Smiling in Public

It's all your fault

2010-06-23T19:53:00.000-05:00

This has been posted before but I want to cover this in a little more detail.

At some point in my life - not too long ago, I realized that thoughts create things. I realized that I think - therefore I am, and not the other way around. I realized that there is great power in my perception. I realized that what I say matters less than what I believe, that my thoughts paint the detail in my own scenery.

I realized that I was responsible for my own joy. I realized that it is all my fault.

Responsible. You too are responsible for your own joy.

This... this is a tough little pill isn't it? As my dear friend says "we like to blame others because it makes us feel good." And it does doesn't it?    And we don't always necessarily blame other people. Sometimes we blame circumstances, events, situations etc.

We are conditioned this way from when we are young. We hear about how things are societies fault, the economy's fault, the politicians fault.   As children we watch adults blame each other and then divert blame from us - their children. It's the teachers fault, the classmates fault, the fault of the creepy friends we hang out with. Wars...we blame the rich, the governments, the religions. We fail to recognize our own place in the human race that perpetuates this wheel. We learn to shift blame.

And so on it goes and the blame gets shifted - most of the time without us even realizing it - all of our lives. We take responsibility for very little. So little in fact that when we do we feel very proud of ourselves, like it's a big event "I owned up to that!"....because we know it happens so infrequently.

Do we realize what we are doing? We are shifting control.

We are willingly giving up control of our lives to circumstances and other people.   We are saying "this is out of my hands, it's not my fault, I have no control."

I have a message for you. It's one that I received, and when I accepted it - my life changed in monumentally profound ways. Are you listening?

It's all your fault.

Right about now your mind is automatically trying to formulate about a dozen or so retorts - attempting to protect itself from an idea that appears to be an attack - and you are thinking of all the things you can tell me (even if only in your own mind) to prove that things weren't your fault.

Stop.

It is your fault. Everything. Some how, in some way, an action was taken and a decision was made that brought about the circumstances that you experience. It's your fault.

Here's the good news.   It's your fault.

You control your thoughts - your thoughts create your world.

Once you accept this most crucial principle of life - it's the most remarkably empowering event you will ever experience.   You control you.

You are responsible for your own Joy. Nobody is here to make you happy honey.   Only you can do that.

You are a remarkable work of art, a miraculous creation of divinity - and as such, you are utter and complete control of your joy during this experience we call life.

Think about that. Let it resonate.

There's more to this - far more... but for now, just chew on that first bite. Say to yourself, "It's all my fault". Think of all the great and wonderful things in your life then say again "It's all my fault." Say "I am awesome, and it's all my fault!" Because it's true.

Expect more on this topic later.   But for now, keep in mind that I am speaking live in Tulsa this coming Saturday and yes - the topic of responsibility will be mentioned :)   You can also expect upcoming seminars covering Responsibility and Control in full detail. This is an experience that will completely change your world.

Stay tuned my friends...

With love and appreciation...

xo

In God's image

2010-06-08T07:08:00.003-05:00

A thought to ponder...

We are made of energy. Our physical selves are literally a collection of atoms. Those atoms are energy atoms. Everything, everything that exists - at its basic level - is a collection of atoms of energy, in its own individual pattern.

Every physical thing - energy. But also every non-'material' thing. A sound wave is energy. A light beam is energy. A thought is a vibration of energy.

Yes your THOUGHT is a vibration of energy.

We were made in God's image.

Perhaps this does not, after all, have anything whatsoever to do with a physical image. Perhaps it does not mean the "human" image.

God is energy. God is pure energy. God is THE pure energy. We are energy and God is energy. Thus we were indeed created in God's image.

Energy cannot actually be 'created' nor can it be destroyed. It simply changes form. God always existed. We always existed. Our spirit is in essence, our energy. Collectively we are all truly one in the same, in perfect commune with God. God is not above, God is not beyond, God is what we are.

God is what we are.

"The Kingdom of God is in you"

Think on this, let it resonate and allow the concept to penetrate beyond your five senses to that core place in your being where you truly engage in enlightenment.

Understand the profound meaning in this.

Are you in the world, or is the world in YOU?

Be Creative!

Energy: The foundation of All there is...

2010-06-07T07:32:00.002-05:00

Creating Bliss Radio

Featuring: Smiling In Public's own Laurette Lynn

and Mellisa of Shambalakids.com

The most recent show:

(air date 6/7)

Energy: The creative source of all there is and the foundation

of the life you wish to create for yourself

Listen now!

To hear past shows see the widget to the left of this screen or visit:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/creatingblissradio

Audacity

2010-06-01T08:18:00.002-05:00

x

au·dac·i·ty (noun)

-The quality or state of being audacious
-Fearless daring
-Intrepid boldness
-Arrogant disregard of normal restraints

"It takes audacity to Smile in Public"

Do you have the audacity

to be happy?

Enjoy the ride.

2010-05-31T00:24:00.001-05:00

In the city where I live there is a particular road I like to drive, even though it takes much longer than taking the highway. I like the view. While it's true there are many esthetically pleasing drives here (I live in a pretty city) I like this one in particular. Starting from the very west side of town, the road stretches out in a straight path, over gentle rolling hills before me and I can see into the distance for miles and miles on end. As the car hits the crest of each hill, I can see so far into the distance that the horizon is but a blur and the road seems infinite.

On a clear day, when the clouds are huge and white and the greens of the summer trees contrast sharply against the deep blue sky - that view, to me - is utterly spectacular!

I wonder sometimes if the other drivers even notice it. Do they realize what amazing view lay before their eyes? Or are they too preoccupied with making the next green light, hurrying to the supermarket, getting to the office on time and etcetera... all the things that distract us from seeing what lay before us, keep us distracted from our destination, and blind us from the beauty of the ride.

And then I thought "What does lay before me?" Looking at the road, it appears to just keep going and going. It is, in my perspective - limitless. It occurred to me, that as I drive, I look out into the far distance of this path that stretches out in front of me, and not for one second do I ever doubt that I will reach my destination.

I drive along, fully and completely expecting to get where I intend to go. I do not anticipate it with any amount of anxiety. I do not "hope" I will get there. I don't really ponder on it at all, as a matter of fact! I simply drive. I move forward and just casually and very completely, expect to get there.

Every now and then I encounter a red light and I have to stop. I don't give up, turn around and go home. I know the light will change and I'll begin to move forward again; and it does and so I do.

My destination is in the distance. Most of the time it's not even on that road, so I can't see it. But I know it's there. Even if I've never been there before, I know it's there and I trust with absolute certainty that I will get there.

The road is long, but it's not daunting, rather it is visually spectacular and great fun to travel!

I can't see my goal with my eyes, but I see it with my spirit and I know it's there, and I know I'll get there. I know that the road is long and far into the distance. But it's a beautiful road and an exciting journey. I know there will be stops, but if I am patient, they will relent and I will move forward. I will get there. And once I do, there will be someplace else to get to...and on another beautiful road I will drive...

And that pretty much sums it up folks.

Trust. Appreciate the beauty in the journey. Move forward. Enjoy the ride.

Pray

2010-05-27T07:43:00.002-05:00

x

It's important to pray. But what is prayer?

When we hear the word, we most often associate it with religion. Many even associate it with a particular religion. But we know that people from all different religions and spiritual beliefs pray. The words vary, the style varies and even to whom they pray varies. But every single day, many many many of us, pray.

What do we do when we pray? Are we asking for something? Praising a deity? Thanking a deity? All of the above? Are we chanting a pre-written script or are we speaking from the heart? Are we using words at all or are we visualizing? Perhaps we are in deep meditation and our mind is clear of words and visuals and we are trying to accomplish that place of pure silence of spirit. Are we channeling or simply communicating with whatever it is we believe God to be? And if your idea of God is correct, and mine is not, then are my prayers unheard? Are any prayers "heard"?

It's all that and more, but at the same time, that's not it at all. If you are not a "religious person" should you pray? Absolutely! In fact, perhaps that is the best way to pray - without the confines and boxed walls of religious dogma.

Prayer is communication indeed. And it does not matter what your specific beliefs are, as long as you truly and honest believe in your prayer. THAT, my friends is the key.

When we truly pray - we are offering a vibrational thought (even if it's not in words) out to the energy of the universe. We are connecting to the pulse, the energy, God with a strong vibration of desire, gratitude, need etc. And manifesting a powerful vibrational ribbon that bonds us to this force. It is the force of the universe, the pulse of creation, the vibration that is all that is - God. When we engage in real, true prayer, we are 'plugging in' so-to-speak to the divinity that is the essence of everything that exists.

We are not reaching or attempting to communicate with something "out there". No, we are focusing on and creating a stronger pulse with what is "in there". It's IN you. It's around you. It's part of you and you are part of it. You the spiritual extension of God and God is an extension of your soul. My soul, everyone's soul.

Many of us begin to pray (if we do at all) and in the back corner of our mind we are thinking "I hope this works....what am I doing? am I talking to myself? Is anyone out there? Is this pointless? Oh god I hope you are listening, I hope this works" But that's not praying folks. That's just going through the motions of something you were taught to do at some point in your life. You are essentially offering a vibration of doubt or desperation (or both) into the universe, and so nothing more than doubt or desperation will manifest as a result.

When you pray - PRAY. Embrace the connection that you know you feel deep within your soul. Focus not on your words, focus not on a particular deity, focus on your spirit and that pure, unmistakable energetic connection to the vibrational pulse that bonds us all together and in the source of life that is - God.

Many of us concentrate on our physical positioning, the way we hold our hands, where we are in the room, the words we use, the tone we use... and whatever makes you comfortable is fine... but what matters more than anything else is that you absolutely and undeniably believe in the thought you are offering to the universe.

Because if you do - believe it thoroughly - remarkable things happen and it does not matter whatsoever from which religious view you take. I will go so far as to say perhaps try stepping away from the religious rules of prayer and simply allow yourself to truly feel your connection. Then let your spirit send the pulse of desire, without your logical words interfering.

You do not have to be religious to pray.

Just - Pray.

x

On the Air!

2010-05-24T09:00:00.000-05:00

Within the scope of Smiling In Public, Audacious Happiness and in addition to Laurettelynn.com I've recently partnered with Mellisa from Shambalakids.com on a live radio broadcast project, Creating Bliss Radio.

This morning we broadcast our first show: "An Introduction to Creating Bliss"
Call it a "trial run" :) We're pretty happy with the direction in which it is going and hope that you will join us in the future for philosophizing joy and discussion!

You can listen to the recording here (or via the player on the left in this page)

Information on upcoming shows and theme's will be posted soon!

Thanks for reading, supporting, listening and mostly for Smiling In Public!

Two

2010-05-21T07:15:00.000-05:00

"There are only two emotions, Love and Pain. These drive absolutely every physical thing we ever do and every decision we make. The desire for love and the fear of pain. We are either trying to experience love or avoid pain. Once we realize this and accept it, we are almost instantly transformed." --LL

Reach

2010-05-17T08:16:00.001-05:00

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How far can you reach? For the stars? "Reach for the Stars".... it's a common and sort of cliche phrase that we are all familiar with. But do you? Reach for the stars that is?

Sometimes, when we think of our goals, we actually talk ourselves out of reaching them. Here is what happens...

We have a desire.
We visualize a goal.
We feel happy.
Then - something happens. A result of conditioning from what appears to be a physical life with boxed limitations perhaps - stops us in our mental tracks.
A voice creeps in and says things like "Are you crazy? You can't do that! You can't have that! Where are you gonna get the money for that? How are you gonna find the time to do that? That's not for you! You weren't born into it. Just go to work and stop being a fool!"

And how often have we complied?   It's happened to all of us. We reach high at first, and then we get nervous, thinking that it's too high, too far, it's unreachable, illogical, how could it possibly happen? We're just kidding ourselves...
So we adjust our reach, lower the bar, lower the standards... we make our goal more "reasonable" and easier to attain.

Then, we spend a whole lot of time "planning" on how to get there. We make a list, we think about all the logistics, we write down ideas.... and on and on... We spend a whole lot of energy 'planning' and very little 'doing'.    We spend a lot of time revving the engine in Neutral and not so much with our foot on the accelerator in Drive.

We've all been there.... but now that we realize it - we can change it.

I was recently watching American Idol (pause briefly for you to mentally make fun of me..... and.... now back to the point...)

At the time I'm referring to, there were four contestants remaining.
One of them was telling the audience how he had set himself a goal to make it to the top three. He wanted to be in the top three.
Okay. Well the first thought in my mind was "top three? that's your goal? why not the top ONE? why not have the goal to WIN?"

Here's why - because he did not actually believe he could win.   At some point he thought about it, and then he talked himself out of it, no doubt heeding to the voice that was saying "are you nuts? you're not good enough!" So he reeled it in and adjusted his goal to 'atleast' getting into the top three.

You may be wondering if he made it to the top three "at least"? (unless you watch the show, then you know)

Well, he did not.   He was voted out that week.   Sad? Maybe. But he did it to himself.   Now, in my opinion, based on raw vocal talent I do not think he was better than the other contestants, but (and anyone who has watched this show knows this) it's not about that.   For this contest, another contest or anything at all in life.   It's not about the physical logistics of it.    He simply did not believe that it was possible. He hoped that it was possible, he wanted it to be possible... but he did not simply and easily expect it to happen.

You have to believe it so thoroughly that you expect it. Just like you expect the water to run when you turn on the faucet. You don't hope the water will run, you don't have positive thoughts about the water running... you just simply and very casually fully expect the water to run.

Maybe your thinking... "well this is bigger than water running from the faucet".   Is it?
No, my friends, it's not.   The grandiosity of any situation is entirely in our perspective and up to us.   The energy that flows through the universe knows nothing about size or complexity of goals.   Flipping a switch or winning the marathon takes the exact same "amount" of belief in yourself.

The difference is - thanks to our conditioning in what appears to be a boxed world - we ourselves struggle to truly believe what will be. But we do not live in a boxed world. The box is self-inflicted.

Can you get there?

If only we had the faith of a mustard seed - we could move mountains! Some of us reach to move the mountain, some of us reach for stone because that is easier for us to try to believe. What is your mountain?

How far is your reach?

Where do you want to be?

xoxo

I've got some audacity!

2010-05-03T08:43:00.002-05:00

What is Laurettelynn.com?

Before you check it out,

Listen to what I'm about to tell you...

A great deal has happened throughout my life. I think that statement is true for all of us, but of course I can't speak for anyone else... or can I? Speak, that is... ? Yes, as a matter of fact, I can!

Let me explain...

Without going into a super long story, I will simply say that my life is fantastic! My family and I are thriving and enjoying happiness and success and wealth is all areas of our lives...financial, emotional, physical etc. So what of it? Am I bragging? Well no, not really despite the sound of this so far. My point is this: We got what we wanted. More specifically *I* got what I desired from this life. And what's more, I continue to get everything I need and desire in this life. How? well in simple form it comes down to this "Ask and ye shall receive". It's that simple and yet there is more to it than that - it's simple but it's deeper. Do you want to know how you can experience this too? You do? Good! Because I intend to tell you!

It's ordinary... but it's extrodinary. And this brings me to the main point...

How can we all experience this? How can everyone (YOU) experience this... this audacity of joy?? How can I share this with everyone? Those are the questions I began asked myself.

Around the time of my birthday last year I experienced a significant emotional and mental shift. This shift was deep and private and only felt by me - but it was quite the profound earthquake and while the vibration was on the inside ended up altering my outside landscape in more ways than one.

Something more was happening. I was ready to share an imporant and significant message with the world. The message was about finding the audacity to be truly, deeply and profoundly happy. It wasn't some paperback "positive thinking" manuscript - it was more than that. I knew it, I experienced it and I wanted everyone else to know it too.

For a while I felt as if I were standing on the event horizon of...something. It was just there and yet it wasn't undulating completely. This blog was a start and it gave way to me intending to write a book. It seemed like the most obvious path for me. I know how to write, I am fairly good at it - and what better way to organize my experience into words to share it with those who desire to hear it?

And so I have this blog, which I enjoy (and hope you do as well) ...and a very disorganized and sloppy manuscript.. but that wasn't it...there was something more I needed to do. The message was there inside me - but it wasn't translating with the intensity that it should considering the magnitude of it.

I reflected on it. Eventually, the image on the horizon sharpened and became very clear. Still though, my human apprehension kept me standing still. Then, one day over a casual coffee and fudge brownie I mentioned all this to my best friend. So in her certain and nonchalant way she said to me "You already know it, Laurette" I nodded but asked her to tell me anyway. She shrugged and said, "You have something to important to share - share it. And I don't mean write a book. Forget the book. It's not meant for the written word. Get up and say it." Of course she was right. The universe, the great energy of God and all that is - was practically screaming this at me. Now it was simply verbalized so that my human ears can confirm it.

So, armed with a lifetime of lessons, several years of significantly profound positive change experience and understanding, a strong and well researched understanding of spirituality, religion and philosophy, and my own proof-positive evidence of it all - I write to you today to announce that God Spoke and I listened.

I learned how to have the audacity to be happy - and I have now acquired the audicaity to share it with YOU!

Smiling In Public is officially going "Live" and will manifest in the 'real world' outside of this cyber container. I have decided to add my public speaking experience to everything I've learned to 'stand up and say it'....for everyone!

The messasge is for you.
It is for all of you who are ready to listen
All of you who are ready to hear it
All of you who are ready to change
All of you who are standing on the preicipus of that unclear something and are ready for the image to sharpen
All of you who can feel yourselves on the brink of something spectacular!
All of you who desire to find the audicaty to be deeply and profoundly - happy.
I've discovered the audacity folks, and I want to share it with you. And now it's time to bring it live!

Stay tuned and discover with me, the joy of Smiling In Public!

And yes, it does indeed take audacity for anyone to do this. I've got it. Do you? Do you have the audacity to be happy?

A series of seminars are planned for this coming summer and fall! If you are local, you are invited! If not, look forward to DVD ;)

Find out the rest at www.Laurettelynn.com

When God Speaks

2010-04-25T08:12:00.004-05:00

xoxo

Every so often in our lives, we hear God.... the spirit of the universe.... the source of all energy.... speak.

We receive an impression on our heart, on our soul.
We get a feeling.
We receive divine inspiration.
We are struck by our muse.
We felt lead.

Whatever we call it, it's the same thing. Something happens. An urgency develops within us to do something. We become motivated to change, act, speak etc.

