Bury Your Worry in the Dirt

It's raining outside and right now, my electric bill and one of my credit card bills is in my backyard…three feet underground in the dirt, getting all wet and muddy.

Why, you might wonder, are my bills buried in the backyard?

Did I conduct some woo woo ritual to eliminate debt?

Did my frustration get the better of me leaving me senseless and enraged with my bills?

No.

It's kind of a long story that started with me experiencing worry.

I was raised by "worriers". I love my parents dearly and they did a good job of worrying about everything. Even now they call me up worried that I'm not taking good care of myself, worried about my financial well-being, worried that my kids aren't getting a good education and worried about the possibility of carbon monoxide poisoning in my house (and to make sure that I have enough carbon monoxide detectors in my home.)

(They also worry a lot about my sanity and my life path, but that is a whole 'nother blog post…)

Worrying is in my genes. All of my memories of my grandmother involve visions of her wringing her hands with worry over everything.

She had a stroke at age 65. For 15 years after her stroke, she was carefree. It took significant brain damage to make her stop worrying.

Somewhere along the line, I learned that worrying was the responsible way to go through life. If you weren't worried about the future, making money, your kids, your neighbors, the news or your career, you weren't being responsible.

And, of course, if you were irresponsible in any way, you were giving your parents something to worry about.

I got good at worrying at a very young age. I bit my nails most of my life until I discovered acrylic fingernails when I was thirty. I chew the side of my mouth and have a hard time sitting still and focusing on one thing when I'm worried. I pace a lot and am very good at waking up several times in the night fulfilling my responsibility to worry about my life.

Over the last few years as I have experienced shifts in consciousness, I have mastered my worrying habit (for the most part).

When you integrate a deep understanding that your true and natural state is abundance in all of its expressions, you realize that you don't have to worry about anything. You are abundant. And abundance continually shows up, often in beautiful and unexpected ways.

But shifting is hard work. As we raise our vibrational frequency and continue to align energetically with our Divine Abundance, it's not unusual to become more and more sensitive to our conditioning and those places where we may still hold beliefs that keep us from allowing our abundance.

We are more sensitive, not because we are weak or vulnerable, but because we are more finely tuned to those places where we need to continue to shift our focus back to abundance. Our intention is to live abundance in consciousness and, obviously, in our third dimensional realities. When we are out of alignment with that intention, we notice!

We have been training for "The Shift" for many years. It is crucial as our souls come together and unify our energies that we ignore our outer realities and stay focused on our inner abundance, no matter what may seem to be going on outside of ourselves.

What does that look like in reality? That means, for example, that when the bills are due and things look grim, you have to ignore "reality" and focus on the abundance that is already there for you, even if you can't quite see it yet.

Freaking out and worrying, albeit "responsible" behavior by old standards, really doesn't work in these situations. We have to practice holding a vision for what we intend, in spite of the outer circumstances.

When we worry, we are basically expressing an unconscious underlying belief in lack of some kind. When you examine what you are worried about, it is always a belief or possibility that somehow there will not be enough and terrible things will happen.

Explore those beliefs and see what needs to be cleared in order for you to come back to an awareness of your natural state of abundance.

From a physiological perspective, worrying triggers the adrenaline "fight or flight" response. When you are fearful or "running", all creative thought shuts down, your connection to Source is forgotten and you go into survival mode. Not only is this tough on your body, especially if you do this on a chronic basis, but it also shuts your mind to creative possibilities and inspirations that can change your situation.

When we worry, we are basically making an energetic statement that we do not trust in the Divine Plan and the Universe. Worrying points our creative energies, our thoughts and emotions, at the worst case scenario and, not surprisingly, worrying can actually contribute to making your worst fears come true.

These are the simple mechanics of deliberate creation.

Letting go of worry doesn't mean you don't "deal" with reality. You may need to call your utility or credit card company and ask them for an extension on your payment. But you do it with knowingness that the bills will get pain, not with fear or shame.

You will be amazed at how simply holding the energy of knowingness that there is an inspired, Divine and elegant solution to your challenges (even if you don't know what it is yet…) creates, well, an inspired, Divine and elegant solution to your challenge.

Where you put your energy and attention is where you get growth and results.

Of course, this all sounds so simple and easy. Just stop worrying, right?

LOL!

I have found that turning your attention away from the worry and back to gratitude and appreciation is the fastest way to get out of the worry rut. If we focus on what we DO have, what we appreciate and all the abundance around us, it's hard to slip into worry and fear.

Not only that, if you place your attention on all the good that surrounds you, you will, by Universal Law, only draw to yourself more abundance. (Focus and attention creates.)

"If you can rid yourself of worry, you will rid yourself of things to worry about.
It is really that simple.
Shift the way you feel and watch what happens."

- Abraham-Hicks

So, you are probably wondering what this has to do with my bills being 3 feet under in my backyard.

