Marcia’s Meanderings – Light & Joy

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Hello Dear Ones! Glad you stopped by…

The past two posts: Poetry Corner and He Says/She Says have focused on the topics of Light & Joy and Being the Light. This mind of mine was enjoying the energy from these inspirational topics. As a result my meanderings today are still being directed to the subject. Perusing my book shelf for something solid to consider and discuss had me opening texts at random. Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth was the hands down winner.

Rather than attempting to paraphrase Tolle’s work, I thought to inspire you from the master himself. (Please note the italics are mine.)

When you say, I enjoy doing this or that, it is really a misperception. It makes it appear that the joy comes from what you do, but that is not the case. Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you. The misperception that joy comes from what you do is normal, and it is also dangerous, because it creates the belief that joy is something that can be derived from something else, such as an activity or thing. You then look to the world to bring you joy, happiness. But it cannot do that. This is why many people live in constant frustration. The world is not giving them what they think they need.

Then what is the relationship between something that you do and the state of joy? You will enjoy any activity in which you are fully present, any activity that is not just a means to an end. It isn’t the action you perform that you really enjoy, but the deep sense of aliveness that flows into it. That aliveness is one with who you are. This means that when you enjoy doing something, you are really experiencing the joy of Being in its dynamic aspect. That’s why anything you enjoy doing connects you with the power behind all creation.

The majority of my days and the hours within those days are filled to overflowing with joy in all I do, those with whom I interact and in all encounters wherever I am in any and every given moment. It is exciting, then, when I see Tolle describing the feelings I have, that the joy is coming from within me – rather than me looking to find joy from those around me and the things that I do. It explains so much. Source fills me with the gift of joy, the light of my being radiates out, touched with the joy of Source and illuminates me, those I interact with, and the chosen corner of this physical world we are experiencing. Rather than looking to find joy outside of myself and to soak it into me as a sponge would draw in water, the joy comes from inside of me – and it is unlimited. A sponge is limited in its ability to absorb. Excess dribbles out ineffectually. Joy radiating out from within is unlimited and reaches out to all within its scope. The gift of knowing the joy within, of watching the effect it has on those with whom I connect, fills me to overflowing with the greatest and deepest sense of rightness. The more I live my life in this fashion, the deeper the sense of joy – the richer the gift that I and those around me are blessed to experience.

Selfish? Not entirely – though there is that aspect to it. The more joy I allow in, the greater the joy I feel. The greater the joy I feel, the more I am able to share. The more I share, the happier I am and the richer my relationships and life experiences. It becomes a cyclical spiral of energy feeding in upon itself and moving the spiral upwards, higher and higher into the furtherence of more and more joy.

I stated above that the majority of my days and the hours within those days are lived from this place of joy lived outward into my reality. I’m not perfect at it. Better and stronger and more at ease with the connection to this way of being, yet not perfect. It is now easier and easier, though, to recognize those moments when I am not living life from a place of joy – of concious choice to be happy and to fill myself up from within with the power of Source – God, the Universe, All That Is. I get a gnawing feeling within my being – it feels like fear – that antsy, restless, nervous sensation that something’s not right. I get this odd churning near my solar plexus that is trying to convince me that I should be afraid of something. When I look at it, I realize there is no logical reasoning for such an emotion to be filling me up with trepidation. There is no anger inside me. Anger, for me, is a misguided response to the deeper and truer emotion of fear. It is almost as though I’m a little girl and I have an angry parent near me. Not knowing what I may have done wrong to cause them to be angry, I have a sense that I am about to be spanked or punished for something in which I took no part. It is the frightened little girl feeling that tells me that I am not connected to Source, not living from a place of joy.

Holding on to this feeling only feeds the feeling and leaves me weak and vulnerable and of no use to myself, let alone anyone outside of me. I get jittery, begin to question whatever I’m doing in the moment and have even second guessed myself to the point of immobility. It has taken many years of trial and error, questioning and listening to myself, and my Self, to help me to be aware of this feeling and to know what it is I can do to let it go.

What is it that works for me? I smile. I smile at myself. I smile at my Self. Knowing myself to be a perfect child of the Universe – not a human child with baggage carried into adulthood – is what has me remembering that I am a being of light. My inner light – like the light of a single candle – is perfect in its unique beauty. My inner light, like that of a candle, dances and flickers with its own personal response to the world around it. Put two or more candles together in the same room and none of them responds the same way as the others. Each dances and undulates and flickers to a beat, a flow, a reality of its own. So too does the light within each of us. We dance our own joyous dances moved by the music, the flow of the Source of Universal energy bubbling up from within us as we allow it to fill us and to radiate out to the world.