Sometimes we heed. We pay attention and silence the noise, tune in the channel and let the images and sounds sharpen so that the clarity of the message is unmistakable.

Sometimes we don't. We shake it off. We ignore it. We think it's absurd, just a dumb fleeting though. "I could never do that!" We tell ourselves. And we let the single-dimension illusion of daily life guide us with mundane logic and stale ritual.

In either case - we know what to do. But do we do it? Do we have the audacity to step outside our lines? Reach outside our box? Grasp something new and exciting? Do we listen to that divine force of energy that drives us? Do we have the courage to change our direction? Or do we opt for the false comfort in the already familiar?

It has happened to you. It happens to all of us. Did you heed? Did you have the audacity?

Well, the good news is that it's not just a once in a lifetime. It will happen again. And when it does, what will you do?

Me? Sometimes I ignored it. Lately I have listened. And I can tell you that since I have learned to trust in the divine energy and trust in the intelligence of the universe and trust in God... my life is phenomenal! It's ALWAYS right - one hundred percent of the time...there simply is no wrong.

When God speaks, it is always a good thing, my friends, so listen.... and have the audacity to get happy.

My guess is that the muse has struck you recently. What have you done with it?

xoxo

Political Anger

2010-04-19T15:55:00.002-05:00

I was having a conversation recently about the weight of my political activism and how it has become less lofty in my recent months. For those of you who may not know, I have been for some time very active in politics and would engage in very public ways. My views are fairly strong (as ones views always should be) and I had been very vocal about it for a long time. Something happened sometime last year that seriously made me rethink my current route in life. I remain very socially and politically aware and that awareness is weaved into the actions I take and decisions I make on a daily basis, but the days of waving my fist in the air and angrily yelling at the "other side" are falling behind me as I try to find a balanced point on which to stand. A perch from which to display to the world the joys of being aware, being responsible AND yet remaining spiritually balanced.

I mentioned the fact that going down that road seemed to have me in this place where I put out a great deal of angry energy and thus got back a great deal of angry energy - often slapped right back at me HARD. I said "It just seemed to make me so angry all the time." Of course when one looks at the political situation the world is in, it's easy to get very angry, but to stay there isn't helpful to anyone.

Below, I have pasted for you my friends response. I was so inspired by what she said, that I felt compelled to share it with you all. I hope it reaches you, speaks to you, makes sense to you.... and makes you smile more in public - despite the things that can make us angry... :) (From my friend, Mellisa)

"...Most of it IS full of anger.... that's why i cannot STAY there any length of time. It's just like the Law Of Attraction ... WHAT are we giving our attention too, you know?The Universe feels like this massive creative energy and people manipulate and bend it to whatever they want to see, feel, touch and do. There is no judgment on that. But I almost feel like you even have to disconnect with the political stuff because I think God is beyond that. I think The Universe just wants to experience and express... it is man's unconscious that brings us the nightmare, because man in general, lives in a constant state of fear. All this government stuff, all these wars, all this hatred and etc is just a manifestation of FEAR people have. They are afraid that they are unloved... that someone is going to get them, hurt them, hurt their family or loved ones, take away their possessions or anything that really means anything to them. But what they do not realize is that no one can truly take away anything, because all is in the mind of God... even these bodies! It would be painful to be locked up, deprived of freedom, to have our families hurt (think of some war torn countries they experience this daily!) and yet in the eyes of God you have lost nothing, you are still whole and complete... and you are just living in a nightmare created by the masses and accepted into your reality by your attention to it. Now I know this is getting way way metaphysical but I think the whole point is detachment. If we realize that every day we can be thankful for one more day to bless others, one more to share, to love, to laugh, to spread joy and warm hearts, then we are to be thankful for that breath. But when we die, we go on... we will soon be joined by our family to laugh and joke and realize that it was all a great dramatic play. we are all soul friends and in fact all connected and all One. Enlightenment comes I think when we can look into the face of a devil and still see God. When we see beyond the illusion and we really are at peace because all we see is beauty and wonder. Detach from the nightmare, from the drama and the illusion and wake up to the wonder filled creation that you are. "

You can learn more about Mellisa and what she does here: http://www.kidsmeditationcds.net/

xoxo

To Dig

2010-04-11T19:12:00.002-05:00

xoxox

This afternoon my five year old son asked me to come see what he was doing.

I went to the far side of the yard and looked.

"What are you doing?" I asked

"Digging" he said.

"Digging what?" I asked.

"A hole" he said.

"Why?" I asked.

He continued to push the shovel into the ground.

Then, without looking up, he said,

"To dig"

It was the best conversation I'd had in a very long time.

Happiness doesn't take effort. It doesn't take objective. It doesn't take a plan.

All it takes is for one to simply...BE.

BE happy folks. Smile.

FLY

2010-04-08T20:27:00.001-05:00

Is there really any words that I can add to this to make it more poignant? We no longer have any reason EVER to say "I can't".

Now THAT is the audacity to be happy!

Know it all

2010-04-01T08:51:00.002-05:00

oxo

Sometimes we hear someone sharing a message and our automatic response is one of rejection.

It passes our ears or the words pass our eyes and we pass over it and that
thought creeps into our mind that says:

"Pffft! Whose this fool? What have they got to teach me? What do they think they know better than me? I don't have to listen to this nonsense!"

Admit it, you've found yourself doing this. Perhaps the words in your mind varied from these, but I'm certain that most of us have found ourselves thinking something similar in response to another person trying to share information with us. Not all the time, but sometimes for sure, we reject people and what they have to say immediately.

Why do we do that? Why are there just some folks that we instantly reject and make a sharp mental decision that we know better than they do? Is it their presentation perhaps? Do they just seem too over the top for us to acknowledge? Do they challenge our comfortable paradigm with their radical ideals?

Is it jealousy? Does dealing with them make us angry at ourselves and force us to face our own short-comings so we build an immediate and intense wall of ego to block them out?

We see someone, whether it be in person, on television or on the computer or even hear them on the radio and we make an immediate judgement in our mind about them and somehow determine that we know better than they do and nothing they have to say is worth while. After that, anything they have to say falls on deaf ears because your swelled up ego is standing in the way telling you that you are the know-it-all and this fool has nothing valuable to offer you.

We don't listen. We don't listen. And we do this more often than we care to admit. Us humans go around on a daily basis with our minds conveniently distracted by our mental to-do lists that we've created all on our own...and behind that is the bevy of problems (many of which also self inflicted) that clog up the second layer of thought. Once in a while we hear someone with something to say and many times we shut it out. We hear, but we don't listen. We rarely listen.

What are we missing? Hmmm?

Stand still for a moment. Shut down all the chatter in your mind. Listen. Who is trying to tell you something? Are you rejecting them immediately? Why? Put your ego away. You're not a know-it-all. Everyone has something to learn and everyone has something valuable to share with at least one other person. Maybe it's you. Listen. You may just find that the message is helpful to you. Alot is going to be noise, but sometimes there's a message waiting for you if you are willing to hear it. The problem is that we stand in our own way most of the time and we can't hear anything but the sound of our own voice clamoring on.

Are you rejecting this? Are you thinking that you are in-fact a know-it-all and there isn't any fool out there that has anything valuable to teach you? Yeah? Hows that working out for you?

Keep in mind that most successful, happy and fulfilled people are open to learning from others. They observe. They filter, but they listen. They listen. And yes some information is hogwash but some is golden...and a lot of the time that golden secret comes from unlikely sources. You'll never get to the gold unless your willing to listen and learn. And first you have to humble yourself and realize that we've all got something to learn. We all have room to grow. Your way, my friend, may not be the right way after all. There may be a better idea out there for you.

The point is folks - relax, open up. Be open to learning more. Be willing to hear something new. Judge less, listen more. Hear the message and allow the universe to help you.

Do it intentionally, do it on purpose, do it with audacity. Ease up, smile and be willing to get happier.

xoxoxo

2010-03-29T05:40:00.001-05:00

Whether you think you can or think you can't,
you're right.

YOU

2010-03-26T07:43:00.001-05:00

xoxo

You make you happy.

If you are not happy with your current circumstances,

don't blame the economy
don't blame your parents
don't blame your neighbor
don't blame your spouse
don't blame your boss
don't blame your co-worker
don't blame your doctor
don't blame the market

It's you. It's all your fault. Your ego is telling you it's not. It couldn't possibly be. It's saying "It's not my fault, it's because of the economy, or this or that or the other thing...." That is your ego and it's false pride talking. Hows that working out for ya?

If you want your circumstances to improve, stop making excuses. Take ownership, take responsibility. Only then will you be able to realize your potential and move forward and finally enjoy a rich, successful, beautiful life.

Because when you realize what you don't like is your own fault, then you realize that all the beautiful and wonderful aspects of your life - are also thanks to you.

So - what is your life? What will you do today? Will you be happy? Do you have the audacity to be happy?

xoxo

The audacity of Nature

2010-03-17T08:15:00.001-05:00

xoxo

Don't over-think it.

Nature knows best - so, let nature lead the way. When we release our desperate need to control every detail of our situations, we find that things flow just as they should. It's only when we struggle that we find problems.

We struggle to be people we are not.
We struggle to do things we are not meant to do.
We struggle to find answers without asking the proper questions.
We struggle to win at battles instead of enjoying the benefit of peace.
We struggle to be heard even if we have nothing to say.
We struggle to fit in without considering the puzzle.
We struggle to make things that aren't right - right.

Like trying to squeeze into jeans that are two sizes too small, we often find ourselves metaphorically trying to squeeze ourselves into situations that we want to make work - even if they are just simply not right for us. We are stroking against the grain and trying to defy nature like a rebellious child.

Nature knows best though, and when allowed to flow, it will flow with the strenght, growth, speed and ferocity that is unmatched by any effort in all the evolution of mankind. We are arrogant to think otherwise.

A tiny blade of grass can grow right through thick cement pavement. The grass is nature, the pavement is humanity. The grass will win. That thin, teeny blade of grass will win. Why? Because it is nature, and all the scrambling efforts of the cement mixture of man simply can not defy it.

exemplified herein

So relax, enjoy. Pay attention to the natural flow of who you truly are and what truly fits your most basic inner function and let the natural you - flow.

Don't be this or that. Just stop, breathe and....be.....

and for goodness sake, have the audacity to SMILE!

xoxo

The emotional experience

2010-03-10T08:09:00.003-06:00

xoxo

When you think about it, there is really nothing whatsoever to be upset, mad, depressed or angry about. Nothing. Not a thing - ever!

(pause)

What was your immediate response to that statement? Did you nod your head in agreement and delight in the sheer joy of it? Or did you immediately search the files of your mind for rebuttals? Did you find yourself mentally reaching for thoughts of situations that warrant being angry, sad, depressed etc??

Aaaaah!!! See what you’re doing there? :)

Now don't get me wrong, I am not against negative feelings. I happen to think all emotions are useful and necessary and even healthy. We are marvelous beings - able to experience a rich variety of emotions triggered by an unlimited number of different events. Feeling is a good thing; even feeling negative emotions. There is a difference however, between experiencing an emotion and letting it overwhelm you.

We are marvelous beings! We are remarkable, incredible, wondrous creations because we control our own emotions!

Yes, you see? We have complete and total control over what we feel. Some of you are shaking your head or rolling your eyes and thinking “oh here she goes with her fluffy nonsense”. If that is what you are thinking then my friend, feel free to move along. If you are thinking that experiencing misery is completely out of your control and I’m just spouting nonsensical ramblings…then you are free to pass this by. But let me ask you this – hows that workin out for ya?

Here’s the thing folks. It’s YOU. It’s all you!

Now, I’m not saying you have to immediately try to squelch a feeling of sadness or anger the second it comes to you. By all means we should experience it. The ability to experience emotions is a fantastic ability very unique to human beings… it is indeed a wonderful thing. The key is to experience the emotion. Take life for what it is – an experience.

When the feeling wells up inside you – take a few seconds to stop and think – what is this going on? I am experiencing this emotion, or is it overtaking me? Sadness, grief, anger, any negative emotion does not have to overwhelm you or control you. It’s a very simple matter of reminding yourself that you are simply experiencing something. Allow it. Allow yourself to experience all the complex physical sensations that anger, sadness, grief manifests inside you. Feel it, explore it, consider your magnificent and grand human ability to have these responses to invisible stimuli. Let it flow through you like water – and then, like water flowing, let it go….

Release the negative emotion. Do not hold on to it, do not grab hold of it and force it to live inside you and become you. For if it lingers too long, it will certainly alter your perspective and absolutely change your experience in this world. Perspective is everything, and perspective is absolutely determined by what you are feeling. So it is important to allow negative emotions to pass through you, and it is crucially important for you to see it for what it is – an experience.

Sometimes we cling to these feelings. Like explained above, we search for rebuttles to the feeling better - we find reasons why we can't and we adhese ourselves to it. We sometimes become so accustomed to feeling crappy, that we are afraid to let go of it. It becomes familiar, and on some level - strange as it may seem - we find safety in feeling terrible. But folks, this is not healthy and you know this. You know it.

See it for what it is. The anger is not you. The sadness is not you. The desperation, greif, melancholy...is not who you are. They are just emotions that you are experiencing, that's all they are. They do not mold you. YOU mold you. Like running your fingers along a surface and experiencing the sensation of that surface, you can move on from it and change the sensation. Feeling sand paper is often not pleasing - we don't enjoy the sandpaper itself, but we enjoy our ability to feel it. We don't enjoy anger, but we can indeed appreciate our ability to feel it. And like fingers on sand paper, we can feel it, then move along.

The same can be said for positive emotions. They are experiences. The difference is they feel good! So these are the ones you’ll want to hold on to.

If you’ve read this far, you agree on some level with what I’m saying here. If not… if you find yourself sitting there thinking “I can’t help it! My life is miserable and it’s not my fault! What can I do? Everything just sucks and that is that!” Then there is really nothing I can do to change your experience for you my friend. There is no reason to feel this way, no excuse but whatever you make up in your own head to try and grip onto whatever comfort your falsely giving yourself in this familiar feeling. You can change that. Only you can change that. So, will you?

Choose to experience joy! Smile!

Be well...

xoxo

The Esoteric Agenda

2010-02-22T06:53:00.000-06:00

xoxo

There is a great need for us as a race to remember our
origins and our connection to each other and all that naturally exists.

When you see your fears for what they truly are,
and master your emotions, then and only then, will you truly be free.

Listen carefully...

It seems to be imperative now

that we remember

who we are...

The good news is.... enlightenment is on the horizon, and that is reason to smile....

xoxo

God; the absence of God in religion and the proof of God in existance

2010-02-16T07:49:00.000-06:00

xoxo

Who is God?

There are many religions of this world, and every one of them adheres to some variation of the of principle that there is a God - a higher being that dictates spiritual law, acts as a guide and watches over it's believers. Most major religions break down into many diverse variations of itself, Christianity for example, having thousands of different sects.

In my own journey of spiritual growth, I've had experience in several different religious practices. As the years pass, I've become increasingly detached from any religious principle and consequently, (and notably) more spiritually mature. I still however find it all extraordinarily interesting, albeit sometimes frustrating.

If you are removed from any religion, you sort of stand outside of it, and are able to observe the behavior of religion. When you do this, it becomes an extraordinarily fascinating observation of humanity. It's as if we, as a race, have from the beginning of time, and continue to... grasp desperately at...something....anything... in hopes of explaining our existence and soothing our instinctual fear of death.

And that is the crux of it all.   We want to know why we exist, and we want to quiet our fear of death. That is the very core of any religion.   We have an anxious curiosity that starves for answer and this gives birth to ponderances and those give birth to eventual ideas that manifest as "revelations" and in some cases (many cases throughout history) these ideas are shared with others, then written down, and shared with more....etcetera etcerta until we have a huge group of people all clinging to the same revelation that usually one person (the prophet) claimed to have had about God...and because we are all so desperate for answers about life and death - we are drawn to whatever seems to offer the answers.

Throughout history, we've become more intelligent and so our religious beliefs have been altered. When once the world worshiped and obeyed the gods and goddesses of Rome and Greece, those gave way to a variety of other new ideas offering better answers...and those eventually were overshadowed by other ideas that obeyed our evolving intelligence.    A handful of these are still going strong today - but with some major differences in ritual because as we continued to learn and evolve intellectually - so did the beliefs and rituals...as these had to also "grow" in order to adhere to new intelligence or else we'd reject them and they would die completely.... and we can't have that can we?

We have come very far, but still we carry our primal and instinctual anxious curiosity about life and death and so we adjust our religious systems to our evolving intellect in order to keep ourselves satisfactorily comfortable with what we cannot explain.

This is how it all seems to me (and to many others) as I have made some inner decision to stand outside of the entire system - despite my own admitted anxieties. In my experience with different belief systems, it just began to really feel unnatural in a very deep way - to adhere to any kind of principle or set of laws that were introduced by human beings who are so obviously struggling to cling to anything that offers comfort to this innate and very natural anxiety.

At some point, I decided that because all of these principles were all initially offered by immature human spirituality (we are all spiritually immature) and originated from fear - that they are all wrong.

But I was wrong.... somewhat.

There is certainly God. But what if it is not "A" god? What if every human religion is completely wrong about the description of God, and at the same time - completely correct?   Moreover, is there really such a thing as a "correct" or an "incorrect" idea of god?   Perhaps these revelations that came to these 'prophets' have something to them that do deserve attention, but perhaps our focus is in the wrong place entirely.   Perhaps the words and the explanations are completely and utterly meaningless and yet that is what we cling to and hang on and base entire cultures and modern society on.

We know that all religions are different - and because we are individual in our human experience and come from different lifetime backgrounds - our differences cause us to gravitate and attach ourselves emotionally to whatever idea offers the most comfort to our own senses (hence the colossal religious variety in the world).    But, do we realize that at their very core - most religions (with a few exceptions) are the same?

Maybe, they are not all wrong.   Maybe they are all right! Better yet...maybe - there really is no right and wrong!

If you strip any one of them down...strip them down to the very basic core - remove the ritual and the fancy hats, remove the political status throughout history, remove the social agendas, remove the different secs and the different interpretations of the prophets, remove the stories and the parables, remove the words. Yes, remove the words! Why? Because think about it -What are we doing basing our understanding of GOD.. GOD... on something as earthly, physically human and absolutely flawed as written language... Audacity indeed it is eh?!

