Fear Not. Love Much.

Do we choose our feelings or do our feelings choose us?

Throughout history, angelic forces have burst into human events in grandiose ways.  Seems that when they do, the first words uttered are…fear not.  Whether one angel or a host, the first encouragement is to set down fear.  Clearly, they are recognizing a universal human pattern.

Many years ago, there was a tragic event in my family.  A pastor came and spoke into the tragedy and asked “What is the opposite of Love?”  How would you answer that question?  Would you answer as I did then?  Immediately, I spoke up and said, “The opposite of love is hate.”  But the young pastor wasn’t asking what the opposite of ‘love’ was.  He was inviting us to consider something much bigger – What is the opposite of Love?  Big Love.  Divine presence.  God.  What is the opposite of knowing and living in the presence of God?  The opposite of Love is – fear.

So do we choose fear or does fear seize hold of us?  If we draw out the camera lens on this idea – I believe we’d hear another question:  Is it possible to live outside of Love?

As I look back on my spiritual formation, I think I’ve been dancing with this idea for a very long time – sometimes it’s been a pasa doble, sometimes a waltz.  What I’ve believed in the past is that it was possible to live outside Love.  To metaphorically crawl out of God’s lap.  I believed that any time I ‘sinned’ I was ‘outside’ Love.  As if there were some cosmic line drawn with a sign “Cross here to be in Love” on one side and “You are now leaving Love” on the other.  There are religious traditions that explain sin this way – an action or belief or thought takes one outside of Divine presence.  I’ve accepted this thinking and in living it, have asked God to help me return to his lap or asked to be held once again in his lap.  My thinking was unconsciously incompetent.  Oh, I love how God works!  Events have continued to tease my beliefs into Light.

Can we leave the presence of Love?  OR do we exist in Love and choose not to be present to it?  It’s not the same thing, though I realize today I’ve spent a lifetime confusing the two!

In meditation recently, I watched an image shift before me.  It was profound and quite wonderful.  For decades I’ve meditated on the image of crawling into God’s lap; again with the thinking that I had somehow crawled out of it.  So I’m in this image and it begins to change.  I hear the still quiet voice of the Divine guiding me, saying: Jamie, I am all encompassing Love.  Everywhere. I have no beginning and no end. Like a fetus completely surrounded by the womb, so is all humanity encapsulated in my Love.  Can a fetus decide to leave the womb?

And I was awakened to a new understanding.  No, we do not exist outside of Love.  We are always inside Love’s domain.  Yet…we may choose to believe the illusion that we can or do.  We can believe that our actions separate us from Love.  This is the falsehood I’ve believed for quite a long time.

We cannot be separated from Divine essence.  After all, we were created in it.  But we can ignore its reality.  We can eschew Love.  We have the power through free will to exercise a belief that Love is not present and to make choices in that belief.  We can choose ignorance.  Some have said that ignorance is the word ignore and brilliance.  To be ignorant is to choose not to see or know Light.  And when we do, fear will be the result.  Because fear is the force that emerges in the belief that we are cut off from Love.

There’s a saying – God so loved THE WORLD (that’s us collectively.)  We are loved.  We are valued.  We matter.  We are connected.  Love has acted for the sake of humanity.  Peace has already come to earth.  Everything we need to live in Love – expressed through us and with our human brothers and sisters, nature, animals – all things – is already present.  It’s not a future thing or a past thing.  It’s a present reality.  Love is here.  Active.  Alive and enlivening us.  At a cellular level.  At a cosmic level.

I am actively exploring this idea: when we turn our attention to ANYTHING other than Divine Presence – we choose fear. The resulting decisions we make are in fear.  The assumption in this hypothesis is that we can choose Love and our decisions based in Love will be radically different.  Our remembering and remaining in Love IS radically different.  I remember and remain in abundance and I don’t worry about having “enough” of anything.  I can freely and lovingly redirect resources (time, money, etc.) to helping others because I no longer perceive the need to hoard.  (Hoard thinking goes something like:  I need to keep some for myself to cover my needs because there may not be enough.)  Poof.  Gone.  When I remember we are all already living inside Love and no decision takes us outside of that, I choose different feelings and actions.

