reaching happiness blog

Thoughts on Marriage

My niece is getting married this week. She met her fiance in 9th grade and they started dating on her 14th birthday. Now they're 22 and they won a contest for a "no pay wedding day," probably because their romance is so sweet and inspiring. They've never broken up or wanted to be with anyone else.

I was telling their story to friends the other day and the man said "Why would they want to be married?" I had forgotten that he has chosen not to marry his partner of 22 years, even though they have a child together and own a home. I think of them as married.

It reminds me of visiting my parents with my husband before we were married. It was Christmastime and I was so hoping for a ring. But my husband wasn't ready to make that commitment. I knew we'd be sleeping apart because that was my parents' policy for unmarried people in their home. At the airport when we arrived, my dad said to me "You and Peter will be sleeping in your room." Shocked, I said to him "Dad, we're not married!" (as if he hadn't noticed) He shrugged and said "Some people just seem married."

My friends seem married, but don't choose to be. They say their relationship is better than most of the married people they know, as if marriage would ruin it. My niece and her intended are over the moon that they're finally tying the knot. What's the difference? I don't think the difference is marriage; I think the difference is the people in the marriage, their choices and intentions. I believe my friends would have the same relationship they have now, even if they did marry, because of who they are and what they want together.

I believe a good marriage brings out the best in us, enhances us, makes us more than we would be on our own. In my work as a Marriage, Family Therapist and Life Coach, I often see the results of marriages that have torn people down, diminished them and left them hurting and bitter. Over and over I see and read in the news about people who have so completely lost touch with themselves and the other person that they convince themselves that happiness can only be found outside of their union.

But happiness is an inside job. And deep within, we are all longing to love and be loved. Great marriages grow over time from an ongoing choice to show one other who you really are and find ways to feel fond of what is seen there. And even when you zig and the other zags and sparks fly as a result, you both find ways to come back to being kind and heal the rifts before they become chasms.

I think that people who don't choose marriage find other ways to love and be loved. Personally I love being married. I love living with my best friend, someone who knows me better with each passing year, with whom I have shared almost half of my life. By now we've worked out most of the kinks. He's got my back and I've got his. We aren't completely similar and we each have parts of us that get fed outside the marriage. But when we come home and we climb into bed at night, we know we're with someone we respect and admire, someone who matters. And that means to the world to me.

(This blog was inspired by a quote that I read in Time Magazine ~ "Adultery is not about sex or romance. Ultimately, it is about how little we mean to one another." If you'd like to receive my Quote of the Week, please e-mail me ~ janet@reachinghappiness.com.)

Forgiveness

I've been going through the lessons in A Course in Miracles day by day. Yesterday's message was "Forgiveness is the key to happiness." Even though I was having a perfectly normal, respectable day, my mind inside was starting to make noises along the lines of "you could have done that better; don't be late; you've been eating no carbs for a week and you haven't lost a pound."

I think that's what the Buddhists call the monkey mind - the chatter that the ego creates to keep us from feeling our stillness and our wholeness, or as I like to call it, our holiness. The Course says the ego is an ancient thought that we are separated from God, and it also says that this can't be true. We are never, ever separated from the Source of all Life...we can't be, because we are Life. My friend Steve, who died a few months ago, saw this in his final days. He said something to the effect of "It's all just love." I try to remember what he saw as I attempt to counter the nattering of my human, in the world, physical mind.

Another line from the Course - "The unforgiving mind sees no mistakes, but only sins." I heard that the word sin is an archery term meaning "to miss the mark." I like to think of a mistake as a "missed take." We look at something and miss seeing the love that's there, probably because our perception is so affected by what we expect to see. Our unforgiving mind holds mistakes against the person. It indicts them and declares that the mistake is evidence of who they are, the sum total of their identity. Our minds can get very locked in to this perception.

Yesterday my mind was doing that, about itself. Why? It might have sensed that I was seeking to loosen the lock that my unforgiving mind has on my being. Forgiving doesn't mean condoning everything that happened. Forgiving means looking through what happened and seeing "some little spark of brightness shining through the ugly picture you hold of it, him or her." (Again, from the Course.)

