The Divine Cycle: Birth, death and rebirth...

Hey, humans!  We are surrounded by nature and nature offers us lessons whether we are paying attention or not.  Today, I was presented a humble lesson on birth and death (and darn if that doesn't somehow also have the sneaky little lesson of letting go attached to it!)

Birth and death are two perceptions of the same process. Everything - every animal, every plant, every minute, every relationship, every breath, every idea you have - everything experiences the two sides of this dichotomy in order to grow, change, and be present in this moment as it is intended to be.

Today it was my orchid that offered me the lesson - by both being born anew and dying in part at the same time. Since 2004, this beautiful plant has blossomed every winter. Today, it has at least six purple blooms waiting to be born. It also has a decaying, dying leaf. The plant is not unhealthy, it is simply putting its resources into being born anew, and not into keeping one very old leaf alive. We, too, must focus our energies on the parts of us that wish to grow, and be willing to simultaneously allow what is no longer necessary - or what must be given up - to wither and die. It is part of the natural order of things to live and die and be born anew. Don't spend all your energy on keeping something alive that is simply ready to go.

As you see the things around you - beliefs, ideas, relationships, perceptions, and purposes that once served you - now decaying in your life, rest assured that what is leaving you will create the space for the energy to be born anew in your life.  And what will be born anew will be full of the wisdom you've gained and the love you've found for yourself so what's coming will only be better than that of which you are letting go.

Namaste.

Death of a leaf empowers birth of budding new life.

Gifts from the universe: Re-examining during Mercury Retrograde...

Mercury is the planet which governs communication, technology  electronics, machinery.  It's a time when computers crash, communication with everyone goes haywire and plans go a muck   This gives us a great opportunity to slow down and focus on our own lives and what we may have missed in the months and years leading up to this time.  You will feel the need to tie up loose ends, speak your truth and handle relationships you have been avoiding.  Read more about Mercury Retrograde here and here.

Mercury Retrograde (November 6-26, 2012) gives us a chance (for about three weeks, three times each year) to go back and revisit the things we've left undone. Nothing complete will ever come back into your life.  The universe wants us to grow so anything that no longer teaches us will simply no longer be in our lives.  Whether memories, behaviors, relationships, questions, tasks left undone or just your way of seeing a situation, we have been given the gift of "re" seeing something in new light. Allow yourself to see anew, to adjust your thinking and feeling and see what you missed the first (or second, or third...) time around.

Rethink

Reflect

Revisit

Redo

Remember

Recalculate

Revise

Redesign

...These are the gifts of Mercury Retrograde

Image of planet in retrograde ("retracing" its own transit)
Source: http://starsyncs.blogspot.com/2010/12/mercury-retrograde-right-brain.html

Nothing comes back to you without good reason and a lesson for you to learn. Ask yourself what old things have come up for you - or come back to you - in the last three weeks. Whatever it may be, it is, at its core, an incredibly important opportunity to explore with new ideas because it is happening to you NOW. Reexamining the past and your attitudes about it is truly a gift because your soul wants to grow and learn lessons.  But don't get stuck with what has come up for you - you must make a choice about what you want to do with this thing, take the necessary actions and let it go. Remember not to hold on; to really let it go because it did not come back to you for you to repeat what you've already done. 

Each day is a new day and an opportunity to let go.  Each day is also a rebirth and an opportunity to see the world with new eyes.  Support yourself in learning both of these lessons during Mercury's retrograde transit.

Imagine just how powerful it can be to be given another chance to let go of something? Or even better - the opportunity to let go of the way you *thought* about that thing last time? Be sure you don't fall into a trap of repeating your own patterns, however, because you are never meant to go back and do the same thing the same way twice. You've changed and so has everything else. Use your current wisdom to revisit, heal, and let go.  ...And yes, be smart about those former flames that seem to magically resurface during Mercury Retrograde.  It's a well known phenomenon that this mystical window of time can bring back a former romantic partner with whom you still have something to heal.  If this has happened for you, re-read this because an old flame may be your trickiest "re" lesson to navigate.

3 ways to release, surrender, let go...

There's too much.  Too much of everything.  And for those of us who are sensitive, we are brimming over, swimming in the overwhelm and in need of release. I wish I had a manual for letting go, but I do not.  It seems that no matter how much I let go of, there's always more.  Some days it feels like a bottomless well... but something deep inside of me knows it is not.

We come here, to these lifetimes, to learn, to love, to lose and to let go.  We know we take nothing with us in the end yet we sure live like we do.  In fact, we take as much as we possibly can.  We hoard it - most of the time without even knowing.  We take all of the joys, all of the pains, all of the bliss and all of the sorrows.  Of course we want only the good things so we soak those up eagerly without cause for thought.  We adamantly reject and detest the bad things though because they feel so awful.  But in refusing and hating the bad, we make it grow bigger inside of us.  We focus so much energy on not wanting the pains of life that we sow such a fertile ground of Not Wanting Bad Stuff that we inadvertently attract more and more of it, over and over.  The law of attraction is real.  We really do get back from the world what we send out and when we are consumed with not wanting more of the bad (when we are neck-deep in the bad), that's all we're asking the universe for... and we get it.

