This week I posted a question on LinkedIn  “Do you Pay Attention to What Nature is Saying Around You?” to see who notices the clues about life that nature, albeit animals, fish, birds, plants, etc.” exhibits all around us (yes, even for you who live in the middle of a big city).  For those of us who live in the Southern States who are feeling the scorching heat this summer (day billion and five—okay 47? of heat above 100 in Texas) it is very apparent from plants to animals to fellow humans that we are all feeling the effects of the heat and drought.  The Cottonwood tree we love in our backyard is practically bald from shedding its leaves to conserve energy.  The birds all seem to get their frenzied feeding and visiting over in the cooler morning hours and take an extended siesta from about midday til just before sunset.

Meanwhile, I’ve seen some of our crazy brethren jogging in the midday heat as if it was nothing.  However, those of us who pay attention and listen to nature know that this heat and drought we’re having is worthy of our respect.

There are other, more subtle kinds of communication from nature that we can listen and look for as well.  I’ve noticed the Roadrunner family that lives in our “hood” has been more active than usual and have seen them running around all kinds of times during the day.  The last week or so they haven’t been as active but then the Cicadas have been loud and buzzing so maybe it’s dinner at your doorstep for the Roadrunners.  Last night while taking the dog for a walk around the block at about 8pm, I listened to the sounds of the Nighthawks flying overhead.   In Austin, it is pretty much guaranteed on a summer night that you will hear the call of the Nighthawk as it circles above whether you live out in the country or are walking under a tall light pole with lots of bugs flying around.  I’d always been aware of their particular “peeeent, peeent” call but had never heard the surprising sound they make when in their fly diving ritual dance until last night.  I remembered my mom and step-father sharing about the roaring sound they heard coming forth from a mating pair but was completely unprepared for what it sounds like in “real life”.  Although it was a familiar sound, it was so different from what I would normally associate with a bird that through the years I must have just been writing it off in my mind as some kind of a grumbling sound that went with a machine or a dog.  I’m glad I’d been paying attention to the rhythm of their diving dance and listening to their songs so that I could connect the dots.

Not sure what finally hearing the Nighthawk mating call means but it was fun to hear and it did make me grateful that at least some normalcy in the animal world continues in spite of the heat.

We have two little frogs who have been living around our home for a while now but one lives in the pond in the front of the house and the other one, if you can believe this, actually likes huddling up under the hot tub cover which has got to be hotter than hell.  That frog is pretty light colored while the other one tends towards green or a mottled brown depending on where he is perching.  There is a part of me that would like to bring them together; however, I have to trust that nature knows what she’s doing.  I mean wonder if they spoke a completely different language from each other?  Or what if they were each the arch enemy of the other?  I do keep my meddling ways out of their lives but I still can’t help myself from telling them about each other….just in case they understand me.

Getting back to center, getting back to being grounded and listening to nature.  Even if all that is possible for you to do where you are is look out at the clouds swirling above your head or watching what the ants are doing you will always benefit from listening to nature.

voices: Common Nighthawk

This past weekend I ventured outside in the 100+ degree heat (47 straight days!) to check the bird feeders outside of our bedroom windows and much to my surprise looked down amongst the ivy growing wild to find a very long snake skin which had recently been shed since the last time I checked the feeders in the morning.  It was a big one!  In fact, I was so impressed with the snake skin itself that I momentarily forgot that “said snake” could have been very nearby.    I took it as a “sign” from the powers that be that they were reminding me how our old selves can be shed and actually need to be shed so that the new selves/self can grow upwards and out.

A couple of week’s ago a publicist that I work with closely sent me a book to read called, “Shapeshifting Into Higher Consciousness” by Llyn Roberts. The tag line says, “Heal and Transform Yourself and Our World with Ancient Shamanic and Modern Methods.”  Whatever the word “shapeshifting” may conjure up in your mind, Llyn Roberts has a very respected academic background that not only includes her being a prominent teacher of healing and shamanism, but additionally she holds a master’s degree in Tibetan Buddhist and Western Psychology as well as having undergone extensive training with traditional Andean healers, and has been initiated into shamanic circles by Quechua peoples in South America, and in Siberia.  The list goes on and on so suffice it to say, she is someone that you can trust has done her homework and research.  I am thoroughly loving this book and highly recommend for you to read it as well.

