Centering Tools

How to Get Through An Extraordinary Life Challenge

What If The Bottom Falls Out

 
What do you do when life is truly, hugely overwhelming and you really know, in your heart of hearts, you can't do anything that will make any kind of difference to well handle things?  What do you do when you experience several major crises at once and it looks pretty clear that unless some major miracles occur, there will not be "light at the end of the tunnel" for awhile?  What do you do when you feel even if there is some support, that you really have to deal with everything yourself, and that you are terribly worn down, scared and hurting; and it seems others take advantage of your precarious state, and compromise and damage you even more . . .  and that what perhaps has been precarious in your world for a long time is crashing down in slow motion all around you?  
 

Top Ten Tips to Deal with Extraordinary Life Challenges

 
1.  Face everything and anything you can in an objectively manageable time frame - talk about it with a caring and equally objective person, who has good common sense and even helpful information and sound advice to offer you; and write about it as factually as you can, answering who, what, where, when, why and how questions.
2.  Pray to your sense of the divine for strength, clarity of vision, higher guidance and HELP anywhere it can come, affirming you're open to receive it.
3.  Take the time necessary to determine what are the necessary priorities to focus on and list as simply as possible, and include a time requirement that is realistic.
4.  Stop during the duration doing anything that isn't necessary, and don't accept any new offers to do anything more!
5.  Take basic care of yourself re: moderate regular exercise, decent nutrition - especially fluids (we become subtly and not-so subtly dehydrated in times of extreme crises) - and basically adequate rest.
6.  Recognize you are in a precarious position and don't any more "push the envelope".
7.  Set realistic daily, weekly and monthly goals for yourself; and write them down in a separate notebook.    Ask your sense of the divine to strongly support your achieving these goals, affirming, as in #3, you'll accept help from anywhere it appears.
8.  Consider on the spiritual front that you are in the center of major healing challenges.  As soon as you can, schedule uninterrupted time for yourself to reflect and meditate on what these healing challenges might be. Journal about it, and refer back to your insights, viewing them as inner supports through this extraordinary time.
9.  Think with as much clarity as you can about your need for protection, and provide it for yourself on an ongoing basis.
10. Affirm, whether it seems to happen in big or little ways, what is positive or good in the day-to-day; and every day, spend at least a few minutes asking yourself how you feel and unconditionally listening to your inner answers, at least some of the time briefly noting what happens inside you. 
 

Profound change means you will be profoundly changed.  Ask your sense of the divine to change you in an inviolate center of healing and development, affirming, like your endless, easy breath, simply letting be (acknowledging what is present and real) and letting go (asking what does not work to fall away, accepting this fully). 

Blessings . . . Marjorie

Projecting the Great Shift: 2012

Great and Fundamental Global Shifts Offer Corresponding Results

The current blockbuster movie  2012 tells a well-predicted story going back to such ancient civilizations as the Mayans warning that the world will literally turn upside down in order to, like the myth of the Great Flood, cleanse and create new space for humans to “start again” from a caring and evolved state of aware spiritual consciousness.  As we come to the end of 20o9 and are poised to enter the upcoming “double digit” decade that is a mere two years away from this cataclysmic prediction, we  need to take stock of not only who we are as individuals and within the communities in which we live, but what is fundamentally changing in our world.

One doesn’t need to particularly believe or not believe in ancient predictions to acknowledge that the world continues to more and greatly and foundationally shift.  Mounting global problems with threatened systems breakdowns involving economics, health care, and ecology, among others, with no “quick fixes” in sight presents like a universal cloud that both stops clarity and being able to draw upon what has worked before in this dawning New Age.

Finding Our Way In a New Time Toward a New Age

Is this the end of the world as we know it?  Is this a new time of spiritual awakening and enlightenment of human response and awareness?  How can we find our way in this amorphous cloud of not knowing on any level toward what seems to be a completely changed world?

There are ongoing givens that are crucial for us to draw upon in these  both crumbling and opportune times which include the infinite power of love, choice and visioning.  Dare to ask yourself, after entering a deeply reflective state, the following questions, holding your focus long enough to hear whatever responses come from your own sacred center:

These Questions Invite Your Own Transformational Shift

1.  What does the word love mean to you?

2.  How able are you to access your innate power to choose?

3.  What are your heartfelt visions for the world?

4.  What are your heartfelt visions for yourself?

5.  Do those visions match?  If not, why not, do you think?

6.  How is it for you to accept the fact that you are meant to die?

7.  How is it for you to accept the fact that you can never know what will happen, and still have the power to be fully present in the world?

