Choices

More Joy

Dobby the house elf is an important ingredient in this tale.  House elves can only be freed if a human gives them clothing.

One of the finest gifts life can bring us is friendship.  I have a dear friend of 39 years (OMG! That many?) who is as close a confidante as anyone could wish.  In spite of the fact that we have lived in different states most of those years and see each other seldom, we stay in close contact.  I can call and whine about anything and be totally supported.  If I whine about the same thing too many times she supports me by gently reminding me to get over it.  We like the same food and music and books and movies.  Harry Potter is a favorite, and Dobby the house elf stole our hearts. 

We talk often and laugh every time we talk, even when part of the conversation is about something sad or difficult.  We hardly ever send each other gifts because both of our houses are already full of too much stuff.  But every now and then…….

Last week we were mutually bemoaning the fact that our joints are in such a state neither of us can tolerate spike heels any more.  I told her I was making up for the loss by wearing brightly colored and patterned socks with my Sketchers.  She admitted to only wearing plain black, brown or blue socks.  We finished our conversation making cracks about our joints, (no pun intended) and laughing hysterically about some of the ensuing limitations.  We hung up and I had a sudden flash of genius, logged on to Amazon and successfully shopped for socks; brightly colored with patterns of peace signs or kittens or lightening.

She got the socks yesterday and immediately called.  “Dobby is free!  Dobby is free!” she squealed.  It took a minute, but when it hit me we were both laughing hysterically again.  If you knew us better you would understand the squealing importance of “FREE” but all I’ll say is that it has nothing to do with ever being jailbirds.

This story has everything to do with the joy of friendship; having one person who shares your likes and dislikes, joys and concerns, and rolls on the floor with you, laughing until you are both snorting, just because of a silly phone call.  It’s like we’re two eight year olds playing in a mud puddle, and as each year goes by we get younger.  We are getting very close, at least with each other, to being such  young innocents we have no knowledge of danger or suspicion or distrust or fear.  Acting like a little child is a very joyful thing.

Wishing you the joy of great friendship this holiday season and every coming year.

Choices

Choosing Joy

It’s time for me to ‘fess up.  This ongoing rant called Bonny’s blog is my attempt to become more conscious about my thoughts and actions and how they effect everything around me, and also to gain a community intent on becoming more conscious.  So, if you are following I thank you and if you choose to comment on any blog posting I’m going to get really excited.

On to the thought for this week.  The season of Advent generally is divided into four weeks, each one focusing on one attribute; faith, hope, peace, joy.  In some traditions love replaces one of those words, but in every tradition the fourth Sunday of Advent is about joy.  Faith?  Got it!  Hope?  Plenty of that too.  Peace?  I am at peace with all my family, finally!  So I’m going straight for joy this entire time.

Here is a question I found on a website I was exploring.  (www.lifebyme.com)  “What percentage of your decisions are based on how much joy they will bring you or those you care about?  More than 50%?  Less than 50%?  All of them?”

Well, now, joy?  I live a pretty happy life with many moments of joy, but it has never occurred to me to measure my decisions on the yardstick of joy.  Why ever not?  It makes so much sense!  Suddenly I feel like I’ve been walking around in a fog, shooting from the hip in my decision making, in spite of the fact that I pretty carefully consider every decision I make that’s more important than “what’s for dinner tonight?”

Ahhh; not true.  Way off track here!!  The question, “What’s for dinner tonight?” almost always has my joy or my family’s joy as part of the equation.  As a mom, grandparent, great-grandparent, spouse and enthusiastic cook, food is probably the arena in which I pay most attention to joy.  Oh, and here’s more.  Christmas is approaching and for the first time in twelve years all our children and grandkids will be gathered in the same place for a few days.  Every choice my husband Chris and I have made in the months it took to make this happen have all been about joy.

Another one; last month I used a colored marker to draw stick figures of Chris and myself, labeled with the names our four year old great grand daughter calls us, Nana and Poppi.  We sent it to her with a great big “We love you” at the bottom.  That was all about joy for us, and she has it taped to the wall just above her pillow and reminds us of it when we talk with her on the phone.

One of the things I’ve become more conscious about in this exercise is how quickly I judge myself as being less than adequate in what I do, such as not using a joy yardstick.  But after a couple of days of examining choices over years, I’m showing up firmly in the “over 50%” group.  Now that joy based choices are part of my awareness it will grow quickly.  Take a couple of days for your own self examination and I’ll bet you lunch you will come to the same conclusions.  We are all joy junkies because it’s encoded in our souls.  Let’s not settle for anything less any more.

The critical piece here is the consciousness of making decisions based on joy.  We all do it, but usually it’s automatic and subconscious.  So wake up.  There are lots of roses to smell.  Conscious choice is what brings true power to our lives, and there are no small things, no inconsequential choices. 