Knowing how amazingly wonderful I feel when I am connected to Source, how could I possibly want to return to the feelings of human weakness of fear and insecurity? Yet it does happen – the return to those yucky feelings. Oddly it can sometimes take hours for me to recognize that I’ve returned to this place of emptiness and restless lacking. Though I seldom go back to my past  in thought – it may be helpful now in the sharing to tell you it used to take me months to get beyond this feeling of fear and restlessness. There was even a time when I spent years living in this zombie-like state. I shudder at the remembered life before this one.

Today, the joy I feel in the knowing that I now have it within my ability to release that restricting series of limiting emotions adds to the joy of my days and the minutes and hours of those days! The source of that power, that ability is not mine. It is in drawing the joy, the light and the love of Source, of God, of the universal love of All That Is up from within myself and allowing it to first fill me and then to radiate out through my eyes, my words, my actions.

Light and Joy. What a way to live!

In Light and Laughter and Love,

Marcia

He Says, She Says…

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Greetings:

A long time ago Marcia and Mike lived in a world where they both believed there were positive and negative forces in the Universe.  In that world it was common to practice (and to teach others) than when doing any meditative or astral work one should create a bubble of white light around him or herself in order to protect the meditator from those dark forces.  This idea came into focus for them one night at a talk given by a very interesting gentleman.  His talk had all of the right words, but the underlying energy behind them was really not good.  Mike’s response to this was to create a circle of loving energy surrounding all those present; although he had his eyes closed at the time, Marcia saw the speaker’s response to this was to step outside of the circle, remove some herbs from his bag, and with  few words…well, you get the idea.  When Marcia and Mike went home that night everything was fine, but the next day Mike woke up with a high fever, delerious.  He couldn’t walk, could barely stand, and he spent the next few days in bed while Marcia ministered to him.

It was shortly after this event that Marcia and Mike received some teaching on a New Way of Being.  Rather than surrounding themselves with a loving white light, or drawing it in from above or below as others had suggested, they were told simply to imagine a candle in the center of their bodies.  They were to simply allow the light of this candle to flow out from them, gently, in all directions.  They were then to allow this loving light to grow and spread until they literally ‘became’ the candle, and this loving light was flowing out from their entire being.  A candle doesn’t reach out to touch others with its light, it simply is itself, and in being itself its light spreads and illuminates.  In this way the light comes from within, not from without, and rather than being a bubble of protection to keep away those dark energies, it simply transforms them into that same loving light.  As the saying goes, “All of the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of one small candle.”

Well, time went by, their knowledge grew and their understandings of the nature of All That Is changed, and they began to see the world and the universe in which they lived as much bigger, more open and more dynamic than they had once imagined.  As a part of this process they were able both to see the role they had once played in the event above and how their own beliefs had created it.  Furthermore they were able to surrender their beliefs in those negative forces.  As such, the idea of ‘being the candle’ no longer held the same significance for them.

Until one day, several years later, they came up with a different idea about ‘Being the Candle’.

Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View

Being Green – Good News?!?!?!

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Hi Folks:  Well, Friday has come around once again and that means it’s ‘green day’ here for us.  Without question the biggest news in the world this week is the aftermath following the earthquake in Haiti.  If you’re interested you can find links to disaster relief sites here.  It’s events like this that bring the words ‘climate change’ into real focus.  It’s wonderful that so many millions of dollars and thousands of hours of effort have been offered in assisting the people of Haiti deal with what’s happened on their island; as Marcia said to me though, where were the funds to help them upgrade their infrastructure BEFORE this happened?

Ah well.  The title of this blog post is ‘Good News’ and all evidence to the contrary, there is good news to be found.  Last week’s post focused on what I see as the somewhat bewildering plethora of green building standards and certifications, but even that is good news in a way.  It wasn’t that many years ago that none of this existed.  One article I came across this week is titled ‘A Very Brief History of Sustainability‘.  These ideas continue to spread beyond building construction as well.  On the Sustainable Sites Initiative website you can find information on “The Sustainable Sites Initiative: Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009” (.pdf), which includes “all stages of the site development process from site selection to landscape maintenance”.  There’s also a companion guide called “The Case for Sustainable Landscapes” (.pdf)  It brings a different slant to the idea of being ‘green’.  Another site I came across talks about greening up building operations and maintenance.  In the US these guidelines fall under the USGBC LEED for Existing Buildings – Operations and Maintenance Guide.  The article I read is titled, “LEED Cleaning – Why Not?“  Consider for a moment the wide range of chemicals used in traditional cleaning products and their effects on both the people using them and everyone else occupying the building after their use.  I certainly applaud less toxic alternatives!  Continue Reading →

Telling Tales – The Walk is Part of the Gift

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Hi Folks:  As a writer and a storyteller, I collect stories the way others might collect stamps or record albums or…  I collect them because they give me pleasure, and because it gives me pleasure to share them with others.  Wherever I can I give credit to the person or people who authored a given story, but sometimes one comes across a story that is listed simply as ‘Author Unknown’.  The following stort story is one of those.  So to whomever authored this story, my gratitude!

