10 Weeks of Word Oracles - Slice

© 2010 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved

No matter how you slice it, slice is a great word for us to chew on for cool insights! Welcome to #3 in a series of 10 words drawn as oracles—spirited topics to ponder drawn just for our Hot/Cool community. Visit the post for Word Oracle #1 (Upper) for the history on what we’re doing at this wordfest and why.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but slice is a very good word for me, personally. I have issues with slice. I alluded to them somewhat in talking about the word upper. Auntie Mame is my heroine, and to me, “Life’s a banquet.” I have a great deal of difficulty limiting myself to a single slice of anything. I have a lusty appetite for food--and live with the health and weight challenges that go along with it. Same goes for most everything else in life. I couldn’t limit myself to one blog. (Now I have three.) Until two of them passed on, I had four pets. You get the picture. Overdo is my middle name.

Unfortunately, one of the side effects of overdo for most of us leads me to another word, overwhelm. Slice is actually an antidote to it.

Slice is like the joke, “How do you eat an elephant?” Answer: A bit at a time.

My office often looks like a total disaster area. I hate working in chaos, even if creativity springs from chaos itself. Still, the enormity of the job to get organized just leaves me with eyes glazed over, my visual orbs a pair of vortexes that are not exactly the white tornados of cleaning solutions. When I can do the job in slices, a piece at a time, I actually get something accomplished. Slice. What a concept!

Then there is the literary form, a slice of life.

slice of life

An episode of actual experience represented realistically and with little alteration in a dramatic, fictional, or journalistic work. ~ Free Online Dictionary

Since memoir writing is one of my strongest genres and my own life has given me plenty of slices to share, I’ll serve up an episode from my Pie of Life. This is the one my intuition told me to tell you.


Thanks But No Thanks

I’m a teenager, and I’m the lucky family member with garbage duty this particular night. Our small house has a postage-stamp sized backyard, and behind that is a garage. A long sidewalk runs beside the house and garage, and the garbage cans are located at the end of the walk, against the garage, where the walk intersects with an alley.

It’s autumn and gets dark early in the suburbs of Chicago. I am hugging my big plastic trash bag, carrying it down the walk by outdoor light, which is rather dim. I’m humming a tune to myself, thinking of some boy I have a crush on. I look up about half-way to the goal and see a man lurking by the garbage cans.

I scream! The trash bag flies straight up in the air, a good four feet, as I reverse directions on a dime and run to the back door, yodeling the whole way like my fanny is on fire. I don’t stop screaming when I get there.

Dad comes rushing to the kitchen where I’m now standing, still screaming. “What in the h— is wrong?” my father demands. I can barely stop screaming long enough to say, “Man—by garbage cans.”

Dad goes out there with a big honking flashlight, the beacon kind you take with you camping. He inspects and investigates. Of course, he finds nothing.

“I can’t see a damned thing,” he pronounces.

I insist that I am not imagining it—that there was someone lurking there.

Hw silly does this sound? He could have been a neighbor tossing a soda can in the nearest trash receptacle while walking down the alley from his own garage. Yet, somehow, I knew he was sinister—and my high-drama, Italian mother believed me.

She called the police, and they knew before they even investigated that they wouldn’t find him or anything suspicious; however, they share with my mom that there have been complaints in the neighborhood about a guy exposing himself. How did I know that? All I saw was the shadow of a man. I didn’t even see the shadow of his—uh—“exposure.”

Now, nearly 50 years later, I’m still chuckling over this scenario, which wasn’t so funny to me at the time. My psychic radar started very young, and believe me, I’m always into prevention. There was a slice of this guy I did not want to see!


Meditation and Journaling on Slice

Sit quietly in a meditative posture, whatever one works for you. Have pen and paper nearby.


1. Take three deep breaths. Say “slice” to yourself. Let it rest on your mind, then let your mind respond. What does this word mean to you? Take plenty of time to let the thoughts form or memories come back to you. Let them finish speaking. When they are done saying what they have to say, write down their message.


2. Return to meditation. Read this thought, and then sit with it in the silence for as long as it feels right: I am thankful for the ability to tackle life a slice at a time. When I am overwhelmed, I respond by imagining the natural slices into which I can break food, projects, feelings, and other larger forms.

3. When you come out of meditation, look at what you wrote about “slice.” Take some time to contemplate it. Carry these thoughts into your week. Learn as much as possible about your relationship to slice. Write a few wrap-up notes before the end of the week and our next word.