Signs of the Times: Five

More on gratitude

I seem to be stumbling on things about gratitude this month.  Personally I know a practice of focusing on gratitude is one of the fastest ways to improve your life in all ways.  Here are some familiar words.  Thoughts are things. Energy follows attention.  What you focus on increases.  As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is. (Proverbs 23:7)   It seems to me that someone with a grateful heart is likely to think and speak in such a way that all those around that person benefit.

One of the wonderful signs of the times is that medicine and psychology are more and more studying what makes people healthy instead of just how to heal problems.  If you have been on a spiritual path for any length of time you will have heard a lot about the power and importance of gratitude.  Here is an excerpt from an article published by the University of Texas.  To read the entire article, follow this link.  http://www.uthealthleader.org/archive/mind_body_soul/2007/gratitude-1121.html

STORY BY Drs. Blair and Rita Justice

“Gratitude is a vaccine, an antitoxin, and an antiseptic.”
— John Henry Jowett

"If you start practicing now, (October) you could be grateful by Thanksgiving. Not only that, your marriage could improve, you might be exercising more, feel less depressed, sleep better, have a healthier heart, more life satisfaction, and increase your chances of living longer.

This may sound like a late-night ad that comes with a free set of steak knives (...and that’s not all!), but a growing body of research shows that gratitude is truly amazing in its physical and psychosocial benefits. The benefits are so great, in fact, that it’s a wonder “gratitude gyms” aren’t already being franchised.

Robert A. Emmons, PhD, professor of psychology at University of California, Davis, pioneer in the research on gratitude and one of the leading scholars in positive psychology, is author of Thanks: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier. What makes gratitude the “magic ingredient” is that it takes us outside ourselves so that we can see how we are part of the larger, intricate network of sustaining relationships -- relationships that are reciprocal."

If you have never engaged in an extended gratitude practice, give yourself a Christmas gift and start one now.  You just might find 2012 to be the best year of your life.  Remember, what you focus on increases!

Signs of the Times: Four

Re-wire Your Nervous System

Many of you are familiar with the statistic that the total of human knowledge is doubling every ten years.  The statistic is several years old so I suspect things are moving even more rapidly now.  How is this a sign of the times?  The average person today experiences more in one year than an ancestor in 1900 would have experienced in an entire lifetime.  That’s why we’re feeling out of breath!  More feelings, more information, more sensory input, more choices, more avenues of expression.  And there’s more coming, fast.

How did this happen?  How can we deal with eighty or ninety or a hundred times the information and experience our ancestors handled?  Because humanity has taken an enormous leap in consciousness since 1900.  We have been energetically rewired and our nervous systems are different.  Practices such as meditation, allowing our imagination a place to play, and working to develop intuitive abilities will continue to energetically rewire our nervous systems and enhance creativity, innate wisdom, compassion, awareness and problem solving capacity.

The growing understanding between science and religion points toward humans learning to use all of their minds rather that just the ten percent Einstein noted.  In his book, “A Whole New Mind,” Daniel Pink explains why right-brainers will rule the world.  He declares that it is the union of the right and left brain that will create the geniuses of the future.  When intellect and intuition work in concert, each side absorbing, processing, sharing information and mutually making choices, a radically expanded intelligence is available to us. 

Here is one of my favorite quotes from Mr. Pink.  “The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind – creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers. These people…will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.”  - Daniel H. Pink, A Whole New Mind

Another point of view comes from an Episcopalian minister.  Oprah had a traditional cleric, Ed Bacon (Rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena) in for an interview. A part of his belief is the insight that congregations of the 21st Century must be of an interfaith nature (as opposed to preaching that our way is the only right way).  He feels that the sense of separation which is caused by people feeling sole ownership to the right way is at the root of violence and hatred and the justification of war.

My point of view is that it requires a mind which integrates intellect and intuition to make the shift from us-against-them mentality to an open attitude supporting the worth and wellbeing of all.

http://www.wisdomquestwizards.org

Signs of the Times: Three

Radical Gratitude

As Thanksgiving approaches, it’s obvious that there are many in the world with little to be thankful for, even in our ‘advanced’ western societies.  I would like to invite you into a state of radical gratitude that will hopefully become your practice reaching far beyond this holiday.  In these changing times the personal energy we each broadcast is the most powerful change agent of all.

Someone I know once took a vacation in Bali where she met an amazing woman.  The woman lived in a grass hut with a dirt floor.  She was thin, prominent bones witnessing to malnutrition.  She also had a radiant smile.  She supported herself by weaving cloth for the beautiful sari’s so common there.  She herself only owned two sari’s; one thin and ragged and the other lovely silk that she wore for special ceremonies.  The visitor asked why she smiled so much, and her response was to recite a litany of all the beauty she saw around her.  That humid climate produced a year round riot of colorful flowers.  The birds were amazing and the sky glorious.  She had friends and family who loved her.  She had work she enjoyed.  The visitor admired the beautiful silk sari and the woman insisted on giving it to her.  She would accept no payment other than a promise to carry smiles back to her own home.  Her focus was one of gratitude and she lived in joy.

