In December I had an article published in a major US magazine - The Secrets of the Bible supplement to US News. And since then, my profile having been raised somewhat, my in-box and mail box have been regaled with articles and newsletters from some amazing people. Some I have discarded because I didn't like the feel of them; others I have read with interest. But what interested me most was that they all wanted me to hear their voice - and validate it for them.
There's nothing wrong with that - after all I am writing this so that you can hear my voice. Most of these people were casting their bread upon the waters and writing to a total stranger. Nothing wrong with that either. But in addition to the emails and newsletters that I'm sent because I'm a subscriber to certain sites, I've been truly overwhelmed by information.
It made me take a whole week out to catch up on my reading. That's a challenge to do even if you do work for yourself. And it's taught me a lot - but not actually through anything that I read in that week...
I sat and read a 50-page document on how we should believe in God in the modern day; I absorbed countless well (and not-so-well) phrased arguments for this or that aspect of spirituality/Jesus/Judaism/Buddha.
I've had at least three people sending me the Our Father (Lord's Prayer) in Aramaic as if I'd never seen it before. And one amazing man sent his complete re-translation from Hebrew of the first five chapters of the Book of Genesis. In addition, I even read two whole books that were sent.
It was all very interesting - but was all theory. It's what Kabbalists would call 'Hod.' And when I say that it's 'taught me a lot' I actually mean that it's taught me how much time we spend (perhaps even waste) on information.
Hod is the Sephira of information; the gathering and spreading of the spoken and written word. At its best it is informative and interesting and at its worse it's recycling harmful gossip. It sits on the passive side of the Tree of Life because all this information may be very interesting but the big question is: What are you going to do with it?
And it seemed that the vast majority (though not all) of the writers were passing their information on to me rather than doing anything with it in their own lives.
There's an equation that my husband, Lion, came up with: Information+Experience=Knowledge. I+E=K.
Without experience, information is not real. This is why nowadays I include creative action and visualisation in all my workshops where before I was happy just to talk and answer questions. And without wishing to blow my own trumpet (much) I truly never pass anything on to you before I have tried and tested it for myself.
By acting on information we make it real; by just reaching for yet another book or article or DVD because we think learning just one more thing will bring us closer to enlightenment, we are deluding ourselves and running away from the value of experience.
So I sat down and assessed exactly how much I'd learnt in this whole week of reading. In more than 500 pieces of paper/online articles and the two books only two paragraphs struck gold within me. And guesswhat? They were instructions on how to do a certain meditation that I had already got written down in my Discovery Journal (which is a book I keep to make a record of everything that I find transformative). I did the meditation and it was wonderful. In fact I'm doing it every day until I know I've done it enough.
Don't get me wrong; I value the time and effort all these people took with their research and their wish to make me happier and wiser with their information. But it's not the information that makes me happier or wiser, it's what I choose to do with it.
The nub of it is this. You already have all the information that you need to transform your life into a happy and prosperous one. But have you done anything about it? Have you applied I+E=K and lifted your vibration through the joy of direct experience?
If not, please do. Because that's what works. And that's this month's prosperity suggestion. Find something you've already been taught and do it. If you're stuck for an idea go back through some of these articles. And let me know how you get on.
Wednesday
Angel Curry
I’ve always been a little bit snappish about angel work. It’s not that I don’t believe in angels; it’s more that I’ve always preferred to go to the Head Honcho rather than the staff. After all, if you want the Boss to help you out and you know you’ve got direct access to his office, why ask the Receptionist, the people from Human Resources or even the Head of Security?
And to be honest I’ve come across a lot of people who talk about angels in a very fluffy manner but whose lives don’t appear to be working very well and that never endeared the practice to me.
The Jewish and Alchemical mystical traditions which I’ve studied for the last 15 years teach that the energy forms that we generally call angels are pure forces of Divine aspects which have no free will. They have never been human and even if they can appear on Earth as humans, they have no experience of human physicality unless we invite them to experience it through us.
That’s different from our guides and spiritual beings whom we often regard as angelic and who combine the best of all worlds. But an actual angel — or messenger of God — is a power-house of energy focused on one particular aspect of existence.
It’s as though we are God’s children and the angels are God’s joyous servants who delight in assisting us. They know exactly what their purpose is and do not deviate from it. The only problem is that they believe that we, as divine beings ourselves know what we’re doing and if we give one Cosmic Order for prosperity and then spend twelve hours focusing on lack they give us the latter because that’s what we asked for most.
Realising that feeling snappish about angels is hardly going to attract a positive angelic experience, I decided that it was time to try to extend the hand of friendship to the Heavenly Office Workers instead of just sweeping past dismissively on my way to the Board Room.
The first few times where I did a meditation where I invoked the presence of one of the higher levels of angels than the ones who take care of the plants in my garden I didn’t get very far. The visualisation called down the essence of Archangel Michael (not the whole of him obviously – an archangel being energetically the size and power of a medium-sized sun). I couldn’t feel him to start with and then got the distinct impression that I wasn’t ready. That gave me a challenge or two!
But I kept trying and one day, the meld occurred. The Archangelic essence stepped (by invitation only) into my electro-magnetic field and it felt as though I was absorbed in living
gold and salmon pink. There was a gentle, powerful questing presence and, as I so often do when asked a question by someone we admire, I babbled.
I said (in my head), “I’m making a vegetable curry tonight.”
I felt like an idiot who was trying to impress with my culinary skills. But the delight that flowed through me at the thought of cooking a curry was palpable. It felt like a rainbow of colour of awe that such a thing was possible. Because, basically, an angel can’t cook…
“You can do it with me, if you like,” I said.
He did like and I loved the feeling of his joyous assent. In fact I thought cooking curry with an angel would be just the bee’s knees. That led to a fairly intense conversation about the leg-working processes of the genus of bee and it’s bending abilities and the fact that bees don’t have kneecaps so, technically, don’t have knees. It wasn’t that he meant to correct me; just desired clarification from a Daughter of the Creator about whether she was commanding/desiring/calling into being a form of bee which did have knees and explaining (politely) that such a creation, being until now unplanned in the evolutionary process would take a long time and a great deal of definitive thought . And apart from that, bees were Sachiel’s business, not his. Not for nothing does the Alchemical Tradition call angels ‘The Heavenly Civil Service.”
So a brief explanation about the vernacular was required. This was listened to with polite interest but it didn’t really hit the spot. Angels tend to stick to the point. Bees may have legs that bend but they don’t have kneecaps therefore they don’t have knees. Either I want them to or I don’t. The choice is mine. If I’m not choosing to begin co-creating bees with knees, then fine.
Shall we move on?
We moved on into the kitchen which was examined with great interest from top to bottom. One of Michael’s call signs is the cat (especially a golden one) and it was very much like experiencing a curious cat checking out the home.
At this point I’d better point out that although I love cooking, I had never cooked a vegetable curry before. I’d just got a surfeit of vegetables and had a recipe off the Internet and fancied giving it a go. I started gathering the root vegetables together, washing and scraping them.
The angel loved the experience of hot water on my hands and, when it cooled down wondered why I didn’t add more.
“I’m trying to save water and electricity,” I said.
The equivalent of a roar of joyous disbelief washed through me. How could I possibly believe that there could ever be a limit of water or electricity! To think that I chose a less than fabulous experience voluntarily because of fear of lack on this incredible abundant planet where it’s God’s joy to give us everything we desire!
That’s a little challenging to write in the light of political correctness and stewardship of the Earth but at the time it felt magnificent! And as creators of our own reality we really do have watch those automatic sentiments of lack.
The next question was even more incredible.
Why, the angel asked, as I was dicing carrots, did any human being voluntarily think any thought that wasn’t a happy one?
Come to think of it, it added in fascinated enquiry, why had I just cut my thumb? And wasn’t the colour of the blood so utterly, amazingly, gloriously, vibrantly beautiful?
We lost contact for a minute or two there as we were on temporarily incompatible vibrationary patterns but he was back in time to be interested in iodine and sticking plaster and very amused at my belief that any bacteria could possibly harm me if I didn’t want it to.
There arose a distinct desire to teach the angelic realms how to swear but somehow it didn’t get through…
As I par-boiled the root vegetables in salted water with turmeric and fried the onions and leeks with grated garlic, chilli and ginger I could almost feel him playing in the colours, textures and shapes. He explained that he was using (as I had given permission) my senses and literally wallowing in the experience of physicality. I ate a small piece of raw garlic to teach him a lesson but it went down a riot. He was in love with garlic and absolutely fascinated by the reaction of my nose and throat when I raised him a piece of raw chilli.
In fact the Angel thought that the whole experience of making curry was pretty darn profound. It wasn’t that he’d never had so much fun but this was happening now and could happen now to him eternally because he had experienced it in manifest existence (I think that’s right but I didn’t have a notebook).
“It’s individual creation,” he said. “You will never make a curry like any other human being. It has your energy in it; you make it in your own way with your own movements and sounds. You are taking individual blocks of life and mixing them to transform them into something unique; a chemical process that changes them forever. It is inconceivable for us to imagine mixing and heating a group of vegetables together because we can only see them in their individual beauty. And yet you humans create all the time. You build things, you change things, you destroy and improve things. It’s divinity in action!”
