Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Thank You, I Love You

I've known for some time now that Love and Gratitude are the keys to living a life in flow. They now seem to me to be the solution to most of life's problems. Two small but powerful sentences, I love you and thank you are the Ho'oponopono prayer and promise. Whenever I see anything out of alignment with my joy or another's, I use this technique. I think of the situation and then hold the mantra Thank you, I love you in my mind. Whenever the image pops back into my mind of the disharmony, I counter it with love and gratitude, I love you, thank you. This is the cleansing technique used by the now famous therapist, Dr. Hew Len, on the inmates in the Hawaii State Hospital ward of the criminally insane. He never saw any one of the inmates individually. He sat in his office and reviewed their charts. Taking 100% responsibility for having created their wrongful deeds into his field of awareness, he cleansed himself. As a result, in four years, from 1983 to 1987, the inmates who had previously been shackled and heavily drugged, were released and the ward was eventually closed. (Google Joe Vitale's story of Ho'oponopono for a more complete version of this story).

I recently attended a Ho'oponopono workshop with Dr. Hew Len in Colorado, which cemented my resolve to use this mantra 24/7. I'm finding wonderful results for which I am immensely full of love and gratitude. As Dr. Hew Len says, "It is so simple that most people won't even be interested in trying it." The mind wants to complicate everything. But as is true with most things, the simpler it is, the more powerful.

Sunday, while on a drive to Napa Valley, I received a phone call from my friend and tai chi student, Renata. "I need some help," she said. "Allison (her one year old daughter) is keeping me up all night. She never sleeps through the night and I need my sleep. Do you have any suggestions on what I might do?" "Ah," I said, "This is a job for Ho'oponopono!" I told her to mantra Thank you, I love you and that I would do the same whenever I thought about them. "Okay," she agreed, "I'll do anything!" This morning, a day and a half later, Renata called with exhilaration in her voice. "Allison slept from 9 pm to 7 am. She's never done that!" I beamed with joy. These stories are becoming a regular thing with me. I'm so grateful about that! I love you!

Friday, November 23, 2007

Attitude of Gratitude

"Desire and Gratitude can never co-exist. When you feel one desire after another, it means that you are not living with gratitude. When you live with gratitude, you can never have any desires. When you live with gratitude, whatever is given to you will simply fulfill whatever you need at that moment, that’s all. Even before you ask, you will be given, so there will be no question of asking."

Nithyandana, from his book Guaranteed Solutions.

Monday, November 19, 2007

From Revolution to Evolution

In the past 3,000 years, we have records of over 5,000 wars. Revolution is apparently not effective. Why haven’t we noticed? Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. We talk as if we desire peace and yet we continually go to war, with even war itself. It seems it is time we individually wake up and start a collective evolution, not a revolution.

Everything is energy! Our politicians are a tangible representation of our collective energy frequency. If we continue to criticize them, we send more negativity into our collective vibration and create more war. War is a creation of agitated people. Becoming agitated with the politicians does not solve the problem it exacerbates it. Instead of contributing negatively to the collective frequency by fighting with what we don’t want, we can put our concentration on what we would like to experience. What we focus on expands. What we put our attention on grows. Let’s focus on positive solutions and do something constructive rather than complaining like innocent victims, pretending as if “they” are doing it to us. We are collectively responsible for whatever is happening at any one time in history. Yet we can only change ourselves individually. If we each take responsibility for the quality of energy we are personally radiating, by focusing on what we want instead of complaining about what we’ve got that we don’t want, we are taking the most important and effective step forward in creating a world of peace. Let’s stop irresponsibly revolving in circles of insanity and start responsibly evolving toward the experience of peace and sanity.

THE MAGICAL UNIVERSE

The Universe keeps amazing me! I am continually blown away by seemingly coincidental happenings. The most recent was so cool, I just have to write about it. I must begin, though, with a bit of history.

Twelve years ago, when my former husband and I decided to separate, I was absolutely at a loss as to how to pull it off emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually and financially. It wasn’t what I wanted. My parents divorced when I was a child and I tried everything to avoid going through that again. However it became increasing obvious that a separation was necessary, and I saw how my actions to keep our marriage together were coming more from ideas I was holding onto rather than from what was best for all involved. The day came when I had no choice but to surrender to a power greater than I and ask for help.

“Universe, put me where I’m suppose to be!

What followed the next few days felt like someone put me on a raft and floated me down the most amazing river. Literally, my phone rang and all the instructions I needed came in a way I had never expected, thought of, or had prior to that moment, wanted. There is one person in particular to whom I am grateful for being the "angel" the Universe came through for this amazing transition and transformation. That person happened to be a tai chi student of mine at the time. As busy lives have it, after a while, ours went on their separate ways and we have not been in contact for many years.

Larry, my former husband, with whom I share the parenting of our daughter, has remained a close friend and we have each found new mates with whom we are both very happy. My mate Steve, (whom I incidentally met through this "angel"), and I began a design business together after buying, remodeling and selling several houses over the years. Almost two years ago we joined with our friend Sallie Lang of Bliss Building to work on the interior design of a house she designed and was building as a spec house.

Sallie, a master wood worker, worked on Oracle founder, Larry Ellison’s Japanese style mansion and upon completion of that job ventured on this new project of her own. Wonderful craftsmen and artists worked on the home and Steve and I felt very honored to be a part of the team. Although there was a budget, every time we came to Sallie to show her what we could do within the budget, and then what we wanted to do, she said, “Do what you want!” It was a wonderfully satisfying and challenging project, which went a tad over budget, to say the least. As time went on during the project, it became necessary for Steve and I to invest our own money into the project. We started buying what was needed to do what we wanted, sure that the house would sell quickly and we would reap a reward on our investment.

Although the house is probably over 4 thousand square feet, it has only two bedrooms. There is a library, a spa with a sauna, six bathrooms, a large kitchen, living room, dining room, and a wonderful view, all space-out over 5 floors and hanging off the hillside. It’s not a typical house for a family. It's an art project and we were not quite sure who would buy it, but we knew it would sell to the perfect people.

Eight months went by and we were wondering where these perfect people were. Finally, one afternoon, Steve and I were in a store and we ran into the realtor for the house. Excitedly she said, “You’ll never believe who came to look at the house and is considering buying it!” When she told us we were flabbergasted. When we told her that we knew these people, she was flabbergasted.

I could hardly believe it was my "angel" of 12 years ago coming onto the scene and again saving the day. Having no idea of our involvement in the project, he and his wife Anne found the house and bought it.

That "angel" is Jerry Brown.
Thank you, Jerry