Had Enough of Winter? Plant Spring in Your Soul!

Launching February 20th:
FREE Deepak Chopra 21-Day Guided Meditation Recordings

A well-known Teacher once said, “I have so much to do today – if I hope to accomplish everything on my list, I must meditate twice as long.”

Most of us are more likely to say, “I have so much to do today, there’s no way I have time for meditation or anything else!”  I used to say that myself until I figured out that I have all the time I need for the things that matter most.

My task is simply to discern exactly what matters most in each moment.

The funny thing is that meditating on a regular basis actually makes me much more efficient and productive.  People throughout the world have long reported a similar result, whether they are Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Jew or atheist.

For those who might want to give it a try — or for those who are already committed to meditation — I wanted to share a great opportunity with you.  Four times a year, through the Chopra Meditation Center, Deepak Chopra offers a NEW completely FREE series of 21 guided meditations.  I love the programs in this series and use them myself.  His next program is launching on Monday, February 20th.

The good news about Chopra’s program is that it’s a simple daily download, with each meditation lasting about 10-20 minutes.

Whether you’re a seasoned meditator or you’ve heard that it might reduce your stress and increase your sense of well-being, this program has a great deal to offer.  For those new to meditation, it eliminates the perceived barrier of “too much silence” by easing you into a healthy new habit through a theme that ties the 21 sessions together with lots of speaking and guidance, very little pure silence.

And, for the seasoned meditator, it’s a great way to expand your options and approach.   All meditation paths have merit because at their core they are all about the myriad ways we can hold ourselves in mindfulness.  Doing the dishes, walking the dog, feeding the cat — all become meditative when entered into with focus and awareness.  We are human beings, not human doings.  Just me, just here, just now, just be.

Here’s how The Chopra Center introduces this series:

“Are you ready to experience greater health, deep inner peace and genuine happiness?  If your answer is YES, we invite you to join us for the Chopra Center 21-Day Meditation Challenge™ as we embark on a Mind-Body Odyssey!”

Find out more and sign up here …

Leave me a comment and let me know if you found value in this series.  Your feedback will help me with other suggestions about resources.

All We Need is Love

Things have been humming along for me.  Coaching six to ten clients a week.  Publishing some, although not as much as I’d like.  Meditating, although more would be beneficial.  Assistants helping me catch up on office work.  New technology acquired to support greater efficiency.  Eating healthy, working out six days a week, listening to good books via audible.com on my Blackberry.  Utilizing Nook and Kindle to help me process and manage content.  An amazing online library system via www.librarything.com to organize all of my favorite inspirational resources for clients.  Less clutter in the office.  Making art becoming a staple of my diet again.  Sounds lovely, yes?

So how could all of that good ever result in me weeping with hands pressed over my heart this morning?

Here’s my handle on the chain of events.  I was cranking along, getting more organized and productive.  Not realizing I was at risk for becoming seduced again by the Gremlin of “Productivity=Purpose.”  Not even noticing her whispering and hissing in my ear, “See, now you’re remembering how this works.  Work, work, work, work, and more work.  Look at how much more you accomplish when you take yourself more seriously.  Using all those organizational tools again.  Schedules, lists, software, how-to-books.  You used to raise multi-tasking to an art form.  For heaven’s sake, you taught others how to be more productive.  I knew you couldn’t have forgotten everything I taught you.  All you needed was a little subtle prodding from me.  You know how much better it feels to be you when you’re doing and accomplishing more.”

No, I had no idea she’d been playing that sinister tape in my head again.  I knew that my work could benefit from a little more intention and organization.  Setting priorities, making some lists, filing more regularly, scheduling more tightly.  There is nothing wrong with being organized or productive.  The problem arises when we conclude our value is in any way related to our performance.  That’s when things get wacky.

So I sat there, sobbing and a bit clueless as to why.  I’d been up for hours and had nothing but a cup of decaf cappuccino.  Knew I needed to back away from the laptop, put some distance between me and my office, go upstairs and eat so my head and heart actually had some healthy fuel to function optimally.  Maybe add some sitting meditation to center myself and attain clarity. So upstairs to break the fast I went, beginning on the spot meditation by chanting my personal version of the Shambhala Buddhist Four Limitless Ones Affirmations which are a way of life.  At least I thought they were a way of life, until I couldn’t for the life of me remember one of the four.

I remembered the peace one because peace was so clearly eluding me at that moment.  And I had the compassion one,  steeped in misery of my own making as I was.  And I remembered the joy one, probably because I was experiencing none. What the heck was the fourth one???  I taxed my brain.  Tried writing them down to trigger muscle memory.  No dice.  It had become the Three, not Four, Limitless Affirmations.  I had lost my WAY.

I knew in my HEART it had to be significant that I couldn’t remember the fourth.  That maybe the root of my misery was that I quite literally couldn’t remember and wasn’t living the fourth.  I couldn’t stand it any longer.  Aborting breakfast prep, I returned to my office for the sole purpose of looking up the fourth affirmation on my laptop (no other work I swear).  Here’s what I found:

• LOVE:  We delight in our purpose – always discovering and living our greatest potential.
• COMPASSION:  Misery holds no power over us – we neither foster nor lose ourselves in it.
• JOY:  We rejoice in all things.
• PEACE:  We abide in peaceful balance – at one and in harmony with all – free from addiction, aggression and indifference.