I noticed the use of the word ‘we’ rather than I. It would appear that the concept of ‘I’ didn’t resonate with a being which was an essence of a greater essence that was essence of an even greater essence for a long and ever-ascending way up to the full glory of Archangelic Beingness. That is one of the amazing thing about human beings, he explained. Our ability to individuate and to make thousands of individual choices.
I liked the idea that my curry might be a unique, divine creation. I liked the feeling of being observed with incredible love. And I had to wonder, why was it that we thought anything other than happy thoughts? Training and habit were the only answers. After all, I don’t know the truth of anybody else’s life and, once you’ve existed inside an angel you realise that there’s nothing external to you anyway so the suffering you see has to be yours and yours alone. And the enemies you make are only the enemies in you projected outwards.
“That’s Samael’s job,” said Michael, testing for seasoning and thinking simultaneously that nothing so good had ever been cooked and that a little more salt might be a good idea.
“What’s Samael’s job?”
“Protection and clearing the illusion of having enemies and suffering.”
“But everybody says that protection is your job. Don’t you have a sword?” A feeling — or was it a scent? — of scarlet flame with specks of green came through for a moment together with an image of a scene from the movie Crocodile Dundee — the one where Mick Dundee is threatened with attack and says, “that’s not a knife, this is a knife.”
“But isn’t Samael a name for Satan?”
Great roars of laugher made the entire room light up. I understood that Samael was the angel of destruction so it was an easy mistake to make. But he broke down the things that needed to be broken down; he didn’t attack the good. Without Samael there’d be no compost heaps…
Apparently if you ask Samael to help you with an enemy he’ll help you move apart on to your better good. Which means the enemy may be the one getting the promotion or the lovely relationship. He won’t get that good a press then…
But back to the curry. It was time just to let it simmer and to get the rice on to boil. I opened the back door to let the cool air in — and a large ginger tom cat was sitting on the doorstep. I had never seen him before in my life. He gazed up at me as a cat to a queen and sauntered into the kitchen. My husband loves cats so raised no objection to the new arrival and, as we ate, the cat sat watching, sitting elegantly on the third chair at the table.
I’m lucky; I can tell my husband about my spiritual life and it was obvious that something was going on with the extra presence in the kitchen.
We enjoyed that curry; all four of us (the cat had a nibble) were pretty impressed with how it turned out. And it was easier than usual to eat thoughtfully, savouring every taste. The red wine also seemed to be a particularly fine vintage.
But as we drank our cup of after-supper tea, the cat got up, asked to leave and I bid the angelic presence goodbye too. That was only right and proper; the rest of the evening was for Peter and I to talk, read and enjoy being together… but I sent Michael a thought of thanks as I left out a bowl of milk before we locked up went upstairs to bed.
It’s six weeks since Peter, the angel and I shared supper but the cat turns up two or three times a week and requests a mouthful of whatever I may be cooking. Sometimes it makes him sneeze but he eats it with his golden eyes shining. And then he leaves for wherever he lives and I watch him go with a smile in my heart.
And to be honest I’ve come across a lot of people who talk about angels in a very fluffy manner but whose lives don’t appear to be working very well and that never endeared the practice to me.
The Jewish and Alchemical mystical traditions which I’ve studied for the last 15 years teach that the energy forms that we generally call angels are pure forces of Divine aspects which have no free will. They have never been human and even if they can appear on Earth as humans, they have no experience of human physicality unless we invite them to experience it through us.
That’s different from our guides and spiritual beings whom we often regard as angelic and who combine the best of all worlds. But an actual angel — or messenger of God — is a power-house of energy focused on one particular aspect of existence.
It’s as though we are God’s children and the angels are God’s joyous servants who delight in assisting us. They know exactly what their purpose is and do not deviate from it. The only problem is that they believe that we, as divine beings ourselves know what we’re doing and if we give one Cosmic Order for prosperity and then spend twelve hours focusing on lack they give us the latter because that’s what we asked for most.
Realising that feeling snappish about angels is hardly going to attract a positive angelic experience, I decided that it was time to try to extend the hand of friendship to the Heavenly Office Workers instead of just sweeping past dismissively on my way to the Board Room.
The first few times where I did a meditation where I invoked the presence of one of the higher levels of angels than the ones who take care of the plants in my garden I didn’t get very far. The visualisation called down the essence of Archangel Michael (not the whole of him obviously – an archangel being energetically the size and power of a medium-sized sun). I couldn’t feel him to start with and then got the distinct impression that I wasn’t ready. That gave me a challenge or two!
But I kept trying and one day, the meld occurred. The Archangelic essence stepped (by invitation only) into my electro-magnetic field and it felt as though I was absorbed in living
gold and salmon pink. There was a gentle, powerful questing presence and, as I so often do when asked a question by someone we admire, I babbled.
I said (in my head), “I’m making a vegetable curry tonight.”
I felt like an idiot who was trying to impress with my culinary skills. But the delight that flowed through me at the thought of cooking a curry was palpable. It felt like a rainbow of colour of awe that such a thing was possible. Because, basically, an angel can’t cook…
“You can do it with me, if you like,” I said.
He did like and I loved the feeling of his joyous assent. In fact I thought cooking curry with an angel would be just the bee’s knees. That led to a fairly intense conversation about the leg-working processes of the genus of bee and it’s bending abilities and the fact that bees don’t have kneecaps so, technically, don’t have knees. It wasn’t that he meant to correct me; just desired clarification from a Daughter of the Creator about whether she was commanding/desiring/calling into being a form of bee which did have knees and explaining (politely) that such a creation, being until now unplanned in the evolutionary process would take a long time and a great deal of definitive thought . And apart from that, bees were Sachiel’s business, not his. Not for nothing does the Alchemical Tradition call angels ‘The Heavenly Civil Service.”
So a brief explanation about the vernacular was required. This was listened to with polite interest but it didn’t really hit the spot. Angels tend to stick to the point. Bees may have legs that bend but they don’t have kneecaps therefore they don’t have knees. Either I want them to or I don’t. The choice is mine. If I’m not choosing to begin co-creating bees with knees, then fine.
Shall we move on?
We moved on into the kitchen which was examined with great interest from top to bottom. One of Michael’s call signs is the cat (especially a golden one) and it was very much like experiencing a curious cat checking out the home.
At this point I’d better point out that although I love cooking, I had never cooked a vegetable curry before. I’d just got a surfeit of vegetables and had a recipe off the Internet and fancied giving it a go. I started gathering the root vegetables together, washing and scraping them.
The angel loved the experience of hot water on my hands and, when it cooled down wondered why I didn’t add more.
“I’m trying to save water and electricity,” I said.
The equivalent of a roar of joyous disbelief washed through me. How could I possibly believe that there could ever be a limit of water or electricity! To think that I chose a less than fabulous experience voluntarily because of fear of lack on this incredible abundant planet where it’s God’s joy to give us everything we desire!
That’s a little challenging to write in the light of political correctness and stewardship of the Earth but at the time it felt magnificent! And as creators of our own reality we really do have watch those automatic sentiments of lack.
The next question was even more incredible.
Why, the angel asked, as I was dicing carrots, did any human being voluntarily think any thought that wasn’t a happy one?
Come to think of it, it added in fascinated enquiry, why had I just cut my thumb? And wasn’t the colour of the blood so utterly, amazingly, gloriously, vibrantly beautiful?
We lost contact for a minute or two there as we were on temporarily incompatible vibrationary patterns but he was back in time to be interested in iodine and sticking plaster and very amused at my belief that any bacteria could possibly harm me if I didn’t want it to.
There arose a distinct desire to teach the angelic realms how to swear but somehow it didn’t get through…
As I par-boiled the root vegetables in salted water with turmeric and fried the onions and leeks with grated garlic, chilli and ginger I could almost feel him playing in the colours, textures and shapes. He explained that he was using (as I had given permission) my senses and literally wallowing in the experience of physicality. I ate a small piece of raw garlic to teach him a lesson but it went down a riot. He was in love with garlic and absolutely fascinated by the reaction of my nose and throat when I raised him a piece of raw chilli.
In fact the Angel thought that the whole experience of making curry was pretty darn profound. It wasn’t that he’d never had so much fun but this was happening now and could happen now to him eternally because he had experienced it in manifest existence (I think that’s right but I didn’t have a notebook).
“It’s individual creation,” he said. “You will never make a curry like any other human being. It has your energy in it; you make it in your own way with your own movements and sounds. You are taking individual blocks of life and mixing them to transform them into something unique; a chemical process that changes them forever. It is inconceivable for us to imagine mixing and heating a group of vegetables together because we can only see them in their individual beauty. And yet you humans create all the time. You build things, you change things, you destroy and improve things. It’s divinity in action!”
I noticed the use of the word ‘we’ rather than I. It would appear that the concept of ‘I’ didn’t resonate with a being which was an essence of a greater essence that was essence of an even greater essence for a long and ever-ascending way up to the full glory of Archangelic Beingness. That is one of the amazing thing about human beings, he explained. Our ability to individuate and to make thousands of individual choices.
I liked the idea that my curry might be a unique, divine creation. I liked the feeling of being observed with incredible love. And I had to wonder, why was it that we thought anything other than happy thoughts? Training and habit were the only answers. After all, I don’t know the truth of anybody else’s life and, once you’ve existed inside an angel you realise that there’s nothing external to you anyway so the suffering you see has to be yours and yours alone. And the enemies you make are only the enemies in you projected outwards.