This is where The Art of Letting Go comes in.  I should have a post-doctoral degree in this fine art by now.  I once purchased a book on Letting Go at a used book sale and treated it like my bible.  I carried it with me and read the analogies and thought about them over and over (red flag:  I was hoarding letting go).  I believed that the book Who Moved My Cheese was written for me and I had to own a copy after reading someone else's (yeah, there it is again...).  I needed to know *how* to let go and I wasn't going to stop until I figured it out (spoiler alert:  I don't claim to have figured it out, but I have donated most of my books and I have a few approaches I recommend trying).

Most of the time we know instinctively that we need to let go of things that no longer serve us (the knowing becomes clearer the more times we've faced the challenge of letting go - or, in some cases, when a close friend simply refuses to hear the story once more).  [So, Recommendation #1:  Get a good friend.  And be real honest with said good friend - ask for real honesty in return.  Buy good friend a drink and show up when good friend needs you to do the same.]

We need to let go so that we can focus on what we *do* want in our lives in place of the bad.  But those bad moments can be so insidious that they get stuck inside of us, refueling the automatic delivery system of exactly what we don't want any more of - so we get more bad, over and over, creating a seemingly bottomless well of hard, challenging, painful experiences.  Letting go of the thoughts, energies and (understandable) hatred of the negative stuff in our lives then becomes so challenging that it seems impossible to get out.  We feel as though we can't even remember what the good moments look like anymore.  The typical advice to "think positive" and focus on what we truly want becomes an irritating reminder that David is smaller than Goliath and he can't possibly win.  But what if the art of letting go happens in surrendering to the monster?  Can we love it enough to turn even our darkest moments and deepest worries into parts of ourselves that we can't help but love?

I believe so.

I believe that the brightness of love can shine its loving (and joyful) light precisely in the places we can't seem to escape.  By turning to face the monster and giving it love, we can shine our own light on the thing we want so desperately to let go of.  By loving that which we hate, we take away its power and we have nothing to avoid any longer.  The scary parts become the parts of us that are craving love and tenderness - something we have within us to give and feel much better than when we hate them.

Therefore, Recommendation #2:  Love the bad stuff, all of it, see it as part of yourself - a part that really needs a hug, to be held, to be told it's dream job is coming, it's beautiful and smart and has great hair... you get the point.

And because I'm a big fan of journaling - and writing in general, here's a third suggestion for your letting go journey, for good measure:

Recommendation #3:  Write a letter to God/your higher self/your guides/your angels/the person who hurt you/your future self/Santa Claus and tell him/her/it your deepest secrets, hopes, fears and desires.  Beg, plead, pray, bargain.  It doesn't matter what you say or how you say it, just that you are honest and that you are releasing some of the energy that is wrapped so tightly around what you need to let go of.  Then seal it up, burn it, hide it, shred it, bury it or read it back to yourself and hit delete.  It doesn't matter what you do with it because the message was delivered the moment you wrote it and acknowledged its existence   You've simply empowered your own ability to release (i.e. leg go) in the simplest of forms.  After all, it's all energy.  The fears, the hopes, the intentions, the messages in your letters, the worries you carry - all of it is just energy.  Release any small amount of that energy you no longer want and you will feel freer to start asking for and attracting what you do want.

I honor your strength, courage and determination in the battle of letting go.  ...And I have no idea who would own a necklace that says "let go" - not a clue.

It's a new day...

It's a new dawn.  It's a new year.  It's a new beginning.  It's a leap year!

I've always loved the New Year.  Sure, I've loved the celebrations, the toasts, the kisses, the parties (yup, I did Times Square when at midnight a ball dropped and Prince's 1999 played everywhere) and I've even loved a New Years Eve or two alone for serious introspection.  Since I was a kid I loved the idea of celebrating a new beginning, entering a new day and a new year during the darkness of night and I love New Year's Eve fireworks so much more than those on the Fourth of July.  I find the cold winter night to be a time when we humans would only venture out into the night because something REALLY big is happening.

Last night, I felt that something really big did happen.  Something way bigger even than roaming the streets of Times Square and dancing to "1999" in the wee hours of 1999.

I don't know what it is, I won't pretend to predict anything but I do know that the shift I've been feeling, the one that has been aligning inside of me, shifted in a rather profound way today when I awoke - and I'm excited to see what comes with it along the way.

