Tag Archives: personal growth

Ripples from the Walk for Peace

Posted in Being Peace, Change the World, Personal Growth, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by

I didn’t hear about the Walk for Peace from Texas to D.C. until it had made it into Georgia but once I heard I started checking in daily for clips about the walk, followed their Facebook page and also a group one. I continue to follow some and especially enjoy when they have events where they lead the lovingkindness chant.

Not only has it been a treat to watch the walk itself and the various walks and rites, etc broadcast since but it has been fun to watch tons of people who are new to all this reacting and to learn a lot about my own progress as I observe all aspects.

Following the group page for the community has been especially interesting. The most fun piece for me is watching so many people being very excited by their first steps in trying to follow a path of peace. Along with excitement I’m seeing lots of people clinging to the monks instead of doing the practices. And folks who like to pick other people apart if they don’t like a question or a remark. Folks who tell others, unasked, what they should be doing…

Lots of stuff going on other than spending time on the practice of regularly reminding themselves “This is my peaceful day” or “I am peaceful” and then walking that talk. And also lots of people committing to practice, finding a local Buddhist center or finding online teachers to learn from, really committing to the work.

Not so long ago I probably would have been up and down and all over the place about all these different paths people have gone down since the Walk and jumping in to criticize, correct, etc. Longer ago I might have put too much attention on the monks and not enough on practice.

But observing myself through the Walk and its aftermath I found myself smiling at all of it and just overall thinking how great it was to draw so many people toward a path to peace at a time when we REALLY need as much of that energy as we can get. Appreciative the monks could feel how much it was needed and get it organized and done.

I’m still enjoying checking in sometimes but I’ve already been on a journey to peace for decades so I also feel no need to cling to the monks or this experience. For me it’s just a lovely reminder about doing my practices, holding a space of lovingkindness, etc. And a profound realization of how much transformation I’ve achieved on this 40+ year journey.

I also remember how it was to be a beginner and have helped facilitate beginners a number of times so I know there are always some who cling to the teacher(s) instead of walking the walk, some who expect to meditate for a week and be transformed, some who choose to pick apart how everyone else is doing it while never comprehending they’re doing the opposite of holding a space of peace, etc.

People have to get on the path however it works for them. It almost always involves a lot of heading down a bunch of side paths instead of getting on one clear, straight path and just moving forward. And I’m just smiling to watch the various ways people are coping with this new journey they’ve found.

And profoundly grateful for the ways in which it has helped me see the progress and transformation my journey has brought to me. Profoundly grateful for the infusion of more energy into the process of tipping the web of all life into a new state where peace is the primary energy. It’s ALL good.

Doubt and being in the flow

Posted in Current Events, Personal, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by

For the Centers for Spiritual Living the month of May’s topic has been Divine Doubt and Reverend Theresa Fieberts has given some thought provoking talks. She asked us to consider “doubt” in our lives and where we stand, etc. which has had me pondering where doubt lives in the space of greater calm and equilibrium in which I’ve been living.

So much of my life before the spiritual path — and in its first years — was spent not just in doubt, but questioning every decision to the point of massive angst. So when Rev Theresa asked us to think about doubt I realized it works really differently now.

While doubt is still present, it arrives less often — and is really more likely to happen if I’m really tired and my head starts spinning about something like whether I’m going to have granola or a bagel for breakfast. Big expenditures are probably the main place where doubt takes over and, because it’s a huge multi-generational family habit, I’m finding that one hard to shake.

But most of the time, as I progress ever more into “living in the flow”, when I realize I’m letting doubt take over, I stop, take a breath and tune in. The more I turn the decision over to the higher self/inner voice the more likely a very strong answer falls in place. About as often as not the answer presents a choice I wasn’t even considering.

I’m especially loving how well it works in a lot of small places. My mind often decides on a plan full of “shoulds” for the day. Some part of me drags about the plan. I tune in and a different plan which at the least changes the order of mine, at most presents an alternate set of things to do, is announced. Following the inner plan leads to a day in which more things get done while I feel more relaxed at the end.

Doubt now is more… quiet. When I can stay mindful enough to notice its presence and tune in for the answer I know comes from higher consciousness, it’s easy to move from doubt to a place of certainty about the next step.

Overall I’ve also moved into a space where I feel a general calm about larger issues. I follow what’s happening in politics and government and do all I can to be sure I’m helping wherever possible to make sure the authoritarians don’t win but I’m rarely caught up in feeling panicked because for quite a while I’ve had a deep sense we’re just watching the last throes of resistance to the times of love and compassion toward which we’re moving.

Even “tanks bottom” warnings, while leading me to prep, don’t have me in constant worry, just aware of possibilities and set to ride out the possible downward spiral. Such a change from the reaction I’d once have had to the studies on the looming tanks bottom impact.

It’s been fun as I hit this moment of recognizing how very far my spiritual journey has brought me to add in thoughts about doubt in my life and how it’s changed.

The long path to equilibrium

Posted in Being Peace, Journey2Peace, Personal Growth, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by

In the year+ since my last surgery (with another looming soon…) I’ve finally had a chance to spend some quality time recovering from the wild ride of 2019-23 and then the various surgeries and to reflect on life and transformation etc.

On some level I’ve been aware of handling the world with more equanimity for some time now — helped by the comments of many friends about “the grace” with which I handled caretaking for my mother, her death and the sudden need to move. But various events recently have helped me see after decades of practices, emotional release work, contemplation, etc. I have finally moved noticeably along the goal of being able to hold equilibrium in the moment at least more of the time than not.