“That’s Samael’s job,” said Michael, testing for seasoning and thinking simultaneously that nothing so good had ever been cooked and that a little more salt might be a good idea.
“What’s Samael’s job?”
“Protection and clearing the illusion of having enemies and suffering.”
“But everybody says that protection is your job. Don’t you have a sword?” A feeling — or was it a scent? — of scarlet flame with specks of green came through for a moment together with an image of a scene from the movie Crocodile Dundee — the one where Mick Dundee is threatened with attack and says, “that’s not a knife, this is a knife.”
“But isn’t Samael a name for Satan?”
Great roars of laugher made the entire room light up. I understood that Samael was the angel of destruction so it was an easy mistake to make. But he broke down the things that needed to be broken down; he didn’t attack the good. Without Samael there’d be no compost heaps…
Apparently if you ask Samael to help you with an enemy he’ll help you move apart on to your better good. Which means the enemy may be the one getting the promotion or the lovely relationship. He won’t get that good a press then…
But back to the curry. It was time just to let it simmer and to get the rice on to boil. I opened the back door to let the cool air in — and a large ginger tom cat was sitting on the doorstep. I had never seen him before in my life. He gazed up at me as a cat to a queen and sauntered into the kitchen. My husband loves cats so raised no objection to the new arrival and, as we ate, the cat sat watching, sitting elegantly on the third chair at the table.
I’m lucky; I can tell my husband about my spiritual life and it was obvious that something was going on with the extra presence in the kitchen.
We enjoyed that curry; all four of us (the cat had a nibble) were pretty impressed with how it turned out. And it was easier than usual to eat thoughtfully, savouring every taste. The red wine also seemed to be a particularly fine vintage.
But as we drank our cup of after-supper tea, the cat got up, asked to leave and I bid the angelic presence goodbye too. That was only right and proper; the rest of the evening was for Peter and I to talk, read and enjoy being together… but I sent Michael a thought of thanks as I left out a bowl of milk before we locked up went upstairs to bed.
It’s six weeks since Peter, the angel and I shared supper but the cat turns up two or three times a week and requests a mouthful of whatever I may be cooking. Sometimes it makes him sneeze but he eats it with his golden eyes shining. And then he leaves for wherever he lives and I watch him go with a smile in my heart.
Tuesday
New Year, New You?
New Year – new you. Usually that means a diet…
For any diet to be successful, we have to give less attention to food and more to our fat-causing thoughts.
By the Law of Attraction, you can’t get slender and beautiful by considering yourself fat and ugly. Tough but true.
If you hate and despise yourself in a world that has a low opinion of people who are overweight then you will create fat – and the food that creates fat will leap to your attention and clamour to be devoured - we know it does that, right?
If the world respected fat people and despised thin ones (as used to be the case in some countries where fat indicated wealth) then the odds are, you would be thin. It’s what you think and believe about yourself that is the key; not the food itself. If you need a cause to hate yourself, your weight is an easy target in a world full of yummy, addictive, sugary or salty foods.
And, of course, the more we worry about nutrition, the more cause for worry we attract too..
Michael Pollan’s excellent book In Defence of Food, (Penguin) suggests that the American people’s major problems with weight gain began as the same time that low-fat foods were introduced. It may be a coincidence, but it is certainly true that much of what we eat today is not actually food but an arrangement of nutrients and what Michael calls “food science” – highly processed and rearranged so that our bodies don’t understand it.
That, and how we are eating these food substitutes – on the street, in the car, in front of the TV, in the movie theatre, while we read a book (and more and more alone rather than with others) – affects the body’s reaction. Without the original make-up of food, including the fats, we don’t have the original automatic signalling system through our body that we have eaten enough. Instead we crave more. And without sitting down and taking time over food, we fail to notice when we are full.
I’ve never been skinny and I’m not built to be a rake. However it took me many years to be at peace with that. I have been what is considered “too fat” and I’ve done diets that worked very well. But they worked more because of my belief in them and my satisfaction at the idea of getting slimmer than because of the food I was eating or not eating. That’s why diets will work to start with and become more difficult later if the issues of self-esteem that caused the need for them in the first place are not dealt with. What really works for me is to ask my body every day what it wants to do and to eat. At the moment it’s mostly blueberries, oranges and watercress and bouncing on my rebounder trampoline. My addictions on the other hand want more Christmas cake, chocolate and biscuits. You can tell the difference between the two – the real desires are much more quietly expressed!
My naturopath wants me only ever to eat 70%+ chocolate and in nutritional terms of course she is right. But that kind of chocolate doesn’t attract me or make me happy. So by the Law of Attraction, it can’t help me much. What can help is loving myself - again and again and again going back to that wonderful ho’oponopono of “I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you.”
It’s vital when you want to become more slender to do it from the point of view of positivity and not from a feeling of self-hatred. From the ego’s and the body’s point of view, dieting is starvation and both will react to attempt to regain the weight and possibly add some more in order to ensure that you do not starve to death in the future.
So a slow diet is always a more successful one in the long run (I know, I know!). Also it’s unwise to refer to "losing weight" as the ego has no concept of loss being a good thing. In absolutely everything else in our life, we want to find things that have been lost so why would weight be any different?
Instead, refer to “becoming slender” or “becoming fitter” and seek interest in how you eat. If it’s hard to find time to cook for yourself or to sit down and eat consciously then the problem is not within your body; it’s in the part of you that doesn’t feel worthy of time for yourself and your body.
Our desire to be beautiful, young and slender has profited the medical industry greatly through the development of surgical procedures and drugs that will have the desired outer effect. But the key to happiness is not beauty, nor youth; it is self-appreciation. Sure, have the Botox if you want; even the surgery if you want. If you do it from a point of view of moving towards your bliss, that’s fine. But if you do it because you don’t, ultimately, love yourself, you will have just the same problems afterwards.
A wonderful affirmation to help with weight issues is “Blessed am I among women/men to live and love in this beautiful temple.” That way you are offering love to your body, and that is the best start you can have towards a perfect and healthy physical life.
So go enjoy that diet! You’ll find me bouncing on my rebounder and we can compare notes in February.
For any diet to be successful, we have to give less attention to food and more to our fat-causing thoughts.
By the Law of Attraction, you can’t get slender and beautiful by considering yourself fat and ugly. Tough but true.
If you hate and despise yourself in a world that has a low opinion of people who are overweight then you will create fat – and the food that creates fat will leap to your attention and clamour to be devoured - we know it does that, right?
If the world respected fat people and despised thin ones (as used to be the case in some countries where fat indicated wealth) then the odds are, you would be thin. It’s what you think and believe about yourself that is the key; not the food itself. If you need a cause to hate yourself, your weight is an easy target in a world full of yummy, addictive, sugary or salty foods.
And, of course, the more we worry about nutrition, the more cause for worry we attract too..
Michael Pollan’s excellent book In Defence of Food, (Penguin) suggests that the American people’s major problems with weight gain began as the same time that low-fat foods were introduced. It may be a coincidence, but it is certainly true that much of what we eat today is not actually food but an arrangement of nutrients and what Michael calls “food science” – highly processed and rearranged so that our bodies don’t understand it.
That, and how we are eating these food substitutes – on the street, in the car, in front of the TV, in the movie theatre, while we read a book (and more and more alone rather than with others) – affects the body’s reaction. Without the original make-up of food, including the fats, we don’t have the original automatic signalling system through our body that we have eaten enough. Instead we crave more. And without sitting down and taking time over food, we fail to notice when we are full.
I’ve never been skinny and I’m not built to be a rake. However it took me many years to be at peace with that. I have been what is considered “too fat” and I’ve done diets that worked very well. But they worked more because of my belief in them and my satisfaction at the idea of getting slimmer than because of the food I was eating or not eating. That’s why diets will work to start with and become more difficult later if the issues of self-esteem that caused the need for them in the first place are not dealt with. What really works for me is to ask my body every day what it wants to do and to eat. At the moment it’s mostly blueberries, oranges and watercress and bouncing on my rebounder trampoline. My addictions on the other hand want more Christmas cake, chocolate and biscuits. You can tell the difference between the two – the real desires are much more quietly expressed!
My naturopath wants me only ever to eat 70%+ chocolate and in nutritional terms of course she is right. But that kind of chocolate doesn’t attract me or make me happy. So by the Law of Attraction, it can’t help me much. What can help is loving myself - again and again and again going back to that wonderful ho’oponopono of “I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you.”
It’s vital when you want to become more slender to do it from the point of view of positivity and not from a feeling of self-hatred. From the ego’s and the body’s point of view, dieting is starvation and both will react to attempt to regain the weight and possibly add some more in order to ensure that you do not starve to death in the future.
So a slow diet is always a more successful one in the long run (I know, I know!). Also it’s unwise to refer to "losing weight" as the ego has no concept of loss being a good thing. In absolutely everything else in our life, we want to find things that have been lost so why would weight be any different?
Instead, refer to “becoming slender” or “becoming fitter” and seek interest in how you eat. If it’s hard to find time to cook for yourself or to sit down and eat consciously then the problem is not within your body; it’s in the part of you that doesn’t feel worthy of time for yourself and your body.