Imagine my astonishment – the missing ingredient was love.  LOVE.  And it’s not fourth, it’s first.  How could I have forgotten about love?  I’m the Love and Curiosity chick.  How had I forgotten about LOVE and how had it led to me weeping at the laptop?  Simple.  Driven by my old task mistress the Gremlin of Productivity=Purpose (aka, Cruella), in the process of becoming more organized and productive, I started to forget that the only reason to do so was to further my ability to ALWAYS DELIGHT IN MY PURPOSE:

I embody and promote Love, Respect, Curiosity and Compassion.  Every being, encounter and experience holds the potential for infinite good – offering unlimited opportunities for insight and growth.

Always delighting in my purpose by discovering and living my greatest potential – LOVE.  Not fussing and making myself crazy about having to be PERFECT at it RIGHT NOW.  Not going nuts trying to figure out how I can read 8,000 self-improvement books this week to embody my purpose perfectly ’cause clearly I’M NOT ENOUGH as I am.

OH DEBORAH, LISTEN TO YOURSELF! LOOK AT LITTLE BEE.  YOU’RE SCARING HER TO DEATH BY PUSHING HER WAY TOO HARD.  LOOK AT HER, YOU’VE MADE HER CRY AND HOLD HER HANDS OVER HER HEART TO PROTECT HERSELF FROM WHAT YOU’RE DOING TO HER.  SHE’S AFRAID SHE HAS NO WORTH TO YOU AGAIN BECAUSE SHE’S NOT PERFECT AND CAN’T DO IT ALL.  DOESN’T WANT TO DO IT ALL.  SHE’S WORKED HARD ALL WEEK.  SHE HAD HER HEART SET ON PLAYING SOME TODAY.  FOR LOVE’S SAKE, STOP THIS INSANITY!

Just like that, remembering that love is my purpose, my greatest potential, I found the compassion, joy and peace I had misplaced.  Remembering that when I approach everyone – especially myself – every encounter and every experience with Love, Respect, Curiosity and Compassion, I always have deep peace, lasting joy and meaningful relationships.

Dear Ones, you are worthy.  You ARE worthy.  YOU ARE WORTHY.  Just as you are.  With your delightful blend of gifts and annoying little quirks.  In all of time, You are the only You in the entire Universe.  You are enough - perfect just as you are in this moment.

You are loved and loving.  You are blessed and a blessing.  Namaste.

 

Art Therapy

During the past five years, I’ve lived the transformative power of today’s reading from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way Every Day – A Year of Creative Living:

“People frequently believe the creative life is grounded in fantasy.  The more difficult truth is that creativity is grounded in reality, in the particular, the focused, the well observed or specifically imagined.  As we lose our vagueness about our self, our values, our life situation, we become available to the moment. It is there, in the particular, that we contact the creative self.  Until we experience the freedom of solitude, we cannot connect authentically.  We may be enmeshed, but we are not encountered.  Art lies in the moment of encounter:  we meet our truth and we meet ourselves; we meet ourselves and we meet our self-expression.  We become original because we become something specific:  an origin from which work flows.”

To begin the search for my long-lost authentic self, I primed the pump with immersion in a plethora of creative endeavors.  I had no master plan.  Only a vague recollection of feeling happy to be alive when I was making art as a child.  Art is the language our souls still speak even when, especially when, our brains and mouths cannot form words to tell our story.  Through our art we self-disclose without ever planning to, even when we try not to.  We can’t stop our hearts and souls from speaking through our creations – whether we sing, garden, write, paint, cook, sew, repair cars or fix computers.  Always, in all ways, we tell what must be told.

Three years into that search, left on my own for the first time in my life, guided by love, respect, curiosity and compassion, I found myself.  Only then could I begin my first real connections with others.  As Cameron observes, before that solitude, before that encounter with my self and my values, I was often, maybe always, enmeshed with others, but I never truly encountered them or they me.

Dear One, Julia didn’t just write today’s meditation for me.  She wrote it for herself and for all of us.  It is time, past time, to fall in love with yourself.  Only then will you be able to fall in love with anyone else.

You are loved and loving.  You are blessed and a blessing.  Namaste.

Six Days of Love and Curiosity

As promised, below you will find the posts from the brief and tumultuous six-day lifespan of my beloved sister blog site, Love and Curiosity – Gems for the Journey.  Many thanks to the loyal fans who followed my musings there.  While Gemmy has returned to the creative ether from whence she came, rest assured you will find lots of future Gems here.

Day 1 of 6 February 5, 2011 – The Keys to the Kingdom

Here you will find the words I live by.  Brief daily insights inspired by my favorite authors, including Julia Cameron, Pema Chödrön, Wayne Muller, Dawna Markova, Louise Hay, Mary Anne Radmacher, Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Mary Oliver, Cheryl Richardson, Parker Palmer, Thomas Moore, Bruce D Schneider, Wayne Dyer,  Sue Monk Kidd, William Bridges and untold others. 

When approached with Love and Curiosity, each day is a gift of endless possibilities for good.

