I started Fearlessly Feral because I believe, truly and strongly, that people can live wild and free. Yes, it is possible to live amazing, incredible, lush, luxurious lives free from limitations of any kind. Yes, even health limitations.
This isn’t pie in the sky stuff. It isn’t wishful thinking and it isn’t airy fairy.
I use myself as an example in my work because I live a Fearlessly Feral life. Not because I’ve had it easy. On the contrary, I used to think there was no road to get from the life I was living to the life I live today. I was right. So I built my own damn road. They said I should have died. They said I couldn’t function in society without drugs. They said I would suffer my entire life. They said all sorts of things. I didn’t believe any of it. I set out to prove them wrong and in the process discovered a way of living that is so beautiful I want to share how I did it with all of you.
Does it take work? You betcha. It takes work of the kind that most people think can’t be done, because it involves changing the way we think and believe. It involves changing who we are at deep fundamental levels. And I’ll be honest, it is one of my greatest frustrations that so many people balk at that. But it is also one of my greatest rewards that so many other people are willing to move toward it.
I am moved to write this today because lately I’ve witnessed so much limitation in people’s lives. I watched one man walking down the street the other day. I’ve known this man for years. He walked slowly, a little hunched over, like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. I got so sad that he was living the way he is living. I want to see him at his full potential, enjoying life. And he isn’t. Regularly I have conversations with folks who are experiencing some sort of limitation in their lives. They hate their jobs, they are in unsatisfying relationships, they have some pretty gnarly health issues. And I know that all of that is not necessary, and I affirm their good for them. But when I was in the studies that showed me how to do the stuff I do, they taught me that I must meet people where they are at. Perhaps. I’ve never been satisfied with that. Oh, I can meet them there, and do, because if I don’t they can’t hear me or any of the messages sent their way. Because I know they are getting messages from other areas besides myself. But I can also encourage them to move from where they are at to a better place, and I begin doing that fairly quickly.
And so I do. And we are now back full circle to Fearlessly Feral. This is why I speak. Why I write. Why I do the podcasts. Why I do the workshops and the retreats.
Because I believe it is possible for everyone to live Fearlessly Feral.
And may I suggest that it is your job also? Because let’s face it, a mold is a hollow form that gives shape to something. It is also a precursor, meaning it is based on the past. Now, follow this down the proverbial rabbit hole and what you discover is that living in the past is like living within the confines of a mold, a mold that was created by the perceptions you had at the time, a mold that was created by values and mores installed by people other than yourself.
Ernest Holmes said that “principle is not bound by precedent.” What he meant by this is that we limit ourselves to a mold when we base our current principles on things that happened in the past.
Yes, those things happened. Yes, we sometimes need to process them. Yes, sometimes those things were traumatic, hurt a lot, and at the time, we wondered if were going to survive this one.
But if we allowed ourselves to feel all the feels, to grieve, to get angry, to be sad, and then to do our forgiveness work, and then to move into that beautiful new place of creativity, guess what? We broke the mold. We weren’t limiting ourselves by saying things such as, “I will never do THAT again!” Instead, we broke the mold and opened ourselves up to the new so that we could experience all the wonder and joy and beauty that life has to offer.
And we are in a perfect time to move through the entire process I just described. Who among us is not experiencing the trauma and fear created by the assault on individual freedoms inherent in the policies instituted by the current regime? I know I have, and continue to do so to a certain extent.
But I’ve come to realize that it was part of the strategy to do so many things so quickly. It threw us off balance. The fear and the dismay was so great that many of us went into survival mode, which is basically a version of flight or fight.
Living like that isn’t pleasant, and if we aren’t careful, we will form a brand new mold that consists of living in flight or fight. I recognized that within myself and so I took some pretty drastic steps to not form a new mold of fear-based limitation in my life. Today, I am in a new normal that feels pretty good.
Last night I had the opportunity to read something I don’t usually read, in a group setting. The quote (by anonymous) that got me was this: “the more I’m willing to act differently, the more exciting my life is.”
And my brain automatically went to this place: precisely how do I act differently?
