question and then “give up” on ever fully “knowing” the answer. You know when you surrender the intellectual understanding of a thing and move to the heart. The heart holds your knowing. It holds your past and your future and everything in between. It holds the points of consciousness to which you will expand and are expanding now. It holds everything. Trust it. Love it. Go there for answers. Your mind is retrained. It is your servant. Use it to direct you to your heart through reading, studying, finding practitioners that resonate with you, conversations with friends, hearts that vibrate at a level you know is close to yours, but slightly higher, and everything that speaks to your heart, but requires your mind to fit together the pieces to physically “get” you there. Do you understand? Your mind is a servant. Your heart is YOU, the angel Self, the link to everything essential about you, the vibration of you, the core of you, the creation of you, the seat of the soul. It is the place where you find yourself, the energy that we see.

Take a moment now to breath to your heart. Honor it. Thank it. Know that you are an angel. Doubts will come and go. Embrace them. They are frequencies putting you in the direction of expansion. They are to be honored. They are to be loved. They are to be offered heart energy. They can shift everything. It is a gift to receive them. When others in your life show you doubt as a frequency, return to that frequency, with unconditional love. Know that their doubts are mirrors for you and opportunities to experience shift. They are always doors. They come in waves and you will “deal” with them as they come, one at a time, daily, monthly, annually, or whatever! They are your gifts from spirit. Who would ever have guessed that doubts were gifts? But they are! We say, they are!

Today’s message is to say, you are changed, and yet, you still will “face” doubts. You still will have desires and longings for “things” in life. That is valid. That is ok. Your life is established as it is for the purpose of expanding, and desires lead you to expansion, so love them. What “worries” you now will assist others on their roads to knowing their angel Self. It is all connected. You are gift to the world. You are a gift to form. You are a gift to the heavens. You are a gift to energy. You are a gift to frequencies. You are a gift to All That Is. Know Thyself. The rest will “fall” in line after this. We love you. We love you. We love you. That is all and It is done.

7-Steps to Healing from Unexpected Events in Life

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1. Admit that this isn’t the way you planned things to go. Spend some time processing your feelings through journaling, confiding in a trusted friend, praying and walking in nature.

2. Let go of expecting anything of yourself for a certain amount of time – you decide.

3.  Spend some time every day (even 3 minutes will do) in silence to return to a place of peace. This is spirit’s opportunity to comfort you.

4. Say the “I’m Sorry/Ho’oponopono” prayer often. A simple “I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.” is all it takes to clear away negative thought patterns. You don’t have to know why you are saying the prayer or have a particular image in mind at which to direct the prayer. Just saying the prayer is incredible therapy. (see http://www.self-i-dentity-through-hooponopono.com) for more details and information about this ancient Hawaiin technique)

5. Learn to laugh again – at yourself, at the situation, at the fickleness of life. Do something that you know will put you in a light hearted spirit.

6. Be open about what is going on. There is no sense in pretending that things are great when they are not and no benefit in hiding the facts from those to whom you talk. It’s all about authenticity. Use this opportunity to be authentic about how you are feeling.

7. Program “unexpected” as par for the course in your mind’s eye. When we expect the unexpected, we can deal with it better. Life is about learning and it will always toss new material our way for us to study and from which to learn. Yippee!!!!

Spiritual lesson of the week.

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This is my weekly opportunity to share some spirituality we learn from our kids. Today, I would like to share a story from Oliver, my 4-year old. He said he saw something the other day and I asked him if it was an angel. He looked at me and said, “No, mom. Angels aren’t real. Only fairies are.” It reminded me that we each perceive spiritual support in a way that is unique to us. No one way is good or bad, right or wrong. Who am I to say to Oliver what is right or wrong about his beliefs? His words are helping me to be less critical of others when I am confronted with beliefs that differ greatly froom mine. Now I can just have an inside joke and say to myself, “Well, I guess they don’t believe in angels. It’s fairies for them.” We all have a connection to the Divine. How we define that connection is no one’s business but our own. It is up to us to share what we believe. Thank you Oliver for that lesson.

What I learned from Bella Casarella…about money and myself.

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Today I interviewed Bella Casarella on “The Way of the Toddler Hour.” She is a money coach and financial advisor with a background in the healing arts – just the kind of combo I love. I learned a lot from this interview, not least of which is the saying, “You can never get enough of what you don’t need.” Get it? Needs are met by addressing them. Too often, and especially when it comes to money, we address the stuff we don’t need way more than the stuff we do. Bella used the example of a time a few years ago when she found herself buying an expensive coffee almost every day. As a financial advisor, she knew that she would be saving a ton of money by not going into the local coffee shop every day and buying her latte. Instead of beating herself up over all those lattes she didn’t need, she asked herself how the latte was compensating for a deeper need. At a time in her life when she was spending a lot of time alone, she realized that the latte represented connection with her community, which is what she needed. When she identified the real need, she was able to diversify and find ways other than buying a coffee every day to feel connected with the outside world. If she had not done that inner inquiry, she would have been filling her days with lattes that she didn’t need for even longer. She asks us to engage with our money as a relationship of equals. By doing so, we can see when and how our spending aligns with our deeper values. As a starting point, she suggests we track our expenses to open up the “code” of our patterns and where we are endlessly compensating for those things that we do need, but aren’t addressing, with things that we don’t. Another suggestion was to spend a week (or even a day) Cash Only plan and to see how our values and spending habits change when we aren’t using plastic. Really, it’s all about staying engaged with our money and conscious of what we are doing with it. It is about relationship. Any relationship, whether with another person or with an inanimate object, will benefit from conscious engagement. This is what our children most desperately want from us – to be consciously engaged with them as human beings. This is why a baby smiles at such a young age. I encourage you to listen to the podcast. It is a deeply insightful exploration of how we can overcome limiting beliefs about money and create a relationship with it that is mutually beneficial. I will NEVER get enough of what I DON’T need. By figuring out what I DO need, I am one step closer to healing my relationship with money. When I know what I need at the core of my soul, I can make sure that I address those areas without ending up at Starbuck’s everyday (as much as I do love a latte).