Lately I've allowed my consciousness to be seduced by worry. In my meditations, I have been working on releasing my worry. I know how little worrying helps my life.

Well, as you know, the Universe often has unique ways of sending us messages. Personally, I think G-d loves to laugh.

Yesterday I was outside on my back deck talking to a client on the telephone. Ayelet, my 16 month old Star Baby, came running out of the house with a handful of my bills clutched in her chubby little fists. Now, as I was talking to a client, I was trying to get my bills back without eliciting a scream of defiance from her (She IS gifted and "NO" is one of her favorite words right now…).

Not only did Ayelet come tearing out of the house, but Kwincy, my 110 pound lab/Rhodesian ridgeback mix followed right behind her.

As I was gently trying to pry my bills out of Ayelets hands, Kwincy galloped towards the back corner of the yard and began to dig a huge hole. Ayelet, seeing that mud and dirt were flying, immediately followed him to be a part of the digging "party".

As soon as the hole was just right, Ayelet, with all her might, pitched my bills into the hole and proceeded to help Kwincy fill the hole back up. My bills had met their fate, 3 feet underground.

Upon completion of their task, both of the Sneaky Sneakers dusted off their respective paws/hands and grinned with pride at me.

The moral of this story:

Go bury your worry in the dirt.

And if you can't do it yourself, get some good soul friends to help you...

Love,

Karen

My Soul Friends, Ayelet and Kwincy

 

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Forgiveness - The Big Reset Button

I’m Jewish.  As a Jew, I am in the midst of what we call The Days of Awe, the time from the holidays Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur. 

During this time, we focus on repentance, deep self-inquiry and atoning for mistakes we’ve made during the year.

Now, I know that even though this doesn’t really sound like so much fun, I actually enjoy this time of year.  There is something to be said for dedicating 10 days to looking back, taking stock and remembering Source. 

I like to think of these days as one big Reset Button.  Push the Resent Button, start over, new possibilities, new opportunities and a chance to improve and “get it right’.

Obviously, this time is about asking others to forgive you for any wrong-doings you may have committed or regrets you may have in how you’ve treated people. 

But it’s also a time of “unbinding” yourself from your stories, old thoughts and beliefs and, most importantly, victim consciousness.  To me, this is the real definition of forgiveness.

There is a real danger in playing with the concept of forgiveness.  Forgiveness can be tricky.

I know forgiveness is a crucial piece to spiritual growth and evolution.  Many

of us have done all kinds of forgiveness exercises.  I personally have written at least 20,000 forgiveness letters to various people who have victimized me in my 45 years…(okay, I exaggerate a bit…but you get my drift.)

One of my publishing clients, Pat Rainville, author of Forgiveness is an Act of Power, (Empoweringbydesign.com) says that one of the dangers of forgiveness is that we think that by forgiving someone we make their actions “okay”. 

This style of “turn the other cheek” forgiveness is dangerous in that it doesn’t usually honor your self and often results in people re-creating old stories and victim circumstances because the underlying energy isn’t shifted.

Forgiveness is not about condoning what someone has done.  It’s about releasing ourselves from the story of the transgression and setting ourselves free to define ourselves not by what “crimes” we may have survived, but by our authentic identity.

I attended an Abraham Hicks Meetup group a few years back.  I remember the third time I attended the group we were invited by the leader to go around the circle of attendees and introduce ourselves.  The third woman who spoke, introduced herself as a survivor of childhood incest. 

It was fascinating to me that every person after that enthusiastically introduced themselves as survivors of different sorts of victim situations such as incest, rape, bankruptcy, infidelity, etc.  Once someone opened the door to “story-telling”, everyone had a story to tell. 

To be honest with you, I never went back to the group.  It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate that these people had endured and survived terrible things, but it was energetically challenging to sit in a room of people who seemed to still be so tied to the story.

If you define yourself as a survivor, there is, by definition, something terrible that you have endured and that you probably were victimized by.  Survivors are still tied to their association with the transgression.

As long as you continue to tie yourself to the story, the energy of the story perpetuates itself.  And while the lessons of the story were probably quite catalytic in your own personal evolution, the actual event is over.  If you choose to hang on to the story instead of the lessons and the blessings, you run the risk, by virtue of focus and attention, of re-creating similar circumstances over and over again.

Haven’t you ever wondered how it is that some people just seem to attract the same kinds of tragedies again and again?  Perhaps there is a need for cutting the ties to the story and truly forgiving the situation…

You can immediately end these cycles and create something new and different when you stop looking at the past and stand clearly in this current moment, recognizing that this moment is the only moment that matters in shaping your future and redefining yourself.

The past is over.  And only determines your future if you choose to let it.

Personally, I prefer the term “Thriver” rather than survivor.  I am a Life Thriver, plain and simple.