Our desire to be beautiful, young and slender has profited the medical industry greatly through the development of surgical procedures and drugs that will have the desired outer effect. But the key to happiness is not beauty, nor youth; it is self-appreciation. Sure, have the Botox if you want; even the surgery if you want. If you do it from a point of view of moving towards your bliss, that’s fine. But if you do it because you don’t, ultimately, love yourself, you will have just the same problems afterwards.
A wonderful affirmation to help with weight issues is “Blessed am I among women/men to live and love in this beautiful temple.” That way you are offering love to your body, and that is the best start you can have towards a perfect and healthy physical life.
So go enjoy that diet! You’ll find me bouncing on my rebounder and we can compare notes in February.
Wednesday
Reclaiming the Miracle of Christmas
“What the festival of lights really stands for today is a reaffirmation of hope, a renewed commitment to friendship and goodwill, and a religiously sanctioned celebration of the simple - and some not so simple - joys of life.” The Times of India.
The trouble with Christmas is that it’s a bit like the phrase: “When you’re up to your neck in alligators, it's easy to forget that the initial objective was to drain the swamp.”
This time of the year people start complaining about the expense and commerciality of Christmas. This year, with the belief that there is something 'wrong' going on in the world's finances, you may be dreading the expense of Christmas. But to name something is to give it power, and what have we done? We've given the financial situation a cute, alliterative name - the credit crunch. So we have made it real.
Don't doubt for a minute the power of humanity to make thing real - a truth is only a belief held by a certain number of people and passed on to others who, in turn, believe it. By believing it, we make it real.
Yes it may seem tough to change your mind in the face of such widespread external belief but it is possible. It is our choice.
Right now we have to decide whether to give 'the situation' more energy through moaning and complaining and believing what is said on the News or we can choose to look for prosperity, health and joy in the coming of Winter. By looking for the hope andthe glory we can change the world from within.
It's not them who controls our lives, whatever we may have thought, it's us.
So perhaps the real secret of Christmas this year is to use the ide of a credit crunch for good. To simplify something that has got out of hand...this is the perfect time to say 'No!' to anything you don't truly want to do at Christmas. Commit instead to something that would have meaning instead of a season of angst and worry.
Only we can reclaim the miracles and mystery that have existed at this time of the year for thousands of years - way longer than Christianity has been in place.
I’ve often wondered whether, without women, Christmas might be a much happier (albeit slimmer and drabber) affair. It is horribly likely that, without the duty and fervour of women, the majority of blokes would probably be happy to pick up whatever’s remotely turkey-like that’s still in the local supermarket freezer on Christmas Eve, some ale and a bag of party poppers.
Maybe they’re right...We seem to run ourselves ragged with all the preparations to the extent that we overspend, over extend ourselves, over-complicate things and try to live up to some incredibly unrealistic standard of hospitality and catering...not to mention the horrors of some members of the family visiting —or events that we long outgrew but are still expected to attend—and make our children attend ‘because it’s traditional.’
And then, when it’s all over, there’s still the oven to clean and the washing up to do... (took me until August to clean the oven this year...)
Don’t get me wrong, I ‘do’ the whole Christmas thing – but there isn’t a single part of the ritual that I don’t love. But it took me years to learn to re-engage with the magic that does make it such a special time of year – whatever your faith.
'But I can't have a simple Christmas because of the children,' you may say.
Perhaps the worst misuse of Christmas is the idea that ‘it’s for the children.’ In a way that’s true but only in the way that we too need to be children again in order to see the miracles and magic of Christmas in us. That saying of Jesus’s about having to become a child again to enter the Kingdom of Heaven is the answer. The ‘child’ is the part of us that expects miracles and magic (probably why Harry Potter is so popular). It’s also the ego – and for most of us, it’s been overwhelmed with ‘duty’ and ‘shoulds’ and other horrors for so long that it simply dreads the word ‘Christmas.’
It is the ego of the child that demands the same presents as everyone else. It's the ego of we adults that thinks that we have to give those presents in order to be 'good' parents. But what about giving an experience of spirit instead?
So what is this Christmas miracle all about? It’s about the rebirth of the real you; the peeling off of the outer layers that hide the gold within; the sloughing off of all the past year that you’d like to leave behind and a commitment towards creating a better, happier life.
You don’t have to be a Christian to see the wonderful, deep inner meaning of the Winter Solstice. Nowadays, we tend to focus more on the New Year as a new start to life (and use that for a guilt trip too!) but, in fact, it’s on December 25th that we have the first, visible evidence that the sun is returning and that spring will come once again.
From the day we first started appreciating the cycles of nature, humanity has celebrated the Solstices. The Winter Solstice heralds the coming of the Light; the return of the Sun—or the birth of the Son—and I believe that there is a deep primal need in our animal soul to celebrate it whether our busy, social, disbelieving selves deem it relevant or not!
The Winter Solstice is a kind of choice between life or death. We may know that the sun returns because it happens every year. But the ancient celebrations are just as much about our willing our own inner source of light to rekindle at this time as they are about the external sun.
The dark days of winter are when the roots go down and consolidate for new growth. One of my sacred rituals this time of year is planting prepared hyacinths which must be kept in the dark and cool for at least a month so that they can develop roots. Then, after Christmas, they will grow and give beautiful colour and scent to herald the often long-awaited new life of spring.
Nearly all the major religions have special symbolism around this time. It’s often said that the birth of Jesus was placed on December 25th because it was the ancient celebration of Saturnalia and that Christianity ‘stole’ a great deal of the pagan symbolism. Two main theories compete about this - one claims that in A.D. 274, the Roman Emperor Aurelian inaugurated December 25th as the pagan "Birth of the Unconquered Sun" celebration, at the calendar point when daylight began to lengthen. Supposedly, Christians then borrowed the date and devised Christmas to compete with paganism. But William Tighe, a church history specialist at Pennsylvania's Muhlenberg College, puts forward the exact opposite theory —that Aurelian created a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Tighe says that the pagans-first theory only originated three centuries ago in the writings of Protestant historian Paul Ernst Jablonski and Catholic monk Jean Hardouin. Tighe acknowledged that the first hard evidence of Christmas occurring on Dec. 25 isn't found until A.D. 336 and the date only became a fixed festival in Constantinople in 379.
Whichever it was, there have long been a series of religious festivals going into—and out of—the darkest days and it’s a wonderful reclamation of Christmas to do something personal and spiritual to mark the ending of one year and the resurgence of the light in you for the coming year. Who knows, it might make the rest of the celebrations fun? And, even if you still think Christmas is going to be hell, perhaps one of this year’s resolutions could be to promise yourself that next Christmas you will actually do what you would like to do...
Christmas/Solstice rituals:
Plan a little time on your own – or with friends if they want to join you. Find something that represents the ‘old you’ of 2008 whether it’s something you’ve grown out of or something that represents a difficult time that you have gone through and then create a little ceremony of release (including burning the symbol if that is possible). Dress up in something you love to wear, light a couple of candles, and take a few deep, connected breaths. As you let go of the object, say something like ‘I release this representation of pain to the Light and move forward to my Higher Good.’
Then take a moment to ask your Higher Self, Guardian Angel or the Source of All to watch over you, protect and guide you to a happier life in the next year.
Fill an atomiser with water containing a few drops of refreshing aromatherapy oils such as lemon or grapefruit plus some Flower Remedies – such as Rescue Remedy, Walnut (protection from outside energies/help with change), Willow (dissolves resentment), Wild Oat (for uncertainty about your path in life) or Holly (anger and hatred) and spray around the whole of your home saying ‘In the name of the Source this room/house and all that is in it, is blessed, cleansed and filled with light.’
Make a prosperity wheel or dream board. This is a montage of all the things, experiences and happy times that you would like to draw to you. Instructions on my Pure Prosperity website. This works by reprogramming the subconscious to look for what you want instead of what you don’t want.
Write a letter to a friend the other side of the world (or to someone closer if neccessary - but someone with whom you only correspond infrequently - someone without email probably!). Date this letter 1st December 2009 and in it tell them of all the wonderful things that have happened to you throughout 2009. And invent everything you could possibly want from a perfect home, partner or job to living in the Maldives. Don't worry about seeming grasping or greedy - that fear is probably what has held you back for so long. There is a reason why Luis Vuitton bags are made and houses and cars are built –so that people can enjoy them. And if you are wealthy, you can do SO much more for others. To think that you can't be rich because of the starving poor is an argument full of holes. If you are wealthy you can donate; teach and offer time to ensure that they too learn how to be prosperous like you.
And if you're now saying 'but my friend would hate me if I sent him/her a letter like that' then I’d suggest that you find a friend who wouldn't. And that's probably the best task you could set yourself this year - to be with people who allow you to be prosperous. If there's no one, then plan to send it to me, because I'll be SO happy for you! You can post it in the comments below if you like.
The letter will work best if it's full of enthusiasm and acknowledgement of the good in your life. It's great if you can start off with something that you actually know IS going to happen. That gives you confidence.
Will it happen? Well, it's got a better chance of happening if you do write the letter than if you don't. If you put it away somewhere safe and forget all about it, the chances are pretty high that at least 60% of it will either be with you or on its way by the date you put on it. My letter last year came 80% true...no complaints about that!
Wishing you the perfect Christmas time...