When I told my husband I was working on holding no grievances, he said "I'm working on untraceable explosive devices." I tend to be serious and spiritual. He's humorous, which I love about him. Humor loosens the lock of our unforgiving mind, too. When we can see humor in a situation we're on our way to forgiving the moment of all its seriousness and allowing that there might be lighter, more loving perceptions worth considering.

Please feel free to comment here. I love comments, and I'd love to send you my Quote of the Week, if you don't get it already. Just e-mail me at janet@reachinghappiness.com. Thanks for reading.

Don't worry; it's benign

Dear God (my journal entries almost always start this way),

Please help me to see social security differently. That's my prayer for the day. I am the representative payee for my disabled niece, and the system is driving me crazy! She can't get the benefits she needs because their computer says she has more money than she does. I can't reach a real person to change it in their computer, even though I spent half an hour on hold yesterday. Checkmate. I'm sure you all have similar situations in your lives, things you need that you appear to be blocked from getting by some cosmic hand being held up, saying "Screw you. We scoff at your request."

But the spiritually seeking part of me thinks " surely that can't be right. There's not a cosmic hand determined to thwart my progress. That's all in my mind (even if everyone else can relate because all our minds agree)."  I can change my mind, which gives me the possibility of changing the results. Thus the prayer "please help me to see this differently." The line that I'm currently studying from A Course in Miracles says "Above all else I want to see." I want to see Jennifer, my niece, as the spirit that she is, not disabled but light-filled. I want to see social security not as a bureaucracy but as a network of people who are ready to help. In another context they could be my friends.

Taking this one step further, A Course in Miracles encourages us to see that everything that happens is not an attack upon us. The other day when I was writing in my journal about a frustration regarding my husband I heard myself think "don't worry; it's benign," and my body relaxed instantly....See it differently. See it as benign, harmless. It can't hurt you. Cosmically it can't hurt you. It may appear to beat up your body (think cancer), but your spirit won't be harmed unless you believe that what is happening is harmful.

That's tricky, if not impossible to do, especially with cancer. It's benign? Yeah right. But what if, when the doctor first pronounced the diagnosis..."cancer, not benign" we could keep the feeling of benign even through the treatments (this is for you, Steve). What if we held in our minds the sweet feeling of being unharmed. I wonder if it would affect our recovery, our cells' ability to create health.

And if the person going through the perceived threat, whatever the threat is, is too immersed in the threat to feel the possibility of benevolence, that's what friends are for. "Whenever two or three are gathered...." Whoever can hold the space, the feeling of no harm on behalf of their loved ones and themselves is superbly helpful. That's really what prayer chains are about...not so much "oh God, please don't make something terrible happen" but more "dear God, thank you for your promise of no harm. Please help me to see how benign this truly is. Please help us to see this differently."

Wish me luck today on my next foray into the network of friends I have there at the social security office...and if you send up a prayer or visualization that all is benign, I bet I'll get better results.Thank you; blessings back to you (and prayers for Steve, too).     ~  Janet

(to return to my website, go to www.reachinghappiness.com and if you'd like to receive my quote of the week, e-mail me at janet@reachinghappiness.com)

Keeping Christmas

This is a journal entry that I wrote last year. I came across it when I was sending cards, and I thought I'd share it with you. My New Year's goal is to start writing blogs once a month again.

Christmas, 2007...What is my gift to the Christ child? My gift is to love my husband when he's taking a nap instead of sitting out here by the tree and the fire with me. My gift is to love the people who send an in your face fundamentalist card with no mention of love. My gift is to love my cat, purring next to me, even though he bites everyone who touches him.

The thing about love is, we just have to do it, not think about it. Just love no matter what. Love and love and love some more, whether we're getting love back or not. Love the way our dogs love us. Love irresponsibly, extravagantly, with abandon.

What would our inner being ~ our non-physical, eternal, all about love, connected to the Christ child, connected to every child, God-self feel about life right now? That all is well.

A sleeping baby, so full of innocence and promise. God came and said "Pay attention to this one. This one is special." Personally, I don't believe it was quite like that. In my belief, God is saying "Pay attention to this one" about all sleeping babies all the time. I believe that God would say "All are special. All are expressions of the Life and Love that I Am." I think Jesus was elevated to Christhood because of how he lived his life. He told us that what he did, we can do also. To let everything fall away but the love. We can do that. To see God within every person, every situation. We can do that. It heals us to do that, to see God in the terrorists and anyone else who feels so far away from love that they think destruction is God's will.