Here’s an example:  I’m going with a team of women in March to Russia to deliver needed supplies to orphanages and community centers.  Each participant pays all the expenses for her portion – airfare, meals, housing, transportation, etc.  I am organizing an auction to raise money for my portion of the trip.  In doing so, all kinds of old thinking has surfaced that connect money with worth.  How valuable this is! I found it really difficult to ask people to contribute.  I’ve remained open to being taught on this and in sharing this difficulty with a friend said, “Why would people want to give me money to go to Russia?”  My friend immediately responded with spot-on in Love thinking – “Because it’s not about you.”  Wow!  What a help that was!  It’s NOT about me.  This trip is a response…living in Love.  I’ve chosen to serve in Russia.  My friend had heard me speak passionately about this and reflected back to me the true source of my actions.  The gift of her response was not only the return to In Love thinking, but being guided there by another who has devoted her life to in Love living.  There is something deeply evocative about being with someone who is practicing Divine presence.

So, we get to choose.  Life continues to remind me of this.  Remember or forget.  Remain or ignore.  Awaken or asleep.  Abundance or scarcity.  Love or Fear.  This is what makes developing habits of intentional living so vitally important.  After all, in Love we ARE all connected.  As the saying goes: “With God, all things are possible.”

The really good news…the overwhelmingly great news…is that Love has invitation at its core.  The invitation to remember, return, and remain.  We can notice, accept and breathe into the very essence that created us.  We can put our full-out energy and attention there.  And invite others to awaken, too.

“Don’t ask what the world needs; don’t ask what others think you should   be doing with your life.  Instead, ask yourself what makes you come alive–because, more than anything else, what the world truly needs are men and women who have come alive.” – Dr. Wayne Dyer

This year is the year of Jubilee for me as I head toward 50.  It’s theme is:

Fear Not. Love Much.  It expresses the beautiful circular movement of noticing, accepting, and remaining in Love.

Together, let’s do it!

I Believe…

My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me that the lamp which I carry does not belong to me, and the song that I sing was not generated from within me. ~Khalil Gibran

As you believe… so will you do, think, feel and become.  Since our life is shaped by our minds, what we think, that we become. As the mind is nothing but thoughts-stuff, whatever is in one’s mind will reflect in his words. In turn, words manifest as actions (“Karnee“); actions form habits; and habits solidify in character. Thus, thoughts processed in our head ultimately become manifest in our face, our speech, our body and our overall attitude. Simply stated, what we consistently cultivate in our minds determines our character-formation, and our destiny. For that reason, if a person wants to change the character-formation in him, he can do so by consistently changing his thoughts.  –T Singh.

 

My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me that the lamp which I carry does not belong to me, and the song that I sing was not generated from within me. ~Khalil Gibran

Including the Khalil quote twice was no mistake.  For it preceeds and proceeds from the statement in the middle.  Lots to consider today in this writing.  God has had my attention on these things for many years, probably decades if I think about it.  Today, I share some of the places where Love invites me to go.

There is a song that for many years has expressed a life experience for me. The words go:  I was blind and now I see.  The song’s title is Amazing Grace.   Over the past year, I have experienced a fair amount of healing around my patterns of thinking and acting.  Growing up in a family culture that taught me I was supposed to know and meet another’s needs and wants before the person spoke them meant I lived a life of hyper-vigilance. This often meant sacrificing my own needs and wants.

To welcome transformation to a new place has been a long and at times arduous journey.  I value every moment and I’m still on the road.  It’s a life-changing journey.  For me, it’s meant seeking understanding inside some big questions.  What does compassion look like?  What is the difference between supporting, encouraging and ‘enabling’ someone?   What does it mean to be with someone in empathy vs sympathy?  How I answer these questions and therefore act in the world depends on what I believe…so I begin there.

