Category Archives: Observation

Clinging doesn’t work .

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Life on Earth was designed to evolve. That’s why we’re here,,,for the ever-changing opportunities to experience life and grow in our humanness. Yet as we move through daily life, we seem to have forgotten the fundamental principle that makes growth possible.

I think it’s fair to say that most of us, me included, fall into the trap of wanting things to remain the same. That’s not surprising, because no-change feels like security. Life seems easier when we know what to expect and how to navigate it.

The desire for the security of sameness causes us to cling to how things are. The more they change, the tighter we cling to them—No, no, don’t go, stay the same. The energy it takes to fuel this resistance is then no longer available for the rest of living, and ends up causing misery and dissatisfaction to varying degrees.

Mindshift…

It is not just you or me—the desire for permanence is baked into the story of Western cultures. It surrounds us in the same way that water surrounds a fish in its usual habitat. And like the fish, we aren’t even aware of how we’re affected by what we are immersed in.

Eastern philosophies are more in tune with the law of impermanence. But for most Westerners, accepting the truth of impermanence requires a mindshift.

Not all Westerners, though. The video below shows a group of people in action on Tenby Beach in Wales, apparently not at all bothered by the reality of impermanence.

To see more stunning sand circles coming and going, visit the YouTube channel of their mastermind, Marc Treanor.

The first time I watched this, my knee-jerk reaction was to wonder how they could put all that work into a beautiful sand circle whose disappearance was both imminent and inevitable.

My second thought was: Hold on a minute! That is a metaphor for life.

Mind-shift…

Here’s what I think we can learn from those folks on the beach:

Accept impermanence. Revel in the process of doing and creating rather than in ownership of the result.

And what about the loss of security?

Security is an inside job.

In an ever-changing world, we will never find security outside ourselves. We need to cultivate it within, and there are tools to help us do that.

Energy activations are a good place to start. Energy activations are designed to enliven (activate) an aspect of your energy field. The words communicate directly with the field, guiding it to a new formation as needed.

This builds your field in a way that you can tap into your inner resources to guide you as you navigate any experience as it arises.

That is genuine security.

Here’s an activation relevant to change.

Relax when things are changing

Experiment with listening to it once or twice every day for the next week and see what happens. First thing in the morning and last at night is an easy routine for many people to make this happen.

 

This document has more free activations, compiled from Sarah McCrum’s YouTube channel. For courses and activations to purchase, visit Sarah McCrum’s website.

Increasing our Cosciousness

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Consciousness is my theme at the moment. Well, actually, It has been for many years. That’s how it ended up in the title of my book, Conscious Spending, Conscious Life, which grew out of my teaching college students to be conscious consumers.

In the time that has passed, I’ve become ever-more aware of the urgent need for increasing our consciousness on all fronts. We must, if we are to resolve the world-scale chaos around us.

That phrase—the more beautiful world our hearts know as possible—is borrowed from author and essayist, Charles Eisenstein. It’s the title of one of his books, and is completely relevant to this time where we must find ways to increase our consciousness.

Seeing the bigger picture…

One of the hallmarks of increased consciousness is the ability to see a bigger picture. And one of the best ways I’ve found is to pay attention to people who are speaking and writing from that greater perspective. It gives me the sense of a perspective I might take and the questions to ask. It helps me shift to another paradigm.

I’m not saying that when I hear a good speaker I immediately take on their views and start parroting them. What I mean is that it gives me other things to consider that may not have been on my radar when I was coming from a more limited viewpoint.

Charles Eisenstein  thinks deeply, writes thoughtfully, and is highly readable. I find him one of the most useful voices in the cacophony of the current chaos.

For consideration…

Click image to hear Charles Eisenstein reading his essay “Reinventing Progress”

So in that spirit, today I’m bringing you Charles Eisenstein reading one of his essays. In it, he describes the paradigm we are currently living under and presents a more expanded one for our consideration.

A paradigm is a framework that contains the basic assumptions, ways of thinking, and methodology that are commonly accepted by members of any discipline or group. This framework determines what people in that group believe is true, and discounts other beliefs as impossible.

We can change paradigms by shifting our perspectives. And this is where the viewpoints of deep thinkers such as Charles Eisenstein can be of value.

Essay summary…

i was going to list key points, but changed my mind.

Content of this nature needs to be taken in as a whole. It wouldn’t do it justice for me to fragment it into bullet points.

The way we perceive things changes what’s possible.

For more of Charles Eisenstein’s perspectives…

This week’s energy activation…

Energy activations are designed to enliven (activate) an aspect of your energy field. The words communicate directly with the field, guiding it to a new formation as needed. For more free activations, go to Sarah McCrum’s YouTube channel. For courses and activations to purchase, visit Sarah McCrum’s website.

