Travelling at the Speed of Light-Heartedness

Cooking for three days in anticipation for dinner on the eve of Rosh Hashona (the Jewish New Year)  has rekindled my belief that if you do what you love, with love, from an open heart, you can rest assured that what you create will be good, even if it does not always appear that way.

It is these words in Genesis, “And it was Good” that inspired me to write today.

During those three days, I attempted to bake a coffee /honey cake. After all, we are celebrating the World’s Birthday. Guaranteed to be delicious, I did everything in the recipe and placed the mixture in the bundt pan and waited. Nothing much happened for a while and then my oven became a container for Mt. Vesuvius. Bubbles rose and filled the hole in the bundt tin, batter poured over the sides and began to ooze out and fill the aluminum container I manages to slide onto the floor of the oven. I just stood and watched in shocked fascination. Eventually, I removed the disaster from the oven and tried to rescue a corner here and there that was not burnt or still runny.  I looked up the reviews on this recipe and many people said the same thing happened to them.

Disclaimer: This is NOT a request for a recipe.

It is a metaphor. Even when we put forward our best efforts, bad things will sometimes happen. They have to. We don’t live in a fairy tale and real life is not about happy endings. Real life is not about devervability. Just because we are good and kind and reasonable, it doesn’t ensure we will receive the same behaviour from others. Just because we drive our car with care, doesn’t mean we will never be in an accident. Just because we were good parents, doesn’t mean our children will forgive and forget our mistakes. Just because we are generous to others, doesn’t mean others will be generous to us.

It doesn’t work that way.

If we do unto others what we would have them do unto us, it doesn’t mean they will.

At this time in the Jewish calendar we are given ten days to look at ourselves with clarity and compassion. We are asked to focus on who we have been over the past year and  we are given the opportunity to forgive ourselves for the times we  reacted rather than responded. For the times we treated our self or another harshly, rudely, thoughtlessly or angrily. For the times we forgot to offer help to another, neglected our true beliefs and wasted time complaining rather than taking action. For the times we chose not to understand why a friend would behave in a certain way, or a family member remembers something you wish they had just forgotten.

At this time we are also invited to forgive every person who we believe has done us wrong. Why would we do that? Nothing happens to us that, on some level, we have not the capacity to understand and forgive. Actually nothing happens to us. We are the creators of our own lives, whether we are consciously aware of that or not. If life just happened to us, then we would all be victims. And surely we are not. Indeed we are the creators of our lives because we can choose how to attend to everything that happens.

As author and teacher Wayne Dyer said, “With everything that has happened to you, you can either feel sorry for yourself, or treat what has happened as a gift. Either everything is an opportunity to help you grow or an obstacle to keep you from growing. You get to choose.”

Self-pity can mask itself as entitlement.

It starts with a ‘should or should not, a must , a have to, or an ought.

She should not have written such a thing.

They should apologise first.

He has to make the first move… because I always do.

They ought to help out because… blah blah bah

All these shoulds and have tos etc, camouflage the underlying issue.

“Poor me. I don’t deserve this.”

Self-pity can also mask itself is righteous anger.

When we step into this way of being, when some of us would prefer to lose family, friends and relationships rather than be wrong, when some people would prefer to die than be wrong, we become blind to the truth.

In the words of Helen Keller, “Self pity is our worst enemy, and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.”

My failed honey cake was a gift. It took nothing away from the joy of the evening with family and friends. It was a tiny hiccup that melted and disappeared in the face of what was important. Love. Connection. Joy. Thankfulness.

One the tenth day we arrive at The Day of Atonement and as important as it is to atone for the hurts and injustices we may have perpetrated, it is, in my humble opinion, far more holy and rewarding to reach a State of At- One- Ment with All That Is. As we look into ourselves and recognise that the parts of ourselves that hurt others usually come from the parts of ourselves that remain unhealed, we are ready to  ask ourselves this question.

Whether you are from the Jewish faith, or another faith or no faith at all, ask yourself am I holding myself back from trying to understand the significance of what happened or stuck in blame in order to remain right, or am I willing to embrace this opportunity, step out on the limb of humility and grace and accept compassionate responsibility for my own actions, my own words and my own life?

