FREE PRAYER SERVICE

It's nothing religious, quite the opposite really. Just email your prayer request, anonymously if you like and I will say a prayer for you. If you like(please indicate so), I will post it and all those who visit here can have the opportunity to pray for you too. A friend mentioned how helpful this is and it's had me up all night thinking about it. Prayer is such a beautiful ancient ritual, so simple and direct, such a beautiful way for us to connect and re-connect without obligation. So please, consider yourselves invited.

SCORE: NOTHINGNESS 1 AGGIE 0

My newest challenge is that all is relatively quiet on the western front. Nothing much is happening these days, nothing on the go, no action, none at all actually. So I go through my trusty daily routines; exercising, meditating, walking in the park, eating, cleaning, cooking, talking to clients, writing, reading, seeing my fiancee, occasionally talking to or seeing friends & family. No major disasters to report, silently working through my issues on a vibrational level (sometimes there's nothing else to be done i guess). Faced with many moments of boredom during this relatively peaceful time, I notice how my anxiety rises in waves, hoping for some drama, something to keep the show exciting. Nothing comes, and I am forced to realize how hard it is to be in this place that I have so often hoped and prayed for. Quiet time has it's very own cross to bear it seems. Not as easy as I thought it would be, not as much sipping on pina coladas as I had envisioned. Being in the nothing is a brilliant challenge for all of us. Of course there are always things to work on, but when it's about letting go-it's about letting go, not circling again and again and prodding with the same stick. Watching the fire burn out on patterns and issues that no longer serve us seems even harder than when we were unconsciously participating in those troubles. To not create problems when there are none is a lot harder than solving ones you already have. At least you've already met the ones you have. 

MAYBE MY FAV QUOTE OF ALL TIME

whoa, this one is major...

"To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations..."

-Emily Dickinson

way to put it em-dog

NO RISK NO REWARD

No matter how often I do it keeping my boundaries is still one of the hardest things for me to do. With full awareness I blame my parents, hehe. No but really, I grew up in a very loving, very enmeshed family dynamic so now when it comes to having boundaries with people, I find it very hard to stick to my guns. There is however an irony whenever I do stick to them. I gear myself up for rejection, abandonment and all sorts of death and destruction scenarios that will surely result from my "selfishness" (co-dependance anyone?) Instead, I am met with respect and understanding and most unbelievably of all, more love. The part of my brain that after all this time still doesn't completely trust that it's ok for me to have boundaries becomes a little more convinced each time I do. Each time I say no, each time I hold steady my ground I get stronger and my relationships get stronger because I am not just a yes machine. And who can really have an honest, trusting, authentic relationship with a yes machine? I know I can't-because you never really know where you stand with them. So as much as we might love the instant gratification, the fix we get from ignoring ourselves and bending our own rules/limits to suit another or saying yes when we want to say no, there is a long term benefit to NOT doing so. It's called Integrity. Integrity is as good a gift as one can give and if that's what we are putting out, we can be sure that it's certainly what we are going to get back. In essence, it is a message of encouragement to myself and to you readers, that it's worth standing up for ourselves, even if we feel the fear and even if it means losing favor with someone we love. In the end we are gaining our own respect and learning a deeper kind of love, and that my friends, is a reward for which I am fully willing to risk.

SLEEP

I just woke up from possibly the best sleep I have had in a month. Not that I was having crappy (or as one of my clients likes to say crappity) sleeps all along, they were just nothing to rave about; some tossing, some turning, some intense dreaming, some hot feet, someone's knee in my leg space on occasion. I was getting enough rest but once in a while it's nice to have the cadillac of sleeps, the kind that can only be described as delicious. The kind you don't want to hear about when you've laid awake all night and someone else is telling you how fresh as a daisy they feel. It truly makes me realize how important it is to do whatever we can to get a good night's sleep. I know mom's, night owl's, artist's, teenager's and insomniac's have a greater cross to bear than most in the sleep deprivation department, but man oh man, what a difference it makes. It reminds me of going to the chiropractor, because when he's done cracking and snapping me, the world is just a brighter place, colors are vibrant again and my senses are re-engaged. For the scientific final word to back my own findings, I went to the National Sleep Foundations website ( i love there are people that care that much about how you sleep that they are willing to start a foundation!). Well the impact on health is massive, from more car accidents to terrible decision making to loss of brain chemicals- these are just a few of the things that can happen without sleep. I am willing to concede that I've certainly made some terrible decisions from lack of sleep and frankly I can't afford to lose any more brain chemicals, I need all the ones I got, no accidents so far and not driving a car here in NY may be the only reason why. So let's make a pact, nothing gets assessed until we get a decent night's sleep and a nourishing healthy meal- it's the least we can do for all we put ourselves through, don't you think?