Of course, it feels good to let go of being a victim of any sort.  But there is another important reason to release any victim stories from your consciousness. 

It’s important for the planet.

We are representatives of the energy we want to see on the planet.  (For more information on this, scroll down and read about the four stages of evolution in consciousness.)  When you open your newspaper, turn on the TV or read your CNN webpage on your computer, notice the headlines.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, there is some terrible headline that involves someone doing something to someone or groups of people being victimized by natural disasters or catastrophes of some sort.

When you really understand the mechanics of consciousness, you realize that the projection of our collective consciousness, the sum total of our thoughts and beliefs, create our collective planetary experience.

We create reality and on a global level, we co-create our world. 

What we think, how we behave, our thoughts and our consciousness is added to the thoughts, emotions, beliefs and actions of others to create a consistent projected collective reality.

We are all unique pieces to a giant puzzle.  When your piece of the whole is carrying the energy of being victimized or victim consciousness of any kind, you are adding to the victim consciousness of the whole.

Now, before we go any further, this is not blame or chastisement.  I am simply pointing out that we are responsible for what we put into the world and what we project into the collective consciousness.

If we want to live in a world without victimization, then we have to eliminate victim consciousness in our own personal consciousness. 

While this may sound big and obvious, you have to also be aware of the sneaky places where victim consciousness creeps in…victim energy can be insidious.

Think about this.  In your outer reality, you are responsible for the creation of every experience. 

Yup.  Every single experience.  It’s Universal Law.

So, for example, if you believe that your business is not doing as well as it could be right now because of the economy, you are engaging in victim consciousness.  You are not a victim of the economy.  You are simply aligned with a belief that the economy is bad and you are manifesting that into your reality.

If you believe you “can’t” do something because of any outer circumstance, including shifts in energy on the planet, karma and the old standby, “It’s just not God’s will.”  Remember that you are not a victim of shifts in energy, karma or even God’s will.  (God doesn’t want you to be a victim.)

I invite you to examine your beliefs on a deeper level and see if you have any beliefs that may be keeping you locked into a victim position. 

Some questions to ask yourself that may give you clues to hidden victim consciousness might be:

Are there any things you feel resentful of or circumstance that feel like they are “not fair”?

Do you have stories about your life that you retell often to the point where it almost feels scripted?  

Are they any places in your consciousness where you define yourself as a survivor?

Are there any creations in your life that make you feel like you are a loser of some kind?

Do you have excuses about why you aren’t experiencing the success or results you intend?

Are there any people or circumstance that you feel resentful of or trapped by?

Fill in the blank:  If only ____________________________________ hadn’t happened, I’d be ____________________________________________________.

This is just a start.  Give yourself the gift of taking an inventory of your consciousness and “untie” the ties that bind you into victimhood!

Enjoy THRIVING!!!

Love,

Karen

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We Are Not Free Until We Are All Free

This blog post may challenge you at ask yourself some hard questions.

Your answers might cause your world to flip instantly (in a good way…)!

For the last 15 months, I have been trying to gather 8,000 people together to hold a single thought in consciousness in order to begin weaving an etheric template for an abundant new world.

My intention is to gather enough people together, at least once a week, to create a shift in the collective thinking of the world in order to speed up the creation of abundance and sustainable peace on the planet.

I have hosted meditations daily, weekly and monthly. I have had as many as around 100 people show up for a meditation and, on several occasions, I have been the only one there.

Last week I had over 200 people register for the mediation and only 4 showed up for the live call.

Now, I know enough to know that if people aren't showing up for my calls, it's very personal. It might not be ABOUT me personally but I am clear that there is something in my own consciousness that is not attracting what I intend to attract.

I ran through a lot of thoughts the day after the last 8,000 Meditation Event. I scrolled the the "Rolodex of Beliefs" trying to find the limiting belief that was keeping me from allowing what I wanted.

Here are some of the thoughts I came up with:

1. No one is as interested in Pakistan (my theme for the last meditation) as they are in the BP/oil spill because there is no "corporate bad guy" so there isn't anyone to unify against.
   
2. People care more about animals than they do about people.
   
3. Unconsciously, we are biased against Muslims.
   
4. No one cares about what I'm doing and I'm the "only one" who sees things the way I see things…(wah, wah, wah…)
   
5. I'd rather be playing with my kids in the evenings that leading mediations for the world.
   

I am really clear that I truly want to be leading these meditations. When I have a mediation scheduled, I am super excited and I can't wait for the call to start. I daydream about the effects of the meditations on the world and I lose time just enjoying the experience of these thoughts.

Shifting consciousness on the planet is my passion. It is part of who I am and my Life Purpose.

So, my excitement tells me that I am doing the "right" thing for me.

But, as I sat with the excitement, I noticed another spot in my consciousness that was kind of begging for attention. As I tried to hold an image of actually hosting a meditation and actually having 8,000+ people be a part of it, I noticed that, even though it was a nice thought, my mind kept flipping back to the more comfortable thoughts listed above.

