Laughing at the Turkey Table

This season, I'm appreciating being from a fun AND funny family. Mom seems to be the ringleader: our history is filled with stories of her antics. One is that after she caught my older brother and sister playing with an unauthorized water balloon, she demanded they give her the balloon. They tossed it at her, she caught it and ended up swinging it around her head before launching it at them. Of course they got wet. And of course this was done in the front yard for all the neighbors to see.

Since beginning a great new job, continuing with my caretaker job at a ranch and other commitments, it's been easy for me to get overwhelmed. Happily, I've discovered that laughter is the best remedy. 

If things are getting too serious at the turkey table, excuse yourself and check out my favorite funny/fun Internet distractions.

1. Flight of the Conchords: Funny tunes
2. Nashville: Fun music drama
3. Shea Hembry: Funny Ted Talk
4. Emergency compliment: Fun pick me up
5. Help Desk: Funny video
6. Nina Katchadourian: Fun artist
7. Light Up Sheep Art: Funny do-it-yourself project
8. Sandra Saenz: Magically fun blog
9. Ellen Degeneres: Funny hidden camera pranks
10. Playmobil Security Checkpoint: Funny Amazon product reviews

If you still need convincing, check out this serious link from the Mayo Clinic on why laughter feels so good.

Refracted Versus Reflected Light

This morning I watched the hummers on the patio. If the weather is good, if the yellow jackets don't chase me away, I sit in the chair under the slatted patio cover and watch them zoom around five feeders. From this direction I can see the garden, the orange groves and the sun rising behind the hills across the road. I have been facing this direction since just after Labor Day.

I laughed at the hummers sweet little brown heads bobbing at the feeders, but the desire to see their brilliant colors made me move to the other side of the patio and face the house. Now I saw that one bobbing head was brown, now ruby red, now brown, now ruby red. Several other hummers were flashing iridescent green.

A hummingbird's coloring comes from refracted light. This is the explanation from  All About Birds website

“Adding to the diversity of avian colors are colors produced by the structure of the feather. The best known example is the gorget (throat feathers) of many hummingbird species. The iridescent colors of the gorget are the result of the refraction of incident light caused by the microscopic structure of the feathers. The refraction works like a prism, splitting the light into rich, component colors. At certain angles little or no light is reflected back to the viewer and the gorget can appear black. As the viewing angle changes, the refracted light becomes visible in a glowing, shimmering iridescent display.”

Photo courtesy of http://stevetaboneblog.com

I sat still for several moments before the difference between reflected and refracted light dropped into my heart.

Reflected light is all about me. Lower case me, ego me. Reflected light begs questions such as why did a hummer pee on my forehead as soon as I moved to the other side of the patio? Why did a bee get tangled in my hair and sting me on the side of the head? (The right side.) Why is it too blowy for me to journal outside comfortably?

Refracted light has to do with Big Me, soul Me. The Me I glimpse as I disappear into a line of writing or a flash of hummingbird. 

Thanks to my hummingbird reminders, the question of the day is: how can I allow my refracted light to shine?

What makes your light shine???

Creative Journaling and the Ladder of Affirmations

Before I discovered the Creative Journal method, I was run ragged by my emotions. It was often difficult to distinguish what I really felt from what I should feel and near impossible to deal with conflicting feelings.

            I was also born a right-brainer and latched on to the feel-good practice of affirmations before I understood the principle behind them. I believed that simply repeating an affirmation was the way to move out of sadness. Instead of staying with the emotion of sad, I tried talking myself out of being sad by masking sad with positive slogans.

Esther and Jerry Hicks, authors of Ask and It is Given, say that this is like putting a happy face sticker over your car’s empty gas gauge. The Hicks teach that our feelings are indicators of our emotional guidance system: they are simply there to tell us where we are on the emotional ladder. The reason why we want to know this is because of the Law of Attraction. Remember? Sad begets sad, anger begets anger, joy begets joy. An extremely simplified version of the Law of Attraction states that the primary feelings that we are living in this moment will attract feelings of vibrational equality in our future moments. So yes, we want to feel the sadness as it comes up, but we don’t want to be stuck there! 

It is one thing to feel and honor our emotions, it is quite another to become a victim of our emotions. Picture a ladder where the top rung is joy, and the bottom rung is depression or hopelessness. If I’m starting at depression and want to reach joy, there are several rungs that I need to reach in between. And each time I move up the ladder, I will not only release my feeling of depression, but I’ll also be closer to joy. But each step needs to be felt, honored and released.

Before the Creative Journal process, I didn’t realize there was an emotional ladder of feeling vibrations, much less where I was on that ladder. But now that I understand that being with and accepting my feelings helps release the emotional energy, I am better equipped to enjoy life and all of its thrilling and contrary loveliness. 

Excerpt from My Body, My Car: How to Coach Yourself Through Life's little Accidents by Dorothy Segovia. www.writeinside.com.

The Berry Hunter

The thing about blackberries and boysenberries is that you have to pick them all gone before you can get more. This is true prosperity. It is in alignment with what my friend Cam just told me earlier this week: that we live in a just in time Universe. As usual, I grumbled and moaned about my upcoming berry picking. I didn't want to be poked by the thorns, and it just didn't seem as if there were that many ripe berries to pick.

Gail has left me a pale blue jumpsuit to wear over my clothes. “Gail Brooks......Berry Hunter” is embroidered in tiny script along the collar. There are disposable plastic gloves to wear, and I always keep a pair of rubber work galoshes in my car. My spirits lift somewhat when I realize the boots match my outfit.