Remove the scripture and all the words written at some point by very human hands.. .yes they are said to have been "divinely inspired" words but who said that? The human being writing them!   Language is human and as such originates from that same place of fear that desperately searches for answers to comfort the fear. AND it's been interpreted and filtered through many languages, many Kings with agendas, may political reigns with agendas and so on and so on all plagued with human anxiety.... Remove it! Strip it down, strip it all down and peel away all the layers that hide the magnificent essence of what "God" actually is! (realizing still, that this in and of itself is but a mere word)

All these things are here so that we can offer something to our five senses. We want comfort for our fears and we find it through explanations of God, but we are only satisfied with explanations that stroke our five human senses - we want to see an explanation of God, hear it, smell it, touch it and in many cases taste it...but none of these will ever allow us to truly experience God.

We preach that God is beyond our humanity, above it, beyond it, outside of it - and yet we demand to experience God with our human senses.

I say, strip it all away! Strip away anything that you can see with your eyes, hear with your ears, touch with your fingers, smell with your nose or taste with your lips. Strip it all away from any of the religions....

...and what do we have left? Nothing. Nothing but a very recognizable spiritual feeling. A sensation. No words, no rituals, no chants, no rulers or leaders. Just a feeling. A most pure and sincere and profoundly simple and very powerful feeling that is completely inexplicable...so much so that our feeble words become a most pathetic failure.

It is remarkable indeed! And if we quiet our mind, and release all the definitions and words and just sit and be "still"... quieting our body's movement and allowing our five senses to rest in order to truly feel what exists beyond those five senses...that is it.

We ruin it when we demand that it obey our five senses. We cloud it, we warp it, we twist it into what we want it to be to make our own identities feel better.   We essentially - lose touch with it.

And what is "It"?   It is God. It is the comfort we all deeply long for.   And the only way to truly experience God is through quieting the rest of yourself.   The only way to hear god is to stop listening to the world around you.

When you are able to do this, you find that you do not have to find a way to "connect" with God.   You find - most beautifully - that you ARE God.   So am I and so is the person next to you.

You are made of energy - that energy has it's own intelligence that is completely interlinked with every single living thing - everywhere.   It is all one, it is all God and you are part of it.   God is not beyond you, outside of you or above you. God is not in you...living inside your physical body. In fact, your body is not you either - God is you.

What if... what if that is truly it?   What if there is only ONE God? Because truly, there is only one everything? Energy is energy. We are all made of energy - even 2nd grade science knows this so lets accept it. We are made of energy. Energy does not have individual identity. Energy is all encompassing - it is everything. It is not one "with" everything, it simply IS everything.

What if that is it then? What if that is what we are? This completely perfect and intact energy? This completely perfect and intact intelligence? One energetic pulse of intelligence?

What if at some point, this collective intelligent energy decided that it would be simply marvelous to delight itself by manifesting in something physical? (God created earth) What better way to do that than to break down into separate and individual physical forms in order to vary and forever expand perspective? And where? a physical plain would be needed indeed! And it all began with the expansion of energy (the bang created the universe).

Energy created the universe - a divine intelligence indeed!

...and here we are - broken down into millions of magnificent physical machines with the extraordinary capability of experiencing physical manifestations of God - with five incredible senses that allow us to touch, taste, see, hear and smell all the beautiful physical manifestations that are all created by - energy...... and will all at some point break down into energy.... ashes to ashes dust to dust.... energy to energy...so there is no death and therefor nothing to fear and no reason to continue to desperately grasp for answers in weak and feeble words wearing fancy hats.

Alas somewhere along the way - we forgot who we are.   But once in a while one of us gets some idea, some glimpse of it, but we don't know how to explain it because it's inexplicable so we attach words to it and try to explain it to others in our time and these folks are called prophets... but they are not different than any of us, or above us, or even outside of us.

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father."

Of course! Of course!!

And that is why it is so very and undeniably true - we are all loved. So very loved...and all is well, all the time.   It truly is all good!

And we have no reason whatsoever, ever, to not be completely, deliriously and audaciously happy..

You are not in the world - the world is in you.

Don't deny your religion, practice it if it speaks to your heart - but while you do... be still...feel God, know God, allow yourself to quiet your humanity and experience the sensational connectedness to the energy and universal presence that you KNOW you are part of.   Let it be you, let it consume you, let you consume it... let radiate from you - with utter audacity!

and be divinely and blessedly happy... smile!

xoxo

Epiphany

2010-02-11T07:33:00.000-06:00

xoxo

The epiphany. That pivotal moment in your life that stops you in your tracks and puts a dramatic pause on the world around you - as if frozen in mid-motion - and lets you evaluate where you are in the universe. This moment brings with it a sense of positive affirmation of some sudden realization, leading to some imperative decision. And then, you raise your proverbial foot, and take a proverbial step - in a new direction... based on the deeply profound but very organic realization you just experienced.. ....and then the frozen motion unfreezes, and life proceeds.... but you are now forever changed.

This happens to all of us. Fortunately, it usually happens several times over our lifetime. Unfortunately, not enough of us pay close enough attention to the remarkable transformation that occurs when it happens. Many of us experience it, then just a few hours, or days back into the motion of life, we... forget. We get sucked back into the vortex of mundane, and talk ourselves into believing it was just a silly thought, not logical.. and we pack it away in the basement of our mind and cellar of our soul - letting the one-dimensional world limited to five senses dictate our place in life.

Why? why do we do that?

When was the last time you had an epiphany? What did you do? Did you heed to it? Did you revel in the joy of it for a short time, then allow yourself to slip back into some track, careful not to derail... careful to maintain logic and stay on the course you committed to even if it was stale?

Or did you derail? Did you turn in the direction of your revelation and create new lines.. and curves... and watch beautiful new patterns undulate before you in your path?

We are not always talking about a solid tangible change. It's not always career or relationship, or something so physical. Sometimes it's much less obvious than that - and yet much more powerful. Sometimes it's an epiphany that entirely alters then lenses which you use to view the world. A clarity...a sharpening of the focus... a sudden deep understanding.

What was your epiphany? and where did you go with it? Think on it, reflect on it... let the thought penetrate you....

(to be continued.....)

xoxo

Chains

2010-02-09T23:54:00.000-06:00

xoxo

There is a scene in the movie "Instinct" in which Cuba Gooding Jr.'s charecter is interviewing Anthony Hopkins character.   Hopkins plays an anthropologist who had lived with mountain gorillas in Rwanda for two years.   After having been accused and convicted of murdering two park rangers, he was in a prison there for a year, and is now in an American prison. He has not spoken for that entire time, until this interview with Gooding - who plays a young idealistic Psychiatrist.

In this scene, Hopkins begins to describe what it was like in the forest.   He then says "There is much more danger on any given day in any city, than in the forest."   He also refers to Gooding and the prison guards as "takers" before he states that he wants to leave. Gooding tells him the session is not over yet, and Hopkins replies "It's over when you say it's over?" and Gooding nods.   Hopkins (with his awesome theatrical experssions) replies "taker".   Ofcourse, Gooding then relents - obviously affected by this reflection and says "you are free to go."

"Am I?" asks Hopkins, then he adds "Are you free?"   And we see Hopkins wearing chains on his wrists and his ankles as he exits the session.

(I may be paraphrasing here, but you get the idea)

So - what are your chains? Unless you are reading this from inside an actual prison cell, it is unlikely that you have literal 'chains' on your wrists and ankles.   However, I think we understand the metaphore here.

Especially in this country, we like to say we are "free". But truly...are we? And if not, who can free us? Can rallies in front of the Capitols make us free?   Can our government make us free? And free from what exactly? What are your chains?

Is it your job? "I hate my job but I can't quit because....."
Your relationships? Your responsibilities? The roles that you fill on a daily basis?
Maybe it's the obligatory ritualistic motions you go through every day just to keep the wheel turning, grinding, winding..... wrapped taut in that chain.

Are you free? Are you free?   What are you chained to?

..and what would it take for you to be free?   Who can free you? Who but you, can free you?

Does it mean you have to quit your job? Then you couldn't pay your bills could you? Then you'd be chained to your debt... you wouldn't be free.
Does it mean you have to end a stifling relationship? Then you'd probably face some sort of consequence or backlash - chaining you to those. (although leaving a bad relationship is still a good idea).
Does it mean you have to shirk your responsibilities?   Can you?

Maybe it's deeper than that. Maybe it has very little to do with physical action - as little as it has to do with physical chains.   Maybe it's more about where your perspective is and where your focus lies.

Maybe... maybe you are not in the world - maybe the world is in you.

What are your chains my friend? And how do you free yourself?

Have the audacity to unlock.

xooxo

Be deliberate

2010-02-09T08:26:00.001-06:00

xoxo

Live with a deliberate audacity to smile!

Could it get any more clear than that? Live deliberately folks. Live with deliberate intent on enjoying every moment. Not like it was your last, but like you have an endless supply of moments and you want every one of them to be important!

Live with....audacity! When a moment is negative, dark, unhappy, angry, sad....that is when it's even more important to have the sheer and utter audacity to smile! It takes deliberate audacity to be the color in the gray.

Effortless, deliberate audacity!

"Be easy about it. Don't rush into things. Savor them more. Make more plans and be more deliberate and specific about the plans that you are making, and in all that you do, let your dominant intent be to find that which pleasures you as you imagine it. Let your desire for pleasure, your desire for feeling good, be your only guiding light. As you seek those thoughts that feel good, you will always be in vibrational harmony with the Energy that is your Source. And under those conditions, only good can come to you, and only good can come from you." Abraham-Hicks

xoxo

The Tao of Silly

2010-02-08T08:01:00.000-06:00

xoxo

Introducing the Tao of Silly Socks

I'm sharing it here because it truly does compliment the concept at Smiling in Public and the philosophy of simply being happy. The art of silly sock wearing epitomizes being happy with audacity!

So go get yourself some silly socks and enjoy the Tao of Silly :)

Check it out: http://thetaoofsillysocks.blogspot.com/

xoxo

Thanks for the SMILE

2010-02-06T14:54:00.000-06:00

xoxo

I'd like to take a moment to publicly and audaciously thank, Allison Goss for designing and drawing the new official SMILE for "Smiling In Public". Thank you Allison!

Thanks for the audacity to be happy Allison! ;)

Check out more of Allison's art in cooking at http://eatwelllovelife.com/

xoxox

Lacking in audacity - a lesson in comically crazy

2010-02-05T19:18:00.000-06:00

xoxo

I got a haircut today.   I've been to this place before and to this particular beautician. I like her. She does a great job and has a great vibe.

So I'm sitting there, and she is shaping my bangs and the front of my hair. I noticed how I automatically close my eyes whenever she leans in close to do my bangs.   If I open them, and she's right there, I automatically avert my stare.   I noticed it today, but it's something I've done all my life in all the haircuts I've ever gotten.   I do it when I have my eyebrows done too.

I wondered if everyone does that and I assumed that we all do.   I pondered it.

Is it just a social conditioned reaction?   When someone is that close, we can't look them in the eye because we are not talking to them. (and sometimes some of us can't look people in the eye when they are talking, but that's another thing)

Is it just me? Probably not.

So, suddenly I thought to myself... "what would happen if I opened my eyes, looked directly at her and suddenly made a funny face? like a giant clownish grin? or crossed my eyes and stuck out my tongue?"
I smiled to myself and stifled a small giggle.   It would have been quite funny!   I think it would have freaked her out at first, but certainly made her laugh. How could something like that not be funny? And this lady has got a great aurora so I know she'd have laughed.

So why didn't I do it?   Well folks, it's because I didn't have the AUDACITY!     I was happy, actually I was quite happy at the moment.   But I wasn't audaciously happy.

And that my friends is what it means to be audaciously happy!   To be able to take a very focused and relatively mundane moment and startle the entire energy with a sudden sharp burst of comical crazy!   Would people have thought I was weird? Yes. But I guarantee it would have generated smiles.

I thought of it, but I confess that I did not have the audacity to do it!

So, I learned something today. I learned that I too have alot of learning to do!   Eh... it's all good... I'll try again nexttime ;)

I'll just disclose here that if you (my wonderful beautician from today) happens to read this... please let me know... this totally would have made you smile? No?

Well folks, here's the challenge.... out do me.   Do something completely random and unexpected and comically crazy - shake up the energy and generate smiles!   Then, let me know about it....send me a message about your audacious smiling in public.... and I'll post it here to make everyone else smile too!

Get the audacity folks :)

xoxo

Finding your "Thing"

2010-02-04T23:26:00.000-06:00

xoxo

What's your thing? You know, that one thing that you are really good at that sets you apart. That one thing that is YOUR talent. The thing that not only are you good at - but you really enjoy doing and can do it without strain. Some folks call it a purpose. Some call it a divine calling. Call it what you want, I'm calling it your thing.

Everyone has one. Everyone has a "thing".

Many of us can do many things well. Many can write well, but for some writing is their "thing" and they consistently hit the best seller list. Many can compose, but some have a thing for it and history reels for the sound of their compositions for all time. Many can sing...but...well you get the idea here.

So I'm not talking about what you are good at. We're all good at lots of stuff. I am a good dancer, I'm a rockin cook and I'm a mediocre writer - but none of these are my "thing".

So what's yours? Do you know? Maybe you don't and that's okay. Maybe this is the first time your even thinking of it. Well, ponder it folks. I've been pondering it and it's all but slapping me in the face lately.

Here's the good news.... you already know what your thing is, even if you don't think you do. I knew, I just kept looking past it, thinking that my real talents lay somewhere else...not realizing that this was the one thing that truly does set me apart and mark my very unique place in this universe. And it seemed so simple, like "well yes of course I'm good at that, I always was, it's easy! everyone knows that!" and suddenly it hit me one day. Well DUH! That's it. The rest of these 'talents' are all nice, but they are not my thing.

This goes for you too....Deep down inside - you know it. And you know it's not alot of the other stuff you dabble at here and there. That's just excess. You know it.

Quiet the noise. Stop everything. Be still. Allow it to hit you.

What are you really good at? What do people ask of you? What makes your friends go "wow"?

This is how we find our thing. Why is it important? Because dude! It's your THING! And if it's not what you are doing, it's what you should be doing!

But...hmmm...how? How does one apply this to their passion? Once we recognize and acknowledge our THING, our raw and unique talent - then what?

The answer to that, friends, is the key to having the true audacity to be HAPPY!

....... to be continued.....
xoxo

Do you have NPD?

2010-02-04T08:28:00.000-06:00

xoxo

Negative People Disorder

My wonderful brother introduced this phrase. He calls it NPD. It is used when he observes what appears to be compulsive negative behavior. Unfortunately, I know you-the reader knows what I'm talking about. We see it often. Here are some examples....

"My life sucks. Why does this always happen to me? Why does he get all the money? How can I be happy when I just lost my job? When will these dam kids go back to school? That (insert exploitative) thinks who she is! I hate my job! I hate my house! I hate that guy! I hate you! How come I can't have a car like that? I'm so fat! She's so fat! Skinny bitch! I can't quit smoking.   Same shit different day.   Life sucks then you die. Why should I have to do that? That's not my problem!" et cetera et cetera et cetera....

You know these phrases and others like them. You've heard them. You've probably said a few of them - hopefully not many.   Oh don't worry, we all fall into this trap once in a while where these things come spewing out of our lips. It doesn't mean you have NPD. It just means you are human.

There are however, people who unfortunately live this way almost on a daily basis. They see the world through a haze of dingy glass - as if they are separated from a beauty that exists only on the other side. And they spend their lives seeing joy as something separate from them - unreachable, unattainable. They are convinced through conditioning that life sucks and have accepted this fate.

You know who they are. We see them at the supermarket wearing sad frowns as they shop, or ring up your order.   We see them in their cars, grimacing at stop lights. We see projections of their energy online as they type out menacing and angry phrases in e-social circles in some attempt to bring attention to their misery, hoping that the company will ease the pain.

They have NPD.

Here's the thing my friends.   They are YOU. Now, I'm not saying you have NPD. In fact I hope you don't!   But we are all connected folks. We're all in this together and we all share and breathe the same air here.   We are both beautifully unique and individual and at the same time all beating through the same vein of life creating the pulse that is existence.    NPD will affect you even if you don't think you have it. It's contagious you see.

So what to do?

First - decide if you have NPD.   I suspect you do not if you are reading this far. So smile :)

Second - spread the joy! Smile and say hello to the person in the supermarket, at the traffic light etc....say something bright to that person online... It may confuse them, but it's the only medicine for NPD and the more doses they get, the better off we all are!

Dark energy affects all of us like a virus.   But the good news is, light energy is even more contagious. But who cares about others right? As long as you are happy, what's the difference if some other poor sap is suffering with NPD?    Is that what your thinking?

If so, then I have to ask you.... really????

Okay you're reading this and thinking "blah blah blah yeah yeah positive thinking, spread the joy, smile more yeah yeah...corny corny"   But folks, deep down you know it's more than that. Deep down you know if you have "NPD" whether we give it a cute name or not.   Deep down you know that if you do - it's killing you.   Deep down you know that even if you don't, others do and you know, you know YOU will matter to another living soul. You know it matters to you, and you do very much understand the significance here.

Everything affects everything, and everything affects you.

In our modern culture NPD is rampant folks. Don't let it get you!   Spread the cure. Smile more.

And do it with complete and utter audacity!

xoxo

Do you have it in you?

2010-02-02T08:04:00.000-06:00

xoxo

Is it in you? You know... IT. The IT that only you can define. Don't be coy - you know what I mean, don't you?

What are you itching to accomplish?

What is that fire burning in your soul?

You know something is there but you can't grasped it?

Here's a question... have you reached for it? If you don't, then you'll never grasp it.

It's more than positive thinking my friends - you know what you are here for.

No excuses, no blame, no procrastinating. This will dull your soul.

Quiet the noise - focus - do it!

....and yes, you know exactly what I'm talking about, don't you?

(note to self: do it!)

I have the audacity to be HAPPY! Do you?

xoxo

Snow Grouch

2010-01-30T17:20:00.000-06:00

xoxo

I am a snow grouch. I admit it. I get sort of grumbly in the winter and yes... I get extra grouchy when it snows.   I think the last time I was excited about snowfall of any sort was when I was ten - and even at that I am just guessing because I honestly do not remember being excited about cold and wet. Yes it's the antithesis of my own philosophy but hey, I'm human. And my friends, this human was very happy to find herself living in the SW where the snow is infrequent after having grown up in the NE where it snows alot!!! (keep in mind city snow if often quite icky after the first hour so cut me some slack).