I'm a big fan of love, light, positivity, prayer, intention... of giving what you can and taking care of your own heart so I'm carrying these things with me into 2012.  I encourage you all to follow me into your own loving light in 2012.  We will need it.  We will surely need reminders to look for our own light and we may need to rely on each other's light more than we're prepared to but know that this is precisely the reason we will carry it forward.  The world - and you, and me - we all need the light and the love to help heal our species and bring love and divine intention back to planet Earth.  Our big beautiful temporary home needs us to love her and love each other just as she does by giving us absolutely everything we need to exist here.  If we can learn to love a little more (and this means loving ourselves more too), then we can surely start that ripple effect that we all know changes the balance of things in the world, heals all things and courses through the veins of each and every one of us.

May you be inspired enough to live your dreams.
May you have the courage enough to be unblocked from your own destiny.
May you have the strength enough to face any obstacle.
May you carry the light you were given by God through even the darkest days.
May you give love to one more person than you thought possible.
May you heal your spirit, strengthen your body and be who you are uniquely meant to be in the world.

Most of all,
May nothing hold you back.

And if you aren't sure you're ready for the big shift or the big energy coming our way, just take this tiny little test.  Just one question, that's all.

Q:  Did you let go of something in 2011 - a relationship, a job, a habit, a toxic situation, a bad friend, a bias, an unneeded possession, a false belief, a denial, a story that no longer defined you, an obsession, a fear?

If you answered YES to any part of this question, then congratulations, you're with us.
If you answered NO, I'm afraid you've landed on the wrong blog.

Happy 2012, ya'll!

You gotta have faith (ah-faith-ah-faith)...

No, not for the reasons George Michael sang about (though that's good too), but for the purpose of getting through.  It seems that we spend so much of our lives getting through something.  An interview, a breakup, a project, a period of change....  We spend very little time in the static space that must exist between one thing and another.  Between achieving/winning/surviving/overcoming one thing before another pops up in our lives.  That between time is as rare as the half of a day when all of your laundry is clean and there is none in the laundry basket.  It's a small moment, it's there, but it's always quickly replaced by a new and growing pile of laundry to be done.  Again.

Unlike the ever-present chore of doing laundry which is mundane, mindless and entirely nonthreatening (save for the part of you that just doesn't want to do it), our ongoing process of getting through something in life just seems to keep coming in surprising ways.  Sometimes we find ourselves getting through something that crept up on us, completely unexpected.  Sometimes it comes as a shock.  Sometimes it's welcome and lovely and you don't mind it at all.  But life is always a series of one thing after another that we are going through.  Or, as you might say, one thing after another that we are living.

Tonight I'm focused on having faith for the getting through.  I'm not talking about the kind of faith that we call upon when we find ourselves in sudden and desperate communion with God.  Not the impetuous kind of begging for the strength to get through something that happens when we are in crisis or hurt or in survival mode. Rather, the kind of faith we have that allows us to move from one phase of life to another.  From letting go of and moving beyond something we know well and moving into the great unknown of the future - having faith along the way that all will be well and banking on it being better than we can imagine in the present moment.

That kind of faith that we humans manage to have in the getting through-ness of life is the kind of faith that is an intimate conversation between ourselves and the higher power that allows us to get through anything. And I do mean anything.  And as humans, across the great span of human history, we have gotten through so much and most of the time we have done it not realizing just how strong we were while we were going through it.

So here's to having faith... and getting through.

When God closes a door...

He really does open a window.  Or another door.  Or eight new doors.  Or sometimes, even, an entirely new building.

I realized recently that I had been looking closely for something in one place for quite sometime.  After years of looking, expecting and hoping for it, I finally accepted that it was never going to happen.  So I let go and gave up the desire for it.  Only after I let it go did something else completely unexpected happen in an entirely new place with entirely new people.

Yes, I'm being vague.  It doesn't matter what it was for me, rather, the important thing is that we all begin to learn the lesson that looking for something is far different from allowing yourself to be open to something.  There are many wise spiritual leaders, metaphysical gurus and none-too-few books that talk about how we attract things to us.  And I've learned, after much studying, reading and listening that they all have pretty much the same thing to say:  We are constantly attracting to us all sorts of things but what the universe (or God) has in store for us is always exactly what we need, be it an opportunity to learn, to grow or to experience something important.  The universe contains such incredible power and works in so many ways we can't possibly measure or understand.  The problem is that we get so attached to what we want (or worse, what we think we need) that we often miss those opened windows, additional doors and brand new opportunities that pop up around us all the time.

Have the courage to stop looking for something in particular and open yourself to all of the wonderful things that life is bringing to you.  They are coming all the time whether you notice them or not.  And don't get attached to what you think the outcome should be.  The actual outcome, once it has come to pass, will be far greater than you could have imagined yourself.  I know, I've witnessed what is behind my own newly opened window after I finally stopped trying to get back into that closed door...

