My “Two-Minute” Video for this Week: Be Your Real Self!
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: You Are Not Your Stories
September 19, 2014 — RosemaryHow many times have you heard yourself repeating a story about something that happened to you, or that you learned about yourself as a child, or that some parent or teacher convinced you was true and, yet, inside, there was a niggling doubt that that story is still true about you today?
Or maybe you keep telling that story without even realizing that it belongs to the past and no longer holds any truth for the you who is showing up in your life today?
It is so easy to ‘story ourselves’ into our victimhood and we hide behind our stories until it becomes difficult to find the real person behind the mask of story.
Years ago (okay, decades ago) I sold cosmetics at home parties part time (yes, your guess is right about which one!) and I had a woman attend her neighbor’s party to try out the new cosmetics. She came in wearing orangey makeup over deep pockmarks and sat at the table with the others to follow the program, removing her makeup and trying on what I was offering. After hearing her friends around the table exclaim over her new look and how great she looked, she requested some additional cleanser, got out her bag and reapplied her orangey stuff before she walked out the door to cross the street to her home.
The hostess was embarrassed and apologetic but I assured her that it was okay with me. Each of us needs to feel comfortable about the way we show up in the world. This woman needed that mask before she could even walk across the street to go home. She ignored her friends compliments and went behind the familiar mask, even though the new cosmetics were more flattering.
How easy it is to wear what’s familiar, even if it’s not the best for us? We sometimes find comfort in the familiar when it is painful just because we don’t want to move into new energy.
What is your security blanket? What mask do you wear that keeps you hiding from your beautiful real self because it is familiar and comfortable, even if your real self is more beautiful?
Uncovering the real self behind the mask is the work of personal growth. The transformations can be amazing! And it means letting go of the old masks, the old stories that we hide behind before we can shine the light of our real self out into the world.
I have a problem with some of the support groups out there that have you staying the victim of your story by repeating it over and over again. Your story is A story. It does not define WHO YOU REALLY ARE. The only reason to tell a story is to show how you’ve grown beyond it so that you can help someone else experience the same growth.
Listen to yourself and your chatter. Notice that your stories might be repeatedly keeping you the victim instead of being stories of empowerment. Notice that you might be hiding your inner light behind a mask that you can shed now.
You are not your stories. Let the light of the real you shine into the world without a mask!
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: Exploring the Field of All Possibilities
September 12, 2014 — RosemaryWhen we feel stuck in our progress, whether it be on a specific project or task or we are stuck in a bigger way, not knowing our purpose in life or not knowing how to shift or eliminate a particular situation or relationship, we tend to drop into a sort of tunnel vision about it.
Have you ever found yourself thinking only of your problem? Nothing else seems to get onto your radar screen. Solutions seem ‘out of sight’ and, maybe, not even available at all. There’s nothing beyond what you can see.
This is the way that we can hold ourselves back from showing our greatness to the world. Tunnel vision is the very block that prevents us from seeing the possibilities that are in front of us because our focus is so narrowed. And we feel as if there is no roadmap out of our situation.
We often get stuck in tunnel vision because our belief structure, at the unconscious level, restricts us from moving into the exploratory experience of curiosity about what else might be possible. We know what our problems are and we keep looking at them as if they will suddenly jump up and tell us how to solve them. If only that were true!
What we must learn to do instead is to seek the solutions beyond the point where the problem lies.
When I worked on the Hubble Space Telescope some of the astronomers decided to point the telescope at dark places in the sky that looked empty when viewed through earth-based telescopes. No one knew if there would be anything there since nothing had ever been seen in that particular area before.
What emerged were huge fields of never-before-seen stars and galaxies! What had looked empty for all the years of humans looking at the sky from Earth were now filled with exciting stars and galaxies and other celestial presences. How exciting it was!
Where is the parallel to this in your life? What have you been looking at through your ‘old eyes,’ that is, through the lens of your old beliefs? Do you wonder if there is anything that you haven’t seen yet? Do you hope that there IS something there?
This is the pursuit of solutions that can lead you to exploring the field of all possibilities. When you tie yourself to what is known already, you limit your own field of view to see just what you expect to see. When, however, you open yourself, with curiosity, to whatever might be waiting for you, ALL possibilities can reveal themselves to you!
Examine the beliefs, those inner decisions that reside at the unconscious level, that might be holding you hostage and limiting you to tunnel vision. Discard and clear those limiting beliefs.
