Okay – so this was my way of relating to a quote today I saw from Esther Hicks/Abraham. Here it is – why not just put it out there, it’s what I wanted to say in the first place……
“Whatever you’re thinking about is literally like planning a future event. When you’re worrying, you are planning. When you’re appreciating you are planning. What are you planning?”
There, isn’t that perfect?

Looking for Home. Finding Home. Home is where the heart is. Isn’t. What is my home aligned with? My heart. My head. My pocket. One thing I know is that I wish it weren’t so involved with “the market,’ the economy, that everyone wants a bargain and so on. I would like to just go out and look without pressure – not that I’ve ever done that, but I’ve been under less pressure before. I don’t love pressure but I know it makes diamonds and all that.
The whole process makes me kind of sleepy.

And it’s raining, which makes sleepy easy.

Grace without pressure. It’s relaxing and you’ll be in great company. See you there!

I love Maya Angelou. I’m glad she has the temerity to write, to be , to stand here, wherever she is, whoever she is.

A Brave and Startling Truth

Maya Angelou

Brene Brown

Freedom TO – live, grow, BE. Brene Brown is my hero of exposing the crusty, rugged, souls we inhabit despite our – my – attempts to hide in good deeds and great accomplishments. No matter how small is the deed, it shouldn’t go unpunished if it doesn’t include acknowledgement of how we got there – wherever “there” is.

I have loved hiding behind the Doer; the meditator, the Knower of All things, the Easy piece in the puzzle. It’s a hard won stance in that it came out of years of shame and struggle with my family of origin.

You never kow when you’ll wake up born into a scenario like the one in the novel you were just reading. I think we all have those revelations. It’s what we do after that that defines us. I love Paul Simon’s lyric – “breakdowns come and breakdowns go. It’s what you do with it, that’s what I want to know.” I’ve quoted that before, I will again. It’s important to know what you can do with “it.”

It’s important to know you don’t have to swallow it. That’s what I was good at. For a while I wore a button that said, “I don’t put up with put-downs.” I knew it wasn’t true. I did put up with them, I invited them. But I thought I had to look like I didn’t. Like I was cool.

When I was a teenager I did what I could to thumb my independence at any adult who was looking – not that many were. I managed to make myself pretty miserable to prove a point I didn’t know I wasn’t making.

I started writing. I studied with Kathleen Spivack. That was the beginning of freedom for me. Hearing her say, “milk it,” when someone in our writing group would come in sobbing over a hurt was the beginning of objectivity. The beginning of my own enjoyment of my pain – not in an S&M way, but the dawn of understanding. Slow dawn though it was, the light did keep coming and the experience allowed me to dive in to and explore my pain and passion, to relieve the “intolerable neural itch” that W.H. Auden talks about.

Some of my “scratches”(itchings) came out in photography when I met Paula – my muse, and subject beyond my imagination.

Don’t forget to thank your sense of shame and justice, it’s the root of all creation.

LOVE

Over the years I’ve contrived to sign a few pieces and I respond to my name when called – for the most part. But I’m not tied to identity – you can tell I’m not a marketer! I even have written articles on “branding,” but I don’t know much about it. I have more than two clients who are marketers whose businesses have taken off since I’ve been listening. I still don’t get it but I know how to lead into the next step. I guess that’s the way. The next step.

These guys are both still unsigned – but I respond when I hear my name called.

“Everything we do that’s important is the result of conflict. Not a conflict between us and the world–a conflict between us and ourselves.”

I feel that all the time. I put Guinevere’s photo up because she is my example of who isn’t conflicted. Today Paula and I are looking at houses. We hope someone will look at ours. We hope they will talk themselves into our house and we will talk ourselves into another house. It would be handy and scary if it all happened soon. But what do I want – I want to be like Guinnie. I want to accept the miracles I find, yeah,  I want to see the miracles in the first place.

My dogs practice what Godin calls “self-marketing.” He even goes so far as to say, “Successful people have discovered how to be better at self marketing.” I agree. When I align what’s in my best interest with what I want, I’m successful. And then I don’t care so much what someone thinks, I’ve done my self marketing. I know my audience.

Seth’s whole post is here:

Conflicted

Everything we do that’s important is the result of conflict. Not a conflict between us and the world–a conflict between us and ourselves.

We want to eat another dessert but we want to be healthy and skinny as well. Who is we? Who is the self in self control, and who is being controlled?

We want to stand up and make difference and we want to sit down and hide and be safe.

We want to help others and we want to keep more for ourselves.

It’s not a metaphor, it’s brain chemistry. We don’t have one mind, we have competing interests, all duking it out.

This conflict, the conflict between I and me, is at the heart of being human. One side sells the other. Like all kinds of marketing, it’s far more effective if you know your audience. You will do a better job of telling a story (to yourself) if you understand who you are marketing to. In this case, I is marketing to me (and vice versa). The marketing is going on in your head…

Successful people have discovered how to be better at self marketing.

Seth Godin

Nor would I. Or you, wherever you are. Transformation is a word we often use to mean big things but it happens every millisecond we are alive – and, continues after death. It’s one of the most normal of experiences. We don’t give it much thought – and the tulip could care less.

The tulip’s actions to growth can be captured step by step in slow-motion. What would your slow-motion movie show? The microcosm bit, not the trajectory of birth to death. The one where you make the decision to…..whatever your decision is. Can you catch it before you say the word you regret? Take the food you don’t want? The step which will not benefit you? What do you look like in that moment?

Every moment, minute, hour we have choices fly by us like bosons and neutrons, we have the chance to catch the flame of our attention, take action or reaction, stabilize or destabilize. The fuse, the fuel of our transformation is how well we know who we are and what we want – our passion, our reason for taking breath.