True, but partial…

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As I wrote last week, there are many definitions of consciousness, depending on the viewpoint of the person creating the definition. Each definition is based on limited information, and the interpretations are all true…but partial.

The problem with partial information…

When we work from partial information, our decisions don’t serve us well because they aren’t taking the bigger picture into account.This is the theme of the Indian parable of six blind men describing an elephant, all of them arriving at erroneous conclusions because they don’t have the benefit of being aware of the whole.

This story has been retold by Westerners in many ways. The version I like best is by American poet John Godfrey Saxe, who wrote “The Blind Man and the Elephant” in 1873.

And so from their different perspectives, six men all misunderstood the essence of the elephant because they didn’t take into account that there was something bigger, beyond what they themselves could observe. These days, we see that happening a lot.

It’s worth wondering…

…in any situation you’re grappling with…

  • What is the “something bigger” that I’m not seeing from my limited perspective?
  • What would I see more clearly if I viewed this situation from a broader, higher perspective?
  • And how can I learn to see things from that higher perspective?

For starters, you might experiment with doing an energy activation, at least once a day but as many times as you like. Sit quietly and let energy work for you.

More energy activations…

Energy activations are designed to enliven (activate) an aspect of your energy field. The words communicate directly with the field, guiding it to a new formation as needed. For more free activations, go to Sarah McCrum’s YouTube channel. For courses and activations to purchase, visit Sarah McCrum’s website.

Q. What on Earth is going on?

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A.  We are evolving.

Evolution proceeds in cycles and leaps.

We humans tend to overlook the bigger picture of evolution, engrossed as we are in the details of our daily and yearly lives.

History offers perspective…

The cycles and leaps of humanity are more easily seen from the vantage point of hindsight than from the midst of a society that is being propelled into a big leap. 

Imagine you were a resident of England in medieval times. You were a member of a family—either serf or nobility, take your pick. The system was based on class. If you were a serf, you worked long and hard on the land owned by the nobles.

If you were the Noble, you felt entitled to their labor by virtue of your higher class. In that way the serfs were valuable to you, and you made sure to give them just enough of the produce from the land to keep them alive so they could continue serving you.

Both classes knew that this was how things were, and change was nowhere in the picture… until all of a sudden it was!

Can you imagine the disruption? Fundamental beliefs about how society operated no longer applied. People in both classes had to rethink how they would navigate life under entirely different circumstances. And they were entirely unprepared for a huge shift such as this.

Guess what?

We are now in a similarly disruptive change—not in the details of course, but in the magnitude of change. 

From my perspective, deeply disruptive times are upon us for a reason. Because we have not been proactive as a species in up-levelling our consciousness, we are being propelled into ever-more challenging circumstances so we can experience how dysfunctional our culture has become. 

I hope we get the message soon.

This week’s activation…

Energy activations are designed to enliven (activate) an aspect of your energy field. The words communicate directly with the field, guiding it to a new formation as needed. Sit quietly and let energy work for you.

For more free activations, go to Sarah McCrum’s YouTube channel. You’ll find courses and activations for purchase on Sarah’s website.

Finding the best of ourselves.…

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Perhaps it’s my age… I don’t know… But I find myself longing for the kinder, gentler times—when people understood the meaning of statesmanship, discretion, civility, honour, respect.

Can we recover them? I don’t know. I can only hope that we humans, collectively as well as individually, will find the best of ourselves soon enough.

Relief…

My mother raised four children in a small house in the pre-screens era. We made our own entertainment, which meant there was a lot of noise and activity going on practically under her feet. In moments of exasperation, she was known to say, “Would you kids pleeeease be quiet so I can hear myself think?!“ 

I thought it was an odd thing for her to say. Now I get it.

We all need space, away from outer demands, so we can remember who we are, what we stand for, and how we can contribute to the kind of world we want to live in.

In that vein, today’s post offers a delight and a tool for finding the best in ourselves. First the delight…

When I see something as creative as these sculptures, I’m always intrigued about the kind of mind it takes to conceive of such a thing. And I’m reminded that there’s a world of possibilities far beyond my seeing.

And now the tool for finding the best in ourselves. I mentioned this last week—energy activations. It’s hard to describe them, so I’m going to make it easy for you to try them. Starting today, I’ll attach one of Sarah McCrum’s activations at the end of each post. I’ve found them immensely helpful and I’d like you to have a chance for the experience as well. I’m starting with relaxation because that was an eye-opener for me.

Listen once or twice a day. Sit or lie down comfortably,, close your eyes, and…

To find more free activations, go to Sarah McCrum’s YouTube channel. You’ll find courses and activations for purchase on Sarah’s website.

A little help from our friends…

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When we think about our friends, it’s usually flesh-and-blood people or furry friends that come to mind. But let’s not forget our invisible friends…the ones we knew as children, and gave up when adults told us we were just imagining things.

