Einstein's Signature In the summer of 2006, my cousin was brutally murdered. The father of her second child arrived in the church parking lot to talk about child support. With a fake suicide note, a handgun and his other five-year-old daughter in his truck, he climbed into her car, blew her brains out, threw down the note and went shopping at Pottery Barn. The heinousness of this crime spun me into darkness. Every night, all I heard was an explosion at my temples and a woman's voice crying, "What about my children?" This event inspired me to leave my complacency and begin a journey to fulfill my destiny and bring Conflict REVOLUTION and Einstein's message to the world. I often said it felt like an atomic bomb had fallen and left a barren landscape where my life had been. I hired some book promoters, and moved across country, leaving my home, job, beloved puppy dog and husband behind to devote my life to Einstein. Beginning in April 2007 in Princeton with my first book signing, I had no idea of how the journey would play out. My book promoters had just gone out of business, forcing me to ship 3,000 books to my friend's barn in Portland, Oregon. While traipsing up and down the Eastern Seaboard that Spring, crying my way through event after event, suicide was often at the forefront of my thinking. To keep a forward focus, my mantra became: "I have no idea how I'll do it, but I fully intend to take this work worldwide." Then, one foot in front of the other, I was led by blind faith in…what? Con Rev? The Universe? Einstein? Me? By some kind of grace, in that time I have been guided to eight countries worldwide to teach and train Conflict REVOLUTION. Now, on the other side of the worst of it, I am so grateful for everyone who has aided in this mission. Looking at the state of the world today and hearing the pain so many are going through, I have committed not to stop until, to the best of my ability, the revolutionary ideas Einstein brought forth through me are infiltrated into culture as a norm. It may not happen in my lifetime, which is even more inspiration to keep traveling, talking, teaching and training what I think is the E=MC2 of empowerment and peace. Sometimes the synchronicity still hits me as beyond belief. Like the workshop I did at Wilmington Peace Resource Center a few weekends ago. Jim Boland, director of the Center, and I met last March in Cleveland at the Global Summit held by the National Peace Academy. We hit it off, chatted throughout the event and stayed in touch afterward. One thing led to another and he invited me to present this revolutionary process at the Center. I had no idea the gist of the Center's focus until I arrived. Standing in the library, Jim explained that the Center was founded by activist, author, and peace educator Barbara Reynolds in 1975 to house the largest collection, outside Japan, on materials related to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to teach peace skills to new generations. Looking at the stark black-and-white panoramas of the aftermath of the devastation in Japan, it struck me as more than coincidence how many times my Einstein said that he died with this passionate grief about what happened in Japan. He'd stepped off his pacifist stance to fight Hitler, but little did he know that his insistence that the US develop atomic power first would lead to the destruction of these two cities and thousands of innocent people. I began to appreciate even more the divine guidance that I'm receiving on this wacky mission we are on together. However, it was after our tour of the library when Jim offhandedly mentioned some letters. He pulled open a drawer in a tall metal cabinet and found the file just for Einstein. In it, among other things, were two original typed letters from Albert Einstein dated 1947 and 1948. They were fundraising letters for the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, imploring potential donors of the dangers of a possible nuclear war. "It is our duty to do all within our power to assure that this historic achievement of mankind does not become his trap and his tomb." As I looked at the pictures of Hiroshima, remembering my Einstein's channeled words, with this letter in my hands, I was thoroughly humbled. Truly, when we get out of our own way and allow Intuition to guide us, miraculous events take place. After the workshop, I received an email from Miriam, a member of the Center and workshop participant. She said, "Your workshop gave me a new way to experience life. Instead of being caught in a cycle of never-ending conflict, I can now recognize emotions that come up, let them flow through me, give myself a chance to reflect it back to myself and then release it. Knowing that I can release the hurt and anger and that that is a good thing for the Earth, the Oneness and it allows the intuition and compassion to flow--it is just mind altering!" Reading this, I felt like I just got paid. It helps me find the courage and strength to continue down this never-ending road. How did I get so lucky? Next stop, Ft. Walton Beach, Florida, the weekend of November 6-7. Join us for a weekend of Einstein and Con Rev as the Dolphin World Wellness Center hosts a workshop and an Einstein channel. Then on to Oslo, Norway for the Conflict REVOLUTION International Peacemaker Training December 10-13. Join us as we cheer President Obama on when he accepts the 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace. Watch for details on www.barbarawith.com. With apologies to ZZ Top, we're bad, we're worldwide. Rock on, all… War & Peace No matter which side of the peace movement you’re on, I think we can all agree: war has never permanently ended war. It certainly stopped Hitler in 1945, but in 2009, the world is a different place. Earth herself is rigged with enough nuclear weapons that, like a suicide bomber, if she were to blow, life as we know it would be over. In 1955, Bertrand Russell issued a manifesto he wrote with Albert Einstein, urging world leaders to find ways to resolve conflict peacefully. Almost psychically they described the potential worldwide destruction of a war waged with atomic weapons: “In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the Governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.” READ THE ENTIRE MANIFESTO HERE So what is the answer? On one side, we have the peace activists, claiming the military is to blame. On the other side, we have the military, who consider themselves peacemakers by protecting us from evil. So who is right? Perhaps both sides must be willing to think outside the box and take a revolutionary new look at how to achieve peace in the world. Conflict REVOLUTION, which is vastly different than conflict resolution, is based on a premise that, if we are engaged in a conflict, our piece begins within us. If we could have the courage to self-scrutinize, find the places within that are conflicted and resolve them within first, we might have a profound affect on how that conflicts plays out in the physical world For the past ten years I have trained this process around the world to amazing results. I can see the tangible results in the lives of participants and their families when they dare to view themselves in this revolutionary way. Finding peace within facilitates a peace in the world around us. One of my participants in Norway was having a terrible conflict with her mother-in-law. At the start of our work, she perceived this woman as trying to drive her out of her marriage. As she looked to find the real root of her conflict, she was able to change herself, which changed her relationship to her mother-in-law. The next day she told me, teary-eyed, “I have never loved my mother-in-law so much.” A major victory in the “war” at home. Will looking at how you perpetrate “us vs. them” stop all wars? Perhaps not today, but if it brings peace to individuals, which affects families, it can affect neighborhoods, cities, countries and the world. When we risk looking within with new eyes, we find possibilities we could not see before engaged in the “us vs. them” mentality. On this International Day of Peace, I challenge you to ask yourself: Do you want to be right or do you want to make peace? Are you willing to look at what you might be inadvertently doing to fuel the conflict? Recreating the “us vs. them” mentality fuels the fire, whether “they” are the military, the peace activist or your mother-in-law. As Gandhi reminded us, we must become the change. So what will it take to get you to stand up? Follow the Leader (Due to a raging case of laryngitis, the audio newsletter will be delayed until further notice)
Up here on the island, we have what I call the "Center of the Universe," otherwise known as Tommy's Burned Down Café. And yes, it really did burn down. From the remnant decks rose a circus tent, some flat beds, a whole lot of paint and nails, and a gaggle of artisan islanders, vowing to never grow up. Between Huber Bocks and Shake-a-Day in front of the fire on a moonlit summer night, a person could slip between the cracks of the world and never come back. In our Neverland, Tommy instructs staff to paint meaningful or otherwise humorous witticisms on boards and nail them to the wall. Drinkers can spend hours reading the quips. Some personal favorites are, "Normal is a setting on a washing machine," "Egotism is the anesthesia that dulls the pain of stupidity," or perhaps my all-time fav, "When I die, I want to go peaceful, like Grandpa, not kicking and screaming like the passengers in his car." The one that leaps at me today, though, is, "Quickly! I must hurry! For there go my people and I am their leader!" For truth be told, this is how I often feel about my mission and my life. This summer we conducted a series of telechannels on inspiration. I think mostly because I need it so badly. Truth be told, this new energy has me exhausted, confused, in pain a lot of time, and with no idea where I am actually going. More times then I care to admit, I think how nice it would be to quietly go to sleep and just drift away into a dream, never to return. Clients around the world report similar feelings of despair and angst and hopelessness in these unprecedented times of human change. As I struggle to understand the seemingly unending stream of deep emotion flowing through me, I wonder how in the world I think I can be a leader? Even I, one of the founding mothers of Conflict REVOLUTION, find myself struggling to make heads and tails of this journey that the evolution of human consciousness is on. When I watch myself, sometimes engaged in addictions and obsessions, fixated on the physical world with all its worries and chaos and finality, I wonder if I am qualified to teach anyone anything, much less how to resolve inner conflicts, when it seems I am so filled with conflict myself. Thank god for all the people who are working as hard as I am to understand these changes and how to survive them. Each time I lose my footing, I have any number of compassion people dedicating their lives to a similar mission to help guide me out. After one such episode of having to face some deep codependent aspects, ones I thought I had cured long ago, my dear friend Holly suggested that perhaps because I fall and am then willing to look at my not-too-pretty self and practice what I preach, I am qualified to lead this movement. For each time I fall, even though I have fallen, I gain the empirical experience to inspire others to also find that step, in present moment, to do the difficult work of self-love. And each baby step I take is leading to a stronger, more resilient me. One step at a time I pull myself out of the abyss, more self-aware and self-loving than the moment before. Am I a leader? Not any more than I am a follower. Conflict REVOLUTION teaches each individual to become the leader of his or her own life. So the very people I am leading then turn around and lead me when I am struggling up the slippery slope of my own challenges. Practicing Con Rev nurtures integrity, responsibility, making decisions for the good of the whole, honor and articulation, compassion and passion. We gain confidence as we learn to feel all our feelings, where our power lies and how to utilize that power to create a better life for ourselves. Resolving conflicts on this quantum root level affects the entire field of energy around us, clearing the way for the manifestation, quite naturally, of the greatest good. Do you struggle with what I call Superhero Syndrome? Are you so intent on implementing the theories and philosophies of compassion and ascension that you don't allow yourself to be human? Remember, when Superman was Clark Kent, he never took off his superhero outfit; he just put his regular street clothes over it. Clark was bumbling, inarticulate, massively clumsy, paranoid and of course mild mannered. He couldn't lead anyone out of a paper bag. But when he was needed, he threw off his street clothes to use all the powers he truly had. The next time you are struggling, give yourself permission to be human and call on others to help guide you through. I find this to be some of the hardest work a person can engage in. I would not have made it through these past several years of loss without the help of like-minded friends and family. (A very special thanks to my dear sister Sandy.) Each time I pull myself up, using Con Rev to create a regenerative self-loving relationship to me, I can (hopefully) better inspire and instruct others on how to practice this revolutionary process. And in the words of Tommy's himself, in reference to spending many long winters on the island, "You've got to be tough if you're going to be stupid!"
August 2, 2009 Some days, when we wake up tired, frustrated with the mundane, hardly able to get inspired about everything we have to do, who can be creative? It sounds like too much work. So what can we easily do on those days to stimulate our juices? Let me suggest building yourself an altar for just such occasions. According to the dictionary, an altar is "an elevated structure before which religious ceremonies may be enacted or upon which sacrifices may be offered." Sacrifice: "the surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim." So this altar will be a place to conduct a ceremony to surrender to a higher, more creative part of self. Consider it a place in spacetime to make an actual statement of intention, a boxing of one's compass, as it were. Light a candle and tell the universe what it is you want to create. Part of the power of the altar, of course, is that the ceremony forces you to state your intention. This guides the course of the day like a little mission statement. How many of us rush out the door, still half sleep, not sure where we are going or what we need, too busy to remember to ask for help? Before you know it, life's chaos has descended and it's tough to get a handle. So, ask yourself, what do you want to create today? Do you need extra time? Peace of mind? A resolution to a conflict at work? Say it…I fully intend to create … fill in the blank to suit your immediate needs. The other part of the power is redirecting your Intellect, that monkey mind, onto engaging in something other than recounting stories from the past, constructing possible grim futures, and/or magnifying doubts and fears. Because I'm telling you, that monkey mind can lead you straight to hell in a hand basket once it gets control, sapping you of energy and natural creativity. Just stating your intention is an action that brings your focus back to regenerative activity. Instead of thinking about what you don't have, can't do or how wrong things are going to go, you think about what you do have and want to create. How empowering this is. I am continually amazed, when I set an intention, that I can always find the way. Even if I have no idea how I will achieve this intention, I can always intend to find the way! This summer I made my first official altar. I went on a scavenger hunt to find candles and holders, and any other objects that might assist me in sacrificing whatever I think is so important (worry, doubt, distraction) for the sake of bringing in a higher vision to my daily activities. At the Thrift store in Washburn I found a perfect candleholder, an earthy, tribal wire figure dancing over the little platform that holds the votive. A half a block down, the next store magically had another candleholder in the same motif! This black wire figure was smaller, but definitely part of the family. At the next, I happened upon two large butterflies. What a find!
But the greatest moment of the search was back home at my friend Holly's gallery (www.imaginegalleryandstudio.com). Tucked back on her storage shelf was yet another mate to the two tribal pieces! I couldn't believe it, and yet…of course. See, what inspires me is not so much the ritual at the altar; yes, of course, that's good, too. But it's the creative ways I find to manifest my desires that set me spinning. I ask the Universe, and then sit back and pay attention to my inner voices guiding me to exactly where I need to go to accomplish my goal. Using intuition to reach the goal reinforces how magical life can be if we pay attention. And when I get to that place, I feel like a child again, one who believes in magic. And from there, the sky's the limit. I'm having tee shirts printed: "I can do anything I set my mind to and you are too." Get creative. Make up your own rituals and ceremonies. Start speaking up and articulating what you want. Building an altar may not be the end-all, but it certainly can help steer you back into your own creative self. I gave my friend the atheist a little statue of Odin from one of my trips to Oslo. He put it on his mantle along with his Celtic cross, his gargoyle, his old necklace, and assorted other "sacred" objects. I consider his mantel an altar. When I asked him why he, the atheist, would have crosses and gods, he replied, "Hedging my bets… LOVE RITUAL I find practicing this focused intention gets me out of my clogged up Intellect and into the whole of my power and energy. It also reminds me of the sacred space within me, that child who believes in magic. Get 7 candles: Light red, brown, pink, blue, black, dark red and white. Line them up on your altar and begin with the light red, working in order to the white. Quiet yourself down and go inside, listening to your breath and meditating on any question you need answered and intention that you wish to set. When you are ready, light the light red candle and invite love into your space. It can be self-love, divine love, a specific person, that yet-to-be-revealed soul mate, or all of the above. You decided. Next light the brown candle and ask that this love be grounded deep into Gaia. Light the pink candle and ask that all obstacles to making a commitment be healed. This can be a commitment you must keep to yourself or someone else, or a prayer for someone else to find their commitment to themselves, or you. Light the blue candle and ask for justice to be done and that everything aligns to manifest for the greatest good of all involved. Light the black candle and ask that all negative energy be fused with all positive energy to create a unified whole. Light the dark red candle and ask that these wishes be made manifest...NOW! Then light the white candle and clear the air.
