Philosophizing

November 12th, 2010

Greetings Friends!

I need to start off this post by saying that my Half Moon Book Review *) is going to be delayed by a few days.  It’s supposed to come out on Saturday, November 13th, but it’s going to hold for a couple days and post on Monday November 15th instead.

Why?

Because I’m reviewing a book that’s not supposed to be out in stores until the 15th of November!  It’s part of the rules for my new book reviewing arrangement I have with HayHouse Publishing :D <– big dorky smile~

I’m so excited about this!!  I ♥ free books.

So anyway, I’ve scheduled my review to post at 12:01 am on Monday morning.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

I’ve always been a person who loves quotes.  They’re so inspirational, thought provoking, deep, funny…

I was deemed a philosopher in my local Mom & Pop grocer one day not very long ago.  When approaching the register and saying hello to the cashier for the second time, I said, “Hello… again.”

He looked up and smiled and said, “Yes! Hello again it is. Can’t really say hello too many times.”

To which I replied, “Seems better to have too many hellos, than too many good-byes.”

He was completely blown away by my comment, and  stared at me blankly for like, 5 entire seconds with eyes wide, and then replied, “Wow!  You should be a PHILOSOPHER or somethin’!”

I am a lover of quotes and what they draw out of you.  How they can shift what you thought you saw into what you now understand.  I love the eloquent way they reach that deepest part with only a line or two.  They make you feel suddenly human, and yet coax forth your divinity.

I am a lover of words.

Well, I read quotes online all the time.  I see them all over the place.  I realized I’d reached a point where I found it hard to even quote anyone because there are so many I see that they don’t stay with me.

I want them to stay with me.

I want to spend a moment and really resonate with the words.  I want to think about what they make me feel and what they inspire in my mind as I take in their depth.

So on this past New Moon, I had started doing just that.  Every morning.  It has made such a noticeable difference in my thoughts throughout the day.  I find myself constantly going back to those words.  And sometimes I don’t even remember the words, but I carry the message.

I recall the specific message that touched me that morning as I contemplated the words before me.

As one who writes, it only took a couple days for me to decide to write about it, so I have now found the purpose for a blog I’d earlier felt inspired to create.  I’ve had this site made for a few months but had only played with ideas on an irregular basis. (as a funny side note; I finished the last sentence and looked under my words and it said “Draft Saved at 11:11″ lol)  I didn’t know how it was going to work itself out, but I was willing to wait and see what happened.

Now it has a definite purpose.  I am LOVING putting it together, piece by piece.  Morning by morning.  Quote by quote.  And then shaping my days with intention.  Conscious thought is such a beautiful thing.

So here’s the link.  *Lilypad Paradise

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Gaining an Appreciation

October 13th, 2010

Good Day!!

I am just fit to split at the seams from happiness!  Over what?  Nothing really. lol  It’s just a great day to be alive.

I made it through that awful, murky, depressing couple of weeks I was in and I’m now freely floating in the presence of the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

Here’s the prologue to this blog post.  Ha ha… it’s a problog…

It is my goal to portray my life in as real a way as possible.  At no time do I ever intend to project a perfect, problem free life.  My goal is to be empowered within my life and to share all the ups and downs with others who are seeking empowerment of their own.  My goal is to prove that you can have good days and bad days and problems and issues and live a normal life and still be happy beyond words.  My goal is to show that even when it’s not perfect all the time, it still somehow is perfect.

I’ve been dumping on here a lot lately, and I don’t want anyone to think that I’ve gone off the deep end.

This post summarizes my recent downs… and why, with the right perception, they’re actually ups.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

I’ve been feeling a bit off.  Unappreciated.  Down.  It’s been going on for about a month.

Back on September’s New Moon, I set an intention to go within.  I’d intended to meditate more and to keep a more regular journal.   Going within is tricky business because you never can be sure what will come out.  I came out feeling sluggish and tired and unappreciated and taken for granted and on and on…

Last Tuesday when I posted The Screaming Banshee Strikes, I included pics I took of a sticker on the back of a truck on my way to a doctor appointment.  Well, I came home from that appointment with my doctor recommending I have a hysterectomy.  I was completely blown away.  It’s because I’m having some pretty prominent discomfort and I’ve had my tubes tied for 8 years now.  I don’t NEED my uterus anymore and if I’m in pain, he sees no reason why I shouldn’t take it out for some relief.

Wow.  I feel down and now it’s starting to rain on me.

Then, two days later, on Thursday I had an appointment at my family doctor about what’s been going on in my gut since my sorbitol ordeal and he wants me to have a colonoscopy and a complete GI work up.

Yay.

So now I feel like crap and there’s mutiny going on in my body.  Fantastic.  How is it that I sit down and meditate to feel good and just end up feeling shittier and shittier?!  How is it that I intend to love and care for my body and it betrays me?!

But being me… and having had the experiences I’ve had, I know this isn’t the end.  I know there’s more.  I know circumstance is going somewhere with all of this and I know it’ll all be right in the end… so I relax and meditate and focus on loving my body.

Saturday dawns bright.  Alan comes this weekend.  I miss him and it really sucks only seeing him one weekend a month now, but I know he’s getting older and older and I’m only going to see him less and less.  Soon he’ll be off to college and I’ll only see him on holidays.

He’s starting on the varsity football team this year.  My 6′  3″, 220 pound sixteen year old who benches 275. *glow*
So I spent Saturday and Sunday talking to and hanging out with him.  He’s gotten so slim and muscular.  He came walking through the house without a shirt on and I was completely struck by how much more handsome he is than his father was at that age. LOL But don’t tell either I said so.

