Not an Every Day Journey

 

 

I woke up early to watch the sky change colors as the sun climbed up into the sky.  The display is one I never ever tire of.  Its magical how the sky goes from inky black with millions of pin point stars, to dark blue, faded blue, to smoky pink, peach and then golden.  Every new day always strikes me as a rebirth.  It isn’t actually that but the world turning on its axis as it orbits the sun. But I like my magical thoughts more than my scientific ones this morning. 

 

I made some coffee, fed the cat and retrieved and then filled the bird feeders.  I sipped coffee watching my little winged friends flitting about excited for an easy meal.  The brightly colored Finches and Sparrows are a favorite.  After they finish a nibble, the bigger birds swoop in to pick up off the ground what the little birds pushed out of the feeders.  The Grackles and Doves get a bite too.  I just love to see them for some reason.  I have small windchimes around the posts that hold the feeders so I can hear when the birds fly in for breakfast.  Well that and I love the little windchimes.

 

It's cool out now so I threw the front and back doors open.  I can hear the birds singing happily along with the occasional whir of air conditioning units kicking on.  Out here in the desert, we are heavily dependent on the air conditioning to keep us not only comfortable but safe from the extreme heat of the late Spring and Summer days.  Sometimes I long for greener scenery but there is something about this place that called to me so long ago.  It came to me one afternoon nearly 20 years ago.  I lived in Southern California and was paying ridiculous amounts of rent, daycare on three kids on one income.  The idea of moving to Arizona came to me.  I could at least solve the exorbitant housing expense.  I just wasn’t quite ready to leave.  But then, over the years the call changed.  Added to it was a desire to not just move to a new place but to be a home owner.  As a single parent of 3, there was just no way I could come up with a down payment.  There was also no way my boss at that time was going to let me telecommute.  A few years later, I had 4 children and no idea how to manifest the dream.  But it came back due to circumstances reinforcing the original thought – giving me pause to remember and consider. I wondered, why couldn’t I just manifest the resources?  That changed to – why don’t I just manifest the resources. And that is exactly what I did.

 

I found my desired location (the city felt like home as soon as I accidentally found it) and started looking for houses in my price range.  I figured out what I needed for a down payment.  I definitely didn’t have that but I didn’t let that discourage me.  I imagined what it would feel like to sit in my back yard sipping coffee.   I imagined my bank account growing so that I would have enough.  I stayed open, positive, and every day looked at homes and started getting really excited about the idea.  I found myself a mortgage broker and an agent.  I found a way to manage a down payment, pulled together the funds for a mover and before I knew it an offer had been made and accepted on a home that really sparked my inner being.  We went to Arizona to see the house and fell in love.  45 days later, we were moving in.

 

I was paying twice my now mortgage plus just for rent in California.  But, my new boss allowed me to telecommute and I was able to bring my California salary with me to Arizona.  My dreaming, positive thinking, staying open to ideas that would better align me to my goal paid off.  Here I sit 4 years later on my back patio sipping coffee watching the birds munching happily the bird seed I just filled the bird feeders with.  I did it on my own.  I did what I once thought impossible.  I manifested a dream I scarcely let out into the light of day.  I’m still amazed today at how everything came together.

 

The trick was giving voice to the dream, as specific as I could while staying completely open to the how and trusting the how would come together.  I did my part.  I researched, I gave good positive thoughts to it daily, I worked to do my part and not one hitch was encountered.  It could have been a disaster, but it wasn’t.  Uprooting your life from being born and raised in one state to another is no easy thing.  But it was the perfect thing for us.  I always knew that Arizona held magic for me. Yeah, there’s that word again.  Let me have my magic!  My first grandchild was born a year ago and as I ease myself into that next part of life I have managed with the Universe’s help, to create for myself a fabulous framework for that next stage whatever it will hold for me.  I couldn’t be happier.