July 21, 2009
CLICK HEART ON LEFT TO hear Barbara read her newsletter SWIFFERED! This summer, I'm conducting informal experiments in manifestation. Just for fun. Making a game of it. And oh what a game it's turning out to be. The basic process is to articulate clearly what you wish to manifest, and then get the hell out of the way and allow Intuition to guide you to it. The cornerstone of this work is what we call obsessive detachment. Obsessive detachment? What in the world does that mean? I know it brings tears of joy to my obsessive students. "We don't have to stop obsessing?" they sing. No, you don't. However, you do have to change what you obsess about. Go ahead, dream the dream. Obsess about it. Take time to visualize every last detail, right down to what color tie he is wearing when you meet him, or see yourself winning the prize, or state that the house must sit on the rocks overlooking the Bay of Fundy. It's your dream. You don't have to justify any part of it to anyone. If you need to live on the Bay of Fundy, you have every right to do so. Who I am to tell you otherwise? It's your dream. Dream the dream with the obsession of a banshee, then, let it go. Forget it. Detach. Get back to work. What you don't want to obsess about are the how's and when's and who's and why's of possibilities, worrying about if you're doing it right. That's attaching. You need razor sharp discipline to focus back on present moment knowing that your only job now is to listen for Intuition, then do what it tells you. I know, easier said than done. That's why I make up games to train myself. And that's why I've chosen not to try and manifest world peace, a Nobel Prize or my soul mate. I decided to work on small, somewhat inconsequential items that don't have a lot of emotional attachment to begin with. To manifest a green pencil has a lot less attachment than, say, a red sports car. Start small, aim low. That way, you're guaranteed success. I keep a list of material goods that I need or want. No, not like "The Secret" with jewelry, cars and boats. I myself have few material desires of that nature but hey, if you need jewelry, who am I to say? I lose jewelry, boats are big holes in the water that people pour money into, and I love my little Kia Rio thank you. No need for even a sports car. No, mine is a much more attainable list of practical things: a new screen door (36x80); a mop; a copy of the Course in Miracles; a stretch frame for a canvas print (36x48 please). Everything and anything I can think of that I need and/or just plain want goes on the list. Once it's written down, I let go of trying to organize a way to get it and watch to see where Intuition will lead me in order to find it. Granted, I live in a town with the perfect place for things to manifest. Here on the island we have the Exchange, a pole building at the dump where people leave things too good to throw away but no use to them anymore. (See World Tour Diaries, July 2008). The Exchange is a great manifestation place because the Intellect can always accept the simple but logical explanation that, "someone left it at the Exchange." It still may have materialized out of thin air, but one will ever know for sure. Even though I have never seen the Course in Miracles at the Exchange before, that someone left a copy coincidentally right after I put it on my Manny list was so much fun. A stretch frame, the exact size to host my print, was a little bigger emotional leap, but hey, it can happen. And did, no lie. A stretch frame showed up at the Exchange the exact size of my print. However, the most profound lesson yet this summer was the Swiffer. For those who don't know, a Swiffer is a floor cleaner with a little electronic nozzle on the head that sprays out fresh smelling floor cleaner while you mop. It also has disposable pads to make cleaning the floor as easy as A-B-C. Working in property management, every timesaving device is welcome. Since I just acquired a new rental home, I needed another Swiffer. The Exchange is only open Monday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, so one must know when to "shop." It was a mid-Monday morning. As I walked up to the sliding door to the pole barn, which was flung open, there, leaning up against the wall in plain sight was what appeared to be a Swiffer. I stopped, put my hands on my hips, looked down at the ground and shook my head, smirking. This was getting way too easy. Starting towards the prize, I began to notice an odd tube coming off the juice bottle and extending down to the head. Something was not right. Picking up the mop, I realized, in one glance, this was not a Swiffer. It was a Clorox brand invention meant to do the same thing I'm sure as the Swiffer. But…it was not a Swiffer. How many of you would have taken the Clorox? Really, because, what are the odds? How many of you would have jumped to the conclusion that you weren't suppose to have a Swiffer, that the Universe sent you the Clorox instead, so just be happy with what you get? Right? Pretty darn close? At that moment, I heard Intuition tell me, "Put it back." Without hesitation, and quite a surprise to me, I set the Clorox back against the wall, happily. Joyfully. "I'm sure it's a very nice CLOROX, but unfortunately, it's not a SWIFFER." Without another thought about it, I turned away. I'm not sure what made me happier: that without hesitation I could "not settle" for less than I believe I want and deserve, or, that as I turned away and walked three paces, I happened upon a Swiffer with a full bottle of juice. I kid you not. So that's my new sound byte. I want to be SWIFFERED. I want to hold out for what I really truly want, need and deserve with trust that the Universe will work with me to manifest those desires at the perfect moments. I don't have to explain to everyone one or justify why only a Swiffer will do. Since I was clear in my heart, a Swiffer it had to be. And WA LA, a Swiffer it is. One reason why Einstein was such a great scientist was because he kept at the process long after others gave up. Let him inspire you to honor yourself by articulating your needs and then have faith in yourself and the Universe that you can fill those needs. The truth is, we can do anything we set our minds to. One baby step by one baby step at a time. I've found that celebrating the baby steps makes for a whole lot of partying. |
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June 15, 2009 Don't you hate writer's block? Believe me, I've had more than my share of sitting at the computer and staring into a blank monitor. Minutes tick-tock by with no inspiration in sight. No sentences. Not even thoughts. Just a whole lot of blank. What to do? Whatever you do, don't panic. Trust me, there's nothing wrong with you. Even if your publisher is demanding to see the first three chapters of the book they've already paid you to write, there is no need to panic. Every one of us has what I call an Inner Editor. This is a voice that wants it exactly right before it even hits the paper. It's the perfectionist in us, not a bad thing, but certainly not the aspect we want running the entire show. Editing is an essential part of the writing process, but all in due time. While you are writing, you should not be editing. You should be engaging your Wild Mind, that creative, feral you that craves expression as a way to relieve itself of the pressure of the pent-up creative energy, longing to be heard. Everyone has a Wild Mind, what does yours crave? Wild Mind the Writer longs with such severe passion to articulate itself that it will say anything. No style here, just raw information, to eventually be chiseled together by Inner Editor. But if Editor emerges too soon in this sloppy, sometimes uncomfortable process, demanding perfection, Wild Mind is stricken dumb and frozen solid. There's your writer's block. So how to we silence Editor and allow Wild Mind to spill out the beautiful beans? First, we call in a third party, a Witness. Like the director of a play who sees the whole stage, Witness has the authority to tell Editor to step back into the wings until cued. Witness can then coax the Wild Mind back out into the light and give the cue to write to its hearts content. Write about ANYTHING. Just write. First, write something you can finish so you can say you did it. Write a paragraph about something you love, something that moved you. Write nonsense. Be a child and open up to whatever comes down your arm to your wrist and out your fingers onto the page. Even if it's clumsy, silly and completely impertinent to the project at hand, just write something. When Wild Mind is done with the romp through the raw stuff, unleash Editor and have a field day. I personally find self-editing such a joyful part of the whole process. Here's where you get intimate and turn the meat into style. Don't just read back what you wrote and call it crap; turn it into something better. Separating and working with these two aspects in this way can help break through the blocks and get the process rolling again. Here's my prescription for your case of writer's block: First thing in the morning, spend 15 minutes writing three or four paragraphs describing what you plan to do that day, or whatever short topic inspires you. Describe how the cat just moved across the room, or your dread of going to the dentist. Then set it aside and go about your day. Before bed in the evening, re-read what you wrote and take 15 minutes to edit it into something better than when you started. Don't over-think it. Just tidy it up and then sleep on it. Then ask for inspiration for the next day. Pray to whatever god or goddess turns your crank and go to bed savoring the time you spent writing that day. Repeat the process with a new topic every day for one week. At the end of the week, re-read all your entries and then burn everything you've written in a small ritual. Don't set the house on fire, but give thanks for the gift of writing, and celebrate that you wrote every day for a week. Being a writer is not about the end product, it's about the act of writing. Write with the wild mind, with passion and authenticity, and then self-edit with a sharp knife, and the end product will create itself. If this doesn't help, remember a watched pot never boils. If all else fails, forbid yourself from writing. Go do everything else but write! Don't LET yourself write. Whatever you do, give yourself a break. The best among us have had blocks. Count yourself in good company. June 15, 2009 Got Game Plan? When I was ten years old, I became obsessed with Fran Tarkenton and the Minnesota Vikings. I don't remember what first drew me in, because no one else at my house gave a fig about football. I was the only one watching these guys in space suits foisting a little ball across white lines until they crossed what they called the end zone. In the beginning, everything was chaos. I didn't know the positions and barely understood the difference between offense and defense. Each play was just a bunch of men screaming out numbers and then running at each other, no rhyme or reason, as far as I could see. After a while of watching, listening and reading the sports page, I started to learn that, as chaotic as it looked, there was a plan. First, Fran would consult with a guy on the sidelines who wasn't in a uniform. This was the head coach, Bud Grant. Grant and Tarkenton would chat it up, then Fran would run back to the field where all the other guys were waiting in a circle (the huddle), where Fran would tell everyone the play. I learned that teams rehearsed plays and each player had a specific direction to move. The coach would try to pick a play that would surprise the opposing defense, allowing the offense to move the ball closer to the end zone. Often times, plays went awry, like when Fran would throw one of his many interceptions, which meant the other team stole the ball and ran the other way to score the points we wanted. Everyone had a job. Eventually I learned. Knowing all this made the game unfold like a beautiful puzzle every Sunday afternoon. But when the Vikings lost their 4th Super Bowl, I just couldn't take it. Exhausted, I put myself on the injured reserve list and focused on other things on Sunday afternoons. The lessons of having a game plan, however, never left me. Sometimes, without a plan, life can be chaos. Creating a game plan keeps us focused and inspired. Imagine Fran saying to the huddle, "Coach says, just do whatever you feel like and we'll hope for the best!" Surely chaos would ensue. Having even a simple plan can box our compass and keep us in the game. The trouble with plans is they tend to change frequently. Becoming too attached to the plan can prevent forward movement. One must be able to improvise when needed. Sticking to the plan when you should be improvising can be uninspiring, even detrimental. Sometimes the play called for a pass to Bill Brown. But if, after the ball was snapped, Brown was too heavily defended, Fran had to find someone else who was open, maybe Paul Krause. If Fran insisted on throwing to Brown just because it was the plan, chances are he'd throw an interception. So how do we find the balance between making and following the plan, and winging it as life requires? How do we make the plan in the first place? 1. Identify, articulate and commit to a goal. Speak out loud what are you trying to achieve and state to yourself and the universe, that you fully intend to achieve it. We don't have to know how just yet, we just have to state to our intention to find out. To lose weight, grow a business, begin an art project, get your PhD, learn to communicate better…you can make a plan for anything, even character development! What do you want to cultivate in yourself? Fran's goal was simple: to move the ball down the field and score the most points. As long as he played by the rules, he could use any style he wanted. Fran's style was scrambling, running back and forth behind the line waiting for an opening. 2. Do it your way. What's your style? Do you like to jump off the cliff and soar, or carefully research the edge of the cliff and take a thorough analysis before considering a small leap? Whatever your style, by all means, do it your way, but just do it. Be unique and authentic in your approach to making your plan. It's your plan, after all. 3. Know your needs and resources. We all have needs, but how many of us know what they are and how to fill them? So often we bemoan our chaos, instead of focusing on our resources and figuring out how to use them to meet our needs. Get creative and brainstorm about all your needs, and every possible resource available to you. Bud Grant knew exactly what he needed: tight ends, punters, kickers, quarterback, etc, plus, he had back-up everything. He also knew his budget and how much he could spend contracting with players who could strengthen his weak spots. 4. Match your needs to your resources. You wouldn't send the running back in to play right tackle. Let's say one of your needs is to find someone to enjoy football with. One of your resources is your friend Gwen. But Gwen hates football. Whenever you talk football, she's bored and distracted. Instead of complaining about how she doesn't care, choose a different friend for football. Maybe Gwen is a better resource for a different need. Pay attention so you can use your resources wisely and not self-sabotage by mismatching football with Gwen. 5. Commit to giving it time. There's no getting around it, achieving a goal takes time. I didn't learn football overnight. Write perseverance into the plan. If the Vikings were ahead with only four minutes left, Fran would take as much time as possible getting down the field. He'd purposefully "burn up the clock" so the other team didn't have a chance to get the ball. Sometimes slower is better. So cultivate patience and faith in "divine timing." 6. Set yourself up to succeed. Make goals attainable. Break them down into smaller steps and do a little bit every day. As much as I loved a 60-yard Hail Mary, most forward progress was made two to six yards at a time. My style is to make lists of all my needs and resources by category: business, emotional, intellectual, physical, intuitive, social, as well as shopping and wish lists, must-dos and reminders. Forget organization; this is creative information dump. I call it the Big Board and use giant 22x28 post-it note stuck to the wall as I brainstorm. Then every morning I create a shorter daily list. I pick three needs from the Big Board that I know I have the resources to fill. I make it as easy as possible so I can create success. How good I feel at the end of a day with my do-to list all ta-done! The truth is I always do more than just the three things on my list. What a morale booster. This feeling of being successful creates motivation to start again the next day. 7. Be prepared to improvise. Life isn't neat and clean. Plans often have to change. If you add, "paint the fence" to the daily list and it rains, just pick something else on the list. You can stand around complaining about the rain, but that only prevents you from getting back to work on something you can be doing. Let go of the plan when you need to. Throw it out entirely if you want. Some days you just won't follow it anyway, but at least it's there. And even if you generally prefer a thorough analysis before a small leap, every now and again, just jump. 8. Ask for help. When I need a resource, I ask, which consists of looking skyward and saying to no one in particular, "Send help please!" Funny how honoring and articulating the needs on the Big Board helps lead to their fulfillment. Of course I freely talk up my needs to my circle as well. It's rare a need can't be met. 9. Start new every day. If you find yourself back in chaos, now you know: a little front-end work on a game plan can restore order and put things back on track. 10. Have fun. Life is too short not to. And when you quit having fun, retire. PS: On January 9, 1977, the Vikings lost their fourth Super Bowl to the Oakland Raiders who trounced us 32-14. Ouchie. I was now 22 years old. Twelve years after my love affair began, dejected, I broke up with the Vikings, vowing never to return to football again. Until 12 years later. September 1989. Driving through Wisconsin one Sunday, I tuned into the last three minutes of a gut-wrenching Green Bay Packer game, neck and neck down to the wire. A young quarterback they called Magic lobbed a long bomb into the end zone to be caught by Carl Bland to win the game in the last few seconds. Without warning, my repressed love of football exploded as the crowd drowned out the announcer. A muscle memory flexed, one of watching Fran lob those crazy passes into the end zone as he scrambled like a madman behind the lines. This Magic Man made me feel like a kid again. Little did I know, however, that Magic's misfortune would become a Packer legacy. In the third game of the 1992 season, Magic sustained an injury that would have him out for four weeks. Young back-up quarterback Brett Favre, fresh in from Georgia, was massively hung over that Sunday morning. He never dreamt he would actually get to play, so he felt free to drink copiously the night before. When Magic went down, Brett had to replace him and immediately fumbled four times, impelling the crowd to roar for his removal. However, down 23-17 with 1:07 left in the game, the Packers started an offensive series on their own eight-yard line. Still in the game, Favre completed a 42-yard pass to Sterling Sharpe. On the next play, Favre threw the game-winning touchdown pass with 13 seconds remaining. The rest is history. Brett was crazier than Fran ever was, and threw even more interceptions. But he was young and wild and had his own scrambling style. He gave us fans the best football a girl could ever hope for. He took big risks that didn't always pay off. But when they did, no one could touch him. He went on to win the world's heart, break most all the records and after 16 spine-tingling years as a Packer, he retired, only to return and sign with the New York Jets. Seeing Brett in a Jets uniform was not in my plan. Now he's considering signing with the Vikings. Good grief, just the thought of it makes my head spin around about six times. Back where it all began. Talk about time travel. But then again, I'm always up for feeling like a kid again… |