But Sunday night, after he’d gone home, I was thinking about the conversations we’d had and how much more he’s come to care about his body.  How much he actually enjoys exercise now and how fit he is.

“I wish I had someone to work out with,” I thought.  “It was so much easier to get off my butt and exercise when there was someone to socialize with…”

And then it struck me.  Why not join Curves again?  And THEN I realized that I’d reached the idea that had been struggling to get to the surface.

How do I know for sure?

Because I’ve been taking piano lessons every Wednesday.  I had my first and second, but had to cancel my third.  The following Wednesday, I decided that I just wasn’t able to practice as much as I’d like in between classes and it had actually been GOOD that I had a whole two weeks between those lessons… so that’s what we’re doing as of last Wednesday.  Every other week.

That means I’m now spending $30 a month on piano lessons instead of $60.  A savings of $30.  A membership at Curves is $30 a month.  Everything lined up for me and balanced out before I even registered the idea.  If I was able to be more active in piano, I wouldn’t even have considered doing both.  I was a little disappointed in myself because I wasn’t able to keep up with weekly lessons, but now… standing here looking back… it’s CLEARLY the better scenario for me.

So, I re-joined Curves on Monday morning.  I had a great workout and felt high for the rest of the day.  As I sit here now, on Wednesday, only a few days in, my body already feels different.  Tighter.  I always notice that the jiggle jiggles different almost immediately when I start working out regularly.

This is what I needed.  I feel appreciation for myself now.  For my body.  The cloud has lifted and I feel good.  Motivated.

That’s why I was feeling so under valued and unappreciated.  Because I was under valuing and depreciating myself.  I’ve been trying to get regular exercise forever now and I just can’t seem to do it.  I need it to be social.  At Curves, it is.

And now, feeling revived and empowered, I feel much more capable of dealing with these doctors and their tests and procedures.  It’s not as big of a deal because I’m looking at it all from a different perspective.  I didn’t change my perspective on the issues, but my perception of myself shifted and therefore everything shifted.

I’ll get my colonoscopy and GI work up and we’ll see what we see.  Better to know.  You can’t work with what you don’t know about.  And until further notice…. my uterus is staying put.  Right now I want to focus upon gaining GI health and balance.  I’ll deal with the rest when we get there.

It’s so much less… URGENT in my mind now.  A lot less anxiety around it all.

Life is always working for you… You just have to relax and let it flow.

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The Screaming Banshee Strikes

October 2nd, 2010

I’m having some trouble today.

I could NOT be crankier.  I’m not a big fan of PMS… especially my own.  Of course that’s not to say I’m partial to OTHER bitchy women either… but I digress.

In an attempt to not murder anyone, I sat down this morning and started reading Bible passages.  I wasn’t seeking anything.  I was just trying to turn my focus on to something that would take my mind off the discomfort I’m feeling and maybe give me something a little more productive to contemplate.

Mission accomplished.

It started because I ended up behind a semi truck on my way to a doc appointment yesterday.  The truck had a big sticker on the back that just spoke to me at that moment, and I try to always have my camera with me for reasons such as this.

Truck with Sticker

Sticker

I liked this and felt the need to take a picture because it speaks volumes to why we don’t manifest what we want sometimes.  We are not working with love.

We are often doing something we don’t want to do in the hopes that the end will justify the means, but the end NEVER justifies the means.  You can not have an end result that you love if the means to the end was not also loved.

If you work hard, every day, at a job you hate, you will never really enjoy the prosperity that the jobs brings you.

If you wake up every day bracing yourself for a day that will hold no enjoyment, you will never reach the place of happiness or satisfaction.  You cannot hate the journey looking forward only to the destination, because the destination IS the journey.

Find the love, and then work from within it.  With that, you will then create it.  It can be no other way, for it is law.

Today, I am going to take my own advice because so far, I’m mostly working from discomfort and the edge of rationality.  It can be a challenge to pivot your thoughts and feelings from such a dark place, but it is possible.  One doesn’t even need to pivot completely out of bad feelings.  Simply moving in the general direction of feeling better helps.

I’m going to go and find something to smile about.  Or at the very least, something that doesn’t make me SCOWL.  I’d settle for a nondescript, straight face from which screams of frustration are not being emitted.  *sigh*

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Here are some pictures I took this morning that made me smile.  I mentioned recently in my post, Timing Isn’t Everything, that we had a bunch of sunflowers that took root from falling birdseed.  I was hoping they would have enough time to bloom.  They did!

SF1

SF2

SF3

SF4

These two pics, above and below, are of my favorite flower out of the bunch.  It sits happily, showing off it’s multi-headedness.

There are three heads sticking right out of the top, and then each and every leaf that branches off the main stem boasts it’s very own tiny sunflower head, from the very top all the way down to the very bottom.  There are seventeen heads on this one stem altogether.

That is just freaking fantastic in my opinion.  I love it. (score one for not scowling for a minute!)
It’s also the ONLY one that does this.  All the others, and there’s probably 30 growing, have single heads and look like normal sunflowers.  Yes, there’re probably 30 growing.  It looks more like a sunflower BUSH growing under and around the bird feeder.

SF5

* * * * * * * * * * *

My current affirmations
** My mind is quiet and receptive.

** I see God in all things and all things in God.

** Learning new things comes easily to me!

~ OxOxx

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