Games to play ... to find the games we play

One of my favorites childhood games was hide and go seek.

As I explore different ways of contemplation and recognizing ones beliefs, I find there are different games that come into play ... allowing us to be 'found'.

Fun, playful games that bring awareness throughout the day ... once you chose to play.

Look:
a. Where can you not make a decision? What conflicting beliefs grab you and hold you down, making you spin as you find yourself pulled in opposite directions.

b. Where is it that you need? Where is it that there is never enough? What is the feeling, story and belief underneath the need that you keep creating, the lack?

c. Where in your body do you feel discomfort? What is the quality of the contraction, the belief, the story that brings this feeling about? Pay attention to it and recognize the feeling so you can recognize it every time it surfaces. See where it appears in multiple areas of ones life allowing one to see it is not the person, event or situation, but the belief within oneself that creates the feeling, the discomfort.

d. Look at every decision and action you make. Where does it come from? A place of truth, expression or a place of need, of wanting.

e. Where, what and who do you avoid? What is the belief and feeling behind the avoidance?

f. Recognize a reaction, a feeling one has attached to a situation, now turn it around in your mind creating a different feeling and/or reaction. Pretty soon, the belief is no longer solid and one can see neither thought or feeling has any truth.

g. Listen to what comes out of your mouth or written on paper. What is the opinion, and/or judgement that you are communicating. Every word is a message to yourself about your own belief systems. Stop and look at each sentence and question its truth.

h. Look and see how you change your beliefs and thoughts, how the people and events in your life start to take on a different appearance. See the change. Not only does it become a gift for yourself but to everyone around you.

The world is ones playground for awareness....every moment you have the opportunity to see what will bring you closer to your truth..

Have fun and PLAY.

Relating with indecision

Indecision - to be or not to be, to do or not to do, yes or no ... what will it be boy?

To be indecisive is one of the many symptoms of not recognizing ones belief systems.

How often do I become confused, frozen, not able to say yes or no, not able to commit ...

All because I have chosen to listen to multiple conflicting, contradicting beliefs at the same time, not allowing myself to recognize them and abandon them as unnecessary.

Constantly exchanging one belief for another until I fall down from spinning in my own dizziness.


Indecision, a gift, a pointer ... allowing me to see the trance of holding multiple beliefs at the same time.

Talk about productivity, if you are looking for recognizing beliefs, you've hit a jackpot.

When I look at my specific indecision, I am awarded with seeing not only 1 but multiple beliefs that have grabbed a hold of me.


Indecision, a bold, blatant gateway to fear, to belief, to freedom.


It may look indecisive in nature, but strangely bold in appearance. There is no pretending when one can not decide, the lack of decision stands out clearly in ones awareness, in ones gut and in ones actions to the world. There is no expression from ones truth ... in indecision one hides out in limbo ... finding safety from ones unnerving truth, caught in belief.

And in that indecision, the cost of relating, connecting to oneself and consequently the cost to relating to others is real-ness.


In a frozen state there is no lasting connection, the surface is cold and slippery ... every time one starts to connect, one slides from the surface ... there is nothing to grab onto or sink into ... the energy is scattered everywhere, providing only fleeting dispersed connection.


Indecision ... scattered, a blatant gateway ... it can be seen as a tool, a solid pointer to multiple fears and beliefs limiting ones ability to connect and relate.

Please De-Leaf Me

Autumn .... tis the season of leaves and fall ....

Let the leaves fall ... fall around you ...
Gathering at your feet ... forming piles of brilliant colors ...
Falling down on them ... laughing, playing ...
Picking them up ... throwing them to the sky ...
Watching them fall into a new creation ... one with a new awareness ...
Only to be picked up, danced upon and thrown to the sky ... time and time again.

Relating ... being able to communicate and share oneself with others, it helps shake the leaves off of myself and get to the root of my beliefs.

I would not uncover or simply have my leaves fall off any other way. Honest, true relating is like shaking the tree ... the leaves fall off more quickly, leaving a smooth bareness underneath.

To relate with the focus of consciousness ...
To relate so one can see and express themselves deeply ...
To relate so one can understand and experience others with curiosity ...

