Diane’s Blog

As I thought about this topic, I laughed, suddenly recalling a review of Stanley Kubrick’s final movie, “Eyes Wide Shut.”  The reviewer said this movie seems to have been written by someone who hasn’t been out of the house for 35 years, to paraphrase.  These days it sometimes feels like it would be safer to stay in, doesn’t it?  I certainly empathize with people who have agoraphobia. 

Intellectually I know there’s nothing to fear outside the relative haven of my home.  So why do I breathe a sigh of relief almost every time I return home and close the door behind me?  I don’t buy into the propaganda–ish statements made by politicians with agendas.  They tell me it’s not safe out there because the world is now full of people who want to do me harm.  Huh uh.  One thing I know for certain is that we create our own reality according to our beliefs, so if it’s a dangerous world you believe in, a dangerous world is what you’ll experience — it really is that simple. 

How do I know?  Because I’ve tested this universal law over and over in the living laboratory that is Diane’s daily life.  Observation over many years tells me we really do experience what we expect to come our way.  Of course, there are mitigating circumstances, and it can also take time — sometimes a lifetime — to manifest what our beliefs dictate.  But proof is with us daily if we bother to look around, that life is one big, hairy self-fulfilling prophecy.  Or as Dr. Wayne Dyer says, “Believing is seeing.” 

So if I’m not afraid, what has kept me in my house for so much of my adult life?  Yes, I’m a bit of a hermit.  As an only child, aloneness is comfortable for me, not lonely.  But I also know part of me wants to be with people to exchange ideas, feel supported, and just enjoy being social, dammit!  When I lived in Cleveland I went out almost every weekend, but I had a “best friend” then.  For some selfish reason she couldn’t just pick up and move to Asheville in 2000 when I came here. 

And, yes, I got married over a year ago, but hey — I married another only child!  So far we’ve spent most of our time as a cozy twosome, but we’re both starting to suspect there may be a bigger world out there.  There’s a reason that home theaters and computers are so popular — more and more of us are choosing to stay in the house.  We don’t even talk on the phone as often, and don’t try to tell me we’ve “replaced” verbal interaction with e-mail or text messaging.  If you believe that one, maybe you also equate intimacy with having sex? 

The sad thing is, I know in my heart that one of the keys to a world at peace is more of us going out there and mingling.  Now there’s a non-threatening word.  I’m determined to go out there and do some major mingling.  I have a hunch that it could lead to higher-level interaction, even.  Ultimately I want to feel “at home” anywhere I happen to be.  After all, I know our only true “safety” and “security” comes from becoming congruent — that place where finally, our outsides match our insides.  Well, gotta go out for a walk — the rain’s letting up and I’m feeling the need to mingle — if only with a few neighborhood doggies, for starters.

Q:  If I choose to pursue bankruptcy, how can I tell if that decision is based on fear or love?

A:  “Your decision will be right for you if you allow your heart, not your mind to lead you.  If you choose to follow this course of action, will you be doing so to escape fear or move toward love of Self?  Can you see this action as a way of informing your mind of what it needs to take into consideration, and leave the heart out entirely?  If so, you will need to look more closely. 

 Why would you choose to take an action which would undermine your faith in your heart — your Higher Self?  If you see this as a move towards stability — away from chaos, that may explain to you why it seems wise, but does it truly suit your deeper needs? 

 Ask yourself if you would pursue bankruptcy under less pressured circumstances.  The answer is fairly obvious.  Now ask yourself if you would pursue it only under extreme pressure to do so.  Then ask — where is this pressure originating — from without or within?  If you can truthfully say “without” then perhaps you have a case.  If, however, the pressure you are feeling is mainly coming from within, then there is only one point of origin, and that is Ego.  Spirit does not “pressure” — it guides, and gently, if firmly. 

 Do you believe you have only one exit door from your present situation?  If so, then you need to reconsider and allow for the unknown to be factored in.  YOU CANNOT KNOW CONSCIOUSLY ALL THE POSSIBILITIES AWAITING YOU IN EVERY MOMENT.  You only think you can, and do.  That is where most humans go wrong; by thinking they have all the answers, and choosing the most “logical” among those.  This is backwards.  You can only look at what you know, and then allow for millions of other possible outcomes to occur as well.  Your solution will more likely be among the unknown than the known.  Is this not often the way — at least when you remain open? 

 There is higher wisdom at work here, so it often seems confusing.  You are not used to seeing and thinking and feeling in these ways.  They are the ways of Spirit, not ego, and that is the nature of the shift you are now making.  All of this will eventually become second nature to you.  For now it is foreign and as such is slightly suspect — perhaps greatly suspect, based as it is on much that cannot be perceived readily by the five senses. 