Then turn yourself toward an exploration of what might be there, waiting just beyond what you can see. There are always possibilities beyond the one you see with tunnel vision.
How exciting this exploration can be!
5 Steps to the First Step – Richard’s Commentary
September 10, 2014 — RichardYou know that old expression – “watch that first step; it’s a doozy”? Well, Rosemary assures us not to worry too much about it because that step can be divided up into five! And I know how well this works.
A few years ago, we were still in Colorado, when Rosemary offered a weekend seminar in her program, The Intuition Edge. Across two days of a workshop setting (more like a playshop!) we learned her system to determine that next, first step. It included these five lead-up steps Rosemary outlined in her post on Friday. As a quick reference here they are again:
- Breathe
- Connect to Your Vision
- Clear the Blocks
- Commit to Forward Motion
- Connect with Your Intuition, Your Inner Guidance and Ask for the First Step to be Unveiled to You
As you might guess I really like that first step. I do a lot of breathing; it’s part of my Qigong practice, my Yoga practice, my meditation practice. When awareness needs centering, breathing is the best approach.
It is the breath that helps us connect with anything, and everything. It is essential to connect within. And where does that vision of where we want to go next reside? Within!
How do you “see” your vision? I think we in the west call this direction we are headed a “vision” because we are such a visual culture. But can you sense your vision in other ways? Can you taste it, smell it, hear it, touch it? If you truly want to activate your vision apply all of your senses; begin to experience the vision in your whole body, as if it is real. It is real!
What blocks stand between you and your vision? Do you fear attaining that vision? Do you hesitate because you are unsure if it is the “right” vision? Are you confident you have the resources needed? There are many ways we sabotage ourselves. This may be the most important and the most difficult step of the five. Do the inner work here, whether it’s to dispel limiting beliefs, move through inner-child fears or gain trust in yourself and the Universe.
Commitment is a requirement. If you are not truly committed to your vision then no “first step” will appear. If the commitment is weak, go back to step 2 and connect or re-connect to that vision. This is a process. It is likely not a linear one but circular; view it as a spiral as you get closer and clearer about your vision.
When you are committed go for the guidance. Once again this is inner guidance and once again we get there, seek it through the breath. See why I like this process so much? We get to breathe!
And then there are many tools to use to stimulate and listen to the inner guidance, that intuitive side of our consciousness, our intuition edge. Use as many as you need and are comfortable with. Use divination tools like a pendulum, oracle cards, Tarot cards, astrology, numerology. Test your vision using these tools and ask for the next step toward that vision. Remember, you only need the NEXT step.
Then TAKE it…”step out in innocence and trust.”
ROSEMARY’S INSPIRATION: Why Am I Doing This?
August 26, 2014 — RosemaryMy “Two-Minute” Video for this Week: Why Am I Doing This?
ROSEMARY’S INSPIRATION: What Needs Trimming in Your Life?
August 12, 2014 — RosemaryMy “Two-Minute” Video for this Week: What Needs Trimming in Your Life? 
ROSEMARY’S NEWS
August 11, 2014 — Rosemary
We’re back home in Maryland – hurray! It was a wonderful road trip to Florida. We saw dear friends and family, participated in a great event in Orlando, visited the ashram where our nephew lives and had a special meeting with Gurudev (Yogi Amrit Desai). We stopped in North Carolina each way to spend time with our son and his girlfriend. We made lots of new friends. And our beautiful new grandson was born in California while we were on the road. (Oh, and we celebrated our mutual birthdays while on the road.Thanks for all the birthday wishes!)
I hope you have been having a Summer filled with some amazing experiences like the ones we have had! It had been decades since I drove to Florida, something we did several times a year when I was growing up. Ah, nostalgia!
And the idea of old patterns, old beliefs came up again and again. I used to say I didn’t like road trips because my childhood was filled with hot cars (pre-air conditioning) and long days on the road. I changed that belief! Richard and I had a great time, planning shorter driving days and longer visits along the way. We listened to music and teaching CDs, sometimes turned off the CD player and just chatted. I had several long phone conversations that I don’t usually have time for – and it was so nice not to have pressure to get to the next event on the schedule. Do you let yourself have long connections with loved ones?
So I have heard a couple of times, in the few days that we have been back home, that I look ‘radiant’ and ‘glowing.’ I have been trimming away what is not important, moving self-care up on the list of priorities, relaxing, and dreaming big dreams. Had an epiphany about my Life Purpose while at the Stand, Speak & Profit Event that brought tears to my eyes. You’ll be hearing more about that soon!