I Believe:

Divine Love is present and active in all things.  Love loves me first; I act inside Love’s action.  Reformed theology puts it this way:  We love because God first loved us.  I believe this.  I believe Love calls me back from the places I go in rebellion to that designed interior space of resting in Love.  Divine Love is seeking in me, in others, and in the world a sustained connection.  I act from Love when I remember I am loved.

I believe Love cannot act outside the nature of Love.  What is the nature of Love?  Wow, that’s a deep philosophical question, isn’t it!  Tough to express Love’s essence simply with words.  I don’t presume to over-simplify what humans have grappled with for millennia.  I would simply say the nature of love is to, well, love.  To ground all things inside a Spirit that’s at once all-encompassing and expansive, welcoming and transforming. I think Love holds the best possible outcome as the reality, not just the possibility.

This is a deep transition in thinking for me that has been slowly changing the way I think, feel and act for the past 30 years.  If I truly believe – and live inside that belief – that Love cannot act outside its nature and Love is present in all things, then how I interpret events and actions changes.  For example:  how are rules and laws viewed in a state of Love?  Take the law of driving the speed limit – how will I view that if I believe Love is acting in love for me, for humankind vs believing someone/thing is telling me what to do?  There’s a BIG difference in my thinking and therefore, in my response.  Coming from Love, I want to drive the speed limit as a response to being Loved; receiving the goodness in the law.  Coming from Being Told What To Do, I will act out of a rebellious nature and perhaps miss the point of receiving the goodness of being Loved.  I’ll miss it if I’m not remembering Love is present and active in all things. 

Life changing, isn’t it, to think of Love acting in Love being at the root of EVERYTHING.  I was having lunch with dear friends the other day and I posed this question:  What would life be like if we lived into this belief even 1% more than we do now?  That in every moment we are held in Love’s middle and Love lives in our middle?  I think the world would change in that instant.  I think the world is changing because of that belief.  It is an evolution gaining speed.

Humans act from Free Will.  Wow, this goes many places in me.  The thinking that we choose every action is the foundation of this belief.   Every thought, feeling, interpretation of action, action, belief – all of it – is chosen.  That’s what free will means.  Have you seen the movie “The Adjustment Bureau?”  I recommend it.

This puts an interesting spin on the notion of personal responsibility.  Free will means I am already acting inside ‘responsibility’ for my feelings, thoughts, interpretations, actions, beliefs, et al.  So are you.  In recovery material (recovering from victim thinking), I’ve heard the phrase thousands of times, “No one makes us feel anything.”  You probably have, too.  Well, let’s think about this.  No one makes us – we are choosing, have chosen, and will choose how we feel. 

My husband and I have spent hours upon hours talking about this over the past year.  We both grew up in family cultures where central patterns of behavior rested inside a victim belief system.  One aspect of this belief system is that other people make one feel a certain way.  “I have no choice” is a staple response.  How radically different it has been to see myself choosing a feeling! There are so many – zillions – from which to choose and how consistent I am in choosing from a short list when it comes to repeated patterns of behavior.  A simple example:  I value neatness.  When my kids were young and used to leave towels on the floor, I would think “Geesh, couldn’t you just pick that up?”  The feeling?  Irritation and frustration.  I chose these feelings!  Sadly for our relationship, I chose it repeatedly and chose to voice my irritation.  How might our relationship be different today if I’d chosen instead to remember Love was present and active?  I could have paused (left the towel on the floor) and given thanks for the fact that I have two amazing beautiful children; choosing gratitude instead of frustration. Such a tiny moment.  Put those tiny moments together over a lifetime and I see where my choices could have welcomed Love much more deeply into my home – internally and relationally.  The good news is that it’s never too late.  I can change my choosing any time I choose.   I already have.

One more thought on the word “responsibility.”  I hear people say “I take responsibility for ___”.  Let’s dissect this.  If I “take” responsibility – where am I taking it from?  I must be somehow outside “responsible” in order to take it.  Picture one of those Radio Flyer wagons.  I’m reaching into the wagon to ‘take’ responsibility out of it.  What if…I’m already IN the wagon and simply acknowledging what I’m choosing?  It’s the difference between saying “I’m taking my free will option now” and understanding every act is already coming from within free will. 