The trouble with Christmas is that it’s a bit like the phrase: “When you’re up to your neck in alligators, it's easy to forget that the initial objective was to drain the swamp.”
This time of the year people start complaining about the expense and commerciality of Christmas. This year, with the belief that there is something 'wrong' going on in the world's finances, you may be dreading the expense of Christmas. But to name something is to give it power, and what have we done? We've given the financial situation a cute, alliterative name - the credit crunch. So we have made it real.
Don't doubt for a minute the power of humanity to make thing real - a truth is only a belief held by a certain number of people and passed on to others who, in turn, believe it. By believing it, we make it real.
Yes it may seem tough to change your mind in the face of such widespread external belief but it is possible. It is our choice.
Right now we have to decide whether to give 'the situation' more energy through moaning and complaining and believing what is said on the News or we can choose to look for prosperity, health and joy in the coming of Winter. By looking for the hope andthe glory we can change the world from within.
It's not them who controls our lives, whatever we may have thought, it's us.
So perhaps the real secret of Christmas this year is to use the ide of a credit crunch for good. To simplify something that has got out of hand...this is the perfect time to say 'No!' to anything you don't truly want to do at Christmas. Commit instead to something that would have meaning instead of a season of angst and worry.
Only we can reclaim the miracles and mystery that have existed at this time of the year for thousands of years - way longer than Christianity has been in place.
I’ve often wondered whether, without women, Christmas might be a much happier (albeit slimmer and drabber) affair. It is horribly likely that, without the duty and fervour of women, the majority of blokes would probably be happy to pick up whatever’s remotely turkey-like that’s still in the local supermarket freezer on Christmas Eve, some ale and a bag of party poppers.
Maybe they’re right...We seem to run ourselves ragged with all the preparations to the extent that we overspend, over extend ourselves, over-complicate things and try to live up to some incredibly unrealistic standard of hospitality and catering...not to mention the horrors of some members of the family visiting —or events that we long outgrew but are still expected to attend—and make our children attend ‘because it’s traditional.’
And then, when it’s all over, there’s still the oven to clean and the washing up to do... (took me until August to clean the oven this year...)
Don’t get me wrong, I ‘do’ the whole Christmas thing – but there isn’t a single part of the ritual that I don’t love. But it took me years to learn to re-engage with the magic that does make it such a special time of year – whatever your faith.
'But I can't have a simple Christmas because of the children,' you may say.
Perhaps the worst misuse of Christmas is the idea that ‘it’s for the children.’ In a way that’s true but only in the way that we too need to be children again in order to see the miracles and magic of Christmas in us. That saying of Jesus’s about having to become a child again to enter the Kingdom of Heaven is the answer. The ‘child’ is the part of us that expects miracles and magic (probably why Harry Potter is so popular). It’s also the ego – and for most of us, it’s been overwhelmed with ‘duty’ and ‘shoulds’ and other horrors for so long that it simply dreads the word ‘Christmas.’
It is the ego of the child that demands the same presents as everyone else. It's the ego of we adults that thinks that we have to give those presents in order to be 'good' parents. But what about giving an experience of spirit instead?
So what is this Christmas miracle all about? It’s about the rebirth of the real you; the peeling off of the outer layers that hide the gold within; the sloughing off of all the past year that you’d like to leave behind and a commitment towards creating a better, happier life.
You don’t have to be a Christian to see the wonderful, deep inner meaning of the Winter Solstice. Nowadays, we tend to focus more on the New Year as a new start to life (and use that for a guilt trip too!) but, in fact, it’s on December 25th that we have the first, visible evidence that the sun is returning and that spring will come once again.
From the day we first started appreciating the cycles of nature, humanity has celebrated the Solstices. The Winter Solstice heralds the coming of the Light; the return of the Sun—or the birth of the Son—and I believe that there is a deep primal need in our animal soul to celebrate it whether our busy, social, disbelieving selves deem it relevant or not!
The Winter Solstice is a kind of choice between life or death. We may know that the sun returns because it happens every year. But the ancient celebrations are just as much about our willing our own inner source of light to rekindle at this time as they are about the external sun.
The dark days of winter are when the roots go down and consolidate for new growth. One of my sacred rituals this time of year is planting prepared hyacinths which must be kept in the dark and cool for at least a month so that they can develop roots. Then, after Christmas, they will grow and give beautiful colour and scent to herald the often long-awaited new life of spring.
Nearly all the major religions have special symbolism around this time. It’s often said that the birth of Jesus was placed on December 25th because it was the ancient celebration of Saturnalia and that Christianity ‘stole’ a great deal of the pagan symbolism. Two main theories compete about this - one claims that in A.D. 274, the Roman Emperor Aurelian inaugurated December 25th as the pagan "Birth of the Unconquered Sun" celebration, at the calendar point when daylight began to lengthen. Supposedly, Christians then borrowed the date and devised Christmas to compete with paganism. But William Tighe, a church history specialist at Pennsylvania's Muhlenberg College, puts forward the exact opposite theory —that Aurelian created a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Tighe says that the pagans-first theory only originated three centuries ago in the writings of Protestant historian Paul Ernst Jablonski and Catholic monk Jean Hardouin. Tighe acknowledged that the first hard evidence of Christmas occurring on Dec. 25 isn't found until A.D. 336 and the date only became a fixed festival in Constantinople in 379.
Whichever it was, there have long been a series of religious festivals going into—and out of—the darkest days and it’s a wonderful reclamation of Christmas to do something personal and spiritual to mark the ending of one year and the resurgence of the light in you for the coming year. Who knows, it might make the rest of the celebrations fun? And, even if you still think Christmas is going to be hell, perhaps one of this year’s resolutions could be to promise yourself that next Christmas you will actually do what you would like to do...
Christmas/Solstice rituals:
Plan a little time on your own – or with friends if they want to join you. Find something that represents the ‘old you’ of 2008 whether it’s something you’ve grown out of or something that represents a difficult time that you have gone through and then create a little ceremony of release (including burning the symbol if that is possible). Dress up in something you love to wear, light a couple of candles, and take a few deep, connected breaths. As you let go of the object, say something like ‘I release this representation of pain to the Light and move forward to my Higher Good.’
Then take a moment to ask your Higher Self, Guardian Angel or the Source of All to watch over you, protect and guide you to a happier life in the next year.
Fill an atomiser with water containing a few drops of refreshing aromatherapy oils such as lemon or grapefruit plus some Flower Remedies – such as Rescue Remedy, Walnut (protection from outside energies/help with change), Willow (dissolves resentment), Wild Oat (for uncertainty about your path in life) or Holly (anger and hatred) and spray around the whole of your home saying ‘In the name of the Source this room/house and all that is in it, is blessed, cleansed and filled with light.’
Make a prosperity wheel or dream board. This is a montage of all the things, experiences and happy times that you would like to draw to you. Instructions on my Pure Prosperity website. This works by reprogramming the subconscious to look for what you want instead of what you don’t want.
Write a letter to a friend the other side of the world (or to someone closer if neccessary - but someone with whom you only correspond infrequently - someone without email probably!). Date this letter 1st December 2009 and in it tell them of all the wonderful things that have happened to you throughout 2009. And invent everything you could possibly want from a perfect home, partner or job to living in the Maldives. Don't worry about seeming grasping or greedy - that fear is probably what has held you back for so long. There is a reason why Luis Vuitton bags are made and houses and cars are built –so that people can enjoy them. And if you are wealthy, you can do SO much more for others. To think that you can't be rich because of the starving poor is an argument full of holes. If you are wealthy you can donate; teach and offer time to ensure that they too learn how to be prosperous like you.
And if you're now saying 'but my friend would hate me if I sent him/her a letter like that' then I’d suggest that you find a friend who wouldn't. And that's probably the best task you could set yourself this year - to be with people who allow you to be prosperous. If there's no one, then plan to send it to me, because I'll be SO happy for you! You can post it in the comments below if you like.
The letter will work best if it's full of enthusiasm and acknowledgement of the good in your life. It's great if you can start off with something that you actually know IS going to happen. That gives you confidence.
Will it happen? Well, it's got a better chance of happening if you do write the letter than if you don't. If you put it away somewhere safe and forget all about it, the chances are pretty high that at least 60% of it will either be with you or on its way by the date you put on it. My letter last year came 80% true...no complaints about that!
Wishing you the perfect Christmas time...
Tuesday
Making Peace With What Is
This is one of the main thrusts of the Abraham-Hicks teachings. Sometimes we can’t change the outer circumstances as quickly as we would like – and sometimes we’ve made choices that we regret which land us in less than perfect situations.
But as what we think, what we feel and what we receive are always a perfect match then it’s really important to make peace with the now that we have created up to this moment.
To do that, all we really have to do is acknowledge that we created the situation. And by making peace with it in that way, we can at least ensure that we won’t create it again.
Making peace does not mean going into denial as in 'it's fine...I'm fine...' when you're not - and it's not about gritting your teeth and enduring because it's 'good' or 'worthy' to do so - it's about seeking for the better thought in a difficult situation and building blocks to happier thoughts in order to reclaim your power.
One of my favourite phrases at a challenging time is Catherine Ponder’s ‘I can hardly wait to see the good that comes from this!’ Once you can say that, then you’re on your way to something better.