Day 2 of 6 February 6, 2011 – Creating a Life

Julia Cameron’s book, “The Artist’s Way,” quite literally saved my life.  My body, mind and spirit began the journey to wholeness when I began living her teachings.  That all of us are essentially creative beings - not just those who call themselves Artists with a capital “A.” That our creativity is Divinely Sourced – as essential to sustaining life as breathing.

With deep gratitude I dedicate this new online journal to Julia Cameron and the other writers and teachers who make my life a joyous adventure of personal discovery and unlimited possibilities for good each and every day.  I encourage you to purchase a copy of Julia’s daily readings book, “The Artist’s Way Every Day – A Year of Creative Living” and read along with me .

Believe in yourself.  You matter.  Dream big.  With curiosity, love, compassion and a sense of humor, all things are possible.  Namaste.

Day 3 of 6 February 7, 2011 – Passion and Purpose

At nearly 57 years of age, I am in the best health – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual – of my entire life.  While I still have my ups and downs, my days are woven with deep peace, lasting joy and meaningful relationships.  This great blessing is the result of the quest I introduced in the preceding entry – a Journey to Wholeness that began five and a half years ago with the reading of Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way and has continued with input from many other sages.  I found myself living alone for the first time in my life - unhappy, unhealthy, unfit. While it was very hard for the first four months as I continued to struggle against my solitude, one day in a moment of grace I realized isolation afforded me the opportunity to work on the relationship I had neglected my entire life – the relationship with myself.  Stripped of my habitual pattern of avoiding my own needs and feelings by focusing on caring for others, I finally turned my attention to myself.  With Love and Curiosity, in the words of Robert Frost, I finally took the road less travelled by and that has made all the difference.

A core text I recommend to my life coaching clients to stimulate self discovery is Wayne Muller’s How, Then, Shall We Live?  Wayne poses four questions that help us reveal the passion and purpose of our lives by awakening four realms of the inner life - Identity, Love, Daily Practice and Kindness:

• Who am I?
• What do I love?
• How shall I live, knowing I will die?
• What is my gift to the family of the earth?

In his Letters to a Young Poet, Rainier Maria Rilke urged, “Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”  I transform the challenges of my life into opportunities by living the answers to these questions every day, for Life is indeed a Journey, not a destination.  And while the answers grow richer and deeper with the passage of time, the essence remains the same.  My purpose, my passion, my reason for being here is to help others live their dreams by finding their own answers.

May your life be one of endless self discovery and growth, resulting in passion, purpose, deep peace, lasting joy and meaningful relationships.  Namaste.

Day 4 of 6 February 8, 2011 – Synchronicity

Yesterday I had a thought – what if all of my striving to make things happen was actually working against me?  What if I was missing many of my best synchronistic opportunities because I was too busy working my plan?  How might my experience be transformed if I just stayed more centered in the present moment, clear in who I am and my purpose, but not trying to architect my life down to the last detail?

Here’s how the Universe replied:

Today’s Daily Word reading from Unity was titled ”SYNCHRONICITY.”  My daily reading from Julia Cameron was on SYNCHRONICITY.  My Pema Chödrön and Wayne Muller daily readings were also on SYNCHRONICITY.  The daily creativity prayer from Julia Cameron was on SYNCHRONICITY.  The Wayne Dyer audio lecture I finished today closed by extolling the virtues of trusting in SYNCHRONICITY.  Get aligned with Source Energy, and the Universe will support your endeavors.

Just me, just here, just now, just be.  Ya think?

Namaste and good night. 

Day 5 of 6 February 9, 2011 – Charity Begins at Home

As we approach Valentine’s Day, the subject of love is top of mind.  If, according  to Merriam-Webster’s 2011 dictionary, charity is “benevolent goodwill toward or love of humanity” or at a minimum “lenient judgment of others,” then I suggest it has to begin at home – it has to begin with me.  My ability to truly love others is directly dependent on whether I truly love myself. While as a good actress I can fake it – keep all the judgmental voices inside my head – there is a vast difference between faking it and the real thing.

So what does love this kind of love look like? According to a well-known treatise on the subject found in 1 Corinthians 13:v4-8 (New International Version, ©2010):

 ⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  ⁸ Love never fails.

Imagine applying these to yourself.  Being patient with yourself.  Being kind to yourself.  Not being envious - believing you deserve good things.  Always treating yourself with honor.  Always protecting and trusting yourself.  Always hoping for the best for yourself.  Always being there for yourself.

This is the heart of my personal transformation over the past two years.  With the compassionate guidance of Buddhist Life Coach Pema Chödrön, I am learning to always approach myself and others with Love and Curiosity.  This way of living is a path, a Journey, not a destination.  It is not about self-improvement.  It is about being aware and awakening my heart, moment by moment, day by day. It is a path to deep peace, lasting joy and meaningful relationships.

You are loved and loving.  You are blessed and a blessing.  With Love and Curiosity, all things are possible.  Namaste.

Day 6 of 6 February 10, 2011 – The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

I’ve spent much of the past two days listening to 8 lectures by Pema Chödrön.  Throughout the program, she warns that the more you study and practice Buddhism, the more you will encounter your own frustrating nature.  That just when you think you should have it all together, you realize the only thing you’ve figured out is that you don’t have it all together. Everything was just ducky until I sat down to write this blog.  Then the whining began.  BINGO!