What I’ve noticed in my life is that when I’m truly feeling, allowing, and accepting my actions – I don’t use phrases like “I take responsibility,” instead I merely state what it is I’m doing or have done.  Simple example: I take responsibility for getting angry at the driver who cut me off vs I got angry at the driver who drove in front of me (please note:  I wrote the story that the driver cut me off, not simply drove in front of me; see my last blog for more on that.)   I chose anger as a response to someone else’s action.  They didn’t make me angry.

I’m having a great deal of fun catching myself in the myriad of ways I act from old beliefs and patterns of thinking.  It didn’t start out as fun, but now…well, I remember more and more often that Love is present and active in all things.  See how it goes?!

We are all connected.  Alongside the belief that we each act in free will is the understanding that we are all connected.  We are responsible each for our own thinking, feeling, acting INSIDE a cosmic web of connected energy.  My actions impact yours.  Your actions impact mine.  Think of snow.  It is a gigantic macrocosm made up of microcosmic drops of frozen water – the snowflake.  Do you see the individual snowflakes in a snow bank?  No.  Yet each snowflake brought its unique structure and essence to the whole of snow.  That’s how it works to have free will among a connected cosmic force.

It would be simple in some ways to confuse “responsible for my actions” and “connected with each other” with thinking “I am responsible for your actions.  You are responsible for my feelings.”  These are aspects of a culture involving victim thinking, aren’t they  – merging the two understandings into an altogether new understanding or two rather than allowing them to sit side by side.  As my wise counselor once said to me, “Jamie, ‘his’ actions are not your doing.”  This was in reference to some difficulty I was having separating out a family member’s actions and my feelings of responsibility around those actions.  I was fusing the two understandings – free will and connectedness – into a belief that I was responsible for another’s actions.  My counselor’s words helped me distinguish, untangle.  I am grateful for this wise person in my life!  As I move along in recovered (remembering) thinking, I repeat this phrase to myself as needed.  ‘Jamie, you are not responsible for another’s actions’ AND we ARE all connected. (Our actions do impact the rest of life.)  Such is the nature of living as human beings who are first loved.

When I confuse the two understandings, I often confuse sympathy with empathy.  Frankly, I think as a world, we often confuse one for the other much like we confuse ‘responsible for’ with ‘connected’.  This is what makes listening in empathy so vital.  So I’ll go just one step more and talk about the difference.

Empathy:  The ability to understand another’s thoughts, feelings, actions, et al.  I would say it this way: To be present with someone in the practice of choosing one’s feelings and thoughts while listening as he/she chooses, too.  Remembering you are both present inside Love.  From here, the listener is unattached to the outcome.  It’s practicing the presence of God in the conversation.  “I hear how much you are grieving in this moment.  What do you need?”

Sympathy:  Share in the feelings of another; affinity with those feelings.  I would say it this way: Understanding another’s thoughts, feelings and actions from a perspective that shares the feelings/thoughts; the listener chooses to respond to the speaker with a feeling; framing what’s being shared from inside the listener’s feelings.  “I am sorry for your loss. How can I help you?” 

Lastly, I believe much of the time when we choose feelings of hurt, it is because we believe someone is doing something ‘to’ us.  We take it personally; having listened sympathetically.  What’s been eye opening for me is the myriad of choices available in every moment of every day.  Frankly, sometimes this can be a bit overwhelming as I seek to make different choices.  Back to the driving example.  So…a driver in the other lane speeds up ahead of me and crosses over into my lane.  I can a) choose to believe the driver “cut me off” and is a ”jerk” for doing so or b) the driver is a fellow human being responding to the world with his/her own actions and is Loved while doing so.  More moments than I like about myself, I start in option A and move to option B.  I notice I’m moving to B more and more quickly and clearly as I practice disciplines like meditation and breathing that help me remember Love. 

I seek to live life simply in option B; remembering that we are loved – first – and invited to live there – always.  Where I live is my choice. 

I believe my actions in Love say to God:  “I love you, too.”

