From the monthly archives:

November 2010

Does Every Silver Lining Need a Cloud?

After recently reading this post by Empowered Soul Andrea Hess, I’ve been reflecting on just how prevalent our sense of deservedness figures into getting what we want. It’s as if we feel the need to qualify our desires almost before we can admit having them, and certainly before allowing ourselves to pursue them.

So let’s talk about desire, which often gets a bad rap and is confused with greed, gluttony, or other characteristics generally lumped into a category beginning with “The 7 Deadly . .”

The Nature of Desire

Desire is natural. Many physical desires – like hunger, thirst, sleep and sex – are hard-wired into us instinctively to ensure both our individual and collective survival. Take a look at just about any other living thing, plant or animal, and the desire for food, water, rest and reproduction is pretty obvious.

Human desire, however, goes beyond survival instinct. Many of our creative or intellectually-driven desires are what take us beyond subsistence into abundance. When these desires are motivated by or result in material abundance – of money, possessions, or experiences – they are oft-criticized.

I prefer to think of desire in all its forms as positive vs. negative in the sense that it spurs the forward flow of energy. I see its primary benefit being not what it yields for the individual having the desire, but what its residual effects are along the journey toward its expression.

As Charles Fillmore states in his book Prosperity, “desire is the onward impulse of the ever evolving soul.” And as Edwene Gaines writes about that in The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity, “It stands to reason then that if we are evolving souls (and I believe that we are) then our desires – the longings of our hearts – are what propel us forward into the life experiences required for an evolution of consciousness”.

I happen to agree.

I also agree with what Andrea wrote, that our divine gifts and talents in life are what come naturally to us. Yes, that which you naturally love and excel at is the “work” you are meant to do, the way you are meant to serve others and yourself in this lifetime.

So it seems both sad and paradoxical to me that so often we [click to continue…]

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Open Up and Say “Om”

photo credit: AlicePopkorn

Hi, Karen here. While I’m off on a new accidental adventure in Barcelona Spain I invited my good friend Penelope Love to submit the following guest post. I know you’ll adore her story as much as I do. Happy Thanksgiving US readers!

My first intimate encounter with an Eastern medical doctor occurred not two weeks after 9-11, when recurrent images of crumbling towers on the nightly news all too accurately reflected my disheveled marriage to my first husband and correspondingly—my inner world.

There I stood at the outset of this fateful journey, my bare calves streaked with filthy water, my ankles rubbed raw and bleeding, again. Arrayed in my DKNY raincoat and spike heel uniform, I’d just dashed five blocks from my midtown Manhattan office and down a block decorated with Brazilian flags to make it to my doctor’s appointment on time.

It was already 11:03 by the time I found her location on the second floor of a…well, I’m still not sure, but I believe it was a residential apartment building. A massage sign on the downstairs door had almost thrown me off the scent, because being fresh out of the University of Florida, I was looking for a lone medical office, perhaps two or three stories and an elevator; and in light of a Catholic upbringing, I shuddered and almost didn’t pass go once I saw that sign. Yet I felt vaguely aware of some benevolent force drawing me in despite visions of oily naked [click to continue…]

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Confessions of a Reluctant Mother and the Bitter Sweetness of Thirteen

I have to confess something few people know. For most of my daughter’s life I’ve been a reluctant mother.

It’s not that I got pregnant as a teenager, knocked-up after a wild night of debauchery, or stumbled into any of the typical, tragic unexpected motherhood situations so popularized in the tabloid news. I was “raised right”. I was responsible. I was married for five years before I ever in my life got pregnant, even though we weren’t trying. And in theory, we wanted kids. It was the “in practice” part I struggled with.

No, I was not reluctant because motherhood was thrust or forced upon me at a tender or inconvenient age. It’s just that it was never my calling, and I did have a calling. From a very early age I longed to be a writer. I had bigger plans than mommyhood: novels, travel, money, and fame – maybe even transformed hearts and minds. In my wildest dreams, a legacy that would last the ravages of history.

Plus, being a mother never looked like much fun. Whether watching my own mother or the moms of my friends, it didn’t seem like motherhood was a very satisfying, easy or meaningful (in any kind of big, outer-world way) path. As the oldest of four kids, I witnessed my parents fulfill classic 1950’s era roles – mom stayed home, cooked, cleaned and raised the kids, and dad went to the office every day. With four, mom had her hands full. Imagine this juxtaposed against my daily viewing of Oprah, then just getting started in Chicago where I lived, rapidly ascending to super-womanhood and you [click to continue…]

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You Don’t Have to Analyze the Garbage Before You Throw It Out

photo credit: kodomut

Few of us make it through life with a light load. At some point, we intentionally or unintentionally become hoarders.

I don’t necessarily mean hoarders of physical stuff, although that can be part of it. Anything that manifests in physical form has emotional, mental and spiritual components behind the scenes. Even if we’re not physically holding onto things though, most of us carry plenty of emotional baggage. Eventually it’s time to toss it or run the risk of it becoming so bogged down we can’t carry the weight. When that happens we can no longer grow; we become stuck in one place, barely able to move or breathe, like those horrifying scenes from the A&E reality show on the same theme.

The question, always the question, is how? How do you dump the emotional baggage? How do you throw out the mental garbage? How do you take out the trash? [click to continue…]

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