What You are Made Of

As I grow older, textures, scents, scenery, good foods, and dynamic sounds are important, even more important to me. This approach is a long time in coming. For so long I thought, whatever, just make everything work, make do, and enjoy what is there. Now I understand that whatever you ask or expect you get....so...I am asking for the high quality I know I am, we all are. I heard a wonderful statement the other day and apologize in not being able to recall who said it, but this person said to imagine within each of us a flowing lava stream of gold. We are loved and made of abundance. It is not wrong to want to reveal it inside and out. And then give it away to more and more and watch it all come back.

To your abundance and self care.

A Good Day to Continue

Thankful. I have learned so much since my mother's death last year. I left Texas a day after her funeral on April 20, and returned to NYC to a full-blown work schedule after experiencing the opposite before leaving for five weeks to attend to my mother. Things change like that. Embracing the changes and making right choices is vital for peace of mind, harmony, and happiness. So I worked hard and strong right through the spring, summer, fall, winter, and now it is spring, again, and I have just completed my evening ESL classes and my tutoring position at a college in the Bronx. There was a time I would be worried, but no more. Now I see, as Jack Canfield suggests, "I believe the world is plotting to do me good today. I can't wait to see what it is."

I've already been asked to substitute for two ESL teachers during the summer so that satisfies much of the hours just ended. And I am excited about a memoir video project I conceived, much like StoryCorps, only I would go to the storytellers rather than them going to a certain site. I will make a Kickstarter video and put my fishing rod and line out to see who bites. And I will look for a sponsor for this project, too, so that those who most should be participating and engaging with me, will.

Most of all, I have written up my goals, specific and time sensitive. If you haven't read Jack Canfield's The Success Principles, I recommend it:http://www.thesuccessprinciples.com/

It is changing my life.

That's the beauty of it. If you keep going, keep awake and stay in your boat going downstream, you will find answers and messages coming at you all the time. Staying alert and aware is the difference between evolving and regressing. You want the former.

But, most, most, most of all, I am listening to my daughter, Leila, who tells me if I put my personality and person out there for the world, everything will happen for me that I desire. Yes, I've hidden my light under the basket long enough. As a teacher, I find my students indeed connect and love me. So why should I hold back on my dreams and goals if I have the essence of connectivity in me as a human being and spirit all rolled into one?

So for this next leg of the journey, I am pulling out all the plugs:

* First and forever, I am a writer. I am writing the memoir on my mother and me and creating big and strong deadlines, and by meeting once a week with another writer committing to fulfilling my goal. And then I will start on the next book. I will also submit articles to magazines and journals. Anywhere I should, I will.

* I am reading my goals every morning and night. (The subconscious mind LOVES goals and the more you remind it, the more active it becomes to make it happen.)

* I am believing that the world is plotting good for me. Only good.

* I am listening, meditating, and exercising (yoga and walking).

* I am letting go of bad eating and drinking habits.

* I am reading a book. When finished, I am picking up another.

* I am earning more money than I ever have and then earning some more.

* I am repaying kindnesses and creating even more.

For everything you do or are involved in or up against, use this quote by Canfield, "What's the opportunity that this is?"

See the glass not half full or half empty, but filled to the top, and even spilling over.

Memorial Majesty

Angels in my Hair by Lorna Byrne

I love this video so much because if you watch it clear through you see the ego in this gentleman just bursting out of him. Fear. Fear of the ego keeps him from hearing her. If he or the female host had read her book they would know the magnificence and know that Lorna is simply allowing the message of God and the angels to come through her. I find this video fascinating and heartwrenching. The fear that keeps us or tries to keep us from  knowing how much support and love we have with us all the time is intense. I urge you to read Lorna Byrne's two books, Angels in My Hair and Stairways to Heaven.

When the interviewer was grilling her over taking money for seeing people...in Angels in My Hair, she talks of how utterly poor they were once her husband became ill. So for someone to give her a cake or piece of meat must have been such a ransom of blessing at the time.

I love Lorna Byrne. I thank her for allowing this beautiful knowing to come through. I am stronger for it. I am changed. I know how much protection, love, and help we have 24/7. I shall never forget again.

One more time

Every day we decide what we want from life. We can live it with big gaping holes or we can live it whole and free. I choose the latter and spend my days aimed at this. I listen to everything, taking what I need, discarding what is not meant for me. Each day I awake I give thanks and request more. And when I do right by my body, mind, and soul, I get it. I am a living testament of how not to give up. Keep on! Keep on! Keep on!

Te amo

Until it's over and done....

I must have been 20. I was at a student journalism conference in Beaumont, Texas. We were at an awards dinner on the last night of the event and a slew of random photographs taken at the conference were being shown on a big screen.

I looked up and there was my face. The music cued to the photos was Kenny Loggins' "This is It." I sat there -  and did then as this song does for me now -  and woke to the idea that I am a writer - maybe not a journalist - but a writer, and the notion is not going to go away nor do I want it to depart.

It has been a struggle to internally embrace this as much as I say it out loud. But, being a writer, a communicator, is enmeshed in who I am and everything I represent. "The waiting is over" happened for me when my mother passed and the culmination of our lives together became apparent to me that my ability and faith as a writer is strong, capable, and intended.

Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald co-wrote this song, first as a love song, but at the same time when Loggins' father developed a severe heart problem and was giving up, Loggins knew the direction the song had to go.

I love how meaning is there for us to find like a brightly colored egg, hidden.We simply need to look and to enjoy the search, as freely as a child.

Two for One: The Spirituality of Discomfort

Yesterday, while leaving my ESL gig, I was trekking home when only a few buildings down the street in Harlem and a man stood inside a doorway with a bar of a scaffold above him. He was doing chin ups and it was dark. I watched him and walked on, but as soon as I crossed his path, he stopped, dropped to the sidewalk and said to me, "Do you have the time?"

I looked at the screen of my phone. It was straight up 6:00 pm, and when I told him, he said, "Thank you," and I moved on.

Later that evening, I thought about him. And I considered how the numbers 6:00 resonated with me, so I went to Doreen Virtue's Angels Book of Numbers and flipped to 600. "Give your worries and stress to God," it read. I sat on the edge of my bed and smiled and said a silent "thank you."

Whether the man doing chin ups had any relevance to it, did not matter. I simply knew it was time to drop my fears and to land feet first on the ground, solid and on purpose.