On a very, very subtle level, I liked the feeling of being misunderstood, being the "only one" and trying to find someone to blame for all the suffering happening on the planet right now. (Selfish corporations, dishonest people, bad city planning and corrupt governments, etc.)

Surely it wasn't MY fault. I'm a Lightworker, right? I only think about good and happy things and if I'm blaming someone, it's only because, well, it's TRUE! Right?

But, the truth is, if we subscribe to the belief that You Create Your Own Reality (Stage Two Consciousness…see last week's blog post) or that We Co-Create Our Reality (Stage Three Consciousness), then we are responsible for everything in the world that comes into our reality and our awareness.

In other words, there is something in our collective consciousness that creates earthquakes, floods and oil spills.

Now, I'm not going to get too heavy into blame. It's not your fault and guilt is certainly going to get us no where pretty. However, as conscious beings who intend to live an abundant life and want abundance for others, we do have an obligation to be deliberate with our thinking and creating so that we can begin to choose a different experience; a different reality.

If we are intending to live in a joyful, abundant, sustainable, peaceful world, the vibrational frequency for those experiences needs to be held by all of us together.

If you want to live in an abundant world, then you have to hold the vibration of abundance.

If you want to live in a joyful world, you have to hold the vibration of joy.

If you want to live in a peaceful world, you have to hold the vibration of peace.

You get my point, I am certain.

It is our responsibility to get very, very honest with ourselves and see if there are still those quiet places in our consciousness that are holding old, familiar and, therefore, comfortable "un-"abundant energies.

Try this.

Take a deep, very conscious, very aware breath in and then out. Now try this again and simply feel in your body what joy, abundance and peace feel like. Don't think about it too much. Just breathe and feel.

Pretty easy, huh?

Now try holding those energies for 10 minutes and while you do that, notice what happens to you. Do you feel anxious or restless? Are you suddenly craving the chocolate ice cream cake in the freezer downstairs? Do you need to check your emails or your Facebook status? Where is your mind? What are you thinking about? How is your anxiety?

If you imagine that your consciousness is like a wind instrument, how long can you consistently "hold the note" of joy and abundance?

Now, just for fun, think about the oil spill in the Gulf or the challenges various relief agencies are having getting aid to Pakistan. What are your thoughts and feelings? Do you feel despair, frustrated, angry or powerless?

Naturally, we will feel these feelings first. Our emotional response helps us clarify what we want. But if we get stuck in these feelings we are only adding to the "mess" in consciousness.

In such times of rapid shifting in consciousness, we have little "wiggle room" in our thinking. We have to continue to cultivate the good habits of focusing on the world we choose to experience instead of lamenting that it isn't here yet.

The world we choose IS already here. It is up to us to shift it from its template form in consciousness to creating it in the third dimension. This can only be done by focusing on what we want.

Another subtle thing we have to be aware of is the idea that somehow, all of these events occurring outside of us to other people and in far-away places are separate from us.

If something is being perceived as a part of your reality, it IS a part of you.

When you read the news and you see an infant crying or turtle dying, because it is in your awareness, it is a part of your consciousness. It is a part of you.

I like the statement, "None of us is free until we are all free." (I could not find a good source for this quotation, so please forgive me for not notating it properly.)

The minute you perceive of a situation or someone as being separate from yourself, is the minute you give away your power to create a different outcome.

All of "it" is all of us.

And if we want to live in a world that is more abundant, healthier, sustainable, peaceful, where corporations act from integrity, where there is food, shelter, freedom, education and the conscious power to choose for everyone, then we have to take responsibility for what is drawn into our awareness and "clean" our consciousness to reflect what we desire.

The most important thing that you can do to create an abundant world, is to be abundant yourself in every way possible.

For the next few weeks, I am shifting the focus of the 8,000 Meditation Events. Instead of working on global issues, I will be hosting meditations about personal abundance. I know that when we know we are fully abundant, we are so much more powerful on a global level!

We can only lift people up to our own vibrational frequency. When we raise our own vibration, we create a greater energy to lift others up.

In addition, I will be offering a special two-hour “Tap-A-Thon” next Monday, September 6 at 8pm Eastern/7pm Central/5pm Pacific.  We will be using EFT and some other belief-shifting techniques to move us all collectively towards an expanded state of abundance.

The cost for the “Tap-A-Thon” is $35.00.  To register, simply click on the Paypal link below:

Love,

Karen

What is all this Consciousness Evolution Thing, Anyway?

T he last 20 years have been marked by, what I think, is unprecedented shifts or evolution in consciousness.


For those of you who have been on a conscious path for several years, you may remember a time when you read a new book, discovered a new healing modality or tried a new technique and thought to yourself, "I must be the only one in my neighborhood doing this…"


Maybe you tried to share these new ideas with your friends and family and they simply looked at you as if you dropped from a spaceship or another planet.