Mike.

_____

An old Cree woman decided one day to present a priest she knew and loved with a sample of her embroidery.  She left the house early, and began her journey to the town far away.  The ground was hard and her feet were sore, but she continued on her quest.

As the day progressed, the sun beat down on her and baked her skin.  The stones on the path cut her feet, and by the time she arrived at her destination, she was exhausted, her lips were cracked, and her feet were bleeding.  Nonetheless, when the priest answered the door she held her embroidery up with great pride.

The priest’s eyes were filled with tears as he took the delicate embroidery from her hands, but his gaze was filled with the question ‘Why?’.

Looking up at him, the woman said, “Father, you don’t understand.  The walk is part of the gift.”

Author Unknown.

Poetry Corner – Being the Light

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This week Mike and I have been discussing the subject of being the light – radiating our own inner light out to the world around us. It may, or may not, become a topic for our next He Says/She Says post … yet it sparked my search for poetry related to light and joy in life. I was quickly successful when I picked up a recent ‘find’ at my very favourite Victoria book store – Russell Books.

From Gifts from a Course in Miracles:

Light and Joy

You are the light of the world.

The light is in you.
Darkness can cover it,
but cannot put it out.

Why wait for Heaven?
Those who seek the light
are merely covering their eyes.
The light is in them now.
Enlightenment is but a recognition,
not a change at all.

There is no difference
between love and joy.

Joy has no cost.
It is your sacred right.

You can exchange all suffering
for joy this very day.
Practice in earnest,
and the gift is yours.

In Light and Laughter,

Marcia

Marcia’s Meanderings – Synchronicity and Inspirational Guidance

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Well, dear folks, Sunday’s She Says post on the topic of ‘Destiny or Choice – A Matter of Beliefs?’ got my mind meandering back to past events and to synchronicities in my life. So many to contemplate, yet in addition to the one I shared in that post, the following synchronicity is one I often use when giving an example of the magic of life when one listens to inspirational guidance.

A few years back I was at home doing the much needed laundry and other housekeeping chores. From the start of my morning I had a niggling thought to go downtown to the indoor mall. There was nothing I needed to buy; I just had a sense to go. Now keep in mind that I abhor shopping of any kind. When I have a need to purchase something – groceries, clothes – I head to the store, get what I want and get out. No doddling and certainly no window shopping or browsing. So for me to get a thought to go shopping with no intention is – to say the least – unusual.

I let the thought pass and continued with my housework. The morning passed into afternoon and the thought kept resurfacing with a greater and greater sense of urgency. This was really odd. The kids were away till after dinner and once I had completed the day’s chores I had no reason to ignore the impulse. What would it hurt to go? I could always stop in at the bookstore for a gander at the latest titles.

So off I went to the mall and straight to the bookstore on the lower floor. I stood for a moment in the entranceway of the store glancing at the books on the display stand. Then I had the feeling that there might be something of interest toward the back of the store. I headed there.

It was summer and I was not wearing a coat, so when I approached the woman who was mumbling to herself she likely mistook me for a clerk.

“May I help you?” I asked her.

“I’m looking for a specific book my friend told me I absolutely had to read,” she stated with a very frustrated expression on her unhappy face. “And I can’t remember either the title of the book or even the name of the author,” she added with a very deep sigh.

In the passing of a mere second I stretched out my arm and, with my hand out and palm up, I curled all my fingers, except one, into my palm. I then bent my index finger toward myself a few times motioning her to follow me. She did.

I led her from the back to the front of the store, over to a particular shelf. I then pointed to one specific book and asked her if this was the one she was looking for. She looked amazed that I had found exactly the book she had come to buy!

“How did you know?” she asked with the widest of eyes.

I smiled and said, “Once you’ve finished reading this book, I want you to remember this encounter.”

With those words, I turned around and walked out of the store and headed back home. I knew I could leave as the earlier niggly feeling had been replaced with a sense of successful completion.

This example of synchronicity and inspiration is common in my life. Most often a daily occurrence, though I tend to see expressions of this in simpler ways now. Even in the simplest of synchronicities there is such a sense of awe and delight.

The above story I have told many times through the years and will probably continue to do so when its example is appropriate. Likely so is the woman in the bookstore still telling this tale! If you are reading this, dear lady, let me know! I’d love to hear where your life’s journey has led you!

Oh, by the way, the book she was looking for was The Celestine Prophecy.