 

More than thirty years ago while driving through the desert, a thought came to me – “Lost and Found in the Desert.”  I didn’t think much of it at the time but as I sit here now, I know exactly what that means for me.  I was lost in so many ways before but when I came here, to the desert in the land of the sun, I found myself.  I found what I didn’t even know had been missing.  The journey of the last 30 years, every step, every misstep, all the good times, all the hard times – they all led up to this moment.   In this moment I feel tried and tested.  I feel strong and so happy.  Times won’t always feel happy because there have been some hard, hard things to face on this journey.  While I know now that dreams can come true, the every day journey is going with the flow, knowing that emotions and circumstance are fleeting, and that every life journey is extraordinary.  It’s no everyday ordinary journey that brought me here.  It was a dream that I gave voice too, concentrated on and helped manifest into reality.  I’m grateful for every part of my journey up until now. The good times – the bad times – the happy times and dire sad times…all of those times instilled in me the character I needed to build, let shine, let grow and to keep on dreaming.  Yeah, this had not been your every day journey.  It has been a magical one.

 

© 2023 J.L. Harter (photos and words)

Is Your Success Hollow?

There are many definitions of success in practice in this world. Some would consider success in mere financial terms, some might consider success only in social terms and some might consider success to mean positions of power. To each, success has its own definition and for a very good reason.
 
Far be it for me or any other to judge another’s version of success because we just cannot possibly know what another’s life lessons entail. Perhaps for some, they wished to learn about poverty, lack, or strife and struggle? If they achieve those life lessons, would they not also be achieving success if they are truly learning from those things?

I once measured success by the standards of others and took every step to get where my goal set by the ideals of others would have me go. When I achieved them (which I have to admit I have achieved everything I set out to do when I put effort and imagination into it with all of my heart), I realized that my version of success is not what everyone else’s is.  It did not result in happiness for me.

So, I gave up position, title and extra money. I gave up pursuing the ideas of what others would normally consider success and spent some time focusing and reflecting on what success truly meant to me. In an instant of clarity amidst much chaos, everything changed.

I found what success meant to me and decided to align my efforts with that idea and focus on the challenging and beautiful parts of my life to better understand them. My idea of success no longer includes money, too many possessions, position or power. I’ve simplified my own version because that is what called to me.

The result? Much more peace, much more happiness and much more time for further reflection and refinement of my focus on what matters to me most. I wish to understand my life lessons. That’s it. So simple. That is success to me: learning to live and understanding the little things that drive us to do what we do.  It matters more to me the things that'll stay with me when I one day choose to leave this realm when my last breath is taken.

Whatever your definition of success, pursue it with all of your heart and you will achieve it if you’re ready to take the steps, build courage and the tenacity to do whatever it is you set your heart and mind to. Never mind how anyone else defines success and please resist the urge to measure yourself worth by the success of others. When you achieve someone else’s version of success, the victory is hollow. Focus on what means most to you and your own life enrichment because THAT is the definition of success that matters most.


© 2015 Jaie Hart (photo/words)

Hold This For Me, My Power

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Oh the ways we give it away so unaware.  If only we knew the keys to prevent ourselves from giving away our power at every turn, we might be better able to address our human interactions in this life.  You see, there will always exist those who know no other way to exist than to intimidate and manipulate others for their power not realizing they have it within.  There too will always be those of us who too willingly give it away without thinking.  Here are some ways to know when you have given your power away and I put them in no particular order:

1. Victim thought processes or identification.

2. Blame thought processes or identification.

3. Dependency thought processes or identification.

4. Manipulating thought processes or identification.

5. Intimidating thought processes or identification.

6. Judgmental thought processes or identification.

7. Persecuting thought processes or identification.

8. Negative self-thoughts and perceptions.

9. Vengeful thoughts and identification.

Do you begin to see where I am going maybe even just a little?  The moment we have given in to any of the above thought processes, beliefs, actions or identification, we have diminished our own power and given it away either through holding a false belief or a fear that we created in response to some kind of external stimulus that it was actually we who created to begin with.  No, this is not a blame the victim thought process and if that is what you take from this so far, I must ask you to go much deeper than the superficial egoic mind to understand.  Going deeper within to feel for understanding will actually raise you above your ego that believes that it always must be right, perfect, save face, be the most, the best, the whatever anyone else may think of as cool and wonderful.  We have to get beyond these things in order for us to begin to dust off the emotional debris we’ve collected inside of us through our lack of awareness that keeps our truth hidden from view.

First and foremost, we are powerful always in all ways all the time.  It is only when we choose not to be powerful that we sink into the dramas of the world that we momentarily think have more significant meaning than they really do.   Going back a bit further to form a framework for you from which you may begin to understand, you are here, believe it or not, to experience and experience life in ways YOU choose.  Yes, you choose and there is no room in your choices really for judgment, blame, seeking perfection, to be right, better, best, etc.  You can give your power away through these things if you want to but you don’t have to.  It is a choice. 