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One of my very best friends is the dictionary. Ever since reading that one meaning of the word "influence" is "an ethereal fluid flowing from the stars that affects the fates of men," I've been in love with this nerdy little book. I use the dictionary like others use a Bible. Whenever I'm stumped on a Rev and can't find the meaning in my Intellectual sound byte, I often turn to a big red tattered American Heritage my sister Sandy gave me on my 31st birthday. For example, a reoccurring theme with clients lately is about jealousy. Or maybe because it's my current lesson, I see it everywhere. But not in me, of course. I'm not jealous. No, it's my friend. She is jealous of me, and is purposefully trying to impede my progress because She is so jealous of me. Perhaps some might say she's an "energy vampire" and that I need to distance myself from her, protect myself from her bad juju. Cleanse her bad energy off of me. Don't take on HER emotion. Send her white light, some might say. Oh, how noble I look in this picture. So perfectly not jealous, and how magnanimous of me to want to help "heal" her while still I have to "protect" myself from "her." Hmm. Really. Why can't I buy into this mess? I guess it's this crazy map of consciousness Einstein gave me years ago and all the research and development involved in testing it. This scenario goes against all my known science. My science has proven over and over, if I am triggered by a conflict, the root is within me. So even though I don't think it's about me, because my Intellect is obsessing on her and all the stories about why I'm mad about her actions, if I'm this obsessed about her, it's time to take a deeper look at me. Jealousy, I think, is one of the most difficult aspects to own. Yikes. How can this be me? What does it even mean to be jealous, and why can't I seem to get off the story that it’s about her? Alright, Big Red to the rescue. Jealousy: Fearful or wary of being supplanted; apprehensive of loss of position or affection. Supplant: to take the place of. So…nothing comes to mind, right off the bat. I am not jealous of her or her position. I was not, after all, the one who said the disparaging comments on Valentine's Day. She's the one who openly mocked me for showing tenderness to my friend. Her statement, thrown off as easily as if she were commenting on the weather or taxes, was so insulting and cruel. She's just jealous. If I didn't know better, I'd think she was trying to hurt me. Why am I even friends with her? But, my science supposes that Emotion, wedded to a story in the Intellect, creates reality. So when I wed my fear and jealousy to the story that she's trying to hurt me, I make it real. But really, I'm the one creating the very condition I am jealous of: being replaced, being unloved, losing my position of importance. Look! In present moment, I witness, right before my eyes, it's me doing the replacing. I'm the one constructing the story that it's all about her, replacing myself by putting her in the role reserved only for me. In my head I am self-righteously telling her she should be aware of her jealousy. I should be doing my own searching moral inventory to find my own jealousy. Instead, my Intellect keeps me focused on her domain (going against the Ground Rules that I am not responsible for her domain). This in turn distracts me from finding my own jealousy and fear, and feeling and breathing the Emotion of it consciously through my body. By making these choices to replace me in the story with her and stopping up Emotion, I fall out of alignment with Compassion and self-love, which relates to the other definition of jealousy: apprehensive of loss of position or affection. Well, I guess this why they say, "Watch and be amazed." So now what? By revolving my focus back onto my own domain, I correct the condition, "box the compass," as it were, to true north. By turning my perception 180 degrees off of her, I now own the Emotion and feel and breathe it. I breathe that fear into my body actually capturing its creative power and not allowing it to fuel a story. Just taking this first baby step, owning the Emotion and breathing it through the body without attachment to any story, I turn myself back to true north and choose to act in self-love, thereby restoring the affection I thought I had lost. Now, in this state of renewed power, I commit to the mystery and adopt an attitude of discovery, asking the Universe to show me my Sound Byte. Whatever I thought she was doing to me is what I am doing to myself. So, I ask to be shown, where do I impede my own progress? From the place of Witness, I go about my day observing present moment, catching myself in the smallest of acts that impede my own progress: denying my feelings again, trying to prove myself right, projecting my Emotion onto someone else. These decisions go by so fast, if I didn't know what I was looking for, I might have missed them. Thank god for Con Rev. And like magic, in a singular AHA moment, when I catch myself in the act, I can change it. Right then and there. And when I do, I create a miracle. That's when I "get the gift" of the conflict. My friend Lily calls it, "Having a Nervous Breakthrough." As we get the gift, we can own it, breathe it and now have the power to change the entire outcome of the conflict. Once again align to compassion, I now hear the Intuitive impelling: Forgive! I see the truth: my friend and I are the same. I don't need be concerned about her, she is fine. I am too. By breathing and feeling my shame and guilt around my own jealous actions, I can redirect Emotion to fuel a new story. I change the Intellectual initiative off of focusing on her, onto finding and taking action to forgive. How do you forgive yourself? That's the canvas we are all being challenged to paint. However we do it, by forgiving her, we forgive ourselves. By forgiving ourselves, we can forgive anything. Either way, it makes no difference. To my Intellect I say, just do it. The miracle is, as soon as I do this, she changes, too, right before my eyes. She becomes kinder, humbler, more willing to listen. As I own my own jealousy, she seems willing to own hers. Hmmm. Really. As I take responsibility for my part, I become the leader and set the example by becoming the change I expected of her. So when in doubt, revolve your focus 180 degrees. Just for fun. See how you can broaden your perspective with this little mind game. If you think it's about her, imagine instead it's about you. If you are defending your right to be right, imagine you are wrong. If you think you aren't good enough, think you are more powerful than you will ever really know. Now there's a scary thought. Good. Grab the fear, breathe it and run. Remember, we don't want to lose the Emotion; we want to feel and breathe the fear while we change the Intellectual sound byte that it's attached to. After this little game of jealousy, I went back to my friend, receptive and loving once more. My boundaries are strong and I see her as the beautiful woman she truly is and I am so grateful for her friendship. I have re-aligned to Compassion. Boxed my compass, as it were, to my own values. All that's left… is joy. Joy: The expression or manifestation of high pleasure and delight; Happiness. Hey! On a compass, North is 0 degrees. Really. Zero. Sounds like the Void to me. March 10, 2009 CLICK ON HEART TO HEAR BARBARA READ HER NEWSLETTER Top 10 Reasons To Hire A Pet Psychic 10. Boo the cat asked you to. 9. To get the real truth about Lassie. 8. To find out if Snookems really was Cleopatra’s cat in another life (like he claims). 7. To tell Fido’s dead mother to SIT and STAY. 6. Because you have all that money lying around... 5. As an informational interview for your new career. 4. To work with the pet detective to find your missing cat. 3. To find out if there are puppies in your future. 2. To find out if Boots will get the job as therapy dog. 1. To find out if you really are supposed to kill all those people like Snuffy says. My apologies to Barbara Morrison in Palm Spring, CA. http://www.animalstalk.com/ Once I started a blog and called myself the Skeptical Psychic. I dissed everyone under the sun—Sylvia Brown, The Amazing Randi, John Edward—even me. And as anyone who has taken a Conflict Revolution workshop knows, humor is one of our Values. So if you can't laugh at yourself, I will do it for you. (Of course I get my due when my trusted team of Con Rev coaches are helping me through a Rev and end up laughing at me…ha ha ha.) A few years back, my friend and I were having breakfast a few days after his father's funeral. His dad was a cut-up, known for laughing hysterically at his own jokes (even if no one else was). He passed this attribute on to his son who carries on the tradition even to this day. As we were solemnly having coffee that morning, suddenly my friend's cell phone lit up with five quick text messages in a row. They were five of the worst jokes we'd ever heard, exactly the kind his dad would have told. Text messages from Afterlife? Maybe the jokes are even worse in heaven. So just for this week, LIGHTEN UP PEOPLE! Life is too short to be crying in our beer about something that happened last week/month/year/lifetime. Yes, we need to feel and breathe. Yes, we need to align our Intellect to Compassion. But more than anything, we need to laugh. At ourselves, and each other, and at the amazing joy that abides in every second of creation.. Nuf said. February 14, 2009 CLICK ON HEART TO HEAR BARBARA READ HER NEWSLETTER Did you hear the one about the nun who married God? Filed for divorce, got half the universe. But seriously, can we talk some turkey on Valentine’s Day? According to astrological sources, today is the official opening of the Age of Aquarius. Apparently, the moon actually is in the 7th house while Jupiter aligns with Mars. In honor of the memories of ninth grade that that song brings to mind, today I challenge all my old perspectives on love. Pretend I know nothing. Start over from scratch, like a little mini-St. Valentine’s Day Love Boot Camp. I have to wonder, what didn’t I learn in those teen years? What are teenagers suppose to learn in order to develop into healthy adults? And how do adults grow healthy relationships with each other, particularly intimate ones? Did I say I would be pretending to know nothing? No pretending here. As is often the case, once I begin asking the questions, I realize how much I truly don’t know. According to John Gray, author of the infamous Mars Venus series about men and women, there are five distinct stages of growing a healthy relationship. The premise for this growth is the idea that the man’s job is to make the woman happy, and the woman’s job is to communicate her needs, and then receive and appreciate his help. Understanding that men thrive on appreciation and women thrive on communication allows the creation of a mutually fulfilling relationship. When I read this, I thought, “Holy mother of god, QUOI? Why didn’t anyone tell me this sooner?” How long have we women labored under the assumption that it’s our job to give and give and give, to family, friends, kids, husbands, boyfriends, until we bleed ourselves dry making everyone happy? As keepers of the transactional relationships, women are taught to give from the moment we’re born, and now you’re telling me, that’s not it? No girls, that’s not it! There’s more! Our other job is to sit back, like Cleopatra, and receive. Wow. Who knew? To better understand, I took a lesson from Conflict REVOLUTION. (What are the odds?) Women are like Intuition; men are like Intellect. Intuition is the voice of our own essence proclaiming what we need. Intellect creates the action plan to fulfill that need. Intuition can impel, but it cannot analyze and implement. Intellect without the guidance of Intuition gets lost. They must work together to create the good of the whole. In a well-balanced psyche, Intellect (the man) longs to please the Intuitive (the woman) by making decisions based on her impelling. As she communicates her need, he listens and learns what she needs, he then uses his power of analysis to determine how to fulfill that need. Intuition is not supposed to step in and instruct Intellect how to do the job. Intuition just keeps broadcasting what is needed so Intellect can find a way to manifest it. Meanwhile she keeps herself filled up with her essence, has patience, and watches and is amazed at how it all runs like a finely tuned machine when everyone is doing their job. More often than not, when men work to make us happy, we don’t know how to receive it. Instead, we automatically give back. We think it’s a good thing. But by giving without receiving, we create our own imbalance. We become plate spinners, as my friend Lily calls it. This non-stop giving is like having a bunch of plates spinning on the end of long skinny poles. We dance faster and faster, making sure everyone’s plate is spinning. No matter what anyone does for us, we can’t be happy because we can’t receive it, we’re too busy giving everyone else’s plate a spin. Unfortunately, this creates a vacuum, causing more imbalance and unhappiness. Once while staying with my boyfriend for a three-week period, I thought, how wonderful I will be, giving to him. Everyday he went to work and I took on a different task to show my love. I did his wash, vacuumed his dining room, scrubbed his floors and toilet, washed his windows. Every evening he would come home to find I had tackled another task, trying to meet his needs. All the while, he was at a loss. Not only was I not fulfilling him by becoming his maid, but he had no idea how to get me to stop. So how do we learn to receive? Sounds like a no-brainer, but why is it that difficult? According to Mr. Gray, Stage Two of our mating dance is Uncertainty, when we pull back and start to consider if the person we’re attracted to in Stage One is someone we might want to invest in. During the uncertainty phase, men are suppose to pull away so both parties have a chance to ask themselves the appropriate questions and then discover the answers through the responses to the separation. If a woman respectfully gives a man his space, she will discover if he is worthy of her love. If in the separation he discovers he misses her, he will make the effort to move closer. If she is making herself happy and remains receptive to him, they will be naturally drawn together. Or not. If they aren’t, they can respectfully move on without much hurt or rejection. Stage Two requires a commitment to the mystery and the discovery. We must be willing to discover the truth, not shape reality into what we think it should be. With this receptive attitude, the truth will reveal itself, in good time. Stage Two has become my new classroom. Suddenly this place of uncertainty is exciting, and learning to receive seems much less work then endless giving. So this Valentine’s Day, turn your view of love upside down and consider another perspective. Men, if the woman you love is not communicating her needs, slow down and create a space where she can just be heard. Then listen. Sometimes we don’t need dragons smote or mountains scaled. Sometime we just need to be heard. And women, just for today, stop giving. Sit back, commit to the mystery and watch what will manifest if you ask for what you need, prepare to receive and be grateful. And for all of us on the first day of this new Age of Aquarius, go out of your way to become the change. Align your Intellect to do the bidding of your Intuitive, then watch and be amazed at what self-love, gratitude and your willingness to receive will create.