The Next Step Towards Spiritual Completion

Seven is a mystical number in many cultures, from ancient to present times.  It also happens to be the number of notes that make up the entire musical scale, from which all things are played.  In numerology it is described as the number of spiritual completion through multidimensional creation and evolution.

Ask your inner sacred center to reveal to you its sense of what the “next step up” would be for the world in activating consciousness and creating accordingly.  Consider if this is could also be the next step for you.  Record your impressions.

Only One Caring Consciousness Survives Us All

In the movie 2012 the most critical theme comes not from the truly spectacular special effects showing the world being largely destroyed through the poles shifting, but from the key scientist telling the survivors of this global cataclysm that a true new world can only occur and permanently survive with a central humanitarian focus - “all for one and one for all”.  This requires unconditionally and universally accepting that what happens to whoever is perceived by whatever standard is described as the “least” of us must be the same as whatever happens to whoever is perceived by whatever standard is described as the “greatest” of us.

Our real Great Shift involves a full recognition that in order to survive we must truly come together as one, and to trust that we really do have the capacity to stretch to correspondingly activate and live our lives accordingly.  There are no “have’s” and “have not’s” – there are only all “have’s” or all “have-not’s” – meaning we really do sink or swim together, whether we like it or not.  Remember we all, as our Declaration of Independence stated over over two hundred thirty years ago, have equal and inalienable rights – the same.

Find and Become the Divine Expression

It is interesting to note that when the word “Goddess” is pronounced we hear God-Us.  Can we also, then, stretch enough in response to these fundamental global crises to come to a new level of thoughtful understanding and inspired direction to say unequivocally that we all equally carry and express within ourselves our own unique infinite capacity to be and extend in creating the divine consciousness?

It has been said this is the dawning age of Aquarius, the astrological sign associated with the full birth of humanitarian awareness and a correspondingly-experienced world.  For us living in a violent, fragmented, diseased, impoverished, broken society where we can, in a moment, tear each other apart with the slightest of excuses, this represents a seemingly-impossible nirvana of enlightenment, peace, safety, freedom and ease.

Your Saving Grace

Do we dare hold fast to this vision, predicted by the Mayans, as the foundation and expression of the Great Shift?  Do we courageously live our daily lives within our full capacity and scope seeking to learn and experiment with love, choice and vision as the transformational elements of survival and growth?

This double-digit year is fast upon us.  Coming full circle to what is only stated in the briefest and most incomplete of terms from an ancient, lost culture may just inspire us to find our way to become, and therefore offer, our own best Saving Grace.  So fire away – take your stock, so to speak, and run and create yourself and the world you live in as a new and fundamentally caring universe.  We are none of us powerless, and can view these times as, through what is breaking down, offering genuine space to become who we really are.   

“If I Am Not for Myself, Who Will Be for Me?”

“If Not Now, When?”

The great Talmudic Rabbi Hillel, martyred by the Romans, said these two pivotal sentences, which to me form a very keen foundation to awaken our consciousness enough to restore what I call spiritual self-esteem.  How do these two sentences strike you?

The inference here is about restoring self-respect.  The message is about the power of being present and acknowledging there is only the present moment in which we can commit to carry out a chosen action.

No Action = No Change

No amount of being told by anyone else about how much worth you have will essentially improve your innate sense of worth.  That power rests in your hands, always.

No amount of waiting, which truly weighs us down and distances us from being able to be fully present, can move you to restore self-esteem.  Moments pass, and when we don’t act, we don’t change – and nothing else changes in our world, either.

Choose to Be for Yourself

What does “being for yourself” mean?  I invite you to settle back, take a couple of deep, cleansing breaths, close your eyes, and imagine you can ask your heart to answer this question.

What happens?  What do you inwardly hear by way of response?

You Know How to Be Your Own Best Cheerleader

Take a few moments and then record your experience.  Then imagine how easily you can go back into your heart and ask it to further tell you what you can do today to be for yourself.

Can you dare consider hiring yourself to be your own cheerleader?  The truth of the matter is, as an innately whole human being, your intrinsic worth is invaluable and without qualification.