May this batch of word oracles, broken into ten slices, bring you some good “slice of life stories” and a new appreciation for savoring life itself one slice, bite, and morsel at a time.

~~~


Next week’s word: Drawing



Photo credit: Pizza Slice © Danee79 Dreamstime.com

Reader Feedback Wanted: Let me know your thoughts on the Word Oracle series in the Comments or by e-mail.

10 Weeks of Word Oracles - Fall

© 2010 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved

Fall is one of the more versatile words in the English language! Just off the top of my head, it can mean any of the following:

• My favorite season, autumn, which also has falling leaves, where I assume it got this nickname.

• Fall as in “go boom” or splat on the floor or ground. Not as pretty, unless it’s a pretty girl fallen in fall leaves, like in the one in the picture in this post.

• “The Fall” – The Bibilical fall of man when Adam and Eve disobeyed divine direction and ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

• Water that cascades off tall rocks down to a river or rivulet

• A fake woman’s hairpiece

• In astrology, a planet is “in fall” when it is in the sign opposite where it is considered exalted. Example from my own chart: Mars is considered exalted in Capricorn; mine is in the opposite sign, Cancer, therefore it’s in fall. I’ve never found this concept very useful. It implies there’s something wrong with my planet that’s in fall. I actually like my Mars in Cancer that’s action-oriented toward making comfortable surroundings for people, and as much as possible, making family of everyone.

Welcome to #2 in a series of 10 words drawn as oracles—spirited topics to ponder drawn just for our Hot/Cool community. Visit the post for Word Oracle #1 (Upper) for the history on why we’re playing with words for ten posts.

Let’s focus on Fall as Autumn—the season we enter on September 22!

First, I want to share with you an autumn “astrologize” I wrote for Spirited Woman blog. Astrologizes are exercises, rituals, or activities to celebrate the changing seasons as the Sun moves through each of the signs of the zodiac. Four times a year, we reach the seasonal cusps. Spring occurs as the Sun enters Aries; summer starts with Cancer; Libra initiates autumn, and Capricorn heralds winter. This "astrologize" for autumn has to do with expressing our gratitude for the harvest of our blessings.

If you don’t have time to do the gratitude box suggested in the astrologize post, let’s take five to do a combo meditation on gratitude and the word “fall.” All truths will be revealed in our oracle word and the Hot Flashbacks alternative to the astrologize combined!


Meditation and Journaling on Fall

Sit quietly in a meditative posture, whatever one works for you. Have pen and paper nearby.

1. Take three deep breaths. Say “fall” to yourself. Let it rest on your mind, then let your mind speak. What does the word fall mean to you? Take plenty of time to let the thoughts form or memories come back to you. Let your memories or thoughts finish speaking. When they are done saying what they have to say, write down their message.
   
2. Return to meditation. Read this thought, and then sit with it in the silence for as long as it feels right: I am thankful for my reverie on “fall” and everything I learned from it.
   
3.  Now let’s focus for a moment on fall as autumn, the season of gratitude: I am grateful for ___. (Make as long a list in your mind as you want.) I will practice living gratefully every day by doing the following ___________.
   
4. When you come out of meditation, look at what you wrote about “fall” and how you’ll create an ongoing attitude of gratitude—a thankfulness practice. Take some time to contemplate it. Carry these thoughts and intentions into your week. Learn as much as possible about your relationship to fall. Write a few wrap-up notes before the end of the week and our next word.

May every fall down help you look up with a different perspective. May every season of gratitude bring you more in your cornucopia and a longer list of blessings.

~~~

Next week’s word: Slice

Photo credit: Young Woman in Fall Leaves © Pinkcandy Dreamstime

Reader Feedback Wanted: Let me know your thoughts on the Word Oracle series.

10 Weeks of Word Oracles: Upper

© 2010
by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved


Welcome to #1 of 10 in a new series on Hot Flashbacks, Cool Insights. It was inspired by one of the many books I inherited from my birth mom, Helen. A Gemini, Helen left behind a library that’s eclectic and highly spiritual. The book that caught my eye while I was dusting “her” shelf is called The Book of Qualities by J. Ruth Gendler. The author has made one-page meditations or thought pieces on various human qualities such as power, pleasure, contentment, change, and complacency.