I used to think Buddhists were people who had risen above normal human experience.  They were always very “zen” – chanting and not caring about anything.  Boy, was I clueless.  According to Pema, Buddhism isn’t about escaping your emotions, it’s about embracing them - the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s about awakening your heart with constant awareness of yourself and your feelings.  It’s about observing them with love and curiosity – accepting everything about yourself, especially the most frustrating aspects.  The point of enlightenment is not to become superior and feel no pain.  It’s to open your heart wider and wider to your own pain and, through that experience, to the pain of others.  It’s to help you develop deeper love and true empathy for yourself and everyone else. So you can finally connect to all of humankind on the most profound level by understanding we are all fundamentally the same.  We are all Just Human. 

So, here I sit.  Tired, confused, not sure where my life is headed.  Feeling a little sorry for myself.  Pissed that I committed myself to a second blog site.  Not sure what to write that will inspire anyone else when I feel so uninspired.  Not sure anyone really cares whether I write now or ever.  Nothing to write.  No reason to write.  So alone.

In tears of frustration, I close my eyes, start breathing slowly and deeply, and ask for guidance.  The answer comes, “Observe the teachings.”

(inhale) I embrace the agony I am creating for myself.
(exhale) With compassion, I send myself love, joy and peace.
(inhale) I focus on the people all over the world who are tired and confused.
(exhale) Others who don’t know if they are on the right path.
(inhale) Others who feel alone and that no one cares.
(exhale) With compassion, I send them love, joy and peace.

After a few cycles of breathing and holding these thoughts, peace envelops me.  I know that all over the world, others are observing this same practice as they sit with their personal pain.  Total strangers and yet we are thinking of each other with compassion and sending each other love,  joy and peace.  We are not alone.  Someone does care. We care.

That’s Buddhism.

I am thinking of you with compassion
and sending you love, joy and peace.
Namaste.

Wherever You Go, There You Are

Those who’ve been following this book from the beginning will notice that initially I published frequently – often more than once a week.  But over time, my entries become more sporadic, concluding with me not publishing at all for over 10 weeks.  As I explained in the previous chapter, restructuring my arts business, reworking my professional space, ramping up my life coaching practice, immersing myself in my coach certification program, hosting holiday house guests and handling the various vagaries of life made it difficult to sit down at the keyboard for a few quiet hours during which I could write without pressure to my heart’s content.  But I know that we find time for the things that matter to us, no matter what.  And publishing, sharing with you, means a great deal to me.  So I began to get an itchy feeling that there was something else going on other than being too busy to write.  Then the data disaster drove me to publish again. (Good news about the data recovery effort will make its way to you soon, along with the additional lessons I’ve learned on that leg of my Journey.)

The continued unfolding of dramatic changes in my life and the feeling of living each day on the brink without data, caused me to take a hard look at many areas of my life, including publishing the book online.  I found that the decline in my rate of publishing had little to do with busyness.  And it had nothing to do with having nothing to say or caring less about my readers.  If anything, the reminder of the fragility of our connection to things we hold precious, only deepened my compassion for all beings and taught me more that I wanted to share.  What I discovered, when I took a hard look at my relationship to publishing was something Julia Cameron writes about with regularity.  My EGO was getting in the way.  And so I decided I would find a way to make writing feel less monumental to encourage me to write more frequently, because connecting with humanity through my writing is an important way in which I realize my purpose on this earth.

So last weekend I got the bright idea to launch an additional blog  (Love and Curiosity – Gems for the Journey) with the intention of publishing on that site daily.  My initial plan was to use the daily meditations from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way Every Day – one of the books I read from each morning to feed my written mediation practice - to create a very brief Deborah-and-Julia sort of experience.  I’d expound briefly on one of Julia’s many inspiring thoughts thereby sharing the inspiration with my readers, with the possibility that they might choose to purchase Julia’s book and read along with me.  It was a lovely possibility for deeper connection with all humanity that warmed my soul. Julia’s an amazing writer.  With Julia providing guaranteed structure and inspiration, I’d have tons of material to work with.  Combined with the intentional brevity of my entries, I would leap gracefully over my writing resistance hurdle, publishing little Gems for the Journey each and every day, no pain, no sweat.  Because, after all, I love writing and know that I’m an excellent writer.  The day I found my voice again and began publishing this book online was a day of great gratitude and rejoicing for me.  Now I had another cool idea for an easier and briefer blog. This should only multiply my publishing bliss, right?

I just neglected to consider one itsy bitsy teeny weeny HUMONGOUS factor.  MY EGO.  I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter that MY EGO was getting in the way of my publishing with the regularity that my heart desired.  And while this new plan is clever and mechanically sound – it could have produced the desired result – the fact is, it didn’t.  That’s because it didn’t do anything to deal with the very real issue of MY EGO (ok, I’m going to stop the all caps now because it slows my typing, but hear it in caps every time you read it).  Briefer it was.  Easy it was not.