We’ve been back from Montana for nearly a month now but that amazing holiday is still warm in my heart. And there was a lovely example of making peace with the now within it.
Our friends, Ris and Joe run an impressive Leadership Coaching company. They use horses to help people realise how they relate to others at work and play and during our visit they wanted to give both Peter (now re-named with his Native American Indian name of Lion!) and me a session with the horses in the Round.
What you do is to wander among their seven very different horses and pick one that you want to work with through your intuition. You’ll always pick the right one. Then you and that horse go into the Round (a circular corral) and either Ris or Joe teaches you how that horse and you are just the same and how to gain each other’s trust.
I was really keen to do this as I’ve always loved horses and ridden since I was nine. Lion wasn’t so keen because he’s a bit wary of big animals but he was up for giving it a go.
The first bit of making peace with now was when Ris and Joe simply had too much work to do to be able to take time out to work with the horses and us during our stay. For a day or so I allowed that to unsettle me a bit – you know the kind of thing; hanging around in case instead of just going out and doing something else that I wanted to do and trusting that all would be well.
But once I’d come to terms that it might not happen at all and if it didn’t, that was okay, and I’d had a lot of fun walking in the horses’ huge field with them and grooming several of them, then I was absolutely at peace with it.
Then, of course, Ris found the time...
It was early evening and I’d just led a workshop at the local Unity Church so I wanted a little time to gather my thoughts so Lion went first. I just wandered among the horses a little at the same time as him and was quite sure that, when my time came, I wanted to work with Billy, a young red-roan appaloosa mustang who was broken to the saddle but very shy.
Lion went into the Round and time passed as he and Walker, his horse, began to get to know each other. It was Montana in late October and evening and it started getting seriously cold.
Time went on and it became very clear to me that the sun was about to set and time would run out for me to have my turn. And we were leaving the next day. So, frozen to the bone, I started working on making peace with that.
Oh God it was cold! But I didn’t want to go inside because I was fascinated by what Lion and Walker and Ris were doing. And I was so pleased to see Lion working with a horse. And of course, I love horses and can hang around them whenever I want to – I used to have my own horse a while back and I did some learnt-from-a-book horse whispering with her (to very limited effect I must admit!). And I was just so thrilled to see Lion losing his fear of horses and realising that both he and Walker were getting into an incredible accord.
So I made peace with the situation and watched Lion and Walker and the amazing, totally glorious orange and crimson sunset across the mountains of the sacred Bozeman valley and I realised how utterly, utterly lucky I am.
But I was still awfully cold! So I sent up a swift prayer to be able to endure out there until Lion had finished – and within 30 seconds there was a warm breath on my cheek. Billy the mustang had walked quietly up behind me. He put his head over my shoulder and placed his chest against my back warming me through. It was glorious.
I knew from Ris that Billy never approached a human voluntarily so this was amazing – and when she saw what was happening she was as thrilled as I was.
Once Lion and Walker had finished, I patted Billy’s neck and walked forward to congratulate my husband. And Billy followed me. He did what’s known in horse whispering circles as ‘join-up.’ It’s the biggest mark of trust a horse can offer. And he did it for me! And all I had done was stand, watching my husband and making peace with the situation.
It was one of the best moments of my life – I kid you not. I was so thrilled. And so chuffed when Ris telephoned her husband, Joe, to tell him all about Billy and me – because Billy had never, ever done that before in the Round, let alone out of it.
So this month, whenever there’s a tricky situation, or even a slightly uncomfortable one - hardly likely over Christmas I know (!), and see if you can make peace with it. Just let go of the resentment with a more cheerful thought about how you are the one responsible for your life and that you created the situation that you are in. Just knowing that, and owning it means that you are already creating a better future. Then see what Christmas miracles may come for you.
Wishing you a wonderful Solstice/Christmas season – a blessed and sacred time.
But as what we think, what we feel and what we receive are always a perfect match then it’s really important to make peace with the now that we have created up to this moment.
To do that, all we really have to do is acknowledge that we created the situation. And by making peace with it in that way, we can at least ensure that we won’t create it again.
Making peace does not mean going into denial as in 'it's fine...I'm fine...' when you're not - and it's not about gritting your teeth and enduring because it's 'good' or 'worthy' to do so - it's about seeking for the better thought in a difficult situation and building blocks to happier thoughts in order to reclaim your power.
One of my favourite phrases at a challenging time is Catherine Ponder’s ‘I can hardly wait to see the good that comes from this!’ Once you can say that, then you’re on your way to something better.
We’ve been back from Montana for nearly a month now but that amazing holiday is still warm in my heart. And there was a lovely example of making peace with the now within it.
Our friends, Ris and Joe run an impressive Leadership Coaching company. They use horses to help people realise how they relate to others at work and play and during our visit they wanted to give both Peter (now re-named with his Native American Indian name of Lion!) and me a session with the horses in the Round.
What you do is to wander among their seven very different horses and pick one that you want to work with through your intuition. You’ll always pick the right one. Then you and that horse go into the Round (a circular corral) and either Ris or Joe teaches you how that horse and you are just the same and how to gain each other’s trust.
I was really keen to do this as I’ve always loved horses and ridden since I was nine. Lion wasn’t so keen because he’s a bit wary of big animals but he was up for giving it a go.
The first bit of making peace with now was when Ris and Joe simply had too much work to do to be able to take time out to work with the horses and us during our stay. For a day or so I allowed that to unsettle me a bit – you know the kind of thing; hanging around in case instead of just going out and doing something else that I wanted to do and trusting that all would be well.
But once I’d come to terms that it might not happen at all and if it didn’t, that was okay, and I’d had a lot of fun walking in the horses’ huge field with them and grooming several of them, then I was absolutely at peace with it.
Then, of course, Ris found the time...
It was early evening and I’d just led a workshop at the local Unity Church so I wanted a little time to gather my thoughts so Lion went first. I just wandered among the horses a little at the same time as him and was quite sure that, when my time came, I wanted to work with Billy, a young red-roan appaloosa mustang who was broken to the saddle but very shy.
Lion went into the Round and time passed as he and Walker, his horse, began to get to know each other. It was Montana in late October and evening and it started getting seriously cold.
Time went on and it became very clear to me that the sun was about to set and time would run out for me to have my turn. And we were leaving the next day. So, frozen to the bone, I started working on making peace with that.
Oh God it was cold! But I didn’t want to go inside because I was fascinated by what Lion and Walker and Ris were doing. And I was so pleased to see Lion working with a horse. And of course, I love horses and can hang around them whenever I want to – I used to have my own horse a while back and I did some learnt-from-a-book horse whispering with her (to very limited effect I must admit!). And I was just so thrilled to see Lion losing his fear of horses and realising that both he and Walker were getting into an incredible accord.
So I made peace with the situation and watched Lion and Walker and the amazing, totally glorious orange and crimson sunset across the mountains of the sacred Bozeman valley and I realised how utterly, utterly lucky I am.
But I was still awfully cold! So I sent up a swift prayer to be able to endure out there until Lion had finished – and within 30 seconds there was a warm breath on my cheek. Billy the mustang had walked quietly up behind me. He put his head over my shoulder and placed his chest against my back warming me through. It was glorious.
I knew from Ris that Billy never approached a human voluntarily so this was amazing – and when she saw what was happening she was as thrilled as I was.
Once Lion and Walker had finished, I patted Billy’s neck and walked forward to congratulate my husband. And Billy followed me. He did what’s known in horse whispering circles as ‘join-up.’ It’s the biggest mark of trust a horse can offer. And he did it for me! And all I had done was stand, watching my husband and making peace with the situation.
It was one of the best moments of my life – I kid you not. I was so thrilled. And so chuffed when Ris telephoned her husband, Joe, to tell him all about Billy and me – because Billy had never, ever done that before in the Round, let alone out of it.
So this month, whenever there’s a tricky situation, or even a slightly uncomfortable one - hardly likely over Christmas I know (!), and see if you can make peace with it. Just let go of the resentment with a more cheerful thought about how you are the one responsible for your life and that you created the situation that you are in. Just knowing that, and owning it means that you are already creating a better future. Then see what Christmas miracles may come for you.
Wishing you a wonderful Solstice/Christmas season – a blessed and sacred time.
Let Go and Let God - a story of Montana folks.
Mike Dooley refers to the human desire to know exactly how things can possibly work out as the ‘cursed hows.’ He’s right. So often we think of a desired outcome and then scupper our ability to attract it by trying to work out how on Earth it could possibly happen.
We fuss about possible outcomes, what other people have to do to make it happen (and often don’t trust them to do their part and even try to take control ourselves) and we so often come to the conclusion that it is impossible.
Nine years ago, I did the impossible by legally bringing the first ever dog back from the USA to the UK without quarantine. It was about the time that Passports for Pets was setting up in the UK – but only for animals from Europe; America was excluded. This is how it came about...
For the Love of Dog.
‘Don’t make me choose,” I said miserably.
'You shouldn’t even be thinking of choosing!' he answered.
But at that horrible moment I knew that a psychological life-or-death decision was necessary. Life meaning my authentic self, death being the life another person wanted me to choose – no matter how well-meaning he might be.
He wanted me to take my 10-year-old beagle, Didcot to the Humane Society to be re-homed, then come home to England and forget our ‘failed venture’ of emigrating to Montana. Bringing the dog home was not an option.