Above the opening of Chapter One, Llyn has a quote by Joseph Campbell which says, “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.  The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.”

Today in our lives as humans, no matter what culture we come from, we are all feeling the effects of generations of choices which  have been made both good and bad.  For some of us who may be more sensitive than others, right now can feel overwhelming from many standpoints such as the heating up of the planet to the economy if you live in a place that is driven by their economy.  Llyn writes, “As the consequences of wreaking havoc with our host planet play themselves out they look dire.  It is at precisely this time that so many of us are searching for hope.   We are looking for a way out of this nightmare.  But balance will not restore overnight. Humanity has devoted centuries to cultivating societies that see themselves as separate from nature. The deeper solution demands that we live by higher values.  We must dive deeply to reshape the consciousness that got us here in the first place.  This is a journey to our higher human qualities that help us live from our hearts and minds combined. There is opportunity underlying these times of change, which indigenous cultures have long foreseen.”

I don’t know about you, but I sure felt relieved and hopeful after I read that paragraph.  And the timing of reading this paragraph along with my finding the snake skin felt like Mother Earth was tweeting me  that all of the emotional and intellectual storms that I’ve been feeling and we’ve all been going through lately are a reflection of where we are growing through to the next level.  Oddly enough, when I heard my favorite NPR newscaster telling us that the high in Austin was expected to rise to 105 today, I did not feel that usual sink of oppressive despair that I have felt for several weeks now.  I do believe that everything is moving towards our highest good.  When I can hold on to this hope, it somehow gives me room to continue growing and shedding my skin along the way.

Take a moment today to stop and reflect on the messages that Earth is sending you.  Even if you work on the 45th floor of a skyscraper in the middle of New York City, Mother Nature can reach you there as well.  Look for the clouds and birds and/or the glint of the sun off of the Hudson.  We are all related.

mitakue oyasin

Do you have a side to you that feels very up front and personal by how it constantly seems to be stepping in the way of your greatness?  Fantastic…no really, it’s a good thing that you are aware of that side of you because the flip side will be the side that can lead you to your greatness. For years I felt like I was stumbling around in the dark and that I kept bumping my toes up against the walls of my discontent.  If there was a side to me that could lead me to greatness, I sure couldn’t see it. I felt that if  you could see all the sides of me, I would look like one of those big plastic balls that babies play with that have all kinds of things circling inside……If I had sides, then surely they were all meshed together.

Upon exploring my behaviors, feelings and beliefs, I began to slowly realize that I had choices where before I believed I had none.  Gradually over time I began exploring further where my choices had led me and began to tip toe up to looking at the darker side of my being.  One of the many tools that I used in my explorations was the Enneagram.  A modern day teacher who brought the Enneagram to North America was “The Jesuit priest Robert Ochs who transmitted some of Naranjo’s interpretation to other Jesuit priests and seminarians around North America. They in turn made use of it for spiritual counseling and added their insights to the steadily growing and constantly changing core of material. The “Jesuit tradition” is thus an offshoot of Naranjo’s teaching, and both are offshoots of the original “Arica tradition” although they are both somewhat different from it.”

The Enneagram is not for everybody, but I found it useful for learning how to accept the part of me that is my “big secret” of how I showed up in my life sometimes when I let my ego take the lead.  When I was introduced to the Enneagram I was told that there were 9 personality types and to read through them.  More than likely, the personality type that I really felt uncomfortable with or  I did not like very much–was probably my type.  Yuck.  But, it’s a great way to learn to accept ourselves and then to appreciate that part of who we are so that we can see the gifts on the other side.  Those gifts when shown under the light, of Divine Guidance/The Universe/The Force whatever you feel comfortable calling that thing that is bigger than us that works the Universe, are what can lead us to greatness.