This got me thinking about our playground on this blog for working with symbols, oracles, and the other cosmic hints we look Up for. I knew about random word generators online.

I decided I’d “draw” ten words for us—ten words that would tweak my intuitive skills for insights that would hit home for my readers. It was like drawing a handful of words in a fortune cookie for the readers of Hot Flashbacks, Cool Insights.

Let’s get started!

Upper—Unzipped

A state of high emotions, one of the best things anyone has ever said to me is, “You’re an upper.” A very ‘70s expression related to the drug culture, an “upper” was a kind of pill that made you high—different from tranquilizers and other “downers.”

Ultimately, an upper has become a term that often denotes a natural high. People, places, things—all can be an upper. Up is fun! It’s buzzy. It’s happy. It’s exuberant and sometimes caffeinated. It’s rollercoasters and risk-taking.


Other Uppers

A familiar vacuum commercial called its product “the quicker picker-upper.” You can pick up, stay up, or look Up. The last is another kind of Upper that works for me in my role as docent for a troupe of spiritual explorers. My original slogan for my astrology-plus practice was:

Do you ever raise your eyes to heaven, asking, “How about a hint?” Astrology is the hint and the heavens are the right Source.

I want to be an Upper. A Look Upper. Someone who seeks guidance from the highest source and vantage points.


Up—and Counter Up

The problem with up is its counterpoint—down. The higher you get, the longer the fall. Through my forties, I still liked high drama, especially the high part. I loved intense people, places, and things—and if I wasn’t feeling everything at a high pitch, it didn’t work for me. Over time, my roller coaster life was exhausting, and the long falls hurt. I quit riding actual roller coasters in my teens. It took me till midlife to give up the figurative type, the roller coaster of Desperately Seeking Uppers.

Now I like to skate in the middle between up and down, often well above the midline, but don’t much like living right on the edge. I still enjoy those delicious peaks at times, but more like caviar, not like before, better described as insisting on eating caviar as breakfast cereal. I realize it’s crazy to try to live in a constantly excited state. Letting go of uppers in the extreme was a good thing for me. That leads me to the final segment, offering you your own meditation and journaling exercise on our word for the week. Ten minutes, ten times—voilà! You’ve got a personal book of insights and instructions. Set aside a special journal book or computer file for your oracular explorations.


Meditation and Journaling on Upper

Sit quietly in a meditative posture, whatever one works for you. Have pen and paper nearby.

1. Take three deep breaths. Say “upper” to yourself. Let it rest on your mind, then let your mind respond. What does this word mean to you? Take plenty of time to let the thoughts form or memories come back to you. Let them finish speaking. When they are done saying what they have to say, write down their message.

2. Return to meditation. Read this thought, and then sit with it in the silence for as long as it feels right: I am thankful for the highs in life, but I’m also thankful for the lows. Without the valley, we can’t appreciate the mountain. Life has its ups and downs, and I navigate them with energy and style.

3. When you come out of meditation, look at what you wrote about “upper.” Take some time to contemplate it. Carry these thoughts into your week. Learn as much as possible about your relationship to upper. Write a few wrap-up notes before the end of the week and our next word.