I invite you to do some trimming in your life, too. The Full Moon in Aquarius occurred yesterday, August 10 at 2:09 pm Eastern Daylight Time; we are still in that powerful energy. This is the perfect time to TRIM! Let go of what is holding you back. Trim away the excess in your life so you can focus on what really matters to you. Do a little ritual around the Full Moon and RELEASE!
AND, If you’d like some help in clearing that old baggage, I am still offering a special reading with me to uncover limiting beliefs and negative thoughts and RELEASE THEM! Here’s where to go to register for a special session at the investment of only $150: Purchase Here
SAVE THE DATE: SEPTEMBER 20, 2014! The Fall Equinox Possibilities Playshop is coming! The earlier ones have been such fun, you’re definitely going to want to join us for this one. If you attended before, come again and update your Playbook! More info later.
Happy Trimming and Clearing!
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: Trim It Up!
August 8, 2014 — RichardYou can trim your hair. You can trim your waistline. You can trim the bushes by the front door. But do you ever think about trimming what is surrounding you in your life?
Sometimes we assume that something, some person, or some situation, must stay with us simply because it is already in our life. The truth is that you can eliminate whatever does not serve your personal growth or your highest good.
What relationships in your life are you holding onto because they are long-term and familiar, even though they no longer serve your growth? Are you in a job that feels as if it robs you of joy but you feel that you need to go there every day anyway? What possessions do you surround yourself with that steal your energy because they require so much care or space or attention or money to maintain?
The list of questions to ask yourself goes on and on. Maybe it’s time for a trim.
Do you ever find yourself indulging in negative self-talk, the kind where you put yourself down or tell yourself that you are not good enough for something? Self-talk is another candidate for a trim.
What about beliefs that are holding you back? If you have unconscious beliefs that you made as a child they may be keeping you from the forward momentum in your growth that you desire for yourself. You can clear limiting beliefs and trim the ropes that hold you back.
When a client tells me a story, I am listening not just for the content but also for the way they are telling the story. The language gives me a lot of information about the meaning behind the story they are telling. Often the ‘trimming’ occurs when I suggest a different way to language the story. You can trim away the old energies and move beyond the way you habitually interacted with those facts. This is a huge benefit to someone who wants to leap forward in their life but feels their story is holding them back.
Just as Spring Cleaning is a way to clear the clutter – in the house, the closet and the mind – this Summer Trimming is called for when subtle or insidious forces are acting on us and our growth depends upon our trimming away what is holding us back or keeping us stuck.
Look around at what is in your life and make a conscious choice to keep it or discard it. Sometimes this requires a painful choice, but your personal growth depends on it.
The guidance I am receiving is that we have no time now to pussyfoot around. We are focusing on growth, on expansion, on moving into deeper territories where we live the examined life, not an unconscious one. If you have relationships, situations, ‘stuff’ that doesn’t support you, that you feel holds you back or, worse, is toxic for you, then it is time to trim that out of your life.
Think of the big tree that has all those dead branches trimmed off so that now all of its energy is focused on new growth. Think of how freely you’ll breathe when you’ve trimmed away the weight of the dead branches that are hanging on you!
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: We Are Family
July 18, 2014 — RosemaryThe word ‘family’ can be a real emotional trigger for some people. I’ve worked with coaching clients who had beliefs about themselves that were limiting their success because they had heard stories or even made up stories about their families and they accepted those stories as unchangeable.
You can change the stories you hold in your head. You can change the stories about your family and its members. You can write your own story. You can create your own loving, accepting, supportive family – TODAY!!!
Whether you believe me about this or not, it is true. I can hear the alarms going off and trying to convince you that the story you believe is the absolute Truth, with a capital ‘T,’ and that you can’t change the Truth.
What if the story contains some FACTS but it no longer has to be your TRUTH, about you, about life, about anything?
I now dub you ‘Lady’ or ‘Lord’ ‘Creator of Your Own Truth’! From this day forward you are the creator of the beliefs that you hold, no matter what the ‘facts’ of your past might have led you to believe. You are the one who decides on the members of your ‘family.’ You create the stories that you want to live.
The facts of your childhood might seem to lead to certain conclusions but children rarely hold all the information available during those younger years. You might have formed opinions about situations you experienced or family members and somewhere in your unconscious mind you believe that you know ‘Truth’ when, just possibly, you don’t.