Here are the many ways my ego showed up. First, my best-creative-girlfriend Julia, the partner I was depending on for this escapade, totally let me down.  I’ve read everything she’s ever written.  She has never failed to inspire through any of her works.  And yet, she chose the day after I announced my big decision to publish daily on the new site, to become a lackluster writer.  I’d read her daily entry, and say, “That’s it?  THAT’S IT?  You expect me to inspire them with that? You had to pick now to become a crappy writer?”  (Somewhere I know Julia is laughing along with you and me.) Realizing that it was risky to depend so completely on such an obviously capricious genius, I decided I needed to call on the other inspiring teachers and writers in my life if I was going to get through this.  And that got me through an entry or two.

But over the course of the six entries I published on the new site, I found that while all of my teachers inspired me on a daily basis, I still couldn’t get that feeling out of my head onto the page.  And that my friends is because feelings don’t come out of our heads.  They come from our hearts.  I was reminded of this last week during a session with my own Life Coach (smart coaches have coaches) during which we were discussing my resistance to publishing, which I kept insisting was not a problem (Hah!).  My most excellent Coach Tina Robbins (www.openroadscoaching.com), observed that in the first 45 minutes of our 60-minute session, each time she asked how I felt, I replied, “Intellectually, I think…” Gotcha!

Like Jacob wrestling with the Old Testament Angel, I wrestled with my EGO every night.  And we managed to publish for five nights (checking off that daily box) with some difficulty not no big drama.  It wasn’t proving as easy as I expected, but maybe I just needed time to get used to it.  (Are you counting the number of times I’ve used think, thought or a synonym?  Big clue that I still didn’t have a clue.)

Which brings us Day Six, Thursday, February 10th, 2011. I awoke with many reasons to feel grateful for how my life was unfolding.  Blessings continued to abound.  Synchronicity without measure.  And yet, it was a harbinger of the day’s events that I began with a ”pep talk” from the nasty voice in my head (think Glenn Close as Cruella DeVil in the Power in Pinstripes Business suit from the remake of 101 Dalmatians).  “Well, darling, Love and Curiosity is a cute little writing effort.  But it is clearly Blog Lite compared to your other site.  Less taste and less filling.  Less effort, less prose, less inspiring,  just … well … less.  I’ll grant you that in some case maybe less can be more (although I personally find that a lot more is always so much more).  And we both know if you would just buckle down and be a serious business woman again, you could do so much more with your life.  Clients used to pay your consulting firms $750 for an hour of your advice.  I just find it so sad that this pitiful effort is what you’ve come to.”

I have a Disney Cruella DeVil doll dressed in the fabulous Power in Pinstripes suit in my office.  She’s there as a physical reminder of the constant presence of the dark side of my driven, perfectionist, performer personality.  I recognized my arch nemesis (the other me) the moment she opened her mouth (in my head) and told her to shut up and get back in her box.  When she’s really bitchy, I tell her I’ll put her box in the closet and shut the door if she can’t zip it.  Works like a charm.  But remembering that she is really just part of me, I know that even when she doesn’t make a sound, she’s always with me.  It’s no wonder I spent much of my day listening to Pema Chödrön lectures to counteract Cruella’s constant subliminal nagging.

I sat down to write at 10:30pm (it had gotten later every day).  I was fresh off the exhilaration trail of listening to eight hours of Pema lecturing on Buddhism.  She is brilliant, touching and so very real.  Her way of teaching Buddhist practice has helped make those practices core to my life.  I had even made notes during the day to make writing that night a piece of cake.  I had 90 minutes to channel Pema in 300 to 500 words and transmit to all humanity the essence of Buddhism and how Buddhist practice had transformed my life.  Piece of cake – NOT.  Because I will be sharing with you in later chapters the content of all six entries on the short-lived sister site (yes, one of my conclusions is that I should merge the content from that site back into this one and go forward with one integrated site), I won’t tell you everything that happened that night.  I will share that in addition to what you’ll read in that entry, when the frustration level became unbearable, I considered ever more horrifying options, such as just copying and pasting a few cool quotes from another site, declare it a blog, check of the daily box and call it a day. Executed that cheap little solution right up to the step before pushing the “publish” button, when I pulled myself back from the brink in horror.  Next I sat weighing the ethical ramifications of plagiarizing my own writing from this site, pulling a clever paragraph from one of my blogs, pasting it, signing it, calling it a blog, checking the box, going to bed.  No dice on that one either.  At one point I was so enraged with myself that I considered obliterating the five existing entries and launching the site into blog oblivion (no issues with suppressed anger here).  Pulled myself back from the brink on that one as well.  I know that whenever I create this much drama in my life, big stuff is happening.  Stuff I need to pay attention to.  The clock was running down.  I had a little over 60 minutes before not publishing my daily blog daily would reveal me for the sham, the charlatan, the lightweight writer that I really am (so much for confidence in my writing abilities).  All I had to do was convey the poignancy of Pema and the essence of Buddhism in 300 words.  How hard could that be? Turns out it was quite hard if I wanted to use only my head, not my heart, to do it.