May these ten weeks of words chosen just for you be—an upper!

~~~

Next week’s word: Fall


Photo credit: Roller Coaster © Grisho Dreamstime

You’ll Be “Dying for a Date” with Cindy Sample

With “spirited living” as its goal, the subject matter on Hot Flashbacks, Cool Insights runs a broad spectrum from spirituality to anything that lifts our spirits and makes us lighter.

Nothing lifts spirits like laughter—and nothing is more healing! We may as well call humor “weight lifting.” Today instead of focusing on the mysteries of life, we’re having a play date and a mystery of another kind—the cloak and dagger variety.

Cindy Sample is a Northern California author I’ve had the joy of getting to know through our Capitol Crimes writing group, our local chapter of Sisters in Crime. Cindy’s first novel, Dying for a Date, has just come out. I wanted to share her new book with you.


Joyce: Cindy, tell us how you became a writer. Did you know early on? Who inspired you?

Cindy: I began reading at age four and when I started reading Nancy Drew books at the age of six, I was hooked. In third grade, I took a list of spelling words and in three hours turned them into a sixteen page Nancy Drew opus. I knew I always wanted to be a mystery writer but life in the form of marriage, career, two children and then divorce intervened, so my next literary masterpiece, Dying for a Date, didn't get produced until 50 years later.


Joyce: Your protagonist, Laurel McKay, is a complex character—a divorced, kid-chauffering professional, who has returned to the dating scene. How did she evolve, and what are the built-in comedic conflicts in her character?

Cindy: My protaganoist, Laurel McKay is a newly divorced mother of two children, 16-year-old Jenna and seven- year-old Ben. She works as a mortgage underwriter at “Hangtown Bank” in Placerville. She married her high school sweetheart who was the only man she ever dated. When her best friend talks her into joining a dating agency, she wonders what she’s getting into and what is she looking for? Does she want an escort or a husband? Is she really looking for Mr. Right or just Mr. Every Other Saturday Night?

As far as comic elements, just trying to decide what to wear on date night provides plenty of material. When you incorporate raising two children along with a new kitten, I had enough of my own maternal experiences to entertain readers for all 272 pages.

Mothers always feel guilty that they aren’t perfect, but I think single moms in particular have to juggle their career with their children’s needs. When you add in the dating aspect, it complicates things even more. I wanted to write a story that not only had elements of a murder mystery, but a series that introduced a sympathetic protagonist who is dealing with everyday realities, complicated by a few dead bodies, of course.

I learned early in my career that a sense of humor can get you through most situations. And even today, when something goes wrong, my first thought is usually how I’ll turn it into an entertaining story. Laurel’s sense of humor and realistic approach to her life is prevalent throughout the book.

Joyce: Obviously, we want to avoid spoilers, but can you give us a blurb about the basic plot?

Cindy: Laurel reluctantly gets talked into joining a dating agency called “The Love Club,” which is advertised as the safe alternative to online dating. The first guy she goes out to dinner with attempts to have her for dessert, and she hits him with a cell phone. I created a new verb for that episode when she “nokias” him. When another date disappears during dinner, and her only alibi is a friendly bottle of Dom Perignon, the investigating detective has to decide if the sassy soccer mom is the killer or the next target.

Joyce: You have some of the most enticing promo lines I’ve ever read, such as:

Homicide, humor, and a few heart palpitations combine to make “Dying for a Date” your summer hammock reading.

I also love the description, “She dips her toe into the dating pool and ends up in a tsunami-sized murder investigation.” Anyone who has returned to the dating scene as an adult probably has some cringe-worthy material that could fill a volume. How did dating in real life influence your book?

Cindy: I will admit my dating experiences have provided me with enough material to write at least eight volumes of Dying for a Date, although I personally haven’t maimed anyone. Fortunately for me, most of my experiences have been delightful. There was one guy who tried to impress me with the fact that his best friend was an assassin. That was one of my shorter dates. But the stories that some of my dates have shared with me are truly stranger than the things I make up.

Joyce: Knowing Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie were two of your earliest influences, what made you decide to camp it up and spend more time on the light and cozy side of mystery?

Cindy: Within the mystery genre, there are so many different types of storytellers. I read and hear enough about the dark side of life through the news and my daily paper. One of my goals was to provide an entertaining mystery, a book which provided clues and red herrings to engage those readers who love to play armchair detective, but also to have them enjoy the humor we all encounter in our daily lives. My fans are comparing me to Janet Evanovich and her laugh-out-loud humor. One woman read the book in one sitting and said her granddaughter kept checking on her to make sure she was okay because she was laughing so hard the tears were streaming down her face.

Joyce: I’m a huge Poirot fan, and he certainly has his comedic moments, especially in the British TV series adaptations of Christie’s novels. The other regular characters—Inspector Japp, Miss Lemon, and Poirot’s sidekick, Captain Hastings—put Poirot’s quirks in a hilarious light by the way they bounce off the personalities of the ensemble cast. Tell us a little bit about the cast of characters in your book and the way they “ping” off each other for comic effect.

Cindy: There are so many entertaining characters in Dying for a Date. Laurel’s mother is particularly engaging since she is the opposite of her daughter. Barbara Bingham is a perfectionist, a real estate broker, who is very critical of her daughter. She is worried that all of these dead bodies will impact her real estate sales, so she and Laurel team up to solve the murders. Their conversations are hilarious and readers can relate to the mother/daughter dynamic.

Laurel’s best friend, Liz, is a bawdy Brit who owns a spa and who had her own entertaining dating adventures before she met her fiancé through the Love Club. Liz and Stan, a gay co-worker, at Hangtown Bank, are two zany companions who can’t wait to assist Laurel in her detecting.

And of course, there is the handsome homicide detective. What exactly are his intentions?

Joyce: It’s every author’s dream to sell the rights to her book and have it made into a movie. Who would play Laurel & Company?

Cindy: Tina Fey (with a little extra padding). As for the mother – why fool around. I say Meryl Streep.

Joyce: Great casting! I’m dying for a date with this book, myself! Tell us where we can buy it.

Cindy: In Sacramento, you can purchase it at Book Lovers Bookstore or the Avid Reader. In El Dorado County, Dying for a Date is sold at Placerville News Company, the El Dorado Arts Council, and Cornerstone Café in Cameron Park. The trade paperback and the ebook are available on Amazon and Barnes&Noble.com and as an ebook on Fictionwise and Mobipocket.

Joyce: Any parting comments or thoughts? Advice to the writers in the Hot Flashbacks readership?

Cindy: Whether you’re interested in pursuing a career in writing or pursuing a romantic relationship, just go out there and do it. Too many people I meet are afraid of rejection, and they are waiting for the world to come to them. I’ve been rejected by publishers and by men, and it has not stopped me from enjoying life. Take a chance and you’ll be thrilled with the new friends you’ll meet and the adventures that may be in store for you. I’ve been on a wonderful journey, and I can’t wait to see what else is in store for me.

Thank you, Joyce, for letting me share my thoughts today.

Joyce: Cindy, I want to thank you for accepting a date to appear on Hot Flashbacks, Cool Insights. You’ve given us an oasis of “light” and the potential for hours more of the same with your new book. Best of luck with it! I’m already seeing it catch fire and look forward to reading your books to follow.