In Light and Laughter,

Marcia

He Says, She Says…

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Greetings:

Our topic for this week comes from a quote in a book that both Marcia and Mike have recently read.  The book is titled, ‘The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid‘, by Bill Bryson.  On page 10 of the book, he wrote:

“The two teams split the first two games, so it came down to a third, deciding game.  At last the Dodgers appeared to recover their invincibility, taking a comfortable 4 to 1 lead into the ninth inning and needing just three outs to win.  But the Giants scored a late run and put two more runners aboard when Bobby Thomson stepped to the plate.  What Thomson did that afternoon in the gathering dusk of autumn has many times been voted the greatest moment in baseball history.

“Dodger reliever Ralph Branca threw a pitch that made history yesterday,” one of those present wrote.  “Unfortunately it made history for someone else.  Bobby Thomson, the ‘Flying Scotsman’ swatted Branca’s second offering over the left field wall for a game-winning home run so momentous, so startling, that it was greeted with a moment’s stunned silence.

“Then, when the realization of the miracle came, the double-decked stands of the Polo Grounds rocked on their forty-year-old foundations.  The Giants had won the pennant, completing one of the unlikeliest comebacks baseball has ever seen.”

The author of those words was my father – who was abruptly, unexpectedly, present for Thomson’s moment of magesty.  Goodness knows how he had talked the notoriously frugal management of the Register into sending him the 1,132 miles from Des Moines to New York for the crucial deciding game – an act of rash expenditure radically out of keeping with decades of careful precedent – or how he had managed to secure credentials and a place in the press box at such a late hour.

But then he had to be there.  It was part of his fate, too.  I am not exactly suggesting that Bobby Thomson hit that home run because my father was there or implying that he wouldn’t have hit it if my father had not been there.  All I am saying is that my father was there and Bobby Thomson was there and the home run was hit and these things could not have been otherwise.”

So, what then guides the dictates of our lives?  Is it fate?  Is it a Guiding Hand or some supernatural force?  Or are our lives the summaries of our choices?  For this week’s ‘He Says, She Says’ post we thought we’d take on “Destiny or Choice: A Matter of Beliefs?”

Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View

Telling Tales: The Law of the Garbage Truck

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Hi Folks:  We came across this story by David J. Pollay recently, and with his permission we’re including it on our blog.  It’s a simple story, but like many simply stories, one well worth remembering.  If you have not yet heard of David, here is his bio:

David J. Pollay is the creator of The Law of the Garbage Truck™.  He is a syndicated columnist, creator and host of The Happiness Answer™ television program, and an internationally sought after speaker.  David’s book, The Law of the Garbage Truck: Take control of your life with one decision and change the world, will be published by Sterling Publishing in September, 2010.  You can find out more about The Law of the Garbage Truck™ at www.thelawofthegarbagetruck.com.

David holds a Master’s degree of applied positive psychology (M.A.P.P.) from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor’s degree in economics from Yale University.  He is the founding associate executive director of the International Positive Psychology Association.  You can catch David’s newsletter here.  You can reach him at david@themomentumproject.com, and you can read David’s blog at www.pollayblog.com.

Without further ado, here’s David’s “Law of the Garbage Truck” (NB: After reading the story, click on the link and take David’s “No Garbage Trucks Pledge”!)

Mike.

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Being Green – Standards

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Hi Folks:  Mark Twain is purported to have said there are three kinds of lies (in increasing order of severity): white lies, damnable lies, and statistics.  As anyone who’s worked with statistics can tell you, it’s important to set your parameters before beginning your analysis or statistics can tell you anything you want.  If, by now, you’re wondering what this has to do with being ‘green’, it’s because I’m alternately amazed and confused on how many ‘green standards’ and ‘green certifications’ there are out there today, with more coming down the pipe all the time.  We have standards for whole buildings, such as R2000/ C2000, LEED, BuiltGreen, BOMA BESt, The Living Building Challenge and others, then there are certifications for specific products, like FSC or ITTO certified wood. There are standards like the California Indoor Air Quality Program or ASHRAE Standard 62 – “Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality”.  The list also includes programs like William McDonough’s Cradle to Cradle certification, but how about Rohner Textil AG’s Climatex Lifestyle compostable upholstery fabric?  Keep in mind these are all just samples of longer lists.  The other issue is that some of these standards are run by governments (LEED for example), others by private companies (Cradle to Cradle), some by industry associations (like BuiltGreen or CPA’s International Testing and Certification Center (ITCC)), and then there are third-party certification companies like Scientific Certification Systems. NGOs like the Rainforest Alliance have created a Certified Xate Initiative (.pdf) in Guatemala’s Mayan Biosphere Reserve to work with the local people regarding the sutainable harvesting of the xate palm. Continue Reading →