CLICK THE HEARTS ON THE LEFT FOR AUDIO OF BARBARA READING HER NEWSLETTER February 3, 2009 Back in high school (I don’t mean this ugly) I was a weird kid. Since I was 12, I’d been writing these strange, gothic songs even I didn’t understand. My parents divorced and I withdrew into my bedroom refusing to speak to my family, oh, for a couple years. At a time when kids were supposed to be interacting innocently with the opposite sex through that societal training called “dating,” I was locked in my room writing music. I did not date, per sae, and although the few boys who endured spending time with me back then still think kindly of me, I was a handful. It always ended poorly. But in my favor, most all my social experiences ended poorly back then, which sent me right back into my room. So instead of dating, at 16 I moved across town into a hippie commune. It was 1972; the sexual revolution was all the rage. Human consciousness had just taken a giant, caffeinated jolt out of the 1950s into the 60s. Who were we anymore then sexually? If the model for marriage was no longer Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, what was it? By the time I reached 17, I was a playing music in the same folk clubs that spawned Bob Dylan. My posse was a group of musicians, all men, none younger than 28, some as old as 40 (“Wow, almost dead,” I used to think). There were no girls but me. I was quickly dubbed, “The new kid.” This was the culture that shaped my sexual identity. I never got to be that innocent teenager who learned slowly and thoughtfully, not just about her own sexuality but also about those strange and beautiful creatures, boys. I never got a chance to hold hands without expectation of sex. And with it, sex brought the expectation of marriage, even in the era of sexual freedom, make-love-not-war, “power to the people.” Those darn Nelsons still had a lock on my ideology. This Saturday I will turn 54. On my own for the first time with this new self-love, it feels like a do-over. I feel like a 17-year-old. Seriously. But this time, I get to explore at my own pace. I say who, I say when, I say how much. I get to pose the questions: what is sex, what is marriage, do they have anything to do with one another and what do they mean to me? I can’t help but wonder, is marriage by nature degenerative? Is it doomed to fail because people mistakenly allow culture to define marriage for them instead of creating their own unique form to fit their own special needs? And could this be because, who knew any of us had special needs, much less what they were, much less how to get them fulfilled? So what really is marriage and how do we create a successful one in this day and age? How many people do you know who are wildly in love after 30 years together? I’m divorced; that was brutal. Why would anyone want to do it again? I know a friend, divorced three times and she’s out there dating again, opening herself up to possibility. She’s dating in her 60s. What does that look like? I had no idea the first time around, why should I have one now? To get to the bottom of this, I conducted one of my patented unofficial research projects, which consists of nagging friends and strangers in supermarket lines to answer my posed questions: If divorced, would you marry again and why? 100% of the interviewees were divorced. 100% said they would marry again. The answers to “why” varied as widely as the interviewees. Everything from tax breaks, insurance, proclamations of love, shared happiness, sorrows halved, to have someone to grow old with, someone to take care of. Every single person, despite the agony of divorce, said they would take the risk of marrying again. However, the research did not settle me. None of the above resonated true for me. I had had the ceremonies, the companionship, the tax breaks, the insurance, the “security.” None of that made a marriage for me. So what is it, for me, if anything at all? Then I remembered a man I met several years ago. I'd only known him for maybe ten minutes and haven’t seen him since, but in the memory of his parable I perfectly found my answer. It’s a mid-September night on Madeline Island, Northern Wisconsin. We’re sitting outside under the tent at Tommy’s Burned Down Café. The fires are going, and my friend and I are perched silently on our bar stools, staring into space. He’s just buried his dad, and my cousin was killed a couple weeks earlier. Out of the blue, a man walks up, puts down his beer, looks directly as us and commands, “Ask me what I’m thinking.” Resisting making a joke about being a psychic, I comply, “Ok, what are you thinking?” “I’m thinking about my wife.” Do I see a tear shimmering on his lower eyelid? “Awww honey…where is she?” Now I want to know. “Oh she’s on the mainland. I work on the island four days a week. I think about her when I wake up, I think about her when I go to sleep, she's even in my dreams. I miss her when she’s not there and I can’t wait for Friday so I can get home. 'Cause when I’m with her, I’m home.” I can't help but ask, “How long have you been married?” “Twenty-five years.” Bingo. That's it/ That's what marriage is to me. It’s not a ritual declaring a union in front of the world and the government. It’s not sharing expenses, tax breaks, insurance or legal documents. It’s not even sharing happiness or reducing sorrow. No, for me marriage is that after 25 years, I think about him when I wake up, I think about him when I go to sleep, he’s in my dreams, I miss him when he’s not there and I can’t wait to be with him, because when I’m with him, I’m home. It’s as if his compilation of consciousness, at 10–100 meters, is parked on top of mine, covering me, so close to the Source we are nearly one. I have no idea how that translates into taxes or ceremonies or living arrangements or insurance. I feel married to him because in my soul, through all these years, somewhere he’s always been there in that way, no matter what. So how does someone who feels married already (according to my new standard but certainly nowhere near culturally) start over and learn to date? I don’t know but wouldn’t this be a great way to revitalize any relationship? Just start over from the top. Begin again as strangers. Learn how to be best friends. I ask my friend Gale about her 30-year marriage. She's still madly in love with him. How did they take it that first step all those years ago? When they first met in high school, they became biking buddies. They rode bikes together for nine months before they even kissed. “I couldn’t even hardly look at him, I was so in love with him.” How sweet to see this 50-something woman still blush telling the story. “We just biked and talked, every week, week after week. But the entire time I was shaking, I was so in love in love with him.” I’m flabbergasted. “How did you bike for nine months in that condition? And what moved it along to the next level,” the part of me still 17-years-old wanted to know. “One day, he was standing on my sidewalk straddling his bike, and I just walked right up to him and planted one on him. The rest is history.” So she took the time to grow the stranger into her best friend, and when Intuition impelled her, and not a moment sooner, she complied. By that time, the kiss was planted on solid ground. This year, for my birthday, I want to learn to “ride bikes.” Take my time. Where’s the fire? Because it’s the journey, you see…and I don’t want to miss one single second. Happy freeking birthday to me.January 9, 2009 CLICK THE HEARTS ON THE LEFT FOR AUDIO OF BARBARA READING HER NEWSLETTER Have you ever heard the adage, "Never ask for patience because you'll get a bunch of really difficult, challenging situations forcing you to be patience the hard way?" Yeah, well, that would be me. New Year's Eve was a beautiful night here in Corpus. I decided to stay home in the Winter Palace and do a big phat soul search. I felt gorgeous in my green 50s shirtwaist dress printed with scenes of Paris and my polka dot strappy sandals. Great hair, too. All dressed up and nowhere to go but straight into 2009 alone. Sitting looking out over this little Texas burg, I was humbled by and grateful for all the abundance of 2008. It was like getting an extreme make over, tip to stern. Sipping my champagne, I asked myself, is there anything I need to cultivate in 2009? Discipline? Creative expression? More balance? The only thing I could honestly think of was patience. According to American Heritage, the new College edition, one meaning of being patient is, "Capable of calmly awaiting an outcome or result; not hasty or impulsive." In many ways, I am patient about lots of things—creative expression, recovery from loss, career fruition. God knows I have waited what seems like eons for my vision of a life as a writer and teacher to manifest. I've known since I was young I would be traveling the world sharing my gifts. Forty years later, here I am. How's that for patience? For my friends I have infinite patience, listening without judgment, holding them close and showering them with compassion when they are in need. So where's my beef? When it comes to patience for myself, I admit sometimes I fail miserably. Some days my Intellect is like a runaway train with a heartsick, drunken conductor at the helm. Try as I will, knowing all that I know, some days I just can't keep those thoughts on track. They impulsively waiver all over the board, hastily careening around dangerous curves, sending me to bed in tears, anything but calm, blowing things all out of proportion, leaving me thinking I am inept and ineffective. What in god's green earth am I to do in those moments? I know. Be patient. Right. So how do we cultivate patience? How can we, amid this chaos, cut through all that crap and get back into calm knowing? So far, I learned that there is no cookie cutter answer that works every time. We have to pay attention to what we need in any given moment. Sometimes we need to focus on details, like an intricate, intimate sketch done with a triple aught nib. In those times, if we grab the big brush, we'll get lost. Think of when the body is being formed in the womb. Something knows to direct which stem cells to be bone and which to be skin. The movement is based on a big picture, but the work is done on the most intricate level. Other times we need to step back and indulge in the big abstract. It's hard to paint a house with a 000 brush. Sometimes, when we are too patient, we allow circumstances to atrophy. Waiting sometimes keeps us sitting on the fence preventing the energy from moving forward with needed change. In those times, our impatience might be the very thing that gets the energy moving. I remember once, I was deeply in love. He was a prince of a guy, not without his foibles. I'd known him forever and would have spent the rest of my life with him. We had that thing people dream of: a good solid friendship combine with high-level chemistry, a meeting of the minds, shared past, family ties, outrageous humor—everything a girl could want. But for some reason he chose to keep it platonic. After a while, I started to feel like a "friend with benefits," except the benefits weren't sex, they were love. Each time we were together, all that sizzling electrical excitement and practical time-tested connection had me reeling. We could spend hours in each other's company, happy just being together, talking like crazy, laughing like hyenas, but we couldn't seem get it to the next level. I figured because he was being so emotionally fulfilled with me, he was able to get his other needs fulfilled elsewhere, thereby keeping himself safe from taking the risk of "having it all." After all, putting all your eggs in one basket means that if you trip and fall, there go all the eggs. In an attempt to be patient with him until he "got it," I inadvertently created the very situation I wanted to move out of. Always there with my understanding, no matter what, why would he want to change it? He had everything he needed. All my good intentions to grow this into something bigger were actually keeping it from doing just that. In a fit of impatience, I told him we had to cut all ties. Because he "obviously" didn't want anything more than friends, I had to "get over him," I said, and I couldn't do it always being enticed by this magnificent rapport reminding me what I could never have. Good lord. Talk about impatient. But sometimes, do we have to inject discomfort into our lives to get things moving? Sometimes can our impatience be a positive power that switches things up? If so, how do we tell the difference? At the risk of sounding like a broken record, thank god for Conflict Revolution. This process allows me to tell the difference between when to feel and breathe emotion and when to do the important analytical work of looking into the mirror. Sometimes staying in emotion is wallowing; sometimes analysis keeps us from feeling. Con Rev clarifies which is needed when. Because it was my Intellect that was impatient, I started in the analytical. Taking a good hard look into the mirror, I used the sound byte that he was "keeping himself safe." Focusing on me instead of him, I scoured areas of my life where I might be keeping myself safe. What I found was shocking. Because of Con Rev, I was able to recognize that it was me who feared having it all with him. After all, I had gone through divorce. He had not. I was the one who put all my eggs in one basket and failed miserably. I worked this deep enough to discover a place within me that thought I wasn't good enough for him. When I got to this AHA moment, I was able to feel and breathe my shame and sadness. I found patience to be with myself in compassion and forgiveness as I moved the trapped emotional energy through me. Realizing I was projecting onto him, I changed my prideful arrogance into humble respect: for me for working this process and owning my part, and for him for hanging in there with me no matter how difficult our journey had been. Perhaps for 2009, we can remind ourselves, there are no easy answers. Life is an intricate, intimate paradox where one day having patience is the blessing and the next it is the bane. Perhaps our job is to just pay close attention, commit to the mystery, listen for the intuitive impelling in present moment and then follow its urging. After my revelation, instead of beating myself up for losing him, I was able to see how my courage brought me back to myself and reminded me, ultimately, it is my own self-love I seek. All else that is meant to be will follow, in good time, if I just have patience. December 26, 2008 CLICK THE HEARTS ON THE LEFT FOR AUDIO OF BARBARA READING HER NEWSLETTER Do you ever get the feeling like time is just folding in on itself? (OK, I admit, jet lag had me up late last night watching a Brian Greene fest on YouTube. One of my science heroes, a foremost expert on string theory and the star of a fascinating documentary, “Elegant Universe,” Mr. Greene once explained how he did math in a way that sounded suspiciously like channeling to me.) So perhaps I meant to say, is 2008 really coming to a close? Already? Where did that time go? Seems like just yesterday it was the end of 2006. If you had told me two years ago that my cousin's murder was just the beginning everything I was about to go through, I might have hung myself right then and there. And yet, here I am two years later, I couldn’t be more excited about life. So where did the old “me” go? According to Mr. Greene, the spacetime of Corpus Christi, Texas, December 26, 2006, including the “me” that was there crying in my Veuve, could exist in a concurrent, parallel universe just a hair’s breath away from the “me” in present moment. The basis of this parallel universe is something called M-Theory. Think of listening to a radio. Signals fill the air but you can only hear the ones you tune to. Tune to a different frequency and an entirely different program plays. Even though you aren’t listening to the other program it’s still being broadcast in the air around you. Therefore, what frequency you choose to tune to is an integral part of what creates the experience. According to the originator of M-Theory, Edward Witten, the M could stand for master, mathematical, mother, mystery, membrane, magic, or matrix. It purports that all physical matter is rooted in electromagnetic membranes, or “branes.” Each "brane" contains an 11-dimensional universe that can operate as the macrocosm as well as the microcosm. These universes could be other worlds with different physical laws than ours; they could look and operate like ours but with different details missing (perhaps the existence of us in them); or they could be the same space, different time, or other potentials that we may or may not have experienced already. In this way, there could be a brane broadcasting emerging particles into the matter of Corpus Christi, December 26, 2006 but I don’t experience that matter right now because I’m tuned into the frequencies that create 2008. While my consciousness is tuning into 2008, the matter from 2006 folds back up into that brane and returns to being sub-atomic math, still being broadcast but without the observer, goes formed. Arriving in Corpus Christi that year to begin again, exhausted, overwhelmed with grief, I had no idea how to proceed. No home, no job and no real plan, the mission was merely to find my authentic self, no matter what it took. I had been a compulsive “plate-spinner” (someone always trying to please others at my own expense to garner outside validation), I was bound and determine to do this alone. Find my own grounding. I had just escaped a life where I felt dependent on so many others for my happiness. No wonder I was desperately unhappy! No, I told myself, I will make this move alone. I can find my own happiness! Putting on my bravest face and bucking up like I was taught to do, with what little resources I had I booked a hotel room, flew into town with just my suitcase and began the search for me. Fortunately, my friend in Corpus could see behind the façade I was struggling to free myself of. Very gently, kindly, he merely suggested I could crash at his place. It would help with resources, and he could keep me company. NO! I insisted I’m fine. I can do this alone. I have to do this alone. Off I marched. After sobbing my way through a sleepless night in my expensive hotel room, I received a telephone call from him in the morning. “Ms. With, this is hotel security. You must vacate the premises immediately. Please proceed directly to 3112 Palmetto Avenue.” An hour later he was tucking me in on the couch, where, for the first time in ages, I was able to rest. As I powered up my laptop to check my email before taking this well-deserved nap, the message on the screen said, “Would you like to join the network HOME?” I burst into tears and said very quietly, “Yes, please.” Perhaps the matter that makes up this past experience has returned back into the sub-atomic domain, as if spacetime has indeed “folded in on itself.” And maybe the events of this parallel universe experienced originally as despair may now be experienced as joy, depending how I choose to unfold it. Since the Observer is an integral part of creating that reality, when I the Observer change my frequency, thereby changing the frequency from which that reality is observed, can I “re-write” the past? The journey from my friend’s couch took me places I never dreamt I even wanted to go, but every baby step has led back to the core. After finally dragging myself out of this abyss by my fingernails, I have successfully joined the network HOME. Hey, no surprise, it is being broadcast from within me. Has been the entire time. The challenges of my journey home were carefully designed to empower me, forcing me once and for all to take charge of my own “brane” to change my own frequencies. That journey led to an empirical understanding that joy resides within. There may never be a greater gift than this. Maybe for 2009 you can invite yourself to join the network HOME. When you think back on all you have experienced, shift your perception to a new angle. Tune into a fuller, richer, deeper frequency and experience it from your core. Whatever the experience, your relationship to it can change, thereby changing the entire experience, even if it’s the past. Gift yourself this season with the knowledge that you did your best. Count your blessings out loud. Acknowledge and proclaim yourown rarity. Go the extra mile to tune into the frequencies that align you with the truth, that you, my friend, are a miracle just sitting in that chair. After watching hours and hours and hours of YouTube videos on M-Theory, I was still perplexed. All the scientists determined that branes have only 11 dimensions: space making up the first three, time as the 4th, then the remaining seven are various forms of other potentials. But Einstein has always