~~~

Although Cindy Sample’s initial dream was to be a mystery author, she quickly realized the necessity of a weekly paycheck. Putting aside her literary longings, she applied for a job as a receptionist with a real estate office. Her career eventually led to President of a national mortgage banking company.

After one too many corporate mergers, Cindy decided it was more fun to plot murder than plod through paperwork. Her books are set in Placerville, California, the gold country town formerly known as “Hangtown”.

Cindy writes a monthly column entitled Hot Flash for the Gold River Community Newspaper. She is a past president of the Sacramento chapter of Sisters in Crime and has served on the boards of the YWCA, Sacramento Opera, and CMBA, the California Mortgage Bankers Association. She is co-chair of the Left Coast Crime Convention, which will be held in Sacramento in 2012. Visit her website at http://www.cindysamplebooks.com/.

Raccoon Medicine ~ Part 2

Thanks to those of you whose have followed my heartbreaking story about our dying oak and how its removal displaced the raccoon family living in it. Between my knee acting up and Tim’s ongoing mobility issues, it’s hard for either of us to get down to the greenbelt below our house on a ravine to check things out firsthand. Our neighbor Ken, who has been harvesting the wood, has been giving us the ongoing raccoon report.


We left 4-5 feet of tree stump up to allow time for the raccoons to relocate. It took the tree service a couple of weeks to get back to remove the remainder. (We waited to call till the raccoons cleared out.) It was difficult to see the raccoon completely that had died, as it was deep in the stump in a place that could not be accessed before removing more of the wood around it.

Good news/bad news depending on how you look at it. It was not one of the adult raccoons that died, but rather one of the babies—and, blessedly, it was not by the saws. It appeared he or she died naturally.

I thought this was particularly poignant to learn right after I posted Incubation/Hatching, where I discussed how not all eggs hatch or make it into the world.

Once more, the raccoons provide an amazing punctuation to my learning. Now I’ll have to go sit with myself and figure out which of my eggs are not supposed to hatch—and quit sitting on them.