I don’t know about you, but when I’m operating in a mold, life tends to get stagnant. Perhaps a bit boring. And very limiting. And as much as I might want to act differently, I find it impossible to do so. This is what happened to me the first couple of months of this year. It did not feel good. You’d better believe I took some drastic steps, which really aren’t all that drastic. They just involve a bit more discipline in doing my normal spiritual practices, as well as incorporating a couple of new spiritual practices into my life.
I was talking with someone yesterday who doesn’t do very well with change. She asked me to affirm for her that she dealt better with the recent changes in her life. And while I was in the process of speaking my words of affirmation for her, out came what I know to be true about change: we are safe even in the midst of the uncertainty that change sometimes brings.
Because really, when you get right down to it, why don’t people like change? It’s because it feels unsafe. And why does it feel unsafe? It’s because we are basing our feelings of security and safety on the known. On things being the way they’ve always been. We are basing our feelings of safety and security on outer things, usually on physical things such as belongings and even our shelter: our home. What works better is to base our feelings of security and safety on what is permanent, what is never changing. And that thing is the higher self within us. Some people call it god. Find. Others call it the universe. Fine. I call it the Force when I’m feeling playful. But one thing never changes no matter what I call It. The nature of God Itself never changes. It is always present, always good, always a loving presence that gives me a feeling of power and safety. The Force is where I get my faith, and when I have faith, everything is safe.
I’m reminded of what the Buddhists say about attachment: our suffering is caused by our attachment to things, not by those things going away. Because let’s face it, they always go away. People go away, things go away. It’s just the way life is.
I’m blessed because I learned at an early age that I had to create my own safety and security within myself because I did not feel safe in the world. I did so by retreating within myself. Of course, I was missing a key piece of successfully navigating loss and change back then. I didn’t yet know back then that there was this Spirit of the Universe, this Stuff that Is, this Energy Force, this Thing, that existed inside of me. An inner place of strength, peace and power. An inner place of safety and security. I just knew that what was out there wasn’t safe. I wasn’t really conscious of where I retreated to when I retreated, but today I know it was a form of disassociation, which basically means I disconnected from anything physical, as well as my feelings. It took me a long time to reconnect. Today, my default is still disassociation, but I recognize when I’m in that state far earlier than I ever used to, and I know how to get out of it.
Today when I go within, I am not disassociating. Today, when I go within, I know where I am going. It is to that place of stillness inside of me, that place where I can connect with my Higher Self. And when I am connected with my Higher Self, no outer changes have the power to make me feel fearful or uncomfortable, and in connecting with that Higher Self, I then am able to reconnect to the rest of me.
And when I am connected, I LOVE change! Because I know without a doubt that sooner or later, whatever change is happening ultimately results in improvement for me. Either a better way of living or better circumstances or a shift that moves me closer to enlightenment. Sooner or later, all the changes in my life result in more wisdom, more clarity, a more successful way of living and showing up in the world.
This is why, in my work with others, facilitating successful navigation through change and loss with them, I am always happy to see that they’ve had losses or changes in their lives.
Don’t get me wrong. I have empathy for them. I know the pain they are feeling. I am well familiar with the devastation that loss engenders. I have felt the dismay, the betrayal. I’ve experienced the confusion and the anger. I get it. And we have to allow those things.
This, by the way, it what processing is all about. When we have a loss, part of grief work is to simply allow the feelings, without judgement. Because if we don’t allow them, they are going to settle inside of us and fester and come out fighting, perhaps with a diagnosis of some exotic disease that is difficult or perhaps impossible to cure. Or maybe with a psychological issue that causes problems for us in our lives. We have to allow those feelings to move through us. I guarantee it: if you allow yourself to cry, you will, eventually, be able to stop crying. I say this because when my husband died, I thought that if I allowed myself to cry I would never be able to stop. I finally allowed it, and yes, I was able to stop. And by allowing myself to cry, the grief became less and less acute. Today I just miss him.
Loss is part of life. Change is part of life.
Our job is to successfully deal with it.
And if we successfully deal with it, eventually we might just discover that we can instigate change in our lives, when we find ourselves in a mold that is limiting us.
So let’s take a look at molds. What they are, and how to break them. In this podcast/blog, I am going to list the steps I took to get out of the state of mind I was in the first couple of months of this year.