Setting boundaries...

Ah, the Achilles Heel for me and so many other women. But I'm making changes. Who's with me?

With my birthday coming up, I'm taking stock, cleaning house and putting up new speed limits and STOP signs on the highways and merry lanes of my soul.  I'll be honest, a lot of people have driven a lot of over-weight, loud-muffler bearing, exhaust-spewing jalopies through my soul that should have never been licensed for operation in the first place.  But I've been open - too open - and so I've unwittingly allowed them have their joy rides and illegal street races, hence the lesson of this little soliloquy.  I'm done with the oil dripping, pot holes and smog.  Are you?

I've found it very easy to see and diagnose the People Pleasing Disease (PPD) in so many women and girls I know.  I have fought ardently against the spreading of this disease, and, like any good girlfriend, I've dedicated HOURS upon HOURS amounting to surely weeks of my life to helping other women re-pave their own damaged roads.  The question is, have I done the same for myself?  I think I'm calling myself on the carpet here.  Not necessarily practicing what I preach...  The question is, though, why have I not?

I think perhaps the boundary setting lesson is one that sets in later in life for many women (and for too many, far too late in life).  As I sit here at the intersection of last year and next year, I'm actually quite grateful for the gift of another year under my belt.  The wisdom that comes with it far outweighs the perceived laundry-list of down-sides that we women are told to fear/despise/mourn/surgically alter as we grow older (don't even get me started on this little gem of backwards thinking that exists in this and so many other societies...).  Really, I can't see where the downsides are.  I think I'm more attractive than I was ten years ago, more confident (which makes a woman more attractive), smarter, sassier, wiser, and happier.  I've also got a whole lot of street smarts I didn't have ten years ago.  I dare you to tell me what I've lost.  Please.

This year's Ah-Ha moment will be wrapped in a big red bow (or perhaps yellow "caution" tape for those tempted line-crossers) and I will happily present it to myself in celebration of another year of life.  I'm giving myself the gift of saying NO.  I'm giving myself the gift of doing what I want to do and not what someone else wants or expects me to do.  My heart is about as big as the ocean so there's no danger of Shadenfreude here, so why haven't I been trusting myself and enforcing speed limits or erecting stop signs where they are needed?  Is this just part of the female condition?

I've become quite comfortable with my wisdom, confidence, life experience and the belief that I am an awfully valuable member of the human race.  Oh, and I'm an eternally optimistic survivor so there's no danger of blind Pollyanna-ness here.  I have indeed seen the ugliness of life, quite a bit of it actually. I just choose to still be incredibly positive about what we are all capable of overcoming and achieving.  My own process of reflection (a welcome side-effect of wisdom) has taught me to start protecting myself from all of the toxic pollutants of life, be they smog, PPD, negative people, toxic relationships or staying too long where I no longer want to be.  I am letting it all go and drawing some lines.

So here I am, world: Amy With Boundaries.  I've learned that by saying no, I don't feed into others' unhealthy habits, helping them to heal in their own ways as well.  It's a matter of stopping a cycle of dependency.  After all, in order for someone to take advantage of another person (that's some pretty bad Karma that needs to be healed), there must be a willing recipient (you've got to heal that kind of Karma too), conscious or not.  I choose to be conscious. I hope you will choose to consciously set your own boundaries too.

I'm positive that if it's done for your soul and with the right intentions, no one will be hurt.  In fact, you may find that other women and girls begin to model your behavior and will do the same for even more women.  If we do this right, ladies, we can heal a very old wound in the human condition and rid 51% of the population of a terribly painful habit that no longer serves anyone.

Letting go is opening up...

Let go of your toxic relationships with friends, lovers, beliefs and fears. 

Open yourself to those who embody the same traits you love in yourself. 

Are you a good listener? Seek others who are good listeners. Allow such traits to be barometers of who and what is right for you.  If you are trying too hard to make it work, that is a clear sign to you to let go and open yourself to what is right for you.

My friend Asha is teaching me to see life as a process of deconstructing and constructing.  This is a powerful way to view the journey.  After all, we are here to build something and we cannot bring in something NEW if we do not clear out what is old, no longer needed and taking up precious space.  This is true whether in our home, our closet, our mind, our heart or our soul.

What are you holding on to that must be released?  Don't know how to answer that question?  It's the thing that makes you feel overwhelmed or sad or weighed down when you come across it.  Quite simply, if that thing (friend, lover, belief, fear, pair of jeans or ugly chair) is not nourishing you, it's got to go.  In fact, it's draining you in a precious space that wants desperately to be filled with a job that makes you happy, a caring new lover, or a pair of jeans that make you feel like a million bucks.  So let it go.  And open up to what is around the bend... it's yours anyway, it's just waiting for you to let it in.

...So let go, and open yourself!