My “Two-Minute” Video for this Week: Be Your Brighest Self!
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: Be Your Brightest Self!
August 29, 2014 — Rosemary…And shine like the star that you are!
It is time. No more hiding your light under the proverbial basket. You were formed from the stardust of the Big Bang. You were meant to SHINE!
What’s holding you back? Are you shining your light brightly in the world? Are you bringing light to everything that you do by being the light that you really are?
Here is what this can look like in your everyday life.
When you are in conversation with another person, you can really open your heart and listen, not just with your ears, but with your heart as well. You can hold the thought in your own mind that, ‘You are a being of light and I hold you in my heart with love.’ Hear what they are saying and hold them, as a person, in your heart in the light of love. How different would your response be if this is what was happening on your side of the conversation no matter what happened on their side?
A friend of mine posted on Facebook recently that someone called him an idiot. He just thought about the person with love. Do you think you could do that?
Remember that having healthy boundaries allows you to be who you really are no matter what is going on around you. Is someone having a bad day? Can you still hold them in your heart in the light of love and allow them to have the space to have a bad day on their own? Or do you feel as if you need to rush in and fix things or get them to get out of their bad mood? What is yours to do in this situation?
Sometimes being the light that you are means giving someone else space to be wherever they are in the moment. You remain the light no matter what they are doing on their side of that healthy boundary, even if they try to drag you across the fence into their own territory. Resist this and hold the light.
And when you are having a bad day, do you seek the light within yourself or do you try to pull others into your bad mood to commiserate with you?
The light is always shining within you even when you forget that it is there. When your day appears to be all darkness, the challenge is to find the light that lives within you like an eternal flame, your very own pilot light. Sometimes you need to ask for help in being reminded that you have that light inside you. Ask for that help.
Your light is meant to shine. Your life is meant to be filled with light. On the dark days there is still some light to be found. No matter how dark things might look to you now, as Annie the orphan sings, ‘The sun’ll come out tomorrow’!
Your purpose on Planet Earth is to be your own Sun, to shine your light. Those around you are looking to you to shine. They need the light of your love and warmth as much as they need the Sun’s. Who are you to withhold that light from them?
Be your brightest self. Shine that light. Thank you!
ROSEMARY’S THROWBACK THURSDAY VIDEO – How are You Hiding?
August 28, 2014 — RosemaryFor this week the theme has been about light and how we are being called to bring more light into the world. But first we have to FIND the light – WITHIN. This week’s “throwback” is about hiding your light, hiding from your own power, playing small! It is time to stop hiding and start bringing that inner light into the outer world!
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 EXPLORATION: The Light Quotient
August 22, 2014 — RosemaryWhy am I making this choice? Taking this action? Making this decision? And what is the ‘Light Quotient’ of this choice?
You might never have thought about decisions and choices as a matter of assessing Light Quotient before but the time is here to bring more Light into the world. Thus, we must constantly focus on how much Light we are contributing to the energy field around us and around the Planet.
If you hear any news about what is happening around the globe then you know that there is much being reported that has a heavy energy about it. There is a lot of darkness in the world. BUT you do not have to be focused on that darkness!
You have choices to make in every moment. Choices about what you will do, what action you will take, how you will respond to challenge or to a challenging situation. At a deeper level, you also have choices about what you will think, which beliefs you will hold onto, what words you will speak. You can assess the Light Content of each thought, belief, word or action you embrace.
Do you watch the news and feel drawn down into heavy energy? Or do you avoid hearing anything about what is going on in the world so that you can avoid the dark energy? Remember, you are at choice about how you will respond to any given stimulus!
You can focus on good news, on what is going right in the world, on the Light. You can choose to speak words that uplift and support and give the gift of Light where there is darkness. In your own mind, you can choose to clear those beliefs that have you thinking dark thoughts, especially about yourself.
When you consider your current situation, in any area of your life – job/career/business, relationships, health, emotions, mental state, finances – do you dwell on what is not working the way you want it to or do you turn your thoughts to what IS working and what it is that you would like to have in your life? Do you shine the Light on the positive energies around you or do you allow yourself to be drawn down into the dark, heavy energy?
For example, the current excitement on Facebook is to watch videos of people pouring buckets of ice water over their heads as they are challenged to donate to a charitable cause. Some people are getting fancy about the way that they meet the challenge and are having fun with it. Some people are smiling and donating to the cause with or without the dunking. And others are posting comments on Facebook criticizing the activities or the people or the cause. Which energy do you think carries more Light? Which would you choose to have in your body, your energy field?
This is one example of where you can choose your response. Does it really affect you if someone dumps ice water on their head and posts a video to raise awareness about a disease? And what about other things that you see – war, crime, death, politics – do you resist and let yourself feel heavy or do you surround yourself with Light and move your thoughts into areas where you can make a difference and raise the Light Quotient?