In truth, our unseen friends were real—invisible, yes, but nonetheless real inhabitants of the energy fields we’re immersed in. 

So what is it with these energy fields?

The world and everything in it is made of vibrating energy. The slower the vibration, the more solid something is, and that’s the world we can see.

When vibration increases, it reaches a point where it’s beyond our visual capacity. That doesn’t mean it’s not real, just that our eyes are incapable of seeing what exists at that vibration. That’s why invisible energy fields are often described as subtle energy.

This is what we’ve learned, bit by bit, in the years since scientists began developing the theory of Quantum Physics in the 1920s. Niels Bohr, Max Planck, and Albert Einstein are recognized as the originators of the quantum view of life. Later contributors include Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger, David Bohm and Richard Feynman. All but one received a Nobel Prize for their ground-breaking work to improve our understanding of how the world really works.

If you want to nerd out on the development of quantum physics and the significant changes from the classical Newtonian view, watch this engaging presentation (3,000,000+ views since 2020) by modern-day physicist Sean Carroll.

Despite all that ground-breaking scientific work, the quantum world remains unperceived by most of us. This isn’t surprising. We are used to relying on our five senses, and invisible energy requires a different sort of perception.

Perceiving subtle energy—from the inside…

There are actually more people than you might think who are sensitive to energy and experience it in ways beyond the use of their five senses. You may already have experienced one or more of these yourself:

  • inner seeing—using your “mind’s eye” to see still images or movies when your eyes are closed; vivid dreams; seeing colours or auras around people, animals, or plants
  • inner hearing—hearing the “still small voice within”
  • inner feeling—gut feelings; hunches; feeling a physical sensation that seems to be bringing a message
  • inner knowing—suddenly knowing something; insight; inspiration; ingenuity; foresight

Applying these abilities…

We all have these capabilities but many of us haven’t yet uncovered them. People who are particularly sensitive to energy often become practitioners of healing modalities. Reiki, Touch for Health, Emotion Code, and EFT Tapping are a few examples. I discussed Energy Psychology in greater depth in a previous post.To learn more about various modalities and the research into their effectiveness, visit the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology  (ACEP).

Why would you want to learn about energy?

First of all, we know from research reported by ACEP that energy work can be very effective in improving our state of well-being. And there are several modalities that we can use on ourselves, which I find particularly empowering.

Perhaps even more important is that working with subtle energy allows us to communicate with beings that are here to help us. Considering the turbulence we’re currently living in, now is a good time for all of us to develop our latent abilities.

We humans have managed so far with our limited understanding of how life actually works. We’ve had some successes, but we’ve also come to the limits of our tunnel vision. Systems we’ve developed are no longer working. We know that because we see them breaking down and falling apart before our eyes. Clearly we need help to navigate to the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

So when you need to call on your friends to see you through the challenging times ahead, remember that you have more than you might think.

Some of them are waiting in the quantum field for you to discover them—and you don’t have to be a scientist to do it.

The Magic of Serendipity

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Last week I featured a poem with a surprise ending. It demonstrates how the energy field of words and their arrangement has more impact than we might think.

But there’s more to it than that…

Worst Day Ever? also illustrates another aspect of energy—not in the words but in the process, the way the poem got out into the world.

Most of the news reports simplify the story to something like this: Chani Gorkin wrote a poem as a school assignment, someone pinned a copy of it on the wall of an English pub, someone else saw it there and posted a photo on his Twitter account, and it flew around the world.

The expanded description reads…

  • 2014: Chani Gorkin, a Brooklyn teenager, wrote a poem for a school assignment. After it was entered in a contest, her poem was published online where a few people read it.
  • July 2015: Zachery Stephenson, who lived in London, complained on Facebook about someone who’d let him down.
  • One of his relatives, living in New York, forwarded Chani’s poem to him in reply.
  • Stephenson was so impressed that he printed it out and pinned it on the wall of a bar he visited.
  • Ronnie Joice read the poem in that London bar after interviewing for a job and feeling “a bit worn out.” He snapped a photo of the poem and tweeted it.
  • Immediately, Joice’s message was re-tweeted. Over the span of a week, it was re-tweeted thousands of times.
  • Worst Day Ever? was downloaded over a million times, shared by thousands on social media, and translated into several languages including Russian, Chinese and Hebrew (as reported in an article by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller).

It struck a chord…

Stephenson has been quoted as saying, “It just kind of struck a chord and really made me change my perception of things.” He added that he’d never posted anything like that before.

Joice explained his action by saying that “London’s a really tough city to live in sometimes” and the poem helped him to get the “right attitude” to deal with the stress of looking for work.

The author’s perspective…

From all accounts, Chani had no intention other than to successfully meet the requirements of the assignment, which was to write a poem about her worst-ever day.