God's will is only love. Jesus the baby was a seedling ready to sprout that message. There is only love. Any other thought is just a mistake...a missed take...a perception that missed something. And even mistakes can't cancel the love. Even if we don't see the love, it's still there. To me, that is the message of Christmas, that we are reminded of every year, during the darkest days of the year.

Blessings to you and those you love this Christmas ~ Janet

My Growing Edge...or you had me at hello?

Okay, I'm out here on my growing edge again. I just spent quite a bit of time and money on a course that teaches me how to market myself with heart. The heart piece drew me in. The first day of the seminar, the leader told us to go out and sell ourselves with heart during our lunch break. And I thought "Are you kidding me? I don't even talk to strangers, much less walk up and offer to coach them." Needless to say I took the "easy" way out and spent my lunch break coaching a fellow attendee who wants to attract a man into her life.

But the next day, with fear and trepidation, I joined my homework partners and scoured the streets and stores, looking for people who might want coaching help. Our assignment that day was to get three people to say no to us...because if we're willing to get a "no" we're more likely to get a "yes." At least it got me talking to strangers. And it turned out to be kind of fun.

I knew what I was getting into when I signed up for this course. To be honest, I really signed up because I have been shy all my life, and I wanted to develop my ability to converse easily with people I don't know. I wanted to put myself in a situation that required me to push past my outer edge. I believe with my whole heart that we are all One Being. So why don't I feel that oneness when I see someone I don't know? Why do I feel shy and awkward and assume that they don't want to talk to me?

As I did the "no" exercise I found out some interesting and touching things about the strangers I met. There was the store clerk who had a tattoo in memory of a sister who had died before the clerk was born. Another woman told me she feels proud of her ability to say "no." She's learned it through life's hard knocks. I really do enjoy people and like hearing their stories. Since I have made a commitment to talk with people out there in the world every day, I am finding out that the minute I notice them and say hello, they give me a little window into their world. That's kind of special.

Whenever I grow, my realizations seem to come in stages. Now that I'm getting better at approaching  people, it has dawned on me that I don't believe people want to hear about me. I would be mortified if I found out that someone experienced me as pushy. Since my personal space is important to me, I am very respectful of another person's space and privacy. So today this is my growing edge...to push myself into the space a little. To trust that they will welcome me; they will feel our oneness and that I will sense how far to enter while remaining respectful.

Whew! Even as I write that I want to backpedal as fast as I can! The shy part of me wants to eat or get busy with something else, like writing this blog. Why? What is it? What am I afraid of?...pause and listen...I am afraid of my limitations showing, right out there in the open. That people will feel my awkwardness and think "What's up with her?" They'll spot my imperfections, maybe before I do and I won't have a chance to cover them. Now that's mortifying. Or is it? In this culture we're not supposed to show our inadequacies. But I am here to say that I find imperfections endearing, when someone has the guts to let them be seen.

And now, with that new awareness, I am ready to go out and enter into the world of strangers again, joining them in what matters to them for just a moment. If my inadequacies show, so be it. Maybe we'll connect. I know I connect better with people who aren't smooth and polished. That's the last thing I want in a salesperson.

So here I go. Sometimes I don't know why I put myself through new challenges like this. But I do know that every time I do, in the end I'm grateful. And I'm grateful to you for listening.           ~ Janet

If you don't receive my Quote of the Week, and you'd like to, please send me an e-mail at janet@reachinghappiness.com.

Summertime and the Living is Retro

Summer has officially started at our house. Yesterday was my son's last day of school. I'm grateful to still have a link to the school year rhythm that I remember so well from my youth. What will I do when he graduates in two years? In so many ways I've been asking myself that question.

Some very dear friends of ours popped in from out of town for a visit this week. They are planning to travel more once their kids are launched. My husband and I have already begun taking more day trips...going back to being the "partners in adventure" that we were when we met. Our son is no longer interested in joining us, but the dog comes along on occasion. I picture us vacationing more, working less, shifting our routines when Chris has gone to college.