For myself, I’m grateful for every single person and event that has come into my life because I can use all the knowing that I have received and transformed through learning and awareness to help other people.  If you had told me so long ago that someday I’d be writing all about how grateful I was to be able to give back, I would have thought that surely you were lying.  Because back then, I felt like I was at such a deficit that I had nothing to give much less give back.  Today it is different for me in that I am experiencing what all those people have been talking about through the centuries in regards to being of service.  For me, that is where my greatness lays. My natural personality is one of a helper and mediator but taken to the dark edges of the soul I become just as hairless and obsessive about “my lovely” as Gollum. Better to work through my obsequious fear so that I can give untethered service.

Where will your flip side lead you?

One of my favorite affirmation posts that I receive every morning is from “The Universe” created by Mike Dooley. The standard line that is at the bottom of every post is “thoughts become things…choose the good ones.”  For some of us, choosing the good thoughts are easier said than done.  Some of us may have a brain that is naturally drawn to the shadier aspects of life.  Some of us have been majorly influenced by the environment that we grew up in and/or are living in now.  Still others may have gotten into the habit of looking at life through the pessimist’s lenses for so long that changing our ways from pessimistic to optimistic is too uncomfortable to contemplate much less choose!

What I’ve learned along the way in life from being someone who can either be way over in Valhalla  land in terms of how I consider life or way down inside the bottom of a dark well is that you can choose to get help to reconfigure your receptors. Aha!! You mean I don’t have to do it alone?!   No you don’t!  I’ll never forget the first time I heard my brain communicate an understanding to me about what I was going through in a compassionate way….it felt like I could almost feel the dopamine rising.  Slowly but surely after weeks and weeks of therapy, I was learning how to replace the negative voices in my head with the positive, soothing voice of my therapist.  From this experience I learned that those positive and loving voices certainly felt much better than what I had stuffed my brain full of over the years.  I wanted more of that good time feeling!

From that point on I was drawn to people, words, art, beliefs and science that expressed the positive aspects of life.  I believed that settling into the negative thoughts about myself, other people and life had become such a natural way for me that I knew that I would have to apply effort to choose to seek out positivity.  Over time, choosing the good thoughts has become easier but I apply effort every day to finding support systems through friends, family, affirmations and people I follow that can help pick me up if I stumble.  One of my favorite blogs to read is written by a friend, Mitch Ditkoff, who is the Founder of a company called “Idea Champions” Who writes a blog called, “The Heart of Innovation” .  What I enjoy about Mitch besides his wisdom and ideas is the humor and positivity that is a consistent thread of all his posts.  Surely someone who has seen and continues to see as much of life as Mitch does with the Fortune 1000 companies that he works with, etc. has every reason in the world to have perhaps at least one eye that is jaundiced, but I have yet to experience that from him (here’s an interview with Mitch on my BlogTalkRadio/Hope42Day show).

Choosing good thoughts over bad ones takes about as much effort over time as reaching for a carrot instead of a cookie.  Over time you’ll increase that muscle that chooses good thoughts in your brain from being an atrophied little semi colon gasping for breath against the side of your brain wall to a hearty well-developed cushion that will expand as needed to buffer and bounce away any negative thoughts that threatens to stop you in your tracks from moving forward in your life.

Start now! What good thoughts will you choose to have?

Do you have a loved one in a “skilled nursing facility” or perhaps you may be looking down the end of the road  towards such a place for yourself? Well then you know the “dirty little secret at the end of the road” that most of us don’t talk about and if we do talk about it, the rest of us don’t listen.  It’s just not a very pretty scenario.  And for those of us who have grown up in the U.S., we don’t like to look at many things that aren’t pretty.

Let me be the next one in line to say that a.) I’m going to keep myself very healthy physically, emotionally, spiritually and financially so that I don’t have to depend on outside institutions to take care of me and b.) I’m a huge crusader for creating a different way of aging and living such as small 5-10 home communities with a main dining, living and library room for all to share as well as a separate quarter for nurses and doctors.  I have just enough entrepreneurial blood in me to know that this is one of the next big waves to create and there is a lot of opportunity out there but only have enough energy to create it with friends for ourselves and encourage it to be copied.

