A Light Bulb Moment

The lounge quickly became the meeting area not just for the subordinates, but for actual meetings. The boss said it was easier that way. Less formal.

"I've heard the questions and I comprehend why you are worried. It's the whole forgetting thing you have to do. What happens if I forget too well?

"Nothing, that's what. Both meanings, too. Either enough of you forget so well that the wake up encoding is ignored and then nothing happens this round. Or you go along in your lives, wake up as designed, and the world changes. That means, nothing is wrong. Nothing bad happened. "

B. piped up from the middle of the lounge chairs. "So no matter how much we 'go local' it's all right? We're going in to disarm them in the good way. Change up the mess they made and get  them back on the path that fear lured them away from yet no matter if we fail or succeed it's all right? You can see why this might be confusing."

"I can and it is. The point is the world you're entering must be entirely your world until you, that is, it, is ready. The way down there must be your second nature. You need to live among them in their way, like I've told you, before you can see why it has to change. It takes one to change one, as it might be said."

More murmuring from the crowd. The boss relaxed a little. "Like the joke down there goes, how many people does it take to change a light bulb?"

They waited. No one asked.

"Only one, but the light has to want to change."

Polite nodding followed by laughter followed by lost looks of confusion.

"Be the light that wants to change."

Gratitude Monday -Preparing For Change Edition

The seasons are changing and for it I am grateful. The differences make for obvious markers as time continues along its path.
Fall is a few days away and the leaves are getting ready to go out in a blaze of colour.
If one must change, then do so with style.

Vote For Change, Or Vote For a Change

Today is election day in Alberta. We'll get either a new, or a renewed, provincial government.
But whatever happens you have a say in it.
Who you vote for is your business.
We're allowed to not vote here so not voting is not a gesture of protest no matter how you try to tart it up to yourself.
If you are among the thousands who don't normally bother casting a ballot, do so this time.
Whether you are voting for change, or just voting for a change, get out and vote.

For What It Is

I've been doing a great deal of cancer research. I've looked at the types of surgery available for colon cancer, the stages of the disease, chemotherapy and radiation treatments and their side effects, alternative treatments be they good, bad, or odd, and have saturated my mind.
I've learned quite a bit. I've applied some of the research to my daily fruit and vegetable smoothie.
Whatever else it does, raw fruits and vegetables are good for a body.
One simply cannot go wrong ingesting, good, healthy food.

But there comes a point where one must stop the research. Certainly one cannot have too much information.
Information is power.
Power guides one to direct one's energy.

I am at that point. I have decided to stop gathering knowledge and accept this disease for what it  is: a chance to change.
In the mind-body connection the area affected refers to issues such as control. It's not having any, or giving up one's control to others.
In my life I have dampened my energies to get along. I have forced myself to be less than I am.
This is wrong
This is stupid.
This stops now.

Cancer has brought me this lesson. I aim to learn it, learn it well, and practice it every single day for the rest of my long, healthy life.

I expect I'll slip back into the old program on occasion. It takes time to learn to live a different way.
But it can and will be learned.
I anticipate the loss of some friends and acquaintances.  if they don't like it, then they had no business being in my life in the first place.
I anticipate new, exciting friends and acquaintances who are a better fit for me.

It is an exciting time in my life and I embrace it.

When Hurting Is No Longer An Option

You don't have to go it alone.

Instead of walking around with an undressed wound from childhood it is possible to be healed. Not with thick scar tissue, but actually go in and cleanse and let the skin grow back. Scars are not mandatory. We can heal from the inside out.

There’s a technique used sometimes in hypnotherapy wherein the subject is taken back to an event and restructures the ending so it turns out the way he or she wants. It has its merits.
Changing the ending of a memory works to a degree. It gives us the satisfaction of being our own director in our own movie and calling all the shots.

But what it doesn’t do is change the original scene. Irrespective of how many of how many rewrites we do on the scripts of our lives, what occurred originally is the only truth. It must be dealt with. It must remain intact as the proper memory. Literal change of the past is impossible; virtual change is a form of healing. We write a different ending and alter how we are affected by it.