Those of you who’ve known me 50 or 60 years or more know I spent my first 30+ years in perpetual angst, always uptight, struggling to make decisions, etc. Those traits have fallen away extremely slowly since I began the spiritual journey in 1985. In fact, if anyone had told me at the beginning how long it might take to really shift into a new way of being, I’m not sure I’d have even started down the path. The blessing has been a combo of always having enough small improvements I could note and also having friends talk about how much transformation they could see.

The deep, deep work of the Fisher-Hoffman process as facilitated by the late Ellen Margron (quite different from the experience you get at the F-H Institute) created some of the biggest inroads and left me generally always in a calmer space than the high anxiety that characterized me for so long but it wasn’t until I hit this last unbelievably tough batch of years I could watch myself calmly handling events which once would have left me borderline hysterical.

In the aftermath of my mother’s death and her reverse mortgage giving me a short time frame to get out of the house – leading to the unexpected move to the condo I’d inherited from my dad here in FL – I think I was some combo of calm from years of spiritual practice and too gobsmacked by the enormity of what I had to do to have an emotional reaction.

Gay’s death – soon followed by David’s – not long after I moved landed me in a space where I suspect I was more numb than existing in peaceful equilibrium but I could also feel the benefits from long since having learned to take a breath and recalibrate.

Several recent events have found me stepping back and observing myself just not reacting to a variety of things that once would have had me amped to the max. Sometime even noticing things I’d have been irritated to observe not so long ago and just smiling at whatever was unfolding and recognizing “it’s what is” for this person, those people, etc. And it doesn’t have to be what is for me or even create a reaction in me, I can observe and let it go.

In all these years I’ve seen a lot of people start the path. Some grow impatient when it doesn’t transform their lives quickly enough and they quit. Some people achieve enough of a new life to stop the journey there without caring if there could be more progress. But for those who patiently keep moving along the path, it slowly creates shifts. As noted, I really had to mark each small note of progress to keep myself moving along.

For those of us who choose to walk a spiritual path while also living out in the world (instead of heading to an ashram, etc.), coping with jobs, politics, homes to care for, etc., it can be quite a slow journey, sometimes with steps backward before moving ahead again. Right now I’m looking at the many lovely stages of this journey and feeling SO grateful to have kept taking another step and another to arrive at this place — which I know will change yet again.

It’s our job to love the pet

Posted in Opinion, Personal, Uncategorized by

I started fostering a senior cat called Tucksie late October 2025 (the picture is my last baby, Salty). He’s 15 and ill and not considered adoptable. I can’t afford to have a pet on my own but in fostering the shelter takes care of the vet and provides some food, etc. so it’s a treat for me to have a little companion. He’s not so sure it’s a great deal… yet.

Because I’ve been volunteering a little bit with the animal shelter I follow several accounts on FB providing news about shelter pets. I see stories way too often about animals adopted and brought back weeks or months later. So I thought I’d provide a little timeline about how things have gone with Tucksie. And my view, which is that it’s not their job to conform to our expectations or even to love us. They’re little beings who are entrusted to our care and it’s our job to make them feel safe and loved.

Until sometime in December, Tucksie was panic stricken. He hid out in an area of my condo with a lot of boxes (haven’t finished moving my dad’s stuff out nor mine in). Other than coming out to eat or use the box he stayed mostly out of reach. He cowered every time I came near or reached for him and I’m pretty sure he thought I might be an axe murderer. We had to interact a little because he needs medicine 2x a day and from the beginning I found him sweet.

Initially he ate most things I fed him. But 4 or 5 weeks in he started getting fussy and we’ve had issues about what he will and won’t eat ever since. The “tough love” I used on my cats when they were young and healthy is harder to do on an old guy who’s already too thin and has thyroid disease. So we’ve been struggling all along about me putting down food, him rejecting it, throwing too much away… And what he likes one week isn’t necessarily something he will eat the next.

In December he started coming out to a sun room across the back of the condo and hanging out in a chair. So I went over sometimes to scratch his chin (he adores it) and give him pats. He still thought I might wield an axe but he liked the scratching and petting enough to submit.

After a few weeks I started picking him up occasionally and putting him on my bed. He does NOT like to be picked up so I kept it minimal. Initially he’d jump down immediately and go back to his safe space. In a couple weeks, though, he started hanging out on the bed a lot. And before long he’d even stay on the bed when I was on it — just well out of arm’s reach.

By February, once in a while he’d move somewhere up against me for a portion of a nap or a little of the night. As we spent more time together I increasingly felt his sweet nature & began to love his gentle being. He still cowered if I walked over to him and I’m pretty sure the axe murderer thing was still a worry. It was okay. I can love him and it isn’t his job to love me back.

Moving into March he now lets me walk over to him and give a pat and only cowers a little sometimes. He spends increasing amounts of time hanging out near me or touching me. Food is still a constant struggle. He’s now on an Rx that helps when he eats it but he’s just as on and off about it as any other food. I have learned he likes “people” tuna and so far he eats that more readily than anything. [I know, not good for him but we’re at the point I’m happy just to get food in him. And while it may cause thyroid issues it also has high amounts of some other nutrients that are good for cats.]

So, we’re five months in. I maybe have gone off the axe murderer radar. We’re frustrated with one another about food. He’s mad at me for forcing medicine into him both times each day. I think he’s a total sweet heart and I love him. He’s tolerating me more, can’t quite tell if “like” is in the mix, but maybe. It’s not his job to love me back.

The shelter often talks about 3 months for pets to settle — many people bring them back after a few weeks or a month with no understanding of how hard the transition is for the pet. I’m at 5 months and I don’t feel like we’re all the way there for him to be settled. I feel like he’s maybe still waiting to go to his original home. It’s okay. It’s not his job to make my life feel better or easier.