Every interaction becomes a gift ... a gift of discovery, awareness, presence ... a creative process ... an ever changing pile of leaves, to be dumped, thrown to the sky, played with and danced upon ...

Always leafing .... something fresh and new in its place.

Relating ... please de-leaf me.

When my story cracks deep ... a madwoman appears

Fear ...
I would like to think of myself as a warrior when I do any consciousness work, and yet I get to see the presentation taking on a different persona, one that I did not quite expect...

The fear that surprises me the most, is the fear that I am not fully aware of, a story that has not been as conscious in my de-constructing ... and with the surface of something so hidden, my approach, my initial reaction has been ... what can I say but surprisingly mad ...

The other evening, fear was everywhere ... lurking ... and it was lying in me ... undercover ... unaware ... until a harmless sentence ... a projection, turned the projector rolling on ...

I became split, two mad women ... a madwoman feeling close to insane and a mad woman full of anger ...

It was like being stuck in a horror show ...
the evil clown lay there waiting, lurking behind the curtains, around the corner, with a twisted smile, a painted face ... waiting to grab me and take me down, down, down into the darkness.
A nightmare of my own making, a movie featuring PAM.

Finally captured, with no where to go ... finally willing to see and feel, to take a long dedicated look at the sinister clown, the hallucination before me ... to be willing to listen to what it had to say, and to feel the sheer terror inside of myself.

The clown, my fear, my darkness, behaving in the same manner I have chosen to behave in the past. My deep fear does not just show up and present itself with open arms ... it runs me in the same manner I have run myself. It shows up like I show up, it behaves like I behave, it manipulates like I manipulate, it denies, hides and cries to be heard just like I do.

And to hear it speak, to no longer run ... is to witness my horror show and to feel the terror that has been embedded within me.

No wonder why I want to scream ... everything within me is trying to be heard, my beliefs, my story, and my feelings that have been buried in my thoughts and in my body. They are no longer being controlled in the same manner ... they are all jockeying for position with strength and they are gaining power. To not listen to them makes me feel like I am going mad, becoming insane, a madwoman of sorts as there is simply to much to contain and to much to deny.

And ... when I stop and listen to them, to my story, to my belief, to my feelings ... I feel the madness within me ... and a mad woman appears ... with tears in her eyes and a clenched jaw ... revealing the sadness and the anger involved.

Yes ... when my story cracks deep, a madwoman and a mad woman appear.
I am able to experience both persona's as I fight between denying and listening to my fear.

I welcome the day when I see my fear in a manner that aligns with my growth and acceptance of myself. When it no longer needs to have a face of a clown lurking, demanding to be heard, but a warrior standing, strong.

When I can embrace the woman before me quickly and cleanly with one deadly strike, one huge HUG of love.

Red Heeled Fantasy

Fantasy...

I never realized how much I loved to believe in just that, in my world, in my fantasy, in my make believe.

I always liked playing dress-up, still do..
Where are those red 4 inch heeled shoes, oh and the dress and the long brown hair?

Belief was so important...that to question, to bring out contradictions, variances was never an option. I would NOT, I could NOT .... see anything but my fantasy ... and damn it, if it was real for me it had to be real to everyone else.

I remember selling someone on my fantasy, trying to make it real for me and convince them of the truth....my truth.

Oh yes...my fantasy would win, I know it...and I would march fiercely defending, believing in just that ... and if selling someone on my fantasy did not work ... I could wait.

And wait I did...I was good at that. It was easier to live in my mind then to face the truth.

To uncover the truth of a fantasy was to shine light on a belief ... and in my world it became DANGEROUSLY illuminating..

So I continued...justifying my illusion, selling my illusion, believing in my illusion ... in possibilities, in the future ... until it became so obviously unreal that the present could no longer be denied or hidden from myself.

Fantasies have many flavors. Mine was of rich, smooth chocolate or warm cafe mocha's ... swirled with perfection ... perfection of love..

Funny, the idea of love ... it got me every time ... whenever I felt truly touched within myself with someone else I would expect that feeling to be equal, shared, received and returned ...
and if not, I would wait patiently like a school girl waiting for the bus .. or more likely at the window for my father ...

If you were good, he would come, wouldn't he?