But now, especially after the movies, "The Secret", and "What the Bleep", we've expanded our understanding and our vocabulary about consciousness. (You can even buy the book, based on the movie, "The Secret" at Wal-mart!)

You're no longer the "only" one!


But as you've embraced certain core ideas like the Law of Attraction, positive thinking, meditation and healing, you've noticed that even though you can feel deeply connected and you "know what to do" to create what you want in your life, you seem to have cycles of things working and then not working.


You understand the prosperous nature of the Universe and Love, and yet, you may still be struggling in your own personal relationships and with money.


You're not screwing up!


You're not doing anything wrong!


Where you are is absolutely perfect!


You might just need some new understandings and information to help you make sense of how you are evolving and growing.


There are four stages in consciousness evolution. While we like to think linearly, the truth is all of us go back and forth through these stages of consciousness evolution and it is quite normal for you to experience several stages of consciousness simultaneously.


This is the nature of evolution.


The Four Stages:


Stage One:  Your Reality Creates You
In this first stage of consciousness, we are deeply conditioned by the collective, the world around us.  Our beliefs, our thoughts, our actions all flow from a belief that our creative capacity is limited to creating a reaction to the world around us.

Our creativity is in navigating our way through challenges and situations that we feel powerless to control.  Who we are, what we feel, what we create is dependent on luck, fate and is all determined by a source outside of ourselves. 

For most of us, our conscious evolution journey begins here.  Our goal in this first phase of awareness is to begin to clear our conditioning, old patterns, thought forms and habits that keep us entrained to a powerless mentality.

Stage Two:  You Create Your Own Reality
During Stage Two we begin to remember our true creative capacity.  We learn that our thoughts, our emotions, our mindset, our beliefs and our expectations create our reality.  Using the basic "grammar" of creation, we begin to create something new and desirable in our world.

This is the phase taught to us in the movie "The Secret".  It is during Stage Two that we focus on our personal reality and move more deeply into a state of abundance consciousness.  We learn to focus and control our minds and master our emotions and use both to deliberately and consciously create.

Stage Three:  We Co-Create Our Reality
During Stage Three, after experimenting with deliberate creation, we begin to realize some very important things:

1.   There is a greater force helping us create and sometimes things work out bigger and better than we intend.  Miracles happen to us every day and we give up having to know "how" something is going to happen.  We begin to take bigger leaps of faith with our creative capacity.

2.  Sometimes things don't turn out at all like we intend but there seems to be a Divine Plan playing itself out.  Sometimes we don't know why a creation "fails", but we begin to understand that, in spite of this, the Divine Plan is good and the results are part of something bigger than ourselves.

3.  Our awareness of our creative capacity deepens and we realize that everything in our outer reality is created by us.  The things in our personal reality are personal creations and the things in our global reality are a result of projections in collective consciousness. We co-create our reality with our Divine Siblings.

4.  We come to realize that, as creative beings, if we don't like our collective creation, we can join together with our Divine Siblings and with intention, co-create something different.

This more expansive understanding of collective consciousness and the power to co-create, compels us to join together in the face of challenges on the planets, like earthquakes and oil spills and co-create in consciousness a different and more abundant outcome
.
Truly, this is an exciting stage for us to enter into.  Just go to Facebook or any of these social media forums and see the growing quantity of opportunities for you to join with your Divine Siblings and co-create an abundant New World.

Stage Four:  God Creates Reality Through You
The fourth stage marks a complete return to your natural state prior to being conditioned.  It is a state that is created after all your old beliefs and conditioning is released and is maintained by three key creation tools:

1.   Meditation is vital for Stage Four.  Meditation, in whatever form works for you, keeps your channel to your expanded awareness and Divine Intent open and flowing.

2.  Maintaining a prayerful state is also important in Stage Four.  Each moment can be expressed by gratitude and an acknowledgment of Divine Order and abundant perfection.

3.  A clear intention to allow the Divine to work through you helps keep your energy and attention focused on being present to the Divine working through you.

In the Fourth Stage, you realize that you are a uniquely created being and that your highest purpose in the fulfillment of the Divine Plan is to express the truth of who you are in the fullest way possible.  The Self in its pure, unconditioned state is intended to serve God by manifesting its full potential into form.

Each moment in this phase is a moment in the flow.  You know that you are fully supported and you simply obey the truth of the moment and your awareness if finely honed on the Now.  There are no worries, no fears, no lack, only faith and complete surrender.