Over twenty years ago, a man I saw for clinical supervision had forgotten our  appointment and was not present when I arrived.

Later that day he sent me a message saying, “Please forgive my memory.”

I thought that was such a strange way to apologise. Can we really disassociate ourselves from our memory? And because I never came to any clear understanding of that kind of apology, his sentence, “Please forgive my memory,” has lingered in my own memory bank ever since. I was angry he had forgotten our appointment and I judged him.

Now in my sixties, having undergone some of life’s big challenges the question of memory has risen again. And it comes out of feeling a sense of compassion for my own occasional  lapses in memory. They come not as a result of anything dire and serious, but rather as a result of one or more of the following.

Remembering and forgetting are impacted by our emotional, mental, physical and spiritual situation. They are ‘here and now’ experiences. Grief, sorrow, depression and loneliness all affect our ability to remember certain events, appointments and things people say. When our lives suddenly change and we find ourselves confused, or mixed up we can forget who said what and even the name of our best friend standing right next to us. When we have been unwell, recently undergone surgery, or getting over a fall, we are more likely to forget something someone may have said to us, even though they apparently remember it clearly.

Forgetting is human.  It’s what we do when we or someone we know forgets something that was  said or planned, that takes us to the next level of humanity.

Judging someone who does not remember something is more about the person doing the judging than the person doing the forgetting.

I’ll tell you why.

When we judge or criticize another it is usually in an area we dislike about ourselves.

When we judge someone we cannot appreciate them fully as well.

When we judge we block our ability to understand. Understanding blocks judgment.

When we judge we make ourselves dissatisfied and unhappy with the way things are.

When we judge another we lower our vibration, shut ourselves down from receiving joy and abundance and prosperity from the universe.

And so to that supervisor so many years ago, I get it.

Your memory is not who you are.

And of course, I forgive your memory.

How often do we thank each other for a kindness and thoughtful phone call, a birthday gift or a bowl of soup from a neighbor when we are under the weather?

I am sure most of us would say we say the word thank you every single day.

I began to think about who and what we thank a few days ago when I realised the time to I exchange the hip I was born with for a ceramic and steel ball and socket was getting closer. This hip, that has only a few more hours left before it is to be replace, has served me so well. And I feel it is only right to thank it for supporting me from the time I began to walk, to running the egg and spoon race, to helping me carry our  five babies. It has helped me move tons of shopping up the steps of our family home and climb thousands of steps over my life time.

It moved me to the beat of bands such as The Animals, The Yardbirds, The Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival  and took me on long beautiful walks  through wonderful countries and in our own gorgeous Australian bush

How do we thank our bodies that tirelessly help us get well after illness, for taking us to the top of a mountain, or to that finishing line. How do we thank our bodies for keeping us alive when we felt too ill to move. For healing the infection, and disease, the burns, the pain, the cancer?

So to my hip, who has been such a loyal and trusted part of my life for well over 60 years, I thank you.

Here’s to joining the marvellous medical club of new knees, new hips, new hearts and lungs and infinite new possibilities.

I hear it often. “Can’t wait till we can return to normal.” And I think to myself, “Really?”

Now let me be clear. I am not a heartless creature who wishes suffering or pain on anyone. I am well aware that Covid 19 has entered our lives and taken many away. It entered our bodies and left millions sick and it interrupted life as we have known it and left millions without work, and shelter and enough to eat. Because of this virus, towns and cities have been shut down, and we have been asked to take responsibility to stop the spread, by staying home. We all know that. So before we rush, (yes I am intentionally using that word) back into the world that cut down trees, and filled our oceans with plastic, and dumped toxic rubbish near towns and villages, and stopped the distribution of food for political reasons, perhaps it would better serve us to look again at our world that has, for the last few months, stopped.

We have been given an opportunity to have a tiny glimpse at a world that could be different.

We have been given a glimpse of a world that is cleaner, clearer and moves a little more slowly. What a pleasure it has been to have longer conversations without those blasted interruptions of an  iPhones ringing in the middle of a sentence. We have been given a peek at how working from our home gives our children a chance to eat more meals with their parents, watch a movie together and more importantly go out for walks together.