I do think he finally feels comfortable and safe here 98% of the time and that was my goal. I hope he also feels loved. He’s 15 and lost his home and he’s ill and making him feel safe and loved is my job. Please, if you take on a shelter pet, start off prepared to give the fur baby as long as needed for him or her to adjust and settle. It’s your job to love them.

I took on a 108 day practice challenge

Posted in Being Peace, Healing Journey, Personal, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by

Yikes???

For a while I’ve been feeling like it’s time to get back on a more consistent path with some of my spiritual practices. You know, after all the deaths and the grieving and the moving and the surgeries…

So I was really pleased when I saw a local kirtan leader whom I follow has a practice group on Facebook and does 108 day challenges. She’s also a yoga teacher and a lot of folks are doing yoga but she said you can choose any practice. Regular yoga practice is one thing that has never been an issue for me since I began in 1986.

But there are lots of other practices I’ve done for long periods then wandered away from. Lately I’ve been feeling I should return to my practice of chanting Jack Kornfield’s lovingkindness chant from Path With Heart for 10 minutes plus singing a 10 minute version of the Gayatri I like. So I picked that one.

The lovingkindness chant has been an on and off staple for me for many years, the Gayatri is more recent. I made up this 20 minute practice of the two early in the first term of the orange monstrosity and it served me SO well for staying more calm and at peace. But I got into Steve Nobel’s meditations on YouTube and eventually moved into doing those instead of the chants (still doing).

Now, of course, I’m also thinking about how I dropped my 5 Tibetan Rite practice and how much I love ho’oponopono but don’t remember to do it… How I keep picking yoga nidra back up and then wandering off. Questioning if I picked the right one.

I’m about 8 months in on a giant effort to change my schedule fairly dramatically from the night owl pattern I’ve had my whole life to an earlier one. It’s shaken everything up including, it turns out, trying to fit a practice back in when the schedule in general has never completely settled down.

But I’m doing it. Often I’m doing it lying down and yawning the whole way through, but I’m doing it. And it feels as good as it always did. I wanted something to calm down some of the anger I keep feeling at current events and it’s working beautifully.

I love the calm and peace it leaves throughout my body. I can always feel heart chakra expanding and energized by the end. And yet I’m dragging my feet sometimes. It’s day 19 and today it feels like an endless time till day 108.

Which is why I’m really glad I decided to take this challenge. It isn’t always easy to commit to practice and in unsettled spells in life it’s harder to do. I hold on to knowing I feel better from the chants as support for my commitment to 108 days. Right now I have no idea whether the practice will stick after 108 days or fade away or change. The yoga nidra I’ve been loving lately is a 20 minute one so I’m wondering about alternating the two after the challenge.

I love this eclectic spiritual path I’ve wandered. I’m also aware many times the picking up and putting down of various practices is part of a flow for me. Sometimes it’s the moment for a shift to something different. In this case thoughts of going back to this practice had been popping up for a while so it feels like a flow into something I was being nudged by my inner voice to do.

I know many people pick one path and are faithful from then on to those practices only. It’s possible one day I’ll arrive at something that feels like “the one” but it’s hard to imagine. Right now I’m just pleased to revisit a practice I’ve loved.

Knots on the daisy chain of beliefs?

Posted in Healing Journey, Personal, Personal Growth, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by

Ellen, my Fisher Hoffman facilitator, talked a lot about how old beliefs and issues operate in complex daisy chains. Sometimes an admonition we follow unconsciously in one area of life is ignored in other areas and connects with other admonitions/behaviors in three other places, etc.

Lately I’m aware there’s a set for me with two sides toeing a fine line when it comes to deciding “am I just following the old pattern?” My maternal grandmother was born in the late Victorian era and definitely learned some of the hand-to-forehead, fainting couch type stuff. To be fair, she (and much of the family) had severe migraines, but she spent an awful lot of time lying down. My mother also tended to go “have a lie down” often, so I had plenty of role modeling about just heading off to bed.

My dad, on the other hand, was a go getter type, always busy, hard working and radiating nervous energy. My mom’s sister was also hard working (the first woman turf reporter in the world) and contemptuous of the die-away tendencies of her mother and sister.

I’ve been realizing I wound up with an odd mixture of the two. I wrote a post long ago in which I noted I wound up often feeling paralyzed amongst the many conflicting viewpoints about me held by the most influential adults (my aunt never had children so her efforts at molding someone were aimed at me). Winding up with chronic fatigue & fibromyalgia seemed unsurprising with “paralysis” as a central mode; ailments that just stop you in your tracks.

My new exploration of the push forward vs fainting couch influences has me seeing some other aspects. To the outside world through the years of zero energy, I appeared to do very little (and many people made sure I knew how lazy they thought I was). But as I struggled through the fatigue, I often pushed really hard to keep working, to keep the house clean, to keep socializing etc. Even though I did all those things far less than previously, the advice for my issues was to rest more and all the pushing, I now see, prolonged the chronic health problems.

In the last few years, juggling grieving, moving, surgeries, etc. I’m seeing I’ve been executing quite a dance around the dueling issues of pushing vs resting. Some of the time I’ve just been either in so much pain or so exhausted — often both — that pushing has been impossible. And yet the tendency to push is there. Because pushing too much and resting/avoiding too much are both patterns for me, it’s a struggle to decide which pattern I might be falling into — and to what extent has all the personal growth work moved me into a different place regarding both?