Helping a good friend to enter a senior skilled nursing facility this week definitely triggered all my flight or fight responses. She is not happy there, is miserable and wants out. I “knew” from friends and family that have shared such experiences with me in the past that this kind of reaction is par for the course, but it’s one thing to “know” and an entirely other thing to experience it.  Especially when you’re like me and just want everyone to be happy.  I will say that when we went out to the smoking area so that she could enjoy her two cigarettes for the hour (don’t ask…) I met two pretty cool smokers , both about my friend’s age, who were nice and full of information.  My thoughts were confirmed that if anyone could figure out a way around the system, the smokers would.  And they had!  These people seemed happy and had both been at this particular home for about a year.

I know it must be scary to lose the power over yourself physically, mentally and financially by degrees and then to find yourself with what worldly goods you could fit, in a room about as small as the inside of a small suitcase.  Trust me, it’s small but at least it’s private.  I think this is only one way that many end our days because I know others who have created pathways for their end days that fit with who they are and what they are and it is because they were willing to look at the hard truths of life.  Still, it’s one of those dirty little secrets that as a society, especially an American society, we seem to sweep under the rug and not talk about very much.  Now that more and more Boomers are reaching the spot in our lives that we have to pay attention to such things, maybe more voice and impact can be given to how we want to handle the end for ourselves and how we can create a plan.

I, for one, know that I sure want to be in control of the kind of environment and people I surround myself with and enjoy in the twilight years of my life, what about you?

Have you ever found yourself about ready to jump off the proverbial “cliff” complete with your Avenger cape (mine’s red) wafting out from behind you as you peer out from behind your black mask ready to tackle all the problems of someone you care about?  Actually, I may have several sets of capes and masks with various designs to complement the mood of whatever occasion I feel that I must “save”.

I’ve been blogging lately about a good friend of mine who entered hospice care a week ago and thought I was doing pretty well in terms of keeping a good balance between being there for her and being there for me and my life.  And if you compared me to the person I was several years ago and how I would have reacted to this situation with who I am today then you could say that I have been doing a good job.  With that said  however, I am so grateful that I have friends who have known me for awhile who can be there for me and help me to see that I’m not only wearing a rather dashing cape and mask but that I’ve even added a shiny new pair of boots to my clever ensemble!  One friend gently reminded me that there is a whole  hospice (Christopher House in Austin ROCKS!) team who can help my friend and her sons figure out which skilled nursing center that is best for her to relocate to and what “stuff” she wants to take with her as well as which items she wants packed up and stored.  It is more important for me to be there for her as she moves through this stage of her life than for me to get in there and get BUSY (so that really, I don’t have to feel what is going on).    These are precious times that I’ve been given the opportunity to share with my friend and her family and what I really want is to be able to just “be” there with my friend and enjoy  the time we have together.

During our visit today, I wheeled my friend out on to her patio for a cigarette (hey, what are you going to say to someone dying of cancer, “no you can’t smoke because….?!??”) and we sat there studying the mural that had been painted on the wall in front of her room (she’s an artist so I always enjoy hearing her take on things.)  We were trying to place the landscape that had been painted.  She thought it looked like a scene out of West Texas showing the rolling hills and mountains (yep, we have mountains in Texas too!).  There weren’t very many trees painted, but my friend did comment about the few sets of Poplar trees by saying, ‘have you ever noticed that they tend to plant Poplar trees by cemeteries” and I said that I had but I’d also noticed that for some reason people in out of way places, especially those without a whole lot of trees seemed to like line their driveways with Poplar trees from the entrance all the way to their home.  We sat there as she smoked another cigarette and I took another deep breath in appreciation of our friendship and then something on the ground below the mural caught my eye.  It was half of a shell of a little bird’s egg.  It wasn’t quite white but it wasn’t quite any other color I could identify either plus it had strickles (Lynn word meaning a smattering) of brown lines running all over it like little mountain streams.  I picked it up for us to examine.

I’m so glad I that I’d left my cape and mask at home so that I could just hang out with my friend and enjoy our time together instead of worry-warting about what next thing I needed to get done!