Well it turns out that this winter brought some extra wintry precipitation here to the SW and for the second time this season we found ourselves under several inches of cold, wet snow!

Now, after having had experienced my own personal lessons with perspective, serenity and mood - still I found myself spending most of the day yesterday playing the familiar 'snow grouch' role that I had been conditioned to play.   I went on saying "I hate it, I hate it I hate it" and spewed all that right out into the energy field around me.   I made 'tsk' sounds when I passed the large windows blatantly showing me scenes of more and more thick chunky flakes falling from the gray sky.   I complained about the cold, the wet, the icey feel of the air. I crabbed out loud at my kids over the wet drippy footprints they left on the floor after coming in from their frolicking in the unusually thick blanket of pristine snow.

No wonder I fell asleep with aches in my shoulders last night eh? And yet I found myself still sucked into this vortex of grumble as I averted my glance away from the mocking kitchen window this morning. Still, an audible 'tsk' escaped my lips nonetheless.

It was overhearing my daughter whisper to her younger brother this morning "shhh! she'll get mad" that served as my proverbial slap.   What? Well, it turns out they were contemplating asking me whether they can go out and play in the snow again this afternoon, not wanting to upset me with all the cold wet snowy laundry and footprints on the clean floor again.

Ohmygosh! Was that me they were talking about? What have I done? Who was I? And it hit me, I was the antithesis of everything I believe. I was creating a bad-mood soup for myself and then swimming in it. My perspective was old, stale and stuck in a time when I was person that I'd long ago stopped being.    I was not seeing the beautiful blanket of white that was in fact highly unusual for this area of the country. It was not dirty-dingy city snow either. It was magnificently white and the woods in my yard were covered in the stark white stillness of the perfect silence of winter.

And so - I immediately altered my perspective and made a commitment to play with my children in the snow this afternoon.   Oh to many of you this may sound mundane and you'll say "so what? lots of parents play in the snow" but you see.. not this parent folks. This parent is the one that stays inside and grumbles when it snows. This parent is the one that despite all her talk about perspective and creating our own joy - grouches out over wet footprints, and makes tsk sounds at the sky when the sun is not out.   What? I can only have joy in the sun? Oh what a stupid woman I am sometimes!

Well today this parent was the one who did indeed play in the snow! The cold, wet and wonderful powdery snow that will probably only occur once in a great while here in the South West!

So after lunch, and after sending the three kids out bundled properly and delivering a 'firm reminder' that they should stamp their boots on the mat before coming inside... I secretly put my warm cordory's on, slipped my winter boots on, put on my husbands snow gloves and went outside.

Glad that I put the grouch to rest once and for all - for the first time in a long time, I looked at the cold, wet snow, and the very same yard that looked yesterday to me to dreary, bleak and damp.... now looked .... spectacular!

We played, we made a snow man....

.....and a snow woman!
(yes folks, those are boobs on this snow girl...we are a fun bunch!)

and enjoyed a generally fantastic time!

On this most beautiful winter day!

And the lesson? Well, I think it's obvoius isn't it?

We do not need sunshine to be happy. ;)

A metaphor? Perhaps.... but you get the idea...

Today I needed audacity to be happy... and I was! I hope you enjoy a most audaciously happy time too folks!

Smile :)

xo

Serenity

2010-01-27T11:55:00.000-06:00

There is a popular prayer called the Serenity Prayer. It goes like this:

God, grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

The courage to change the things that I can;

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Serenity. What is serenity? As defined it is:

repose: a disposition free from stress or emotion
peace: the absence of mental stress or anxiety

Peace. The absence of mental stress or anxiety. The prayer asks for this peacefulness that comes with acceptance of what we have no control over, courage to create change where we can, and the wisdom and clarity to see the difference.

Sometimes we have no control.
We cannot control other people.
We cannot control their thoughts, their actions, their emotions.
We cannot make them see what they do not see. We can show them, but cannot make them see.
We can talk, but cannot make anyone hear.
We cannot make people love us.
We cannot change what others do, feel, say or how they behave in any way.

But we can change ourselves. We can control how we respond to others and their actions.
There is no such thing as "he made me angry" No. We got angry because we responded to what someone did. But our emotions are under our own control.
How strange are we humans - that we blame others for control over our emotions and at the same time - expect to control theirs.

We must take responsibility for our own behavior and let go of any desire to control someone elses behavior.
With this acceptance comes serenity.

Anything about ourselves or our own personal lives - we have utter and complete control over.
Nobody changes our emotions but us. Nobody changes our behavior but us. Nobody makes us do anything. We make decisions about every single tihng we do, every thought we have and every word that comes from our lips. We decide everything in our own lives.

Sometimes, we say "but I can't change how I feel" or "I can't do it any other way.." or "I can't..." this or "I can't.." that.
This is not true. We can. But sometimes it takes courage. A mass of courage to change from the familiar to the unfamiliar. This counts in behavior also. Even if we know our habitual behavior is detrimental - it is scary to change it because as harmful as it may be - it's familiar and comfortable.
Many times, to avoid having to even entertain the option - we blame some ohter person or circumstance and use this as our personal excuse to continue the behavior or patterns.

It takes courage to change what we can. And with this, comes serenity.

Understanding that we cannot control others and accepting that is the first step.
Next, we must understand that there are many things we can control and can change. That is the next step.
Finally - recognizing the difference is ultimately what will bring us peace.

Friends - take control over what you can. Let go and release what you can not and enjoy the peace that this acceptance will bring you.

Smile :)

xo

I is okay!

2010-01-23T11:38:00.000-06:00

This morning something happened that prompted me to post the blog entry I posted this morning. This is the one, in case you missed it: http://publicsmiling.blogspot.com/2010/01/being-better-than-disconnect-and.html

I witnessed something (rather a bevy of somethings) that..more or less... deflated my sense of connectedness to humanity, moreover it dampened my desire to maintain any connection.   It wasn't anything that we don't see every day. All the time we witness the dark side of humanity; the gross over-consumption, the violence, the arrogant idolatry and ignorance. Sadly, most of the time I'm immune to it. I see it, overlook it and move on.

Today however, it affected me. I actually felt ashamed. Perhaps it had something to do with my desire recently to improve myself and my being by feeding my spiritual growth.

Now the logistics of this saga are better left to another entry - and an interesting lesson in happiness indeed it is so I'll tell that tale another time. But for now, suffice it to say that I stirred a dark soup for myself and found myself swimming in it.

In an effort to find my spiritual center again - that place where I knew I was most happy and comfortable, that place where positive energy flows about freely - I shut my mouth, changed gears and tried to focus.    Part of this is remembering who I am and remembering that we indeed are all in this together.   I tried to look at other people and rather than automatically feel like I was some kind of pod - completely different than any of them - I tried to remember my connection to every other human being and dispose of my own ego.

This morning, the general ugly nature of humanity was in all it's dark glory before me and for some reason, I got stuck on it. I could not just shrug and overlook it like I usually do. I was essentially, snagged by it.

Almost immediately, I felt this primal urge to disconnect. The best way to describe it is with the word "ewe".   I felt... "ewe".   I wanted to shake it off, to peel it off like a suit of slime and step out of it.   I'm being raw here, and absolutely honest and I fully expect that you - the reader - have in fact felt like this at times too. I fully expect that you - the reader - has experienced this seperation from humanity and more, the desire to be seperated.   It was the uglyness, the dark side of humanity in general and I didn't want any part of it.

And so, the entry you read this morning was born.

Throughout the day a few people had some very helpful words to share with me and I am grateful to all who took the time to discuss the matter with me. That in and of itself was enough of a reminder to me that humanity is not one hundred percent gross, and that the world is indeed beautiful and I indeed am part of all there is. I think the most important reminder for me was that we *are* truly all in this together, whether I want to be or not. I can't simply "disconnect". There is no such thing and it is simply not possible. The other important epiphany was that feeling this way sometimes is OKAY!! It's okay to sense and even desire and embrace a sense of individuality. Individuality is not synonymous with isolation. Defining that was important to me because it helped me realize that balance that I had previously found elusive.    Something else that was told to me stuck out prominently, quoted below:

"How do you reconcile your emotions? you don't stop there... where you feel you are "better". Thinking that you are "better" keeps you still trapped in the matrix. You are still operating on a human gratifying level. Understand? You are not better, you are "aware", you are "awake", you are "free", you are "evolving" and that is a continuing ongoing process that never ends.

Yes you are "above" that. But what do you do with that? that is where your focus should be. Understand?

And yeah, it is sad, disturbing, shocking... shocking to the core.. those things that people do that leave you feeling hollow and with a sense of pointlessness. That is the test on those of us who are awake. Can you see that? and still feel joy? true, unshaken, peace... peace in your core? can you love your fellow man... when he does and says despicable things? can you? That is the work, for us."

And that is exactly it isn't it?   To love anyway. To find peace in the chaos. To sit inside the noise and wallow in the beautiful silence. To know that while I am separate indeed - that I am simultaneously connected.

......and that is when it occurred to me. Ego. I've been engaging in this perpetual argument with my own ego! No wonder a true sense of balance seemed elusive!

There is all this talk among the spiritual seekers and sages lately about ego, and how our ego is the enemy and how we have to abandon our ego in order to find true peace and enlightenment.

So that brings me finally to my point.   Which is - I disagree!   I finally realize that I disagree with this entirely!
For a long time now I struggled to try and find a balance between two seemingly conflicting ideologies that exist in my life and for a recent while I felt as if I was on the cusp of realizing where that point of balance rested.   Well there it is folks.

Your ego is YOU. My ego is ME. I do not have to abandon me in order to find peace. I do not have to deny the essence of my individulaity in order to feel happiness and enjoy - joy!   Our ego is part of who we are, to deny it, to struggle against it, to try and seperate yourself from it - put you in a constant state of struggle and whats more, you are struggling to further your isolation from humanity *because* you are essentially trying to seperate yourself from YOU. We are experiencing an amazing existance in this physical life.   We are all of the same soup and yet each soverign individual beings adding our own magnificent talents to the whole.   It's an extrodinary reality indeed! And worth embracing in total.   Embracing it in total means acknowleging our connectnedness with each other AND embracing our own ego without abusing it.

We do not have to be in a place of isolation in order to realize our uniqueness. At the risk of sounding cliche-zen... I am one with God, I am part of you, but only you are you.

We indeed are all connected my friends.   We share a commonality that is our humanity. Our basic needs are the same; food, shelter, clothing and have been for the entire span of our existence. Our emotional capacities are the same - love, anger, sadness, joy, fear - we all experience all of these. We share this unbreakable and undeniable bond. We are one. We also share a commonalty with nature because were are all essentially made of the same stuff.   Broken down to the core - everything is made up of atoms of energy. Us, nature - everything.   And it's all the same energy, it's all the same make-up.   We are very much "One".

And yet - and most miraculously and in the spirit of the most sacred and divine mystery - we are also all individuals.   We are our own person - each with unique qualities that do indeed separate us and stand us apart from the entire rest of the human race. We are not bio-rhythmic clones, but we are all individually and beautifully unique...and whats more... all offering our own unique contribution to the world and universal pulse.

Each cell in our body is it's own individual cell, and yet cooperatively they literally make up the entire body.   We too are individual. We are individuals - cooperatively.

This individuality is our ego.   We cannot separate ourselves from our ego no more than we can separate ourselves from humanity.

And, it's okay! It's perfectly and wonderfully and beautifully okay!

My feelings of not wanting to associate with, or identify with particular kinds of folks - is my ego talking and it's okay! I recognize and acknowledge that I am made of the same stuff and part of the same energy and share the general oneness.   I love all people - but not every individual person and for this I have forgiven myself because it's okay. It's okay to be me.

and to you - the reader who made it this far in this post - I'm telling you, that it's okay to be you. It's okay to decide to disassociate with those whom bring you down or dilute your joy. It's important to remember that we all remain connected no matter what - but okay to want to surround yourself with positive vibes.

Recognize your connectedness with everyone and everything. See it, feel it hear it and experience it - you indeed are part of the whole that is everything and everyone. Alas, at the same time you are YOU.   Our basic needs are the same but our desires differ.   You are unique and divine. You are separate but never isolated, you are connected, but never assimilated. You are the father son and holy spirit. You are the mother, the daughter and the spouse. You are they, and you are you.   It's an extraordinary and most spectacular divine mystery.

So what's the point? You may read this and think "yeah, I know, I know all this already, and what of it?" But honestly do you? Do you KNOW it? Do you know it at your very core? I thought I did, but with the true knowledge there comes a most significant sense of peace and comfort and deep love. So truly - know it!

Smile! There is nothing - absolutely nothing to not be smiling about :)   There indeed is "we" but there is also "I" and "I" is okay!

Feel the joy, spread the joy! Be happy!

Being "better than". The disconnect and the condundrum.

2010-01-22T08:28:00.000-06:00

It has been said that we are all connected.   It's not only some 'new age' philosophy - every religion teaches this as well in some way.   The New Testament speaks of Jesus using the analogy of a vine and it's branches. I find this especially interesting because it is not a 'tree' but a vine.   A tree is usually picutred as a trunk with branches - the branches are extensions of the root or core of the tree, all making the entire tree. But here we see 'vine' instead.   A vine is something that exists because of the branches, it is a tangle of branches twisted together to create the vine - so it actually *is* the branches.   This exemplifies our universal connectedness. We *are* each other. The Christian Bible also refers to the 'body of Christ' both as literally the body of Jesus and figuratively as the 'people' making up the 'body' of the spirit of Christ.

And that is but one example.   At the center of both ancient and modern spiritual teachings, lies the prime and most important message - we are one. We are one with each other, we are one with God.   You can slice it up any way you like, and add dogma as we humans like to do... and we also like to add our own arrogant interpretations of ancient writings and insist that our different 'groups' have the only "right" translation.... but all this has done over history is dilute the main point, and the only important message. That humanity is spiritually connected. We are all created by the same source, and whether you call it God or the great spirit or nature or whatever - we all came from the same soup and therefore share a common origin.   We are essentially - family.

I've been trying to pay more attention lately to my spiritual growth.   I've been trying to be less hostile and angry toward others. I've been trying to find commonality rather than focus on differences. I've been trying to be peaceful and kind and smile more in hopes that it will infect others.   I've been trying to shed this feeling that I am somehow 'better than' other poeple, or above them.

Oh I'll admit to feeling that way.   Quite often actually. But I am realizing that all this does really is put me in a place of isolation, a place of disconnect. At first, I didn't see the problem with this. What's the difference if I'm disconnected from people whom I consider foolish?   I'd prefer not to connect with them!

But... no... at some point I realized that this is just not "right". And by "right" I don't mean in opposition to "wrong" I just mean it didn't fit or flow or feel good. It felt negative and angry and the energy was bad... one can say 'bad karma' I guess or 'bad juju'.

And so I seek now to find that place of connectedness with others. A place where I do not automatically feel a disgust for others, or repulsed by anyone who is different than I am.   A place where I see beneath skin and realize that the soul is part of my own essense.

Here's the problem:
I live in this world and sometimes I see people do beautiful things. But sometimes - more often in fact - I see ugliness. I see hatred. I see people clinging to their rituals and beliefs and hating others who disagree. I see governments lying to citizens, I see brute force used on sovereign beings. I see large nations of people unilaterally hating other nations of people based on differences in culutre and largely based on lies being told to them by their leaders. I see people clapping for the deaths of others in wars. I see people glad to see nations wiped out by nature - stating that it is their God's punishment.    I see people bicker over trivial details. I see most of humanity - walking blindly through life - thinking that they are alone among a sea of other souls.. I see people doing crazy things to themselves, becoming sick and toxic, and engaging in brutal practices renamed "remedy" because they are told it's 'best for them' and they refuse to hear of any alternate options... fearfully clinging to old ideas and scorning those with fresh alternative options - refusing to embrace the flawless wisdom of nature...failing to recognize their connection with the very same essence that creates the air they breathe.   I see most people - purposely isolating themselves, making arrogant claims that they know the true God and everyone else deserves to die at the gunpoint of a soldier. They don't even know that they are puppets on the strings of their leaders whose goal is ultimate power.   I see others - the voices crying out in the wilderness - screaming at the tops of their lungs. They see it too, the deception, the ugliness, the maniacal manipulation and they are shouting warnings, they are speaking truths, they are frantically trying to save others....and I see these folks ignored. I see them scorned as outcasts and arrested, and stifled and told they are crazy because they challenge the status quo. But I see the status quo as bleak and dark and dead - void of spirit, void of joy, void of the basic heart of humanity. And yet - that is what the majority of humanity adheres to.

If I observe the world from a place where everyone is quiet - and nature speaks - I see profound beauty and extraordinary joy.   But when I observe the people (and I mean in general, not individual people) I see ugliness, disjointed and disconnected hatred, anger and primal cerebral behavior completely void of spirit.

Thus - my dilemma. I do not want to be connected to that. I want to be above that. I feel above it. I feel beyond it, and what can I do? I do not want to be part of it. I want to be better than it.   And so... if I allow myself to feel 'better than', then have I evolved at all?

I want to get to a place where I truly feel connected to humanity on a spiritual level, and not feel perpetually 'above' anyone else. But how can I do that when people behave like savages...clinging to dogmatic rituals that spew hatred and scorn others. I *want* to be above that, I don't want to connect to that. Does that mean I think I'm better? More evolved? Perhaps..hence the disconnect.

A conundrum indeed.

xo

It's none of your business!

2010-01-19T07:50:00.001-06:00

What others think of you is none of your business!

I received this gem of wisdom for the for the first time a few years ago while listening to some audio of a lecture delivered by Les Brown.

The idea still resonates with me today. What others think of you - is none of your business!
I simply love that! It's so simple and yet it conveys such an important message.

For many of us - more than admit it - a good deal of our behavior is dictated by what others will think.   We feel as though we will be judged in some way, on some level, by someone person or persons, just about on a daily basis. Whether it be our peers, our friends, our family, our co-workers, our boss, our online buddies, or just the strangers in the shopping mart... alot of our behavior is dictated by what others will think.

On a simple level, it's in our clothes and our daily coiffing. We present ourselves to the world and while some of that has to do with how it makes us feel - alot of it (admit it!) has to do with how others will see us. And you know, this is partially vanity and partially ego and it's okay. Really it is.   That's just the skin on the surface here (punn intended) of what I'm actually referring to.