Accept Your Greater Spiritual Challenge

Accepting the spiritual challenge to be your greater self develops compassion, clarity, and courage – today’s three “c” words I offer you to well support greater corresponding change, and equally correspondingly invite the universe to offer you matching opportunities to create your soul’s dreams.

Now think of a problem you currently struggle to solve.  Focus for the next several minutes, returning to your deeper reflective state, on what courageous, compassionate, and clear choices you could make to respond to this problem.

Three Powerful Words to Transform Your Life

Once more record your impressions, using these three words to “fill in the blanks”:

In this situation I could . . .

. . . courageously ___________________________________________________________________________________

. . . compassionately _________________________________________________________________________________

. . . from a place of greater clarity ____________________________________________________________________

Transcend Fear and Limitation

Now that you have exercised your divine power to command yourself to transcend beyond fear and limitation and develop, express and test your innate worth through deliberately choosing to carry out in your daily life how you wish to respond, to re-esteem and recover your greater Self.  You have created a call to action in the present to transform your reality and better serve yourself, and the world you live in. 

Now is the time, understanding in this way you own and accept responsibility over your life.  You can move beyond playing endless varieties of powerless victim to become an empowered, evolving whole and aware spiritual being of multidimensional consciousness. 

If not now, when?????

The Power of Feminine Support - enter the "Jane Austin Book Club"

My Latest Favorite Chic Flick

A couple of weeks ago I knew it was once again time for me to beat a quick, definitive path to the nearest movie theater alone, to catch the latest chic flick that caught my eye.  I ended up watching a movie I thoroughly enjoyed, The Jane Austin Book Club. 

Yes, I've seen every last Jane Austin movie that has come out for - over a decade, is it?  But no, I am not a die hard fan of her books - never could get into them, to be perfectly honest.  Dostoevsky, yes, I can't put him down - all that late-nineteenth century Russian angst and  DEEP analysis into one's very soul . . . Jane Austin - well, works for me in the movies, is about it.

Women's Challenges for Healing and Development

That being said, this terrific film artfully pulls a handful of women and one "token" man together in southern California who are each undergoing major life crises with all their accompanying challenges toward major transformation, and all the healing, integration and development it brings.  Women of all ages who are very avid Jane Austin fans (the man becomes an equally avid convert) at the first somewhat-tense meeting determine who will be responsible during the monthly meetings to review a particular book, until all of Jane's books are discussed. 

Of course, the film makes  sure that the particular woman who reviews one book is currently facing the exact same thematic challenges in her life that her chosen book to review presents.  Each "reviewer" comes to experiences herself as a heroine in her own life, and so she "rises" to the occasion" of becoming one. 

Can We Unconditionally Accept and Love Each Other?

At that time, natural, organic transformation occurs, all successfully enhanced in the arena of the increasingly cohesive, unconditionally loving and accepting group support.  Individual challenges for members of the group include a sudden marital break-up after over twenty-five years of working partnership,  exploring and solidifying lesbian  relationships,  deciding to "try again" for a soul mate connection after many failed partnerships, and finally "crossing the line" to, for the middle-aged "ultimate heroine" of the group, at last be able to commit to  a "happy-ever-after " marriage.

Of course the film offers women the ancient reminder that when we come together in a like-minded, caring group that affirms our inherent capacity to empower ourselves, we integratively heal, develop, and create great miracles for ourselves and each other.  That brings me to what really "floated my boat" with this movie.  I  realized as I watched the women change profoundly, one by one, that I have delighted in this view of self-healing through women's spirituality groups on an ongoing basis in facilitating, for over twenty years now, Centering women's self-healing and spirituality groups.

Our Tremendous Power to Restore Awareness, Choice and Staunch Support

We have such tremendous power to restore awareness, freedom to choose, and staunch support to each other and, coming full circle, to ourselves.  When we can let go of millenia of cultural conditioning that stripped us of our power and twisted us into perpetual "good little girls", which fueled all kinds of passive-aggressive, subservient behaviors, we become a formidable force for good to transform ourselves and the world we live in. 

And Goddess knows, we and the world we live in so desperately, so piteously cries out for just that!   Interesting to note that I write this on Halloween , which, in the days when we worshiped a Goddess and not a God, was called Samhain, actually the start of the New Year.  May this be a  new year for us to stand tall as the divine feminine beings we are, and come together to support our own desired healing, transforming ourselves and our associated world  for love, for light,  for acceptance.