Sometimes the best kind of rescuing we can do for another person is just to show up and just “be”.    Where can you just “be” in your life today?

Turns out there is just a whole lot about dying and living that most of us don’t  learn about in most academic settings.  We tend to learn about the hearty rich part of life and death through our own personal experiences.  One of the best things we can do for each other is to share those kind of experiences. Of course, there is no substitution for the real thing but at least we can create a safe place to explore these mortal topics.

I’ve been blessed with three friends who have allowed me to support them as their days came to an end.  I had never had this experience with my family (thank goodness) partly because everyone is so dispersed that sheer geography gets in the way and partly because we must all be really really lucky!  I’ve written about these friends over the years because it seems that I am still unwrapping gifts and lessons from my time with them.  One of the things I’ve learned about being with someone who is dying, at least as far as pertains to these friends, is to accept that you cannot “fix” them.  That they are going to die and to give them a safe harbor to park their boat and talk about their feelings and thoughts as they ready for their journey home.  It’s such a sacred time right on the edge of this world and the next.  I wonder if this is what babies are trying to tell us about their experience of being born only they don’t have our words yet?

I’m grateful that I’ve cleared away enough of my own inner garbage that I can be there with my friend during this time.  Yesterday during our visitr, her pain level was at about a “6″ (1-10) but even more disconcerting was her bi-polar and depression medication not working very well so she was feeling very fragile and very scared.  I’m grateful that we’ve known each other a long time and had talked each other off of many cliffs, so I knew how to talk her down off of this one.  She was worried and sad that she may have offended one of the older CNA’s when she was talking about her son and made a disparaging remark about his confusion and politics which my friend though offended the CNA.  After years of working the 122-steps of AA with my friend, I was able to acknowledge how she felt and that she wanted to make amends where she had done wrong but I was also able to tell her that I was pretty sure that anyone who worked  in this particular hospice setting  that she was in  had probably heard just about everything and was not bothered by it….but even if he was, right now my friend needed to focus on herself and love herself.  Feeling crazy because of the mental meds being off and also being in pain and also in the process of accepting that you’re dying is probably not the best time to rake yourself over the coals because you “may” have said something that offended someone else.  At least it seemed so in my mind.

Some people have asked me how I have been able to show up for this friend day after day, month after month and of course you know I respond with “how can I not?” But even more is that I believe I have been graced with the desire help her. It’s as if there are hundreds of angels on the other side of this earthly veil who are just waiting for us to ask them for help and for us to be willing to be used by them in the process.  Sometimes I feel like I am floating through experiences with the ability to observe what I am going through and wonder how it is happening so smoothly when there really is a big huge chicken s&*t inside  of me who has regularly run away from all kinds of commitments and intimacies in my life.  On the way home from our visit yesterday I put on Zero 7 and cried all the way home.  Cried that my friend is having a tough time right now, cried because I will miss her but also cried because of the searing beauty of life in these moments when we’re asked to expand our hearts.

What we usually don’t learn about the dying process is the outline of love that is filled in by living.

Most of us have heard the reminder about “living in the now” and that the only thing we can really count on is the present moment.  Turns out, these words of wisdom as well as many similar quips are right on.  There is something about being in the presence of a loved one who is dying that really opens up the present of life for me.  Not to sound like “Harold or Maude“  but just to make note of how the shadowy side of life, which is death, certainly has its moments as well.

A very good friend of mine who I’ve known since I was in my early twenties entered hospice care yesterday.  Thank goodness for Hospice and the caregivers who give their time and love to those who have chosen to end their journey of life this way.  This friend of mine has seen me through thick and thin.  From being an absolutely crazy, out of control co-dependent through getting sober off of many things that I used to ingest to help me to get out of all the mounting moments of pain.  When I went to visit my friend this evening, I felt time moving like thick molasses.  She had asked me to grab a few things from her apartment to bring with me which included her nail polish remover. She has always had incredibly beautiful long nails.  I sat there for the first half hour taking the old nail polish off of her nails as we talked about the present, the past and the future.  Just like in meditation, somehow my usual fast moving thoughts had slowed down enough so that I could be fully in the present.  She cried, I cried. We laughed.  When I told her that during my meditation yesterday I just “knew” that she had made this decision, she asked me why I hadn’t told her that she was going down the shoots.  I said, “you are a wonderful, loving lady who is a dear, dear friend but you’re also hard headed as hell and so you had to get here on your own sweet time” and we both laughed and then cried.