Being single and living alone gets into the mix too. If I want to eat and live in a reasonably clean house, there’s grocery shopping, cooking, dish washing, etc. And I’m fostering a cat who needs to be fed and have his box kept clean every day. Living in a condo with a small stacked washer/dryer set means more small loads to run so there’s rarely a day when I don’t need to run a load.

I listen to various married friends complain about their husbands who only do these 2 things or that 2 things and imagine how my life would change if ANYONE but me did those 2 things… or anything around the house. Even a decision to take a day of rest still involves a couple hours worth of cooking, cleaning dishes, cat care, etc.

I’m trying to handle decisions about doing versus time off with a lot of checking inward. It definitely helps and there are more and more days when I think I’m going in one direction and a check-in leads in another. But because those are deeply entwined issues for me the mindfulness required to always sense into the push vs rest question can be elusive.

Plenty of times along this journey it’s been easy to see the daisy chain of one issue/behavior leading to another but this is a new one for me to ponder a place where two opposing tendencies meet on the chain but also have their own spots.

Resolutions and Grind Culture

Posted in Healing Journey, New Age, Personal, Spiritual Journey, Spirituality, Uncategorized by

For my whole life New Year’s has been a moment when one “must” make a list of resolutions for the coming year. Not a practice I’ve ever been into; I think some part of me resisted being tied to a list & another part knew life throws too many curves to make a plan for a year. In recent years, as I’ve come to understand how our corporate culture has molded a grind culture mentality, I see those resolutions as further invitations to the grind — another to-do list adding more time to the constant activity roster.

It took me a LOT of years on the spiritual path to finally, a few years ago, start seeing how affected I am by grind culture and a lot of American ideas about what counts as a life worth living. And then to see how the goals of being in the moment and following an inner flow are direct contradictions of the demands of grind culture.

If I were to make a resolution now (and probably for every year to come) there would be two interrelated ones: stay in the moment and stay tuned in to follow the flow. I’ve been really working these last few years at doing both. I’m a long way from being sufficiently mindful to hold myself in the moment or to stay always in the flow. But I have reached a point where I stop and tune in often during the day to decide which of several (or multitudes of) actions all clamoring in my head to be done is the best choice in the moment — or whether there is another choice I’m not hearing because of the mental noise.

My days often feel much more smooth and satisfying and I often get more done while draining less energy by listening to inner wisdom about the next moment instead of laying out a plan. An early change involved a daily check in I’ve been doing for years with a friend of mine. We started because of a blog post suggesting it as a daily text activity, checking in on how you’re feeling, what you intend to do & what you’re grateful for.

We changed it to an e-mail and have turned it into a much longer check-in than the quick few words intended by the post that inspired us. A few years ago as we both leaned in to trying to follow the flow more of the time we decided that calling one section “intentions” was too grind culture and put on too much pressure to feel like we must accomplish the list. We changed it to “flow wishes” and we’ve both been much happier with that much less judgmental & demanding title. We both often find the flow leads to something other than the plan being the thing that feels right to do. Life also often throws a curve into the plan and “flow wishes” makes that much more okay.

As New Year came and went this time I really thought about the resolutions requirement and I really didn’t want to make one. I did participate in a spiritual exercise that asked me to go deeply inward and name some words about a few aspects of the coming year and I did though I have some questions about whether I even want a word for the year that asks me to follow it instead of my inner guidance (it was a lovely inward journey anyway).

Staying in the moment and being always tuned in to the flow are such foreign concepts in our culture and time, I feel like an annual resolution to work on those — and maybe eventually to keep living with those — will be a long journey. So far it’s a slow process to keep my thoughts in the moment and my being tuned in to the flow and I’m okay with re-learning those culturally ingrained habits in baby steps.

On “being” and “doing” in “must do” U.S.

Posted in Being Peace, Collective Consciousness, Healing Journey, Personal Growth, Uncategorized by

One of the most enormous transformational journeys in my life involved going through the Fisher-Hoffman process in the 1990’s, then continuing for approximately 10 years to “process” every deep issue I could identify and release. At the end of the 9-month Fisher-Hoffman class* the facilitator warned us to be careful, once finished, about jumping too fast into things.

The release of a big block of old stuff for most leaves a sense of a hole that needs to be filled, she told us, and if you anxiously leap into filling the space immediately you’re most likely to re-build the familiar old stuff. I took it to heart and kept it in mind as I continued marching down the “release the old” path.

Eventually I reached a point where I felt as if I no longer had a strong sense of who I was. Here in the U.S. where “being yourself” is endlessly celebrated along with a strong moral certainty that having goals and working hard to reach them is the only way to be worthwhile, such a journey has been an interesting challenge.

It’s been 20+ years since I reached that moment and I have to tell you the ongoing journey of transformation has mostly just increased the sense of not knowing. All those old issues, auto-programmed reactions, etc defined so much about how I operated in the world that without them, I’m not sure. I pick up, look at and drop various “goals” and longings-to-be of different stages of life and find they no longer appeal. At the same time I don’t have a strong sense of “what’s next”.

A lot of health issues created a strong sense that healing had to be the primary objective and, of course, it has included more digging into the depths of consciousness as well as following a lot of alternative therapies to heal the physical aspects. Mostly I keep moving through what seems to be in front of me.

The Buddhist concept of “no self” has helped me negotiate through these years. Not that I have any illusion I’ve achieved that ultimate space of the Buddhist path, but I think stripping away a lot of old touchstones and auto-behaviors has brought me closer to that space and farther from the American ideal of deciding who you are and insisting upon sticking to every aspect of that.