You are becoming a multi–sensory human.  Remember this as you continue to bump up against the old ways — the old beliefs.  They are too limited and limiting for the life you have chosen to open to, so now you must make new choices daily to align with that new way of being.  Otherwise it will simply be more of the same. 

 The bottom line is to see beyond the demands of ego to the needs of Spirit.  You will only know your truth by leaving ego behind.”

I was watching Oprah yesterday, and although the topic was the widening rift between the “haves” and “have-not’s” in this country, what really got my attention was something else.  Near the end of the show Robert Reich, who was talking about the imbalance of wealth in our country, said that “luck” was an important factor in achieving what we like to call The American Dream. 

Oprah said that she had to disagree; she does not believe in luck.  She said that she sees it instead as the place where intent meets opportunity.  Mr. Reich fumbled around with this for a minute, but couldn’t seem to get away from the “luck” concept.

 I used to believe in luck, but that belief began to fade as the realization of a new truth entered my life: we create our own reality.  It seems that these two concepts cannot share the same space within us.  What does this mean?  In other words, it’s the old debate — there is meaning and organization, versus randomness, chaos, and by inference, luck. 

I now see that where you fall in terms of these two concepts determines not only your worldview but how you actually experience life.  For example, when I believed that circumstances in my life were conspiring against me, I was unhappy and resentful.  Bad things “happened” to me — surely I wasn’t creating them — who would want to?  I was at the mercy of factors I couldn’t control and therefore I was a victim. 

Then I began to open to the universal truth that made its way into human consciousness in the 1960s — we create our own reality.  As I did so, not only did I cease to feel that I was a victim of happenstance, but I began to see that my intention in any given circumstance had more power over the outcome than I ever would have thought possible. 

 Luck is in the category of  human beliefs that we cling to in order to keep from becoming fully conscious.  It gets you off the hook, doesn’t it?  But it also prevents us from becoming the immensely powerful beings we really are, because belief in luck says that you still think the real power is outside of you somehow.

So how do you improve your life if luck isn’t involved?  In the realm of social class in this society, certainly there are long-standing institutional factors and pervasive beliefs and practices that conspire to keep all of us in the same class into which we were born.  Do exceptions like Oprah transcend these factors due to luck, or is it that notion of intent meeting opportunity? 

 This is one of those areas where most people come down 100% on one side or the other; there are no shades of gray here.  How do you see it?  Earlier this week my husband and I received an offer from a friend to live rent-free in a beautiful home in the country not far from here in exchange for being the caretakers for the main house, which is occupied by a lawyer from Washington, DC only a few months out of the year.  As it turns out, this opportunity couldn’t be more well-timed, for reasons I won’t go into here. 

But the question I asked myself was, “How did I create this?”  And I knew the answer immediately — our intention, bolstered by our belief that anything is possible and that we deserve all the abundance that life has to offer, met with a wonderful opportunity.  The same holds true when circumstances are not so favorable. 

 I ask the same question, but I’ve learned, more and more, to stay away from the voice — the ego — that wants to blame Diane and make her guilty for having created something that she will most likely experience as painful.  I’m learning that part of the journey of becoming “conscious” in this life is to stop seeing chaos as an enemy.  What if the meaning behind the chaos is simply our cue to look at everything from a greater perspective than we normally do?  I don’t know about you, but making that choice helps me to stay sane when so much in our world appears to be madness.

Hi, People!  I’m taking some vacation time this week.  See you back here next Friday. 

I asked for guidance recently about marketing my web site.  The answer I received made me say “Duh!”  Guidance is often like that, in that what it really does is tell us what we already know but haven’t yet brought into sharp focus.  (Often because we don’t want to) 

 So this answer seemed obvious:  “You are an unconventional person — why would you choose to pursue conventional marketing advice?  It won’t work for you.  You will need to allow your creativity to flow freely; then you will find the methods that “work” for you.”

This inspired me to take another look at my life: sure enough, I have almost always been different.  But that square peg-ness was extremely painful in my first, oh, 40 years or so.  I feel compassion now for the Diane who so desperately kept trying to fit into a world that didn’t accommodate her uniqueness.  The thing is, if you haven’t looked within in a serious way over time, how can you know what your needs really are?  Most of us think we know, but we don’t. 

Here’s a test: How many times have you agreed with someone in the last week without digging deeper to take stock of how you really feel?  Then look at your life and ask, “How often have the important events and turning points in my life been governed by “shoulds”?  For example, I married my first husband because I was 37 years old and held the belief that if not now, when?  There’s a “should” for you. 