Facts and the Stories We Make of Them

You are a creative writer.  I am a creative writer.  We are ALL writing creatively every minute of every day.  Hmm, you say?

Imagine this:

You are driving in your car and crossing the street in front of you is a woman in a long coat who looks to be about 60 years old pushing a grocery cart filled with bags.  And you think she’s….homeless?  carless? environmentalist choosing walking instead of driving?  Whoop. There you go writing a story about her life.  You are a creative writer. I am, too.

There are facts and there are the stories or meanings we make up around the facts.  We write our stories using the material of our life experiences and how we choose to perceive those experiences.

Here’s an example from my life.  I am almost 5’5” tall.  Most of my family members are shorter than I am.  That’s a fact.  When I’m with my siblings and mom, I write myself as “tall.”  I go to wrap my arms around my mom and I have to stoop just a little to do it.  Then…I’m with my in-laws.  My stepfather-in-law is over 6 feet tall.  When I give him a hug, I’m standing on tippy toes and I write myself as “short” in the story.  It’s the same fact – I’m the same height, but how I write the story of ‘me’ around that fact (short or tall) depends on my experience.

Over the past few months, I’ve been reflecting on this – catching myself in the creative writing process of weaving story from fact as I course through the day.  I see something.  I pause and notice the story I am creating from what I perceive I see.  I ask myself what I believe about it.  I’m thinking about my thinking.  The fancy word for that is metacognition.  I thank Naomi Petersen, mentor extraordinaire in my master’s program, for teaching me that.

It’s a fascinating process.  Sometimes I’m hard on myself when adding meaning to facts.  Sometimes, I’m a bit generous. (Are you catching my creative writing here…?)  Here’s a recent story I created from a couple of facts.  About a month ago, I asked a friend who I hadn’t seen in a few years to be my friend on Facebook.  (There’s an interesting new cultural story!) Looking further back in time, you’d see us bumping into each other in a clothing store where we spent about 20 minutes among the clearance rack catching up on the events of our lives. I walked away thinking it would be nice to carve some time to spend with her listening a bit more.  I never acted on that thinking.

So I was “Facebook stalking” as my daughter calls it – engaging with other people’s pages – and I saw her name on a friend’s page.  I remembered my desire to connect with ‘Sally’ again.   Delighted to have found her serendipitously, I happily clicked the “Add Friend” button.

Life interrupted after that click and I didn’t actually track whether my request had been accepted.  One day, I’m stalking again and I think of Sally.  It dawns on me I haven’t heard back.  I wonder what happened…is it still a pending request or has it been denied? I find Sally, click on her name, and up pops the “Add Friend” button on her page. Oh!  I HAVE been denied!  And this funny thing happens – I feel rejection.  Oh what a story I begin writing…rejection, pain, suffering.  Sally doesn’t want to be my friend because….and before I’ve caught myself, I’ve hauled out my mental pen and tablet and am writing the story with all the epic drama of Homer’s Odyssey. Yes, I have a flair for the dramatic in me.  You?

Because I’d been pondering how we create story and meaning from facts, I did corral my thoughts.  I applied the brakes to my thinking like a teenager taking the wheel for the first time – clumsily with both hands bracing and both feet driven into the floorboard.  I breathed.  I took a few minutes to notice all the things internally I believed about myself and about life that would cause my thinking to drift to an “ouch” in the face of a simple fact. I breathed some more.  I might have even done a couple stretches as I took a few moments to re-read and edit the mental page I’d written.

Then I simply did a complete mental rewrite; I tore up those pages and scribbled on a new one.  I reminded myself what I ultimately believe about who I am and who Sally is.  Who we all are.  We are beloved beings held in a greater Love – a Divine Love.  We are worthy, valuable, lovable and beloved in the story created inside that force.  We are all of us held inside something much bigger than the “Add Friend” moments of our life.

