Traffic Jam

And now comes the busy time of year. There are presents to buy, trees to decorate, cards to write, pictures to take, parties to plan, schedules to coordinate, and not to mention, I work at the Post Office. I also try to call my dad and my daughter every day, go to the gym, meditate, and now I have committed myself to occasionally writing a blog. My mind and my schedule have been stacked full to say the least, and then I have my Inner Self knocking on my door, saying, Excuse me,I would like some of your time as well.

I have a tendency to pack my days off from work with all the things I can’t seem to find time to do during the week, and I rarely get everything done on my list. So today while I was in transit from one task to another, my Higher Powers seemed to indicate to me to take a different route to a destination than I normally take. Was I avoiding some unknown accident or incident? No, I drove right into a major traffic jam in which in about three miles I passed three accidents. It took me three times as long to get to where I was going. Was this some joke on the part of my Guides? Was I just not in tune today and not listening when they told me to take a different route? Hmmmmm… I don’t think so. I really think They were sitting up on a cloud somewhere laughing at me. Now I was forced to sit and wait. I was forced to just be….

My husband pointed out to me that had I listened to him we would already be at our destination. Hmmm… true, I said, but we can be thankful that it wasn’t us in the accidents….(no one was hurt in any of them, by the way, just people in a hurry to get home after a holiday weekend)…..and we can be thankful that it is a nice warm day and we can sit and enjoy the sunshine with our windows down.

We finally got to where we were going and we got most of the stuff done that we had intended. I think my Guides are trying to teach me that I need a balance between doing, and having and being. My doing and my having sometimes get more attention than my being. Sitting in the car today I got to experience being. If I don’t make time for just being in my busy schedule, then the Universe will orchestrate it so that I do have time.

Life gives us everything we need. It may not be what we want, but if we look for the gift in the experience, we will find that it was something we need. Today I apparently needed to sit in traffic. During that time I experienced a moment of time with my husband and my stepdaughter when we were not doing anything but just sitting together, observing life, enjoying the sunshine, and waiting.

Play Time

This weekend my daughter Felicia and my grandson Hayden who is just turning four came up for a visit. It was my grandson’s birthday and also my husband’s and I was having a party for the two of them. I don’t get to see my grandson often so it was great fun watching all the changes since the last visit. I was busy vacuuming and cleaning and preparing for the party, but Hayden was continually calling for me to play with him or write with him. At first I kept saying to him, “wait just a minute, grandma is cleaning, or grandma is cooking or grandma is making tea, or….”

Two things came to my mind. I remember my mom when I was little. She was always busy doing this or that. She never sat to watch tv with us or just hang out with us. It was always something important and I didn’t begrudge her for it until I was older. The second thing that I thought of was actually a bible story from my church going days. In this story Jesus goes to the house of two sisters, Martha and Mary. While Martha is busy preparing the food, Mary sits at the feet of Jesus and listens to him talk. After awhile Martha gets angry and actually asks Jesus to tell her sister to get up and help. Jesus reprimands her and tells her that Mary has chosen the better thing. I guess what lesson the Angels were trying to tell me was that I needed to lighten up and not worry if the house was not spotless and everything was not picture perfect. I had a grandson who was wanting my attention and I will not always have this opportunity to just sit on the floor and roll the ball or play with cars and trains. I am sure my daughter will remember that I always seemed to be busy when she was little and didn’t spend a lot of play time with her, but this was a mistake. There will always be dust on the floor and there will always be dishes to wash. I need to play with my grandson.

I think the same thing applies to the Spirit. Sometimes we just get too busy to stop and just listen. There are deadlines to meet, there are clothes in the washing machine, and I still need to go to the gym today. And there are our Angels and Guides, just waiting to communicate. We just have to spend time connecting.

Don't let time get away. Remember what is important.

Time to Plug In

This evening while I was meditating I was given the picture of a cord which had become disconnected. I heard the words… it is time to reconnect. The thought that accompanied this was how sometimes when I am using some kind of electrical appliance like an iron, for example, and I am ironing away (not that I do this very often), when suddenly I notice that the iron is no longer hot, and, upon examination I find that the iron has come unplugged from the wall. If I am not paying attention, I will iron for a moment or so before I notice that whatever it is I am ironing is not responding to all my hard work. I think this is what happens sometimes to our spirit. We unknowingly become unplugged from our Source and then gradually we begin to notice that we are no longer functioning at our normal levels of awareness.

I had mentioned in my previous blog that I had noticed that I had not been receiving any messages lately. When I tried to meditate I would fall asleep or my mind would go off into a hundred different directions. It felt like the connection had been lost. Tonight the message was… it is time to reconnect. Apparently it is just as easy as plugging a cord back into a wall. So I envisioned myself plugging back into my Source. I almost felt a wave of electricity go through me as I realized how easy it was.

