Diane’s Blog

Last week I talked about my concern that we tend to not get worked up enough about the state of the world.  Funny how you can step around a corner and Bang!– you’re looking at the other side.  My father sent me a newspaper article this week from the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  Although at first glance it seems to provide useful information — graphs, statistics on medical care for retirees — a closer look had me jumping back like I’d stuck my nose into a funky garbage can.  After checking out my response with that of my husband Jim, I tossed the thing into a file drawer.

 Why, you ask, did I flip out?  Well, I’d be pleased as punch to answer: I no longer conspire with worry-mongers.  My dad, on the other hand, is a full-out black-belt, proselytizing worrier.  I can remember hearing his voice back in my teen years, responding on many occasions to my innocent statement that I wasn’t worried about whatever it was.  “Well,” his deep voice would boom, “You SHOULD worry!”  And so I did.  I learned to be a champion worrier.  Hell, I’d worry if I even suspected that I might run out of toilet paper before my next scheduled trip to the grocery store.  Did you notice the word “scheduled?”  Yep — I was also a world-class control freak.  More on that another time.

 But as I began to look at my life in a new light in my 40s I realized there is a hidden hand guiding everything we do (not necessarily “God” — but a greater intelligence.)  And then I understood that a soul that is lovingly, purposefully guided and supported every step of the way is wasting absurd amounts of energy by worrying.  As James Redfield, author of The Celestine Prophecy stated in an interview, “Worry is negative prayer.”  Oops!  That really hit home for me.  The last thing I want to do is send more negative energy out into an already gasping world.

The aforementioned article on the growing cost of medical care for baby boomers meant well, but its whole point of view was to scare the shit out of us about how “unsafe” retiring at any age now is, unless you’re Bill Gates.  Worry because of scarce resources is big in the media these days. While I agree that there will be people going under financially, and who knows, I could be among them, I know that worrying is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Especially harmful is dwelling on “statistics” and anything quoted from “experts.”  Please.  Who can be more expert than me about how I choose to create my life? 

 Interestingly, large numbers of people (also sheep) are quite easily directed if someone yells “Fire!”  and then points to the door they want said sheeple to pass through. So I hope you’re not in “worrier” mode.  Here’s an interesting fact: You can’t worry and be fully present at the same time.  It’s not possible — our conscious mind can’t achieve that particular multi-tasking challenge.  Try it out if you haven’t already. 

 Whenever I’m tempted to worry, I ask myself — “Is everything okay in THIS moment?”  The answer can only be “yes” unless you just expired. (Now THERE’S a whole other topic)  Then I remind myself that the future is just a string of “this-moments.”  So the chances are really good that they’ll be fine, too.

I’m feeling a little snarkey this week.  I snapped at my husband this morning.  I’ve had zero patience with myself.  I didn’t even feel like “blogging,” to tell you the truth.  It’s been one of those weeks that you can only describe this way: “It’s been one of those weeks.”  I can’t quite put my finger on any one thing.  Hmmm — My hair made me a cinch for the “Kramer” look-a-like contest, if they ever hold one.  I’ve felt tired all week — low energy, nothing serious.  Oh, and every time I turned on the TV or radio or went online, I heard horror stories of innocent people dying and rumors of World War III.

   Oh.  That could be it. These are turbulent times we are living in, people.  Or as my elderly ex-client Doris from Pittsburgh used to say, “Turrible, turrible.”  How are you affected by all the global gnashing?  Do you tune it out?  Does it make you feel impotent?  Resentful?  Angry?  Have you ever just cried for the hatred and greed that are playing out on a world-wide level? Or do you feel nothing at all? 

 When I heard the author and mystic Andrew Harvey speak here in Ashevile almost 2 years ago he said the reason we aren’t outraged 23 hours a day is simple: “We’re in a Coca-coma.”  This is a consumer society, after all.  Consumerism is the national religion.  And if it does nothing else, our religion helps us to go numb just when the appropriate response for any normal human would be, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”  Or perhaps, “It didn’t have to be this way,” if we are one of the more forgiving, compassionate ones.

The beauty of this religion is that you don’t even have to get high and alter your consciousness to zone out.  Hell, that would be redundant — we are all zoned out.  All the time.  If you doubt it, ask yourself, “How horrible would things have to get for how many living beings on this planet for me to break down and sob?”  I don’t know about you, but I think of myself as a fairly empathetic person who gets upset if an animal is mistreated.  But I can focus my eyes and ears on stories about thousands of innocent people dying in Darfur or Iraq and eat my dinner at the same time.  Isn’t that denial, folks?  Yeah, I know — we all need a little denial just to get us through the day.  It’s one of the holy sacraments of consumerism. 

