My “Two-Minute” Video for this Week: What Needs Trimming in Your Life? 
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 THROWBACK THURSDAY VIDEO: Examine Your Expectations
August 7, 2014 — RosemaryThis video is from the Spring, 2013 about expectations. It corresponds well with the messages for this week on plans and planning. The phrase “this or something better” applies to both plans and expectations!
Enjoy this replay:
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: How’s That Planning Thing Going for You?
August 1, 2014 — RosemaryWe can plan. We can organize. We can expect. And then Life Happens.
Have you ever had a plan, had everything organized down to the tiniest detail, and set your expectations on that plan working out exactly as you planned it? And have you had the experience of having little or big glitches shift things out of Plan A?
We have all had this experience. We THINK we are in charge of everything but the Universe sometimes (or often) has a different plan and guess who succeeds?
This isn’t about whether or not you should develop a plan of action to accomplish something. It’s good to have a plan. But do you become so invested in YOUR plan that you forget the ‘this or something better’ part of your request to the Universe? There is a value in learning to go with the flow.
We saw this with the birth of our grandson. His parents had Plan A, Plan B, Plan C and the baby decided to be born on HIS schedule, the way HE wanted to come into the world, with HIS CHOSEN astrological birth chart. He was born the day that a surprise baby shower had been planned for his Mommy. The surprise was his appearance in the world 3 ½ weeks early!
What plans have you developed that have seemed to go awry? How do you react when that happens?
Remember that the formula is:
Event happens. Then you React. And then you CHOOSE how you will respond.
Event (Plan seems to go awry). What is your REACTION? Anger? Upset? Depression? Denial? So many different emotions can arise and they can stem from previous experiences, even from your childhood. Reactions start at the unconscious level. But your RESPONSE is chosen consciously.
Do you allow your reaction to dictate your response? Or do you hit the pause button and give yourself a chance to consciously choose how you will respond? This is how you live a conscious life.
Babies choose how and when they will come into the world. Most of us accept that they have a plan of their own. But what about other plans that don’t go the way you want them to, or planned them, or expected? What if another person interferes with your plans? What do you do then?
Remember that you CHOOSE how to respond. You can choose to get upset and to stay upset but that isn’t a very resourceful place to be. Even if you do get upset, you can decide to respond by figuring out a new plan, to go with the flow.
Do you plan differently in your work than at home? Are you flexible in the workplace to get along with others but you are rigid at home because you want things to be just the way you intend for them to be? Notice if you operate differently and then ask yourself, ‘Why?’ Sometimes it is easier to adjust plans in the workplace because you are not emotionally invested in them and you are resourceful when you are in ‘work mode.’ But when you are at home, with the family or in a social setting, you might have stronger expectations that you have control over your life. Can you go with the flow? Are you willing to work on Plan B or Plan C?
If you are the opposite – going with the flow outside of work but expecting everyone around you at work to line up with your plan – what could you gain by adding some flexibility to your methods? What if Plan A was the goal but Plan B was also OK?
Think about this the next time you decide that your plans must go exactly as you arranged them. Those creative babies might have a mind of their own!
This or something better.
ROSEMARY’S THROWBACK THURSDAY VIDEO: Today is Your Birthday!
July 31, 2014 — RosemaryOK, it is not quite our birthday month! But when I have to share my birthday with my husband (and my brother-in-law) I really have to get my time in! And the sun is in Leo after all! So, I am celebrating a day early starting July 31 this year!
I am extending my offer for a very special “Reading with Rosemary” through all of August. Go here to purchase.
And every day is your birthday; make your choices and celebrate!
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!
The Moon and YOU! – Richard’s Commentary
July 16, 2014 — RichardDo you pay attention to the moon? Right now we are being inundated with rain here in Maryland, so I can’t see the moon. But I know she is waning after fullness last Saturday. We’ll soon be coming up on last quarter and then a week later a New Moon. The cycle repeats reminding us of rhythm. Moon cycles are like breaths; she swells from newness to fullness as with a two-week inhale, and then shrinks from fullness back to newness on her two-week exhale. She reminds us to breathe with her: big, full abdominal breaths.
As some of you may know I cast an I Ching Gua on every New Moon. A gua is a six-line hexagram made up of yin and yang (open and solid) lines. (My last post about this can be found HERE for the last New Moon.) I do this for a number of reasons but the key one is I am curious about what new things the New Moon is bringing in, especially what the energies, specifically the energies of change may offer during the month between the New Moons. It is fun to go back over the month and the “reading” of the I Ching to see the correspondences between the reading and actual events! I am amazed at the accuracy!
Another tool I use in conjunction with moon cycles is my Possibilities Playbook I created during Rosemary’s January Possibilities Playshop. My Playbook is a 12-month notebook filled with pictures, phrases, themes and other guidance that I intuitively chose to go into my book in January. Of course, the book is laid out according to the moon phases. Now I record plans, events, feelings and senses of how unfolding reality aligns with what I set in motion in January. This tool is like a “vision board on steroids.” The pictures, words, phrases are pulled from magazines not with desires, hopes, plans in mind but how I want to feel. Looking back on the process I had no idea why certain pictures appealed to me. Now as I examine the pictures in context of what is actually happening I get it! And I am continually amazed!