I think much of the game of life is that fact that before we are born we are so connected to our Source and then we come into this life having forgotten who we are and why we have come. Much of our lives we spend trying to figure out how to get connected again. We try to fill our lives with things that we feel will give us that feeling of connection. For each of us the things we try will be different, but eventually we must learn that the connection to our Source happens from within us.

thoughts

Lately I have been thinking about purpose. It seems that we as human beings thrive on the feeling that our life has some meaning, that we matter to someone or that we have done something for some Higher Cause. This need for our lives to have meaning and purpose is what drives us to wake up from day to day and to do the things we do. Depending on our religion or the way we were brought up this need for a sense of purpose might manifest in different ways. It might cause someone to do any number of things for any number of causes. But the fact is that we all desire to have a higher purpose in our lives. This need for purpose in our lives in itself is not a bad thing. I was reading a book today that proposed that a feeling of purpose can keep a human from falling ill or from contracting diseases versus someone who seems to contract every virus that comes along. Maybe the one person had a sense of purpose and the other person didn’t. Or it could keep a person from dying from a disease long after the doctors predicted they would live.

I read a post today on facebook where someone said… do what you love and you will love what you do. What about all the people in this world who would just love to sit in front of the tv all day? I would predict that soon those people would be getting hungry. Sometimes life requires us to do things we would not prefer to do. Some days I get up in the morning and I really don’t feel like running or going to the gym, but I make myself go and after several minutes the rush comes and all of a sudden I am loving what I am doing. My suggestion is this… choose to love what you do and then you will do what you love. I never thought when I first got hired at the Post Office that sorting mail or delivering mail was my purpose in life. I thought surely one day the heavens would open and by some miracle I would be able to quit my job at the Post Office and do something ( I wasn’t sure what that something was) that would save the world from disaster or make the world a better place. In the mean time, I delivered mail and along the way came upon a woman who had no real contact with people except for me, the mail carrier, delivering her mail to her every day. She baked me bread and had some little something for me every day. At that time my purpose in life was to be a light to that woman. I would take my breaks at her house every day and talk to her because I knew that I was the only human contact she had every day. No I wasn’t saving the world, but I was bringing a better day to one woman.

I think sometimes we have these grandiose plans for ourselves. I think of the movie Toy Story where the Astronaut toy thought he was really the real action hero who was here to save the world. His whole world fell apart and he lost his whole sense of purpose when he discovered he was only a toy. But his real purpose in life was to bring happiness to one child.

I think most of us are here to make the world a better place one little moment at a time. Maybe we are here to encourage someone who is down or to smile at a clerk who has had a bad day. Today as I read inspirational thoughts from some authors and public speakers who seem to really have an amazing talent for words and inspiring others, my first thought was, what could I possibly say that would be as good as what any of these people are saying? And then I remembered talking to a customer today whose exwife is trying to take visitation of his child away from him and I encouraged him to think positive thoughts and send her good vibrations instead of the energy of hatred and just say a positive affirmation that whatever is best for everyone concerned is what will come about in the end. Of course I do not know the whole story and that is why I encouraged him to affirm what is best for everyone concerned is what will come about. There is no harm in sending out the energy of love into any situation. He left me thanking me for the encouragement and I realize that he may never read an inspirational thought from any one of my favorite authors or speakers but I am there delivering a message of hope to him.

I guess my thought for today is … bloom where you are planted. Think positive thoughts and send out positive energy no matter whether you are out there literally saving lives or whether you are flipping hamburgers or changing bedpans. What if there was no one to change bedpans? Everyone has an important job. Everyone can make a difference in the world just by being happy and spreading love wherever you go and whatever you do. If we all spend more time loving each other and seeing the best in each other than we do finding fault with each other, soon there will be nothing to complain about. We will have created a better world, one person at a time.

Blocked

The past week or so I have been feeling blocked in terms of my creativity. A difficult week at work last week did not help my situation. The two may have been related. I seemed to be unable to meditate, and even while on the elliptical machine or running, I was receiving no inspiration. I had been looking forward to November 11, who many said was a high spiritual day. Off from work due to this day also being Veterans Day, I spent much of my time attempting to meditate and spend some time with Spirit. It seemed like the walls around me were too heavy for any communications with Spirit to come through. All I wanted to do is sleep.

Even sleep did not come easy for me. Worried about a computer challenge at work, one night I lay awake all night trying to figure out how I should have solved the problem. I had even expressed to a few choice friends that I thought something about me was making some electronic equipment fail to do their job properly.