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your healing words, because this incident “got to me” so deeply.


~~~

Photo Credit: THE RACCOON by Vladvitek Dreamstime.com

Incubation/Hatching

© 2010 by Joyce Mason

This is the third in a series of posts that discuss the relationship between humans and the Bigger Plan. In Karmic Relationships: The Great Flow Charters in the Sky, I addressed my ideas about how reincarnation works and the complexity of getting multiple characters together to work out sometimes rather convoluted scenarios to balance the ledger on past-unfinished business. This is literal if you believe in reincarnation. But in our many lives within a life, thanks to fast-paced modern society, these principles can sometimes refer to meet-ups in different eras of the same lifetime.

Next, in Dis-appointment, I presented a concept of a divine calendar that doesn’t always match with ours and sometimes blessedly removes us from danger. It can be the equivalent of being Touched by an Angel, who diverts you from a romance or job that might end in an emotional car wreck. You might wonder if God Knows What She’s Doing at the time. You are often not happy with the detour.

Now I want to address another aspect of our relationship to the divine, when it comes to direction, time and timing. It involves incubation, the time needed for a project or relationship to “cook” before it’s ready to emerge from its egg as a Baby Whatever It’s Going to Be. As you can see by the look on the face of this chick, getting there isn’t always half the fun!


Set Goals, But Sit in Silence Listening for Changes in Direction

Here’s where East/West, yin/yang, and a complementary blending of the best of both worlds is ideal for optimal manifestations. I’m all for being goal oriented, including making commitments such as, “I will publish my book by October 1, 2010.” However, to take only a target date into consideration and the sheer dint of your will is true folly. There can be a myriad of reasons why something might need further incubation … and if you listen closely to the whispers of the divine all around you, you’ll know when further gestation is necessary.

For instance, the example in the paragraph above refers literally to my poetry book in the middle of production. I kept dragging my feet; I couldn’t figure out why. I decided one poem had to be pulled, even though it’s one of the most powerful, because I felt the language was too sexually explicit. When most of these poems were written in the 1970s, there was a lot looser cultural norm about language. I’m just not comfortable with it now, even though I’d read it to my best friends in private.

When I couldn’t light a fire under myself to finish this nearly done task—still—I waited around to find out what else I had to fix. That’s when I realized that there had to be a poem about Garry, my dear friend and hairdresser that I wrote about in Bartenders, Beauticians and Baristas. I did that. If that doesn’t clear the logjam, I’ll wait awhile longer and ask for help in my dreams and meditations.

Settled Mud

We often joke when we’re not clear about something, “It’s as clear as mud.” A wise man asks good questions. Ask yourself in any incubating project or situation the questions in the classic Chinese text, the Tao Te Ching, attributed to the sage author Lao Tzu:

Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving until right action arises by itself? ~Tao Te Ching

Here’s where the Western mind dulls and our eyes glaze over. We are so unused to the concept of sitting with something until the time is right. (In the case of literal incubation, that would be sitting on.) In my placeholder post announcing the launch of Stitched Verse, my new poetry blog, I quoted a more modern literary version of this idea from Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land: “Waiting is fullness.”

Unfortunately, many things in life don’t have a predictable gestation cycle like the one leading to human birth, which seldom varies from nine months. Human gestation carries signs of progress, like an ever-enlarging belly. Then, one day, close to the nine-month mark, the water breaks and the hour is imminent. Especially in the more subtle areas of life like relationships or creative projects, there are no meat thermometers declaring them cooked or timers that go off and say, it’s done—ready to go. Send the baby out into the world.

Department of the Interior

Here’s where we have to rely on inner barometers, self-knowledge, and the ability to be both gentle and tough with ourselves. Are you dragging your feet because of some fear? If yes, find it and address it. While that’s often easier said than done, it’s totally do-able. If you can’t identify your stumbling block alone, that’s what friends—and sometimes counselors—are for.

If that’s not it, something may be alerting you to intuitive timing factors. My dearest friend often tells me I have an impeccable sense of timing. This is wrapped up closely with my sizable intuition and often runs counter to what I really want to do in my busy Western mind.

Another example: In 1996 after creating a pilgrimage of people from around the world to Greece for an astrological event, I was at the peak of my career as an astrologer. Everything was going my way. I was becoming well known for my astrological specialty, my part-time practice was thriving to the point that I could see its becoming full-time, if I chose …

… but God/dess would not have it. I was given clear inner direction to put astrology on the back burner at the peak of the wave.

Little did I know then that later in the year, I’d reconnect with my childhood sweetheart and begin a relationship that would lead to marriage—plus all the complexities of merging two very single people in one place, one of them from several states away. Even though I wasn’t the one to relocate, my life was topsy- turvy with making these transitions for several years. Once more, divine direction was right direction.


“Don’t Count Your Chickens Before They’re Hatched”

I have always gotten a bang out of this saying, which reminds us that not all seeds make it to fruition; no matter how much we want to assume it’s so. You might start with five eggs, but maybe only three will hatch.

So it is with our ideas, projects, relationships and all other creations. A natural weeding process occurs in nature. The strongest survive. The same goes for the metaphorical seedlings and eggs in our lives.

As humans on a spiritual journey, we are often left to Inquire Within on whether we should continue to incubate certain creations. I think the biggest hurdle is learning to trust that inner wisdom and sage direction that comes from inside us.

Once I started looking back (hot flashbacks), I could see the clear track record of better outcomes through following these signs. Whatever way you perceive the Ultimate Creativity, God/dess is a good egg. After all, s/he hatched every one of us. We made the cut. The rest is Up to us.