(http://toginet.com/rss/itunes/thewayofthetoddlerhour PODCAST IS READY! Today we interviewed Bella Casarella, money coach and financial advisor at The Art and Soul of Money. She gave practical and easy to follow tips for healing our relationship with money. This is a note taker, so get a pen and paper ready! Learn about money personalities and archetypes, unhelpful cultural messages, how money can be a spiritual growth tool and much more!)

What I do, why I love it and how you can do it too.

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The greatest reward to what I do is my continued growth as a woman, mother and wife. My children are Zen masters in diapers and I learn new lessons from them every day about happiness, authenticity and all that matters most about the human experience. Without their input, I would still be living my life with someone else’s definition of career and personal success. Instead they have shown me that joy in each and every moment is an attainable goal, that peace is a daily practice over which I have control and that it is possible, even achievable, to balance career and family successfully. With discipline and clear boundaries in place, I combine my role as mother and my career ambitions into the greater meaning of life: the purpose for all human endeavors in my opinion.

My biggest challenge to balancing working from home and being the primary caretaker to 3 boys is patience. Recognizing that I do not have to be accomplishing everything right now is a skill not taught in the “doing” oriented mentality of modern society. I have learned that as long as I am moving forward in my career in some way every day (be it answering emails, preparing a workshop, writing a blog or another business related job), I do not have to beat myself up for not yet appearing on Oprah! The same goes with domestic duties. We don’t have a cleaner, personal chef or laundry maid. Instead I work every day at teaching my children to put their own clothes away, take their dishes to the sink and put their toys away. When the house is still in need of a vacuum, I schedule “vacuum” into my week and then do it at the appointed time. Otherwise, I give myself the grace to forgive the odd goldfish crushed into the carpet.

In my life pretty much everything is scheduled with a precision and efficiency that makes it all eventually get done. I have had many people comment on my focus when working. Wasting no time, I have my task list, and I set to work accomplishing each item. When I’m done, I leave the office and do not look at work again until the next appointed work time. In this way, when I am with my children, I am able to give them 110% of my attention. I expect them to pay attention to me when I am speaking. They deserve the same respect from both parents. With my book being about what we can learn from our children, it is in my consciousness to view parenting as a two-way street. Their dignity is affirmed when I extend the same behaviors I expect of them. This includes being patient. Learning to be patient with myself is the first step in knowing how to be patient with my children and being justified in expecting patience from them.

During the lean times, I work out a schedule that relies more heavily on my husband and mother (who lives 5 hours away) shouldering child care requirements so that I can drive to my workshops. It helps that I do so much speaking to moms groups where I can bring my two pre-school children and put them in with the children of moms attending my workshops. The lean times mean I work more on the weekend when my husband is home. It also means that we eat at home instead of out and I buy more generic brands from the grocery store. When it comes to Christmas, I tell my husband that the only thing I want is a sitter. Instead of date nights, we sit on the couch holding hands and watch old movies while our children play in the background. It takes us longer to get through a movie because we push pause periodically to deal with some request or other, but we deal with it and move on.

I schedule ferociously and live my life with a precision that makes my husband and friends amazed at what I accomplish. I do not neglect spiritual practices that give me the deeper resources to handle what life throws at me. I wake up earlier than my children and meditate, write and work. I stay up after they go to bed and meditate. We have family rituals like watching a TV show together and all of us getting ready for bed at the same time that take precedence over whatever workload fills my plate. I have sat down and written out the core areas for my focus in terms of business and put them all under my obligation to family. I have taken the time to write out my “rules” and they are posted publicly in my office to remind me daily of how I operate in business. My yearly plan is outlined and I know where and what I will outsource. It is a combination of organization, discipline, commitment and focus. All the while, I trust in a greater power that sees my life from a much larger perspective, ask if I have done my best this day and hold on to an overriding guiding principle of unconditional love for myself, my children, my husband and my life.

What is “Worldly?”