A sample prayer for Stage Four might be:

I am an emissary of the Divine.
I am a child of Light.
I am an unlimited aspect of the Universe.
Because G-d is abundant, I am abundant in all ways.
Because G-d is powerful, I am powerful in all ways.
Because G-d is creative, I am creative in all ways.
Because G-d is all-knowing, I am always clear.
Because G-d is omnipotent and omnipresent, I am always in the right place at the right time fulfilling my Divine Purpose.
I pray that each moment, my hands, my body, my mind, my spirit, my Light and my essence be used in the service of the Divine.

A sample intention for Stage Four might be:

I intend to joyfully allow the Divine to easily create through me each and every minute of my day.

We all bop between the different phases, but you will realize that as your consciousness evolves, you tend to spend more time in one particular phase. 

In the last few months, I have seen a lot of my clients hovering between Stage Three and Four. To some of you, it may feel as if you are living in kind of an energetic "gap". 

For many of us, we are so used to "manifesting" that we are unsure of what we're doing if we don't have a "plan" or a vision we are working towards.

If that has been your experience lately, I invite you to relax into just simply being and remembering that your emotions are the GPS of your soul.  Simply follow what feels good and correct and you will be in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing.
Stage Four is joyful.


Some of us find that our "missions" that we do diligently served in the first part of our lives, has fallen away and we are truly following our hearts, sometimes into experiences that our previous, "serious" selves might have deemed frivolous.  The purpose of Stage Four is simply to BE abundance and to follow the passion....no guilt, no remorse, no worry and, most importantly, no martyrdom.

It is in this fullest state of expression of the Self that we serve the Divine Plan.  Remember, we are hard-wired to be happy, healthy, wealthy, connected and enlivened in whatever way feels correct for each one of us individually.


My intention, here at Joyful Mission, is to help you navigate the changes that come with each stage of evolution in consciousness.


Currently, there are three classes available to help you with your own personal growth and evolution. Each of these three classes is specifically designed to work with the energies of each stage of consciousness expansion:


Prosperity Boot Camp – Helps you transition from Stage One to Stage Two. This course teaches you what I call the "grammar" of Deliberate Creation and is a building block to all stages of consciousness expansion.


Inside the Body of God – Helps you fine tune your Deliberate Creation skills so that you can move from Stage Two to Stage Three and begin to use your skills together with other people to co-create an abundant New World.


Ascension 101 – Helps you understand all four stages of consciousness and continue to move solidly into Stage Three and Four of consciousness. This class is currently only available live. A recorded version will be available by January of 2011.


I hope you'll join me for these fun, dynamic and transformative courses. Taking this courses helps you set a clear intention to stabilize and ground your evolution and your "shifting".


You also get to be in the energy of some wonderful, like-minded people!


If you attend these classes as a pre-recorded experience, I'd love to hear your feedback and your experiences. Please feel free to drop me a note and let me know what's up in your world!


I look forward to continuing to expand these offerings!


Thank you for all that you do to take your place in the Divine Order! You are truly magnificent!


Love,

Karen






 

Suffering, Love and Homegrown Tomatoes

I’ve been thinking a lot about suffering recently. Not the greatest topic to swill around in your brain but I have NEEDED to figure out this weird web of self-generated pain I’ve been indulging in for the last year.

It’s been a great learning journey that came to a conclusion with a baby, two dads, a magical homegrown tomato and a lost necklace. But more about that later…

Let’s start with the fun stuff first.

I’m experiencing love.

I’m experiencing love with a lot of things and a lot of people. I’m experiencing love with my kids, my family, my friends, my work, my brain, my life and, in spite of my resistance, the father of my youngest daughter.

My relationship with this man is a weird and very personal story. But since it is my birthday and kind of the beginning of a new era for me, I’d like to share it in the hopes that it might help you find love, too.

I started seeing this man about four years ago after I issued a personal moratorium on relationships in my life. I had just gotten out of a very painful relationship that ended the way all of my relationships in the last 10 years have ended and I didn’t want to get involved with anyone.

This relationship sort of started out without a whole lot of “relating”, if you catch my drift. Until I got pregnant, very (VERY) much against the odds…

Now, I have been diligently working on manifesting my life partner since my fortieth birthday, five years ago. I have a nice list of all the qualities I’d like my life partner to have. Some of you may have heard me read it out loud in Prosperity Boot Camp (which starts next Thursday, August 27, BTW).

I wanted a metaphysical man who would sit and meditate with me, a man who shared my passion for teaching and my life mission, a man who believed in fate and soulmates…

Instead I got this incredibly brilliant, well-educated, logical, intellectual Jewish man who is 15 years older than me and doesn’t really fit many of the criteria on my list.

I am very frightened of being in a relationship with this man. He is very attractive and many women want him. He has lived long enough to have a parade of “exes” of one sort or another and, given my history in relationship, and the statements he has made about the quality of our relationship, I can’t figure out what he wants with me, other than the fact that we share a daughter. (I know, you don’t have to send me emails about the “obvious”.)

But it’s more than just that.