Choose to bring more Light into the world! Let this be your ‘why.’
We Are Family – Richard’s Commentary
July 23, 2014 — RichardI want to begin my comments with Rosemary’s ending to her Exploration:
This is important 21st Century work for each human being. Love yourself. Be Who You REALLY Are. Be the Light. Write your own story.
…and create your family; “we are family”! This is a lesson I have learned and continue to learn from Rosemary. It started over 30 years ago (we celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary yesterday!). We came together with kids; Rosemary had a daughter and I had two sons. From the very beginning we made a conscious choice, and from then on a conscious and valiant effort, to blend and create a “nuclear” family of the five of us. And it worked. Today our 30-something kids could not be closer if they were blood-related. We are family!
And we each have our extended families. I met Rosemary’s at her sister’s wedding. The vibe is dominated by Italian ancestry; my Norwegian/Swiss (northern) ancestry was welcomed in with open arms and big hugs. My cold northern blood melted right in to this southern love. Meanwhile my family remains pretty much in tact in Wisconsin – that Norwegian blood just likes it cold! I love them, visit (in the summer/fall) now and then. We are family!
And then we have our ultra-extended family that spans the globe from here north into Canada, east to Europe, south to Australia, west to China. We have grandchildren here in Maryland, another on the way in California. And then there are our adopted grandchildren/god-children spread all over from England to Florida and far beyond. Our younger friends with children just seem to know: we are family! (Of course, the children know it immediatedly!)
We are about to begin a fun trip to Florida for a work-related conference in Orlando next week. On the way (we are driving) we will stop in Raleigh, NC to visit with our youngest child, catching up with that part of the nuclear family and his delightful girl friend. Then it is on to Brunswick, GA to visit long-term, but not seen in years, friends; and even though there is a serious back injury in the picture here, we are compelled to spend the night – “you are family.” Then it is on to Tampa to visit more friends and one of our adopted grand/god-children. After the Orlando conference it is on to Amrit Ashram to visit a nephew and Gurudev. We are family!
And my story goes on. It is still unfolding. We have more family members to meet; they are out there waiting for us. As Rosemary says:
…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.
Be the love. Be the light. Go meet your family; they are out there waiting for you! Be the ancestor of a legacy! And remember:
We are family!
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!
What’s Your Umbrella? – Richard’s Commentary
June 18, 2014 — RichardMy “umbrella” has always been work. When I was in the corporate world I worked hard. I traveled a lot. I had responsibilities. I shouldered them well. As I look back on those 40 years I realize that I was often running away from the lessons, the real part of life I needed to learn.
Oh, sure, I needed to earn a living, keep the family secure, move ahead, up the corporate ladder – that’s what we do, right? But at what expense? How many of us escape into our work with these very rational motivations and miss why we are here in the first place, miss our real purpose?
I am retired now, still working hard, enjoying the work a great deal more and, yes, sometimes I still continue to use work as my umbrella. Why? Rosemary hits on one of the reasons:
All you have is NOW. The lessons don’t go away. The Universe wants you to have that success, satisfaction and fulfillment and puts lessons on your path so that you can clear the blocks and achieve your dreams. Why delay that?
It’s usually fear. But the rewards of doing the work, of learning the lessons, are so much greater than the pain of getting there that it’s worth it to start now.
Yes, it’s usually fear. I wrote about this in a post just last Friday, the 13th when I commented on the blocks we face:
I think the main one is fear – fear of letting go completely and relaxing into full awareness.
I believe my main purpose in this life is to become fully aware, to become enlightened. This is not an ego thing; I believe this is the main purpose of every human on the planet. I, at least on some unconscious level, have known this for a long time. And I have escaped from this, from the lessons that would bring me closer to enlightenment, and worked on all the other things humans do: job, family, earning corporate merits, duty, …
But the Universe wants me to have that “success, satisfaction and fulfillment…” The Universe wants us to become enlightened! The lessons are all there, strewn in our path to bring us into the light.
The ego doesn’t get this. The ego would rather escape into work and feed itself with the rewards of a job well done. So the Universe continues to offer the lessons. And I am beginning to listen. Sometimes the lessons are loud; we can only miss them if we continue to distract ourselves with our umbrellas. Sometimes the lessons are whispers. I’m learning to listen more closely.
I’m following the advice I wrote for myself in the June 13 post (link). And I am ready to “happily dance in the rain!”