told me there are 12 dimensions. Then I got it. Maybe that last 12th dimension is that of the Observer of the other eleven. Perhaps it’s the most important dimension of all. It doesn’t take a psychic (or a physicist) to believe that 2009 could very well be the best year ever. Since you, the Observer, are an integral part of the creation of your reality, perhaps it will all depend on how you choose to unfold it. December 1, 2008 Back in the 70s, I was performing in a band named after me. The Barbara With Band was a rag-tag crew from different musical backgrounds playing the “B” clubs throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. One such establishment was the Runway Bar outside of Sioux City, Iowa. Literally an old airport runway and a rundown Quonset hut, the Runway hosted strippers during midweek. When the club owner put up our poster advertising the Barbara With Band, the patrons thought I was a stripper who happened to be traveling “with” my own band. Nice. Our drummer, Tom, was straight out of a rural country western trio; we were now asking him to play funk. God bless him, no matter how he tried, he couldn’t sustain a laid-back funk groove to save his life. It was like working with a drill sergeant when a massage therapist was needed. Oy. During one particularly grueling rehearsal, as our brutal, brilliant bass player Sid was riding herd on Tom for being “too white,” from out of nowhere came about 16 measures of pure unadulterated funk. From Tom! We were floored. As we jammed on, astonished, Tom was obviously enjoying himself immensely. Lost in the great gestalt of rhythm, he closed his eyes and, for the first time ever, laid down a perfect funk groove. Then, as suddenly as it descended, the groove was gone. Tom had fallen back into the gap between his country roots and his best funky intentions. He stumbled so badly one drumstick actually flew out of his hand and landed under the table. With the enthusiasm of a kid who’d just almost caught his first fish, he looked at me and said, “I turned the funk corner but I went the wrong way.” I can’t tell you how many times I have plagiarized Tom’s words. How many times have I been grooving along and then out of nowhere, bam, I’m in the hole again. Turned the funk corner and went the wrong way. Well, I am pleased to report, in the past few weeks, I turned the funk corner and kept grooving on down the road. Something happened, something monumental took place in my life. I found something I’ve been looking for for a very long time. If I could bottle it, y'all would be placing orders for a case. What happened was, I discovered joy. Joy is not something that comes easily to me, although I can make you laugh like a hyena at any given moment. No, this is more than humor. The joy I happened upon was like a wellspring of energy emanating from within me bursting forth onto the landscape around me. Finding it was like being in some action adventure movie where, in the end, the girl gets the guy, the money and the happy ending. Where did I find this joy? Why has it eluded me for so long? What magical incantation did I employ to mysteriously get to this joy? It sprung forth from my decision to actively find it. I went on my own action adventure to seek it out. After reading my last email about my sadness over the loss of my puppy (see below), I just decided it was time. Time to get up off the couch and start applying some of the discipline Einstein is always telling me about. We create our own lives with every decision we make. And while I would not recommend skipping past important work like grieving loss and healing the heart, I would warn about overdoing the addiction to being stuck in it. A Comfort Zone is not necessarily comfortable. What made a huge difference for me was meeting someone who was so joyful it just burst out of her every pore. I watched this woman tackle a number of situations and always find happiness. At first, my naturally melancholic and brooding self was put off by her constantly turning everything into a blessing. Then I started to see a direct correlation to her power of her manifestation and the intensity of her joy. So I started experimenting. I started channeling joy. What a concept, eh? For someone who thinks she can channel Albert Einstein, why did it not occur to me sooner to channel my own joyful self? I know she has been in there under all the layers of programmed patterns of sadness and depression. Could I actually channel my own joyful self? The good news is, not only is it possible, but I started working it and immediately found amazing results. Joy (“Intense and especially ecstatic or exultant happiness”) is just as accessible as depression. Perhaps because I took a long time to feel and breathe the losses of my life, I finally emptied out my basement of all the old baggage and useless flotsam and jetsam. Down in the deep reaches of my inner sanctum, just waiting for me to open was the door marked “joy.” What happened? Did I make tons of money, sign a record deal or did my boyfriend finally come back? Nope, it was all inside me, right there in the present. I began to focus on appreciating all that I have, counting my blessings, proclaiming my rarity, going the extra mile to be optimistic, making a decision to change my life because I can. How can I inspire you to find your own joy no matter what is happening in your life? How can I convince you to focus on all that you have, not what you don’t have? Is there any way I can motivate you to get up off your own couch and breathe in the wonder and miracle of just being alive? Only by truly becoming the change myself can I so inspire you. So that is my mission. So each time you feel the pull to turn the corner and fall into the hole again, stop, take a breath and make a conscious decision to turn your focus back to the joy. Instead of the knee-jerk reaction to doubt your abilities and cling to the fear, use discipline to literally count all your blessings. From a beautiful sunrise, to your health, your loving friends, your talents, achievements and successes, everywhere you can find something to be joyful about, when you pay attention and start looking. I believe my joy is the natural byproduct of working Con Rev for so long. Once we resolve the conflicts within our own psyche, we can open the door to lasting change. So what will it take for you to find your own joy? Shoot me an email and let’s talk. November 12, 2008 Perhaps the biggest reoccurring theme that I come across with people I work with is loss. So many of us have had major losses over the past couple years. Most everyone has lost a parent or other family member, a home, their job, direction, hope—so many in this world have been and still are mourning one loss or another. I am, of course, no exception. But of all the things I have lost in the past few years (and those things have been many) perhaps the hardest one is still my puppy dog. Gabriel was a pound puppy I found one winter day 12 years ago. I was searching for the perfect puppy and had met quite a few that day. While my preference was for a black or golden lab, I made a point to talk to other breeds as well. I met a collie, a terrier, a pit bull and I even spent some time with a coonhound. As cute and capable as they all were, I knew that none of them were the one. Then, at the last minute, just when I was about to give up, out popped the sweetest little fellow I had ever seen. He was tiny, and looked just like a chocolate lab except he had one white paw. I couldn’t understand how I missed him, as I had considered every other one of his siblings in the cage and didn’t even see him there. Back in the meeting room, I sat on the floor with him between my legs. He had an unusual calm for a six-week-old husky lab mix. As he looked up at me with those big brown eyes, he seemed wise beyond his years. I knew his name was Gabriel and that he was to play an important role in my life. As a puppy, Gabriel provided endless unconditional love and joy. As he grew, he became a handsome, smart and supernatural creature. He was always there for me at every step, watching over me, taking care of me in his own canine way. He knew when I was sad, and would schoosh his soft wet nose into my face and lick away my tears. He never failed to cheer me up and the soft brown fur of his neck often absorbed my sadness. I bonded with him so deeply, I never imagined that anything would take him from me but death. Gabriel lives now with my ex and his new girlfriend, a wonderful woman who loves him like her own. I see him very rarely, but I am comforted to know he is well taken care of and loved. But will this big hole in my heart where his puppiness still lives ever stop missing him? Will I ever stop crying at the thought of him? Maybe, but not yet. But it’s OK. I know many of you have lost much more than this. And maybe that soft spot that is activated when I think of him is a gift of compassion. I never want to lose that innocence his memory evokes in me. He still makes me feel like a kid again, as hard as it is sometimes. Last spring when I returned from Romania, my lovely roommate informed me that she had found love. It was a beautiful thing, except for the fact that I had to move out of her home to make room for their new life. I was elated for them and their powerful love. Yet at the same time, it was very sad to lose another warm place that had kept me safe. One night, in my sadness and my jetlag, I went out to the garden in the middle of the night, to smoke, to ponder life, to try and let go of one more thing. I wondered, how much loss could a person take? When will it end? When will the joy begin again? I remember looking up at the wisteria dripping from the pergola and thinking how mysterious life is. The next day, my dear friend showed up unexpectedly at my door. He made me come out to his car, where, in his trunk, he had six giant stuffed animals. Apparently his neighbors were getting rid of them, and his own big heart couldn’t bear the thought of seeing them sitting on the curb waiting for the trash man. In the lot was the biggest white tiger I had ever seen. Four feet from tip to stern, and sitting in a regal pose, he captured my heart at first site. Since that day, I have dragged Tiger across the country and more nights that I care to admit, I have used his big furry neck to bury my tears. He knows all my secrets. Sometime perhaps all the sadness in life will be over, and we can celebrate every day as a miracle, filled with joy and happiness. Until that day, do what you need to do to move through the sorrow. Grab on to a soft neck. Appreciate the ability to feel all emotion. Perhaps an abundance of sadness is still abundance. The other day a perfect stranger handed me a book in the grocery store about long-term relationships with people with Asperger’s Syndrome, a mild form of adult autism. Go figure. My first brush with autism was in 1998 with Dorothea and her 36-year-old son. Nick was autistic, easily overwhelmed by bright lights, water, a change in his patterns or any other myriad of mysterious circumstances which brought on uncontrollable and inconsolable outbursts. He never spoke a word, but instead used Sufi-like hand gestures while making strange noises, clicking and cooing, almost like a dolphin. Dorothea said that she’d been communicating with her son through her own imagination, but she wanted me to “channel” him to see what I thought he would say. I made it clear: I couldn’t claim to channel someone with autism. This had to be an experiment; she was to form her own conclusions. Dorothea would drive to my house in her old Toyota camper and I would sit between them in the front seat (he would not leave the truck) as she asked questions and I responded with what I imagined I heard him say. After several sessions she concluded those imaginary conversations weren’t imaginary after all. She got the validation she needed. Shortly after we stopped working together, she found a wonderful group home for him, and was well on her way to preparing him to live without her someday (her wildest dream come true). Getting to know Nick and other subsequent autistic clients and friends, I postulate that those with autism carry a heightened state of the senses that most “normal” people don’t have. It’s as if they don’t have filters to limit the flow of information to their brain so they have to block it all. I like to think of it in this way: For me, humans are like giant sensors, moving through spacetime picking up and transmitting huge quantities of information on many levels: emotional, intellectual, intuitive, physical, neurological, psychological, quantalogical, all sub-systems of a larger mysterious system that is creating our ability to experience being human. Our human mind, in order to maintain sanity amidst the cacophony of creation, filters out information that does not need to reach the conscious thinking process. So with every step you take, you don’t need to hear the words in your head, “Left foot: move. Right foot: move.” Or, “Heart: beat. Heart: beat. Egg roll: digest!” You would go insane if you had to listen to all the commandments going on at once. On top of all that, while you’re sitting in that chair, the chair is actually resonating with a vibration unique to being a chair. In essence, it drones, “I am a chair, I am a chair, I am a chair, I am a chair, I am a chair,” ad infinitum. The song is outside of range of normal filtered conscious thinking, but the sight, feel, smell and taste of the chair come into focus as per the “song” of the chair, programmed into quantum levels of consciousness. Most humans are born with filters to keep this noise level to a minimum. Autistics seem to lack such filters. They seem to hear, feel, see, sense, taste, smell and intuit much more information than the average bear. They can actually hear the song of the chair. Depending on the degree of bombardment, they have to block out the entire world just to cope, for who can teach them how to block out just the noise of the chair and not the noise of Mom asking a question? The trouble is, once you block out the song of the chair, sometimes the chair disappears from view. Imagine the confusion in that. Blocking the senses appears to allow them to rearrange their world to suit their needs, which are certainly unique from the needs of those with filters. Let’s say you bring a “normal” child into the grocery store and she grabs a box of Fruit Loops off the shelf. You say, “No,” take it from her and put it back on the shelf and she starts screaming. You know her behavior is a little temper tantrum and deal accordingly. Maybe that’s a moment where you apply some discipline to set boundaries and help her learn proper behavior. However, bring an autistic child into the grocery store and she can hear the sound of the butcher cutting meat in the farthest corner of the store; the ringing of the cash registers; everything everyone is saying. On top of the blazing lights overhead, the smells of all the food, the colors bombarding her sight, she might not to be able to even make out forms through all the noise. This condition of being extremely overloaded is such an assault on her senses that she could easily freak out and throw an enormous tantrum, just because it’s so insane. Can you imagine? If you didn’t know the child is autistic, you might mistakenly judge her as a spoiled brat and try to discipline her, making matters quite worse by introducing more stimuli and emotion into the situation, when in fact, what she needs is a reduction of input into her sensory system. Special Education teachers are trained to know what these special needs are and how to meet them in those moments. An adult Asperger’s is a higher functioning autistic, harder to detect because of the years he has had to restructure his behaviors to hide his symptoms because he is often misunderstood and ridiculed. Through a “normal” filter, his behavior might make you might think he is a sociopath, narcissistic, even multiple personality. One minute he is fine and the next he gets overwhelmed and freezes up. He appears to turn a cold shoulder and get very aloof. He is often awkward, physically and with language, and when he doesn’t know what to do, he doesn’t do anything or he does something crass, just to do something. What makes it more confusing is that he can be as outgoing and theatrical as he is desperately shy. Through a “normal” filter, his actions appear uncaring, even brutal. But through a different view, it’s could be that it’s taking every ounce of his energy to manually filter out the spectrums of information that are flooding his senses. It’s exhausting. He isn’t focused on social etiquette or cultural expectations. He doesn’t appear to understand the emotional impact of his decisions on the people around him, nor does it appear that he cares. In fact, he cares very deeply but it’s difficult for him to focus on anything other than what is happening in his immediate present moment, which is generally overwhelming, because he must keep such intense structure in his life to maintain focus on the physical world. If he lets go even a little bit, the world disappears, and perhaps it feels like he does too, which evokes terror. I knew a man like this. He functioned “normally” in the world; he was a man of great accomplishments, held a good job, enjoyed watching the Packers, was very intelligent, even brilliant. He could go to the super market and not get overwhelmed. However, he had to keep himself busy from morning until night to keep structure to the physical world. So I accused him of “running away from his problems.” One minute he was a man of extraordinary compassion, and the next he was as cold and mean as Wisconsin in February. Then I accused him of being abusive and having a multiple personality. He didn’t seem to have an innate ability to understand his emotional impact on the immediate situation, and he lost touch with simple information. Then I called him callus and felt rejected, as if I didn’t “mean enough to him” that he would remember or care about me. Perceiving him through a “normal” lens, I judged him very harshly as being selfish, uncaring and manipulative. I might even have gone so far as to think he was a sociopath. Good lord. Reading this book, I saw our relationship on every page. When I looked at him with a different filter, suddenly all my judgments could not only be wrong, but also have contributed mightily to his overload. I tried to get him to take some time off, but he needed the structure of his life to keep him intact. He didn’t hate change because he was lazy or stupid but because it was less stress to not change the pattern. And perhaps his intense compassion for the world as a whole, which was so stunning, was countered with not having access to his emotion because it’s so immense for him. He simply could not bear all that feeling at once so he blocked it all out. At the end of the book, the “normal” wife expounds about the benefits of having an “Aspie” husband. He has a heart of gold, and has never lost his natural innocent curiosity. She will never be bored with his off-the-wall thinking and mysterious mind. Once she understood that he needed to be alone, she was grateful for being forced to have her own alone time, wherein she could concentrate on making her life as full and rich as it could be. It was as if her husband, in his own way, made it impossible for her to gain her happiness and worth from him. What a concept… She suggests a simple exercise that might be good for all of us to think about: 1. Make a list of three individual things that you need to be happy. The author’s list: Her husband’s list: Culture tells the couple to work their way down the list, each compromising for the good of the whole. However, this creates a situation where each is only half satisfied. Perhaps he reluctantly goes on a trip with her, or she has to tolerate hours of him sitting alone at the computer. Now no one is happy! You know how it is to be on a trip with someone who doesn’t want to be there, or working on your computer when you know someone is waiting for you. You think you are doing a good thing by compromising and yet now no one gets to be fully fulfilled. What if each person takes care of his or her own three needs, without compromising for the other? If your lists intersect, great, go do it together. If not, be responsible to get your own needs uncompromisingly met. So now she goes on vacation while he sits at the computer. She fulfills herself, he fulfills himself and then, when they come back together as a couple, they are so fulfilled and whole, it’s like a second, third, fourth honeymoon. Or so she says. Surely we all have times when we scream because we can’t have the Fruit Loops, but how many times are we just overloaded? With information, transformation, demarcation, collaboration, reconciliation, emotional, intellectual, intuitive