~~~

Photo Credit: Lonely chicken hatching © Ekaterinas Dreamstime.com

Dis-Appointment

© 2010 by Joyce Mason

Disappointment leaves us sad that something we looked forward to—maybe even longed for—did not occur. It can be a relationship, a fun get-together, or a goal we didn’t achieve, like getting a promotion. We expect people to act a certain way. They don’t. Disappointment.

Yet, in the Great Calendar in the Sky (it goes along with the Great Flow Charters in the Sky from the last post), the dis-appointment might be better for us. We just don’t know it yet. We had an “appointment” in our own minds with a set destiny. God/Goddess/All That Is had other ideas. The cosmic appointment calendar trumps our own. Sometimes we just don’t see the big picture, thinking our Day Runner, Franklin Planner, or the PDA in our minds knows best, like our mothers. Our own calendars are right about as often as mom is about “what’s good for us.”

I’ll share my most dramatic example. When I reunited with Keane, the great lost love of my life (the one who took me decades to get over), he tried to get a transfer to my city, which shocked me. I was startled that after our first long weekend together in 18 years, he’d actually make an effort to be near me on an ongoing basis. What shocked me even further was a dream I had while he was still in competition for the position. I heard this clear, psychic message, “There’s no way he won’t get it.”

Assuming the best and definitely wanting him to move to Sacramento, I was stunned when someone else got the offer. That’s when I realized that my wishful thinking punctuated the dream message according to my desired outcome.(There’s no way getting it won’t happen.) What my inner wisdom was really saying in the dream: “There’s no way. (Punctuation—period.) He won’t get it.”


Disappointing Godsends

In the three decades I spent recovering from Keane, I learned something about myself. My early relationships were agony/ecstasy, enmeshed with a mixture of high highs and low lows. Pleasure and pain were so closely bound together, I truly believed I had to endure twice or more pain for any love I got. Not exactly good programming for healthy relationships.

Had I stayed with Keane from our earliest encounters (ages 18-22) or even had the opportunity to be with him again at age 40 on an ongoing basis, the basic facts of our chemistry would not change. Our pull toward one another was always bigger than the both of us, but he was terrible for me. I would have bent over backwards trying to make it work for the fun and the intense chemistry—and my actual, unabashed love for him. But we’re simply too different. He had a side, at least back-when, that was very punishing—one my sensitive soul could have never endured in the long run (and I wonder how it ever did in the short run. I guess if it took so many years to come to stasis about him, it didn’t).

I have often thanked God that there was a bigger force that kept me from going Round 2 with Keane. But it took me years to “get there,” to see the divine direction, redirection, or right direction of it. With time I learned to trust the Big Appointment Calendar in the Sky … as you’ll see.


The House That Broke Our Hearts

When Tim and I first got together, my reunited childhood sweetheart hubby, we started looking for a house after we’d been living together, renting, for close to a year. We thought we’d found the house to end all houses—a block from my best friend in a small suburb that was more rural than suburban. From the back yard, it had a gorgeous view of Folsom Lake. We wanted to be near water—if not on it, at least where we could see it, which is more of what we could afford.

We signed the deal right after we saw it. It had a built-in sauna and many attractive features. However, when it came to moving the deal along, the seller hid out and would not respond to our realtor! Apparently, she wanted to back out of the contract but wouldn’t face the music. We had to hire an attorney to gain back our earnest money, and the lawyer’s fees cost us half of it. Tim was resentful and miserable for months. He had his heart set on that house.

Shortly after this debacle, our realtor’s assistant called us about a house she located just a block from her own in a nature setting near a creek. She felt this one was “it” for us. She was right! In the long-run, the house we bought was newer, closer to freeways for commuting while I still was working at my civil service job, and we suspect it is much more structurally sound than the one we lost. We love it here and can’t imagine ourselves in the other place, now that time and the divine appointment calendar has had her way with us.