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Did everyone see Stephanie's amazing comment, sorry to put you on the spot Stephanie, but it's so poignant that I just had to put it on the front so that I could see it more often, i think it's one of my new favorite quotes:

"I love to dig up seeds to see if they're growing. This, of course slows their progress."

-Stephanie McCracken

NEEDS

When we first begin therapy, we may find out about our NEEDS and that we actually have some and that there's nothing wrong with having them met. It's a great experience to discover that this can actually happen, that you can ask for what you need and receive it. You may ask your spouse to turn off the TV while you are talking or that you need time alone from your friends, and much to your surprise they do it! So you do that for a while and it feels good, and then you forget about it because it becomes second nature over time. You get used to it-you may even plateau at that stage thinking that it's just that easy. Not to say that it isn't, however the topic of NEEDS does get more complicated as we go deeper. Now as we grow we may sometimes find that even when we ask there are certain things that we just cannot seem to get, no matter how hard we try, (i want more money, i want more security, i want to relax, i want to meet that special someone, i want that job...you get the idea). It's a strange thing because here you were getting your needs met and now here you are not getting the things you want. How are they different? you might ask.

So if we break it down, what we may notice is that in the first case we already felt we deserved what we were asking for and so we got it, that's the law of attraction at work. Secondly I want to point out an important characteristic of why certain desires go unfulfilled. If there is an element of A) Not believing that we already have it, you can forget it, we cannot manifest anything we don't already picture having, being or doing and B) when we have urgency around healing, receiving, manifesting, solving, then we are creating a time pressure and that may not be synced up with Divine Timing (the different laws of the universe converging in a timeline). In essence what I am saying is to get what we want we have to both believe we already have it and let go of having it at the same time. No more checking in, No more watching the pot (my personal favorite ax to grind). A simple formula that's quite the challenge but I highly recommend enjoying the process of getting there all the same.

New Definitions

Lately I have been really triggered by the question, "So, what are you doing today/these days?" 

Most of the time my rebellious side wants to answer "Nothing, I am doing absolutely nothing important and what are you doing that's so great huh?." After some long walks with my buddy Eckhart Tolle (in my headphones), i came to a few realizations that I'd like to share about why this seemingly normal and polite inquiry gets me so mad. I feel like I am moving further and further away from traditional definitions of what "work" and  "productivity" mean to me and am all out rejecting the idea of "doing" as a whole. It's taken me a good ten years to come to this, which makes me all the more protective of this now that I am here. I have had to work through family and societal patterns around money and what it means to be a useful part of society; a slow, sometimes painful and sometimes freeing process. New definitions come to mind now, like what it means to exist: how important and helpful it is to simply BE. The more I am myself, the more aligned I am with source, the more I am in the flow, the more chance there is that I can help someone in a positive way. The questions I'm asking myself and that I'd rather be asked by others are-what feels good?, how do you like to spend your time? what vibration are you in right now? what feeling are you acknowledging? Generally speaking people want to know what you are doing, this and how much money are you making while doing it have come to define the worthiness of our daily lives. It's easy to measure I guess, easier than the more fluid, less exact science of being. So what i am saying is that my new definitions aren't definitions at all, I am and want to continue to be growing into the space that is the absence of definition. So if you happen to ask me what I am up to and you are met with a long deep silence, don't worry, only know that I am just stretching into my being-ness one day at a time.