Taming Chaos - A Path of Thought and Integration

After years and years of intense experiences, deep and core reaching and teaching spiritual experiences, it has taken me a very long time to process and integrate.  Am I finished yet?  No, not by a long shot but I’m feeling my time of solitary contemplation is ending.  In a world that seems chaotic, punctuated by all that is negative in the media and the psychotic-seeming trolls that have permeated all of our on-line existence, it sometimes feels very pointless to speak a single word.  So, during such times, quiet solitude is necessary to begin to understand.  Will we ever? Honestly, although I’ve had some very serious doubts, I believe that we will.

The masses are purely frustrated and divided over things we all consider to be important but it is not really the dividing lines that are the real focus here.  We are being challenged to declare ourselves.  Just not in the way we might think at first.  I don’t know about you but if ever I find myself in wrong thinking, my body speaks to me.  It tells me, “wait a minute, you are going a bit too far – be silent and quiet – let the emotion settle and begin again in a better frame.”  I used to miss this important message time and time again until massive episodes of anxiety or depression would strike and painfully remind me.  So, I learned to be more silent and work through the feelings and fears of hopelessness in all I witness in life on planet Earth.  If I clear away the superficial thoughts and fears, I find something truly amazing.  It’s sometimes a very tiny gossamer thread of hope.  Just when I think there is no hope, I’ll see a sparkle out of the corner of my eye.  I may witness the true beauty of the nature of some humans so readily expressed that I cannot stay in a space of fear or of hopelessness.

While the media expounds on this atrocious thing or that heart-wrenching and mind numbing angry-toxic producing thing, they are getting the reaction they strive for.  I have decided to no longer give it.  I understand the stirring of baser emotion for the sake of stirring negative emotion.  It gets people into a very reactionary state and then the witch-hunts begin and the scape goats are strung up and strung out and then there is even more terrible news to broadcast.  But, but, listen – is that really the life we want to live -a life being manipulated by the media and those with a dark design?  How does that help you put food on your table, love those closest to you and strive always and ever to be better and brighter?  I can’t remember which book it was but Thich Nhat Hanh has said something to the effect of, “What are you feeding your head?”  When you are glued to the news channel late at night before bed.  Is it easy for you to fall asleep?  You get that concept, don’t you? If you turn to hope and what builds and better supports you in this life, can you sleep better and love better?

I don’t believe the world is any crazier today than it has always been here at the hands of fearful humans.  But, if that is all you focus on – that is all you will continue to perpetuate.  I now implicitly trust my inner guidance system.  Whenever I feel absolutely incredulous watching the news or being confronted by this human or that human I know there is a lie in the mix.  Either one I am being told or sold or one I am believing in.  Rather than waste my time and energy fighting back against the darkness of this reactionary manipulation employed unwittingly or unintentionally, I stop.  I pull myself back.  I calm gently my ego’s need to fight back, to be right, or to defend.  I pause and reflect to discover what part of my experience truly feeds my incredulousness and it doesn’t take long anymore to uncover the truth.  I then can move into the space of my heart, see more clearly and then simply hold a space of understanding.  Fighting back and defending is always an option but with so much time and energy poured into this negative manipulation of experience for ratings, for money or for God knows what else, it would seem to keep us all exhausted and vibrating so low, thick and desperate.  I don’t want that for myself and I don’t want that for others.  I also know that my only choice is to be the change that I want to see.  I need to focus on what lifts my own vibration.  I need to explore what better supports me and helps me operate more clearly as a conduit for balance in a seemingly crazy world.

We are all of us the darkness and the light in this world.  We can point our focus at any time and in any moment towards dark or light.  It’s not good or bad, right or wrong, it just is and you can argue these points from any angle for arguments’ sake.  You can troll me to the moon and yet, my inner guidance system will not waiver.  In that, I trust completely.  So, how have things been for me lately since this shift in thought, while integrating experience?  Peaceful.  I have found peace, I have found an inner well of unshakable love and support.  I have discovered in life where I “went wrong” so to speak but I’m not angry for it because it taught me so much.  I no longer need to learn from the obvious negativity in the world put forth by intentional or unwittingly participating humans expressing their own form of environmental psychology.  I can learn my life lessons by connecting with the Earth, appreciating the Sky, the Wind, the Clouds, the Birds, the Trees and every single blade of Grass.  Creation speaks often.  I now listen more closely and openly.