It is for us to learn from the events of our lives. If we don’t we are lost and must return to the pattern and relive it over and over until in this life or another we realize our cycle and break it.
When we change everyone wins. But this is not a contest, and not a duel to death. I am not against you nor are you against me. Abuse is not personal. Not really. The abuser is in as much pain as his or her target. Abusers are acting out of intense unaware self-loathing and they want you to hate them and to hate yourself too. Become one of the crowd and pain is lessened. Hate is attention the same as is love.

Our agreement with our abusers pre-dates birth and is forged out of love, not hate. It is to learn something. Do we bring it on ourselves? Not as such. We agree to a certain set of circumstances in order to learn, but we have the free will to alter that course. We can stop the pain and we must simply because letting abuse continue keeps us on the karmic wheel.

We absolutely must learn from our life experiences and lessons work both ways. They are for the abuser as much, perhaps more, than the abused. Perhaps that is the most difficult aspect to accept. It is a learning experience that we have both taken on. It does not have to continue. An abused person sometimes goes on to abuse others. The other has agreed to experience some of this, if needed. This is the key. It does not have to be needed.

We cleanse the wounds life has inflicted on our psyches by admitted they occurred, and while we are not at fault for being victims, we are complicit in the experience by dint of agreement. Should we blame ourselves? No. But we just admit it happened, face the events of life and move on from them.
Being bested by abuse perpetuates the cycle. Accept it and move on from it. Dwell on it and playing the victim will only serve to let the abuser win, and not learn anything. Find the strength inside and build from it. Do it for both of you.
It is an act of love.

Simple Beauty

The simple beauty of the change of seasons.

A Horse Is A Horse Unless Of Course...

Ever see a Unicorn?

I have.
And no I wasn’t on anything at the time. It was broad daylight in the middle of a July afternoon in 1984.

I’d gone for a job interview in Olds and was on my way back along Highway 2 when I passed a field where horses were grazing. It’s a common sight and nothing to turn your head over.
But my head did turn, rather sharply in fact, when I clearly saw the horn protruding out from the forehead of the mottled gray horse nearest the highway.

I only saw it for a split second because when I turned for a full on look it was gone. The other horses -- all of which were assorted shades of brown -- were still grazing.

I didn’t say anything about it at the time chiefly because I was rendered speechless. My parents, who’d accompanied me on the trip, didn’t notice anything or just didn’t admit to it.

I can’t write this off to imagination because of the accompanying feeling. It felt like change. It felt as though everything was going to be fine, that I was on the right track, and the Olds job was mine.

I got the reporting job in Olds and stayed there for 33 months. I passed by that field dozens of times, but it must have been a very specific sign because I haven’t seen it or its kin since that day.

I want to. I have hope that one day it’ll show up on the edge of my awareness signaling another big change or just reminding me that there’s magic about.

Of Course I Can

Affirmations, mantras, incantations, spells, call ‘em what you will; they work.
Distilled down to their simplest form they’re a strong positive statement expressed repeatedly. When you say something over and over it gets imprinted. It becomes real. It is real.

Simple is best because it’s easy to remember and easy to use.
If you’ve got several areas to work on you might find yourself skipping about excitedly trying to change everything at once.

I know. I’ve done it.

It scatters the energy too much at a time when it ought to be focused. You’ll get some changes, but the attempt is half-hearted. That makes it easy to declare affirmations as useless.

“They’re too hard,” you might say. “I’m not going to bother. And they don’t work anyway.”

This clears the way for you to stop trying so you can get back at all that important grumbling you’ve been doing.

Do you realize your grumbling carries the same amount of energy and does the same thing as the affirmations? You’re inculcating problems when you could use the same focus and energy to rid yourself of them.
That’s your choice, of course. Do what you want.

Do you want to change? Do you want to stop wasting energy feeding your problems? Are you looking for a place to start?
Here’s a simple declaration to get you going. I recently started using this because I’ve been scattering my energy instead of focusing it.
I wanted something on the ground level to build on and I decided this declaration was the best foundation:

“Of course I can.”

Use it or discard it as you see fit.

Want more affirmations? LaUna Huffines has some good ones at Path of Light.

And you can always make your own.

Think you can't?

Of course you can.