It may seem silly to be thinking about this now, when we've got two years to go. I've guess I've always been someone who likes to plan ahead. The thing is, being a mother has been the most cherished aspect of my life, and two years seems like a short time left. I'm grateful that I've retained my professional identity. I feel like I've lived in the best of both worlds, combining part time work with motherhood, but lately I've been savoring my hours at home.This last month Chris has been riding the city bus home from school to save on gas, and after sixteen years of being a mom, all of a sudden I'm playing house.

When I was a girl, I loved to play house. Not very imaginative I know. In my sister's scenarios we were ballerinas who were kidnapped, but when it was my turn we were mommies who would visit the neighbors and have tea. Now that I'm no longer driving Chris home, I've been setting up my work day to be here when he gets here. Sometimes I bake cookies. It's as if I'm living in a Leave it to Beaver world, and it is hitting the spot.

I have friends who are doing the same thing, getting laid off and staying home. When we grew up the feminists had paved the way for us to work, and work we did. Gratefully. But midlife is a time to look at what one hasn't yet done, and I realized that I hadn't stayed home and made cookies for my son when he comes home from school. Not everyone wants to do that, but clearly that was a childhood fantasy of mine. I suspect that I will get restless if I do it for long. I may not even last the summer. And I am still working. I thank the feminists for the choice to do both. But I only have two years left with Chris at home, and I want to soak up every aspect of motherhood that I can. So cookies it is. And maybe lemonade, although he's too old for a stand...his teenage friends will have to come over and guzzle it instead.

I wonder how many other people will find that this economy and gas crisis gives them an unexpected window into a simpler time and an aspect of their personality that may have been overshadowed by our hustle bustle world. If you have a story of retro summertime living, I would love to hear from you.

Camping Out on the Couch

It's been a long time since I've written. Since my last posting all my writing efforts have gone to a brochure, a Christmas letter and a chapter for a book. I've been missing my blog and this subject popped into my head last Friday, which is technically my day "off," but is in fact my "catch up" day. It has become increasingly important to me to be, feel  and stay "caught up." And I've been doing pretty well at it, keeping all the balls in the air...but Friday I couldn't seem to get myself off the couch. After taking my son to school (at "dark thirty" as my friend says) I made my coffee and a piece of toast and just began to camp out. I had my books that inspire me, and I really wanted to meditate. I've been wanting to meditate for a long time, a desire that has become full blown since reading Eat, Pray, Love. I think I long for that kind of time out that she gave herself, without the expense and change in life-style.

So without realizing it, I began a day of camping out on the couch and basically stayed there until I picked up my son. For those of you who are as uncomfortable as I am with such a lack of enterprise, I did get busy then ~ working out at the Y, walking the dog, shopping for groceries, and tying up the loose ends of my business week on the computer. But the majority of my day was spent sitting on the couch doing nothing.

I can't begin to describe the luxury of simply looking out the window at our glorious sycamores! And breathing. I have to say I haven't been successful yet at reaching those states in meditation that I hear about with envy, but I believe I'm getting closer. As I focused on my breathing I noticed that I had an anxious feeling in my chest, around my heart area, that wouldn't go away. So I tried to love it. It was probably because I wasn't doing anything with my day, and I am really programmed to be productive. I actually love feelings of accomplishment. But something in me was telling me to rest, to allow a fallow period, to play hooky. I really think that's why I was able to get so much done later in my day, when my energy is usually spent.

There's something else that I got out of the day, something very valuable. Just spending the day with myself, doing nothing, validated me like never before. Because all the accomplishment validates me the accomplisher, but sitting and breathing validated me. Just me. You know how they say we're human beings, not human doings? I've never really tested that. And I think that's what I was longing for. That's why I subconsciously set aside the time. I could have called this blog "the pause that refreshes." I really was refreshed after that pause, and I really needed that pause after working so diligently to stay "caught up."

I know in the past I've paused without permission...headaches will give us that opportunity, as will colds and flu. Sometimes we lose ourselves in the internet or spend hours in an unplanned conversation with a friend. Usually there are many tasks that tug at the back of our minds during these unexpected pauses and our minds are torn. On the one hand we appreciate the break, and on the other hand we regret it because we are now further behind. That feeling of being torn keeps us from being refreshed.