I leave the conclusion of that encounter to the actual blog entry.  Because, it turned out to be one of the most real and moving pieces I’ve ever written.  I will close now by sharing the lessons I learned on this latest leg of my adventure:

• I write this blog book to touch people’s lives.  I believe that sharing my vulnerability and growth can inspire hope and courage for others.
• I do not write this blog to market my life coaching practice.  Often I include links to websites of others who have shared my Journey in a meaningful way.  And I encourage prospective coaching clients to read this book to get a sense of my life philosophy and gauge whether they feel there’s a fit for us working together.  But I don’t make pitches here to call or email me if you want to explore coaching.  There’s nothing wrong with marketing.  For me, it belongs on my professional website.  Not mixed in with this intimate memoir.
• I don’t have to publish lengthy chapters to touch lives.  I write from my heart, not from a production schedule based on elapsed time and volume.
• I am the Distribution Channel not the Manufacturer of my art.  My role is to stay tuned to the Universal Frequency of my Great Creative Source and distribute what I am sent.

I love you all and have missed you.  The next entries will be the six from Love and Curiosity – Gems for the Journey.  Then I’ll bring you up to date on the success of the data recovery.  And then, I hope, the long-awaited remaining chapters in how I lost the 75 pounds (balancing the ten senses).  Unless the Universe has another plan.  Which it often does.  In that case, I will have to go with the Universal Flow.

Be gentle with yourselves, my Dear Sisters and Brothers.  Treat yourself and others with Compassion.  When you have the choice to be right or be kind, always choose kind.  When you approach life with Love and Curiosity, there are endless opportunities for good.   Namaste.

Baby, I’m Back!

Yes, I know I have been absent from the online publishing world for over two months.  Yes, I thought of you daily and kept notes for the many chapters I will be sharing soon.  Restructuring my arts business, reworking my professional space, ramping up my life coaching practice, immersing myself in my coach certification program, hosting holiday house guests and handling the various vagaries of life have kept me from the keyboard.  I’ll explain all of that in later chapters. Meanwhile, here’s the life lesson I felt absolutely compelled to share today while it’s still fresh.  Brace yourself, Bridgette!

During the migration of my computer equipment to my wonderful new life coaching office, I lost access to all of the data stored on my 2TB data drive - a lifetime (57 years) of data. Absolutely no backups anywhere else – its own cautionary tale of the potential in life for gross misunderstanding.  All of the intellectual capital from my 30 year consulting career.  All of my financial records, all of my machine embroidery designs, all of my pictures, the autobiography I wrote in the early 90′s.  Everything means EVERYTHING.  The only thing I have access to at the moment  is the current version of my Outlook data - calendar, contacts, tasks and email. For that, I am exceedingly grateful.

Imagine the magnitude of the problem like this.  You own the public library system in your town.  There are four branches.  One day, you lose the entire card catalog system and all of the labels on the shelves.  The little Dewey decimal numbers on all the books are gone too.  The books are still there, but you have no idea how they’re organized or even which branch they’re in.  They are utterly scrambled.  And, to make matters worse, the codes for the security systems that allow you entrance to each of the four branches have also gotten randomly reset but no one knows to what.  So you have to break into all four locations before you can even begin trying to make sense of the books.  While you care about all the content, imagine what you most especially need is in a chapter of just one book, somewhere in one of the branches.  And you need it before next Thursday when your annual state and city sales tax returns for your business are due.

After two days of failed attempts to get to the data with the help of the drive manufacturer, I hired Ximatic Data Engineering (www.ximatic.com) to try to restore as much as they can.  The price, if they succeed, starts at $7500.  No, I didn’t forget the decimal point – that’s seven thousand five hundred dollars.  That’s if all goes well.  They think, given their initial investigation of my drives, that my potential cost should cap out at $8500.  And that’s the good news.

My data drive is an exceedingly complex, highly secure, Buffalo RAID5 drive.  But a simple power failure  – me unplugging it without turning it off - brought all four drive crashing down.  It could have failed during one of the many power outages we get in our community.  But it didn’t.  It failed when I forgot to turn it off before unplugging it and, unbeknownst to me, it was in the middle of re-indexing all the data.  It’s like the head librarian threw all the cards from the catalog up in the air and said, “Oh, whatever!”  While we still don’t know for certain whether Ximatic will be able to recover anything, based on the facts and circumstances we have reason to be hopeful.

Yes, the documentation for the drive does indicate that it should be plugged into an uninterruptable power source (UPS).  But somehow this info never made its way to my brain.  Because, if I’d had any idea how serious unplugging it without powering it down first could be, I would have had a zillion warning signs all over the place.  But the reality is, even a really good UPS would only provide an extra 90 minutes battery power for hardware as draining as mine.  So if you lost power while at the movies, you could still come home to find you and your data were no longer on speaking terms.  And, I see a lot of movies so, it was bound to happen someday.

The good news?  Yes, there is some but probably not what you’d think.  Bruce Schneider, the founder of my iPEC life coaching certification program (www.ipeccoaching.com), says one of the keys to life is believing that there are really no problems or challenges, only opportunities.  My current situation is no exception:  opportunities abound.

Opportunity Number 1:  Whatever happens, I’ll be fine.  Massive data loss is an event I’ve feared my entire life.  Couldn’t imagine how I’d manage.  And, had it happened two or more years ago, I would not be managing well at all.  But thanks to the life lessons I learned over the past two years, I’m staying centered, exercising, eating healthy, meditating, journaling, sleeping peacefully, working on my life coaching certification and practice, relaxing, and gearing up should I have to try to recreate all of the financial data my accountant needs to file this year’s taxes.  Funny thing is, I was expecting to be able to file by April 15th this year instead of needing to file extensions until October.  Now I say, “Hallelujah for extensions!”