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I have recently been called “worldly.” In fact, one of my speaking engagements was cancelled because of it. Granted, the venue for my workshop is a conservative Christian church, but I am still perplexed by what the organizer meant when she called me too “worldly” to speak in front of her group. The basic underlying message behind all my workshops,  my book, my radio show and my parenting blogs is that inner peace is not relegated to men, mystics, old maids (who never had little lungs piercing her bubble of concentrated calm), or empty nest moms who now have time to focus on themselves. Peace is for everyone. The God I believe in gives it freely to all: even those in the midst of poopy diapers and piles of laundry.

The challenge for mothers, especially those of children between 0 and 5, is to stop focusing so much on our responsibilities to our children that we forget to check in with our immediate state of being and determine if what we are experiencing is good for us, let alone our children. The subtle energetic impulses which we are constantly emitting are very easily picked up on by our super-sensitive children before they are fully immersed in the sophisticated social structure we call modern culture. We say, “Do what I say, not what I do.” They hear, “Do what I do.” And they do it.

Being called “worldly” for spreading a message of inner peace for the exhausted mother seems ironic considering my interpretation of the Bible and the teachings of Jesus Christ. However, the experience has given me an opportunity to clarify the distinction between “worldly” and “world-like.” What is the world but a huge conglomeration of human beings all with challenges, feelings, mistakes, triumphs, tragedies, longings and life lessons of one kind or another? My role as mother is to direct my children to a happy adulthood and show them how to successfully be that happy adult. For me, there is no separation between my happiness and the depth of peace I feel towards my current surroundings and circumstances. To be “worldly” is to acknowledge and understand the broad range of our possible experiences and then to choose steps that take me in a more satisfying direction.

On the other hand, the world consists of form, natural and man-made splendors and catastrophes, and an infinite array of stimuli for our five senses. To be “world-like” is to be fixated on just what I experience through the five senses alone. It is that constant outward looking and disregard for the inner world holding in check my collection of thoughts, feelings, interpretations of past events, and all that goes into what constitutes my “personality.” World-like ignores the spiritual nature of so much of our experience. Worldly recognizes that there is a spiritual context for everything we go through – including parenthood.

Even though I am saddened that a single individual can determine whether or not I present my message for practical steps we can take now to feel calm, even when the world seems to be falling apart around our ears, I still owe her a debt of gratitude for giving me something to write (and think) about this week and for allowing me the privilege to know with absolute certainty that what I stand for is both worldly and in complete alignment with the great spiritual truths taught throughout the ages. Whatever contradictions perceived by those who would send my workshops elsewhere are really not my concern as long as my children continue to see in me what inner peace looks like in the outward example of my genuinely joyful experience of life. Amen.

Taking the time to sit in between all the running around!

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The only constant in life is change. Who said that? Somebody famous, I’m sure. For the life of a mother, this is a mantra. Every day is a mixed bag of “busy, busy, busy” or “ho-hum.” When my oldest two were 3 and 1 and I was a full-fledged stay at home mom, the monotony of poopy diapers, piles of laundry and plans for dinner definitely took their toll. Around the time of my (now) middle child’s first birthday, I was having an existential crisis of “Is this all there is to life?” Alas, the winds of change were set to gale force when we found out we were pregnant with baby number three and moved from an apartment to a house in the suburbs. With the introduction of school into our lives, some days I feel downright knocked over by the speed at which life moves.

It goes without saying that there is always something to do. It takes discipline not to do all the things you could or should be doing. Balance is a quality I treasure. I have worked diligently to experience it, albeit fleetingly. With this in mind, I take stock of each of my days and grab hold of opportunities to sit on my couch in quiet contemplation, to read or to write in my journal. Yesterday was a day like that – a day where I put off the laundry and took leftovers out of the freezer. The trees outside my window are so beautiful they beg to be looked at and appreciated, truly appreciated, every once in awhile.

Today is a different kettle of fish altogether. I am washing the towels for the homeless men staying at our church this month. They had to be picked up, washed and returned. Appointments, phone calls, domestic duties and more fill today. It’s 1:30pm and I haven’t had time to take a shower yet. This is a day where I wake up in the morning and wonder, “How will it all fit together? How will I make it all happen?” I have to stop and breath, reminding myself that it will all pan out somehow and that worrying about it will not solve anything. I press on, accomplishing each task in turn. It will be ok.

Looking at the clock is such an addictive habit, especially on busy days like these. If I learn now how to stay present even when there are so many things to do, I will be all the better prepared to handle life when it becomes really  interesting – when I have three school aged boys each in a different activity all overlapping with homework and all the other things that come with school life. I write this as my baby sleeps on the couch beside me. I may be stinky, but I do have this quiet in which to write. I will flow from this to the next thing (shower hopefully before a phone appointment) and keep my eye on the prize. The prize, for me, is balance, which I define as an inner state of equilibrium that makes me feel that I can handle everything on my metaphorical life-plate, that nothing is too overwhelming.

Having enough conscious awareness to know when I am being presented an opportunity to sit on my couch for 10 minutes and acting on that opportunity is the kind of awareness I am going for in the overall scheme of things. It comes when I make the time to wake up each morning and have time to myself before anyone else wakes up. It comes when I go jogging and make exercise a priority in my life. It comes when I stop looking at the clock (or checking my emails) and just finish the task at hand. All of these things take practice and discipline. Luckily, I have the rest of my life to get it right.