energy, space, time, matter, anti-matter—it’s enough to drive a girl insane. How many times are we simply on information overload? I vote we err on the side of us all being special needs children. Instead of judging each other, let’s find out what we do need and set about to make that happen, starting with ourselves. Sometimes it is discipline, but other times it might just be rest. So what are your special needs? Make a list of the top three and set about to find a way to meet them. Look at all your resources and get creative. Figure out how to use them to meet your needs. These resources are the easel and the canvas, the paints and the brushes and the palettes. What are you going to create? And what will it take to get you to pick up the paintbrush? I jokingly call myself a bi-polar agoraphobic with multiple personality disorder. I have no idea if that’s really true or not, but I have certainly felt spectrums of those behavioral challenges, as I have felt a bit autistic sometimes. Is my friend really an “Aspie?” Good lord, I have no idea, I’m in rock and roll. I have no idea but knowing him has helped me understand my own judgments and projections and led to enormous growth in my own life. He, like the author’s husband, would not allow me to use him for my own happiness. Thank god. It has helped make me strong and happy and fulfilled, all by myself. My only regret is that I didn’t know this when I was with him. If I could only take back my own crass and thoughtless behavior… Truthfully? I think we’re all crazy. At least it’s a really big club. September 26, 2008 I had a friend once; she and I were thick as thieves. We shared the same astrological sign and the same taste in champagne; we could make each other laugh like hyenas and cry like babies. I was there for her when she was moving through the beginning steps of discovering she was codependent and in a bad marriage; she was there for me when I took those same steps for myself. However, as much as we loved each other, we had this habit of doing what I called blowing ourselves up. At regular intervals, we would get into a huge fight, slam out the door, stomp dramatically away and vow never to see each other again. Inevitably, one or the other of us would reconnect, forgiveness would be had, and onward we would go, until the next explosion. Sound familiar? This pattern in my life ran its course in most every relationship I had. In the past several years, after making the decision to become the change as deeply as I could, I started working Conflict Revolution on them all. Since the conflicts that existed within all my relationships began within me, each one held a piece of my peace. If I looked long enough into the mirror, and then watched my own decision-making process, I would catch myself in the act of perpetuating what I blamed them for. I used Con Rev to begin to learn how to stop this cycle of conflict, which is really one of abuse. We all grew up with deeply embedded patterns programmed into our psyche. These messages and patterns influence the decisions we make in present moment. This is how we can still be perpetuating patterns from our childhood, even as adults. As I dig deeper and deeper into my own psyche, learning where I am in conflict with myself, where I say no to my Intuition, where I say yes to abuse and self-abuse as mirrored through my relationships, slowly but surely I have begun to understand and change the way I behave. Have I completely eliminated all abusive patterns? Heavens no, just ask my family. I still stumble and fall, write stupid, reactionary emails, say dumb things, stomp out the door. But I can say I have reduced that behavior by at least 75%, and I have a system in place that allows me to catch myself as I tumble and right my wrongs far more quickly and with a bit more humility and grace that ever before. As I work to become the change, funny things happen to my relationships. I am able to extend love in places where before I would have fought and blamed. Sometimes, love means silence. Sometimes it means speaking with compassion instead of lashing out when my heart aches. Other times it means celebrating those who still can’t celebrate themselves. But the most profound change is how when I stop fighting, those intent on being right and not making peace, who have no system, either disappear, or they rise up in greater and greater anger. Not having someone to blame for their anger seems to make them angrier. Its no wonder the world is a steaming ball of anxiety right now. If we are all indeed one body, then there are six billion of us contributing our fair share to the mess. My friend, I am sad to say, is one who is spiraling out of control. No matter what I do to stay in compassion, she comes back bigger, badder, meaner and more judgmental than before. Her last move was to have her new husband, who has never met me, write an email telling me such things like, "You are nothing. A fraud, a hoax, evil. Your orbit of people is using you as much as you are using them. Stop giving them your fiction and they will abandon you from boredom." Good lord. Such bad writing, from a man I have never even met. I am no longer triggered, except to compassion. I feel for her pain, but will not allow myself to be her punching bag. I do not respond, and have, for the good of the whole, gently wished her on her way. I have faith that she is in the perfect place, doing the work in her own way, and perhaps one day she will take her focus off of me, find her own mirror, take a good, long look and do something about her own domain. I know, it's sometimes not very pretty, but it’s all we got. September 19, 2008 I swear on a giant-sized stack of hotel bibles that I have never seen so many people in so much pain. I have been doing this work since 1987, and the collective condition of the human psyche right now seems to be that of intense, unbearable and sometimes maddening pain. Oh, did I mention I fall into that category as well? Yessiree, I’m a mess most of the time too. What in the world are we all to do with this massive energy flowing through us like a fire hose on full bore? While in Hamilton, Ontario last week for a rip-roaring Con Rev workshop and Einstein channel, I received some personal insights to my situation that weren’t very pretty. If any of you know me, you know that there is no bigger practitioner of self-awareness than me. I work my buns off every single day, Con Revving my life, owning my stuff, feeling and breathing, looking in the mirror. Honestly, I don’t mean to brag but I invented the process for heaven’s sake. If I don’t work it, it won’t work for anyone else. So here I am, feeling like I have done everything I can to move this energy through me, to set the example, to become the change, and last weekend I found out, am a fraud! Oh, don’t get me wrong. I work it. And work it and work it. And because of that, I have changed my life to a degree I never though possible. However, I discovered an area of my life last weekend where not only do I not work it, but then I create the great amounts of pain and sadness and insanity I experience. Some of you know of which I speak as far as mental illness. Others of us have the conflicts showing up as back pain, ringing in the ears, indigestion, insomnia, sexual dysfunction, thyroid problems, or other physical symptoms. Worse yet, some of us have evil stepmothers, lazy children, uncaring spouses, mean bosses, inconsiderate brothers, dead-end jobs, or any number of a myriad of conflicts outside us that won’t seem to heal. And in record numbers, people are so exhausted and fed up that they seriously consider taking their own lives to be done with this divine insanity. What in the world is going on and what in heaven’s name can we do about it? Aside from one step at a time, listening to intuition and doing its bidding, feeling and breathing, remember: your pain is not original. We are all of us being challenged to find our way to become whole, self-sufficient people. And it appears every nuance of our energy is under scrutiny. So, as I discovered, yes, you can be working it in one area, but completely overlooking another. My dilemma was, I have a friend who has been a dear supporter of my journey. He is very adept at astral travel, and has often shown up in dreams to help me when I am particularly suffering. I have come to depend on this spiritual connection we have to get me through tough times. However, last weekend I learned the difference between asking for help in getting my needs met, and expecting others to meet them for me. The situation I went through with him revealed a ghastly presence of codependency on my part. I was mortified to think, me, the queen of Con Rev, the teacher and trainer of personal empowerment, Einstein’s personal advocate for becoming the change, had become, in this one area of my life, a spiritual cling-on. Egad!!!!! Welcome to the human race, Barbara With. Yes we are all being challenged to look at our perfectionism, our dependencies, our self-defeating languages and take steps to change. And like spoiled kids raised by weak parents, our egos cry and kick and scream and cling. And when we can’t get someone to take care of us, to give us the attention we are actually seeking from ourselves, we are powerful enough to create physical illness in our own bodies to get attention rather than become self-sufficient. So what did I do when I realized I wasn’t walking my talk, and clinging to a man, being a burden on his energy, looking to someone else to save me when I know full well I can only save myself? First, I stomped on some sidewalks. I cried and pounded my fists like a little kid being denied dessert. Then I told myself, well, I will just leave the planet then. I am out of here (more egotistical posturing). Then I pouted through play practice. Then I went to bed and slept. And then, I got up and I got it. I woke up this morning grateful. Thank you, universe for guiding me perfectly to this revelation. I was ready to hear it, and now I am ready to do something about it. I will not beat myself up for taking this long a time to discover the truth of myself; everything in good time. I will not belittle, berate, insult, talk down to, or otherwise exasperate myself because of it. What I will do it, now that I know, step by step, guided by intuition, is pull back my energy from my friend, and focus on me. Even though I thought I did that in the physical, that I was still clinging onto him in the spiritual needed to be addressed, and now I can. I am not sure how I will proceed, except I fully intend to find out how to be healthy, how not to cling on to him, how to find courage and fortitude and discipline to become my own whole self. These are character traits that can be cultivated, not some mysterious “woo woo” power only special people have. Courage can be developed; discipline can be learned. I can do this. So what are you going to do when you venture across areas of your own life that aren’t so pretty? Promise me you won’t beat yourself, or someone else. Stomp on some sidewalks if you need to, but when you are through, come back, take a breath, and start again. Commit to the mystery; make a list of what you need, and set about to find creative and constructive ways to get those needs met. Don’t look to someone else to meet them, but feel free to ask others their thoughts on creative ways to fulfill them. And to my friend in spirit, who has stood by me and been there no matter what? Thanks, Bwana, for all your support but you are free to go and take care of your own needs. I am fine. I am more than fine. It’s not that I don’t want you, or love you, but I don’t need you any more to do what I should be doing for myself. Happylooya. September 1, 2008 But it's not for lack of story that people don't become authors; it's about the gut-wrenching self-discipline of a drill sergeant you need to get yourself to take the time to do it. Maybe working with dead people provides me more motivation, as they sometimes have their own agenda and timetable (or perhaps spacetimetable…). Dragging myself to the computer at 4:30 a.m. to write for four hours before going to work requires a kind of psycho-creative possession that cannot be denied. Or some antsy dead person who doesn't need sleep not wanting to wait for me to get mine. Falling asleep at 1 a.m. with the computer propped up sideways on a pillow so I can edit while lying down constitutes maniacal obsession. But that's when the best writing is done, the writing you simply have to do or you will go insane. Big, inconvenient, all encompassing creative drive. And it is the journey through this creative conflict, you see, that you don't want to miss one single sleep-deprived second of. Many thanks to my closest circle in these last few weeks. You have endured my panic attacks, those sorrowful, hyperventilating phone calls begging for grounding. Everyone who endured me putting off my other commitments to you, promising for three months, ad nauseum, "It's almost done…" Well, it’s not almost, nearly, soon soon soon, just about—the new book IS NOW DONE. All that's left is to wait for them to arrive. Einstein and the Party will not disappoint, I promise. This book has so many layers I didn't know I was writing about, it took getting the first proof copy and sitting with it, like an old lover returned to rekindle a new passion, to really see what I've done. Stretched out across my palms, spine rubbing against my fingers, I'm in love! With how this book came about, with the creative energy that fueled it, with the colors and design and message and with me and my own gut-wrenching discipline…with the story, and with life itself. Again. Finally. After all I have lost in the past two years, to feel like I am in love with life again is the biggest miracle I have personally ever experienced. Whew. I can only wish every single one of you a creative experience of your own like this at least once in your life. If the world could all feel this fulfilled, it would indeed be heaven. |
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Do you like my new hat? I got it last week at the Exchange. That's just a fancy name for the dump. Here on the island, we have a great big phat state-of-the-art transfer station, otherwise known as a dump. It's a super-nifty facility that you drive up to, a nice, orderly, clean system of tossing your garbage, as well as sorting recycling: cans, bottles, tin, aluminum, plastics (six levels to choose from!), cardboard (waxed or unwaxed), batteries, paper, steel, lumber, dead beds, lawn mowers and weed whackers, old tires and appliances and every other assorted sundry under the sun. On a regular basis, the staff smash cans, crush bottles, compile stacks of cardboard, compact trash, round up the dead beds, lawn mowers and weed whackers, and load them onto flatbeds to mysteriously disappear from the island never to be seen or heard from again. All that remains is one last category, of those things that are too good to trash but that you don't want anymore. For that, we have the Exchange. To understand the Exchange, you must understand the history of our dump. In the way back, thirty years ago, we piled our trash into the car or truck and drove out to a long driveway just this side of the airport on lakeside. At the end of this driveway was a gynormous hole in the ground that was burning, and a little hut that housed a man named Skeezix. God bless Skeezix, he was exactly the character you expected to be manning the dump: a sweet loner, eccentric, a little ripe, played the spoons, laughed big, probably drank too much, heart of gold. We'd take our garbage out of the car or truck and got the privilege of flinging our bags and whatnot into the big burning hole in the ground. And everything, I mean, everything got flung into the hole. There was a great episode of the 1990s TV comedy, Northern Exposure, when, in a moment of creative angst, poet-artist-DJ Chris in the Morning needs to "fling" something. He builds a huge catapult intending to use a live cow, but instead ends up flinging a piano, the entire town watching as it sails into the big blue and drops nicely into the river. At the dump in 1979, everything got flung. I thought I died and went to heaven. Going to the dump was a spiritual event. Out here, I could come with my empty cans of Aquanet and Easy Off and fling them into the big burning hole in the ground, watching them explode from a safe distance while doing a nip with Skeezix, out in the middle of the beautiful forest, high summer, all with a soundtrack of spoons. Is there any richer life than this? Here on the island, one would never know. One of our first modern island garbologists was Ludlow North. When he wasn't teaching the rest of the year in some college or prep school, he came to the island for the summers and turned his little Datsun 4-cylinder truck into "Ludlow's Island Garbage and Dating Service." He would talk people into paying him a couple bucks to come at the same time every week and haul away their garbage so they didn't have to personally go to the burning hole and fling with Skeezix. As I recall, the "dating service" part didn't work too well, but hope sprung eternal back then. Part of his operating fleet was always one "mom-back." I started as a mom-back (standing behind the truck motioning with my hand while saying, "Come on back," when he backed up to the garbage) but quickly rose to being invaluable to the organization. While Ludlow was inside having coffee cake with the clients, I was doing the actual work of hauling the bags out of their cans and into the company truck. For this I received the title, "First Lady of La Pointe Garbage." The pay off was, back at the dump, I was the one who got to fling those bags high into the air and watch them sail into the eternal flame of the dump. I often wondered, memorized by the fire, when was it first lit? How long has this dump fire been eternally burning? One youthful day, island son Tommy Nelson is at the dump, enjoying his own flinging. Tommy is the kind of kid who brings stuff home from the dump. But this day, Tommy has a nice pair of tennis shoes, too good to fling. Out of nowhere he creates a small structure at the foot of the driveway, much like children wait in during winter for the rural school bus. In the shelter are the shoes, with a note saying, "Free to good home." A funny thing happens. The shoes disappear, but in their place are a shirt and a pair of pants. The note is untouched. And thus is born The Exchange. Today, we have a state-of-the-art Exchange, a 40-foot pole barn where you can give or receive literally everything under the sun. I shop every day in the summer when the dump is open. One visit, I got out of my car and before I was even in the building, someone screamed up, whipped open their trunk, pulled out a bear skin and thrust it into my arms and drove off. I've furnished my bedroom with wicker, found replacement bulbs for all my ceiling fans, curtains, dishes, clothing, shoes, and, well, hats (see above). But also mowers and barbeques, bikes, scrap metal and wood, appliances, anything that is too good to toss. It's not uncommon for the island children to pass a piece of clothing around because when your kid has out-grown it, you bring it back to the Exchange where you got it and the next ones in line get to wear it until it's done gone. Easy. But the transition… how did the system transition from the art of flinging to this space-age model of sustainability? How did I go from knee-deep in dirty disposable diapers to shopping for a new hat? After Ludlow died, our friend Craig Dear inherited the truck and the garbage service. Craig was everyone's favorite bartender. He also opened "Lame Deer's Pretty Good Bike Rentals and Pasties" and had the island's only taxi service. (None of us locals ever mentioned to the tourists we were sending to him for rides that he was legally blind.) Craig took this new garbage business seriously. He saw the need for the island to make the quantum leap from burning to recycling and decided to become the leader in the movement. He enlisted my help to start a movement to educate, change systems, and get community buy-in. We started by making a flyer, educating and inspiring people to begin thinking and acting differently. We explained what can be recycled, asked people to sort, encouraged them to wash everything first, all the while touting the features and benefits of recycling. Every run he made to pick up garbage, he talked personally to the community, one household at a time and left the flyers behind. He left a flyer with every run at first because at first, as willing and excited as people were to talk about the idea, no one was actually doing the sorting and cleaning. We still just picked up big bags of garage with unsorted recyclables inside. For a period of time, we needed a system of retrieving the recyclables so Craig could take them over to the mainland in his old truck and sell them at facilities there. The system we created was to take all the garbage to a back corner of his property where he had a flatbed, don over-the-elbow thick rubber gloves, spread the bags down, rip them open, and retrieve the recyclables by hand, one at a time. Some afternoons, in mid-summer, with our faces masked, the flies biting, the reeking stench of, you can only imagine, I would curse the people who weren't recycling, my fate of working in garbage in the first place, and the fact that it seemed like people would never change. Would we be back here at the flatbed the rest of our lives sorting people's garbage? Of course not but I'm telling you what, some days, it seemed like forever. So in regards to your own transformation, ask yourself, what stage of the transformation are you at? If you're elbow deep in garbage, well, maybe it's the beginning of change and it's suppose to be chaos while you are constructing the new system. But there is also a stage when the system is complete, up and running smoothly, and now it's easy. If you had told me in 1988, as I bent over the flatbed in 95 degree temps with rubber gloves pulling aluminum cans out of endless bags of dirty disposable diapers, that someday I could casually toss my cans into the state-of-the-art transfer station and get a new hat at the same time, I would have replied, "It would be an answer to a prayer." Have hope, people. As I was shopping last week at the Exchange, Avery came running in with a huge bag of Italian leather sandals and several summer hats (see above). As I walked the aisles to see what new treasures could be had, I came upon a pair of huge rubber gloves in very good condition. Nope. Won’t need those. |