It’s okay that Sally clicked the “Deny” button.  It’s understandable that I would begin again to write a story about that fact that took me down self-perception roads well-traveled in me.  Roads filled with abyss-sized potholes created from the blind spots I’ve carved into my experiences.  It’s understandable that I would brake, exit and merge onto the ultimate road as I mind the story I fashion from the facts of my life.  It’s okay.  I return again to practice authentic creative writing; becoming a clearer, more intentional human being who creates meaning from the middle of the ultimate truth – we are all of us loved.  From that place, we can write amazing, life-altering stories.

So, next time I’m driving and a woman in a long coat crosses in front of me pushing a grocery cart – I’m going to tap into the story of Love already written about her life and mine.  Remembering she’s held in a story that is truly far more fantastical than anything I could write on my own.  Want to join me?

One Aspect at a Time

“WE ARE CONVERTED one aspect of the self at a time. That phenomenon explains why some parts of us can be approaching holiness while others remain locked in resistance and rebellion. Because different parts of our soul proceed at different rates, the invitation to love with our ‘whole heart’ is the work of a lifetime and beyond.”

- Robert Corin Morris

Every morning, I receive in my inbox a quote and corresponding thought from Upper Room Daily Reflections.  It no longer surprises me that these quotes illuminate something in me in the process of being transformed (converted)- an old belief that does not serve Love or an action coming from that belief.  I have the opportunity to see and welcome what is framed within that light or to ignore it.  I choose the practice of welcoming it.

Welcoming the revelation requires me to meet the fear that sprouted the rebellion; to face the chaos my fear has created.  But this is rebellion, so initially I cling and I grab and I tighten my fists.  However, in the practice of accepting my rebellious aspects, I pause, take a deep breath, remind myself that it’s okay, and ask “Jamie, what are you afraid of?”  What do I resist?  The answer, peeled off layer by layer, invariably comes around to…accepting Love as Love is.  Accepting and allowing that I live and breathe and have my being in Love.  Not love as I would design it, but Love as Love is.  And thank goodness for that!

The other day while driving along listening to the radio, my wandering mind collapsed around the words “you deserve” coming at the end of an advertisement.  I laughed out loud and immediately gave thanks that I do not get what I think I “deserve.”  Nor do I get what I believe I have “the right” to have.  For these are aspects locked in thinking that life is about me; rebellious aspects that tend to suffocate the quieter, deeper, most profound knowing we are all a part of Love’s design.

If these aspects are locked in chaos, why do I welcome them?  Well, to do otherwise would merely feed the beast.  I have very much been there, and done that.  Denial fails to introduce rebellion and resistance to Love.   The way through.  So I choose to allow, accept and love into maturity those slower parts of me that just don’t get it – don’t yet live in the knowing that it’s not about me.    

I remember algebra class in high school.  I loved math…so much so that I signed up for the zero hour math class that started before 7 AM.  I’m a morning person so I thought this would work well for me.  Yet I struggled in that class.  I kept bumping my mind into the same problem over and over again.  I just couldn’t get to the answer or grasp the concept the problem presented.  Yet, I had a brilliant teacher who explained and illustrated and loved us (me) along.  After leading us through the problem in a thousand different ways, (felt like 1,000 anyway) the way through finally “clicked” and I grasped the concept.  I don’t remember the problem, but I remember the internal feeling of “click” – feeling all cells falling into alignment; all the struggling melding with understanding the bigger context.  Have you ever felt that within you?  That knowing that comes when we pull our bruised heads back from the brick wall to see an entire wall with open doors and windows?

When I accept my rebellious thinking and acting about a certain something e.g. a judgment I have about a person or situation, there opens a space to Love.  I can make different choices.  I can live in a different place within.  As Anna says in the book Mister God, This is Anna –we go through God’s middle and God goes through our middle. Accepting aspects of me that live in chaos, fear or rebellion sets me firmly in living through Love’s middle.  In this way, the work of setting down ceases.  It becomes instead the practice of noting, accepting and releasing rebellious or fearful energy to become something else, something useful.  And my whole intentional human being self lives a little more fully in Love’s collective middle.  A place we all live and breathe and have our being.