She talked about this last year of battling her Lupus and Cancer and how it had felt like she was trying to put round pegs into square holes.  I told her she’d put up quite a good fight.  And reminded her about how many people she has touched and continues to touch.  In fact, a couple of weeks ago she had struck up a conversation with the guy who had delivered flowers to her hospital room and learned that he had her deceased husband’s same first and last name.  They bonded over books very quickly and two week’s later he had chocolate and a teddy bear delivered to her room at the rehab center.  I reminded her about how precious each of these living moments are that we are in now…that these count too, that little miracles continue to pop up all the time if we just notice them.  Like the baby green frog who I startled awake from his safe sleeping post on our coiled up hose the other day. He had been so asleep that I was able to pick him up and spontaneously kiss him on the head.  I put him in the fish pond on top of a lily pad. My friend loved that story. She agreed with me about the precious moments. Like when her major care giver doctor who had been seeing her through chemo had the tough conversation with her about the aggressive cancer, her weak physical condition and helped  her arrive at the decision to enter hospice care.  He hugged her and then cried as he was leaving her room.  She also said after a very tough day of people coming in and out of her room as she readied herself to being moved to hospice she looked up to see the entire Occupational Therapy department who had helped her over the months and years standing in her room to wish her good bye.

Death does suck, don’t get me wrong but I believe that when life gives you a whole cart of manure, there’s got to be a pony in there somewhere.  Love your life’s precious moments. Slow down and let it in.

What? Money isn’t everything?!?  “How could you say that?!”, you may be thinking. But it’s true, Money is not everything. In fact it’s really usually only some kind of metal, fabric or paper (which is certainly not “everything”)!

Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of books have been written about what money is and in my not so humble opinion, not enough has been written about what money is not.

In all the cultures who use money, the metal, fabric or paper is an agreed upon symbol for mutual exchange.  We use it to communicate an agreed upon thought such as you make me this and then I pay you what you and  I feel it is worth with our agreed upon symbol.  Isn’t it interesting how much time most of us spend on wanting to and/or acquiring money and how little time we spend on the actual communication and cultivation of relationships with other people? Money is a symbol used for communication but it is not actual communication.

Before I list the top ten things that money is not, please know that I am acutely aware that for many of us we have a lot of needs (much less wants) that (in our cultures at least) cannot be met without money.  I know that I need a roof over my head, food in my belly and clothes on my back just like you do, so maybe this top ten list will help you to put your idea of what money is in your life back into its rightful place in balance with everything that is available to you that won’t cost you a cent:

1.) Money is not the warm feeling you get when someone is unexpectedly kind to you.

2.) Money can’t buy you that look that your loved one/dog/cat/horse,bird gives you straight into your eyes that let’s you know you are loved and respected.

3.) All the money in the world won’t buy you true friendship with someone who would give you the shirt off their backs if you needed it and really be happy to do so.

4.) Money won’t fill that empty hole in your gut that only spiritual and emotional healing and time can fill.

5.) Money will not make you important.  Look at Bernie Madoff, how important is he now?

6.) Money won’t buy you the experience of laughing so hard with someone you care about that you run out of breath.

7.) Money will not make you a better person.  You can be a good person and do really nice things with money for others but that doesn’t mean you’re better.

8.) Money is not the answer to all your problems.  If you have a problem right now that you believe money would get rid of, then think again…you may be able to come up with a creative solution to help you get your problem(s) cared for in another way.

9.) Money is not approval.  If you have lot’s of money it does not mean that the world approves of you and if you have no money it does not mean that the world disapproves of you—money is a material thing—it does not have feelings.

10.) Money is not love. Money is not love.  Money is not love.  Yes, if you are a loving person with money you can buy many loving things with money but the actual money itself is not love.  Money is a material thing-it does not have feelings.