I feel I have been waiting most of my life for that school bus, never wanting to see my truth ... and now realizing I never needed to wait.

I have feet that can cover the distance. The cost of waiting or fantasizing is BIG to my soul ... an illusion filled with fear, wrapped in the safety of denial. An illusion without any true substance or nourishment ... an illusion that is oh ... so exhausting to maintain.

And then the anger, the sadness, the initial terror as well as the personal power I have felt when I realize the importance of being true to myself no matter what the perceived cost...

and you can only imagine what my cost would have to be to fit this story ... of red heeled shoes and coffee mocha's swirled with perfection of love....

My fantasy of love...
A fantasy I have built my life around.

Funny... when I realize I had it all along within myself, waiting for me to discard that school bus and turn within. I never needed to fantasize...

But I still see myself in those 4 inch red heels and the long brown hair....

More than a feeling, it builds structure.

This article was written to thank and acknowledge the Aspire foundation for their experiential workshops and community of lovely people.


Sometimes I wonder what is real.
It is when my mind is at war with my heart, that I start to question my process, whether I am being self indulgent, self absorbed to be on a path of self awareness.

But love is more than a feeling, it is a truth that my heart knows and feels, a truth that my body and cells know and feel, and that is what has become so evident to me. I asked for affirmation and my body speaks to me so kindly, demonstrating the power of being in ones truth.

It has not been until I started on this path of self discovery that I have been willing to look at what I have created for myself, my heart, my body, my mind. I was not willing to look at my health, as it was so painful to feel, so difficult to acknowledge, but so evident in my body. I did not think I had the energy to address what I needed to change.

What I did not realize was that by denying myself, by staying emotionally constricted, I was also foregoing my passion, my vital energy, my life. It is in the denial that the cost was truly being born.

I have spent years living constricted and years fighting for life but it is not until now that I feel a nourishment and an expansion in my body. This is due to the direct experience with various people in my life, the opportunity to belong to a community of people that chose to connect from the heart and the willingness to let go of beliefs that no longer fit.

I have begun the process of breaking down the structures that have had a strangle hold on my body, and re-create life within myself. This is so evident in my heart as well as in my body. Recently, my menstrual cycle has started again. For most people this would not be celebrated but for me, being post menopausal for over 2 years due to early menopause from my health conditions it speaks loudly to me. It shows my body is changing in many ways and it all represents an opening and expansion.

Yes, there is a war going on with my mind and my heart, but this shows me my heart has the upper hand. By following my truth, my cells feel the change, they are no longer being constricted, they are receiving and providing nourishment to my body and that is in direct correlation to how I feel.

This approach to life makes me feel nourished.

So when there is a war going on ... I must remember to feel what is real, and look and listen to my body, as it gives me guidance.

More than a feeling .... its what builds structure.

Beauty of the non verbal

Having a sister such as mine, having friends such as mine, has shown me the beauty of the non verbal.

Growing up I had the opportunity of having a sister who could feel, listen, hear and speak for me with just a glance of our eyes meeting, being in the same room or from far away .... all based upon the intention and the need I had at the time.

How safe and secure this made me feel, to know someone would understand what I wanted to communicate without having to chose the right words to express it, to have someone 'get me', get my intention, the essence of the expression truly without boxing in the feeling with spoken words.

Today, instead of speaking for me she is able to help me, assist me in understanding myself when I stray from home. By talking with me, being around me, she can hear what is underneath my words or thoughts. To get to the true essence and feeling of a situation and how I feel.

And this ability, this interaction has shown me the beauty of non verbal communication. To be able to share, communicate, express oneself all through thought, touch, movement or voice but to get beyond the spoken word as words often do not capture the true essence of a feeling in its raw form.

This gift has allowed me to see and treasure the beauty of non verbal communication. No wonder why I have chosen Massage therapy as a profession as it allows me to receive, communicate and express myself through my hands.

And when I think about the people in my life that have touched me dearly through the heart, it is at this core level that they speak to me. No wonder why I feel so blessed to simply sit in their presence ....... no words need to be said, it is being felt...and there is such love in that.

I am thankful to have Cheryl as my sister, and to have friends who touch my life with such beauty and understanding of their truth.