I guess that's the quality in the Eat, Pray, Love book that I was trying to capture for myself ~ total permission to give myself the luxury of unencumbered time and the knowledge from somewhere inside me that such a gift would be rejuvenating.  Now that I have discovered that I can capture some of the feeling of eating, praying and loving from the sanctuary of my own couch, I thought I'd share that discovery with you. For those of you who are willing to try it, I would love to hear how it goes.

Is your star burning brightly?

I recently saw the movie Stardust, which I recommend to you. It was funny and entertaining and my teenage son said he liked it  well enough to buy it. My favorite part was the way that Claire Danes (who was literally a fallen star) glowed when she was happy. They created a perfect visual depiction of what I believe we all must look like - if our eyes could see it.

My money situation seems to have turned around (refer to the previous 2 blogs). More clients are coming; money is coming... I can pay my taxes and go out to dinner. I attribute this success to the feeling of well-being I created within me as I trimmed my budget to fit my income and then turned my total attention to things in the present that truly made me happy when I looked at them. Now I'm happy about money, but my abundance is new enough that I don't completely trust it to be an unending spigot of prosperity. So I'm still turning my attention elsewhere. I'm focusing on how happy I feel, and I'm trying not to attribute my happiness to what's going on with clients. If I look at clients and money as the source of my good feelings, I am telling myself that my well-being hinges on conditions that may change. And I don't have control over the physical conditions surrounding me. I just have control over the way I feel.

So I've been focusing inward and noticing when I'm on fire - when I'm full of enthusiasm, excited about my next project, my next appointment, the conversation we'll be having, the energy that will come out of it. And I just had the thought "My star is burning brightly." I know that this feeling of my star burning brightly will keep my spigot open. The abundance will show up in many different ways - the ways are immaterial. Well they are material, as in they can be seen, but they don't matter. What matters is this feeling of my star burning brightly, like Claire Danes in the movie.

So how brightly is your star burning? If you're unhappy, your star may be diminished. It's important to remember that this is temporary, and you can get your glow back. Start with the question "What do I love?" Look around and take time focusing on what you love...the sky, flowers, trees, birds, your dog, your cat, your car, singing, running, watching a particular tv show....Then think about who and what makes you laugh. Think about what you love about that person or that situation. Think about who else you love and what it is about them that delights you. If you spend one minute focusing on these questions, your star will start to burn. Little by little, you can get your glow back. And go see the movie, if you haven't already. It will make you smile.

Creating Liquid Gold

In my Law of Attraction group, we were given the assignment of writing how much money we intend to make each year, breaking it down into weekly bites and then spending 3 minutes a day relishing the prospect of our plan coming to life. We were also told some important caveats - don't compare our amounts with others, don't even share our amounts with others unless they support us in our vision, treat it very lightly ( like a game), but take it seriously enough to visit it weekly and fine tune our actions to support its viability. Most importantly for me, we were told to manage our thoughts so that we didn't get discouraged and to let go of the time table...that we aren't in control of when the Universe delivers this to us, but we can absolutely count on it happening.

If you've been reading my blogs, you know that I've known this for a long time but have yet to see it happen. After my last blog, entitled Money Prayers, I realized that even though I've listened for years to Abraham-Hicks CD's, telling me not to focus on the lack of what I want, that is exactly what I was doing. My mind may have been concentrating on my vision, but my emotions were very compellingly camping out in "not enough." So I decided to get off the topic of money altogether and began to focus on everything that feels truly good right now. It's been working pretty well, too. My outlook is brighter, and I can feel the possibilities opening up. Things are shifting for the better.

So how do I bring my attention back around to money, 3 minutes a day, and still feel good? It's a pretty emotionally loaded topic for me still. I think the answer has something to do with how I conceptualize my ego and my Self. With the help of another old favorite, Emmanuel's Book III, What is an Angel Doing Here? by Pat Rodegast, I have been playing with the notion of dancing light. Emmanuel is another channeled being (group of beings?) that inspired Ram Dass, and their writing is lovely. In the book someone asked a question about having seen bodies, trees and stones as dancing light and they say "(You) experienced a journey out of the familiar into the real. And what really is is dancing light."