My intent and my focus of late is shifting my own energy and letting that vibrate out from my being, letting that be the wake I leave behind me as I place one foot in front of the other on this journey I call my life.  I’m living it my way and doing the best I can.  I’m turning off the news and disengaging from that which does not support me or those I love on my journey.  I’m doing what I can where and when I can to help change those things for the better where I see fit in a positive, non-violent and non-toxic way that does not infringe upon the free-will of others.  I’m making a commitment to myself and to all things I relate to – to strive to bring good, do not harm, and make a difference I can live with.  I can stand for something I find important without causing harm to another soul.  I have much hope that others in this world will rise up from this constant swirl of utter chaos and awaken and learn that they too can make a difference without imposing upon the free will of others.  I have hope. Find your hope and your faith.  Trust yourselves to find the best way.  May your God or Goddess or Nature or Life in General – bless you in every possible way with great wisdom, great compassion, great healing and great abundance.  I wish this for the entirety of this beautiful globe that is our home.  It is time.  And, So, It Is.

 

© 2019 (Photo/words) Jaie Hart

You're Gonna Choke

Have Faith In Yourself and Know You Can Do it

When I was a little girl in 1976, I watched Nadia Comaneci and Olga Korbut perform in the 1976 Olympics in gymnastics.  I was just 10 years old but in watching them I wanted nothing more than to go to the Olympics.  Big aspirations for a ten year old kid right?!  Grandma signed me up for gymnastics at the local YMCA and with much very hard work and sheer determination, I made it to the YMCA's competition team.

As a child, I never had any fear or doubt about doing what I wanted to do.  For two years, I worked very hard and in my very last competition, out of 200+ girls in Beverly Hills, California, I placed for the first time.  No small fete considering my coach told me I was going to choke that day.  I spent my time in between events focusing in my mind performing every routine flawlessly.  My coach taught me this many times – “See it in your mind performed flawlessly-know that you can do it just the way you see it and then just do it.”  Such valuable words were these.

"You're gonna Choke."

At that last competition I was nervous and doubtful for seemingly the first time as it was the biggest gymnastics meet I had ever competed in.  There were so many people and it was throwing me off during practice.  My coach’s words that day stung when she told me I was going to choke and I was mad but I went back to her prior words – “See the performance in your head flawlessly completed, know that you can do it and then do it.”

That is exactly what I did that day.   I didn’t take first place but I placed 6^th in the all-around and in one or two other events and for me, that was just the best thing ever.  By age 12 I was very quickly growing much too tall to be a gymnast and social things were quickly becoming much more important than my 10 year old dream.  I chose to end my career as a gymnast.  I went out on a good note and I always felt good about that.

Many moons later, I had my eye on Corporate America.  Well-meaning friends and others told me I couldn’t get in because back then, I had no degree or training.  So, I researched various jobs, studied for them, talked to people, practiced what it would take to do them and then I went for it.  I visualized and practiced nailing the interview.  I got it.  I was roughly 19 when I went into Corporate America as an Administrative Assistant.  I worked for several different kinds of companies and watched the leaders of those companies.

I grew up very poor and didn’t care to continue that for the rest of my life. So, I had dreams of becoming an executive because getting into Corporate America wasn’t enough.  As I began to pursue my goal, I was told I could never be an executive because I had no degree.  I didn't let that deter me.  Again, I studied, I listened, I learned and I watched those women and men who were very successful in Corporate America.  I was promoted and promoted and promoted.  I visualized the next level, I watched those who did it successfully and I went for it and achieved level after level ultimately achieving my set goal somewhere back in 2005 or so. 

I think that many of the New Age approaches over simplify the process of attraction by saying “just see it and feel it and you’ll attract it to you."  I say that is absolutely not true at all.  If it is your path to create certain things, you will create certain things.  If you set a reasonably achievable goal, get the facts about what it will take to get there, learn what is necessary to achieve a set goal and then go about taking every step with good intent, confidence and demonstrated ability, the only thing that can stop you then is fear or doubt.

These two stories represent very different scenarios of my life that carried the same theme:  Visualizing and then achieving a goal (okay - others too but let's stick to the one easiest to get to on the surface and I'll get to the others in another post).  It’s important to remember that we’re very often NOT handed what we think we want for a very good reason.  The journey is the destination in goal achievement really.  The things I learned after I set goals and went after them are worth more than the actual goal achievement itself.  Naysayers do absolutely nothing for you but trigger the ego into fear.  Action based on fear leads to trouble eventually and you may find goals set in fear aren’t always so satisfactory once achieved.  That is also something I learned.