Then I’m going give you the opportunity to sign up for a class that I will offer, a class in which I will accompany you on your journey through each of the steps. By the end of the class, you will not only know how to break the mold, but you will also have broken it. You will have moved into a new way of living.
1. Acknowledge that you are feeling something that is not pleasant to you.
2. Have a desire to change it
3. Learn about ways to discover and connect with that higher self within you.
4. Be willing to really take a look at the feelings you are feeling.
5. Forgive.
6. Create a new mold.
There you have it: six weeks. At the end of those six weeks you will not only be living in a new mold, a new way of being, but you will be better able to handle all the stuff that life is throwing at you. AND you will be better able to respond to it.
This class will be held on Tuesdays, via zoom, from 4 to 5:30 PM Pacific time. Cost is $150. Start date is May the 6th, with class running through June 10.
It isn’t trivial! I had a grand plan, a strategy with my social media. My grand plan consisted of providing people with tidbits of my daily life, to peak their interest in my work. My vision was for them to ask themselves: “how does she show up like that every day?” And then they would go and check out my work. That grand plan worked for years. My followers grew and I have podcast listeners in 32 countries! Pretty cool deal. But then some shit happened. We all know about it. The country as we knew it now is being dismantled. There is gnarly stuff going on, people are getting hurt, and it’s bad. And all of a sudden, posting tidbits about my daily life just seems so trivial. But I was having a conversation this morning with a friend. It was one of those deep conversations, we were talking about spiritual bypass and balance and Oneness and knowing and being the truth of who we are, and about being aware of what is going on yet resting in the joy and truth of who and what we really are. We talked about being ministers (even though he isn’t quite yet a minister) and giving talks and being open to downloads from spirit and about our own healing and transitions. Our talk lasted almost an hour. And during our conversation, I shared with him that I had made the best chili rellanos EVER for dinner last night, and that I had one for breakfast and it was every bit as good as the one I made last night, and yet I felt guilty, or wrong about sharing it like I used to do because there was so much stuff going on in the world. It felt trivial to share it. And he voiced that it wasn’t trivial. That people needed to see the good in life, they needed to see that life goes on, no matter what. They needed to see that all my work doing spiritual practices resulted in a great balance between being aware and being able to still enjoy life and be effective in my work. So I’m sharing my chili relleno success with you. I’m not sure what made this batch the best ever, but it really is. Chili rellenos are labor intensive, and I came home on Sunday afternoon from a pretty long and eventful day. I had given a talk at Unity at the Lake (Lake Tahoe) in the morning then had lunch with a friend (another deep discussion) then went and performed a wedding. I got home around 4:30 and there were horses to take care of, dogs to pay attention to and kitties to feed. I did all that and still, chile rellenos were calling my name. So I got out the eggs, flour, chilis, jack cheese and a can of Old El Paso mild red enchilada sauce and went to work. Broiled the chilis, let them cool, peeled off the skin. Separated the eggs, beat the whites into a nice froth, beat the yolks, blended the two, added some cumin, salt and baking powder to the flour, cut up the jack cheese to fit into the peppers, grated some more (can you say thank all that is good for my Cuisinart?). Stuffed the peppers with the cheese, dipped into the eggs and then the flour, repeat, fry, then put them into a baking dish, cover with the cheese and the enchilada sauce and bake for 45 minutes. Best batch EVER! So there you have it. One of the rewards of taking the time to consistently and persistently do spiritual practices is that one can come home after a long day and still have the energy left over to make chili rellenos and have it be the best batch EVER! You can listen to the podcast wherever you listen to other podcasts. It is called Fearlessly Feral Living. You can also listen here: https://fearlesslyferal.buzzsprout.com
It is the end of the month, and what a month it has been right? Don’t let the daily assault on common sense and good distract you from your primary purpose. Yes, stay aware. Yes, fight back as you can. Yes, do all that.
But first do you. More than ever right now, it’s about self care. It’s about taking care of ourselves so that we can go out into the world and successfully meet the challenges that are being presented.
How on earth do we do that? I will share with you what has been working for me. I’ve changed my routine. I no longer begin my day with news and social media, and I no longer end my day with those either. Instead, I begin my day with reading my daily meditation books, with introspection, and journaling if needed. My meditation time is midday, by the way. And I end the evening with more reading of positive stuff.