The only available answer was the one so often quoted in spiritual circles – 'Let Go and Let God.'
But how?
To cut a very long story short, we had emigrated to Bozeman, Montana from London, England to run a cafe. But my husband’s US business visa had failed after less than a year and he was back in England. I had my own visa and could stay in the USA while he tried to sort it out with the American Embassy in London. The phone call that day was to tell me that their answer was ‘No.’ As a couple, we had no alternative but to try and sell the business and go back to England. If I chose to stay, the marriage was over.
In those days, the Passports for Pets scheme which enables a pet to change continents without six months in quarantine was not available from the USA to England; the scheme was due to set up in Europe only in one year’s time. So, Didi could not go from the USA to England without six months quarantine in a cage. She was too old to cope with that even if I could.
I bought Didcot, Didi for short, two months after my first husband died. She was a sassy, loyal and incredibly cute beagle – and she was an immutable part of the package when I got married the second time. And I knew, that if I left her, and the marriage – which had been badly scarred by the Montana experiment - failed anyway, then I would lose on all counts. Much as I loved my husband – and much as his intentions were honourable – this was an impasse. I was not leaving Didcot behind.
Since coming to Montana, we had both attended Unity Church in Bozeman every Sunday and loved its energy and the vibrancy of the minister, Philip Zemke. In the UK we’d heard of Unity – and read a lot of Catherine Ponder’s work – and this particular church was truly inspirational. I knew too about Silent Unity and, after putting the phone down on that horrible call from England, I went to see Philip
He listened to my tearful ranting and then said: 'Honey, don't tell the Lord what you don't want. Tell Him what you do want.'
'I want to get Didi back to England without quarantine,' I said. 'I want to sell this cafe in less than three months. I want someone to help me run it in the meantime because it was my husband’s cafe and I have no experience.'
'Well let’s pray!' he said and we did.
But it was at the end of the prayer when I started the worrying and fussing again that Philip said the words that I will remember forever – and I always pass on to anyone who might be in a similar situation.
'Honey,' he said. 'Get outta the Lord’s way! You’re standing right in his way and he can’t get around you if you block his path. All you gotta do is ask for what you want; then you just gotta let go and have some fun. Go riding quarter horses in the sunset and watch the eagles. Just get outta his way and your prayer will be answered.'
On this particular occasion, as everything I wanted was verging on the impossible and I was so terrified that I hardly knew how to breathe, I didn’t really have much of a choice. It was trust or give up.
So two days later, on Sunday morning at Unity in Bozeman, I stood up and said:
'I need a buyer for the cafe; I need a cafe manager to help me run a business that I don’t understand with the Taste of Bozeman Festival in two weeks’ time. My dog can’t go to England but she could go to Europe, so I need to find a dog-lover who lives in Europe who would look after her there while I go back home and work something out. I need somewhere to stay here in Bozeman as I have to move out of my house in a week. I need help to work out US to Europe immigration for a dog. And I need someone to lend me a quarter horse so I can go riding in the sunset and watch eagles.'
A hand went up at once and Charles Carrell, the Unity Musical Director, who had catering experience and didn’t need to earn money at that time, volunteered to act as unpaid manager for the cafe. And beautiful Robin, the actress, offered to introduce me to her friend Charlie who need help exercising his three quarter horses.
What a start! Emboldened, I started talking to people on the backstreets of Bozeman when I walked Didi in the mornings. 'Cute dog,' they’d say.
'Do you know anywhere we could rent?' I’d answer. 'Do you know any dog-lovers in Europe?'
Within two days, two people had offered us accommodation, and someone’s cousin had telephoned me from Spain to say she would care for Didi, She said something very important too: ‘Now you know someone can help, you can relax. I don’t suppose for a moment your dog will need to come to us but the fact that you know she can means that something better can turn up.’
She too was saying ‘Let go and let God.’
And each evening, Charlie and I rode his quarter horses in the sunset, watching the eagles.
But the cafe didn’t sell.
I telephoned the Ministry of Agriculture in England and asked whether taking a dog to Europe from the USA and then registering it as a European dog meant that Didi could be eligible for Passports for Pets when it started up.
‘We’d never thought of that!’ said the woman at the other end. ‘I’ll check.’
She called back, quite excited. ‘We’ve had a lot of Americans upset that the scheme doesn’t work for them,’ she said. ‘But your idea of taking your dog to Europe and staying there for seven months while the process goes through is fine. I’m telling other Americans that already so thank you.’
My goodness – we were even helping others!
That very night, an old friend of my husband’s emailed out of the blue, revealing that he actually owned a little house in Andalucia, Spain. I phoned him asking if I could possibly rent it. He was outraged. ‘Rent?’ he said. ‘Rent? Mi casa es su casa! I will not charge you rent! You stay in my house for as long as you need. And your husband too if he wants to. Rent indeed!’
I booked a flight from Seattle to Malaga for two months’ time.
But the cafe didn’t sell.
There was another problem: Charles the unpaid cafe manager was doing brilliantly but he was away at a convention for the weekend of the famous Taste of Bozeman and neither I nor the cafe staff had the slightest idea what to do. We couldn’t pull out – I desperately needed the revenue to make the wages and the cafe’s rent. We could sort out food but knew nothing about Heath Inspection requirements or what equipment to use outside.
On the morning of the great event, Katerina, one of the Unity church congregation came in with a card for me – nine years later, it’s still in my treasures box. It said ‘God is looking after you. Just trust. Let go and let God.’
I think I was just about getting the hint!
An hour later, Al Kilmurray, a former chef and a member of Unity Church, walked into the cafe and simply took over. He organised it all; we just had do what he told us to do. By lunchtime he’d sorted it and gone.
Apart from accidentally shutting the Health Inspector in the freezer for half an hour (she had gone in to test the temperatures) we were all set. But just as we were about to put up our stall in the street, it began to pour with rain. A total disaster for The Taste of Bozeman as not a single stall could go up. Oh God! What was I going to do about the wages and the rent?
As Robin, the staff and I watched the floods in the streets, Al walked in covered in plastic sheeting.
‘Tea!’ he bellowed. ‘Make tea! People need tea not coffee at a time like this and you’re a Brit; you know how to make tea!’
He went outside and started yelling ‘Warm yourself up with a cup of English tea!’
And they came – the people whose dinner had been rained off, came in for a cup of tea. And stayed and ate all the food we had prepared.
Robin, Al and I worked like ten people and by midnight, the rent and the wages were paid. I never saw Al again. He just went back out of state. He died last month, and by one of those strange sychronicities of life, I was privileged to be able to attend his memorial when I returned to Bozeman two weeks ago,
And every night, I rode Spuds the quarter horse with Charlie and watched the eagles fly.
And every Sunday I went to Unity where Philip and the congregation continued to pray for Didi and me.
But the cafe didn’t sell.
Let go and Let God...
All the officials taking care of Didi’s paperwork were so helpful (although every bit of it was new to them). When I realised it all had to be translated into Spanish, Katerina from Unity translated it for me. When I found out that we were six days out of time for Didi’s required Rabies vaccination, the kind vet ‘accidentally’ back-dated the certificate.
‘Your dog is already immune from the vaccine she had less than a year ago in England,’ he said. ‘It’s not a problem. It’s obviously God’s will that you are going to Spain.’
One hitch – completely my fault – I forgot to send the $3 dollar fee to the Spanish Embassy in California for Didi’s export visa. Without that, they couldn’t issue it and we had only three days left before we flew.
My loving hosts, Ris Higgins and Joe Esparza, who run Leadership Outfitters, an amazing executive coaching business that includes horse whispering, tried everything – they called everyone they knew in LA asking them to drive $3 round to the embassy; they phoned a flower delivery company asking for a bouquet with $3 in it to be delivered. They asked a courier company to courier round the cash if we paid for the courier price plus $3. Everyone said no.
We were stuck.
‘No we’re not,’ said Ris. ‘We pray! And then we call the Embassy lady back.’
So that’s just what we did. And when I called her, she said that she’d been thinking about the sweet little dog. And if we FedExed the $3 to her with FedEx reply-paid and faxed her a receipt proving that it had been sent, then she would release Didi’s visa.
The next morning my ride to the airport in Seattle arrived ... Of course we had a lift for the two-day drive to Seattle! I hardly even bothered worrying about that one. My friend Lisa Jeffers from Unity offered to drive us - and Didi’s huge Sky Kennel - in her 4x4.
Just as we were loading up, there was a phone call from the Real Estate Broker.
The cafe had sold.
There was just time to stop off and sign the sale papers before I left Bozeman...
Seven months later, Didcot the beagle was the first dog ever into the UK from the USA, via Spain, on the British Passports for Pets scheme. She lived happily with me in London for four more years.
Thank you Silent Unity and Unity of Bozeman. You taught me how to let go and let God.
In loving memory: Alan Kilmurray.
We fuss about possible outcomes, what other people have to do to make it happen (and often don’t trust them to do their part and even try to take control ourselves) and we so often come to the conclusion that it is impossible.
Nine years ago, I did the impossible by legally bringing the first ever dog back from the USA to the UK without quarantine. It was about the time that Passports for Pets was setting up in the UK – but only for animals from Europe; America was excluded. This is how it came about...
For the Love of Dog.