Some things don’t seem like choices at all.  Some things feel entirely thrust upon us quite unexpectedly and it is way too easy to get caught up in identifying with the victim or blaming activities in order to vent your way through an experience.  It wastes your precious energy to engage in such thinking and sometimes acting.  It takes less energy and promotes a greater sense of balance for you to attempt to seek understanding for your own choices (whether you realize you made them or not).  Bad things happen to bad people.  Bad things happen to good people too.  The judgment of “bad” is just that, a judgment and it is a judgment most often based on a false premise or belief.  When you begin to understand that we are all part of the whole of life, you start to think about things a little differently.  At some point you begin to disconnect from the world of victims and villains and start to instead embrace the world as it is through compassion and seeking understanding of what you really intended in your creation of this dramatic experience or that one.  You had an intent.  You just can’t recall it. 

You may have heard the term Maya as an attribute describing the superficial consciousness of and happenings in this world as illusion.  In the world of Maya, ego rules supreme and merely battles and clashes with all it encounters in the fight for better/best, etc.  Ego judges, persecutes, attempts to steal what it already has, competes for some superficial prize that doesn’t take one anywhere or give anyone anything of lasting import.  Spoiler Alert:  There is no prize for being better, best, right, stealing energy, giving it away or striving to master illusions.  What we get from this life is the richness or value of our experiences rather than the experiences solely.  If we maintain a place of power, which is our right, we do not have to choose the world of villains and victims whether or not others wish to exist in those worlds and believe in those frameworks.  You can live your life in fear or worry or you can choose not to. 

I’m not saying any of this is easy.  I can’t even say I’ve done it all the time.  I too am just a mere student of this life but I do know a surely as I’m sitting here breathing and typing away that I can feel it when I give my power away and I can feel it when others try to take it from me.  Psychology and lack of awareness runs rampant in our world.  It has been this way always.  But some of us who care to look can catch glimpses of the truth deep within us and take great comfort in the knowing that it is we who choose to be energized or depleted, to become victorious or defeated as we face each of the scenes of our lives we have created for the challenge of the experience.

I suggest to you that despite how you have lived and what you have experienced up to this point in your life, you can make a choice to understand your beliefs, their origins and whether or not you will continue to buy into them or not.  You too can choose whether or not you will stand in your power full of love and light or hand it over to the very next person who demands it through manipulation or fear generating villain-like postures.  It’s all up to you.

In the midst of some of our darkest and most challenging experiences, these little flashes of insight will come from your soul.  Watch for these and expect them to show up for the purpose of your truest and most reliable guidance.  Steer clear of energy robbing anger, frustration, fear, intimidation and all the other negatives as much as you can.  Do so through seeking understanding and choosing how you wish to participate with such things in such a way where you hold yourself accountable for neither doing yourself nor anyone else any intentional harm and you can find and hold your power to you.  If you give it away in fear of worry, you cannot positively create.  I can attest to this fact.  If you hold it with the knowing, trust or faith in yourself as a Source-Connected miracle of energetic existence, you have half the battle of dealing with the challenges you face won.  You can then step back a bit and observe what you might have wanted to glean from the experiences you go through.  The self-love you do hold in the heart of your soul knows that you established experiences for much higher reasons than reinforcing your weaknesses.  The heart of your knows that you created experiences to rediscover your strengths.

It’s a huge leap sometimes to go from fearful to courageous.  So, start with one little step instead and that very simple step begins with curiosity.  Be curious rather than assumptive, judgmental or resorting to persecution, blame or vengeance.  You’ll feel much better about your experiences in the end because then you are moving in tune with your soul that has a much longer-lasting impact than the superficial pursuits of the ego.   Speaking from experience, when your heart stops and your consciousness goes on, the things the ego thinks are important here on Earth do NOT come with you.  What does come with you is the love you held inside, the compassion you experienced, the awe, wonder and beauty of your experiences comes with you and nothing more.  Okay, for some may be regret comes too but if you are alive right now and reading this then there is plenty of time for you to shift your thinking.  Do it today.  You have the power within you and all the love in the universe behind you and to support you.  ~Blessings of infinite love and light.

(Photo, fortunate random internet find)