For most of my life I would watch with resentment stars in one genre use their money and prestige to become stars in another genre: Shirley MacLaine with Out on a Limb, Gwenyth Paltrow with her food/cookbooks, and now, Jeff Bridges, beginning a singing career. Don’t get me wrong, I love all of these people as actors, perhaps Jeff Bridges most of all; I thought he was fabulous in Crazy Heart, where his singing worked for me, but listening to bits and pieces of his new album leave me uninspired, and I initially went to resentment: Why does he get to do his heart’s desire, just because of his fame and fortune? But, if Abraham and others are to be believed, fame and fortune have nothing to do with it, and anyone else, star or not, doing what they love most in life, greases the skids for the rest of us to do the same, while our resentment only slows us down. So. . .YOU GO, JEFF!! (And everybody else.) Check out Jeff singing “Fallin’ and Flyin’” at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMdBQfgTQn0

Bridging gaps

This is an Insight Card message from the Transformation Game, a card which I draw fairly regularly. Sometimes it is a reminder of what I need to do; sometimes it is a pat on the back for how I’m living my life in that moment. When I drew it this past Sunday, as Bonnie Cooper and I were offering Earth Fare goers a taste of the Transformation Game, the card had multiple meanings. When we were finished with the Game and checking out with some food, we witnessed a cashier who was living this message in the moment, and his energy was exhilarating and contagious; both Bonnie and I wanted to dance right there. The next day, something happened (with my car) which I initially allowed to depress my energy, until I remembered the night before, and the message: You laugh a lot, dancing along your merry way. The rest of the day I attempted to stay true to that message and, the next day, the problem with the car was easily (and cheaply) resolved.

Last night I participated in a Global Heart Coherence/Summer Solstice Labyrinth walk. If you don’t know about HeartMath’s Global Coherence Initiative, please check it out: http://www.glcoherence.org/ It is about bringing our collective hearts together in an uplifted vibration to bring energetic/vibrational coherence to the planet. While it is a global initiative, the experience of centering in your heart is very personal. We began with that—centering in our hearts—and then we walked the labyrinth. I was first. I danced my way through and, when I got to the center, I sat and, centered in my heart, waited. A dream from last winter came to me, a dream in which I was retrieving things from behind 3 doors, but in the dream I had only gone through 2; last night I went through the 3rd, retrieving my onederment.
This morning I feel sad and scared that I can’t/won’t live up to that possibility in each and every moment of my life. Of course,that’s a tall order for anyone; even the Dalai Lama forgets and swats and mosquitoes. So I’m trying to be gentle with myself, trust my intention to guide me, and know that will be good enough.

You may already have gotten this news via Facebook, but I recently opened a virtual shop at Etsy which will have most, if not all, of my smaller products: fabric postcards, purses/bags, lap-sized labyrinths in totem shapes, books and patterns. I hope you’ll check out the store, and let others know about it. I plan on adding new items on a regular basis, so give a look every once in a while.  Thanks!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/InnerLandscaping

A friend has asked me to make him a quilt, adding, “I am surrounding myself only with things I love, that make me laugh, or remind me of friends.” What a wonderful way to live your life. Obviously there are things that are practical or even necessary, but my friend’s list is a helpful addition for anything beyond practicality. But even practicality can mix with other values. . .as when another friend said to me, “If it doesn’t feel like pajamas, I’m not wearing it.” There, comfort was the issue, and my friend loves comfort. I like a house which is neat and clean, but more than that I love doing what I love to do—which, more often than not these days, is sewing and making beautiful things to look at or which carry loving, supportive energy.

One of my favorite things about spring/summer are fireflies, and I saw my first ones a few nights ago. I knew them growing up, when my father/mother/daughter family spent a couple of weeks with another such family up in northern MN, fishing, and then they disappeared from my life as it became much more urban-focused. Eventually a friend moved to the country, and I re-encountered them when I went for summer visits, but it wasn’t until I moved to N.C. 10 years ago that they became such a large part of my spring/summer consciousness. I had an especially meaningful experience with them a few years ago when, unable to sleep, I got up around 3am and went into the kitchen, which had a sliding glass door to the deck. And there, on the deck, were about 20 fireflies which, as I watched, settled into a perfect circle on the deck floor and just lay there, blinking, until dawn. I had never seen such behavior, and to this day don’t know what it meant, except that I felt very connected to these creatures, and filled with a silent joy which arises again each spring with the first sighting.

Iin developing a new blog (Transformation Through Play) for my work with The Transformation Game, I ran into a challenge and emailed the support crew at WordPress.com. An answer came back very quickly, which completely answered my question in totally understandable terms, but what struck me more was the signature: beneath the support person’s name was the title, “Happiness Engineer.” I just had to smile, for this person was, indeed, a Happiness Engineer for me in two ways: I was happy with the ease of the “fix” and the promptness of the response, and he had gotten me to smile in the process. Rarely, if ever, do I smile when I run into computer problems.

How/where can you be a “Happiness Engineer” in your life? How can you get people to smile in circumstances which normally bring a frown and a curse?  Can we all be happiness engineers for each other?

Thank you to all the Happiness Engineers with whom I come in contact; may your numbers grow.

This morning I began my day, as I often do, listening to an Abraham meditation, after which I move directly into my practice of the Inner Smile by Mantak Chia. Normally this practice takes several minutes to get into the flow, but this morning, as soon as I my thoughts turned to the Inner Smile, it was there, on my face, and all throughout my body, and I moved immediately into the final stage, which is a flow of smiling from me, outward to the entire universe (and beyond) and back again. It was utterly delightful and delicious, and I have yet to find a better way to start my day, a better energy to send forth before me as I venture out into the day and the world.

Today I went to a friend’s 60th birthday party and discovered it was, primarily, an ecstatic performance, by her, of some dance/story/sign language pieces which she offered to us, her friends. It was delightful to see such an expression of joy in her and in us. May we all express ourselves with such joy and abandon in our own lives.

“Radically new or innovative; outside or beyond established procedure, principles, etc.: a revolutionary discovery.” dictionary.com
“Does a man become a revolutionary out of the belief he’s entitled to joy rather than submission?” Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna
I had never thought of myself as a revolutionary before reading The Lacuna; idealist, perhaps, but never a revolutionary. But if entitlement to joy is a benchmark, then I am, indeed, a revolutionary, albeit a fairly quiet one. I don’t pick up arms, or even a megaphone but, at times, the quill. Or, just as likely, I quietly practice tonglen (a Buddhist breathing practice of breathing in pain and suffering, your own or someone else’s, and breathing out/sharing joy, delight, peace, etc.). I gave up my license to practice psychology because the methodology and bureaucracy no longer afforded joy to me or my clients; now I practice coaching people on how to experience more joy in their lives. Never mind previous life experiences—find joy in the moment, in the NOW, and the rest of it falls away, at least for as long as you maintain the practice. As w;ith any such practice, you simply keep coming back to it, without judgment about how easily you fall out of it. Even sitting here in McDonald’s, when I look for joy within myself, I find it. And then it appears without, in the delighted voices of some children who just entered. Squeals of delight; ignited by me creating my own reality? Who can say.