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.

It's okay, you're not the only one...

I just received an email from a very close friend who moved to the other side of the world a couple years ago to follow her dreams.  She has.  But it's not enough.  It got me thinking (and writing) about how just about everyone I know is struggling right now.  I don't mean to say that people's lives are falling apart, in fact most "strugglers" I know seem to be doing okay "on paper".  They seem content and in most ways, they are FINE.  But fine just isn't enough when your soul is knocking on your brain and saying, "Hello, it's me, your higher self.  You're here for a purpose.  A big one.  And it's a big undertaking.  You won't fail, but you will have to change a lot of things - let's get going."

Sound familiar?

That's all well and good if you know what that purpose is (or at least think you know - or have an idea) and it's easy enough to live with if what you need to change doesn't cause you too much pain, or financial burden... but I don't think that's the case for many of us.  Maybe most of us.  I think we are all releasing something huge... and in some cases, we are releasing everything.

At first I thought it was mainly happening to my "generation" (let's call that Generation X - fancy label isn't it?) - but even that isn't right.  My mom is changing in ways I never imagined.  Others her age are turning over MASSIVE stones in their own lives.  At first, I thought my former students (who are now 18-24-ish)  didn't face as many of these challenges - I thought they had a different perspective because of their innate open-mindedness - they grew up living and breathing a kind of openness that has existed in their world view because they were born into a world that is connected via the webosphere.  They ARE the children of the global village.  But that assumption wasn't right either.  Many of them find the norms of society to be boring, redundant, pointless and un-engaging.  And they're right. How can we lose them before they've even really begun the "grown-up" journey?

Actually, I don't think we are losing them, I think they are leading us on this journey into Change.   For their generation, it's a default setting.  For us Gen Xers, it's a kind of refusal to conform.  For the once-radical baby boomers it's an overdue rebellion (they who got distracted raising us Gen Xers).  For all of us humans though, it is a very personal and very difficult set of questions, doubts, worries, self-examinations and, in the end, a battle that can only be fought and won with love and honesty.  Love and honesty with Ourselves.  Talk about a tough audience.

I wish I had answers for my girlfriend but I feel as though my only advice to her is to stick with it.  I'll stick with it too. (Mine is no less open-ended, unsettled, raw and inside out than anyone elses.)  Not only will I stick with my own uncertainty, pain, loss and confusion, I will do it right beside her (thank God for the internet).  And apparently I'll do it out in the open for the rest of the world to witness if they care to.  I suppose a big part of the self-honesty in this is admitting that we are not alone in the uncertainties - and then reaching out to ask someone to stand by us while we go through it.

This great collective of individual struggles is part of a greater human struggle to find what is right for all of us.  Collectively.  The Collective Human Population.  After all, we are all the same, aren't we?

What are you waiting for?

Don't get distracted...

Pause, breathe and listen.

There are so many things surrounding us right now that are designed to distract us from what matters.  So much simply does not matter and adds nothing to life or the world.

You know what matters.  If you don't think you do, take a moment, close your eyes and listen to your heart.  Pause.  Take a deep breath.  Exhale and listen. What is your heart telling you to focus on?  What deserves your attention?  What needs your effort?  Who are the people you should be spending time with?

Get rid of all the things that are not worthy of your precious time and energy.  Now, more than ever, it is important to focus, get grounded and do what you are here to do.  There will always be distractions - that's the world we live in.  But we don't need to multitask at every moment and we don't need to do everything that calls upon us.

Own your space in the world.
Embrace your role in the world.
Empower yourself to give your unique gifts to the world.

Don't get distracted.
Don't be distracted.
Go, change the world!

The spiral of life...

Life is a dance of dichotomies.  The pairing of love and loss, challenge and triumph, joy and pain accompanies us all along the journey. As long as we take time to reflect and seek the divine lessons in our challenges, then we are on the right path. When we step back and see this magical system for what it is, we can then find gratitude for all of the bliss and suffering of life.

Knowing it to be true...

Have you ever had a gut instinct that proved to be right?  A feeling about someone or about a situation that was exactly what you thought when the truth came out?  Have you ever felt that you were inexplicably familiar with someone despite only just having met them?

These are all examples of the Spirit being alive in us and actively working with us... and evidence that we are fully present in our lives.  When we are open to our own Spirit (or God), this kind of knowing happens for us.  I've learned that when I feel most alive, most comfortable and most in the flow in my own life with someone or something, it is a sure sign that I am connected to a deeper knowing within myself.

There's a terrible affliction in humankind - one that keeps us trapped, living life in our heads all the time, trying to make sense of things, or worse, trying to make the world fit into our understanding of it. Too often too many of us forget to let go and let life happen.  And more often than not, people don't even realize that this is happening - that they are living life through their thoughts.  We've created our routines, our sense of right and wrong and our ways of seeing the world but they leave little room for seeing the world anew day after day.  There's so much beyond what we thing we know and see each day but it is so easy to miss it.  We forget, in a way, to get out of our own way.