Radical gratitude is about the little things.  My lovely stone tile floor collects balls of cat fur rather frequently.  I can be annoyed at needing to sweep, again, or I can smile about the four affectionate Maine Coon cats that share my life and make me giggle.  The wind blows a lot where I live.  A Navajo urged gratitude for the wind blowing bad spirits away.  I am getting older and sometimes that’s uncomfortable, but I have lived fully and joyfully in this body, and still do.  I have had some very difficult relationships but each one taught a priceless lesson and I’ve finally grown up enough to be in a very good relationship.  My flower beds are full of newly planted violas and pansies that will survive the winter and burst into incredible bloom in late March.  Mice and tiny lizards nibble in the flower beds, putting on a daily wildlife show.  Oh, and have you ever seen a hummingbird war?  Two species visiting your yard at the same time makes for an amazing ruckus.  I have the time to write.  Finally!

Begin with a small notebook, or a document that sits on the desktop of your computer.  Put it in your calendar if you use one.  No bit of appreciation is too small or too silly.  Write something down at least once a day.  If you are not a writer and hate that sort of thing, you’re not off the hook.  Instead you can find at least one person a day to listen as you speak aloud the blessing of your gratitude.  Become the Pollyanna of your tribe, the one who always sees the good and speaks the good.  That is not a position of weakness; it is a stance of power.  Your words, your thoughts and your attitude are the greatest gift you have to give to the future of the human race.  Your choice is to stand under a cloud of gloom and feed it with your thoughts, or radiate a spirit of joy that will lift those around you and lift you to a new level of experience.  Get your light out from under that bushel and shine on!

Signs of the Times: Two

The Times We Are Leaving

The rioting of Penn State fans over the firing of coach Paterno is bone chilling.  To these people, “my tribe winning” is more important than young boys being raped.  Repeatedly.  By a so-called sports figure looked up to as a hero and an example for  young people.  Then the rapes are covered up by the aggressor’s superiors, including but not limited to Paterno.  The cover up went even higher.

This sort of madness is historic, tracing back through all of recorded history.  Rape and torture of the conquered was encouraged because it broke their spirits and discouraged further fighting.  We Americans like to think we are evolved enough that we don’t do those things any more, but the torture of prisoners in Iraq by American military, including electric shock and waterboarding among other things, proves otherwise.  Yes, the actions were performed by low ranking young people, but they were encouraged by their superiors all the way up to George Bush and Dick Cheyney who still claim it was the right thing to do.

If you are thinking that rioting football fans being compared to military atrocities is a bit of a stretch, think again.  Anyone who still believes they belong to a tribe that must win in order to feel good, even to the point of ignoring the rape of children, has the personal capacity to engage in similar acts and find a way to feel justified doing so.  This mentality is the root and seed of warfare, cruelty and ‘collateral damage’ being acceptable, and we must find a way to heal the psychosis of hate if we are to step into a future world that works for all.

Each of us has one simple thing to do in order to support the shift to a better future. Just speak up, with those you know.  We don’t have to march or do anything extreme.  Find a way to talk about the need to see things differently and do things differently with your circle of friends and family.  You can also post your ideas on this blog, then invite friends and family.

Signs of the Time One

After observing the “signs of the times” for years with great dismay, finally hope is blossoming.  It began with my friend and astrologer telling me she searched for planetary aspects which might indicate what to expect for 2012, and there weren’t any.  Astrologically, 2012 is unusually peaceful in terms of aspects; it’s all happening now.  This is the year of great upheaval, some of which will bleed over to early 2012, but by the time we get to the dates which were noted in the Mayan calendar, we will be living in a new reality.

New realities can sound frightening to some, particularly those most resistant to change.  Perhaps it will ease some anxiety to look at how far we have come, say in the last thousand years.  In the generation living in 1012, CE, you lived and died where you were born, if you were lucky.  If you weren’t lucky, you were conscripted into some army and died violently very soon after.  No one expected to better themselves or rise above the life of a serf and become wealthy.  Today anyone with enough drive and vision can go anywhere.

The reality we are approaching will be as different from today as today is different from the way people lived a thousand years ago.  Einstein said the most important decision we all have to make is whether or not we live in a friendly universe.  I am convinced we live in a friendly universe, one that conspires for our good.  For me that indicates that the new reality will bring a better life for all the children of the earth.

I will be posting the “signs of the times” that I see in future blogs.  Please subscribe and add your own observations.