 I select two cartons from the pile on the chair: one for each type of berry. I begin with the boysenberries along the fence. I taste several checking for ripeness. There are so many different shades that I am easily confused as to which ones are ripe. I mentally hope that Mike, Gail's partner, shows up so I can ask him. Surprisingly enough, my prayer is answered within the next half hour when Mike and his father appear walking along the path that edges the bay. Mike picks a couple berry's and pops them in his mouth. “See, these are done. Whatever ones come off the tree easily.” Reassured, I go back to picking the sweet, red fruit. When I fill up half a milk cartons worth, I start on the blackberries. It doesn't take long before my mood has shifted from grumbling to gratitude.

Although it is overcast, it is warm. There are less berries now because I picked a full carton a few days ago. This gives me a chance to notice my surroundings, and listen to the bees, the breeze and the wind chimes. The chimes send me back to my beginnings here on the bay. It was in 1993 and I was renting a place behind a friend's house in Morro Bay. It was a basement apartment. There were wind chimes there too.

Carolyn Myss said that we have to let go of the life we thought we'd have to embrace the life we are living. When I think about it, I've always wanted to live in a house where I can spread out with enough time to focus on writing, songwriting and creating. I wanted the freedom to flow with my own energy. I'm done picking berries and ready to head back into the house. I wind my way back through the bushes and notice a number of ripe berries that I didn't see before.

The Pissosity of Presence

Once I woke pissed at the cat for having the audacity to walk across my pillow, announcing it is time to get up because she was hungry. I wanted to walk across God's pillow myself, announcing “Hey, I am here. Feed me.”

Of course, if I did that God would only answer back, "You have a full fridge, get up and get it yourself."

After I fed the cat, I felt guilty for being mad.



Playing monsters with brothers baby Michael and Larry Larry Lawrence.

This afternoon I was hanging on the patio with a friend, feeling tender by recent personal events. My friend is an energy worker. That means she not only feels me heading towards TILT, but she sees how I am energetically locked in on TILT. This is not unlike a heat-seeking missile. If my setting is stuck on guilt...then all I'm going to attract is guilt.

This is why I kinda love the energy of mad. Mad means I have the gumption to shift my locked-in energy by actually feeling and releasing mad, then and there, in the moment. Only then can I move on. Lately I've noticed that some people don't allow themselves to feel this energy. Instead, in an effort for peace, they stuff down anger or frustration and pretend peace. I understand the fake-it-til-you-make-it adage, but in the case of strong feelings,  this is only putting a finger in the damn! to stave off an all-consuming  flood.

My friend went on to explain that when we are children, we move through feelings quickly. One moment we are fighting with our siblings. The next moment, we are best buds. As we become socialized, we hang onto certain emotions rather than allowing them to move through us. This wreaks havoc with our bodies as well as our creativity. 

I'm not saying that it is appropriate to inappropriately act-out or dump on others. Our feelings are for US. If we are open to them, we will be naturally guided to the right expression. Right expression may be telling someone how you feel; or right expression may be simply drawing, painting or dancing out the energy.

It is our duty to be present and FEEL our FEELINGS, not judge them, or stuff them. Again, stuffing only leads to harmful behaviors. By honoring our true emotions, we gift ourselves with presence.

What energy is present in you now???

Allowing, but not Chasing Chickens

On my first day pet-sitting at a new ranch (8 cats, 6 hens, 2 ducks and several house plants) I learned how NOT to catch a chicken.

I went down to the pen to say hello to my new charges when I spyed one of the black hens had flown the coop. She was now racing around the perimeter of the coop, periodically stopping and trying to squeeze back in through the large chainlink.

My initial thought of simply shaking the cracked corn treat can and waiting for her to approach didn't work because of my impatience. I kept walking toward the hen rather than standing still and waiting for her to come to me.

My second attempt faired better: Steve, co-owner of this ranch (and experienced chicken catcher) waited in one spot with the treat can while I snuck up behind the chicken. I missed multiple chances to scoop up the bird and toss her into the pen because, well, I'm a chicken.

Finally, I surrendered to my truth and told Steve I'd just keep her pointed in one direction, Steve continued to stand still (at the pen door) shaking the can, and voila, the hen is now happily laying eggs for my breakfast.

Photo courtesy of www.123rf.com

Chasing that chicken felt an awful lot like chasing my dream. The one thing I know from my practice of Visioning(R) and using the non-dominant hand method of journaling is that allowing a dream to happen is much more enjoyable--and a lot less effort than chasing down a dream as if it were an escaped, clucking chicken.

Chasing a dream assumes that we have all the answers.
Allowing a dream is surrendering to your internal life questions:

Who are you?
Where are you coming from?
What do you want to become?

By surrendering and investigating these questions through the internal exploration of poetry, music, art, movement, gardening, biking, yoga, meditation, scrapbooking and writing, we allow ourselves to live the questions. To evolve.

Surrendering to your heart's will is a subtle, yet dynamic process that is often lost in the cacaphony of modern living and all of it's viral and noisy technology.

How will you allow your dream to manifest today?

Post Your Answer. I'm listening.

Room to Dance

I was dancing in the living room this morning when I realized how little space I claim in my universe. I'd been dancing in a small corner of the living room, worried that my neighbors were going to see me. Silliness! I couldn't even move my arms because I didn't want to hit the lamp.

When I moved into further into the middle of the room, I was benefited with a view of Morro Rock.

This leads me to ask the question: What areas in my life do I keep myself confined to a corner???

Expanding ourselves through physical movement throughout the day keeps our perspective fresh and open.
This leads us to access intuition. When we regularly follow our intuitive voice, we are rewarded with passion and joy.

Ann Cuddy describes this in her powerful Ted Talk.

Beware! Practice equals more power.
What part of your life needs expansion?