To me life seems far more flexible and shifting and my goal has more to do with always tuning in to “hear” the inner sense of the right next thing to do in this moment. I watch people from many spiritual traditions, including the more “New Age” type spirituality paths, insist that having a plan, deciding on steps and “doing things” is a MUST and at this point I mostly shrug and think to myself it’s a deeply held American belief that needs to be culled out of the collective consciousness.

I’m not unaffected by the overwhelming majority view. In fact it leaves me uncomfortably questioning whether I’m doing something “wrong” by not having a plan and a destination more often than I’d like. But I always wind up tuning in, breathing deep and throwing off the “do, do, do” dictates in favor of listening and being…

I wrote a longer piece discussing this a while back but it’s on my mind again as I contemplate how this all applies to political activism. Stay tuned for that post 🙂

* If taken via the Hoffman Institute, the course is much shorter (a residential week or two?). Ellen had facilitated there for some years and evolved the process into a longer and, to me, much more in-depth one. Instead of being residential, hers was a weekly class with assignments to do in between, some gatherings to help one another on release work, etc. and spread over a period long enough to let everyone have time to delve into many issues. Unfortunately she died some years ago and as far as I’m aware no one else teaches the method as she transformed it.

The healing journey and value

Posted in Change the World, Healing Journey, Uncategorized by

My physical, emotional & spiritual healing journey stretches at this point over decades. And for much of it I was only in shape to work part time, if at all. Because of the physical aspect, it was obvious to me I really needed to address the healing because being out in the world in any normal way was impossible given the constant levels of fatigue and pain.

Having embarked on a spiritual journey almost simultaneously with discovering I had some big physical issues, it didn’t take long to connect those two, nor to realize emotional issues intertwined with both. Working on all three levels is time-consuming and takes a lot of commitment to healing on every level. If the issues are numerous and deeply imbedded, it is also a long process. I was lucky I had few commitments to stand in the way of my journey so I could devote lots of time over many years. Plenty of people heal in many ways and still do other things; I’m not saying the way I did it is in any way a must, it was just the way I had to do it.

Through the journey, on many levels I’ve understood healing is really important — and the impact of healing spreads out into the web of all life. At the same time, living in grind culture, I’ve encountered many moments when I questioned the contribution and import of healing as a basic life direction — and, surrounded by grind culture, plenty of other people made sure I knew they disapproved of a life devoted to healing rather than working hard at earning money.

I can’t tell you I’m never affected by the grind culture mentality; it’s so deeply ingrained in our culture that I struggle to free myself of it and can’t always remain immune to other people’s immersion in it. But overall I’ve long believed in the central importance of understanding ourselves as beings of energy who exist as part of an interconnected web of all living beings’ energy. As part of a web, each one of us who heals the wounds and traumas of the past contributes healing to the web.

All this healing, releasing, clearing, transforming, etc. doesn’t pay a dime. In fact, a lot of it has been expensive, especially the alternative healers who have been vital to the physical recovery piece of the journey. In the eyes of our society, the lack of monetary return means the journey is useless, without value.

The deeper I move into this journey –with the clearing away of false layers, the slow unveiling of my essential self, the growing connection to higher consciousness — the more I sense it not only has more value to me than a well-paid career but that it also adds plenty of value to society and the web of life. Not all things of value equate to sums of money.

In spite of the lack of a “normal” career or means of earning, my financial circumstances have actually grown slowly better and I attribute it to having cleared away a lot of blocks and old beliefs about money. So, an interesting side note about the value of the healing journey is it may attract abundance to you without the usual grinding claptrap.

I’m not sure what it would take for our culture to shift into a space of appreciating how key to our collective well-being it is to have increasing numbers of people keeping their physical bodies as healthy as possible, healing themselves of old traumas, beliefs, issues, and stepping forward into their essential selves. But I hope all of you who have been traveling down a path of physical, emotional and/or spiritual healing pat yourselves on the back for the great value you are adding to the world.

Scar tissue from the past

Posted in Healing Journey, Personal Growth, Uncategorized by

I’ve complained a lot in the last few years about pain in my left hip/low back area. Having just hit a breakthrough, it seems like a good moment to tell a bit about the journey.

I’ve had problems there for decades but a combo of excellent bodyworkers and routine practice of poses and exercises for the area kept it at bay. Then my mom landed in the hospital and suddenly I was spending hours on uncomfortable chairs, followed by having to support her weight much more often. My exercise routine wound up often being less than usual. Didn’t take long to find myself limping around in pain.

I exercised that round of pain away over the course of a year and instantly she was back in the hospital. When she came home I was on 24/7 caretaker duty with many more times I had to support her weight. Then she passed away at the onset of a completely new ailment and suddenly I had to move. So my hip was already killing me and I spent the next 5 months on first clearing our home and packing up my stuff then moving to a condo I inherited from my dad and both unpacking my stuff and feverishly working to get his out.

Ultimately, while moving a chair I threw the whole low back/hip area out of whack so badly I stopped all efforts to move anything in or out and have concentrated ever since on figuring out the hip. A referral to PT came attached with copays that were too high for me, so I began hunting on the internet for PT exercises. I’ll be writing a series with lots of videos and info about what I found, but for this post, I’ll just mention the biggest challenge for me was that pretty much every muscle and every muscle group in the entire low back-pelvis-hip-groin area was totally out of whack.

To work on an area with issues that complex the order in which you work is important but I had no way to know where I needed to start. So I just found tons of exercises for many specific muscles and areas and began working my way slowly around. For a long time it actually got worse, though there were days when a particular set would bring relief for a while.