Communities have not only sprung up focusing on how they can help others and make a difference but many people have welcomed their communities love and care and now feel seen and heard and remembered in ways that didn’t always happen.

We have begun to see ourselves in a different way.

Some of us have been so frightened we are willing to fight for a packet of toilet paper or buy 7 cans of Glen 20 just to be ‘safe.’ Some of us have done everything possible to avoid being alone. Zooming three times a day and watching Netflix for the remaining hours.

Some of us have avoided the one thing that would give us peace of mind. Without this there is no space to ask and hear what all this means and where to go to next. Silence. Some of us talk about being bored with doing nothing and yet doing nothing is the gateway to wisdom. Doing nothing, sitting in silence, opens our consciousness to ideas, imagination, and guidance. As long as we fill our hours with chatter and stuff to do, we cannot create or contemplate, we cannot meditate and concentrate on growing, on evolving, on learning and taking a risk or two. Without taking risks we cannot grow.

The one and only thing that can open ourselves to our inner wisdom, is silence. Sitting still. Not looking down at our phones or filling in all the hours, but giving ourselves the gift of silence between the actions.

Some people have discovered that not only can they still run a business at home but they can teach their children and cook and clean, and smile, yes, still smile! and manage brilliantly. Of course they are tired. It’s been huge, but did you know you could do it? And you did it so well.

We are so much more than we give ourselves credit for.

So, what is the normal we so desperately want to return to? This experience of the world stopping is not an accident. It is an opportunity to look at our lives, at how we have chosen to live and to ask ourselves do we want to go back to that; to rushing to meetings, speeding off to Pilates, squeezing in speedy phone calls in the car and scratching out those surreptitious texts at the next red light. It’s okay to be busy but not if it steers you further and further away from your heart.

For those who were constantly helping their children and grandchildren, coming home and sharing only with a  good friend or two how exhausted and tired they are, how every bone in their body aches, we have now seen that our children have managed well without us. No one is indispensable. Is that the normal you can’t wait to return to? No, I’m not saying we stop being available, I’m saying being available only when it works.

Yes our world stopped. And maybe it stopped to show us all how important it is for everyone to occasionally stop too.

And to consider the most pressing question of our time.

What next?

As I sit in my home quietly living out the days of quarantine, following my return from Northern Italy I ask myself this question. What was my soul’s intent for this incarnation? What did I want to learn, to understand, to create, to share? As I sit in my home thankful for the powers that be, who brought me home at the eleventh hour, just before the doors of Italy were shut, I ask myself, how is this experience connected to the Intent to which I was born.

Let’s take a few steps back. To even ask myself this question, it is clear that I believe we have consciousness that exists beyond our physical life. That I am, you are, a sacred, indivisible spark of Light that originated as part of the Source of all Life. That spark of light does not wear out or flicker and go out in a puff of cosmic smoke. That spark of light holds all the memories, lessons, triumphs and tribulations that make up who we are from the very first moment we enfolded and surrounded it with a physical body. There is a difference between the Essence of who we are and our Soul but that is not the purpose of this writing. The purpose is to explore with you, what is my, your, Intent for this life.

In The 12 levels of Being I explore the significant difference between Intention and Intent. They are not the same. Intention is more like a hope. We have an intention to wake up early every day and go for a walk or we make an intention to write in our journal, or stop buying chips for a month, or read a new book a month. We make these statements but they come from a desire, a wish a hope that this is what we will do.

Our Intent is something different. Intent is a higher frequency. It requires clarity and action. It requires a deep understanding of how to action this Intent and to put that action into practice. Intention can become Intent with clear and concise action but without it Intent can slip right back into intention or  sit is a metaphorical place where our Intents, those sparks of Divine energy gather and wait to be remembered.

Our ethnicity is intrinsically connected to our Intent. We learn because of who and where we come from or in spite of who and where we come from. From my perspective there are no mistakes and so, however we arrived in this life, it was part of that Intent for this life.