I'm referring to the actions we take. We have goals in mind, we have destinations we aspire to reach, we have things we want to try, dreams we want to move toward and in many cases - we don't. We don't reach forward, we don't move toward our goal...because... somewhere in our mind what stops us is the nagging and penetrating voice that asks "what will they think of me?"

Here are some examples:
You want to write a novel but you wonder what others will think of it.
You want to audition for that part but you wonder what your friends will think if you tell them you want to be an actor.
You want to start an organization but you wonder if your peers will think it's stupid.
You want to start a blog but you don't want others to think you're partaking in a fad.
You want to dance in the pouring rain in the middle of the street on a crowded Saturday but you don't because you figure everyone will think you are nutty.
You want to get up on a stage and tell everyone all the profound thoughts in your head but you fear that people will think your goofy.
You want to quit your job as a corporate accountant and pursue your dream of opening a bakery but you know your family will think it's stupid.

...you get the idea here.. and these just name a few. How many things have you wanted to do - you didn't do because of what others may think? Be honest with yourself.

Well, guess what? What others think of you is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!

The only thing that is your business is how you feel, what drives you, what brings you joy and what will get you smiling! Once you are following your joy, once you are in that place of balance, once you are in alignment and living in harmony with who you truly are - that is when you will radiate joy! And when you radiate joy, you know what others will think of you? They will think that you are happy! And if they don't, SO WHAT? Honestly, peoples judgments of you are really their problem to deal with and not yours. Understand?

It takes audacity to be happy folks.   So go ahead and do it, have the audacity to forget what anyone will think, have the audacity to follow what drives you and have the absolute audacity to be happy!

Smile! It's all good :)

Are you dead when you die?

2010-01-17T10:10:00.000-06:00

Most of us don't want to die.   Even those of us who believe in some kind of after-life typically do not want to die.   I would feel confident saying that most of us do infact fear death to some degree.   Even those who have strong religious convictions still have some fear of death.

This is okay, of course. This is natural, we are supposed to have a healthy fear of death. We are not supposed to desire it. It's a very basic and primal survival function. Like the animals who function on mere instinct, survival is a human instinct. So it's perfectly natural to want to avoid death. (Of course it become unhealthy when we obsess and have irrational fears but that's another story.)

While this natural aversion to death is very basic, for us humans it is more than just instinctual. Animals strive to survive because of very basic programming, they do not ponder an afterlife.   We humans however do. And so our instinct to survive is coupled with our fear of the unknown.

Throughout all of human history, humans have wondered about what lies beyond death.   Humanity always has, and most likely always will. Many of us protest to know what lies beyond death, but we don't. Many of us insist that we are certain, we figure our random sporadic spiritual experiences have enlightened us. Alas, we don't know. Entire religions are created and function based on some kind of after-life belief.   But as certain as any of us claim to be - we must acknowledge that nobody really knows.   Nobody does. And so despite our claim to certainty - we have no idea. We think we do, we'd like to know, we want to believe we know, but we don't.

So fear of death is really fear of the unknown.   Which is perfectly okay and perfectly natural.   We live according to this really. Our entire lives - we go through our days knowing in the back of our mind that we are on some kind of time-limit.   We do not know when it will be but we all know that we indeed have an eventual deadline.   And if you break any action, any decision, any situation down to it's most basic core - it will be based, in some way, on the that eventual deadline.

Most of our philosophers throughout history with all of their most profound musings... can be broken down to the same core basis... live life based on the acknowledgment of eventual death.   The suggestions vary greatly, because there is such a magnificent variety in human thought and emotion... but everything comes down to the universal understanding that we will all eventually stop living. "live life to the fullest" or "live like today is your last day" and etc...

And despite our claims, and our laughably arrogant suggestions that we somehow know...we just simply do not know what happens after our physical body dies.

Well....What if we knew for certain - that we did not die? What if death was indeed an illusion. What if we made it all up? What if life never ceases? What if it is a simple matter of transformation? What if our physical body is nothing but an illusion and that who we truly are is not anything we think it is at all.   What if the 'death' of our physical body is really nothing more than our spiritual readiness to let go of that imaginary scenario and move on?

I recently learned, that despite great efforts by modern science, there is actually no real proof that the physical world exists. Isn't that amazing? Let that sink in for a moment:

There is no proof that the physical world exists.

Neurologists can explain our perception of what we believe is our world.   Electronic signals are processed and we translate these signals into pictures, textures, sounds and so on... but that is the translation of energetic pulses - it is not proof of existence.

So, if we cannot prove physical life - then by default we can not prove physical death.   And if we can not prove physical death, then we cannot possibly know what lies beyond that perceived event.

Where does that leave us then? Well, I hypothesize that if the physical world were indeed a grand and intricate illusion created by our collective energy.... well then, there can not be a "death".   We are spiritual energy and that is all we are.   What we perceive as life and death are all part of our own creative process and so on we go.

In theory, this would eliminate fear of death wouldn't it?   And so I ask you - what if?

What if this were the truth, and what if we truly and deeply KNEW it?

What would change and why? How would you live?   Or is the concept just too profoundly difficult to reasonably accept thus rendering the question unanswerable...?

If so - why? Does it contradict your senses? Your logic? Your religion? (keep in mind that most of the worlds most popular religions all tell the same message in different words and through different prophets - there is something to that...)

Does it contradict your sense of security? Sense of reality? Sense of security in your sense of reality?

What are your thoughts?

When we die, are we dead?

The search for answers - what am I doing here?

2010-01-16T07:32:00.001-06:00

Who am I?

What is my purpose? What do I hope to accomplish? Which road is better? Where am I going? What is my destiny?

Have you asked yourself this?

Here is the follow-up question....

Why? - Why do you ask? Why do you want to know?

How will the answers (if there are any) benefit you?

Try

2010-01-14T08:27:00.000-06:00

Some days I am sane. Some days I am not. I prefer the days that I am not.
I strive to be happy. I try to do what feels good. I try to follow my bliss...pursue the mirth....head toward the joy... and so I do. It's not accomplished every day.

As I grow, I exercise this muscle - this ability to peel off the layers of excess that complicate my life leaving the beautiful shining joy exposed - beautiful and vulnerable - for my most exquisite pleasure.

I'm not there yet. Not complete. Not perfect.

I do not bask in pure bliss for every moment of every day, all the time, always.
But I try.

Sometimes I am sad
Sometimes I am angry
Sometimes I am mean
Sometimes I judge
Sometimes I fail
Sometimes I yell
Sometimes I whisper in the dark silence in my own mind and I beg....why....
But sometimes....sometimes.... I dance in the privacy of my bathroom walls..
But sometimes...sometimes... I smile in the darkness behind my eyelids and inside my own embrace..

Sometimes I see something I saw a million times and my eyes treat it like it was the first time I've looked upon it.
Sometimes events of my past look different in the ray of light that is cast upon them by maturity.
They are - beautiful.
Sometimes I cry.
Sometimes I smile.

Always - I try.

My life.... my life is eternal.   My life is good.
These characters parade about me - I love them.

I have peace.

Forgive me my sins when I am mean
Forgive me my silence when I am broken.
Forgive me my judgment and judge me not for I am not perfect.

....but I'm getting there....

so I smile.

And so should you too, smile. For when you do - so shall I...smile...

xo

A lifetime of Happy Part II: If today WASN'T your last day.

2010-01-13T15:41:00.000-06:00

What if you aren't going to die?

In the song "100 Years to Live" we also hear the lyric:
"...when you've only got a hundred years to live..."

In another song that I like, "If today was your last day" we hear the lyrics:
"If today was your last day
and tomorrow was too late
Could you say goodbye to yesterday?
Leave old pictures to the past
donate every dime you had?
If today was your last day?
What if, what if today was your last day?"

Both of these songs are good, carry what appears to be a positive message to humanity, and illustrate a relatively common philosophical principle.

The message is common. We hear it in music, on TV, in movies. It's scripted into our religions - especially those with a new age flair. We read it in books, many books! There are libraries of books that muse over this principle; that we only have a limited time on earth and we should pay more attention to each moment we have. We do hear this message alot. So often infact, that I think we all understand it clearly. Yes, we get it... we need to spend more time loving life and less time stressing out.   We do all know this.... but I wonder, how many of us adhere to this principle? How many of us have this realization, and acknowledge it, but do nothing with it?

Perhaps some of us do, for a day or so... maybe a few days... and that's it usually.   But we've all pondered the question (or some variation of) "if today was your last day...." how would you live?

If you've pondered this before - if you've thought about the reality that you are eventually going to die, that you don't know when, and if you've ever told yourself you should do more... I have something new to propose to you....

What if today wasn't your last day? What if it wasn't tomorrow? Or the next day? or the day after that..and so on.... in other words, what if - you knew you would never die?

Most of us (I'd venture to say all of us who are at least reasonably sane) understand that we are going to die someday. But what if that wasn't necessarily true? Can you wrap your mind around that for just long enough to contemplate it?

What if you didn't die? What if there was no mysterious, unavoidable and untraceable "deadline"?   What if there was no "end"? What if there was no possibility that you only had today? What if you knew that you indeed had all the time in the world?   What if there was no death?

THEN how would you live?

What would today be like then? What would you do? Would you then figure you had time to worry about the laundry? Or would you realize that it just doesn't matter?

So while I'm sure at some point you've contemplated what you would do if you knew when you'd die.... think of this...ponder what affect it would have on your life if you suddenly found out for certain, that you would never die?

What if.... what if...what if..... there was no deadline - ever?

how will you live, if you were to live like you will never die.....would it be with audacity?
xo

A Lifetime of Happy: Part I (continued) - To my fifteen year old self....

2010-01-10T09:06:00.000-06:00

If I met my fifteen year old self...... what would I say?

Dear Fifteen,
Pay attention.
There is no such thing as "grown up". We're never finished.
Wear gloves. Your hands will look terrible when you are thirty if you don't.
And lastly,
It's all good. No matter how bad it seems, it's not. It will always be just fine.
Love,
You.

That's it. That is the only thing I would say to my fifteen year old self. Why? Well what would be the point of saying anything else really? I'd really like it if my teenage self didn't feel so uncool wearing gloves, my hands are paying for it now... but otherwise I just think I'd encourage myself not to worry so much about growing up and leave it at that.

Life is really so much less complicated than we make it sometimes :)

Have the audacity to be happy, and always love thyself!
xo

Observation #16789 Saying "Thank You" spreads joy

2010-01-09T11:33:00.000-06:00

Want to be happier? There are many simple ways in which to do this. Here is one way:

Say "Thank You" More often. And to make even more satisfying, add a smile to it.   :)

Say it to the cashier, but really say it. Look them in the eye, smile and say "Thank You!" if you're really feeling ambitious, take a glance at their name tag and use their name. People like the sound of the own name!

Say it to your teacher, your kids teacher, the soccer coach, the kid at the hardware store. Tell them, "Thank You!"

Write Thank you notes more often.   Not just for gifts. For little things in cases where they'd be unexpected.   Find everything you need at Target? Write a thank you note on a slip of paper and leave it for the manager.   Write "Thank You" at the diner and leave it with the tip.   Did your kids football coach or dance teacher do a good job Saturday afternoon? Send him or her a "Thank You" email.    Include a 'smiley'.

Kiss your spouse and say "Thank you for being you".    Give your best friend a squeeze and say "Thank you for making me smile".

You get the idea here :)

Here's the thing, when you do this, you yourself will automatically feel better.   Being nice is never a selfless act - but it's not supposed to be. It's suppose to make us all happier!

Here's what's more... sometime...someone that you thank, will really need to hear it. And to that person, you will have completely made their day!

Do it! Say "Thank You".

Be AUDACIOUSLY Happy :)

xo

A lifetime Happy - Part I: Fifteen

2010-01-08T07:54:00.000-06:00

Fifteen there's still time for you...

These are some lyrics from the song "100 Years" by: Five for Fighting.

15 there's still time for you
Time to buy and time to lose
15, there's never a wish better than this
When you only got 100 years to live

This is part I of multi-part post. Here is the first question.
If you were able to meet a fifteen year old you - you are who you are now, and you met a teenage kid who was in fact YOU at fifteen -what would you say to the kid?

Would you impart advice? What kind? Would you give warnings? Would you try and steer them in any particular direction?

Would you change anything? Why or why not?

If so, would your fifteen year old self listen? (only you would know)

If not, is it because you believe your experiences created who you are now? And if so, have they? Are you sure?

Comments are open for your responses :)

xo

Good Morning Apple!

2010-01-05T23:15:00.000-06:00

Meet Dragon. Dragon is a simple, kind and beautiful character created by Dav Pilkey, a popular children's author. "A Friend for Dragon" is the first of a handful of books about Dragon, and is my five-year-old son's favorite. We've read it together many times and he has read it on his own dozens of times to date. Its cover is worn and wrinkled, its spine is cracked and its dog-ear creased pages have little scribbles here and there. Not surprisingly, Dragon has become one of my favorites as well. (learn more here if you like: http://www.pilkey.com/bookview.php?id=4)

"A Friend for Dragon" is a simply written short and rhythmic story about a sweet blue dragon who decides he would like a friend. When Dragon sets out to find a special friend, those he encounters are unwilling to befriend him. Then, a 'snake in the grass' (aptly named) tricks Dragon into believing that an apple is talking and desires his friendship.

Excited about his new friend, Dragon takes the apple home. They have a grand time together and Dragon is just delighted with his new special friend!

In the morning however, something is wrong. Apple does not 'wake up'. Dragon repeats "Good Morning Apple!" Several times but Apple does not respond. After a fateful visit to the doctor Dragon realizes his friend has passed on and buries Apple in the yard. Dragon goes through the typical stages of grief, then Spring comes and Dragon finds a most spectacular surprise in his yard, where he'd buried his friend.

The story is sweet, beautiful, delightful and whimsically illustrated. In sharp contrast to the dozens of deep intellectual and philosophical texts lining my shelves - this child's book is so simple and yet it carries such a meaningful and beautiful message - told in the most flawlessly simple manner - that it actually rivals the thick and verbose pages written by all of our modern philosophers.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Maybe I've read it too many times. Maybe that is just what I do and why I am able to smile so much more in my adult life - because I can see the profound and grandiose beauty in the most extraordinarily simple things.

Or perhaps it really is that beautiful.

We are creatures of divine uniqueness - all with our very own private circumference within which to learn, grow and shape our existence. And yet, we are distinctively interconnected by the magic of that unseen lace of energy that makes us all part of the same fabric. It is therefore, natural to feel alone when we are isolated. It is natural to seek kinship - to desire conversation, companionship, a warm touch. Our relationships are, very literally, the thread that binds us to our physical sanity.

Apple's lack of animated existence is irrelevant. Apple - despite being a fruit - very much becomes Dragon's very best friend. Dragon perceives Apple to be his most valuable companion, and so that is who Apple is.

Dragon frets when Apple is not responsive. Dragon grieves when Apple dies, and Dragon celebrates the (very literal) fruits of the seeds of love that Apple left before its departing.

Dragon is a beautiful, simple and divinely wonderful creature. He perceives his world, and he enjoys what manifests. Dragon smiles.

And so should you - smile!

Good Morning Apple!

Be ye man or be ye beast?

2010-01-03T23:41:00.000-06:00

" If you know that all is well, you know all you need to know. And if you know life is supposed to be fun, you know more than almost anybody else knows. The beasts, the animals know that all is well. Animals live in the moment. They understand the power of their now. They expect the Universe to yield to them. They don't worry or fret or conjure or make laws or rules or try to regulate. They are Pure Positive Energy. The beasts vibrate more on the Energy scale of contentment than of passion. The difference between the beast and the human is that the beast is more general in its intent. The human is usually less blended, usually less allowing of the Energy to flow, but is more specific. And that is why the human is seen to be the Creator while the beast is more the balancer of Energy."

Amazing but true indeed isn't it? We are more complex in our ability to think-to reason and so it is our blessing and our curse. It is the thing that bestows a most extraordinary bliss onto us at times, and also the thing that keeps us agonizing over the perpetual strive for what we think is unattainable pure joy.

A flower does not stress over opening it's pedals. It simply does. A blade of grass does not strain to grow, it simply does.

Life does not try to exist. We simply...exist.   Our eyes open in the morning, our breath fills our lungs and so there we are....forever standing on the precipice of our own existence.   Continuing to paint each next stroke of our lives with a brush we are not even aware of.

We expect to strain. We are conditioned to believe we are supposed to. We expect to have to bend the world around us in order to reach a place of contentment.

Stop. Be still. Listen.....   it is not a strain. Like the animal whose blessed lack of complexity in thought allows it to expect the Universe to yeild to it's will - so should we.   We are not hurdling through space on an unseen roller coaster my friends. No. We are driving the coaster. The hills and dips and turns - they are all engineered and thrown before our path - by us.    Our strain causes the difficulty, and our unwillingness to just... be still, and know.

Expect the Universe to yield to your will.   Don't stress or worry if it will, or get angry or frustrated - that will do nothing but exasperate you.   The grass does not try to break through the cement. It just expects to, and so up it comes.

Expect joy. Expect peace of mind. Expect health. Expect love.    Not jealously, or angrily, or with desperation; but with simple acceptance.   Expect these things like you expect to breathe.

And that is what is meant by "Ask and ye shall receive."

Ask. Expect. Enjoy!

But what is happiness?

2010-01-03T08:15:00.000-06:00

"But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads" Albert Camus

What an amazingly accurate quote!! Are we looking for something that we cannot seem to find? Are we perpetually chasing carrots? Perhaps true happiness, true deep joy does not reside "out there". It resides inside you. It was there all along. It is not a carrot on a stick. It is not at the end of the rainbow - it is the rainbow.

If you do not feel it, you are looking in the wrong place.

If you are not experiencing it because you are thinking "but...." this and "but...." that, then you are finding excuses to avert your attention from the happiess that has always been there.

We are here to experience joy - not pain. We experience pain only when we fail to acknowledge joy.

Joy is not something to look for, strive for or attain. Joy is there. All we have to do is recognize it. Pain is not already there, it's something that we allow ourselves to feel when we fail to recognize joy.

Pain is necessary for spiritual education purposes only. It is a thin skin that is to be felt, processed and then evaporate, leaving only the joy that was there all along. The problem humanity faces is that we spend too much time trying to process pain. We focus on it, we talk about it, we discuss it with our therapist, we think about it, we dwell on it. We don't allow it to dissolve, and so it becomes a thick blanket that hides the brilliant light of joy.