Opportunity Number 2:  Control is an illusion at best.  Blame and self loathing are counterproductive.  I messed up.  Others may have contributed.  But even if I had turned it off before unplugging the drive this time, even if I had a UPS in place, I go to a lot of movies and a power failure during a movie could have landed me in the same place.  I will admit to shedding a few tears over this but not very many.  Absolutely no beating myself or blaming anyone else.  It would be downright idiotic to waste any of my precious time and energy in negativity when I need all the positive resources I’ve got to fuel my spirit, brain and body through a potentially complex and tedious set of tasks.  I need all the help from friends I can get.  So mostly I’m focused on moving forward with my life, reminded once again that I am never really in control of anything except how I choose to handle what happens.

Opportunity Number 3:  My compassion for others has broadened and deepened.  Because I have always been paranoid about losing all of my data someday, I have always been absolutely anal retentive about running regular backups.  And keeping a lengthy history of those backups.  All my data, every week, all the way back to the moment I came out of the birth canal.  Last year, when a friend told me she had gotten lax about running backups and as a result had to pay a data recovery firm $1,300 to restore all of her data after a drive crash, I’ll admit feeling just a wee bit smug.  Not backing up your data?  What the heck were you thinking.  Any responsible person backs up their data no matter what else they have going on in life. But the Uncharitable Thought Police are always on alert.  And the moment they catch us feeling superior, they have the Universe send us a reminder memo.  Hence, I encounter a situation where I understand I don’t have to run manual backups because the drives essentially take care of backing each other up automatically (WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.  Voila!  Deborah’s latest opportunity to replace some arrogance with compassion, further increasing her ability to connect deeply with herself and others.

Opportunity Number 4:  Most things are not life threatening, just inconvenient.  Sometimes INCREDIBLY inconvenient and INCREDIBLY expensive.  But still, at worst, only inconvenient and expensive.  All over the world, people are sick, frightened, starving, tortured and dying.  My data access issue doesn’t even move the needle on the meter.

Opportunity Number 5:  Everything I need is inside of me.  I am enough.  Many years ago, when I was moving from one consulting position to another, I was in a panic over whether I had copies of all my intellectual capital to draw on in my new position.  Because without them, I felt I wouldn’t be able to perform – I’d be worth less.  For weeks before the switch, I’d lay awake at night remembering things I’d forgotten, then run around during the day trying to gather them all up.  Until one night I had a dream - the first in-person encounter I remember having with an Angel.  In perfect King James English (we’re all products of our upbringing) she said, “Do not fret my child.  Everything you need is inside of you.  You are enough.”  This week, whenever I found myself starting to fuss a bit over all I had lost, I remembered all that I have found over the past two years.  Health, energy, grace and gratitude.  Inspiration, deep peace, lasting joy and meaningful relationships.  I found myself.  And that is so much more than enough.

Dear Ones, no matter what trials you face in life, remember that you are more than enough.  Data will come and go.  But you are precious and irreplaceable.

You are loved and loving.
     You are blessed and a blessing.
          Namaste. 

Getting to Know You

In Who Ya Gonna Call (10/21/10), I asked you to stay tuned to laugh and cry with me over Life’s Latest Smack Upside My Head.  Some of you may be saying, “It’s been five days.  You’ve published two chapters in the interim and now another one today but we still don’t know what happened?”

Other readers have been annoyed with me for even longer – since The C Word (10/12/10), when I casually mentioned losing 75 pounds last year.  I’m sure you’re saying, “You’ve published seven chapters counting this one.  You lost 75 pounds last year, you’ve kept it off, and you’ve found deeper peace and more lasting joy.  Enough with the peace and joy – how did you lose the weight and keep it off?”

Please hang in there.  I will get to how I lost the weight and all the other stories I promise along the way.  Each chapter tells you more of both – how I lost the weight and how I live each day.  It’s just much more comprehensible (and humane) if I break it into manageable installments.  I’ve found it’s not simple to tell the story of a life, certainly not my life and I suspect not anyone’s life, in a way that is meaningful, complete, comprehensible and engaging.  This experience is giving me much greater appreciation for what it takes.  Using food metaphors, I could serve you a multi-course meal at one sitting that would be so overwhelming you’d experience the reading equivalent of food coma after consuming it.  Not pleasant or kind.  Or I could spend a bit more time analyzing my experiences, break them into component parts and communicate those to you in smaller, healthier, much more digestible mini-meals, each time leaving you just a bit hungry for the next serving.  I’ve opted for the healthy, more frequent, mini-meals and there, my friends is today’s first diet tip.  I know you’ve heard it a zillion times.  You may have even tried it for a day or so but given up before the new behavior had time to become a habit.  I’m here to tell you, it works.  But more on that later,  I promise.

With all these food metaphors flying about, it feels like the right time to introduce the concept of balance – a major weight and life altering discovery. One day last year, I received an insight from the Universal Intelligence (much too profound to have originated with me).  In my role as Perpetual Transmitter, I now pass it on to you.  It went something like this, “Deborah, if you feed all of your senses in a balanced way, you are more likely to live a happy life.  If you neglect to feed one or more of your senses, there’s a greater probability that one of the remaining one’s will try to fill the void and take over your life in an unhealthy way.”