Those readings help, a lot. For example, today’s reading by Mark Nepo, in his “Book of Awakening,” gave me the inspiration for this writing. It reminded me to not allow the distraction of the mess out there to make things messy inside of me. It reminded me that I have a responsibility to myself to take care of myself first. And most importantly, it reminded me that everything begins within. My beliefs lead to my thoughts which lead to my emotions which lead to my actions. So I must be aware of, and change if necessary, any beliefs and thoughts that are creating havoc in my life.
And I must remind myself of who I am and how I have promised myself I would show up in the world. With any commitment to change, there will be times when the news of the day will throw us off track and send us running back to old default settings: basically fight, flight or hide. When that happens, it is important to acknowledge that has happened and move back to equanimity. Move back to what we have promised ourselves. And we do so with compassion, forgiveness and grace.
I recently got a new iPad and when all the books got downloaded into the kindle app, they were no longer in the order of most recently read. So I had to do a search for my favorite daily readers, and some came up that I had forgotten about. This morning was a huge gift that I very much needed: I had time to read the daily entry for no less than 8 books, plus I got a few pages read of a couple more books. Heaven! While I always create time to do my foundational spiritual practices every day (connection and personal self awareness) I don’t always have time to read as I would like. Today I want to share with you some quotes that made me think, or made me remember.
This first one comes from Paul Ferrini, in his book The 12 Steps of Forgiveness: “Properly speaking there are only three states of consciousness available to us. One is love, which is eternal and unconditional. One is fear, which is temporary and conditional. And the last is forgiveness, which is a bridge from the illusion of fear to the reality of love.”
WHOA. THAT’S HUGE.
I have spent YEARS believing and knowing and teaching that there are only two states of consciousness: love or fear. The idea that there is a third state, a bridge, if you will, from fear to love, is radical for me. And yet, it answers the question of how one gets to love when one is feeling fear. I said I have believed and taught this concept for years, and many times a student will ask me, “how do I turn my fear into love?” That question has always been a difficult one for me to answer, because how I’ve done that internally is a process that I can’t put into words. It has to do with faith, or knowing. It has to do with allowing. It has to do with acknowledging and inner awareness. It has to do with all that stuff. But as I think about it none of that really addresses a process for moving from fear to faith. But now we have one. Forgiveness!
And of course I have a lot to say about forgiveness. Forgiveness is probably one of the most difficult spiritual practices to do, but it is also the most rewarding. And of course, you know that forgiveness is never ever ever about them, always about yourself. But perhaps you did not know that inside just about every book on prosperity and abundance is a forgiveness piece.
Obviously forgiveness is a big deal if we are to live happily and joyously on this earth.
And I just happen to have a way to forgive for you. A forgiveness process if you will. This is a process recently created by myself and my students in a class called 5 Gifts for an Abundant Life. We were in the class on forgiveness (there’s that connection again!) and more than one student voiced frustration that there wasn’t really a process in the class to use to forgive. So we created one. Thanks and acknowledgment go to Julia Mattis, Cindy Mesa, Jamie Russell and Sharon Anyan for helping to create this.
This process is for self forgiveness, but as Ferrini says, we can’t forgive others until we forgive ourselves.
I offer this process to you for your consideration:
1. Create a safe container by going into meditation, so that forgiveness of self is more of a heart space thing than an intellectual thing. Be gentle with yourself.
2. Identify what wants to be forgiven
3. Breathe. Honor what comes up, and don't dismiss it. Accept it without judgement 4. Ask: What am I feeling? What are my beliefs behind this feeling? Identify your limiting beliefs. More meditation might be necessary.
5. Talk about it with a practitioner, prayer partner, mentor, coach or trusted friend.
6. Resolve to change your thinking. Do a treatment: Identify what you want to replace the old belief or way of thinking, then identify how you will feel when the old way of thinking or believing is replaced, then treat for that. Ask for help from a practitioner or prayer partner if necessary.
7. Resolve to change our feelings about it, not our thoughts. courageously release my resistance, courageously surrender.
8. Set the intention every day to feel the way you identified that you want to feel. Then go about your day, trusting that your intention is coming true.