There are lots of reasons to pay attention to the moon cycles in your life. Certainly gardening and farming, fishing and boating are activities influenced by the moon. I was pleased to learn, during a tour of Napa Valley a few years ago, that at least one vintner, Grgche Hills Estates, uses the phases of the moon for planting, pruning and harvesting. As they say: “Committed to natural winegrowing and sustainability, we farm our five estate vineyards without artificial fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides, rely on wild yeast fermentation…”
The moon has so much to offer us if we let her into our lives. Think of all the songs we would miss if not for the moon! Pay attention. Note the days on the calendar when she fill, empties and goes dark for a time. Keep a diary of how you feel in relation to the phases. Note your dreams and if they are influenced. Be aware of peoples’ driving and how it changes with the changing moon. You too may be amazed at what you find!
Problems? Be a Solver! – Richard’s Commentary
July 2, 2014 — RichardRosemary posted her “Exploration” on this subject the night of the New Moon in Cancer. As I do on the New Moons I cast an I Ching Gua – a six-line hexagram consisting of open, yin, and closed, yang lines. I posted my results and my interpretation of this I Ching divination on Monday this week (Link). The initial Gua I obtained was “Hardship” – it appeared that I may be in for some “problems” during the month (I use the I Ching to give me a sense of the incoming energies for the month ahead from New Moon to New Moon).
Here is what Divine Mother Mary channeled through Rosemary had to say about problems and how they might be solved:
When people seek solutions to problems, answers to questions, they do not realize that they are seeking help in making a change in their life. They want something outside themselves to change without changing anything in their interior life, and they want that one thing in their life to change without their having to change anything else in their life.
I am fascinated by this Mary quote because here is what Taoist Master Alfred Huang, quoting early 3rd Century BC philosopher, Mencius, offered to help us understand “Hardship” –
If one loves others and they do not respond in the same way,
one should turn inward and examine one’s own love.
If one treats others politely, and they do not return politeness,
one should turn inward and examine one’s own politeness.
When one does not realize what one desires,
one must turn inward and examine oneself in every point.
The message is clear from both Mother Mary and the I Ching: if you want to solve a problem look inside yourself for the solution. How do you need to change your perspective? What do you need to change to be a solver?
One must seek a solution to a problem by asking this question FIRST: “WHO do I need to BE in order that this problem be solved?” –Mary
Turn inward and examine oneself in every point. –Mencius
And the good news for this month is the “Hardship” doesn’t last! There is volatility in the I Ching and it changes to “Union.” I like that energy much better. It also suits the Cancer energy much better!
Enjoy your month of “Union.” Enjoy your problem solving by questing inside for the changes, the appropriate responses, the new perspectives that lead through the lessons to the positive outcomes you desire and deserve!
ROSEMARY’S INSPIRATION: Looking for Solutions?
July 1, 2014 — RosemaryMy “Two-Minute” Video for this Week: Looking for Solutions?
Mystic Messages 
How’s That Planning Thing Going for You? – Richard’s Commentary
August 6, 2014 — RichardWe are on the last leg of our journey to the south, visiting family and friends all the way from Maryland to the “main event” in Orlando, Florida and back again. Today we are leaving Raleigh, North Carolina where we have spent some time with second son’s family, to head home and plunge right back into our “normal” lives. In fact we arrive just in time to lead our Consciousness Exploration Group scheduled for the first Wednesday of every month.
It has been a “busy” trip with one-night stands in several places as we drove south. Planning and coordination was key to keep us relatively on track to get from place to place. The trip has gone really well. And I expect our last leg will go well.
We did get a little tangled up in navigating between Orlando and the Amrit Yoga Ashram, where we spent a delightful time with our nephew. Our Google Maps were not in complete agreement with our GPS guidance and we made some wrong turns on the toll roads. We spent a couple extra dollars backtracking, and, yes, my reaction was anger and frustration. I failed to take the advice Rosemary offered in her Exploration post:
Event happens. Then you React. And then you CHOOSE how you will respond.
Event (Plan seems to go awry). What is your REACTION? Anger? Upset? Depression? Denial? So many different emotions can arise and they can stem from previous experiences, even from your childhood. Reactions start at the unconscious level. But your RESPONSE is chosen consciously.
The key here is choice. The initial reaction is OK; we all react to missteps, to little, and big mistakes, to detours in life that annoy. It is the next step that matters. It is the conscious pause to move into our higher brain and consider an appropriate response, choose that response and act.
The second key is to work on shortening the time from reaction to chosen appropriate response. This seems to be the main work of my lifetime. My primary lesson is patience; and I get many opportunities to practice! Highway detours are just an example.
We will likely need to change our plans for visiting our new grandson in California. We had planned to go out for second son’s birthday, a few weeks after planned birth of Tristan. Son’s plans went into a sharp detour when Tristan decided to come into the world three and a half weeks early! Sometimes other people’s choices affect our plans!
Son Andrew seems to have handled this big change in his plans relatively well. He and Mom are home now and Tristan will follow soon when he is eating well and gaining a bit of weight (he was four and a half pounds at birth).
Of course we are easy with this change in plans; it means we get to see him that much sooner! We have to rearrange some scheduled events and reschedule the trip; fortunately we had not yet made flight reservations.
Some detours are good, even wonderful. This is what Rosemary means by “this or something better.” The best plans include this line!