For example, I believe both anorexia (which I suffered at age 19) and obesity (which I suffered at age 50) both have their roots in an unhealthy relationship with food – trying to use food to fill un-food needs.  They also share lots of other commonalities, chief among them for me, an attempt to deal with the anxiety of uncertainty – yes, a misguided attempt to gain a sense of CONTROL over a life wildly spinning out of control (you had to know that baby would come up again).  And while anorexia – starvation – looks more like control than overeating, they were both about control for me and I suspect are for many.

Feeding my senses in a balanced way means not just the standard five senses of sight, touch, sound, smell and taste, but also my higher five senses of spirituality, creativity, purpose, physical flow and connection.  Paying attention, being hyper aware, of how I am feeding all of my senses – content and frequency - and whether each is being healthily sustained, starved or smothered.

What might that look like specifically? In the time we have left today, let’s explore the sense of sight – the satisfaction supplied by your visual environments.  Surround yourself with colors, patterns, objects that please your eye in your home and at work.  Do you prefer variety or consistency?  As an artist, I love every color in every shade imaginable.  I use all of them in my art and my environments, but my favorite colors are purple, orange and green.  It’s downright funny how often they end up in my art, in my living space and on my body, without any conscious intention.  In fact, even when I try to exclude them in a design, they sneak in no matter what.  They feed my soul.  Together, in combination.  I do light hues in spring and bright hues in summer and dusty hues in Fall and darker hues in winter, but they are always present.  They comfort and delight me, providing a needed sense of consistency.

I also love cats.  I live with three  – Sid, Morty & Maisy.  Okay, I live in their house, they let me sleep in their king size bed and eat in their kitchen.  They are all ragdoll mixes (yes it’s an actual breed, unbelievably affectionate).  We’re crazy about each other.  Sid holds my hand or plants his big head on top of it when I write or type – seriously.  It makes the progress slower, but the experience richer.  So every time you’re reading one of my chapters, realize that Sid had a hand – or paw or head - in each and every one.  Morty’s my empath.  He always knows when I’m crying and he plants his body on my lap, rubbing his face on my face and won’t stop until I stop crying.  He doesn’t rush me.  He doesn’t say anything.  He just stays there with me,  literally drying my tears.  The perfect model for how best to be with someone who’s grieving.  Don’t do or say anything.  Just be fully present.  And Maisy, well she’s all about satisfying her sense of touch.  She’ll snuggle with anyone, anywhere for any length of time.  I know in the human world that might earn her an unkind label (easy, slut, tramp, ho) but she’s my daughter so I just call her loving and you’d best too.  DEBORAH, YOU’RE DRIFTING.  ENOUGH WITH THE CAT STORIES.  BACK TO SENSE OF SIGHT.

Sorry about that.  Anyway, I love cats and living with three is not enough.  To avoid becoming the weird old lady living alone in one room with 50 cats, I find other ways to include them in my life.  Pictures, quilts, vases, dishes, jewelry, whatever.  And I love the symbolism of butterflies – patience and hope for the fertile possibilities of life transformation during incubation in a dark void.  So they are sprinkled liberally throughout my life.  And books, I love books too.  The power of human thought shared.  I love to see them in my space and be reminded that, even when I sit alone writing, I am not alone.  I am surrounded by everyone who ever had an idea or experience and felt compelled to share it with someone else for the benefit of writer and reader.

Don’t get hung up on my colors and my choices – the point is to figure out your own purple/green/orange and cats/butterflies/books.  There are books on standard reactions to colors (blue is soothing, yellow is cheerful, red is energizing/irritating, black is depressing, etc.).  But I’m not interested in standard reactions.  What matters here is your  reaction.  Some people find being surrounded by their favorite colors the most soothing and stimulating environment.  So if you’re one of them and you love red, have at it.  Experiment with it a bit and determine the optimal amount of red and other favorites in your world.  Maybe you’ll want all your red in the den or your office, but want blue in your bedroom.  Or blue and yellow because you want to be soothed at night and cheered in the morning.

Remember that clothing is your portable environment.  As a fashion artist, I’m especially attuned to it.  But I think it has an impact on all of us.  It’s the house we wear on our body and carry around all day.  So try starting each day by consciously picking clothing that expresses who you are so that you feel comfortable and centered.  While I’ve started by tackling one sense at a time, you can quickly see how interrelated they are.  For example, clothing should be considered under both sight and touch.

Provide a pleasing visual meal in each room of your house (yes, even the bathroom – we spend substantial time there too). Pay attention to portion control, avoiding the visual version of gluttony by overwhelming your senses with too much stimulation and thereby numbing them.  Go for healthy digestible meals that leave you hungry an hour later for more visual stimulation outside your home and work location.  Include regular outings to places that augment your visual diet with special snacks – botanical gardens, galleries, the mountains, book stores, pet shops, the ocean, fabric shops, art supply stores, whatever delights you personally.

We’ll discuss the other senses in more detail soon.  Meanwhile, keep getting to know yourself better and find a healthier balance.  You’re worth the effort.

You are loved and loving.  You are blessed and a blessing.  Namaste.