For all the places where we lack common ground, we also have many places where we stand solidly together, side by side. We both believe in family, are committed to our children and doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. We laugh a lot. We do really well playing house together and we’re both very creative. We have an incredible energy together and, at the same time, a lot of simple peace between us and we really love our daughter, Ayelet.

And he likes my writing.

And he thinks I’m a good mother.

Oh, and did I mention that he lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and I live in Houston, Texas and we commute once a month to spend time together?

We live in separate cities because my fear drove me all the way across the country so that I could be “in control” of our relationship.

All that really happened is that my baby and I have logged an absurd amount of frequent flier miles and I spend my free time with a telephone glued to my ear.

So a big part of my suffering this year has been about being afraid to let go and love (and TRUST), feeling abandoned (even though I’m the one who left), feeling overwhelmed by parenting a baby by myself, missing my guy, feeling guilty when I leave my other children to spend time in Minneapolis (or wherever we end up traveling),feeling guilty for taking my baby away from her father, trying to explain this relationship to my friends and family who just look at me with one eyebrow raised and wondering just what DID my Higher Self have in mind with this pairing anyway????

(BTW, this is the LAST post about suffering for at least three months…new topics coming soon!)

Love scares me. I’ve had some really painful manifestations in relationships that have left me with a crook in my neck from looking back and a lot of fear that if I surrender to love, I’ll just get hurt again. So I enter into love always waiting for the “other shoe to drop”.

A few years ago, a very wise friend of mine told me that if you don’t want the “other shoe” to “drop”, stop looking for the other shoe. One of the things that I have learned recently is that if I want to stop suffering, I have to stop looking for it.

When you stop searching for evidence of something in your life and instead focus your attention on something else, “magically” we begin to see more of what we are looking for.

We are actually “hard-wired” in our bodies to only see what we condition ourselves to see. Think about this for a minute. At any given moment you are surrounded by thousands of bits of information. If you pay attention to all of it, you might go mad.

Your brain has a system call the Reticular Activating System (RAS) that programs your awareness to sort through about 250 bits of information per minute so that you are not overwhelmed by data. Did you ever notice how when you are thinking about buying a particular kind of car that you start to notice that car everywhere you go?

It’s not magic or even a “sign”. It’s simply that your RAS has programmed your awareness so that what you are thinking about is more evident in your outer world. Basically, you can program your thinking to see what you want to see and consequently even influence the kind of experience you want to have.

When I was living in Sedona a few years back, I got to spend a lot of time in my hammock under the stars. One night I got a very clear message in my head comprised of only one sentence:

It’s all Love.

And in that one moment I had this profound awareness that everything, every experience, every person, every situation, basically, all of life was an expression of love. I just had to learn to see it that way.

Marianne Williamson, author of “A Return to Love”, says, “There is no such thing as a neutral thought. Every thought takes us into love or into fear, and whichever one we choose casts out the vision of the other.”

We cannot be in love and fear simultaneously. One has to win. When we embark on an enlightened path and we begin to see the expansive, unlimited nature of the Universe, we also come to understand that love is the basic unchanging nature of life.

In the Human Design System, which I believe gives us the archetypical blueprint for the highest expression of humanity, love and life force are inextricably intertwined. Fear isn’t even a part of the map and is actually evolving out of the system as a place of awareness. (See the Solar Plexus Mutation mini-course.)

The only pain we experience in love is the pain of separation or the perception of separation. Are we really separate or do we just perceive ourselves to be, focus on it and then sit and suffer in the ever-growing gap we create in consciousness?

My friends, Paul and Layne Cutright, relationship coaches and authors of several relationship books, including “You’re Never Upset for the Reasons You Think You Are,” stated once in a teleclass I hosted, that the root cause of all conflict in a relationship is a couples desire to be closer and an inability to manifest that desire.

As with all contrast, our suffering in the perception of separation is simply our Higher Self helping us clarify that we want to be closer and in a loving space. To create more love, we simply have to shift our focus away from the places where we think we are apart from love and look at where we find closeness.

Creation is simply a matter of where you put your energy, attention and focus.

When we get stuck in fear or even panic (not-love) it’s usually because we don’t understand what is happening. Most of us, when we are caught in fear, struggle, resist or try to escape the circumstances that created the fear. We act like bugs caught in a spider web. The more we resist and struggle, the deeper we are ensnared in the web.

If we, instead, allow our response and work to see the experience from a different perspective, we can use the not-love experience as a powerful Point of Evolution that gives us the information necessary to move to a deeper experience of love.

There are many reasons why we get trapped in the web of fear. I’ll list a few but you may have your own:

1.It’s time to move on. You are done with the experience but you aren’t trusting that what is coming next is more in alignment with what you truly want to experience.

2.What you are wanting isn’t in the highest good for all, including yourself and your Higher Self is staging an “intervention”.