Her challenge was that the topic didn’t align with her beliefs. As she has explained, her poem reflects the idea that it’s possible to control how we see the world, whether negatively or positively. “I don’t think there is such a thing as the worst day ever… I wanted to show how your day is really based on how you look at things.” And, holding that contradiction between the assignment and her view of life, Chani found a way to creatively meet the requirements of both.

I think this poem has struck a chord with so many people because she expressed what she sincerely believed and presented it in a compelling way. As a result of that clear expression, her poem touched people, activating  energy fields in multiple ways over a short period of time.

How is it that this poem ricocheted around the world?

You might call it coincidence, or synchronicity, or serendipity. They are all nuances of the same thing, describing an occurrence that happens as if it is out of your hands. And indeed it is. Such occurrences are tangible examples of the work of invisible energy fields—invisible  but nonetheless real.

The story of Chani’s poem demonstrates that…

  • When we turn something loose in an energy field, we never know what will come of it.
  • Energy fields intersect and overlap.
  • Surprises and serendipities happen!

And it reminds us of what we intuitively know but have long-since forgotten—that we don’t have to do life alone. We have invisible help.

Worst Day Ever?

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Worst day ever? It all depends on how you look at it.

The poem below was written by Brooklyn teenager, Chani Gorkin, for a school assignment. A semi-finalist in a 2014 poetry contest, it was published on Poetry Nation.

As you read this poem, pay attention to the emotions and the energy field it creates. If you can, read it aloud—that will make the effect more palpable.

What was your experience—especially of the energy field created by reading top-to-bottom compared to reading it bottom-to-top? You might think in terms of emotional response or maybe the tone of it. Fancy words aren’t necessary. My experience was depressing compared to uplifting energy.

The unseen dimension of words…

This poem is such a good example of the unseen dimension of words. Words have power, both individually and in the way they are arranged together.

Words, whether written or spoken, can change the energy fields into which they are inserted. This makes them a tool that we can use for better or worse.

Let’s use them with care.

Could we stop using the word “safe”? Please!

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How did safety become our prime directive, the thing we value above all else?

Safety is a primal instinct, centred in the primitive part of our brain where its job is to be alert for danger and trigger fear so we’ll take suitable action. This  served a useful purpose for human survival in the days when fight, flight, or freeze were our options.

As humans evolved, so did our brains. We became more conscious, developed a sense of values, and expanded our capacity to view our lives from a larger perspective.

Now, facing the chaos and uncertainty that confronts us every day, we are retreating to our base instincts. And so “stay safe” has become the mantra of the culture. 

I say… Enough!

We need to regain our sense of perspective and balance. As is often the case, we can find a new way of looking at things from the children in our lives.

A while back, my eight-year-old granddaughter hurt herself while roughhousing with her dad. As her tears dwindled, I offered a sort-of consolation that I learned from my mother: “Well, at least you’ll know not to do that again.” A thoughtful look crossed her face and she surprised me when she said, “I might… if I was having fun.”

She didn’t know it, but she was making a risk/benefit assessment. Her goal wasn’t to keep safe at the expense of enjoying her life. Notice she said “might” not “would.” This implies she’d assess each situation and decide. She kept herself open to possibilities rather than being closed and fearful.

We adults can do the same.

Empower others..

Instead of saying “stay safe,” our parting words to others could be “take care.” This is an empowering choice because it implies that they are capable of navigateing situations that arise. On the other had, “stay safe” activates their primitive brain by reinforcing the notion that the world is a scary place.

None of this is to suggest that it’s desirable to be reckless, careless, or thoughtless about the effects of our actions on ourselves and others. We are humans in a community and have a responsibility to both ourselves and the larger group.

Use alternative words…

Words carry energy. “Safe” carries a reminder of harm and danger. Uplifting alternatives include mindful, careful, and prudent—they come with the energy of agency, of being able to look after ourselves as we make choices while navigating life.

Make your decisions from a broader perspective…

Think about what’s most important. Usually that’s what enlivens and uplifts us. Think about what will be gained and lost by your decision. Economists call this the opportunity cost: the idea that when you decide to do one thing, you have given up the other possibilities. What are you willing to give up?

This is my mantra for the remaining years I have…

What’s your mantra? Care to share?

Benefit of the Doubt

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Benefit of the doubt

Benefit of the doubt is an old-fashioned expression. My mom used it when I got on my high horse about what someone else should or shouldn’t be doing. That happened fairly often because I had strong opinions about how things ought to be done.

When I was about 12, I overheard Mom telling Grandma that I didn’t suffer fools gladly. She was right. And it couldn’t have been otherwise because, back then, I had a very limited perspective of life and why we’re here.

Now that I’m 75…

As I get older, life seems less simple, less black-and-white. There are nuances. There are unknowns. There are unknowables. There’s a bigger picture. Continue reading →