Today while doing my exercise routine, it has occurred to me that challenges are to our spirits what weights are to our muscles. I notice that when I do the same kind of exercise routine for awhile, my muscles adapt and the workout becomes easy, therefore ineffective. I have to continually challenge myself and change my routine to continue to see results. It is the same with our spirits. If we coast through our lives with no challenges, our spirits become weak. I still believe that our thoughts create our reality, however, I do not believe that I intentionally created a computer malfunction or a creativity block. Maybe my Higher Self realized that at some point in the future, I was going to need to know how to handle a computer challenge, and the best way to learn is to experience one. And the best way to be sure that my messages I receive are indeed messages from an Unseen Realm, is not to get anything for awhile.

I heard someone say one time that if you think you are running into a wall, step back and look up. It may be that instead of a wall, it is a huge step and you are just running into the riser of the step. Maybe you are getting ready to step into something really big.

Gratitude

Recently I have become increasingly aware of my thoughts and emotions and the power they have to create the reality I call my day to day existence. Every day in dealing with the public, I engage in conversations and small talk, and frequently the subject matter becomes less than positive: the weather.. it is too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry….etc… politics, you either love him or you hate him….the mail, it is late or misdelivered…..I guess you get the drift. I guess I noticed it is rather easy to fall into less than positive conversations.

After several hours of this one day, I began to realize that I needed to offset all of this negativity in my mind. I began to make a list of all the things I was grateful for, and not just the normal things like a house to live in, a job, health, family, those things we take for granted but are the first on our list when we start to think of things that we are blessed with. I began to thank my invisible helpers, be they Guides, Angels, or my Higher Self for those things we sometimes don’t notice but are instrumental in our survival in this realm. I thanked them for helping me through the difficult years, for sending me signposts when I was feeling lost, for sending me knowledge in the form of books or teachings of different kinds. There are many times when I am feeling worried or anxious, I will have a particular song play on the radio, the words of which will give me comfort. Or sometimes I will wake up and a particular song will be playing inside my head, and if I pay attention it is a message of some kind for me. I don’t know how many times I have gotten messages from movies or television. It may be only a sentence or two but it will be exactly what I need to get me through a particular time of uncertainty.

Most of the major crossroads in my life have been determined by by certain signposts that my Guides have set up for me so that I would take the path that would best serve the purpose I needed to accomplish at that particular time in my life. I wasn’t always good at reading or interpreting the signposts and I didn’t always follow their direction, but the signs were there nevertheless.

Our unseen helpers are always there suggesting paths that would serve us the best. Of course we are always free to choose our own paths, and they never force us into any decision, but the choice is always given to us. I think it is time to say thanks to all those unseen helpers who tirelessly send us messages and never give up even when we ignore their promptings. Thanks, to all of You Guides and Messengers, who never give up. Thanks for all the signs, messages and guidance whether I realized where it was coming from or not, and whether I listened to the guidance or not. Thanks for the interruptions when I was about to do or say something I shouldn’t. Thanks for the answers you sent to my questions in the form of movies or television interviews.

All of these divine interventions many times go unnoticed and unacknowledged. I just want to take this opportunity to say “thank you”.Thank you to all my unseen helpers for all that you do to illuminate my path and point out potential stumbling blocks.

I appreciate all your help……

The Empty Table

I am sitting on the porch at an upscale French restaurant called Gabriel’s Inn in Ijamsville, MD, near Frederick. I am sipping on a glass of wine while my husband is inside at a meeting. There are outside tables available but at the moment the tables are empty. There are customers inside and I can hear them chatting and there is pleasant music playing. I also can hear the cicadas singing to me, birds chirping, and in the distance a train whistle blows. Occasionally, a car passes by. In the front of the restaurant there is an expanse of green grass, decorated by a fish pond and a gazebo. Near the gazebo, I can see a couple of deer grazing.They have crossed the front entrance and seem to be completely oblivious to any feelings of danger. What quiet contentment. A feeling of deep gratitude and joy rises up within me.

I happen to focus on the empty table in front of me, clad with a nice tablecloth and candle and surrounded by hanging plants and creeping ivy which has made its way up the banisters.

For some reason, a verse rises up within me from the deep recesses of my memory, “I have prepared a table before you in the presence of thine enemies.” Ah.. an excerpt from the 23rd Psalm. Yes, but as I have previously shared, I am seldom troubled by any enemies. What are you trying to tell me?

I seem to remember a quote and I don’t even know who said it or where I heard it that says,”I have found the enemy and the enemy is me.”

Are you trying to tell me that even through all my ups and downs and battles with myself, my endless questions regarding the validity of my contribution to the betterment of society, my questions to myself regarding whether or not I am really hearing messages from the Higher Realms, even through all that… You…. the Angels, the Higher Realms, God, whatever you want to call the Higher Power…….You have prepared a table for me despite myself???

HA…just now a train whistle blows loudly as if to call out to me and say… YES …. you finally got it!!