Being open and letting life happen shows us a much more beautiful reality than one we could have written for ourselves in the first place.

I've practiced this openness to life and awareness of my own intuition for years but it's very easy to fall off the wagon.  Fear of loss, worries about the future, shocking information - it all throws us off balance in an instant.  That delicate and hard won balance is worth paying attention to and maintaining because it allows us to experience life in greater dimension.  It's a combination of living in the moment, listening to (and for) our own intuition, and believing that we are each a unique part of a larger story and that our role is critical to that story's success.  No one else can live our lives for us - we are here to live them fully and intentionally in the starring role.

Apathy toward your own life creates disappointment, lost opportunities, sadness, loss, regret - all terribly undesirable things!  So why not be engaged fully in your own story and fully open to all the story lines and walk-on characters that show up?  Only you can experience and share all those wonderful moments in the story of YOU.  And in that story of you, you are the superstar, the director and the producer - fitting indeed since only YOU can know all there is to know... and know it to be true.

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...

What comes along the way...

The universe brings you exactly what you need for your own personal growth exactly when you need it.
  
It may be a new friend, an opportunity, a mistake, a road block, an insight, a resource, a piece of wisdom or an ah-ha moment.

Whatever you receive is yours and only yours.

Whether challenging or filled with love, it is precisely what you need - and you are exactly where you need to be.

Balance is being captain of your own ship...

Without even typing a word, this kind of feels like a redux on the theme of setting boundaries I wrote about not too long ago.  Perhaps I'm being reminded of my declaration to setting boundaries as I am called to write about balance tonight.

Perhaps it's because I've lost some very precious things in life, perhaps it's because of some wisdom I've gained with age, but whatever the reason, I've reached a point in my life where I know that I must intentionally and deliberately create balance in my life.

So many speak of balance.  So many books are written on the subject.  So many experts claim to have "secrets" or tools or or to-do lists for us to use in creating balance in our lives.  I'm beginning to think of balance a little bit in the way some might consider God:  worth believing in, worth the effort to know, a life-long inquiry and entirely unknowable by anyone but oneself.   And just like many a believer's prayers to God, I think one's commitment to maintaining balance might ebb and flow throughout life as well.  Finding balance becomes terribly important when life is out of balance but not much of a task when things feel good (how many people pray more when things go really badly in life but forget to check in with prayers of gratitude when life seems to be going along swimmingly?).  And just because life feels good, doesn't mean things are in balance.

Balance?

I'm in a space right now where things are beginning to feel pretty good.  I've eliminated many unnecessary things from my life in recent months.  I've spent quite a bit of time in reflection, meditation and prayer.  I've been asking myself the Big Questions.  This is all good.  But in the process of getting rid and opening up, I am acutely aware (surprisingly!) that a lot is flowing to me right now and I have to be very careful not to recreate another version of what I've just gotten rid of.  I am employing my still juvenile boundary setting skills, but in the midst of drawing lines and saying yes or no, I find myself reflecting on the need to be acutely aware of not just what I'm allowing into my life but how I am using it and relating to it.  Am I being realistic?  Am I being overzealous?  Am I missing information?  Is this going to serve me?  How much of my precious energy and focus do I want to assign to each part of my Universe of Amy?

This process is new to me and quite fascinating.  It feels as though I have just given myself permission to take the wheel and decide what, where, how, who and when.  If this is the case, who the hell was in charge before now??  Is this really what it feels like to be grown up?  That's a laughable thing for me to say because despite a number of revisits to my 26th birthday over the last several years, I am indeed grown up and I have the battle scars, bits of broken heart and a few grey hairs to prove it.  I've also been "grown up" for longer than most people my age but I think I've been seeking the permission and direction of others in one way or another for almost all of my adult life.  And since that is also precisely what I did during my childhood, I guess this means that up until the very recent past, I have lived my entire life according to the expectations of others.  Good lord.  Is this possible?  And am I the only one?

So, here I am.  At a very interesting transition point in life reflecting on so many lessons learned in order to apply them to achieving balance.  Perhaps this revelation itself is part of creating the balance I am seeking.  Perhaps being worthy of my own permission - and recognizing that no one but me can give me permission - is creating the foundation for that balance.  I don't know what it is for sure and I can't tell you what it looks like but I can tell you that this balance thing feels like something big.

My heart expands when I consider being the captain of my own ship and deciding what kind of cargo I'll carry with me to which ports.  And if need be, I can decide to dump it all into the ocean to lighten my load or recalculate my direction to a new port.  It's not about what or how much or how long or how far, it's about my relationship to what I carry -- and remembering that I get to choose what I say yes or no to when it comes to what I bring on board in the first place.  I'll get back to you when I can figure out how to factor the wind, waves, gulf stream and tropical storms into my New Balance Theory.  I'm wise enough to know you can't plan for those things and they are what really throw us off balance in life in the first place.  For now, I'll start here and keep up with my prayers of gratitude.