This illustrates how we just can’t see the complete picture when a dis-appointment occurs. Our perfect house wasn’t ready for us yet. It wasn’t even on the market. So we had to be distracted by some other “house drama” (I’m a big fan of the drama “House!”) to keep us from making the mistake of buying anything else until it became available. I chuckle over this story still, and it has been 12 years.


Expectations and Disappointment

Instead of relying too much on my personal expectations, I’ve learned to live by what my first spiritual teacher called the divine escape clause, “This or something better.” Add the name of divinity to the request as you see Him/Her/It—Lord, God, Great Spirit, etc. Disappointment makes us miserable because we continue to think we’re the ultimate authority on what’s best for us, when life and All That Is have been disproving that to us every year of our lives.

I’ve learned, now, to simply understand that when something doesn’t work out, it’s because something better for me was meant to be. I just don’t see it yet. When you can see life through this lens, everything changes. It becomes more of an adventure and there’s less of that weepy, woeful disappointment—a feeling that makes me miserable.


Relationships: The One Appointment We Should Always Keep

This is the area where dis-appointment often equals heartbreak. I have another spin on this. Not just with Keane: I have had many relationships where, in retrospect, I feel blessed to have been “removed” or my appointment calendar edited against my will at the time.

From the perspective of a mature adult, it’s easy to look back and imagine the story arc of major loves lost and how things would have turned out, had we stayed together. That’s when I appreciate that God/dess spared me. But there’s one appointment people always should keep, whenever possible. That’s your appointment with completion.

At least three times in my life, I have had a relationship interrupted for different reasons—in one case, by the man himself (Keane), not wanting go to the next growth step when I had gone as far as I could go without a commitment. In another instance, the young man’s mother made him break up with me when we were truly too young for the feelings we’d gotten ourselves into. In yet another case, another woman stepped in right as we were getting to the cusp of declaring ourselves, before either of us had gotten up the nerve to risk admitting his or her feelings. (In that case, feelings not spoken and each of us being uncertain of how the other felt became the weak link and opening for someone else to enter).

These unfinished relationships feel like emotional miscarriages. I never stop mourning them at a certain level. I have been luckier than most, because in all cases, the interruption was talked about and/or resolved in some way later, even if we didn’t live the relationship to its natural completion at the time. (Example: One of the first things Keane said in our reunion phone call was, “There were loose ends.”)

Still, these relationships leave major losses to mourn. It’s not painful that they didn’t work out; it’s painful that they didn’t get to run their course for whatever we were to learn and experience together because our opportunity was cut off before our appointment time was up. It’s like that horrendous scene we often see, or heaven forbid, may have even personally experienced, where your 50 minutes is up with your shrink in the middle of some big emotional build-up to breakthrough. You’re cut off and left hanging.

There’s a corollary of this idea that applies to divorces and break-ups of committed relationships or any relationship where there was deep bonding. You didn’t fail; the relationship didn’t necessarily fail. Your appointment was with specific learning and experiences. Your time was simply up. This particular appointment didn’t block out your calendar for the rest of your life.


The Blessing and Curse of Deep Feelings

I am a deep feeler, and my husband calls it both my blessing and curse. He’s the middle man in the previous discussion. I keep teasing him that the only time he ever listened to his mother is when she told him to break up with me. Still, we ended up together 37 years later and are happily married. Sometimes even an interfering mother can’t muck things up completely.

If you, too, are a person with deep feelings, understand that mourning the losses of these dis-appointments is normal, healthy, and something you just have to take as part of love. Move through the feelings. Understand that same level of depth is also what brings you great joy.

An old boyfriend died recently, and when I found out, I had quite a weepy day or two consisting of a rush of happy and painful memories. (As I mentioned, all my youthful relationships were a mishmash of both.) After that, I felt great. I’ve even had some nice psychic conversations with him. Any story I’ll have with him again will have to be saved for another lifetime. I can only wonder if the Great Flow Charters in the Sky will bring us together to make up for the opportunities we missed when our appointment was cut short this time.

May you learn to see the blessings in all your dis-appointments. May you lobby for completion whenever possible, and at the very least—reconnect with that person when you’re older and wiser. Express your sorrow for what you missed together … and your joy for the fact that you can see a certain divine wisdom that led you down another path.

~~~

Photo Credit: A February calendar showing the 14th prominently © Kasiap Dreamstime.com