So, money is dancing light. I am dancing light. Anything that appears solid is like a hologram; it's not really solid at all. It is made of dancing light. I am connected to all of it. In fact, I'm not an "I" in a solid, separated sense. This sense of myself as solid and separated has been termed "ego," which I've been conceptualizing as the part of my mind that thinks alone. The minute I remember that my mind is connected to broader mind I regain my bearings.

Bringing money to me alone has never worked for me. Winning money on behalf of my ego doesn't last, and I honestly don't think it lasts for companies or countries, either. Being for the self alone, it is tenuous and guarded carefully; it can be lost to another separated self at any moment. In contrast, when I recognize that all of life, money and humans included, is dancing light, I realize that we are never really apart. We cannot be separated from one another and together we cannot be separated from money. With that in mind, I can imagine for 3 minutes a day that the light is already with me/in me and I am simply giving it a suggestion of what form I would like it to take. My ego or sense of myself as separate might get attached to this form, as if the manifestation proves something about my worth. But my whole Self, my dancing light self, knows that I am already part of everything anyway. As a light being, I'm fine; I'm complete; I have everything I need. The only reason to have a vision or a point of focus is to give the dancing light of life a channel to move through, a form to take. And as we live and experience life, our minds continuously come up with new forms. That's the creative part...realizing what form we want to suggest now and putting it into motion.

So I'm not going to get attached to my vision as if it is solid and fixed and real. I'm going to start my 3 minutes reminding myself of the dancing light. Then I'm going to visit my vision and play with it and delight in it and allow it to unfold and change it as I go...and try my hardest not to freeze the dancing light in any form, but to see it as liquid gold, flowing through my life on its way to more.

money prayers

I feel like writing something to you all, and I'm not sure what. That must mean that I'm writing something to me, and you are listening in. Money has been tough lately. Interestingly enough, as its been tough for me, it seems to be tough for my clients as well. That's our vibration at work. We're melding. Which is a bummer, because none of us want to attract less money. So I got really excited yesterday when I managed to feel truly happy even though I had a record low in terms of income. I felt like I had a glimpse of what people in poor countries do to stay happy, regardless of their poverty conditions. My inspiration was the line "I would rather control my thoughts than control the conditions" from Gerald Jampolsky's book Love is Letting Go of Fear. It's an oldy, written in the 70's, but sometimes I go through old standbys to hear the same message in a fresh way. I worked with my thoughts and worked with my thoughts and I wouldn't give up until I had completely turned them around. I really believe that turning my thoughts and feelings around will turn my circumstances around. And I was so excited! I told my husband "I'm doing it! I've shifted my vibration! I'm happy! Now the money has to come!"

But tonight I can feel myself turning back again. My car is reversing its course, recovering old ground. The pull of the old territory, the one it knows, is strong. The old thoughts keep slipping back in. I think this is true of any habit we're trying to change. So tonight I'm in my tough zone, in withdrawl from my familiar thoughts and trying to hang in there with the new ones. I guess that's why I thought I'd reach out to you. And write about it. When we teach, we reinforce what we know. I'm trying to reinforce this new knowing. I met with a new coach on Monday, and I told her...I know what to do. I know what actions to take. There are a gazillion actions I could take. What I need help with is my vibration. Because I can feel when my actions are hollow, or worse yet, when I'm defeated as I go through the motions. Sure, I can check it off my list, and there's some small satisfaction in that. But I don't really expect it to get me anywhere. Abraham says on those days, put it down and go to the beach. That's great advice and very hard to do if I'm worried about money. There are bills to pay after all.

So I'm doing anything I can to help myself feel better. I'm coaching you and I'm coaching myself, here on-line. Just doing what I love to do. Feeling, being honest, connecting with you. Knowing that we are all connected in Spirit. Sending out my vibrational advertisement. And here is my prayer.

God, I want to feel your presence with me now. I want to feel your presence as me as I love. I want to feel your presence as me as I teach. I want to feel your presence as me and as money, belongings, beauty and opportunity. I want to feel your presence as me as I coach. Please infuse all the aspects of my coaching with you, God, with your grace and your joy and your love. Thank you so much. So it is and so I let it be. I am so very grateful to you, God, for being here. I know that all will be well. Amen.