Peace and Relief

My friend Brendan is in The Gambia river valley in The Congo in West Africa. He is there with the Peace Corps for the next couple of years. It's great reading his blog. http://www.alittlehungry.blogspot.com/

He's on the move with a couple of friends to a city in Mali that has a very happening music scene. Take a moment and read what it's like to go into service for peace.

We hear so much, some would argue not enough, about war and violence that we can forget that most people are just living their lives the way it is right now. The past is so long for indigenous people that it has a whole different meaning to contemporaries who identify themselves by their grandparents from the "old country".

War has been such a present danger to Africa and for so long. War has been everywhere for eons, it seems. So when do we consider peace? Peacefulness, peace of mind, peace of heart. Even saying the word is like a whispered prayer of relief.

In Esther and Jerry Hicks book "Ask and It Is Given" the concept of relief is highlighted over and over again. When I hear myself grinding something over and over in my mind I can bring myself out of it by taking an action step as I affirm "The Universe loves and approves of me. It is safe to know and grow." I can move myself into relief from fear. It may be take a little more time and thought until I don't feel a charge of anger, fear, upset and can address the thing that is, in fact, instructing me to turn to the Light.

This is the most healing remedy to the weariness of war. If there is to be peace, let it begin with me. Let it begin from within. And let it be a noble thing to travel to far away places and wage peace.

Learning a little bit

For the past week or so I've been writing classes for online delivery. Because so many are using the internet for learning I wanted to make the Health Care Class more accessible. What used to happen was a class for all new members to come to with family and friends after business hours.

We spent about 1-1.5 hours learning about the Six Essentials for Life; what we eat, drink, how we exercise and rest, what and how we breathe and what we think. And how to make good choices in each area that would help our healing and get us to the goals we were setting. This entailed coming to the office after work.

Have you had to carve time out of your schedule lately? It's getting to the point with most of us that we really have schedule "down time". Time when nothing is scheduled. I was just talking with my dear friend Vicky about this. With blended families and children in different age groups and spouses with lots of outside activities, having some time to do whatever one feels like at the moment is really important. "Downtime" is just as valuable as any "productive" time.

So I've created little classes broken into 2-10 minute segments, you can learn any time you want in manageable chunks. There are handouts with every class that you can download and print out as well. I hope you enjoy the classes. You will get valuable information that you can use right away.

And as in the past with the Health Care Class, those that take the class get to their goals faster and easier.

Discovering Talents

Ed and I recently received a note from one of Sam's teachers exclaiming his brilliant writing on a memoir about fear. He really captured the feeling well. It was a big surprise because this was his struggle for the last two years.
Writing was the most frustrating thing he could possibly have to do in school. His handwriting was almost illegible. He didn't follow punctuation rules and the most debilitating part was he could get hardly a word on paper during class.
We became concerned that he would not be able to express himself in written form when needed. He went for testing and came up with no real definitive problems but a little bit of this and that.

So you can imagine that when Ed called to tell me the news that he had an email from a teacher, oh brother, what now, was my reaction. When he read the email aloud to me I was blown away. My son had become a great writer! His story of fear had tension and changing of perspective. It was "writerly". So a transformation had taken place. Sam's is in ownership of his talent.

What talents do you have yet to discover? How about talents as a community? Did you hear about the families that adopted Liberian orphans? The whole community let their hearts open to orphans of war and are now being blessed over and over for their willingness to allow others in. It started out as one woman listening to a boys choir and it changed a whole community in two countries!

When we allow ourselves to grow into our passions we can discover amazing talents we never knew we had. Here's to discovery!!

How is Life like Pie?

PIE PARTY!!
Life is like pie. You can have whatever you want in it. What do you want?

On October 24th we'll have a party that kicks off at 2:00 pm with the
"Awakening the Healer Within" class.
This class has been getting rave reviews for 4 years. People start healing right then and there! I hope you will bring your friends and loved ones who are in need of healing. It's easy and fun!

Then at 4:00 pie! Bring a pie to share.
Savory or sweet, fruit or meat, oh me, oh my, I LOVE PIE!

If life is like a pie and you had a kitchen stocked with everything you could possibly want, what would you put in your PIE (life)? Put your attention on what you really want and share with us what your PIE would contain. It could be a poem, song, list or story board.

We are given what we want but only to the extent that we are clear about it.
So what do you clearly want in your PIE?

Time to get in gear already!

So it's taken me over a year to get going on this. You know how you decide you want to do something and the Inertia takes over? It happens to me too. So here goes...

Several limits for what I write here:
It must be True - insofar as it will not hurt others
It must have a Brevity - so that I cannot rant for hours
Personal - that it is my truth and others can have their own

My day is beginning by a long meditation to clear my meeting house. The time I spent thinking about this building, filling it with pure water and light and clearing it of all unwanted energy, lifelessness, negative feelings and upset has made a difference in my day and I trust in the day of this wonderful meeting house.

The energy one expends in daily thought helps to create the day and my goal is to create a day of healing for myself and others everyday. Some days it's not so easy. Resistance is real and it can be really hard to make that final leap to "doing". Do you sometimes feel like your feet are stuck in the slimy mud of indecision or low self esteem? Like the harder you try to pull your foot out the lower the other one sinks so that even trying becomes futile?

Even the word "trying" sounds strident and stuck. But "being" and "allowing" become the most relaxing words that we can use to create our experience.

I believe that life is supposed to be effortless and easy. That will push some buttons, I'm sure. I used to have a boyfriend that thought that life was about suffering. It was hard for him to have life and relationships be easy because his belief created his suffering as well. But that's what he learned from his parents. His unconscious reaction to things was what he had learned from 0-6 years old. What he mimicked from his parents.

No one is at fault it's just the way it is. As I have learned to overcome my unconscious thought (this is a daily lesson) life becomes much easier. The task to stay conscious becomes less a task and more of a joy! Imagine it as a joy to remain conscious!

I often tell practice members that it's like playing the piano. At first you have trouble telling your fingers which keys to hit when and it sounds very unlike the way the composer intended but as you practice a little bit, I practiced 20 minutes at a time as a child, it became easier. By the end of my piano phase I could play a Scott Joplin rag, in time and pretty fast! Easy! Fun!

So I'm practicing a little every day healing, clearing and being conscious. You can too.
Hugs,
Tanya