So my rebellious and resistive nature is being converted one quality, one aspect at a time at the pace of acceptance.  I am a multi-faceted being part of a collective whole.  I am being converted to something.  We all are.  Robert Corin Morris and I very much agree on what that something is.  A life lived loving with the whole heart.  Love from the middle.

 “The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.”
~ Frederick Buechner

Make a Difference or Be the Difference

Wow, I’m wading into the world of blogging.  Thanks for tuning in.

I’m a ponderer and my life is full of little and larger moments of invitation; things to consider in making my minutes more intentional.  My life is dedicated to nurturing spiritual formation  – tending it within myself and shining the resulting Light into the world to encourage and support others in their sojourn.  I am very blessed.  We are all very blessed.

Next year (late next year!) I will turn 50 years old so my pondering lately has been about the journey of maturity.  I am hitting a stride of ease and fluidity in my life that I haven’t experienced in quite the same way before – a result I think of some very intentional practices that have helped me acknowledge, allow, accept, and move through conflict more quickly and peacefully to places of joy.  (Conflict’s purpose is soul transformation after all.)

It’s had me pondering how my understanding of my purpose has morphed as I’ve aged.  My friend, Chris, likes to say “As we age…” and follow it up with some pithy statement.  I love it!  My “As I’ve aged” observation is this:  I used to believe I was here to make a difference.  Today, I believe I’m here to BE the difference.

As we are individually healed, so too, is the world.

Making a difference requires only that I acquire skills to lead others to change.  Being the difference requires me to start at home – within myself.  It requires me to know my motivation, my intent, my feelings, my needs, my wants (the difference between needs, feelings and wants)  and most importantly – to actively take responsibility for all those.  Being the difference requires personal responsibility – owning my choices.  As I do, I AM the change I want to see in the world.  I am changed. And the world is changed.

Sometimes the internal work this asks of me can make even a deep ponderer like me sit back on my haunches.  I can at times feel challenged to know where I am internally in every given moment and apply it to loving action right then and there.  Sometimes I act and then later think “Jamie, what were you thinking?” I laughingly call this ‘trigger point therapy’ – asking myself what internal motivation or feeling or patterned response triggered my action especially when it wasn’t the response that truly offered Love.  Because let’s face it: I often do the things I don’t want to do and fail to do the things I do want to do. And realize this all very much after the fact.  Does this ever happen to you?

I used to believe that there was no value to the delay between my actions and my understanding of my actions.  Today, I believe the value comes in the asking - the seeking to understand ”What were you thinking?” It’s okay that sometimes it comes much later than the action. I accept and allow that this is how I operate as a whole intentional human being.  Because eventually, I WILL ask that question of myself and seek its answer.  Seek to become clearer and clearer about my intention; my loving.

I guess I see the maturation process for me as shortening the time between asking, knowing and acting.  More and more I have built habits – specifically breathing and centering in the daily minutes of my life – that foster an understanding about where I’m living internally so that my actions are coming from Love (for myself, for others, for the world.)  I remember that I live in Love and act from that knowing.

I am very grateful for the mentors and friends who have walked and are walking with me – taking responsibility for their own living as whole intentional human beings – and in doing so, nurture me to do likewise.  I’m honoring them now and ‘paying it forward’ if you will by constructing and instructing a class on these habits.  A class called Breathe, Stretch and Pray.  (You can read about it on the CLASSES page.) These habits I’ve learned from amazing people who bless me with friendship and mentorship and whose habits I’ve incorporated in the class.  This class is not ”my” class, but a class that includes the essence of these great mentors and their lives of intention: Barbara Helynn Heard, Mana Lomi practitioner; Bryan Van Dragt, psychologist and leader of Intensive Retreats; Nancy Wilkinson, yoga instructor and classroom teacher; Ilona Lord, Hellerwork practitioner and many many more.

Teachers show up in my life everyday looking like clients, clerks in stores, exercise buddies, drivers on the road, et al. So thank you.  Thank you for your intentional living and how you are choosing your habits of Loving.  You, too, ARE the difference.  We are all part of the big web.  It’s a beautifully woven tapestry of gift, talent and action to Love.  Peace to you, today.