Slowing myself down: Setting in motion the creative forces of the Universe

My niece Mary's dog, Jade, sleeping on our couch after playing hard with Luke

My day unexpectedly opened up on Monday, and I decided to take a ride to Middlebury VT, (a town we are thinking about moving to) just look around and get a feel for it. It was a fluke of a warm day here (almost 90 degrees) and the drive was like heaven. I arrived in town and started slowly driving up and down every street. I didn’t want to miss anything.

After about an hour, I started to get tense and tired. It was hot, and I was in an unfamiliar town (which has traffic…a thing I’m not used to!). I pulled over and took a deep breath and reminded myself that I would be guided and shown what I needed to see, if I could relax and get out of my head, and into my heart. I never used to be able to stop myself like this. The more wound-up or frustrated I felt, the more I would try to DO SOMETHING to change it. That usually ended up in an escalation of the chaotic feelings until things got worse; either I made some rash decision, or crashed from emotional exhaustion….a tiring way to live at any age, but the older I get, the more I feel the negative effects of out-of-control emotions.

When I get excited about something, I have a tendency to want to “make it happen” and I know the reason for this is that I temporarily forget that I’m not in this (thing called my life) alone, and think that if I don’t figure it out, it won’t happen. I think that I know how it should happen, and forget that I don’t really ever get to see the big picture….this is where faith comes in.

It is a thrilling thought, that the Spirit of Life wants me (wants us all) to have a big, abundant, happy, loving, fulfilling life experience, but I notice that on a pretty regular basis, I need to be reminded that faith in this spiritual Truth is the real door-opener.

After my short period of “remembering”, I slowly drove up a hill into a lovely residential area that turned out to be a dead-end. I was turning around, just as a man was walking out of his driveway. He smiled, and looked at me like he thought I might be lost and in need of help. I told him that we were hoping to move to Middlebury and he said, “I don’t think there is anything for sale, at the moment, in this neighborhood, but a really nice old colonial home in town, just came on the market a few days ago and I can give you directions. I hadn’t known about the house he mentioned.

I did a drive by and it was the nicest and most “perfect for us” looking place that I have seen so far. I wondered, as I got home later in the day, if I would have dove-tailed with that friendly, helpful man, if I had been all stressed out and rushing? I don’t think so. I don’t believe that our energies would have matched. My little time of slowing down actually moved things along so much faster because I was working with the energy of the Divine (which always has the big picture and never rushes!)

“There is a basic law that like attracts like. Negative thinking definitely attracts negative results. Conversely, if a person habitually thinks optimistically and hopefully, his positive thinking sets in motion creative forces – and success instead of eluding him, flows toward him.” Norman Vincent Peale

Read Full Post »

I have to get it done now!

Bodhi and Fred peacefully napping through the heat

It was 95 degrees and humid on Friday. As I drove home from the seacoast, about 2 in the afternoon, I passed through a section of Vermont where there was road work being done. I saw the orange cones but no workers and felt relief, thinking that the state had given the outside crews an emergency day off. A few miles up the road though, I realized that they had just moved and saw them working, laying new tar on one side of the road. It actually made me feel a little sick seeing these very hot, stressed-out men outside on the black top.

I used to believe that I alone was responsible for setting a schedule and sticking to it, no matter what,  in order to accomplish what I felt was important. The concept of a “heat day” or a “snow day” was inconceivable. Only undisciplined, lazy people took days off, and I secretly feared that I was both, so I set routines for myself and did not veer from them in order to stay on the straight and narrow; to somehow prove that I was a “good person”.

It never occurred to me, that because I was in this world, this universe, that even extreme heat was a part of the flow of my life, offering guidance to move in a direction (possibly of no movement!). I have come to see that God speaks/offers guidance in infinite ways; through people, books, songs, breakdowns, stubbed toes, dreams, and even through the weather. When I forget that I am connected to all, when I think that I am just this singular little “unit” out here alone slugging it out, life feels like one big obstacle.

I read something by Elbert Hubbard once, and I am sure that he was saying it facetiously when he wrote, “Life is just one damned thing after another!” Life is not something that must be “overcome”, it is something to be embraced. We are either flowing with life or struggling against it, enjoying the trip or having a rough ride. Either way, the choice is ours. What will you choose today?

Read Full Post »