 But I’m beginning to suspect we’re in it up to our necks.  Otherwise we would be marching and protesting and banding together to make our voices heard.  We wouldn’t sit there and say, “Oh, that’s awful.  Is American Idol on yet?”  At least I’d like to think we wouldn’t. So what does it take to respond, if not with anger, which is useless anyway, then with compassion and with a resolve to do SOMETHING to improve the lot of humans?  It seems to me that we’ve sedated ourselves so successfully for so long that we now have whole generations growing up thinking that reality TV beats the real thing.  Their parents can’t really help them sort things out because they’re too tired from working overtime to make the mortgage payment and hopefully avoid losing their good credit rating.  What is THAT about?

I know this — everyone I meet is too distracted almost all the time to focus on the one thing that counts — the quality of life on Earth.  It’s no longer possible to act as though what happens in equatorial Africa doesn’t affect us here in the U.S. On the level of Spirit, All is One.  So that even if we don’t necessarily know what’s bothering us, on the inner planes we are all suffering from the damage we are inflicting on each other as an interconnected part of the collective mind of this planet.

 Sometimes we just have to turn our focus to those areas of our lives that make us feel good about who we are.  I’m now finding that it no longer seems possible for me to separate the quality of my life from that of the other 6 billion souls.  Maybe that’s a good thing — if you choose to see it as an indication that we all are, indeed, one.   

Okay I know that for those of you of a certain age that song title is incredibly vapid, but “Subterranean Homesick Blues” just doesn’t describe this week’s musings; Ms. Spears’ pop hit does.  What I did again is listen to my ego voice as though it was my truth.  It isn’t, of course; Spirit is the voice that carries our deepest truths.  But I got sucked in by the ego’s thoughts and didn’t recognize them; they can be so darn convincing.

I decided to share this week’s process with you because it’s what we all have to go through over and over if we choose to evolve.  (I’m talking spiritual evolution here — this dimension apparently escaped Darwin)  I had always been confident that this web site would do well — meaning people would take advantage of the personal guidance I offer.  That confidence seemed to flip over on its head about a month after publication of The Soul Garage.  I found myself suddenly entertaining thoughts like, “Nobody will even FIND this *!&# web site, forget about requesting guidance!”  And more recently, “Oh, who cares, anyway.  It really makes no difference to me.”  Wha ’sup wit dat?

Within three weeks my vision for my work went down the toilet, and along with it went my sense of moving in a certain direction; suddenly I was lost.  I finally did what I learned to do back in 1992 when I first began receiving answers to my life questions in written form from higher guidance — I sat down with pen and paper, aligned myself with Spirit, and asked.  Because much of what I received in response is universal, I will now share with you excerpts you may find useful:

 ”Your dilemma is this: You haven’t a clue when your work will take off and this is driving the ego crazy.  Its response was first — “Oh, it’s just a matter of time” which quickly has degenerated to, Nobody will EVER come to me for help –fuck ‘em!”  Does this sound familiar?  It should, as it is a long-time response system set up by your ego many years ago to protect you from outside disappointments.  This is not your truth.

 Your truth is that you are now offering to the world grace in the form of your answers to individuals’ most pressing problems, and you know you are the real thing.  Your truth is also that whatever happens, Diane will continue to evolve.  The timetable is set only by the ego, which wants Diane to feel guilty for not DOING more at this time — does that sound familiar? In order to feel the motivation you want you will need to discern the ego voice when such thoughts arise and do so vigilantly.  Right now you are accepting that voice as your truth and are becoming lost in it.  Your work WILL be found — never fear. 

 Allow yourself to have “negative” thoughts and feelings without judging yourself, Dear One.  The thoughts in themselves are harmless, and you only give them power by dwelling on or by immediately pushing them away.  Acknowledge them, thank them, then move on.”

 So you see, I did it again.  I gave more authority to the external world than my internal wisdom.  Although I don’t do this nearly as often as I used to, obviously there is still work to be done. So for all of you who are choosing to reach for the life you really want, please know three things:

1) Notice your thought processes, especially when they become negative and/or you find yourself feeling guilty about not being good enough in some way 2) Go with Spirit’s guidance, whether on your own or through someone like myself, and 3) Forgive yourself, no matter how many times you catch yourself buying into egoic thoughts as “truth.”  What matters is walking through this corrective process — how often is irrelevant. 

 Each time we choose to align with Spirit we are learning to carry more authentic power.  That’s the kind of power that brings both inner and planetary peace; until we understand this as a species we will continue to flail against “enemies” and feel impotent, no matter how successful we are as currently defined by our society.

Please feel free to contact me here at The Soul Garage if any of this is confusing to you.  I’d be glad to answer any of your questions.

Hi Everyone–I’m on vacation this week.  I’ll return next week with yet another fablog entry!  (I may have coined a new word.  Hmmm)