Eventually I was exercising 2 different times/day and then 3 in order to make my way through more than one area and also to do some things like my exercise pedaler just to keep in general shape. From PT type exercises to isometrics and continuing on with the yoga and Robert Masters work I’ve done for years, I moved slowly through each sore piece. By this last March I’d finally narrowed in more on which areas to work on, one at a time, and unlocked enough tight stuff to feel like the small amount I could afford for massage might be enough to move it along faster.

I did some research to find someone with the kind of credentials I wanted. One fab thing about the Upledger Institute (home of craniosacral therapy studies) is that their “find a practitioner” pages include info on all the certifications the person has from Upledger. I wanted someone with at least 4 levels of craniosacral, 1 or 2 from their visceral manipulation or lymph drainage therapy and to have massage certification as well (not listed on Upledger).

I found Jennifer, with 4 levels of craniosacral, both visceral manipulation and lymph drainage, 4 kinds of massage certifications and more! She’s been amazing. I’ve had 6 appointments so far and so much has improved in such a short time. Thanks to all the opening through her work the exercises I’m doing are going deeper and helping even more.

She mentioned scar tissue several times and that the cerebellum will move bones and muscles away from pressing on scar tissue. She pretty quickly realized the top of my left femur is rotated. Finally on the 5th appointment while talking about it she mentioned that just a minor fall can create scar tissue. As she spoke she circled her hand around the central area of her lower left back — basically the pelvis/piriformis area and emphasized how scar tissue there could affect the femur.

Later that evening as I reflected on the appointment a lightbulb went on: when I was maybe 8 or 9, at a riding lesson where we’d gone outside late in a droughty summer, my horse took off and I wound up flying off, landing on exactly that area on the left side. My parents took me to the family doctor who didn’t bother to take an x-ray. There was a giant BLACK bruise over that area for the next couple of months but no treatment ever.

Suddenly, an explanation for the many decades of issues with that hip and low back area! Jennifer did a bunch of work on the next appointment to break up the scar tissue (calcium deposits) and it’s already made quite a difference.

Bringing up the memory has me thinking about a lot of the issues swirling around that incident and the messages I took in. The riding master’s first reaction was “Who told you you could get off the horse?” along with a command to get right back up. The doctor’s attitude was that it was just a bruise and to buck up. The overwhelming message I received was to pretend nothing had happened, that it didn’t hurt and that somehow maintaining a perception of stoicism and gung-ho “keeping on” was more important than any wound I’d received.

Stoicism and “keeping on” fit right in with the “grind culture” I’ve been arguing against for a while. Those notions go deep in American culture and when they have a personal drama driving them deeper, it’s a long journey of spiraling up through the many levels where it holds and moving beyond…

I’m so incredibly grateful this round of journeying with that area going out again has finally led to figuring out the key issue and how well the healing is progressing.

How we dread change

Posted in Being Peace, Healing Journey, Personal by

I’ve been listening a lot to a local Sarasota FM station that plays rock music from just my era and pretty much all stuff I love. At the same time a friend has recommended Radio Paradise and I’ve been trying to get myself to tune in.

Much like WXRT in Chicago, it plays rock from a number of eras but curated to be all stuff that kind of goes well together, a flow of sounds through decades. Sometimes on RP I hit a nice mix of old stuff I know and love and new things I don’t know.

One day recently I put it on and found myself in a long stretch of music I’d never heard before and I wasn’t really loving any of it. Nothing bad, just not grabbing either. Not one song I’d pick up the tablet and write down info to find it again. I longed for the FM but I was all comfy with my book and the FM station takes the old stereo setup in another room.

As I thought about how much I love almost every song on the FM station and wished the streaming app would play something I loved, it struck me that a certain measure of disliking change lived somewhere in those feelings of discomfort with the new stuff. Not anything huge, but once the thought crept in, I flowed on to a sudden distinct sense about how much of our current upheaval and conflict in the world reflects the fears of lots of people who are faced with a changing world they really hope to keep the same.

And in my moment of discomfort about my favorite old rock choices, I felt a tiny tug of greater understanding about how afraid they are. Not enough to sympathize with the hateful choices many are making, but enough to see more about how much humans generally like things to stay the same.

Fear of change is behind so much of what goes wrong in the world and how unhappy people who want their lives to be the same tomorrow as yesterday wind up ramped into constant anger. As I sat and willed myself to just let the unfamiliar music flow and enjoy having the musical background to my novel, I had no insight on how to help those “stay-the-same” folks reconcile with change.

I learned how to move into the flow by purposefully pursuing a spiritual path including practices to develop just that skill. But you can’t make other people do it, it’s definitely something that must be chosen. So no answers from my moment of insight. Just a flash of recognition about the deep discomfort many are feeling…

Healing my anger with ho’oponopono

Posted in Being Peace, Change the World, Collective Consciousness, Healing Journey by

I’ve been making my way VERY slowly (i.e., most of the time not at all) through the ho’oponopono course for which I signed up a few months ago. So far, though, completing the class isn’t feeling like the point as much as reconnecting with the practice — also gaining insight from the videos of the course I’ve watched — and the deep reminder that everything I see reflects something inside of me.

The big place in which it’s come into play has been noting my high levels of anger at Republican pseudo-Christian right-wing fascists. How often, as I watch MSNBC or read articles pointed out by fellow progressives on social media, I yell and shake my fist at the lying, misogyny, bigotry, hatefulness, murderous intent, utter lack of compassion, etc.

Now I shout “You lying f**k!!!” and then repeat “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.” I contemplate how much anger must be in me to be constantly that angry. To question how much misogyny, bigotry, etc. there is in me if I keep seeing that much outside of me. Yikes. “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.”