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| July 10, 2008 In 2002, Teresa and I did a series of road trips to Arizona to ply this trade of Conflict REVOLUTION. We had been invited to present a workshop in Phoenix by Jenny Dickason, hostess of a monthly meeting of Wild Women. Teresa and I packed books into our suitcases and set out from Minneapolis. At this time Teresa was going through a period of loss. She couldn’t stop crying. Don’t misunderstand, she was not whining or complaining. She simply could not stop crying. As I pulled the Arizona rental car onto the highway into town, the sky before us opened up and poured tigers and wolves (a more ferocious form of cats and dogs). She wept through the desert thunderstorm, she wept as we checked into the hotel, she wept when she went to bed. I had no problem whatsoever being around her in this condition. I lovingly gave her privacy, offered perspective if she asked, maintained my generally cheery self and it all worked out. At one point in the car, she apologized for being such a mess. She felt she was not “doing it right” because she was in this condition. Aren’t we supposed to be evolved spiritual beings who never get fooled by the illusion of physical reality? Aren’t we supposed to spread love and compassion, not tears and pain? How can she teach anyone manifestation through Con Rev when she herself feels so inadequate? I took a breath and paused for a second. The wipers were on the highest high which was still not high enough. The rain came down with such intensity I almost had to pull over. Then, in one instant it stopped and the sun snuck out from between thunderheads. I had to stop myself from laughing given her teary state. But I knew she was going to love this… “The theories of manifestation require direct focus on present moment as a whole. If we ‘pull back the lens’ like the angels taught us and look at the whole truth being created in this moment, then I see those mountains glowing orange from the sun peaking out from between those storm clouds. I pay attention to the fact that we’re driving a brand spanking new car (which is why we love rentals, right?) and I look over at you and even after getting up early and the flight and all, your hair still looks fabulous, I love those Capris and are those new strappy sandals? I remember we are traveling the world together teaching and training, our dream come true. And you think you are inadequate? That’s a downright lie! Looks to me like you’re doing a mighty adequate job manifesting a beautiful place to feel and breathe.” She stopped crying and sat in silence for a few minutes staring out the window at the desert. It began to rain again, but gently this time, and measured. Teresa turned, eyes still red with tears but a small smile spreading across her beautiful face. “Dang. We’re good…” We went on to present at WILD Women where we spoke the concept that we are all liars. I was revving a conflict with one of my girlfriends and using a sound byte, “She lies.” I looked inward and discovered my own lies embedded in my subconscious by various influences—culture, karma, science, religion. Teresa and I discussed on the flight to Phoenix how much all of us lie to ourselves on a daily basis. Every time we tell ourselves we aren’t intuitive, that we can’t create what we need, that we are inadequate—all lies we tell ourselves without thinking. We are all liars. This was Teresa’s first out of town presentation, and I knew that was part of her anxiety. She’s a very private person. I have to remember not everyone relishes standing up in front of people and making a fool of oneself with the same intensity I do. Making a fool of myself keeps me honest. Especially when done in public. Turns out, as I knew it would, she was the poster child for articulation, honor and compassion. The workshop was great fun and I think we turned some heads with our “revolutionary” ideas, not to mention my polka-dot shirtwaist retro dress and her leather jacket and black Ann Taylor capris. After the event a participant approach us. She seemed hesitant to ask her question, so I encouraged her. “I just wonder if it might be possible to call myself a ‘recovering liar’ because, well just coming right out and saying, ‘I am a liar’ is really hard for me.” Without pausing, my response was, “No. There is nothing to ‘recover’ from and there is no shame in it. We create it and have to take full responsibility for it if we are to un-create it, if we are to recreate it.” This gentle woman looked a little shaken. I supposed she was expecting a more “angelic” answer. Teresa stepped up, put her hand in her forearm and in her southern drawl that we all aspire to, smiled at this kind lady and said, “Oh honey, I know what you mean. I couldn’t hardly take the idea at first, but then it started unlocking all these door for me that helped free me of that shame. Like coming into Phoenix yesterday, I had been crying for days…” She then told the story of the moment she realized how good she was in the car, the very second her perspective changed from, “I’m not doing it right” (the lie) to, “Look at me creating this beautiful mountain scene in this new car with this great hair.” Those are the moments I adore. Creation is its own reward. Where are you focusing your energy in any given moment? What lies do you tell yourself that no one else but you can hear? Find the source of those lies within you, where you are creating them, so you can un-create them so you can recreate them to align with the divine voices of truth and unity: you are a miracle just sitting in a chair, you have the power of the entire universe inside you, you are manifesting this moment now whether you like it or not. Take a couple deep breaths, pull Emotion through you as you ask yourself, “What do I want to create and is it for the highest good” and you might just unlocked the key to manifestation of your own abundance. Later that night, drinking Veuve Cliquot at Hilton Tapitio, our hair still gorgeous, Teresa and I toasted to our manifestation. In that moment, it was exactly what I wanted to create and as far as I could see, for the good of the whole. And that’s no lie. |
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| June 24, 2008 Home Again When I left Texas it was 98 degrees. When I arrived on Madeline Island three days and 1638 miles later, they had just broken out of a long cold spell. The week before it had been 39 degrees and they were half expecting snow. “You brought the nice weather with you,” I heard from many. Yes, indeed, I did. What an amazing year it has been so far and it ain’t over yet. Never would I have imagined going to all the places I have since September when I appeared at the Crimson Circle Quantum Leap celebration. Since then I have channeled readings for people all around the world. My appearances in Romania and Hungary upped the ante. I have received so many invitations from around the world to come and share Einstein and Conflict Revolution that I had to hire an assistant. Tess will help organize my events. It’s all wonderfully and magnificently overwhelming. On top of all that, “Party of Twelve: The Afterlife Interviews” won its first book award. I plan to take the next month and sort through all the requests for Einstein, Conflict Revolution and me, and once I do, Tess and I will begin to book my next appearances around the world. Many have inquired about the new courses, Manifestation, Time Travel and Materialization. These won’t be offered until next year, but in the meantime, I can tell you that prerequisite work for all of those studies will be Conflict Revolution. This revolutionary new process to bring peace to the inner world as a way to reflect peace and abundance in the physical world is the first step to manifestation. But for now I am back on my wild and wacky island. Surrounded by my tribe of eccentrics, I am taking a little time off, kicking back in the afternoons at Tommy’s Burned Down Café with a Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Shake-a-Day. Or headed to Ed’s grocery store for a smoke and some esoteric conversations about politics, prose and republicans. Thursday night softball games, morning coffee at Marie’s, long afternoons at Joni’s Beach—truly food for my world-weary soul. Again I want to say thank you to everyone who I met along the way and all your kindness. It won’t be long until I am up and at it again. But for now, give me a moment at home to sleep, to dream, to breathe, to swim, to love, to rest. Stay tuned… |
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June 4, 2008
As my Air France plane the size of a football field tore westward towards JFK, we hit some pretty spiffy patches of major turbulence. The captive crowd was oohing and ahhing as if we were on a roller coaster at Disneyworld. My trip to Romania and Hungary flashed before my eyes. It yielded more dreams coming true than Brett Favre at a children’s hospital. I have received invitations from all over Europe, people anxious to share the messages of Einstein and Conflict Revolution with their part of the world. Four hundred people at the Crimson Circle event in Bucharest, listening to Einstein without a doubt that it’s him; the impromptu hotel room channeling with 20 people representing 10 different countries; my new Romanian family: Silvia (hey cousin!) and her daughter Laura (hey sister!), Marius and Carmen my new Romanian promoters, Maria my new European liaison, Georgeta who translated Einstein to Romanian, Lucieta, Jacki O, Florin, Andrei, Gi Gi Oola, Carmen my money exchange manager, Demitri, Madalina and the prayer meeting, all who came for private readings, and always generous Geoffrey and Linda Hoppe and Norma and Garrett, amazing Gerhard and Einat…who knew I would be welcomed like a long lost sister everywhere I went! Thank you so much! And Hungary, a decidedly different energy: old and venerable, intense in its first inception of opening to the New Energy. And my new family in Budapest: Alfred and Timmea and their wonderful work taking care of me, Hava who saved my life one night, Elizabeth my translator whose heart opened before my very eyes, the two Erikas, Alfred, Tunde, all my private sessions. As the Air France plane jolted and jostled, my thoughts were more than just worrying if the champagne onboard was safe. I remembered Laura’s story about being stuck in traffic and for the first time ever, as per Con Rev instructions, closing her eyes and feeling and breathing without attachment to the story of why she thought she was anxious (“This damn traffic!”). As she took her third big breath while focused on feeling, not thinking, like the Red Sea parting, a miraculous opening appeared in the traffic jam and before she knew it she was sailing on her way. What wonderful instant gratification for me to see the changes happening right before my eyes. What more could a woman traveling the world claiming to talk to Einstein ask? I closed my eyes, turned my focus inward and took three deep breaths. I breathed in home, and success, appreciation, gratitude and thanks for being delivered safe again to my beloved Body of Christ. On the top of the third breath, the obnoxious luggage buzzer started beeping, and I smiled to myself. What will happen when people all around the world begin breathing for peace? Boggles the mind... |
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| May 15, 2008 Here in Romania, cultures are colliding even as I speak. A country that has only known freedom for 19 years, the people are much like birds in cages that have been freed but don’t quite know where to fly. Because of this, there is a wonderful naivety here, a promise of something new permeates the consciousness of everyone I meet. From the cab driver, a 62-year-old man who grew up in the reign of communism, to Laura, the gorgeous 18-year-old translator who has only known a free Romania, everywhere there is a sense of unlimited human potential. I have come here to introduce them to a new Einstein. As a guest of Geoffrey and Linda Hoppe and the Crimson Circle, I am honored to be part of a changing consciousness in this part of the world. Many of the participants at the event on Mother’s Day were teachers, doctors and scientists. Because they have not had years of unlimited freedom that has made them groggy from choice, they are as open minded and anxious to learn as children. Sitting at dinner Friday night with the New Energy teachers, I felt like Einstein must have in his youth, gathered at the tavern with the great minds of the time, drinking beer and passionately discussing potentials. That night I talked with people from Romania, Bulgaria, England, Germany, France, Finland, people not filled with nationalist spirit but with the hope of international unity. On Sunday, as I opened myself up to allow Einstein to speak through me, I was reminded that there would be an interpreter. I was to speak slowly and leave room for her to address the crowd of over 400, repeating what I said in Romanian. I had only just met Ramona, a beautiful Romanian in her 20s who was anxious to make sure she got the message correct. I closed my eyes, got out of my way and allowed the energy to come through me. I thought back to the day before, me and Einstein walking through Herastrau Park, carefully preparing his address to make sure those listening would understand his words. I asked him as we walked how he would ever deliver this complicated information in the short time I was given so that everyone understood. The energy in the room was palpable. Geoffrey had channeled Tobias before me. Two amazing musicians, Gerhardt and Einat, a married couple from Austria and Israel respectively, performed a haunting number involving overtones. Later at dinner they told me what they had gone through when Einat brought Gerhardt home to meet her grandmother, whose relatives had been victims of the holocaust. As Austria had been Hitler’s birthplace, Gerhardt had a bit of convincing to do before they accepted him into the fold. But they did and now Gerhardt and Einat live a simple life, visiting sacred spaces together and making sacred music. Talk about international unity in action! I closed my eyes and started to speak. Ramona later said she felt this unearthly presence overtake her. Her voice lowered and sounded very much like a man. She and I work in complete synchronicity, Einstein speaking short concise sentences and stopping very deliberately to allow Ramona to translate. The message was clear, as it has been since the beginning of this strange odyssey of being his emissary: world peace, one person at a time, starting with each individual. He once again painted a precise picture of a compilation of consciousness, reminding us that on a quantum level we are individual facets of one being, the family of humans all living on a beautiful planet spinning through space. He thoroughly explained Conflict Revolution, a process of self-scrutiny that allows us to use the details of our lives as clues to our inner world, and how to align to compassion from within. People often ask me why I think I was chosen to be his emissary. I tell them, I have no idea but why not me? Does Barbara Walters ask herself why she gets to interview the world’s most famous people? Perhaps. For me, the challenge that my interviewees are dead people only adds to the allure and the mystery of it all. I can hardly wait for the big summer celebration in Hamburg in August! Einstein comes home to Germany. Here’s to the mystery and the wonder! |
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| May 5, 2008 My friend the history teacher lent me the Texas Teachers Edition of the world history curriculum taught at his high school as a way to prepare me for my trip to Romania and Hungary. Forget that it’s 998 pages, weighs more than my car and makes my ADHD all goofy with so much information on a single page. The tome just sitting in my lap vibrates with the history of the entire world from the beginning of civilization at 4 billion years BC right up through Homeland Security. I turned to Chapter 31, “Years of Crisis 1919-1939.” Under the heading “Age of Uncertainty” was a picture of Einstein along with a sidebar about Freud. The caption under Al was about how his genius was partly due to his tenacity to stick with a problem until he solved it. Freud was credited with the idea that much of human behavior is beyond reason. I was after the answer to a question: what happened that so many people could propagate Nazi Germany and what would one do if those circumstances arose again in current culture? What if, like Hitler and the Nazis, through the use of legal pathways a party rose to power so set on destruction and domination that it might arrange its own terrorist attack to kick off martial law? What did the ordinary citizens of Germany do during these so-called “Years of Crisis” as they watched Hitler march the Nazis on a blazing trail of human destruction? Hitler pushed Einstein off his pacifist stance. Though he was using his rock star status to promote world peace, Einstein the pacifist did not know a way to face Hitler. And who can blame him? What Einstein did know was that Hitler could not have done it alone. It required a mass effort on the individual parts of the Third Reich. The hearts of so many men and women had lost their moral compass. Is this his lament “It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man”? How does one get to the root of that kind of degeneration? In these turbulent days, it’s sometimes difficult to believe any one of us can make a difference. What kind of impact can one human have against the terrorists, errant governments and systems of culture that strive to keep citizens dull witted and unaware of the lies and nefarious dealings of subversive fundamentalists? Because according to the history book, this kind of behavior has gone on since humans first emerged from the apes. It seems to me it can only begin within each individual, committed to looking at one’s own life to see where we might be driven by fear to inadvertently fall into lockstep with the voice of authority outside ourselves. It is our duty and responsibility to find our inner moral compass, align to compassion and learn how to measure our actions against it. We must quit lying to ourselves and refuse to propagate the “US vs THEM” mentality. I believe Conflict Revolution® is the formula to denature our evil spirits, one person at a time, starting with self. And who else but Einstein would find a way from beyond the grave to create a simple formula to align our actions to compassion? Who else could come up with a geometric definition of love? Talk about sticking with a problem until it's solved! The beginning of the 20th century was indeed a time of great change and uncertainty. Einstein had brought forth E=MC2, which threw everything science had known into a new paradigm. Freud was dealing out concepts of the unconscious that had never been considered, putting psychology into new realms of thinking. Europe was spiritually, emotionally and economically depressed and uncertain. People were disillusioned and hopeless. Their answer was to follow the leader, who eventually led them into ruin. People believed the lies, overlooking their own instincts. Let’s not blindly follow some leader in times of insecurity. Let’s use those times to really examine our motives, our decisions, and ourselves and see where we can become the change. Where are you lying to yourself? We have so much more power than we can even imagine. Let’s use it to create peace within. According to my imagined Einstein, when we do that we help reprogram the gravitational waves that manifest the Earth. What’s it going to hurt to self-scrutinize? Knowledge is power, after all. And what will it take to get you to stand up? |