‘Don’t make me choose,” I said miserably.
'You shouldn’t even be thinking of choosing!' he answered.
But at that horrible moment I knew that a psychological life-or-death decision was necessary. Life meaning my authentic self, death being the life another person wanted me to choose – no matter how well-meaning he might be.
He wanted me to take my 10-year-old beagle, Didcot to the Humane Society to be re-homed, then come home to England and forget our ‘failed venture’ of emigrating to Montana. Bringing the dog home was not an option.
The only available answer was the one so often quoted in spiritual circles – 'Let Go and Let God.'
But how?
To cut a very long story short, we had emigrated to Bozeman, Montana from London, England to run a cafe. But my husband’s US business visa had failed after less than a year and he was back in England. I had my own visa and could stay in the USA while he tried to sort it out with the American Embassy in London. The phone call that day was to tell me that their answer was ‘No.’ As a couple, we had no alternative but to try and sell the business and go back to England. If I chose to stay, the marriage was over.
In those days, the Passports for Pets scheme which enables a pet to change continents without six months in quarantine was not available from the USA to England; the scheme was due to set up in Europe only in one year’s time. So, Didi could not go from the USA to England without six months quarantine in a cage. She was too old to cope with that even if I could.
I bought Didcot, Didi for short, two months after my first husband died. She was a sassy, loyal and incredibly cute beagle – and she was an immutable part of the package when I got married the second time. And I knew, that if I left her, and the marriage – which had been badly scarred by the Montana experiment - failed anyway, then I would lose on all counts. Much as I loved my husband – and much as his intentions were honourable – this was an impasse. I was not leaving Didcot behind.
Since coming to Montana, we had both attended Unity Church in Bozeman every Sunday and loved its energy and the vibrancy of the minister, Philip Zemke. In the UK we’d heard of Unity – and read a lot of Catherine Ponder’s work – and this particular church was truly inspirational. I knew too about Silent Unity and, after putting the phone down on that horrible call from England, I went to see Philip
He listened to my tearful ranting and then said: 'Honey, don't tell the Lord what you don't want. Tell Him what you do want.'
'I want to get Didi back to England without quarantine,' I said. 'I want to sell this cafe in less than three months. I want someone to help me run it in the meantime because it was my husband’s cafe and I have no experience.'
'Well let’s pray!' he said and we did.
But it was at the end of the prayer when I started the worrying and fussing again that Philip said the words that I will remember forever – and I always pass on to anyone who might be in a similar situation.
'Honey,' he said. 'Get outta the Lord’s way! You’re standing right in his way and he can’t get around you if you block his path. All you gotta do is ask for what you want; then you just gotta let go and have some fun. Go riding quarter horses in the sunset and watch the eagles. Just get outta his way and your prayer will be answered.'
On this particular occasion, as everything I wanted was verging on the impossible and I was so terrified that I hardly knew how to breathe, I didn’t really have much of a choice. It was trust or give up.
So two days later, on Sunday morning at Unity in Bozeman, I stood up and said:
'I need a buyer for the cafe; I need a cafe manager to help me run a business that I don’t understand with the Taste of Bozeman Festival in two weeks’ time. My dog can’t go to England but she could go to Europe, so I need to find a dog-lover who lives in Europe who would look after her there while I go back home and work something out. I need somewhere to stay here in Bozeman as I have to move out of my house in a week. I need help to work out US to Europe immigration for a dog. And I need someone to lend me a quarter horse so I can go riding in the sunset and watch eagles.'
A hand went up at once and Charles Carrell, the Unity Musical Director, who had catering experience and didn’t need to earn money at that time, volunteered to act as unpaid manager for the cafe. And beautiful Robin, the actress, offered to introduce me to her friend Charlie who need help exercising his three quarter horses.
What a start! Emboldened, I started talking to people on the backstreets of Bozeman when I walked Didi in the mornings. 'Cute dog,' they’d say.
'Do you know anywhere we could rent?' I’d answer. 'Do you know any dog-lovers in Europe?'
Within two days, two people had offered us accommodation, and someone’s cousin had telephoned me from Spain to say she would care for Didi, She said something very important too: ‘Now you know someone can help, you can relax. I don’t suppose for a moment your dog will need to come to us but the fact that you know she can means that something better can turn up.’
She too was saying ‘Let go and let God.’
And each evening, Charlie and I rode his quarter horses in the sunset, watching the eagles.
But the cafe didn’t sell.
I telephoned the Ministry of Agriculture in England and asked whether taking a dog to Europe from the USA and then registering it as a European dog meant that Didi could be eligible for Passports for Pets when it started up.
‘We’d never thought of that!’ said the woman at the other end. ‘I’ll check.’
She called back, quite excited. ‘We’ve had a lot of Americans upset that the scheme doesn’t work for them,’ she said. ‘But your idea of taking your dog to Europe and staying there for seven months while the process goes through is fine. I’m telling other Americans that already so thank you.’
My goodness – we were even helping others!
That very night, an old friend of my husband’s emailed out of the blue, revealing that he actually owned a little house in Andalucia, Spain. I phoned him asking if I could possibly rent it. He was outraged. ‘Rent?’ he said. ‘Rent? Mi casa es su casa! I will not charge you rent! You stay in my house for as long as you need. And your husband too if he wants to. Rent indeed!’
I booked a flight from Seattle to Malaga for two months’ time.
But the cafe didn’t sell.
There was another problem: Charles the unpaid cafe manager was doing brilliantly but he was away at a convention for the weekend of the famous Taste of Bozeman and neither I nor the cafe staff had the slightest idea what to do. We couldn’t pull out – I desperately needed the revenue to make the wages and the cafe’s rent. We could sort out food but knew nothing about Heath Inspection requirements or what equipment to use outside.
On the morning of the great event, Katerina, one of the Unity church congregation came in with a card for me – nine years later, it’s still in my treasures box. It said ‘God is looking after you. Just trust. Let go and let God.’
I think I was just about getting the hint!
An hour later, Al Kilmurray, a former chef and a member of Unity Church, walked into the cafe and simply took over. He organised it all; we just had do what he told us to do. By lunchtime he’d sorted it and gone.
Apart from accidentally shutting the Health Inspector in the freezer for half an hour (she had gone in to test the temperatures) we were all set. But just as we were about to put up our stall in the street, it began to pour with rain. A total disaster for The Taste of Bozeman as not a single stall could go up. Oh God! What was I going to do about the wages and the rent?
As Robin, the staff and I watched the floods in the streets, Al walked in covered in plastic sheeting.
‘Tea!’ he bellowed. ‘Make tea! People need tea not coffee at a time like this and you’re a Brit; you know how to make tea!’
He went outside and started yelling ‘Warm yourself up with a cup of English tea!’
And they came – the people whose dinner had been rained off, came in for a cup of tea. And stayed and ate all the food we had prepared.
Robin, Al and I worked like ten people and by midnight, the rent and the wages were paid. I never saw Al again. He just went back out of state. He died last month, and by one of those strange sychronicities of life, I was privileged to be able to attend his memorial when I returned to Bozeman two weeks ago,
And every night, I rode Spuds the quarter horse with Charlie and watched the eagles fly.
And every Sunday I went to Unity where Philip and the congregation continued to pray for Didi and me.
But the cafe didn’t sell.
Let go and Let God...
All the officials taking care of Didi’s paperwork were so helpful (although every bit of it was new to them). When I realised it all had to be translated into Spanish, Katerina from Unity translated it for me. When I found out that we were six days out of time for Didi’s required Rabies vaccination, the kind vet ‘accidentally’ back-dated the certificate.
‘Your dog is already immune from the vaccine she had less than a year ago in England,’ he said. ‘It’s not a problem. It’s obviously God’s will that you are going to Spain.’
One hitch – completely my fault – I forgot to send the $3 dollar fee to the Spanish Embassy in California for Didi’s export visa. Without that, they couldn’t issue it and we had only three days left before we flew.
My loving hosts, Ris Higgins and Joe Esparza, who run Leadership Outfitters, an amazing executive coaching business that includes horse whispering, tried everything – they called everyone they knew in LA asking them to drive $3 round to the embassy; they phoned a flower delivery company asking for a bouquet with $3 in it to be delivered. They asked a courier company to courier round the cash if we paid for the courier price plus $3. Everyone said no.
We were stuck.
‘No we’re not,’ said Ris. ‘We pray! And then we call the Embassy lady back.’
So that’s just what we did. And when I called her, she said that she’d been thinking about the sweet little dog. And if we FedExed the $3 to her with FedEx reply-paid and faxed her a receipt proving that it had been sent, then she would release Didi’s visa.
The next morning my ride to the airport in Seattle arrived ... Of course we had a lift for the two-day drive to Seattle! I hardly even bothered worrying about that one. My friend Lisa Jeffers from Unity offered to drive us - and Didi’s huge Sky Kennel - in her 4x4.
Just as we were loading up, there was a phone call from the Real Estate Broker.
The cafe had sold.
There was just time to stop off and sign the sale papers before I left Bozeman...
Seven months later, Didcot the beagle was the first dog ever into the UK from the USA, via Spain, on the British Passports for Pets scheme. She lived happily with me in London for four more years.
Thank you Silent Unity and Unity of Bozeman. You taught me how to let go and let God.
In loving memory: Alan Kilmurray.
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