Life Lessons Learned

No matter what goals you set for yourself or how you go about achieving them, you’ll learn even if you seem to fail.  I have failed so many times in my life seemingly but when I step back and look at what I’ve learned to create out of nothing and when there was seemingly no hope, I am just in awe.  I have created much in my life that I’m grateful for and I wouldn’t trade a single thing.  I did realize something important though.  The goal isn’t always as important as how you get there.  I am not a wealthy woman in terms of assets and dollar signs.  But I’m infinitely rich in knowledge in terms of love, a confident knowing that I can create whatever my heart truly desires and that I can do what I love.  These are the things that create a wealth to me.

I like to look back at this picture every now and then and see a little girl raised on welfare from a broken home.  Even with everything stacked against her, she let nothing deter her - Not social status, not naysayers and not lack of much outside support.  I learned a lot in my life and will continue to and that makes me smile.  I don’t have to be the smartest, the richest or the best dressed to make me happy.  Along life’s little mini journeys I’ve learned to appreciate people, diversity, challenge and beauty.  It’s all part of a much bigger goal of getting through life.  

 

© 2015 JL Harter (photo, I believe was taken by a teammate’s parent, most likely the Wells or Dornis Family - I'm pictured standing in the back row, farthest to the left)

Outcome Modification Process Explained

Physics teaches us that what we focus on, we create. Until we become aware and more awakened, we unconsciously create from a place of fear, anxiety and pain. As we learn, grow and begin to heal from the wounds within (and we find them by seeing the product of our thoughts manifesting without) we learn that we can consciously create from place of love, hope and joy. Like attracts like and our thoughts magnetize the energy about us so that we draw to us what our thoughts command. Think positive, heal the source of the negative thoughts and then begin to consciously create. Unconscious creations are good for learning but when you get tired of those kinds of lessons and can stop blaming the outside world for them, you can change the outcome by what you put into your world. Positive thoughts and conscious creation will change the outcomes in your lives. Know that there is no right or wrong way to learn...there is no judgment...and we have free will to hold either negative or positive thoughts. We will attract to us what we most need to learn and in that, the creating is perfect for each either way.

To some, the above concept is a gross over simplification and nothing but new age BS.  I used to be one of those so, I completely understand.  Until the moment I realized my life was falling apart and I took a courageous look at what the common thread was in all of my life's happenings (e.g., me and decisions made that were not well thought out to say the very least), I could not complete the shift in thinking necessary to move from a negative state of results I didn't want to a positive state achieving results I did want.  I've had conversations with naysayers and again I'll say that I completely understand.  Words such as, "What do you mean I'm to blame - all of this s$%! just happens to me...everything I touch turns bad or goes wrong and nothing I do will change it...I'm sick of being hurt all of the time, I'm sick of being taken advantage of and left with nothing but pain," are not lost on me at all.  I so get it.  I remember those feelings because I once held them but there isn't some magical belief you hold that transforms you.  You really have to look with a keen eye towards the major things you were involved in in your life that went wrong and understand how you had the hand in your own undoing.  Maybe it's something simple as putting too much trust in others that had not sufficiently earned that trust.  Maybe its that you had too high of hopes out of sync with the reality of a situation and who you were dealing with and you exposed yourself.  Maybe the gamble was just too big or you were seeking a quick way out and took it without much thought to what all of the risks were.  Maybe it was really you making not well thought out decisions all along that lead to your down fall time and time again.  Believe me, I know how this feels. I've been there, done that and gotten many messy T-Shirts.

I spent 3 years in near complete solitude at one point in my life because everything had gone wrong, everything I touched lead to my pain, everything I did backfired and it got so bad all I could do was cry myself to sleep at night from the pain of it.  But one sleepless night, something happened.  I kept asking myself, "What is it?  What is it that I am doing wrong?  This victim thinking is putting my power in everyone else's hands leaving me a perpetual victim to float forever in a stream of nothing but terror and misery emotionally.  And then, I saw someone else making the same mistakes as I had made and I realized, with chills, that there was no mistake about what I was seeing.  I was going to have to spend some time trying to separate the themes and sets of assumptions I always made and based my decisions on.  I found a good number of things as I began to go deeper within.  First of all, I routinely expected those around me to behave like me - honest, high integrity and responsible - they'll do what they say they are going to do no matter what.  One of the first things I learned was that THAT was a terrible assumption and expectation on my part and quite unrealistic.  I realized quickly too that I needed to have much greater experience with people before I put forth any kind of trust.  It is not that I refused to trust, it's just that I had to learn to be more cautiously optimistic with how I expended my resources with people who talked a good talk but I had not yet experienced enough time with them to see if they could walk the walk before I trusted them with my resources or goals, plans and dreams.  I began to take accountability.  I began to become more self-reliant emotionally, physically and financially.  I wasn't making enough money for my obligations and so I took a second job rather than relying on others who said they'd help me and then didn't, wouldn't or couldn't.  I cut out all extra expenses.  I realized the assumption that I needed to hold was that I was in fact surrounded by people who could not be there for me the way I was there for them.  I had to understand that also was a theme.  Why did I feel responsible for stopping or mitigating the pain of others when there was no reciprocation - there was only taking from me in those around me and no giving.  That wasn't their bad - that was mine. I blamed them but I realized that I needed to blame me for my own assumptions and expectations. The Serenity Prayer lead me out of that one - God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdome to know the difference.  These words a genius to me!