9. Make amends to yourself, which means to set things right with yourself. Sometimes the treatment and intention is enough, sometimes you might need action as well. Resolve to do things differently if needed.
10.Go forth and have fun!
Affirmation: Today I fully and completely forgive myself, thus opening myself up to joy, happiness and peace.
Fourteen years ago I created a workshop called Status Quo or Status GO! Just for kicks and giggles I went back to look at my outline and realized my workshops have changed a bit over the years. This one went deep, as they all do, but I was less focused on spiritual principles and practices back then. That workshop dived into what fears would keep us stuck in our lives, and what we could do about those fears. The premise behind the workshop is that if we address our fears properly, we can better move out of the status quo, the stuckness, and into more creativity, more liveliness, more GO in our lives.
Fast forward to current, and I just finished teaching a 4 week class based on a book by Dennis Merritt Jones called “When Fear Speaks – Listen.” This book talks about seven messengers of fear, and their descendants, and how those fears will keep us stuck in status quo unless we listen to the messages they have to offer.
This morning I was thinking about status quo, because the theme for this month in Centers for Spiritual Living is Unstatus Quo. And then in the daily meditation voice mail I recently received, it talked about superiority and inferiority and how our judgement of others as inferior to us really gets in the way of our good.
Here’s where I tied it all together: according to Jones in his book, judgement is one of the messengers of fear, and superiority and inferiority are its descendants.
Here are the messages we can receive from judgement, superiority and inferiority, if we allow it. Judgment tells us there is something going on within us that we don’t want to look at. And it is that judgment that allows us to feel superior to our fellows. Ironically, it is also that judgement that allows us to feel inferior to our fellows, because superiority and inferiority are two sides of the same coin. So we move through life judging others, an ego maniac with an inferiority complex. I’m sure you don’t have to think too hard to come up with times in your life when you have felt like this, or when someone you are familiar with that has those traits. Being like that causes a lot of trouble for us in our lives. And it keeps us stuck and limited, in the Status Quo.
What if you could move through life without judgement? What if you could move through life with a true sense of what it means to be humble, to know your strengths and your weaknesses and to be able to truly take your place in this life?
To not feel superior to anyone nor inferior. Feeling that way makes us feel separate from, and feeling separate from is a very lonely place to be.
What if we were to, instead, release all that judgement and superiority and inferiority and replace with humbleness, with meekness?
Here’s where our spiritual practices come in, and for our spiritual practice today I want to explore what it really means to be humble. And for that, I first go to what is probably my favorite part of the Bible, the beatitudes. In this wonderful teaching called Science of Mind, we take into account the fact that the lessons in the Bible were never meant to be taken literally, because they taught in metaphor in those days. And just as important, most modern versions of the Bible have been translated so many times that they are inaccurate, at best. I use the George Llamsa bible, which has been translated directly from the original Aramaic language of the day, and I rely on the wisdom of folks such as Llamsa, Charles Fillmore and Rocco Errico to help me get to the true meaning of the words. In true Science of Mind form, I bring you a metaphysical translation of “blessed are the humble.”
What that really means is delighted are those who place more importance on God than they do on material things.
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Meek means yielding, pliable, flexible, unassuming. And the earth means our outer conditions.
What that really means is delighted are the yielding, pliable, flexible and unassuming, for they shall have control over outer conditions.
As beautiful and powerful as the beatitudes are in their entirety when translated this way, this article is more about moving out of judgement, inferiority and superiority so I’m going to leave the rest of the beatitudes for another time.
Remember, one of the ways out of judgement, inferiority and superiority and all the limitation that those traits cause for us, is to be meek and humble. To be yielding, pliable, flexible and unassuming, as well as to place more importance on god than we do on material things.
We have more wisdom to draw on however. Dr. Bob Smith, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, had a plaque on his desk. I actually have these words on my desk as well. Here they are: “Humility is perpetual quietness of heart. It is to have no trouble. It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore; to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised, it is to have a blessed home in myself where I can go in and shut the door and kneel to my Father in secret and be at peace, as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around is seeming trouble.”
It never fails. Whenever I am feeling judgmental or superior or inferior, all I have to do is read those words and they bring me back to being right sized, which is another meaning for being humble.