3.Your experiences are triggering past painful memories and you are afraid that the past will repeat itself.

4.You are focusing on what you don’t want instead of what you want.

5.You have an identity rooted in your “stuckness” and you don’t want to let it go. Maybe you don’t know who you are without pain, suffering, struggle, etc.

6.You are too tired to make the change. You’re burned out and need a break.

7.You have old beliefs that won’t allow you to believe that you can have/deserve to have/it is possible to have/feel guilty for having…

8.You forgot (temporarily) in the midst of the “earth dream” that you are a Source Being.


As I said, you may have other reasons but basically, they are all rooted in fear and not love. When we see the love, we can experience immediate healing.

Try this for a minute. Sit and breathe deeply and consciously. Let your breath fill your body and just hold the energy of the breath for a minute. As you exhale the breath, imagine that with your out-breath you are releasing all the tensions, fear, anxiety, concern, panic, or whatever may be bugging you.

Now breathe in again and as you breathe in this time, simply think about and feel love entering your body and breathing in pure love in all of its expressions and forms. Just be love.

Isn’t it interesting how such a simple experience of love can erase everything else?

I was recently at a wedding. One of the guests made a toast and compared love to the image of Adam and G-d in the Sistine Chapel, fingers reaching towards each other but not quite meeting. He stated that maybe love was the work we needed to do to actually connect and touch. I agree.

We can stand in the gap and connect and touch simply by shifting our focus. Do we spend our time noting the places where we don’t connect and lack common ground, or do we stand in the moment and savor all those places where we do connect and touch?

Your experience will depend on your answer to that question. (Hint: Life is precious and each moment can pass in heart beat. Do you really want to spend the time we have standing in “the gap”?)

Now, back to a tale of a baby, two dads, a magical homegrown tomato and a lost necklace…

When I was in New York a few days ago, I was traveling in the backseat of a rental car trying to keep my very active toddler happy at the end of a long road trip. I was wearing a necklace my father had given me when I was eight-years-old that was very dear to me. I took off the necklace and gave it to Ayelet to play with. She dropped it and it slid to the floor, or so I thought.

In the morning when I went to the car to look for the necklace, it was nowhere to be found. Her Dad and I tore the car and her car seat apart looking for it but it was gone.

When I was growing up, my Dad traveled a lot and I really, really missed him. He always brought me back a souvenir from his travels, usually a piece of jewelry. I have several pieces stored away to give to my daughters when they get older.

But this particular necklace is my favorite and when I wear it, I always remember how much I missed my Dad when I was little. When I lost it, I realized that maybe it was time to release the memory of always missing my Dad and I adjusted myself emotionally and let it go.

A few days later, after traveling with the car seat from Newark to Houston and putting it in two different cars, I was leaning over to put Ayelet in her seat when, seemingly out of nowhere, my necklace “dropped” into my hand. I was thrilled but kind of confounded at where the darn thing had been hiding itself.

In my meditation that evening, I got a clear message that instead of wearing it as a symbol of my missing my Dad, that I needed to see it as a token of my father’s love for me and I imagined him in the port city of Basra in Iraq picking out a special trinket for me. (BTW, he is still delighted when he sees me wear it.) It is time to release the old memories of separation and remember the love.

(One Dad down, one Dad to go.)

Now for the Magical Homegrown Tomato…Last week, Ayelet and I were outside enjoying our beautiful, tropical backyard in Houston. After roaming around the back of the garden, Ayelet brought me a warm, beautiful, sun-ripened, homegrown tomato.

Now, this isn’t such a big deal except that we have no tomato plants in our backyard and neither do our neighbors. I was, again, confounded about the appearance of something out of
“thin air”.

Later that evening, when I was talking to her Dad on the phone, he mentioned that he had picked the first ripe tomato of the season from his backyard in Minneapolis. We joked that maybe Ayelet had found a portal to her Dad’s backyard…

Now, I am certain that there is some kind of logical explanation for the reappearance of my necklace and the magical tomato. But I’ve decided to let go of my need to know…

Instead, I prefer to think that the power of remembering love vs. separation brought my necklace back to me and that the strength of a little girl’s love for her Dad (and his love for her) was powerful enough for her to blast through the time-space continuum and go tomato picking with her Daddy on a warm, beautiful summer afternoon.

Today is my birthday. Today I commit to a year of finding the love in everything.

I hope you’ll join me!

Love,
Karen


P.S. At the end of my time with Ayelet and her Dad, I made a little stack of stones, three stones representing each of us, and at the base I placed a perfect heart-shaped rock. I thought about taking a photo to mark the moment but I realized that the moment was, like all moments, temporary and profound because of its fleeting, impermanent nature.

My intention is that this “note” will remind you to see all the love that surrounds you, too! And That you won’t waste a minute getting after it! Hop to it! Love in all of its unique and amazing expressions is waaaaay more fun than suffering…