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“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” Antonio Gramsci  This quote was written in 1929, a decade before the beginning of WWII, and it is no less appropriate today. People are desperate to return to the old ways, to get back to “normal”, but they are forgetting the old ways weren’t working.
Life has been becoming less and less sustainable and yet we continue to act in selfish, irreverent ways towards the planet that houses us. In the movie The Matrix, Mr. Smith refers to humans as a virus, an organism that consumes every natural resource until depletion. We operate on fear, on the premise that there is not enough, which leads to greed and hoarding (think of the toilet paper crisis in the US during the pandemic). We cause each other, the planet, and her beings, great suffering with our wars, our greed, and our ignorance. Out of touch with our inner world we are desperate to gain control of our outer world through any means necessary –oppression, violence, torture, genocide, wars, bombings, shootings - all have become accepted means of gaining control in the “us vs them “society in which we live. We turn to drugs, sex, gambling, shopping, television, and technology to numb our minds and escape this unholy way of being. We are the monsters that walk amongst us, puppets of the evil that is created when we join our fears together and give each other permission to commit monstrous acts. The only way out is through compassion and love, through recognizing our oneness, through understanding that the suffering of a man in the Middle East is no less than the suffering of our mother or our daughter. To fully grasp that is not a sink or swim situation for individuals but rather for mankind as a species. The hope lies in the research of David Hawkins, which states- “One individual who lives and vibrates to the energy of optimism and a willingness to be nonjudgmental of others will counterbalance the negativity of 90,000 individuals who calibrate at the lower weakening levels.” The question you must ask yourself is – Are my thoughts and actions contributing to collective weak energy levels or am I using my power to help others to shift to a higher level of being? Does your role support extinction or evolution?
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Follow your heart Trust your gut Crush your irrational fears Stand up and be you, even if you stand alone.   We've all seen the races where someone wins by a stroke, the games where the underdog comes from behind and the marathons where the tenacity of putting one foot in front of the other, over and over again is what leads to the finish line.
In all these cases, while winning may be the ultimate goal the victories occur in the moments. Win the day by holding the vision in your mind but placing your focus on the next minute. Win the day by winning the moments. When we change the beginning of the story we change the whole story.  Imagine if we used this as the guiding principle in creating services for pregnant women, wrapping the expectant mothers with services that optimize well- being for them and providing the healthiest environment possible for the baby to develop in.
And what if we continued supporting mothers and their babies, regardless of income level, age, or race. Imagine a world where babies were born into a community that welcomed them and supported their physical, emotional, and mental growth. Imagine the kind of world we could create by minimizing stress and trauma, on both mother and child and instead helping them to thrive. Imagine if, as a society, we did our absolute best to create a good beginning for every individual. Imagine.  The ego operates from a place of fear: the heart works from a place of love. The ego is obsessed with lack, comparisons, winning, competition, and security; the heart wants to comfort, to share, to help, to include. Ego vs Heart Ego: I close my eyes to your suffering so that I don’t get hurt. Heart: I not only witness your suffering, but I bear it with you. Ego: I focus on how different you are instead of seeing how much we are alike. Heart: I will walk with you. Ego: I am number one. Heart: I am here to serve. Ego: There is not enough to go around. Heart: I have so much please help yourself. Ego: I thrive on your failure. Heart: I celebrate your success. Ego: I push fear away by using denial and distancing myself from it. Heart: I’m scared too but I won’t desert you. we’ll do it together Ego: I ignore the consequences my actions have on others and the planet. Heart: I am you, you are me, we are one. Which one is calling the shots in your life? Recently someone asked the question “what are some affirmations that actually work?”. Although that was the question, I think they were really looking for an answer to the question “how do I get affirmations to work”. Many people view affirmations as some magical cure all, but without intention, belief, and action they are only words.
For an affirmation to work a few conditions must be present:
Affirmations aren’t magic, but they can be an effective tool when used in conjunction with setting clear intentions and goals and taking action to reach these goals. Check out my YouTube channel to get started with some short, affirmation videos. Gratitude is one of my favorite topics, because it is a feel-good topic. There is something a bit supernatural about it, the way it can completely transform perceptions, feelings, and experiences. Even material goods seem to become something more when viewed with gratitude. Gratitude throws open the gates of the heart and closes the judgments of the mind. One of my father’s favorite proverbs was "I cried because I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no feet". Gratitude can bring about that feeling without witnessing someone with less. It has a way of making a little seem like an abundance, a way of brightening all the colors, of making the air smell fresher and your body feel lighter. Gratitude can give you that spring in your step.