Why am I exploring all this with you at this time? Because as part of my own spiritual growth I have been invited to look at what was my Intent for this life time and as I am confined to my home for two weeks, I am struck with the realization that I am not waiting to get back into my life. This is it. This moment, though not one I had even thought of when I left for Venice 6 weeks ago, is my life.

 How do we live our life without waiting for the next part of it? How do we embrace the unexpected, the challenging, the painful without waiting till it’s over?  When my husband, Oren died, just over a year ago, people often tried to console me by telling me how I will feel, in time,  how and when I will heal, eventually. It’s the same with chronic illness, years of sleepless nights with tiny children, incarceration, or detention. Waiting to get better, waiting to sleep the whole night or get out of jail, though completely normal is not accepting that this situation is actually my life. Here and now. And to use it to become stronger, wiser, more resilient, turns it into a powerful opportunity to reconnect to your original Intent.

There are many examples of people who have done this and have changed the world through aspiring to live their lives every day and not waiting till it gets better. Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Ram Dass, Steven Hawkins, Franklin Roosevelt and Victor Frankle, just to name a few. If I look at these lives, I love to imagine what was the Intent made by their souls for their most recent life. They all inspire me. I certainly aspire to live every day putting into action the Intent that informed my birth in this life.

We have watched and perhaps even participated in the panic and chaos that Covid19, or  Corona Virua,  is bringing to the world. We worry about what ‘might’ happen if…….

We do, we say and we behave in ways that are not aligned to our perception of ourselves and we try to defend or rationalise our behaviours because of the situation we all find ourselves in.

I have given myself a small challenge and I want to share it with you.

How can I bring Calm to Chaos  in my actions today? Whether it is at work, shopping, caring for our children, elderly, sick or infirm, how can I bring calm to chaos right now? What can I say that shifts the energy? What can I do that brings a smile to that person in front of me?

Who do I choose to be in the life I am living, right now, at this time, in this situation?

There are no mistakes. Only choices and the opportunity to action our sacred Intent.Bringing Calm to Chaos

We’re Captive on a Carousel of Time

I’m in Venice walking for hours every day. I’m never sure where I’m going unless it’s to the dentist or the hairdresser. Getting lost down a calle ( side street) and turning corners day after day, and finding myself going round and round in circles has become the new normal for me.

I’m okay with that. The heart is open and I am here to Be and to see and to touch and taste and feel it all.

I only learned that Carnivale was cancelled from my children because the news here is in Italian and I listen but don’t understand what I’m hearing. I hope that by some magical form of osmosis I will suddenly click and understand everything, but so far I only understand a spattering of words. One of them is Corona virus. Once I hear that, I tend to change the channel or put on Netflix mainly because I know there is a lot of media hype and fear creating going on. The media influence mass consciousness a bit like the spread of well….an infection.

Level 6 in The 12 Levels of Being is Mass Consciousness. That is the emotional climate of a community, country or indeed the world. It could be grief, blame, fear or revenge and it permeates people’s consciousness until it becomes difficult to differentiate between the feeling as being yours or being something that is so strong in the mass consciousness it only appears to be yours.

Turning off the television only partly works. My friends call me… did I know……..?

Did I know that the planes to Israel have been canceled if have they come from Hong Kong, Singapore or Korea? No! And did you know that all the theatres and places for events has been closed in Italy? No. And did you know that… well you get the message. It was stuff they hear and read through the media.

So, to be clear I am not worried. Let me get that out first. And I am taking some precautions.  I wash my hands all the time. But every bottle of sanitizer and every mask in the whole of Italy was panic-bought last weekend. I kid you not. Nothing on the shelves.

All this made me start to think what could the significance be? The appearance is easy. A new virus it causing people to become sick and some to die. The result is panic.

But what is the significance?

We all know that individual countries are  concerned about themselves. Their financial situation, the education of the population, their medical services  and their people’s well-being. Every individual country has their own ideas about what is right for their country..