 Or going back further, I went to college right after high school even though I hadn’t a clue about who I was or what I wanted in life.  All my friends were going, and it was assumed by all that I would, too.  “Here’s the application; pick a major.  Well, put SOMETHING down.  You can always change it.”  Only since my early 40s have I really celebrated my different-ness, and that was pretty wobbly until more recently. 

 Now I realize that the very qualities I once felt I had to hide are the ones that comprise my gift to this world; it is always so.  If there is one pearl of wisdom I could give, it would be this: Choose to dig deeper and find your own different-ness, because within it lies the key to your greatness.  Okay, two pearls: If something isn’t working for you — look more closely.  Maybe it isn’t meant to, if it doesn’t fit who you really are.

On Monday of this week Jim and I visited his daughter Kara, who lives about 45 minutes from us.  She is a lovely, complicated, endearing 22 year old who I am delighted to have in my life, never having had children of my own (that I know of).  We get along famously, but every now and then I suddenly feel like I’m 85 years old, for God’s sake.  Don’t get me wrong — she never intends this response, but there it is, all the same.  What’s the demon that rears its ugly head? 

Technology — plain and simple.  This is the dividing line between generations now, as I see it.  When I was her age it was the “generation gap”; code for our rebellion against the old guard’s societal attitudes.  Now I ARE the old guard, and I will not go quietly.  Here’s the latest of numerous incidents: I just realized this sounds a little disgusting, so try not to get grossed out.  I was sitting in Kara’s living room, talking and idly running my hand over the nape of my neck when I felt a bump at my hairline.  “Hey — look at this — does this look like something?”  I asked Jim and Kara.  Well, her first impulse was not to run over and look, but to pick up her digital camera.  “Here, I’ll take a picture of it!”  She said.  I’m sitting there thinking, “What good is that?  What’s she going to do — mail it to me?  By then it’ll either be gone or I’ll be dead.” 

What I actually said was more like, “Huh?”  She grabbed the camera and stood up, saying “You know — I’ll take a picture of it, then we can zoom in on it!”  I forgot — Digital.  No waiting.  Zooming in AFTER you shoot.  Egad.  So that’s what we did, and it looked harmless in close-up; at least I’m not in a coma yet. 

I heard a segment on National Public Radio the other day about how this is the first generation that knows more than their parents about everything technological.  And with every new advance, we lose ground.  I don’t doubt the truth of this for a minute.  But the question is — does this mean we have nothing to offer these children of the post-information age?  Should we just throw up our hands and wheel ourselves off into the Sunset Retirement Home? 

Happily, I do know the answer to that one.  Hell, no!  There is something which is at the same time the most valuable gift my generation has to offer and also among the least valued by this society.  If you said “advice”, you’re close.  Personally, I have finally learned this about advice — nobody wants it; they just say they do.  So it’s not that.  What they do want is answers about life’s challenges, e.g. “How do I get out of THIS one?” “Why do I get so depressed about things?” 

Life experience is the only way for young people to feel that they are okay, but they don’t have nearly enough of it yet, and the world they live in is so much more demanding and fast-paced and cynical than the one we knew.  We can share our experience with them.  But there’s a catch — you can’t provide helpful examples of how you got through something unless you gain some perspective over the years, because chances are you screwed up at their age, too.  I know I did. 

So it’s only now — now that I have a sensitive young woman in my life who is so like me at her age it’s uncanny — that I realize how far I’ve come.  15 years ago I was still struggling with my own identity.  In the interim I looked within and worked at letting go of my need to judge, my inability to forgive, and my mistaken identification with the ego’s idea of who Diane is rather than with my heart’s knowledge. 

Now I’m able to say to Kara, “Well, sweetie, I did the same thing when I was your age.  I got into trouble for it, and I lost some friends.  I finally learned that I’m okay just as I am, and I don’t have to pretend to like what everybody else does just to keep their friendship.”  Or whatever the topic is — you get the idea.  I’ve also learned to add something my parents rarely, if ever, gave me — unsolicited cheerleading.  Maybe it’s BECAUSE I didn’t receive it that I value it so now, but whenever I can I add, “You are such a fabulous person.  I know you don’t see it that way yet, but you will.  Some day you’ll look back on these days and wonder how you could possibly have underestimated yourself so.” 

Don’t we all need to hear that more than we need to know how to use an MP3 player?  Interesting, isn’t it, that we still choose, as a culture, to place the public “achievement” (almost always in terms of dollars) above personal triumph over old, dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors?

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)