At the moment I can’t say I see a big change in the frequency with which I erupt upon seeing various news items, though I have moved to watching MSNBC less and spending more time researching on subjects raised on social media, like learning more about Constitutional interpretation, etc. Watching less means fewer occasions to get angry. What I really notice is how the constant repetition of the prayer keeps shifting me back to a more peaceful place.

Those of you who’ve read my blog for a long time will know I always come back to the Oneness of energy. We’re all energy and exist as one wholeness of energy. Thus we each contribute to the peacefulness or hatefulness of the planet by which energy vibration we choose to hold. Knowing that, I continue repeating, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you”, trying to release all those hateful qualities within me.

I also believe in the basic theories of David Hawkins’ Power vs Force, which posit that those who raise their vibrational levels to higher points help to raise the vibrational field for thousands (or, at the highest, avatar-type levels, millions). And I think the spiritual movement that has built around the world, quietly, in the background since the 1960’s, has been raising the vibrational level.

The movement brought westerners into practices that eastern spiritual leaders have taught for centuries as well as bringing eastern lights like Yogananda and Thich Nhat Hanh to the west and also led many people to study indigenous spiritual traditions. Human vortexes of higher energy have thus been created at various points around the world. Some spiritual leaders have actually set up places where certain numbers of people chant or pray 24/7 to keep a high vibration helping to counterbalance lower energies.

Much of the world has lived in apathy, the 100s, the bottom of the scale of energy. The next level up is anger, so when enough people have raised their vibrations to impact the whole, a significant number of people who’ve been in apathy are raised up to anger, something I believe we’re seeing now. The next level up is the 300’s, where self-awareness and introspection begin to operate. I feel that when we move the energy up enough to have a majority of people vibrating above 300, we will start to see the harmony, justice, equality, etc. for which so many of us yearn.

I can’t control what other people are doing, I can just work on my own vibration. As well as repeating the ho’oponopono prayer, I meditate, practice yoga, chant, etc. I belong to several spiritual groups in which I’m able to periodically participate in the “energy of two or more” phenomenon around building peace. Right now I have a big focus on the readiness with which I yell and shake my fist at what I consider Republican perfidy and keep repeating, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.”

I’m also contemplating whether I should return to more frequent metta practice. I’ve been a big fan for many years. In the leadup to the Iraq war, I spent half an hour every day saying it for President Bush. It didn’t stop him from faking intel or starting the war, but it did shift my feeling about him and my sense of his deep insecurities. Didn’t mean I suddenly liked him or agreed with him, but it created a softer place in my heart that has remained that way.

For me it was a profound shift and I wholly credit the power of the lovingkindness chant. I’ve always used Jack Kornfield’s version from Path with Heart: “May I be filled with lovingkindness, may I be well, may I be peaceful and at ease, may I be happy.” Obviously, substitute someone else’s name to say it for them. And I often leave off the “may” and state it as an affirmation “___ is filled with lovingkindness,” etc.

Whatever practice or technique works for you, I hope everyone is finding a way to keep returning to peace, to keep releasing old anger and fear, etc. in order to raise their vibration and contribution to lifting up the planet.

For some interesting info on energy in the world, etc. see https://www.heartmath.org/gci/gcms/live-data/ and https://noosphere.princeton.edu/

Guided to Ho’oponopono

Posted in Healing Journey, Personal by

Every now and then the Universe hands me a series of synchronous events that point me to a new insight or direction. Recently, after a long hiatus from practicing ho’oponopono several taps on the shoulder turned me back to it.

My ho’oponopono story started with my recently-departed friend, Gay Luce. During a conversation in which I told her that I’d come to believe the biggest changes/impacts we can have on the world are those we make in ourselves to release negative issues/beliefs and also to raise our vibration regarding peace, love, compassion, etc. I was looking for a teacher or teachings to help me practice from that understanding. She asked me if I’d seen the work of Hew Len, master teacher of ho’oponopono, because she felt it would dovetail very well.

I never got a chance to study with Hew Len (and he passed away last year…), but I found some videos on YouTube on which he talked about it and found some teachings online via Joe Vitale and some of Hew Len’s students. It gave me enough to begin doing the ho’oponopono prayer and for some years I practiced it regularly, then, five or six years ago, drifted away.

Jump to this summer. Not long after Gay’s death in June, I got on a Zoom service from Camp Chesterfield (spiritual center) guest-led by Rev AdaRA Walton, whose Wednesday night meditation I’d been attending via zoom for a while. For one portion of the service, she did readings of people on the zoom, during which she called my name and gave me a strong message to re-connect with a kind of healing I’d stopped doing.

Over the years I’ve been trained in lots of types of healing and there are many I don’t do anymore, so I had to do some inward journeying to interpret her insight. The very strong message I received was to go back to ho’oponopono.

A couple of weeks later as I went through my Facebook feed, there was a big ad from Joe Vitale (whom I do not follow) offering the first level ho’oponopono practitioner training for a hugely discounted price. I instantly knew I needed to take the class and signed up.

Once I started watching videos (I’m making my way through VERY slowly), I was delighted to realize that almost all the teaching is from Hew Len. The class is a set of videos from a workshop some years ago brought by Joe Vitale, who also taught a bit, but mainly featuring Hew Len. So at last I get to “study with” him. And the timing, so soon after Gay’s death, leaves me feeling my dear friend has a hand in this.

I have no idea how the ho’oponopono practitioner status will fit into my life. Is it just to uplift my personal path and being and to help me clear issues and thereby help to clear issues all around? Or will I go on to take the other levels and start a practice? Right now it’s fine with me that I don’t know. Taking the class feels right and I’m content to let it flow wherever it’s meant to flow.