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| April 20, 2008 I am often asked in readings about past lives. Einstein has a unique perspective about how past lives interact with our present lives. I think we should actually call them concurrent lives, since they are happening simultaneously as opposed to a linear timeline that presents one as “past” and one as “present.” I have recently been struggling with a relationship with a man with whom I know I share concurrent lives. He is a person who I have such a deep seeded emotion around, I can only assume there are several concurrent lives that exists within the matrix of energy that bleeds through to this life. He is not particularly spiritual in this sense, a very practical man who does not subscribe to New Age mentality. He is a Taurus, grounded in the earth and very much concerned with today’s news and politics. He is a teacher, so he deals with young minds every day. Since he works in one of the worst school in town, he is constantly dealing with teen pregnancies, lack of motivation and a daily challenge of how to inspire the kids to want to learn. Our experience together has been both exquisite and agonizing. A part of me is so attached to him, beyond reason. I find myself driving past his home and surrounding it in white light and saying a prayer for his well being, even though we are estranged. At the psychic fair I worked this weekend in Cincinnati I had several readings and in each one I asked about him. I wanted to know about our past lives and what was causing this attachment to a man who clearly did not want to, in this life, be close to me. The answers were so revealing that I couldn’t help but find illumination in them. In one life, I apparently had executed him during the French revolution. In another he had been my grandfather, and for some unknown reason I murdered him. In yet another, we were married in an elaborate ceremony in western Ireland, he as my prince, making me a princess. But he went off to war and never came back, leaving me stranded and alone in a desolate part of the world to rule without him. All of these lives showed me why, first and foremost, he wanted to hurt me in this life. And then, why, when I found him in this life, I was so relieved to have reunited with him. I remember laying beside him that first night we were together a few summers ago, looking at him sleep, feeling like it had taken me so long to get to him. I looked at his ring, which I knew he had gotten in Ireland and felt attached to even it. And I had a dream, wherein I dreamt I was sleeping beside him and a leprechaun appeared between us, looking me up and down before “allowing” me to remain nestled up against his back. What is the point of knowing or learning these past lives? For me it is helping learn to let go of him. Sometimes “soul mate” does not mean happily ever after. It means we come together to help each other learn how to be whole without one another. Being with him for the short time in this life has allowed me to examine parts of myself I never would have seen without the mirror of him. I learned about some of my deepest, darkest parts of self over the past year or so, being with him, struggling with the “issues” of this present life as a reflection of all the other lives culminating in who are together today. As I got clear on my own part of our lives together, I have been able to detach from the deep angst he creates in me. And in that detachment, I was able to see him for who he truly is. He turns 50 soon. Will I be able to share with him these insights, with the hope to help him find wholeness for himself as he has helped me? Only time will tell. He might find this all ridiculous. On the other hand, my recounting this might spark a part of him past the conscious mind and appeal to an age-old part of him and his Celtic heritage. Who know? All I know is I love him deeply and dearly, and even though I can’t be with him in this life, a part of my heart will forever love him without reason, without purpose or understanding. A passion everyone should experience at least once in this life. Happy birthday, bwana. I love you. Always and forever. I will see you in our dreams. |
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| March 27, 2008 This past weekend I made my first ever trip to Las Vegas, or “Lost Wages” as the flight attendant called it as she welcomed us to the town also known as “Sin City.” I was heartened that another psychic, channel and peacemaker Steve Rother of the Lightworker.com network makes his home here. I figured if it’s good enough for Steve to do his amazing work from, then it’s good enough for me to spend Easter in. As we flew in I was impressed with how small it really was. One long strip stretched from north to south, filled with the most impressive array of strange and wonderful architecture I’d seen since Disneyland. New York, New York simulated the skyline of my favorite island of Manhattan; The Luxor created the illusion of the Great Pyramid, complete with sphinx; The Venetian had actual canals with gondolas. Then there was an older Vegas: the Flamingo, Circus Circus, the Golden Nugget. Everywhere there were sights and sounds that stimulated and thrilled the senses. Truly a giant playground complete with roller coasters, dancers and singers, magicians, gamblers, acrobats, children and the most international collection of tourists imaginable. Christina and I walked from one end of the strip to the other. I saw the Dancing Waters of the Bellagio, the indoor rainstorm at Planet Hollywood, the opulent Roman baths at Caesar’s Palace. As we ate the first night at the top of Mandalay Bay, I took in the strip from 30 stories up and pondered the blessed excess of it all as it stretched out before me like a runway. I came to Vegas to conduct one of the most intense Conflict Revolutions I have ever performed on myself. Sometime like self-surgery, I sought to resurrect the deepest part of me to reunite my consciousness. As so many of us have experienced in our lives, wounds from childhood have kept us from ourselves, secretly blocking the divine abundance that is our birthright. For me, the abuse from my youth has haunted me since that time. I have transformed over and over throughout my adult life, each time getting a little closer to that purity we seek, that divine essence coming into the mundane and making everyday life sacred. The past year or so I have been plummeted to the depths of my pain, becoming incapacitated by its overwhelming and illusive reality. Thinking I had healed, I was surprised when it returned to overtake me in the summer of 2006 when my cousin was brutally murdered. Since then I have struggled to rebuild the hope that was taken away from me in the form of murder, death, divorce, a broken heart, business losses, sexual assault. It’s only been the last few months I have made headway and still some days the ground disappears beneath my feet and I am left with a hole where my heart and soul should be. So why come to Vegas to resurrect this divine part of me? Why not a hejira to some sacred energy place like Sedona, or a vision quest into nature, or a retreat to a monastery? Why not be like Elizabeth Gilbert, author of “Eat Pray Love,” in the story of her divorce and subsequent journey to Italy, India and Indonesia to find herself? Why Vegas? Because Vegas represents the most mundane and yet fantastic world imaginable. If we can bring the divine into the mundane, isn’t that our mission here? To make our ordinary lives as extraordinary as possible? As I watched the sun rise over the Mojave Desert after being up all night I tried to feel and breathe the ache in my heart. I looked into the light and imagined it a magical reflection of some part of me I could not see yet. Even though I couldn’t feel the joy, I could believe in the sun, and somehow knew that if I keep working, keep trying, something’s gotta give. On the cab ride to the airport, the driver and I talked about how difficult it is to address the evil in the hearts of humans. He did not believe we would ever change, that it was an impossible task to try and inspire people, one person at a time, to commit to peace in their lives. As we were talking, he purposefully drove the long LONG way around, thus charging me twice the cab fare I would have normally paid. By the time I finally caught on, he had proven himself to be one of those people he had no hope for. As I threw down the twenty on the front seat, I figured he needed it much more than I did. At least I had my commitment to becoming the change. At least I was trying. As the wheels of the plane folded into its belly and I watched this mecca of excess disappear beneath me, I knew I was leaving with a tiny piece of myself I came to find. One small step… |
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| February 23, 3008 The Party and I left Corpus Christi last Wednesday, kicking off the most amazing world tour ever. Oh wait, it’s the only world tour ever. How can I lose?! For the rest of 2008 it’s me and you and the road, baby. Columbus, Colorado, Romania, West Palm Beach, Hamburg, Colombia—grueling? I have no doubt. Satisfying? Good lord yeah! I feel so blessed to be living a life most just dream of. How special to be me. Thanks for letting me reflect it right back atcha. As ZZ Top might say, “Let’s get this show on the road.” |
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| February 7, 2008 Recently a friend of mine took a two-month road trip to Mexico from Florida. As he was packing, Max laid out several of his beautiful 1950s vintage shirts. He was looking forward to sporting these classics as he wandered the west coast between Puerto Vallarta and Rosario for a few months. After the first long day’s drive, he laid up in a hotel in Baton Rouge only to discover he had forgotten his shirts at home! Drat! He had so looked forward to showing off his collection. During the remainder of the long drive to the Pacific, he kicked himself often for not remembering to bring them. On the last night in Mexico, at a little rural hotel near the border, he and his friend went out for dinner. They returned to the hotel to discover…no hotel! While they were dining out, their small hotel burned to the ground, completely destroying everything, including their laptops, cameras, all their clothing and everything else they had with them. As Max stood before the pile of cinders that contained the remains of his road trip, he suddenly thought of his shirts, safely on the bed back home. What had previously been a big mistake had suddenly become his heartfelt blessing. Perhaps he was considering how close he came to being cinders himself. How many times have you done this? Spent too much time regretting things that have happened, flailing yourself for not being more—aware, smart, in tune with your intuition, outgoing, thin, successful? On and on goes the list of what you don’t have that the Intellect can focus on. And then one day, a life-threatening event happens that allows us to see those shortcomings from a new angle, one that reminds us how short and miraculous this life really is. One of my favorite saying from the myriad of readings I have given through the last 20 years is, “You’re a miracle just sitting in a chair.” Truly if you were consciously aware of all the miraculous systems at work that make up you, just sitting in a chair, you would be astounded: neurological, biological, cosmological, physiological, psychological, quantalogical. Who or whatever plans and implements creation is truly a god and you are a miracle of creation. In the construction of a physical body, I believe it is Intuition instructing which stem cells to be bone, which to be skin. As if Intuition knows the gynormous plan that will become your body and your life on all those aforementioned levels. The tiniest step, from stem cell to bone, is inspired by something that knows the whole plan. If your Intuition can know which cell is suppose to be bone, perhaps it knows that forgetting your shirts was no accident. So why do we flail ourselves for forgetting? Our Intellect lies, telling us we screwed up, and then sets about to punish us with harsh judgments in our self-talk. These lies are the basis of what keeps us from living in the truth of the miracle that we are. The abundance that naturally exists within us is diminished each time our Intellect concocts a story about our lack. “What is wrong with me that I would forget my shirts” and the constant intellectual belittling prevents abundance from flowing through. So how can we surrender to the knowing? First, remind yourself what a miracle you are. Then, commit to doing some Conflict Revolution: when despair, anxiety or frustration arise over your forgotten shirts, turn your attention inward and breathe this abundant energy of emotion into your body. You don’t need to know why you feel this emotion, you just need to feel it. Analyzing where or how it came about (forgotten shirts) is not feeling it. It’s analysis, an activity of the Intellect. You cannot feel with your Intellect, just like you can’t pump your blood with your liver. Max returned home to his precious shirts having learned a new lesson. Mistakes can be turned to blessings. The more we can connect to present moment through Emotion without having to diminish ourselves with Intellect’s lies, the more we will manifest our pure abundance. Happylooya. Happy Birthday to Me |
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| January 1, 2008 Happy New Year from Chicago, Illinois! I am so excited to greet you on the first day of the brand new year from the city of my birth. Seems symbolic to wake up here, like coming full circle after a long, dark night of the soul. Happylooya! 2008 is not only a “1” year, which indicates many new beginnings, but heralds the start of a ten-year cycle that is sure to bring profound changes in personal and global transformation. Let’s use this new energy to create innovative ways to bring peace to all levels of our world. For my part, this year’s New Year’s resolutions are simple statements of gratitude, love and appreciation for life itself. On the drive from Minneapolis to the Windy City, I had been contemplating how much I lost in 2007: home, relationships, family, so many things that had previously kept me secure. Unfettered by material possessions, a committed relationship, obligations of family, I feel as if the Universe unbounded me in order to launch me into greater heights of service to the world this year. I see myself standing on the edge of a precipice, arms outstretched, ready for flight. This stance is frightening and yet, when all is said and done, what is life all about if not to live to the fullest? Holding onto material possessions as a way to bring security is an illusion. When all is really said and done, and we are on our death bed, will our 401(k), big home and all our toys be of use to us? Will all that money in the bank help us in that moment of passing? Not that we should stop working to achieve material gain. I look forward to the day when I have my own home again and a nest egg in the bank. However, in the meantime, remember that what brings us security is love, the quality of our relationships, and the integrity of our actions and decisions. How are we living each and every day? Are we committed to honesty and peace making on all levels of our life? Use the new energy of this upcoming “1” year to continue to refine your relationship to your higher self, your family and friends, and your own life. Be grateful for life itself. Use the love you have to make positive, powerful changes. Become that change you want to see in the world. I myself have vowed to always remember in 2008 that I am not alone. I will let go of despair and nostalgia and choose to make peace with loss in order to move forward. I will release my regret and fear to make way for forgiveness, pleasure, beauty, abundance and hope. I am empowered by my conscience and my gift is forgiveness. Have an absolutely fabulous new year! |
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| December 21, 2007 According to the Mayan cycles of 12, we are in the last 10 days of a 26,000 year cycle. Whew! No wonder 2007 was one of the most intense years to come down the pike, for me and many others seeking enlightenment. If any of you have had the kind of 18 months I have had, my advice to you is to let it go. Let it all go. Feel and breathe. Take time to appreciate what you have left in your life. Chances are, there are so many things to be grateful for. For me, after murder, death, suicides, ending of relationships, assault, divorce, a failing business, as well as great success and triumph, I am ready for this new 26,000 year cycle to begin. I have my health, my sense of humor, renewed strength, tons of great friends and wonderful family, a beautiful home, and the ability to watch the sun rise and set. Such a miraculous gift life itself is. We are miracles, just sitting in a chair doing nothing. Know that everything you have been challenged with has been specifically designed by you, for you, to strengthen you, to empty the recesses of your spirit that you could not see from waking consciousness, to prepare you to receive the bounty of 2008. So let it go. Create comfort in your home. Nurture each project and friend as if they were your only child. Foster independence and the ability to grow strong. Choose quality over quantity. Tend to your garden and have faith in the Universe. Get ready for greatness. You deserve it. |
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| November 29, 2007 The Bush Administration is in the midst of conducting Arab Israeli peace talks. With only 418 days remaining in his presidency, Mr. Bush has left little time to broker a peace pact aimed at ending decades of conflict. And despite his pledge of personal involvement, few expect him to succeed. There doesn’t appear to be much hope on either side that a true and lasting peace can be achieved through these talks. After a seven-year hiatus, the two sides remain at odds on fundamental issues, including the future of Jerusalem, the right of return for Palestinians and how much territory Israel is willing to return for a nascent Palestine. This brings to mind 1978, when Jimmy Carter invited Anwar al-Sadat and Menachim Begin to Camp David to forge a peace accord between the Arabs and Israelis. Such a triumph for the day and yet, even the Camp David Accord was a short-lived treaty. Today it seems as if it never happened. So how does peace begin within, and how do our individual efforts to create peace in our own lives translate into helping the rest of the struggling world? If we are all indeed one sentient being with Earth as our home, then every effort made on the part of the individual can have an impact on the whole. Much like medicine moving towards a more holistic approach, doctors are now realizing that treating body, mind and spirit contributes to the overall health of the individual. Even though there are conflicts around the world, every effort each one of us makes strengthens the whole and helps with healing. Whether that is resolving inner conflicts, or working in our communities to bring peace, all efforts assist the whole. Unfortunately, President Bush’s efforts probably won't bring peace in the Middle East. But everyday there are ordinary people on grass roots levels making a difference. Listed below are some brave individuals becoming the peace in one of the most violent areas of our planet. Check out the work of these activists and let it inspire you. Know that everything we can do in our local world to make peace, whether within our own hearts, or in our families, our community, state or nation, will help contribute to peace on a global level. Conflict Revolution® addresses the conflicts that exist within us. To resolve conflicts on that level profoundly affects how we manifest our lives. And each time we work to bring peace within, we contribute to peace on the planet. Einstein explains exactly how in “Imagining Einstein.” Bravo to the brave activists around the world working for peace every day. Our hearts are with you. |
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