One way to move from Status Quo to Status GO is to take a look at where we are judgmental, superior or inferior in our lives, and to transform those fears into meekness and humbleness. To being yielding, unassuming, flexible, pliable and right sized. And to do so by placing more importance on our connection with God in our lives than we do on anything else.
To close, I bring you this definition of humility from Ernest Holmes, in the Glossary of the Science of Mind textbook: “True humility does not mean self-abasement, but is rather that attitude which Emerson tells us is willing to get its “bloated nothingness out of the way of the Divine Circuits.”
Today, I move from Status Quo to Status GO by nurturing and strengthening my connection with God.
I sure am enjoying the sunflowers! At this time of year they seem to be everywhere, showing up along side fences and roads, volunteering in various places in my garden and in the gardens of others. I love sunflowers because they simply shine their light and they produce a seed that is good for you!
What else can we ask of life? I think to shine our light, to show up and produce something good is what life is all about.
We shine our light by practicing humility, which means nothing more than knowing ourselves and allowing our true selves to flourish. Humility means we are right sized. We aren’t ego maniacs with an inferiority complex, nor are we quietly hovering in the background too unsure of ourselves to fully participate in life, nor in people’s faces insisting we be given our due. We are simply being ourselves, offering ourselves to the fullness of life. This is how we shine our light.
And we produce something good by again knowing ourselves well enough to know what it is we are meant to be doing in life. I’ve never believed in showing up to do a job one disliked, just to bring home a paycheck. Life is worth so much more than that.
We do our spiritual practices so that we can know ourselves, and in knowing ourselves, we can then know what to do to make a living. And if our perfect job does not exist, we create it. Because we have the power to do that.
Today, I am like a sunflower, shining my light and producing good in the world.
Like the image? You can purchase it in many sizes, as well as in my favorite version: refrigerator magnets! Simply scan the QR code (purchased image does not have the QR code on it) and click on the link that appears. Or, if you are on your phone, save the photo to your phone. Then go to your photos, click and hold on the photo until the drop down box appears, and an option to go to your browser will appear. Like magic!
Ernest Holmes: “Perfection: The real state of being; complete so that nothing is wanting. Ideal faultlessness; the divine attribute of complete excellence.” Science of Mind textbook, glossary.
Meister Eckhart: “If the only prayer you ever say in your life is thank you, it will be enough.”
Gratitude
Relaxation
Altitude
Peace
Excellence
Eat your grapes today!
Grape is a wonderful acronym, standing for Gratitude, Relaxation, Altitude, Peace and Excellence
Today I am embodying gratitude. Gratitude for all that is. For the miracle of the power of our minds to create our reality. For my surroundings, my life, my beingness. And I further embody relaxation, simply being still, and knowing. I also reach high, into great altitude, knowing that there is always something greater in store for me. Always higher. I feel that grand glorious sense of peace flowing through me. I know excellence as an attribute of spirit and I can embody excellence in all my affairs. Excellence in living through and because of spiritual principle. Excellence in living.
Whenever I get ready to sink into an affirmative prayer, what is also called a treatment, I first glance to my outer surroundings. I don’t know why I do this and I’ve learned not to question why in such matters. But I believe this practice is a simple way for me to move into the first of the five steps of a treatment, which is to acknowledged that god is everywhere present.
Today as I went to move into a treatment, I looked out the window and noticed the wind. I can hear the wind, making whooshing noises as it moves around out there. So I knew it was a windy day. But I saw the trees moving around and thought, “oh look! God is dancing in the trees!”
And then I moved into the second stage of a treatment, oneness, which is where I acknowledge that if god is present everywhere, it is also present in me, and so my next thought was, “oh look! God is dancing in MY consciousness!”
And then my next thought was the third step of treatment, which is to state my word. And so I know that God is dancing in my consciousness, and always has been, but today I feel it. I feel that glorious presence of spirit moving through me as divine right and perfect energy. I feel It as the ideas that are coming to me, from both within me and from other people. I know this God stuff dancing in my consciousness is the result of fully feeling the feels of loss, fully appreciating the healing journey, fully knowing the gratitude for that has been and all that will be, and I also know that my every intention is now come to fruition. All those beautiful ideas coming from the dance of Spirit in my consciousness are now so.