In the meantime, it IS helping me personally as I navigate through lots of angry moments as I watch the news and the hateful, misogynistic, racist, authoritarian, murderous right wing that is threatening democracy. Next post will talk about how ho’oponopono is helping with that and helping me see what in me hooks into all that.

Recovering from the work ethic

Posted in Collective Consciousness, Personal by

I’m shell-shocked. With the death of my dear friend, Gay Luce, I finally took in the enormity of what I’ve dealt with in the last 2-1/2 years and realized how gobsmacked I am. The upside is also seeing how well the many years of spiritual delving, meditation, yoga, etc. have served me. The other is seeing how, subtly, I fight a regular battle between my desire to just sit back and absorb and the societal message of “go, go, go”.

It’s odd to find myself in that battle because long issues with my health have put me pretty far outside the norm of constant doing and I’ve learned to make peace with that and accept, even enjoy, living life on a different path. Wow, these societal beliefs hold on deep in our beings!

As several friends kept asking me how I was doing and mentioned how much I’ve been through, I finally took stock:

  • January 2020. Mom fell and broke her hip. First hospital fails to diagnose and sends home on broken hip. Next day second hospital correctly diagnoses. During weeks in hospital bad chair sets off old hip issue for me
  • Early April 2020. Mom finally gets home from rehab and we hit Covid lockdown
  • May 2020. I realize Dad really needs me to figure something out for him but… Covid lockdown. Start calling him every day and organizing Covid supplies from afar
  • July 2020. Dad died
  • November 2020. Dear friend Pat died
  • 2020 way into 2021. All kinds of problems with Dad’s estate and a new judge’s misinterpretation of a common legal phrase in will, including I have 2 cousins who are now dead to me…
  • 2021 and 2022. Five more friends died
  • February 2022. Mom fell and broke her leg. Having finally calmed down the hip issue, bad hospital chairs set it off again and I also developed a rash. Hip issue combined with remnants of psoas injury to lock the whole area up.
  • May 31 2022. Mom had been home a little more than a month when she started throwing up blood and we found out she had an inoperable issue that would inevitably be fatal.
  • June 2022. Mom died.
  • June-September 2022. Mom’s house was on a reverse mortgage and I’d been told I’d have 3 months to get out. So began a mad dash to clear her hoarder stuff enough to separate out my belongings and organize for movers. All the furniture moving and box hauling threw whole hip/low back area out even more
  • September 2022. I moved to the condo I inherited from my Dad in Florida. Good news is I’d known the place since 1980, bad news I don’t really know the area or anyone else
  • September 2022. Tried to get driver’s license, couldn’t pass eye test, found out I needed to have cataract surgery.
  • October 2022. Mad dash to clear Dad’s stuff and get my stuff in sends hip/back into incessant, immobilizing pain
  • November 2022. At doctor visit to get referral for eye surgery, also dealt with the rash I developed while Mom in hospital in Feb, which became ongoing issue, many treatment trials, dermatologist visits and still not resolved
  • January and February 2023. 2 cataract surgeries
  • February 2023. Find out my friend Gay is in bad shape & start organizing a 9 Gates community help/service group and schedule.
  • March 2023. While moving chair throw back and hip all the way out again. Left the chair right where it was and all efforts to continue clearing Dad’s stuff and finish unpacking mine stopped.
  • Eye surgeries changed me from lifetime of near-sighted to far-sighted so now have to wear glasses for the many hours I spend reading and writing. The shift gave me headaches.
  • Can’t afford the copay for physical therapy so am working my way through a bunch of PT exercises posted on YouTube from chiropractor which are helping but because muscles are in such bad shape, also very painful work.
  • June 2023. Gay died.

Looking at the whole list makes my head spin. And yet, even though many days I long to just hang out reading and watching TV and taking naps, most days with no doc appointment I push to grocery shop or cook something or clean something.

Between the friends who noted how much I’ve faced and my own explorations lately of our society’s built-in beliefs about work and wealth and poverty, it finally hit me that, even though I mostly live outside those norms, in little ways I still operate out of “must do” assumptions.

People around here keep asking if I’ve finished clearing and setting up. I keep telling them no, I just stopped and left everything sitting around as it was and that I actually kind of like that it’s my space, in which only my wishes count, and I find I don’t care if part of it is still a mess of boxes and Dad stuff. Could just be me, but I always feel a little wave of disapproval. Oddly, on that one I just don’t feel pushed. Not gonna do it until my hips and back can tolerate it. That’s final!!!

Some amount of cleaning, grocery shopping, cooking fall into the “must” category, at least for me, but even with those I find myself realizing more could slide than I sometimes allow and I often feel burdened by the perceived need to accomplish those things.

Even more, I find I am often haunted by a sense of failure or lack of accomplishment if I had a list of things I thought I should do and get to the end of the day without doing any of them. And a sense of guilt when pain or exhaustion leave me just unable to do anything arises sometimes.

Because of the years of health issues, I’ve tended to operate at a pretty low level and have often had older friends who accomplish more by lunchtime on an average day than I do in a couple. It’s another thing with which I’ve largely made peace over the years of a life outside the norm. Yet those “musts” and “shoulds” still influence my life and decisions about how to spend my days.

For most of my journey I’ve been looking inward at issues that were by and large personal. When I released them, worked through them, etc. they were gone and other people didn’t really influence the process. I’m finding it really interesting to be looking at the issues built into the culture. Because so many people believe in societal assumptions like the need to work all the time, it makes releasing the assumption more complex. I find I vacillate between the space on my own in which I’ve let go and the space where the cultural consciousness keeps intruding.

I’m pulling for a personal and societal revolution of rest in which we let go of grind culture and forge a new path.