Stop. Rest. Take time to just....be..... BE. Exist.

Don't talk about it.

Let it dissolve.

Do not look for your joy. Look inside. It's already there.

To achieve the harmony referred to in this quote, you have no further to look than inside your own closed eyelids.

Smile! It's there for you.

xo

Perspective

2010-01-01T20:34:00.000-06:00

Being able to see the world beyond the end of our own nose is a rare talent that few of us have and yet is so crucial when it comes to truly enriching our own spirituality thus improving our experience.   Every now and then, we are reminded that things are not always the same from another view and then we have two choices....we can chose to examine the other perspective; becoming aware of an entire other world that exists outside of our own four walls...or we can choose to ignore it and stick with the interpretation from our own lenses.

Like art, life looks different when you stand someplace else.   Things are what they are, that is very much true, but all things take on a different appearance through different lenses.

Recently I experienced one of these moments - when I had an opportunity to look through a different pair of lenses at a situation that I had long ago made a decision about. My perspective was altered, having been given another view, and thus my opinions changed thus altering - for the better - my entire feeling about the situation and the person of which it was all about.

I had an uncle, we'll call him Uncle Henry.   Uncle Henry passed away several years ago. He died essentially from liver failure thanks to years of chemical abuse.   Uncle Henry was my Mothers brother, he was the closest to her age out of 8 other siblings.   For the most part, she grew up with only him in the house as all of her other siblings were much older and gone and married to their own lives.   Uncle Henry was a hard core drug addict. He had been addicted to heroine as well as a variety of other drugs from a very young age.

Mother told me stories of Uncle Henry that would eventually assist the formation of my opinions about him. I learned that he was often violent with her, that he often stole her personal items (and her parents items) to pawn for cash to feed his addiction and so on. Mother described the tortured tension that would encase the household thanks to Henry's problem, driving her father to drink (literally) and her mother to violent outbursts and perpetual stress.   Over the years Henry had been in and out of rehab, most attempts at rehabilitating having failed, as he'd come home and within a short period of time the chaos would begin again.

These stories shaped my view thus my perspective of Uncle Henry.   My personal experience was different of course. By the time I was born Uncle Henry's 'problem' was 'regulated'.    Six years older than my mother, he never married and lived with my grandparents.    I have clear memories of going to Grandparents house every weekend and seeing Uncle Henry in the back room, watching afternoon TV.   He had trouble focusing his eyes and rarely looked directly at me. He wasn't cruel to me at all, he'd say "Hey kiddo" in a low and shaky voice. His hand would raise slowly from the armrest as if he were struggling to pull it up, and he'd wave with a slow and deliberate effort.    Uncle Henry looked tired, worn, years older than his age, slack jawed and weak.   He looked like he could have been a good looking man if he hadn't beaten himself silly with drug addictions.   Most of the time he'd sit in his recliner.   When he was standing he had trouble standing still and would rock like a pendulum, looking horribly uncomfortable in his own skin.

I'd hear my mother complaining about having found more track marks on Uncle Henry - realizing that even on a 'regulated' medication he was still shooting and this would affect her emotionally in a huge way - no doubt thanks to her experience having grown up with him.   Naturally, this would affect me, being her daughter.

In my eyes, through my view and in my world - Uncle Henry was a burn-out. A looser with a capital L. A druggy, a rotten egg. A boy gone bad and never come back.   He hurt everyone around him, including my mother and I didn't care for him.    I actually feel bad typing these words now, and you'll see why in a moment, but keep in mind that I was seeing the entire situation through my own unique perspective; a perspective shaped exclusively by the man I saw with my own eyes and the stories of stress and angst that I'd heard.

I suppose the good news is that this did keep me away from doing any serious experimenting with drugs as a teenager (wild as I may have been, the way he looked, and the stories I'd heard, scared me enough to say "no" to the hard stuff). Anyway...

After my grandparents died (another saga in and of itself) my mother refused to have Uncle Henry move in with us.   I couldn't blame her considering their history and her great fear of having her daughters live with the chaos and tension she grew up with.   She was out to protect her family from a similar experience to her own.   So, when I was seventeen, Uncle Henry went to live with my aunt in Connecticut and that was essentially the last I heard of him until he died several years later.   I respectfully attended his funeral but felt little remorse. In my memory - he was a burn-out, who brought my mother and grandparents years of great stress and pain. I did not harbor hate toward him, but I will admit I saw him in a distasteful light and through dim lenses.

Many many years later, I find myself in my mid-thirties with a facebook account to keep in touch with family and friends and goof off over coffee in the mornings.   At some point I receive a friend request from a young man whose name I do not recognize. (we'll call him Charlie here to protect his privacy). I can see that he and I have two mutual Facebook friends. I do not know either of these folks well, but I know they are related.   My mothers family is extremely large and we are spread out in many different states so most of us do not know each other personally, but Facebook has introduced a lot of us for the first time - such was my case with these two other mutual friends.   So, assuming this young man was somehow related, I accepted Charlie's friend request and wrote a friendly message to him, asking him to explain who he was.

I find out he is the grandson of one of my aunts in another state.   Great! I'm happy to meet another cousin! So we get to chatting, learning more about each other and our lives and then he makes a statement that caused me to literally drop my jaw as I read it, sit back in my chair and read it over and over again.     He mentions Uncle Henry.   He not only mentions him, but expresses that he misses him a great deal since his death, and goes on to make statements about how much he appreciated him and how much great respect and admiration he had for him.

Whaaaat? Respect? Admiration?? Whaaat?    I admit that that was my initial response. I could not understand it. Was there some alternate Unlce Henry that I was not aware of? Who was he talking about? Uncle Henry? The burn-out? Was he nuts?    Honestly, and to my own discredit I am admitting here that I was not seeing beyond the end of my own nose and I was quite taken aback by this outpouring of affection for a person that held nothing but disrespect for.   This is not a recommended way to behave and I'm afraid I was indeed behaving in a spiritually devolved way - but such is the case often when we are struck with childhood memoirs.

Keeping my opinions mostly to myself I wrote back and simply stated that our experience with Uncle Henry was obviously different, and I changed the topic.

Later, I asked my Mother if she knew Charlie. "Sure." she says. She knows exactly who he is.   I ask if he knew Uncle Henry.   "Oh yes." My mother explains, and proceeds to tell me that he lived with him for a while during a time when Charlie had many troubles of his own.   From the little my Mother is able to retell (she only knew a little bit herself) I find out that Uncle Henry lived downstairs from my aunt, who took good care of Uncle Henry and helped him out a great deal.   At some point, Charlie found himself in some kind of trouble of his own, (his grandmother) allowed him to live downstairs with Uncle Henry for a time.   Now, realize that to me, this sounds outrageous - why would anyone put a kid in trouble with that guy? But I'm starting to see that there is alot I don't know.     My mother doesn't have all the details but explains to me that Uncle Henry ended up helping Charlie out a great deal. Perhaps he served as a 'big brother-type mentor' having had a lifetime of struggles with addiction and able to impart important experience onto Charlie now.   Without having all the details, the gist of it was that somehow, in some way, Uncle Henry was a great help to Charlie.

I was amazed.   I let it sit on my mind for a while and really tried to expand my own mental horizon. It also occured to me, that whatever it was he was able to help Charlie through, I suspect Charlie was a great help to Uncle Henry as well. Sometimes, the opportunity to help another soul is the most extraordinary medicine for one self.

I wondered why I never knew any of this. My mother said "you never asked". And it was true. Once he was gone, as far as I was concerned, he was gone. I could have cared less and never asked how he was doing or anything.   My mother kept herself informed about her brothers life, and visited occasionally, which is how she knew about Charlie, but didn't report any of the news to me, until he was dying.

This was a truly enlightening experience for me.   In my recent years, I like to consider myself fairly well evolved spiritually.   I tend to be able to see beneath the surface of most situations and I've come to learn that there is always much to learn.   Well, this is that case in point.   I evidently still have a great deal of evolving to do (it is of course an eternal process).   So the first order of business was to forgive myself for the immediate sensation of guilt over having had such negative thoughts about this human being who was my Uncle.

The next order of business was to accept the lesson for what it was. Things are not always only what we perceive them to be. They may certainly be in part - of course they are as everything essentially is nothing more to us than our own personal experience with it- but that is never the entire story. Everyone has their own perspective and the same situation can mean something entirely different to another person. Simply put, Uncle Henry still was who he was to me, that remains unchanged. However, the same Uncle Henry was someone entirely different to Charlie.

While it does not change my personal experience, it was still a profoundly collosal spiritual lesson! My experience may not have changed but my perspective changed entirely - thus rendering my feelings about my prior experiences with him - forever altered.

How extraordinarily beautiful! That Uncle Henry was able to give such a wonderful gift to another human being before his time on this earth was through. And how amazingly beautiful that Charlie was able to give such a special gift to Uncle Henry before he passed on.... the deeply powerful gift of being needed.

Not only was this a lesson in forgiveness (in an abstract way) but a huge lesson in Humanity that is a huge part of our spiritual growth.

So folks, take what you will from this story... but if anything at all, please try to remember that your view is usually much more narrow than you think.   You may not be able to see beyond your own horizon at first, but try to keep in mind that there is always a panoramic view - whether you can see it straightaway or not.

Knowing this... doesn't it make you want to smile??? :)

Be well!
~Veda

*While this is a true story, names have been changed for privacy :)

Resolve to smile, resolve to feel good!

2010-01-01T09:19:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year! Welcome to a new year, a new dawn, a new day.... are you feeeeeeling goooood? :) Well you should be! But not beause it is a new year, because there really isn't any reason not to be feeling good! Do you agree? If not, why not?   Do you feel as though you have valid reasons to not feel good?   What are they?

For anyone not feeling good...Lets try this, if you think you have reasons to not feel good, write them down. Make a list with bullet points. Spend no more than 15 minutes doing this and really do it. Write down all the reasons you think you can't be feeling good right now.   Go ahead and do that before you continue reading.   (insert theme song from Jeapordy)

All the rest of us who are feeling quite nice, read along just for fun ;)

Now, did your negative little self write down your reasons?   Here's what you do next:
Look at your list.
Read every one of them.
Did you read them?
Now, forget them. Crumble up the paper, rip it to shreds and throw it away! Because they are all excuses.   I don't care what you have written on that paper.   The degree of the issue is completely irrelevant - the fact of the matter is that you have the power to feel good.   No matter what your circumstance, you have the power to feel good! And don't be shaking your head and saying "but my circumstance is just too awful" because I guarantee you it's not!   That is simply another excuse to stay where you are at, it's wallowing.   So I say, make a decision and feel good!   It really is that easy.

Here is where to start: Smile!   And when you leave the house today, or tomorrow, whenever you go out - wherever you go SMILE!    Smile while you are driving, smile at the cashier in the grocery store. Smile at the folks walking by you. Smile at the person on line behind you.   Smile at the waiter serving your meal. Smile at everyone and most of them will smile back.   Why? Because that is the first outward sign that you have made a decision to feel good! Smile in Public!

So here is to the year 2010, the year of smiling in public!

Lets put it to the test shall we? Face this new year, this new dawn, this new day... smiling!

Let go of excuses to feel bad, and start feeling good! It's simply a matter of choice. Choose to feel great, choose to smile and my friends, I promise you, it all starts there.   Once you make that simple choice, there is a grand shift in the energy that precedes your path and everything becomes brighter, clearer and more joyful. Everything starts when you smile in public :)

Do it! and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T00:24:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas!

Today is a day that a huge number of the world enjoyes celebrations and festivities! It is Christmas!

Primarily a holiday associated with the Christian faith - the birth of Christ - Christmas has come to be widely celebrated by almost everyone regardless of the religion they practice.   While some may see this as a problem, (the lack of religion in the celebration) I'm going to go ahead and say I dissagree.   I think it's okay. As a matter of fact, I think it's more than okay!

Most people celebrating Christmas are celebrating love, joy and general happiness.   Honestly, there is truly nothing wrong with that! The Christian message is that Christ was born to bring peace on earth and good will toward men.   So let it be then, regardless of the many religions that man has creatively come up with - let us have good will!

Let us have joy!

Let us dance and sing and love each other!

Let us not be concerned with what is not, and revel in the joy of what is!

My friends, on this Christmas may you experience profound joy!

Here is an incredible quote that I found particulary wonderful! May it bring you meaning and hope and love.

"Create a victorious mindset of such extreme happiness that you create moments in others lives that take their breath away"-Chip Esajian

Merry Christmas to all!

The Creator of Joy

2009-11-17T08:12:00.000-06:00

Your life has been dictated by you.
Everything you do produces cause and effect.
Every decision you make dictates the path you are on.
Even every thought you have causes a mental vibration that aligns the energy patterns ahead of you - shaping you life.

It's not something to believe or disbelieve. It simply is.
Whatever you are experiencing right now, is your fault. So if it's wonderful, congratulate yourself.

If it's less than wonderful, take responsibility.
Refusing to accept this is not going to be of any help to you.

You may be experience a feeling of anger upon hearing it, thinking the author of this blog doesn't understand, or couldn't know.... you are rejecting the notion, and therefore rejecting the only thing that is going to help you. Anger and rejection are the very emotions that are going to send out bleak vibrations that will secure you into a dark situation indefinitely.

However, once we accept that our lives and our experience are completely and totally our responsibility and a direct result of our own doing - then we are liberated. This acceptance.....liberates us. It frees us from laying blame, finding excuses and wondering why.

Once you are free of that binding, you are free to begin to change your life and your circumstances to fit your desires.

And here's the thing, the beautiful part is that it does not take alot of effort, it does not take alot of sacrifice and it does not take any painstaking labor.

We are conditioned to believe that anything worth while is a result of hard tedious work and tiring effort. This is not completely true. You can put in thousands of hours of work and you can sweat out difficult labor for years, and you can sacrifice greatly and still not enjoy a wonderful life.

This is because contrary to what we have been taught all our lives, it is not about that. It is very very purely about our state of mind and our attitude. Most often, the sacrifices do nothing but aggravate the situation because we mourn for what we've lost. Hard labor and sweat and great difficult effort leave us feeling exhausted and angry and often defeated.

The mourning of our sacrifices and the feelings of anger and exhaustion put us in a vibrational place of utter discontent and disharmony - creating a vibational energy pattern around us that swirls around us like a great whirlpool that becomes overwhelming and escape seems impossible.

All it takes is a change in how you feel.

If you are reading this and find yourself thinking "it's not that easy" or "you don't understand" then you are not on the right track and are doing nothing more than spinning the great tornado around you. You are essentially finding excuses to be where you are at.

So are you thinking "but what do I do?"

Here's what you do. Decide. Decide that where you are at is unacceptable and realize - fully and honestly realize that you put yourself there. Not by your actions or lack of actions but by your attitude. Sadness, frustration, depression, feelings of loss - these are the things that put you where you are at. And thus these are the aspects of you that will need to change.

Focus on what you want, and simply expect to have it. Be happy. Don't say you are happy, BE happy. Think of what will help change your situation, actions you can take. Do those actions make you feel happy? If not, they are not going to help, they will undoubtedly make things worse, much worse.

What will make you feel good? Do that.
What do you enjoy doing? Do that.

If your issue is a relationship problem, change the dynamic of the relationship. If it brings you sadness, if it tires you, if you find yourself in a constant state of longing, desperation, anger with the other person... that relationship is going to kill you. Change it or end it. Focus on being content and happy. Don't exacerbate it by offering more negative energy into it.

If your issue is financial, think about what situation will be acceptable to you and make you feel happy.

What are the solutions? Do these solutions make you feel angry or good? If the solution hurts you, causes emotional stress, then it's not the solution.

When dealing with financial trouble, the key is never to chase the dollar. It is a perpetual carrot on a stick. Chase your happiness.

Do what you love and the money will come.
Do what you hate and you'll never see financial freedom.

Whatever situation you are in, if it does not bring you joy - YOU are doing something wrong.

If your relationship leaves you feeling frustrated and angry, change it or leave it. People should energize us, not drain us. Find friends and family that will bring you joy, not frustration and anger and longing. Joy perpetuate joy.

If your situation has you feeling hopeless, frustrated, angry....it's all in your hands....if the solutions seem daunting, aggravating.... they are not the solutions, they are the problems. Joy perpetuates Joy.

You created it. The good news is, you continue to create it.

It's not in what you do, it's in how you are.
Fear begets fear, anger begets anger, frustration begets frustration.

Alas...

Joy begets joy. Joy begets joy. Joy begets Joy.

What you do is irrelevant. What you feel is the entire creation process.

So, how are you?

What are you feeling? That is exactly what you are creating.

Feel angry, create anger.

Feel joy, create joy. Feel sadness, create sadness.

Feel frustrated, created frustration.

Feel wonderful.....create wonderful.

May your day, be wonderful!

xo

Is it the message or the messenger?

2009-11-12T07:17:00.000-06:00

A word or two (or more) about Religion....

People say "Religion is the cause of all the war in the world".   Is that so?   I wonder.   I think it appears this way because all the fury seems to be over differences in belief systems.   Alas, I don't think it is the true cause of war.   Religion is in fact a tool though. It is a man-made institution and is perpetuated by man.   God has no religion. The divine energy that is who you are - who we all are - what the entire universe is - has no religion. Religion is our pathetic invention developed by our puny but arrogant minds. It is an attempt to explain what we call "unexplainable".

But here are some points to ponder:

One - it *is* explainable. The great mystery of the universe truly is not all that mysterious. We are not meant to go bumping around in the dark wondering why we are here. We all know why we exist, we just forgot. Too many theories and objectives and words get in the way, obstructing our spiritual view so that we can no longer see what is there all the time.

(notice the lack of visual stimuli in this post)

Two - every religion is the same. They vary in their interpretation of what God is, they vary in their regulations, they vary in their prophets and they vary in their saviors and messengers.   The stories are all told in different ways but the message - the bone marrow of the true lesson in the message - is all the same, is universal and is profoundly simple.   And yes, we are all missing it, none of us are seeing it.   But it's there, it's right there.

We are hung up on the messengers and whose got the "real" one. We are hung up on the regulations (all man-directed) and completely blind to the point.

If we stripped them all down to the main objective, we would watch the words disappear from the pages, leaving nothing but a blank white canvass on which we can truly SEE the message in the blankness.   For we need not look to the human language to convey God.   We need not see it, hear it, taste it, touch it or smell it. Those are all physical senses.   And yet we need all of those to truly experience God.