Guess what? That story belongs in the past. You can write your own story now, today, and it can be a different one. You are Lord or Lady Creator of Your Own Truth! You decide what you will believe. You choose which thoughts you will energize by your focusing on them. You can even choose the people that you will invite into your ‘family.’
Before you were born you chose the human DNA that you would need to get to the lessons for this lifetime. That means that you chose a mother and a father and some other family members whose job it was to help you to learn your lessons and to grow. For some, it was less painful than for others. For some, it is still painful to be associated with family members who are connected through the bloodlines.
Others have graduated from those birth families and have collected around them people whom they can trust, who love them, who support them and accept them, no matter what. This is the meaning of ‘family’ now.
If you are living far away from family that you love, you can create a group that gets together for holidays, does things together, shares experiences, helps out and supports, loves unconditionally. You can do this even if you live down the street from blood-relatives who are toxic to you. You can choose your family now.
When we feel obligations that are burdensome or that hurt our hearts and souls, we can choose to move away from that family. It might seem difficult, but it can be the most liberating choice you ever make. Feeling ‘stuck’ with a family is often the result of being ‘stuck in our story.’
What is the story that you find yourself telling over and over again? Have you allowed a story from the past to creep into the position of defining you? Are you ‘stuck in your story’?
Then write a NEW story! You have permission. You are Lady or Lord Creator of Your Own Truth! Love yourself enough to be the creator of a fine life story. Be the ancestor of a legacy that makes you proud and smiling today.
This is important 21st Century work for each human being. Love yourself. Be Who You REALLY Are. Be the Light. Write your own story.
I bow to you, Oh, Lord or Lady Creator of Your Own Truth! Huzzah!
Mystic Messages 
Exploring the Field of All Possibilities – Richard’s Commentary
September 17, 2014 — RichardRosemary’s exploration this week is a great lead-in to her Possibilities Playshop scheduled for this Saturday. It is not only the Playshop but the Playbook, the product of the Playshop, that is an amazing tool to help with “exploring the field of all possibilities.” Let me explain:
During Rosemary’s Playshop we play at several activities designed specifically to get us out of our heads, out of the problem space, so we can move into the field of possibilities where solutions lie. And one of the first steps is to clear the way to get there, clear the limiting beliefs that tend to hold us in “tunnel vision.”
Here’s how Rosemary describes the “problem”:
This is the way that we can hold ourselves back from showing our greatness to the world. Tunnel vision is the very block that prevents us from seeing the possibilities that are in front of us because our focus is so narrowed. And we feel as if there is no roadmap out of our situation.
We do this clearing, opening up beyond the tunnel vision, through visualizations. This is necessary to begin to believe that there may actually BE a “roadmap” to the field.
Once we clear the old beliefs, a process to re-vision the problems and re-create a new vision forward, we are then in a great space to create the roadmap. And this is no ordinary roadmap, but one created and guided by our intuition. This is where the “play” begins in earnest.
Briefly, we pull pictures and words from old magazines, images and phrases that appeal to us. We do this fast without much thought about why they appeal. This is somewhat similar to creating vision boards (have you ever done one of those?) but with less intention, suspending the rational left-brain activity and relying on our child-like unconscious minds to direct the play.
Pictures are put in an envelope, words in another; pictures can even be sorted by size and put in different envelopes. Then the “roadmap” or Playbook is created by pulling pictures and words blindly from the envelopes for each of the months going forward. We actually align our calendars with the phases of the moon to bring an even deeper intuitive, feminine connection to the Playbook.
The resulting Playbook is an intuitively created “solution space” to use as a guide for the months/year ahead. The pictures and words can be interpreted as the moon cycles through her phases. I frequently consult my Playbook for a number of reasons, including when I am stuck or catch myself in tunnel vision.
I use my Playbook as a journal to record events. It is always curious to review the pictures and words I chose months ago to see how they inform my current situation. I also record my I Ching Gua that I cast at each new moon; there is always an alignment with the reading and my Playbook entries for that moon!
The point here is not to “sell” you on the power of Rosemary’s Possibilities Playshop event but to suggest there are tools you can use to move easily, even with a lot of fun, from tunnel vision around a problem to a new vision of expanded possibilities where solutions live. Inner work, access to our intuitive powers, even play serves to offer a way forward!
And remember, problems are lessons waiting to be learned in the field of all possibilities!