And for that I am very grateful. Which is the 4th step of a treatment.
And so I release it all, except the dance part. Because I happen to love that dance and want more dancing! And so I shall dance my way through the release of my words to that law that is also dancing with incredible joy at my words, delightfully accepting them and acting upon them. Which is the 5th step of a treatment.
Every year in the spring, I get some peeps and play with them. This year I posed the peeps on the horses and took photos of them.
Creativity. It is one of my favorite things in life. I’m not speaking about artistic creativity here, but about creating in our lives. In fact, I was drawn to the liberation theology of New Thought, and specifically, Science of Mind, because somewhere along the line I learned that the philosophy taught one how to create one’s life. Or how to recreate one’s life. At the time, I was also searching for a god that wasn’t a religious god, and in Science of Mind I found both. From the first class I took, I was off and running into a new way of life that continues to support me, reward me and fulfill me, each and every day. Every day I create anew. I do this by connecting and by examining my beliefs and thoughts, and changing them when necessary.
It gets pretty heavy does it at times.
So I’ve learned that it is important for me to regularly play. Just play. Play is why I have rocks in my life. Play is why I have a garden in my life. Play is why I have horses in my life. Play is why I have dogs and cats in my life.
Play is a big part of creativity as well. Play can help us lighten up and change our perspective. Changing our perspective is what coaches call reframing. It simply means we view an event in our life differently, so that we can heal and move on and, well, play more.
In the book The Creative Act: A Way of Being, by Rick Rubin, he says, “In play, there are no stakes. No boundaries. No right or wrong. No quotas for productivity. It’s an uninhibited state where your spirit can run free.”
How do you play? Play is part of living Fearlessly Feral you know. Gotta have the play time in there. If you think you don’t know how to play, watch a little kid play. Then go outside and do what that little kid did. Kids play. They just play. It is suggested that we be as little kids. Not all the time. I’m not suggesting immaturity. I’m suggesting regularly taking time out to play in and with something that you enjoy. For me it’s rocks and horses and gardening and dogs and cats. For you it might be something entirely different. Some folks like to build model airplanes. Some folks like to take old cars and restore them. Some folks like to make stuff out of wood. Find or create your playground and go play in it.
It is the end of February and it occurred to me to check in with how everyone is doing with their word of the year. Remember way back in the beginning of January, some of you chose a word for the year? At first, I thought a word for the year was rather limiting, but then, in classical New Thought fashion, I had a new thought about it. Instead of a word, I began to think of it as a concept, and that opened up a whole new vista for me.
So my word is enthusiasm. And I had to find some balance there because I got a little over enthusiastic for a while. Which looked like some sort of frenzied whirling dervish with a mood disorder. LOL! Such is the power of our word guys. So I tempered my enthusiasm with things like release and faith, and now I am nicely humming along.
And I happened across a reading this morning about enthusiasm. It’s in a book called New Thoughts for Today, published by Associated New Thought Network, and is a compilation of readings by different New Thought authors. This reading was titled “ Enthusi-usi-usi-asm.” It went back to the Greek origins of the word, explaining that enthusiasm came from the words en and theos. Entheos means god filled. Which I am. But then the reading went on to say that enthusiasm wasn’t a result but a cause. AHHHH. THERE! That’s the ticket right there! We don’t just choose these words to embody the emotion of them. We choose them as a foundation to give us power.
The reading, written by Rev. Dr. Michele Whittington, went on to say, “ Enthusiasm gives us the power to create, not just to react; the power to be responsible, not just to be responsive; the power to be the cause for good.”
Yes.
So today I continue my enthusiasm, knowing it is giving me the creativity, responsibility and the power to do my good work in the world.
If you want to take a deeper dive into your word for the year, see if any books that you typically read have anything to say about your word. Look up your word in the dictionary. Google it. Consider what any of those things has to say about it.
Have fun and I’d love to hear what you discover!
In other news, I would love it if you subscribed to my YouTube channel: @KarenLinsleyMA. And if you checked out my podcast called Fearlessly Feral Living, which you can find where ever you listen to podcasts.