To understand God. Be silent. Be still. Be peaceful. Look within, look not at words, or figures or statues or things made and interpreted by man.   Look at the stark purty of white light.   Look with your soul but experience with your eyes.   Hear nothnig but the pulse of the universe... that pulse that beats in exactly the same rythym for every single part of this entire universe...hear that with your soul, and experience it with the ears you have.    Feel nothing but the delightful sensation of the energy around you in the air.   Feel it with your soul but experience it with your skin.

We know God, we see, hear, feel, touch, smell and taste God every day.    Ah but we experience God in an entirely different way, and that is what I fear we as a race are failing to allow ourselves to do. It's not hard at all.   There is a passage in the Christian Bible that says "Be still and know that I am God."   Other texts have similar passages.   The messenger is irrelevant. That is the message.   Be still. Experience the true purity of divine energy.

It is around you, it is everywhere you are... it is - you.

Be blessed, be warm, be open, and for the love of God, be HAPPY!

xo

The Who of You.

2009-11-11T08:38:00.000-06:00

You are who you think you are. That is the thought for you to ponder today. Who are you?

You are whomever you believe yourself to be. And no, I do not mean that if you believe you are Spiderman you can scale walls, you silly! Alas, this is because you do not truly believe yourself to be Spiderman. If you did, you'd in fact be, Spiderman.

If you are not understanding this concept, go look at your myspace or facebook profile. This will be a good representation of who you want yourself to be. Now ponder whether that is who you are.... here's the thing...even if you think it's not. It is!

You see, your experience is not a random accident. Nor is it predetermined by some power outside of yourself, hurling you out into the atmosphere without a steering wheel. It's not that you have a steering wheel my friend, you *are* the steering wheel....

There is someone you believe yourself to be. That is who you are. Can that change? Sure. But you must change your perception of who you are. Someone who thinks they are spectacular, is usually spectacular, whether the rest of us like it or not. Someone who thinks they cannot accomplish certain feats, usually cannot; but not from lack of ability, simply from lack of faith that they are that person.

When most of us were in grade school, at one point or another we were given a writing exercise and told to write a composition about ourselves. Most of us were adolescents when we did this. If you still have your old school work, perhaps you can dig it out and take a peek at who you believed yourself to be when you were a child. Many of us will not have saved it. It doesn't matter though.

What I'm advising today, is that you take 15 minutes out of your day and write a composition, a short essay, about yourself.   Be honest, be raw, be real.   Know that nobody but you will see it (unless you choose to share).   Don't think about it, just put the pen to the paper or fingers to the keys and write it.   Unlike your 4th grade class, you are not getting points off for bad spelling or improper grammar.   It doesn't even have to have periods dotting the ends of sentences.   Just allow the words to form a detailed portrait of the person you are.

When you are done, read it.   THAT is who you are.   Some of you may read this, and think you may have been exaggerating, but it's not so.   That description my dear friends, is who you are.

Maybe you'll read it and realize it matches exactly.   But perhaps maybe not. Maybe you'll read it and think that it does not match at all, that it seems as if it were written about someone else. Well folks, that is who you are, introduce yourself an welcome to you.

You will behave in ways that reflect who you believe yourself to be on a deep, core and very raw level.   That behavior will manifest events in your life that will steer it in a very particular direction in order to perpetuate your persona.   The problem with many of us is that we don't know we're driving.   We think we're on a ride.

We're not.

You are whomever you think you are.

Really. Get it. Let it sink in.....

So who are you?

You are.....beautiful.....

xo

Life is good.

2009-11-09T23:58:00.000-06:00

Greetings you lovely people you!

I had been without a computer for several weeks, which is why you have not seen any current blog entries from me on the joys of happiness :)

Of course I feel like I'm simply spilling over with lots to say after having been cyber-stifled for some time, but I'm going to keep this one short and precise.

Life is good. Quite good infact.

Yup, that's it. Life is good. What? You don't think so? You think maybe your life is not? Well my friend, that is quite the conundrum. Because it is your insistence that it is not, that makes it not. Stop being a schmo, smile a little and realize that all the drama is utter nonsense.

Deep down inside, you know it's true. Life... is really freakin good!

Why are we here? We are here because we choose to be, to enjoy the experience that only a physical life can give us through the most beautiful gift of five fantastic senses. The problem is that we quickly forget that we have more than just those five, and then slowly but surely, but the time puberty reaches us, the joy of living seeps out between the layer of social drama, financial strain and identity crisis that we lay on ourselves.

Take a deep breath, remember why you are here, and realize that life - is good.

That's all for now folks... stay tuned for more audacious happiness.....

xo

Want to feel better? Decide!

2009-10-06T08:39:00.000-05:00

That's right my friends, it's a decision. We must decide to feel good, to feel happy, to feel better.

When we say "that or he or she or it... makes me happy, or sad, or angry or thrilled..." whatever the emotion is, we are making a mistake. We are attributing power where it does not belong. There is no situation, person, statement or event that can make you happy or sad or anything else.

Certain situations in our environment certainly can and do elicit different emotional responses from us, but here's the thing - we can and do always choose our responses. We do not always realize that we are choosing our responses and that is why so many of us often feel this overwhelming lack of control over how we feel.

This in turn, leaves us with a loss of control over our lives and circumstances in it. If we do not feel we can control our emotional responses, then we certainly do not have any inclination that we have control over anything else that occurs in our life.

Ah but this is not true at all.   We do very much control all of our direct circumstances, we just don't realize we do.   Realization is the key to gaining back that feeling that we control our lives.

And it begins with controlling our mood.   And that begins by controlling our emotional responses to circumstances around us... those that we may not have direct control over because they are the result of other peoples actions and emotions.

We can not always control other peoples actions and emotions, however we can control our reactions to those situations and events. That is where our control begins.   And it begins with a choice.

Nothing is making you feel sad or angry. You are choosing to feel it. You are responding to a situation. As difficult as it may seem it is always possible, always and always, to decide how you are going to feel about it.

That decision is crucial, because it will dictate your behavior from that point on, and that will dictate the course of events that follow.

The truth of it is.... that life really is a highway, and you are driving. Whether or not your hands are on the wheel - that's up to you.

It is imperative that you realize the power of choice is in your hands. Nothing dictates how you feel but you. If you do not like how your world looks, YOU must add some color....

Want to feel happier? Don't expect others to bring you there. You do it. Decide. Then, BE happy. And once you do, watch the beautiful spectrum unfold before you.

Remember, how you feel is "all your fault" so make it good. :)

You are the artist of your life's canvass. It is imperative that you understand this... your happiness depends on it!

Start painting happy....

xo Veda

Karma's Boomerang

2009-10-02T00:37:00.000-05:00

Friends, if you put it out there, it's coming back atcha. Sooner or later, it's coming back at you, in some way shape or form. And when it does, the best way to handle it (if it's negative) is to recognize why it's happening to you, take responsibility (it's all your fault, remember) and make it right but turning it around and sending out on a positive wave.

It's not so much "Karma" in the traditional belief, but it is a very sound law of physics.

What you put out, you get back. What you sow, you reap. It's fairly easy to understand but evidently difficult to really apply that understanding.

Whatever you do, whatever action you take, whatever falls from your lips carries a wave of energy that will resonate. Actions produce energy, words carry energy, thoughts (yes even thoughts) create patterns of energetic pull. Whatever energy you emit, it will surround you and become incorporated as part of your life, and thus that same energy will manifest in some way, as part of your experience. Simply put - right back atcha!

Everything you do is a boomerang friends, so think about what you are throwing around. If you don't want it for yourself, don't put it out.

That said, we are human and fallible and as such we are goign to throw some undesirable energy out there sometimes....and we are going to get smacked hard with it back sometimes.

When that happens, we can either whine and moan and wonder why this is happening to us - thus perpetuating the cycle. (which is why folks in various state of depression often stay stuck there).

-OR-

We can acknowledge what is happening, and why. We can take responsibility and then move forward from there, taking care to ensure our next action is one that will create positive energy, the sort that we want in our experience.

Throw the happy out into the world my friends, and then reap the reward of happy back atcha!

xo

Sometimes.....

2009-09-30T19:44:00.000-05:00

Sometimes all you need to feel happy is a good tune that makes you feel good....

What's your good tune?

If it hurts, stop doing it!

2009-09-30T07:59:00.000-05:00

Albert Einstein said: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

It seems that humanity in general suffers from this condition. We have a tendency to subject ourselves to situations that aggravate or hurt us, do things that cause us strife or pain, succumb to compulsory actions that inevitably bring painful or aggravating results...and so on.

There is a corny joke that goes:

"A guy goes into a doctors office and says 'doc it hurts when I move my arm like this' So the doctor says 'well stop moving your arm like that!'"

As ridiculous as that joke is, it's really very good advice.   Why do we do this to ourselves? Is there something primal and masochistic about humanity?

We have all done it. We find ourselves engaging in situations that we know are going to cause some amount of anxiety or pain, and yet we do it again and again.

    We continue relationships that are bad for us.
    We hang on to friends who drain us and cause nothing but drama and stress.
    We continue with habits that we know are either physically or emotionally unhealthy - or both.

And then, in some cases, we have the audacity to whine about these things to others! We play the 'woe is me' card.

In some cases, it starts out as an irresistible urge of curiosity. We spy on an ex and find out things we really didn't want to know. We visit the myspace profile of some past friend and see all sorts of things that aggravate or even hurt us. We allow "friends" into our lives simply because we want to know what is going on with them and then we find out things that hurt, aggravate or cause some amount of anxiety. And what do we do? We keep coming back for more.

Friends, let us ask ourselves...why do we do this? What is so important about these compulsions? When you strip it down to it's core - nothing. There is nothing significant about any one or any thing in our lives that brings about any kind of negative reaction from us. There is no room for it, no reason for it and certainly no excuse for it.

We truly should be trying to make a conscious effort every day to engage only in those things from which we expect to gain a positive outcome in some way. And that is perfectly okay! It is OKAY TO BE HAPPY... because you are truly no good to anyone around you, until you are.

We should be avoiding things, people, habits and situations that we know are going to induce negative emotions and reactions. It is really another example of "It's all your fault".

When we recognize the power we actually do have over our own lives, and the amazingly beautiful life we can have when we simply choose to, an entire new world opens up to us. A world where gray becomes color and blurred lines become sharp, and your forever furrowed brows and pursed lips become relaxed.

And it has nothing whatsoever to do with what anyone else is doing, not doing, saying or not saying. It is entirely YOU.

If it hurts to hit yourself in the head - then my beautiful friends, stop hitting yourself in the head.

Are you thinking "it's not that simple"? Well dear, you are incorrect. Strip it down, peel away all the dramatic details you've attached to it, and see it for what it is. It really is that simple. Excuses will bring you nothing but grief.

Free yourself of these things that bind you folks. Free yourself of this insane human behavior and realize who you are and that you truly do deserve to be happy. Realize also that NOBODY can bring you there, but YOU. Feel it, know it and practice it. Dive into it.... and enjoy!

And if you have to audacity to complain about your own self-inflicted annoyances, then for the love of grapes you should have the audacity to be happy!

:) Smile! It feels good!

xo

Who are you?

2009-09-28T16:43:00.000-05:00

People say: "My past has made me who I am today" or "What I've been through has made me the person I am now" ... or some variation of that idea. And it's fairly accepted as generally true. That our past experiences have created the person we see before the mirror.

I'd like to challenge that principle. I'd like to say, that your past did not make you who you are today.   Who you are today, makes you who you are.

Who you are today...makes   you    who    you    are.

We can imagine that we are a manifestation of our past experience.   We figure that our unique experiences have driven us down certain paths thus creating other experiences and it is those experiences that have somehow molded us into the being we are right now.

I don't think so.   We are not a manifestation of our experiences.   The experiences are simply that - experiences. They are what they are.   WE have made decisions and taken actions etc.. which have driven us on our unique journeys.    And still yet, the journey did not mold us into ourselves.   We are not a mere accumulation of past experience.

You are a manifestation of your current thoughts, mood and state of mind.   You are NOW.   You live - NOW.   You do not live three weeks ago, a year ago, a decade ago during whatever trauma you like to blame for your character.   We do not live backwards.   We live now. Who you are is actually an accumulation of this very instant in time. And here's the magic..... if you don't like it, you can change it. Right now.

What you are thinking, what you are feeling, your state of mind at this moment is essentially who you are. These things will determine the next choice you make, the next tihng you do, and all the feelings that will be associated with those actions.

Perhaps how you feel right now, and the way in which you formulate your decisions is very much a result of your prior environment; but right now in this instant something is different. A key ingredient has been introduced to you that has not been there before. Now - you know. This is the pivotal moment then isn't it?

You stand on the event horizon of who you think you may have been and who you will be. In between those two is who you are.

So, who are you?

Smile!

Be Happy. Truly happy... you see.... you really have no reason whatsoever not to be.

What's wrong? Nevermind!

2009-09-26T08:50:00.000-05:00

When you ask "What's wrong?" you are immediately initiating focus on what is wrong. When you are upset and you think about what is wrong, or talk about what is wrong, you are focusing all your energy on that which is wrong. You become consumed by whatever is wrong in your life and you spend a good amount of time and energy trying to figure out how to make it right. But here's the thing - it's not going to get right, because all you can think about it's how much is wrong.

You want it to get right? Focus on right, think about right, talk about what right would be.

We think we have to focus on the problem to solve the problem. But when we do math, we are striving for an answer, not a perpetuation of the equation. Forget the problem, focus on the solution. Forget the "how". The "how" will keep you chasing your own tail, in a dizzying spin with your attention on the problem, asking yourself "but how do I solve this, how do I get out of this? Should I do this? Should I do that?"

If you did that when you were faced with a mathematical equation, you'd never solve it.

Forget it. Forget what is wrong and put your attention on what is right. Imagine everything in a state of peaceful joy and contentment. Focus your energy on that, talk about that, think about that.

Once you are able to do that, watch how quickly, whatever is 'wrong' suddenly becomes 'right'.

"oh but it's too hard"..."This is important, it has to be dealt with"..."I can't stop thinking about it"...

These phrases keep you in a perpetual state of wrong my friend. They are excuses, and deep down inside you know that.

The power is in your hands, nobody can help you, but you.

Change your thought patterns and watch your backdrop change before your eyes.

Yes, it truly is that simple.

Do it, have the audacity to just be happy.

2009-09-24T08:03:00.000-05:00

"I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction."

There is really nothing anyone can add to that statement to make it more beautiful or profound. So there is your meditation for today.

It is not "I am therefore I think" nor is it "I think therefore I am"

It is simply.... I am.

...and it's all good.

Unfinished.... forever...

2009-09-24T00:01:00.000-05:00

"There is no condition that you cannot modify into something more, any more than there is any painting that you can paint and not like and just paint over it again. There are many limiting thoughts in the human environment that make it feel like it is not so, as you have these incurable illnesses, or these unchangeable conditions. But we say, they are only "unchangeable" because you believe that they are."

I love this quote. I love it because it really illustrates the simplicity of our existence that we tend to think is just so very complicated.

We decide everything. EVERYTHING. Do you get that? It is really very profound and yet so clear. Once it hits you, it's like this amazingly brilliant light suddenly switches on and your entire life is suddenly crystal clear.

So lets review...it's all your fault, it is what it is and you decide everything. Now lets add to that the realization that you have the ability to modify anything.

You are standing on the event horizon of now. Whatever happened two seconds ago... (right there - you missed it) no longer matters. Your are a result of the prior few seconds, but the next few are completely up to you. So are the ones after that, and the minutes, hours and days ahead of you....

Look at your painting where you stand. Are you satisfied? No? Well guess what, it's unfinished! Pick up your brush and get painting! Make it what you want.

Is it not that simple? Oh but my beautiful friend, it actually is.

Have the audacity to be happy!

Relax, it will all work out

2009-09-18T07:33:00.000-05:00

Wasted Worry. Worry is almost always wasted. We stress ourselves over our perceived problems. Granted some of them seem extraordinarily huge and often times we just don't know how we are going to handle it. Sometimes, because we are human, we are vulnerable to pain -sometimes immense pain - that seems to accompany human events that are in our experience.

There is a passage in the New Testament in the Christian Bible where it is written that Jesus said "with the faith of a mustard seed you can move a mountain". Regardless of our religious beliefs (or lack thereof) I always thought that was such an important statement. Just the fact that it was phrased is important, without the bickering over who phrased it. (lets pay attention to the message and quit quibbling over the messenger). The message here is that with just a teeny scintilla of faith in our divine abilities, we can move mountains. Now, what's that again about the current problem being so huge we don't know how to handle it?

Here's the thing my beautiful friends.... it will all work out. It always does.

Listen to that statement. Speak it out loud, let it resonate. And really let it sink in.

It will all work out, it always does.

Now think about it, doesn't it always work out? Think about your life and all the tribulations you've encountered. I'm sure if you are human like we all are, you can think of some issues you've faced in your past that really rocked your world at the time. Events that were so immense or painful that they nearly sent your sanity over the edge of the abyss. Was it yesterday? Last week? Last year? A decade ago? Longer? Has it worked out? Hasn't it? Are you standing here today? Are you before your computer screen reading this blog? If you are then I'm assuming whatever it was that was so huge has since passed or you wouldn't be taking any time to sit here and read this right now. So it worked out then didn't it?

Everything does. Always and always and always. Whatever it is, chances are on this day next week, things will be different. On this day next month, your perception will be altered. On this day next year, there is a good chance you will not be worried about it anymore.

So...when you are faced with something...refer to my previous blog entries on these subjects...and remember these things:

It's your perception.

It's all your fault.

It will all work out.

It will all work out. It ALWAYS does.

So smile, and be audaciously happy! Because when you make a direct effort to chose to be happy - with audacity - no matter what - your entire perspective changes and your life is just automatically more pleasant.

Daily bliss....

2009-09-16T16:50:00.000-05:00

May the joy of this day become clear to you. May the colors of bliss sharpen and undulate in your view and may the smile that decorates your face fill your soul with the most pleasing vibe of content appreciation for all that you have....

Smile, and be happy with audacity!

Om

2009-09-15T19:46:00.000-05:00

Today, to be happy... just simply.... be.

Pause the player on the side of this blog, press play on the visual stimuli below...and enjoy the senerade and most exquisite sensation of vibrational harmony.....

You are loved...