The deeper I went into my assumptions and expectations about situations and people I had experienced, the more I began to ask, why?  Why did I do that?  What was I really after?  What was I hoping to gain from an action that lead to pain? Was I trying to change things beyond my control?  What was within the realm of my control? As I tore apart the themes, I saw what lay hidden underneath.  That is where things got very interesting.  I found a lot of pain that had laid dormant, unhealed but affecting my thoughts in the negative.  I wondered what would happen if I changed the premises of my thoughts and assumptions, maybe ditch all assumptions and seek validation and clarity in advance, if that might change the outcomes.  It did but not enough.  The trust thing came in again - even though I would validate with crystal clarity verbally in advance I still could not guarantee with certainty an outcome and began to realize that I couldn't control an outcome at all.  The only thing I could really do was set my intent, be solid in what I hoped to achieve (e.g., have a good goal that had nothing to do with anything but honest input and healthy focus for result) and then do my part to get there actively and not passively.  When I took accountability for doing my part, everything changed.  I began to see clearly that the only power I truly had was the power I exercised to control my own thoughts and actions and that the actions of others were far beyond my control.  I started to see things differently and started having better outcomes as a result.

This isn't a one-time process and you're healed though.  It takes effort every day and now today when I see an unpleasant outcome, I can quickly diagnose where I went wrong in my thought process.  I then can take the steps to focus on healing what caused me to overlook something obvious and plan to do things differently the next time. What is so funny is that the universe, in it's infinite wisdom, will give you plenty of tests to make sure your creation process is operating the way you intended based on the time and effort put into it.  I'll give you an example I see so much:  Dating - take someone who is lonely who just wants a date or a relationship but they are so fearful that what happened in the past that hurt them will happen again in the future.  I'll stop right there - this - this is a bad way to start...fear of pain from what has happened before is never a place to start.  Heal the pain first - set clear intent - and then take action so that you create from a place of curiosity rather than fear...that you create from a place of hope rather than contempt and then, then you will change your experience going further. First of all, behaviors in others that triggered past pain for you will be more visible and you won't invest time in those kinds of folks.  This will clear the path for those to date that will be more rewarding for you.  The process works just like that.  Find out where you are holding negativity and fear and clear that before you engage in a similar interaction where those emotions will rise to the surface.  If you step way back, you begin to see how it is the planning, the intent, the focus and your beliefs that create your outcomes.  Test it.  Try different things and see what happens. When lessons repeat, there is something you missed.  Don't feel bad!  Just go over the inputs again and see what you can refine or modify and then reset your intent and try it again.

Life is really amazing when you begin to understand just exactly how you create in this world.  I hope I've done a little better job on expanding the concepts in the first paragraph.  I love this lesson and test it often and it is a recipe that works...what I put into something, I will get out of something.  If I go into something with pain, I'm going to attract something that will bring me more of the same.  If I go into something with curiosity, balance and focus, I'm not going to accept what doesn't measure up to the outcome I seek and so will modify or change the resources that come at me to help me create...the outcomes will manifest if I do my homework correctly.  I love how this works now that I understand but I hated it when I didn't know what was going on.  We live, we love, we learn and hopefully grow.  I hope I've given you some food for thought at least!  When you hear that our thoughts are so powerful, well - this is just one of those ways.  If you want delicious chocolate chip cookies, you can't go into the process fearful that they are going to taste terrible!  You need to make sure you have the right ingredients, tools and process to make them come out right.  If you get a bad result, note what went into the batch, the process or timing and modify accordingly.  I'm hungry now!  I hope you get out there and create a beautiful lives for yourselves.  The tools seem to always shift and change but hey, you ARE powerful and can create new tools, look for better resources and pull everything together in a beautifully rewarding process.  You can.  Just believe it and half the battle is already won.  ~Blessings.

(c) 2012 Jaie Hart (Photo - this beautiful painting is not mine but I loved it - the focus is peace and serenity - smiles).