In the midst of my own self doubt, my battles with myself, there is a table prepared for me. Right now it is empty. It is waiting for me to sit down and dine.

Keep the Change

Working in a retail environment, I have noticed a circulation of the energy we call money. There are those customers when they are offered a few cents in return for the money they have used to pay for the services they requested, they will say, “keep the change.” Some will stand and wait for a penny, and some customers occasionally come up a few cents short. In the big scheme of things, the customers who say, “keep the change” make up for the ones who are a little short.

It seems to me that this is the way of the universe. There is the give and take of all of existence. Bees pollinate flowers. It benefits both the bee and the flower. We humans give out carbon dioxide and take in oxygen while trees do the opposite. We all are involved in the give and take of the universe.

The problem arises when there is inequality in the giving and the taking, which is the biggest problem in global warming. We humans are taking all of the resourses of Mother Earth and not giving enough back. Many times I have found that givers have a hard time taking and takers have a hard time giving. If a person who is a giver by nature doesn’t take time to recharge themselves and fill themselves back up with the energy they are always giving out, they can become ill and make it necessary for others to give to them. If a taker who is accustomed to having others give to them never gives of themselves or the blessings they receive, even if it is not money they give, they will find themselves always in need of a handout. They may find that their sources dry up as even the most generous givers get tired of giving to those who never seem to be able to improve their conditions.

For those of us, including myself, who tend to get a little unbalanced one way or the other, we all need to learn that there is give and take and that it is universal law. If we give a lot, then we need to spend some time renewing ourselves. Spend some time in nature, exercise, meditate, pray, play, whatever it is that renews our souls. If we are a taker, then learn to give. Volunteer for a charity, help an older person clean their house or wash their car, mow their grass. Or it may be something simple, like telling someone to “keep the change.”

Signposts on the Road of Life

Monday I took a little road trip to see my daughter who lives a couple of hours away. My plan was to stop along the way and pick up some of that wonderful new grilled chicken from KFC and take my daughter Felicia and her son Hayden up on the Skyline Drive for a picnic. To my astonishment there were no KFC signs on the highway telling me… take this exit for KFC. Finally I decided to stop at one of the exits and just check. Maybe KFC doesn’t advertise on the highway. Unhappily, there were no KFC’s on the particular exit that I took so I ended up stopping at the grocery store and buying one of those wonderful rotisserie chickens instead and we still had a wonderful picnic.

As I was driving though, the thought came to me that life is just like this road trip. We are driving along the highway of life and someone before us has paved the road for us so that we could have a pleasant ride and someone has thought to put up signposts to tell us what lies off of the exits that are available. It is our choice to take or not take the exits along the way. Also there are other travelers in life riding alongside of us and some pass us because we are going too slow and some we may pass by because we think they are going too slow. But everyone is traveling along at the pace that is best for them. Some travelers may just be taking a ride and some may have a particular purpose or destination in mind. Most of us are not mindful enough of our fellow travelers. Some of us, like I did, noticed the wonderful beauty of the landscape around me and the wonderful sunshine and puffy clouds dotting the sky. Some of us are too wrapped up in the journey itself or the anticipation of what lies ahead of us on the road or at our intended destination to pay attention to the beauty around us.

As I drove, I just thanked the trees for giving us oxygen and providing us with beauty, and I thanked the person or group of persons who decided to make a highway in the first place so I would not have to travel on a dirt road. And I thanked the person or group of persons who thought up the idea of making signs to indicate what was off of each exit so that we could know our choices, and then I thanked the person or group of persons who actually made the signs and put them in place. It occurs to me that we all have a job in life. Maybe our job is to pick up the trash that lies on the side of the road. Maybe we cannot see that we have an important job, because we are making someone’s journey more pleasant or more safe. All we see is the trash. We are unhappy that we have to pick it up and we are thinking… if some people would not be so inconsiderate as to throw trash out of their cars maybe I wouldn’t have to do this. But the positive side of the trash is that it gives someone a job to pick it up. So no matter what your job or how thankless you think it is, it is an important job. It matters to someone.

As you travel your highway of life, or maybe to you it is a dirt road and you are walking, but as you travel, look around you. There are so many other travellers that have gone before you and have made your journey so much easier than they had it. There are people and angels and guides who provide you with signposts to indicate what the outcome might be if you take a particular exit or go down a particular path. Don’t be oblivious to the signs around you. It may be that your computer goes down and it is just a sign that now would be a good time to do something else. Or the phone rings just as you were about to make a gripe or complaint of some kind and your words are stopped before you can say them. Thank the angels and guides for the sign that maybe you should say something different or do something different in that moment in time. Maybe if you take an exit looking for something that wasn’t indicated on the sign you will find something better that you weren’t necessarily looking for.

Love and light to my fellow travelers……