You Are Being Lied To! – Richard’s Commentary
June 4, 2014 — RichardI don’t know about you but I lie to myself all the time. And part of “growing up” is to catch myself doing it, question why, and the underlying beliefs that trigger the lies, and then digging down underneath the beliefs to work on rewiring the neurology or filling in the ruts in the neural pathways that entrenched the beliefs underpinning the lies.
Here’s an example: I use the word “never” a lot! “I will never win that prize.” “I will never figure out a way to stop misplacing my glasses.” “I will never get published.” The “nevers” go on and on.
There seems to be a negative trench in my brain that too often goes to the improbability of something happening rather than to the possibility! Part of this is the way I came into the world, my genetic wiring. And part of it was the way I was raised, the environmental wiring. We all have these vestige neural pathways carved into us; some more deeply than others.
But there is good news here; neuro-biology is examining the “neuro-plasticity” of the human brain and discovering that we can change the way we think. Ruts in the plastic can be worn deeply by repeated thoughts, beliefs, lies. But they can also be modified, filled in, redirected through conscious choice.
This is Rosemary’s whole point in her article about the lies we tell ourselves. And here’s the paragraph that helps me the most:
Now LAUGH!!! Feel how good it feels. You DESERVE to laugh, no matter what is going on in your life, no matter where you are, there is something to laugh about. I just looked out the window at a squirrel trying to get into a squirrel-proof bird feeder. Do you think the squirrel thinks that, just because he can’t get any birdseed out of it, there’s something wrong with him, that he’s not ‘good enough’ to be worthy of food? Heck, no! That squirrel goes around the corner of the house, climbs the tree to the non-squirrel-proof bird feeder, hangs upside down, and eats his fill. Only we humans compare ourselves to some mythological standard and find that we don’t measure up.
There is nothing wrong with me. We all have negative thoughts about ourselves, but these are lies buried in the beliefs we carry that no longer serve us.
I once had an Enneagram teacher ask me: “what if the world is perfect just the way it is?” I was stunned at first. Then I laughed; and I relaxed! Yeah, the world is perfect and I am perfect. The lessons come to help us become more perfect.
One of my lessons is to replace “never” with “sometimes” in my thoughts about myself– and every time I do I get to laugh! Through this practice maybe that “never rut” will begin to fill in. And when it is gone, when that lie disappears maybe I can replace “sometimes” with “always”!
How are you lying to yourself? How are you catching yourself doing it? Find a practice to rewire your neurology; pave over the old ruts and believe in your inner light!
Mystic Messages 
The Light Quotient – Richard’s Commentary
August 27, 2014 — RichardI am struggling with this response. Why? I am in a bit of a dark place at the moment, so Rosemary’s post is aimed directly at me! And what do we often do when something is aimed directly at us? We freeze! And I’m sitting here at the keyboard a bit chilly, frozen, dark!
But here goes! Here’s the key to the whole article:
You might never have thought about decisions and choices as a matter of assessing Light Quotient before but the time is here to bring more Light into the world. Thus, we must constantly focus on how much Light we are contributing to the energy field around us and around the Planet.
Staying in my dark mood is a choice. I realize that and have been moving this choice around in my mind – and my heart – since yesterday afternoon. As I went to sleep, and it took awhile to drop off, I worked to lift the “light quotient” all around me. And it took work! I did a “nightly review.” Do you ever do this? It’s a good exercise: before dropping off to sleep go over in your mind all the events of the day, moving in reverse order, latest event to earliest. Review the events, and especially your responses to those events from the perspective of learning lessons. Ask: did I respond appropriately? Could my reaction have been different, better in some way? How might I have done that differently, more effectively? This process is not about self-judgment but about learning and improving. Maybe another question can be Did I bring in enough light into that situation?
This process did help me drift off to sleep last night. It didn’t solve any problems and it didn’t lift my dark mood entirely, but it did bring more light into my life and my rest (dreams were good!).
Now, here, this morning there are still some clouds overshadowing the light in my day so far. But as I write I have the sense that there is a lifting to those clouds. Maybe just writing about it has helped bring in some light. I do picture myself as a “writer.” I can add this “tool” to my approach to lifting the “light quotient” in my life. In fact, this is exactly what my “Morning Pages” practice is about. Following the Julia Cameron Artist’s Way approach has helped me with the “light quotient” in my life for many years!
When I awoke this morning my first thought was about this blog article and how I was resisting it, resisting writing about this business about “light quotients.” I was still in the darkness. But I asked how I could bring in more light and that’s when I reminded myself that “I am a writer.” I need to be able to write about anything, even (especially?) about light when I am in the dark!
The sun is coming out. My day will be bright now because I am choosing to see the sun beyond the clouds. I wish for you a sunny day filled with an abundance of light. And if you are in the clouds ask what choices you are making to remain in the shadows. It’s a process and takes practice!