Then one day a new tiny little microscopic virus arrives. Even though influenza takes a few lives every year and the SARS virus cause a bit of Asian panic this virus seems to be scaring the whole world. I remember when HIV and AIDS terrified the world but in our ignorance it became an us again them situation. In other words Separation. This corona virus has the whole world working together for one of the first times I can remember. The common enemy. A teensy little virus that can cause serious illness and occasionally death. The whole world is trying to work together to eliminate this new strain of virus.  Universities and laboratories around the world working together, hospitals and towns across borders protecting their cities and towns and communities  And every time this tiny virus shows up in a new place or in a new person the whole world hears about it.

But. And it’s a big BUT

Panic is the main cause of this global connection. Fear is bringing people and countries together and unfortunately still turning some people against others. So my question is why do we need Chaos for us all to come together?

What would every nation leader say and do if they could all come together for the highest good of the entire planet.

How could we as one living entity called Earth unite and make Global decisions for the highest good of all.

What would every nation commit to and create for the whole world to thrive?

This is virus is an opportunity. Another one. They come and they go, but without recognizing an opportunity it’s like a wave that breaks on the beach and just disappears. We have an opportunity here to disconnect from mass fear perpetrated by the media in search of some new drama to sell news. I’m here in Venice. It’s quiet today, but the re are some restaurants and cafes are open. Hardly anyone is wearing a mask. People are smiling and children, home from school for this week, are enjoying time with their parents. Life is not a swirling mass of terror as much as the media would wish you to think.

As I walked in circles trying to find the vaporetto that brought me here, I notice an art gallery. I get distracted by a moment in time.

Everything the artist, Enzo Fiorie makes comes from trees and roots, and dirt and dead insects. This work is beautiful in its honoring of life. From dust to dust. The richness of life emerges. She, our Mother Earth will survive no matter what,  no matter what we fear. Indeed no matter what we do. But we also have choices.

As I walk around and around I realise I am embracing uncertainty.  I am here, we are here, for such a brief time and the opportunities to make a difference, to  open our eyes and hearts and take it  in, moment by moment, come and go. Sometimes the opportunity to do something beautiful, something meaningful, something  purposeful only comes once.

It’s a new day here in Venice and I’m back on the carousel.

  Recently my children  and I were sharing information about climate change aka global warming especially in relation to the hugely damaging fires still burning around Australia right now.  Extreme weather has caused floods, cyclones and typhoons in the last few months

We are faced with leaders reticent to admit Global Warming over the past 70 years  is primarily man made and many people who listen to and agree with the global scientific analysis are frustrated and angry.

There is no doubt that the weather is shifting and changing, and that mankind has mis-treated our planet. The connection between these two facts has led scientists to say the way we have treated the earth, those huge carbon emissions , the over use of chemicals and plastics along with the destruction of rainforests have all contributed to the issues we see today.

However, I want to invite you to consider there may be other contributing factors.

One thing follows another

    I have always recognized and accepted that one thing follows another. A simple truth. Something happens, for example a car gets a flat tire on a highway, the car behind that car puts on its breaks, the car behind  skids on the road in order to avoid a collision and before you know it, 5 more cars go crash bang boom and we have a huge pile up. Of course it doesn’t stop there. All the cars behind the pile up have to stop and cars that at the time of the pile up, that are just pulling out of their garages to get on the highway find themselves in a bumper to bumper traffic jam that lasts four or five  hours. By the time these cars pass the place where the accident occurred there is nothing to see, but the effect has been significant.

This scenario can be described as The Butterfly Effect. The butterfly effect is the idea that small things can have non-linear impacts on a complex system.

  The Butterfly Effect: This effect grants the power to cause a hurricane in China to a butterfly flapping its wings in New Mexico. It may take a very long time, but the connection is real. If the butterfly had not flapped its wings at just the right point in space/time, the hurricane would not have happened. A more rigorous way to express this is that small changes in the initial conditions lead to drastic changes in the results.

Without going into the physics of matter, the truth is we humans are a collection of vibrating atoms  science has now proven that our thoughts and feelings have an impact of reality. The world we live in is not separate from us. Quantum physical explains that we are all in integral part of a grand and unified field. Everything is connected.

The elemental world that consists of Air, Water, Earth and Fire and all parts of the grand unified field of on this planet. Many cultures have since time began, understood  the importance of living in balance with the elements.

The Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples have lived on this land for tens of thousands of years in balance with the elements of the land and have a profound understanding of what it means to be one with the Earth.

Here in Australia we have been experiencing the worst bush fires in living memory. People have told me, God is angry. Of course, the God I believe in is never angry, and certainly doesn’t send us floods, fires, cyclones, tornadoes or earth quakes. Punishment and reward are offered to humans by other humans. Spirit is not interested in this. Spirit offers us guidance to Be the best human being possible. Guidance to hear and feel and see and know the truth to living in perfect balance.

Humans have been given the most wonderful and challenging gift.

The gift of Free Will. We can choose how we react, respond, and relate to each other and the world in which we live. And the world in which we live will respond and react to how we live and what we choose.

Our emotions impact the Global elements. Why? Because everything is connected.

When we rage against each other, when we are frustrated, jealous, bitter, angry or revengeful we ignite a great deal of fire within.

When we hold too much emotion, depression, sadness, chaos and  fear, the water element in us is out of balance.

When we are stubborn, heavy, impatient, thoughtless, and unstable, or when we are bored the Earth element is out of Balance.

And when we have our head in the clouds or we are full of ‘hot air’, when our mind is too busy and we hold our breath or breathe erratically, we have too much air.

By bringing ourselves back into balance we help to bring harmony and balance back to our world.

   By using our joy and passion to ignite love and harmony. By becoming more organised and disciplined to fulfil our intentions we will manifest and ground our purpose.  By being more empathic, we wash lovingkindness  over our planet. And by  communicating authentically with clarity and care we help our world to breathe deeply into its sacred lungs.

We, human Beings have a responsibility, to ask ourselves every day, how can I bring myself into balance today. If we remember we don’t live on our planet but rather we are One with our planet then we can breathe with Her. We can listen to Her whisperings.  We can sing and dance with Her. And when we do, we can rejoice with Her that we have co- created a sacred planet where everything is in perfect Balance.

There are countless times we kick ourselves when we are down especially after someone or something has gone wrong in our lives.

Have you ever reprimanded a child only to find out that child actually was not the culprit? Perhaps you forgot an appointment after changing it twice to suit your schedule, or agreed to a radical hair cut only to denigrate yourself for being so  (choose your word) stupid, impulsive, hopeless, ridiculous, for doing such a thing.

 The same thing happens when someone we love dies. Someone very close like a mother, father, husband or wife. If only I had said I love her one more time. What if I had not missed that bus I might have got there in time. Why did she have to leave me before I told her the truth.

These scenarios are examples of kicking ourselves when we are down. Judging ourselves when we are already in pain.  What happens when we do this is rather than recognizing our human frailty through kindness and  compassion, we resort to punishing ourselves. It reminds me of a saying my mother repeated ad infinitum. Two wrongs don’t make a right.  We tumble into  a cesspool of self- judgment, self-criticism and even self-hatred. We ignite emotions such as anger, fear, resentment frustration and even shame and guilt. These negative emotions create stress in our bodies and our minds and when the level of that stress reaches a specific point our health can be affected.

Why is recrimination of self or other our natural go-to after something painful, tragic or shocking happens to us?

What to do? Strangely, trying to avoid these feeling does not work. However, to return to Connectedness and Harmony ( Level 2 of The 12 Levels of Being) we now have an opportunity to ask ourselves some important questions.

1. Why am I so hard on myself? Who else was hard on me in my life? How did it feel? Do I want to become that person? If I don’t how can I begin to bring kindness back into my life.
2. Do I know anyone who has never made a mistake? If someone did that to me would I tear into that person or would I try to understand what might be going on for him/her.
3. What is the significance of all this? Is there a space in all this chaos to sit and breathe and allow what I had no choice in, to simply be.

We are not the sole orchestrators of our destiny.

We all have the power to ask ourselves those important questions and to listen to the answers through love and compassion for our self.

  Life chooses what Life chooses

We all have the ability to recognise, acknowledge, allow and accept what we are feeling without judgement and when we do, we inevitably bring ourselves albeit slowly and gently back to  balance, harmony and ultimately inner peace.