I’ve been spending the last hour reading blogs from friends of mine here on Maui. My friend Visit her blog for all sorts of fun and inspiring and beautiful things. Liza Pierce started a Facebook group where we can all connect, and one of the key things to come from it is that we do a “blog hop” each month. Everyone shares a link to their blog, so the rest of us can wander around to read and leave comments!

The glass half-full folks see it as a way to meet more of one’s neighbors, to discover treats in our shared back yard, and to experience some virtual Aloha. That includes me.

It is so easy to get distracted by looking at the outer experience of things, especially in our rush rush life these days. We see the actions of a group of people and possibly make a snap judgment. But what is motivating me to jot down this post tonight, is to state out loud the very pleasurable experience I am having reading entries from neighbors and friends.

There is no agenda. There is no client-vendor relationship. Some topics are more interesting to me (in theory) than others – though each person’s style often overrides that setting. It just feels so nice.

One of the folks I would like to shout out to is Ihilani at her blog Life is So Pupuka. Pupuka is a Hawaiian word, and I really recommend you

I was talking to friends on the phone from their car today and I had a momentary memory lapse: we were talking about last year’s New Years Eve. The mom was saying, “Remember, we were all together at our house?”

Slowly it was coming back to me as I spoke. Meanwhile, from the back seat, comes the voice of the first grader:

At first I couldn’t remember either but then I went quiet and went inside my mind and then I started to remember it all!

Then I saw this article on the NYTimes.com called The Joy of Quiet by Pico Iyer. He says,

In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug.

Then of course later I look up and there is this banner ad displaying on the web page in front of me:

For me, the silence is not to fulfill a spiritual obligation. It is simply – to remember. To remember my connection to the whole hologram of all that is and to remember how many choices I have in any given moment. To remember that I am ultimately safe; no matter what happens I shall return to the unlimited state of everything and nothingness, just like you. To remember that life is but a game – one that we are creating and playing in the same moment, safe and free at all times.

Special thanks to my friend Liza Pierce who suggested in our Maui bloggers group that we each post something on January 1, 2012. I really appreciated the idea and happily ride the thread of energy to get here today!

I am also contributing this to my friend Tania Ginoza’s compilation of New Year’s Resolutions coming soon to her Maui Shop Girl blog. Though I don’t do resolutions per se, I do love this “do over” that we get every January 1st and the surge of inspiration and energy that often accompanies it.

Happy New Year – isn’t it fun we get to start over again?

Love,

Photo Credit: Quiet by towardsthesunset on Flickr

Lots of new age philosophers promise this. In my reality (as truly we each have our own realities…) this is true some of the time, not all of the time. Yet. Since it is a goal of mine, I like to acknowledge when it happens, so I can put the spotlight on my successes and generate energy for more of the same!

Last Sunday, my guy Shane was arriving in Albuquerque at 11:30 pm. He would then be driving about an hour up to Santa Fe. Having lived in both cities, I know that summer nights at 5000’ to 7000’ (above sea level) are cool and clear like few other places on the planet. And as you may recall, Saturday was the full moon, so there would be a big waning moon in the sky around that time.

At around midnight Shane calls me. “Did you order me a convertible at Hertz?”

I said, “No, however for just a brief moment around 11:10 pm MDT I had a brief thought of how cool it would be to drive the open road from ABQ to SAF in a convertible.”

That was it. A passing fancy. And voila, a convertible appeared on his rental contract, billed at the Compact Car rate.

All I have left to say, is what I might say on Twitter, via hashtag syntax:

#howcoolisthat

Translation: How. Cool. Is. That.

It’s very freakin’ cool and I love it when that happens! Attached here is the actual car he drove. (Thanks baby for taking a nice photo for my blog.) Check out his gorgeous photography at www.shanerobinson.com.

Do these “inexplicable” things happen to you? Do you allow a wider intelligence to play in your life? I would love to hear your stories of how all this “plays” out!

I updated my blog software today before adding a new entry; the whole thing broke! It was due to a plug-in incompatibility. It fit in perfectly with what I had logged in to write about!

One of my current transitions is completing some client projects that I have procrastinated on. The reasons don’t matter but the energy does: I have lost interest. This is stirring the pot for me and bringing up a lot of frustration, anger, disappointment, and the like. I slipped off my wagon earlier today and attempted to unload this on my partner. Silly move! He’s not that good a listener on these sorts of things, AND, boy am I grateful for that!

Why? Because unloading on another person is a very inefficient way to deal with these kinds of feelings. Much smarter to take them to the Source, and unplug them from the he said-she said-they said stories. Those stories just perpetuate the feelings, they don’t dissipate them! All that matters is that the feelings felt bad, that got my attention, and now I can look at what I want to be doing with the preciousness of my time and of me.

When you realize that everything is moving you in the direction you want, it is easy to embrace. Easy to let go of that which hurts, feels bad, etc.

Everything that happens to you is 100% for you.

And isn’t it brilliant that the Universe can have all this interplay (you complaining, him responding “poorly”, you waking up to a better plan…) with utter disregard for a balance sheet? It does not have to make sense to a human mind (partner acting irritating to help me redirect consciousness) or satisfy earthly rules of math. (Who knows if/how this made sense in his universe!)

That is the point of living here in our overlapping yet parallel and individual realities.

None of these actors in my play are good or bad per se; they are just filling roles that I have created to help me become more conscious of who I am and what I want. We are acting in each other’s plays all the time. The roles and the scripts themselves really are not the point. There is no need to track them, measure them, compare them.

The point is to keep moving in the direction of bliss, of grace. By being grateful for every feeling, every incident, every actor, I can do that even when I am so-called “feeling like crap or pissed off or down in the dumps.”

You know it is easy to feel grateful for the “feels good” stuff. But your life will shift dramatically when you are grateful for the yucky stuff!

Photo credit: Grateful by Gamma Man on Flickr

Aloha,

I blog therefore I remember.