So anytime you are feeling down, disheartened, or disenchanted, or if you are feeling a lack in some area of your life, like you don’t have enough -money, love, friends, time - stop and challenge yourself to write down things you are grateful for. It is an exercise that once you start it will gain its own momentum. If you are feeling stuck start small, like – the weather is nice; you enjoyed a hot shower; you heard a great song on the radio; you got a good parking spot. Look at those things that you take for granted – like indoor plumbing or your car starting when you turn the key, or the electricity needed to make that delicious first cup of coffee in the morning, or that fact that you slept in a bed last night and that you woke up this morning. These are the types of things we take for granted until something brings them to our attention – usually when something unexpected happens. I am saying don’t wait for that interference, instead notice now, notice the gifts, the blessings, the magic and miracles that surround you in every moment. Gratitude is a game changer – practice at your own risk, it is highly addictive. We have all been there, hearing the clock ticking on a pressing decision we need to make. We have spun it around and around in our minds, written down the pros and cons, gotten the opinions of others and still we cannot seem to choose. Our mind keeps flip-flopping and sending anxious messages throughout our body. But there is hope in a technique called heart brain coherence that joins the judgmental, critical brain with the feeling, intuitive heart and can lead you to make the decision that is right for you.
The first step is to place your hand or fingers over your heart space -touching this space is recommended because where attention goes, energy flows. Next focus on slow, even breathing – it can help to visualize the breath entering and exiting through your heart. And lastly, you want to use your mind to visualize and your heart to feel things that put you into an elevated state - people, pets, things, and experiences that bring emotions like gratitude, awe, joy, appreciation, and love (if you can keep it uncomplicated). This exercise will synch your brain and your heart which can help you to tap into your intuition, and that is key is making good decisions. An additional benefit is the combined force of your two “brains” (the heart is now being referred to as the second brain by some researchers) is that messages of well-being will be sent to the cells in your body. This practice can be done for a few minutes or longer and it can leave you feeling wonderful physically, mentally, and emotionally. I was thinking about our fast paced, distraction filled world, and how consumed we have become with being busy and being visible. We live out our lives on social media and look to others for validation. We crave that rush of dopamine we get when someone likes our tweets, posts, pics, stories, pins, blogs, vlogs; we wait for that ding, that notification, that thumbs up, that new follower, that nod of approval. We are like children yelling – watch me mommy, watch me. With enough nods we may even feel like we have arrived. But that satisfaction is short lived, we must be up and running with the next bit of information, consumed by how we measure up.
And why are we addicted to busyness and shallowness? Maybe because we are bored, maybe because we are overwhelmed with choices and information. Maybe because we are insecure, or because we are overworked and exhausted. And maybe because we are afraid, afraid of what time alone with just our thoughts might mean. What if we don’t measure up in our own eyes? What if we look deeply and can find no meaning in our lives, in life in general? What if we cannot pinpoint our purpose, or find any point to life, then what? What if the constant running, doing, chatting, discussing, planning all mean nothing. What if we realize that no matter how fast we run, death keeps pace and will catch up to us right on schedule. What then? Using our minds, we can peer at moments from the past, like clicking thru snapshots on a view finder (yes I am old!). These memories may even carry emotions back with them, but we are still remembering with our minds. Compare this to those that are stored in our sense organs, the ones powerful enough to bring the past back and plop it right down in front of us.
For instance, thoughts about my mother my bring warm, loving feelings, but if I remember through the cells of my hand I can feel how it felt to hold her aging hand in mine – the coolness of it, and how it seemed to have gotten smaller and how the bones protruded more -this remembering brings with it a longing to feel her touch again; and memories of watching my father comb his gorgeous hair in the bathroom mirror are just images in my mind, but give me a whiff of his cologne, Aqua Velva, and poof he is in the room with me (I keep a bottle in my medicine cabinet just for this reason) ; or images of my dog, Johnnie, waiting to greet me when I came home - I can see his sweet face, but if I remember through my skin I can feel the softness of his fur, and just for an instant he is back in my arms; and I can think of pizza and imagine how it would taste but walking by a pizza shop, on a warm summer’s night, transports me back to giggling with my girlfriends, at the church carnivals of my youth. What a precious gift we possess, to be able to live in the present but touch the past, and just for the briefest of moments, hold it in our hearts. Your turn – what memories come to life for you when you hear, smell, see, taste, or touch the past? |
AuthorCatherine Cashmere is a newbie blogger, working on transforming her own life and hoping to shine light for others. 
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