It's all your fault! (thank goodness)

2009-09-15T08:51:00.000-05:00

So here's the thing... we humans suffer from this fairly general condition where we compulsively shift blame from ourselves to others. We also have a habit of projecting our issues onto others. Maybe we do this because we think it will help us gain perspective, but.... it doesn't.

In order for any of us to truly start enjoying the beautiful life we actually do have (even if we have yet to recognize it) the first thing we all should consider doing is realizing that wherever we are standing - we walked there on our own. It's all our own fault.

In my last post, I discussed the perception of good/bad and right/wrong and suggested that there is really no such thing. That things and circumstances and events are all just what they are. It is what it is is the mantra. Having that in mind, consider where you are at in your life right now?

Are things wonderful? Are things stressful? are they terrible? Beautiful? Fantabulous? Consider now that however you describe your immediate circumstances, #1 - it's your perception. Whatever it is, *it* simply is what it is, you however are determining how it feels. #2 - considering that, realize this, you got you here.

We don't like to admit this sometimes, but conveniently enough, we don't mind taking the credit when things are spectacular in our lives. Well my beautiful friends, when things aren's so spectacular, it's all on you too. (yikes!)

You are a direct result of you. Every single thought resonates and produces a vibration that will attract similar energetic impulses. Every action attracts a reaction. It's really very simple universal physics. We call it quantum physics, but the concept - stripped down, is really quite simple. You are what you perceive yourself to be. Change your perception, you change your reality.

Sounds simple enough right? Well I realize that it's not. We've been conditioned to function as if we are completely at the mercy of random events and chance. So to truly gain control of your life and start appreciating the beautiful life you really do have, requires a certain degee of de-programming.

The first and most crucial idea here, is that you simply must take responsibility for where you are at. You are the manifestation of every single thought and action you have had up until right now. It will require some amount of self control but stop saying "but this happened, and but so-and-so did such-and-such, and but it's not me, it's not my fault..." No! It is. Is truly is, and once you accept that you can move on. Unfortunately you will not be able to move on until you do accept it. No matter what it is (it is only what it is remember) big, small or in between.... it's YOU.

Now here's the good news (and very good news it is indeed!).... it's possible and it's really not that hard.

Begin where you are! Don't look back at the last year, month or even minute. It's all part of you but at the same time it's irrelevant to your next move. You have the most incredible power of creation resting on your shoulders right now, at this very instant that you are reading these words.

Quiet your mind, and made a decision. Ask yourself "how will the next few minutes be fore me?" if you decide that they will be pleasant and happy and wonderful, then really make that decision and commit to it, then.... simply enjoy!

It's important that this resonates with you and does not fall upon you as some ordinary cliche.

The idea here is that in order to be happy.... one must simply BE Happy.

Think on it... smile... and enjoy your beautiful life!

It's all the same stuff

2009-09-14T08:03:00.000-05:00

You are made up of atoms of energy. The people in your life are made of the same atoms of energy, and so is everyone else. The trees, the birds, nature... you get the idea here... all atoms of the same energy. It's the entire universe.

Consider the cells that make up your physical body. Millions of cells, tissue cells, blood cells etc... all binding together and working together to very literally make up your body. You are made of these cells, they are not you, you are rather, a collection of them. Alas, they are all individual cells, with their own function and purpose.

Consider the vast universe. Made up of gozillions of "cells"...every living thing.... each with our own individual uniqueness and purpose, but all making up the same entity.

Every single life is of utmost importance to the infinite eco-system that is our existence. And the beauty of it all is that nothing ever dies, we simply transfer. Energy cannot be created nor does it die, it simply IS. It changes form and purpose, but never ceases to exist.

....And we are all made of that same energy... uniquely individual, yet all part of the same one organism. The heartbeat of the universe beats in beautiful rhythm with your own.

So next time you feel resentful toward, disgusted by, angry at, etc... toward any other human being or living thing... remember that he is you and you are he. And... (I think you know where I'm going here) be NICE!

Be Happy. Just very simply, make a decision and BE happy. You have every reason in the world to be, and remember that every time your heart beats.

I suggest you smile at everyone you run into today and try to recognize their most blessed connection to who you are. Moreover, observe how it affects your mood, thus the events of your day. If you do this, if you really do this...smile.... I guarantee you will have a happy day! Like our body responds to the impulses of our cells, so does the universal energy respond to our thoughts.

Be well!

Love Thyself

2009-09-13T16:44:00.000-05:00

There is something to be said about vanity.... a confident love of oneself certainly does promote genuine self-admiration and affection.

This is the building block to happiness.

Look in the mirror.

You are beautiful.

Now, smile.....

...wider....

Carry that out into the world, and experience how the world reacts

to beautiful people.

I do. It's wonderful!

It's part of being audaciously happy!

Love thyself.... and remember always BE NICE!

A matter of perception

2009-09-13T08:07:00.000-05:00

Most of humanity struggles with this idea of right and wrong.   We agonize over decisions, wondering which choice is "right", painstakingly trying to avoid making the "wrong" choice.

In many cases, we look back at where we've been and think "well that was the wrong decision" or "I've made a mistake".   If we're lucky, we are able to give ourselves emotional padding for the misery by telling ourselves it was a learning experience and now we can move forward and make the "right" decisions.

But what if that is all nonsense? What if there is really no such thing as "right" and "wrong"? What if it's really all just a matter of our perception? Wouldn't that mean that we are in so much more control of our true happiness than we currently believe ourselves to be?

Let's step outside for a moment, pulling ourselves out of our proverbial box where reality is nothing more than what our five senses can translate.   Go beyond the daily experience of your life and meditate on who you actually are.

What are we?   We are a cluster of atoms of energy. We are pure energy. It's a most magnificent and yet most profoundly simple concept.   It's completely uncomplicated! We are energy.   The entire universe is energy.

That in mind, lets observe lightening.   Lightening is the purest natural manifestation of energy.   I often theorize that many of us feel excited by thunderstorms because we are very literally becoming CHARGED by the abunance of energy flowing about around us.   We experience that feeling of slight nervousness mixed with that incomparable sensation of awe and connectedness.    Most of us feel this way anyway, at least those of us who pay any amount of attention.

The reason we feel this way, is because we are made up of the same stuff. Energy.

Now, that in mind, ponder the notion of right and wrong as it would apply to the lightening itself.   It simply acts - it strikes, it illuminates haphazardly in response to the collective impulse of nature.   Does it contemplate right and wrong?   Does it rejoice when it lights up a mountainside?   Does it regret when it strikes a tree?   Moreover, does the tree grow hostile toward the lightening? Does the fire that consumes the tree remorse? Does the rain rejoice when it douses the flame?

No.

It just simply is what it is. It is not right, it is not wrong, it is what it is.

Human beings are blessed (or perhaps plagued) with the power of perception.    Although we are made of the same atoms as the lighting and the rain and the trees and even the fire... they do not perceive. We do. Some speculate it is because we have a soul, and perhaps that is true but it's fairly clear that we have got a whole lot of spiritual evolving to do - us humans.

Perhaps that is a profound revelation in our evolutionary process.   Our power of perception allows us to experience incredible beauty in this universe and appreciate it far more than any other living thing.   However, it also burdens us with the impulse to categorize just about every experience into "right" and "wrong".

But what if that is all just our imagination?

I propose that there is no "right" and "wrong". That things just simply are what they are, and we decide whether they are right or wrong, based on our perception.   And, our perception is based simply on our life's experience up until that point.   Everything we've learned to that date, dictated how we are going to respond to the event before us and that response determines in which category we will mentally place it... right or wrong.

Imagine if we stopped looking at everything that way and just accepted that it is what it is.

Meditate on that for a while and allow yourself to realize the true and magnificent freedom it will bring to you.

You have not made any "mistakes". You have simply had experiences.   Others have responded to you with their own mutated perceptions, categorizing your actions according to society and human physical experience.   But that is their decision, just like it is yours.   At it's very essence though, it's very primal core... it simply is what it is.

The universe - our life - is so much less complicated than we make it.

So, smile, be joyful.   Because honestly, it is what it is. And YOU decide what that means.

Be well... and for goodness sake, Be Nice!

:)

Life is a blank slate.... draw your experience.

2009-09-12T08:09:00.000-05:00

Our life is a blank slate on which to create the mural of our experiences....

Once we truly comprehend this, once we let that really resonate with us... that is the pivotal point at which our life becomes beautiful.

This is a brand new moment. Nothing before this very second matters. Don't let yourself say "but... but...but..." No, there is no "but". This moment has never existed before and everything before right now, does not matter. You are staring at a blank slate. Pick up your favorite color and start drawing. Draw it how you want it to be.

Smile while you are drawing, focus on it, revel in it... and let it manifest into 3D.

The concept here is that YOU hold the pen. So now that you know that... get writing!

And most importantly, SMILE! Be happy... with audacity!

So....What will you draw today?

Obervation #644 Nothing is what is seems.

2009-09-11T08:25:00.000-05:00

Everything is what it is, but nothing is what it seems...

Human beings are imperfect. Our memories are imperfect. The images are distorted by influences and experiences as time goes by. This is the fodder for human argument and disagreement. Our memory is subject to our opinions, are opinions are subject to our life experience. It is what it is, yet nothing is precisely how you perceive it to be. Remember, yes. But keep an open viewpoint. Even our memories are open to interpretation.

So in essence, relax you are not right about anything. But neither is the other person.

Always seek the truth, but never try to define it.

Always speak the truth but never mistake yourself for the most righteous for doing so.

Remember that debating is healthy, dissent is only natural, but anger is useless.

Always remember.... but never linger.

And most importantly - to be happy - BE NICE!

xo

:)

Bliss observation #982 don't sleep with it

2009-09-11T00:30:00.000-05:00

So when you have an issue that is nagging you and bothering you.. sleep on it? Right?

Well I suggest perhaps NO! It's just not a good idea to drag anything negative into your REM cycles. This is the time when your body and spirit are rejuvenating and can use the healthiest flow of energy you can get.   So by all means, no do not take your baggage to bed to sleep on.

Instead, pack it up, leave it in another proverbial room all together and think about it tomorrow, when the day is fresh and you are well-rested and able to think a bit better.   Taking things like this to bed will undoubtedly alter your sleep pattern, which will most definitely screw you all up for the entire next day.   Whatever it is, chances are you can't properly address it overnight anyway so leave it be and go to sleep.

You will most likely find, that when you awake you will have a fresh perspective and the colors will undulate a little more clearly in your view, making whatever it is, that much easier to deal with, solve or address.

If you have trouble sleeping, realize that you are letting the issue grow into a monster that is eating your sanity. When we are tired, and it's the middle of the night, all shadows seem bigger and have more of a looming presence.   Now would be the time to focus on leaving the issue be until morning, and if you have a hard time, force yourself.

Keep in mind too, that saying 'I can't I can't, it's bothering me too much" or "It's a really big deal"... these are excuses that will do nothing more than keep you awake and exasperate you.   Go to sleep!

Having said all that, I'm putting my current frustrations for tonight aside... easy enough for me to do as I'm typically not a fan of letting issues linger on anyway.... and going to sleep.

Stay tuned for Observation # 13268 (no they are not in any particular order). ;)

Use your senses to provoke your mood.....

2009-09-10T15:53:00.000-05:00

Make time in your day to rest your eyes on images that elicit positive emotional responses....

Observation #090909 Being happy makes you happier.

2009-09-09T20:21:00.000-05:00

Today was an interesting day. As you can read below there was a rather odd exchange between my daughter and one of her classmates in a gymnastics class. I've spoken to her about it and it passed smoothly. Later, we went to a local party/pizza/arcade place for my youngest son's birthday. I, making a conscious effort to smile more and be nice, went about the day in a relatively joyful mood, and enjoyed feeling that way :)

I did observe people smiling at me for no reason whatsoever, and I laughed to myself that some would find that kind of friendliness odd. Especially being that I grew up in NYC, many folks I know would typically react to that sort of gesture with some level of discomfort and maybe even take a defensive position. Sort of a " Hey! what are you lookin at?!?" Philosophy. And today, I wondered why. Why are do some of us have an aversion to friendliness? What has our culture done to us? Why is it so wrong for a perfect stranger to simply smile and nodd at you?

Hmmm...

Well, the day progressed and I found nearly every interaction I had with people was pleasant. I like that. What's not to like? You are happy, people are happy right back atcha, and it's a rather pleasant exchange throughout the day.

Of course the young guy arranging the produce in the grocery store seemed a little TOO happy when he caught my glance as I perused the tamatoes, LOL but it all went well and he even went to the back to check for a better selection of organic tamatoes for me. =). Okay, maybe that was a bit much to expect ordinarily, but the point is that had I walked by with the normal frown that I wear (for no other reason than I am just in a constant state of organizing my day in my head), and my typical habit of avoiding eye-contact and averting my glance... I may not have had the pleasure of feeling good about myself being a thrity-something woman that could make a twenty year old blush (oh come on, like you wouldn't like it? lol) AND I would not have had the opportunity to select some much nicer looking tamatoes!! I'm sure I'll reflect on it as I enjoy my salad tomorrow.

So what's the point? The point is that it did me good to be happy, and not just generally happy... alot of people are generally happy and honestly, so am I most of the time. I am! I walk around with a frown because I'm not paying the least bit of attention to my facial expression because I'm a busy mother of three and usually lost in organizational data processing in my mind; but I truly am usually relatively happy. Today I was happy with audacity! I made a point of it, and did it make a difference in my day? You Betcha!

Now I may not have had a bad day, (I can't say I have those often anyway) but I certainly would not have had as pleasant of a day. It wasn't a kick-up your heels jamboree... but in the words of Nina Simone, right now I am feeeeeelin.... gooooood.... and it's simply because I chose to feel this way :)

So there you have it. Being happy is good, it makes you... well...happier! :)

End of blog? ha! Not even close. It gets a whole lot deeper than this... (mwwwuuu-hahaha). Stay tuned and remember, BE NICE!

Veda

Hate hates you

2009-09-09T11:46:00.000-05:00

My daughter had an experience today in one of her classes. Another little girl with whom she is friendly, announced that she hates a certain group of people (a particular religion..I'm refraining from details as the are irrelevant).

While my initial reaction was to tell my daughter not to be friends with this girl, or even nice to this girl anymore... I thought better of it and simply explained to her that we do not hate others. We do not hate based on religion, race, sex, gender etc... we simply do not hate. I encouraged her to be honest if it ever comes up again, but told her that even this little girl (realizing at her young age it's probably not entirely her own fault) deserves to be treated nicely, and with both honestly and respect.

I explained to my daughter that this makes her the more peaceful person and therefore allows room for her own life to be better and more peaceful.

It is through some relatively difficult experiences... and just through a general observation of the world around me.... it is very clear that hate begets hate.   When we say we "hate" people, based on their religion (or anything) we are creating a monster, and also inviting that monster into our lives.

So, my official statement on that experience is.... JUST BE NICE!   We are never going to be able to enjoy all the beauty that this life has to offer if we are stuck in this primitive, reactionary paradigm where were hate on impulse.   How do we break the flow of that energy? Don't hate back.

-Veda

Prelude to being nice

2009-09-08T23:59:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is my sons birthday. So what better day to put into practice these thoughts that have been floating around my head, right?

Until now, they were disjointed thoughts, tangled up in a web of random ideas, all sharing that common thread that string them all together. Now it's all sorted out :)

It's no surprise to me that when I'm happy, my life is better, when my life is better, I am happy so my life is better... and on and on. Being human, I do find myself sometimes allowing outside influences to effect my overall mood, which inevitably effects everything else and every one else in my radius.

Of course I have at least gotten to a spiritually evolved point in life where I have learned to avoid blaming others for the way I am feeling or what I am doing. Simply put, while we may not chose all the outside factors that befall us in a day, we do chose our reaction to those factors, and our reaction to people in our lives. So in essence, we are always making a choice - whether conscious or unconscious - about how we are going to feel, and what mood we are going to be in.

Again, being human it's very easy to be distracted by our routine, and fall into that trap where we are unwittingly choosing to be in a less-than happy mood because we have allowed ourselves to be affected by the world around us, or people in that world.

Aye, that's just thing though isn't it? If we are effected by stimuli and people around us, then consequently, so are they. So if we know just how much control we actually have, then we can be creating the stimuli rather than reacting to it.

I think I've tried, at least for the past few years, (since this revelation dawned on me) to live by this philosophy... or at least try to. It is my experienced opinion therefore, that life has been wonderful ever since - simply because I chose that it is. :) I have observed recently though, that I could probably do better (who can't right?). While I'm glad that I'm just naturally a happy kinda girl without much concentrated effort (what would be the point?) I realized that if I put in just a bit more effort into consciously acknowledging my behavior on a daily basis, I could probably offer even more improvement into my experience AND the experiences of those around me.

I will admit that there are times that I'm rather unfriendly, especially in uncomfortable situations... either because I'm too shy, or in a hurry, or lost in my thoughts trying to organize the days plan in my own head, or keep track of my children...etc.... there are even times that I'm downright insufferable - especially when you get my ear on subjects like politics! Oh man I can be hostile when it comes to that topic! So as happy of a person I generally am (generally) I falter. I can't help but wonder, what it would offer my existance in this life, if I did actually make an effort to falter less.

What if I smiled more? What if I was truly friendly to everyone, literally EVERYONE I run into during a day? What if I was just nice to people, even people that frustrate me? Would they frustrate me less? Or how about when I am in a situation that is uncomfortable or nervous? If I can just smile and be nice, would I be more comfortable? Experience less anxiety?

Would people around me be affected? How would it affect my life in general and the lives of my family and friends? Note that on the side bar, I refer to happiness as "audacious" simply because that is how it is often viewed... that somehow we are a society of people who are supposed to be generally pissed off at the world around us, and those of us who laugh too much have some nerve! Well, lets see... does joy truly irritate EVERYONE? Or is that just some sort of facade? Lets find out shall we? and if I irritate some in the process... so be it.. maybe they just need more people to be so audacious around them :)

Who hasn't joked with or smiled at a miserable check-out girl and as a result got them to smile? You must realize that that one brief moment was most likely pivotal in their day! It's a simply equation really, and bliss is very much contagious. What if it goes viral? Hmmmm???

So tomorrow, on my youngest sons birthday, as I travel about and go about the busy day we have planned. I intend to make an acknowledge effort of my demeanor, expression, body language and communications. I intend to observe and note my findings here.

So... without further ado, I bid you goodnight and I'll see ya later!

Remember,BE NICE! ;)