Sending Y'all My Hearty Joy!

For almost a year and a half I have had heart shapes appearing all around me. They started about six months after I watched "The Secret" for the first time. I've written about them in past posts, here and on LipstickHippie.com, so I'm not going into great detail about it here but you can see them if you search for "heart" on either blog. I just wanted to share a couple that I found recently. I don't photograph all of the hearts that I find but once in awhile I am inspired to grab my camara and document my crazy heart story!


This toothpaste heart I have tried to recreate and I haven't even come close. I was talking to my cousin on the telephone and getting ready to go out at the same time when I looked down and this little gem was looking back up at me! I took the photo while I was still on the phone with my cousin. The funny thing with this one was that we were talking about the hearts a few moments before this showed up. I'm glad that I use cinnamon toothpaste, it's so pretty! And check out the cloud heart in the column to your right (scroll up or down a bit, depending on when you read this.) That one is pretty amazing!

Why Ask Why?

Imagine if you deliberately paused for just a moment before choosing to take action and asked yourself why? What paths would change in your life? Today I paused before choosing angry words and instead I chose to express pain. Each action becomes more deliberate and has more meaning when we pause for even a millisecond to evaluate our choice. I choose my actions and my reactions and when I remember to choose consciously I lessen the drama and heighten the quality.

Oprah's Incredible Gift of Inspiration!

My dvr is set to record Oprah every day so that later I may pick and choose which episodes I want to watch by reading the episode description. Recently I was baffled... an entire show dedicated to YouTube.com celebrities. It seemed pretty off the wall to me. So, of course, I decided to check it out and I am once again amazed by Oprah's vision, understanding and powers of inspiration. A topic that seemed at first to be trite and a little bizarre turned out to be incredibly moving and inspirational. Several people on the show were simply following their bliss and through the magic of YouTube.com their dreams and beyond became their reality in no time at all. It was a beautiful affirmation of the Law of Attraction. Self effort and grace will bring us more than we could ever hope for when we learn; how to truly allow ourselves to dream, how to ask for our dreams, and finally, how to love ourselves enough to allow our dreams to come true. It sounds easy but it does require a good deal of love for one's self, a plethora of faith, and a wee bit of motivation. Mix 'em up in your tummy and dreams will come true folks! And if at first you don't succeed keep on tryin' and I promise that when you get the recipe just right it really does work.

Aaah! The Power and Wisdom of Intention

I first watched The Secret a little over a year ago. After my first viewing I watched it every day for over a month. I tried creating a vision board but ended up with a collage of a magical garden with a hummingbird and my teacher and Lakshmi hanging out with me and my best friend Pam. It's quite beautiful and everyone loved it so much that I made one for my mom for her birthday. I actually didn't really feel that I had accomplished what I had set out to do but I loved the collage and that was great.

At the same time I went through some magazines and picked out a few pages with photos of things that I wanted to change in my life. I only remember two of the pages one was a woman doing yoga and one was a photo of some healthy looking organic food. Lastly I wrote in a gratitude journal every day for a few months and then off and on for the past year or so. In my gratitude journal I write about the love that I feel radiating from inside and out. I express gratitude for my healthy, strong, lithe and beautiful body mind and spirit. I say thank you for the ease with which I walk through this life. There are other things but those are the constants.

Here I am about a year from the first time I watched The Secret. Let's see... I am doing yoga every day because I feel like doing it not because I feel I should be doing it. I feel stronger and more present in my postures than I ever have and I actually taught yoga many years ago! I eat almost entirely organic and my overall diet is much more healthy, again because I crave these foods now. I do my yoga practice in a garden where there are, I'm not kidding, two or three hummingbirds buzzing around and occasionally alighting on a branch near me. There is a baby bunny who pops out once in awhile and has actually fallen asleep near me. Majestic eagles soar above me almost every day. One day two baby deer were laying down in the field next to me quietly watching. Could this garden be any more magical? I find heart shapes everywhere. If you want to see a couple more of them go to this posting. You will likely be surprised. I still get these hearts all the time.

I am more relaxed and calm than I have ever been. My family and friends have all noted and praised the change in me. More importantly I have noted the change in me. After many years of being told that I must first love myself... I DO! I really do feel incredible love for myself. I still get the old crap rearing it's head occasionally but it has so much less power than ever before. I might listen for an hour or so now and then I just go outside and reconnect with myself and get back to creating my beautiful life. I am happy and grateful to be manifesting love, joy and magical gardens. Oh yes and, of course, a healthy, strong, lithe and beautiful body, mind and spirit!

I Saw Tammy Faye Doing Yoga

Recently a TV program that I had recorded on my dvr ended and suddenly Tammy Faye's smiling face was in front of me, larger than life. I must say that I've always had a lot of respect for Tammy Faye, she was an amazing woman who radiated love and acceptance. And though I generally try to avoid wacky reality TV, I've found myself lingering on her televised escapades from time to time. She always seemed to me to be a lovely, kind and wonderfully kooky soul. (She passed away on July 20th, 2007. You go girl!) Anyway, I digress... a lot. The program was about the various ways that Tammy Faye was trying to heal herself. In the ten or fifteen minutes that I watched she had some acupressure done and she went to a yoga teacher to learn meditation. Her daughter Tammy Sue had suggested the yoga teacher. The last thing that I saw was Tammy Faye saying that, if nothing else, the yoga and meditation had definitely made the chemo easier for her to handle.

The next day, after my own yoga practice, I was meditating on the grass. Just as I was emerging my beagle, Duda, started barking wildly and went tearing off to the fence where a precious Puggle and the couple who were walking him stood. I looked back at them and the man smiled and gave a friendly wave so I waved back, got up and strolled over to say hello. The young couple, Dave and Sharon, were finishing up college in Long Island and they were up here, in the Catskills, visiting Dave's grandmother. We started conversing about rescues because both of my pups were rescues and Fleck was too. We discussed organic dog food and I was so pleased to hear of more dog owners who put a good deal of consideration into their dog's diet. After all, dogs deserve to enjoy their food and maintain good health too, we all agreed.

After awhile I invited them to bring Fleck into the yard to play with Duda for a bit. They did and we conversed awhile longer. We spoke about buying dog food from small company's which led to a discussion about corporation's which led to me telling them about the film The Corporation. Finally we talked about how amazing it is that people are really becoming more and more aware and awake. We all felt that the world around us really is changing in a positive way. Then I asked if they had seen The Secret. Sharon smiled and said that she had the book and she'd been lent a copy of the dvd by Dave's grandmother. Dave said that he hadn't watched it because he felt that he already believed these things and didn't need confirmation. I laughed and told Dave that I had a spiritual teacher since I was eleven and that I watched The Secret every day for over a month after seeing it for the first time. I explained the reason I loved it so much was not because it was new information to me, it really wasn't. The reason that I enjoyed it so much is that it confirms, for me, everything that I know in my heart to be true. It's really just a bunch of phenomenal teachers speaking from their heart and offering their knowledge from the work that they have done on themselves. The light in each of them is evident and when you put them all together in The Secret, the light is blinding. The reason that I watched it every day for over a month was because changing habits takes repetition, and I wanted to change some old habits! Thirty dollars is a bargain for a tool to help me with that, if you ask me.

A friend of mine told me that he had heard someone claim that The Secret was brainwashing. Well, sugar, I can't speak for anyone but myself but I will say this... Wash My Brain. Clean away the negative self talk, the low self esteem, the reveling in resentment and anger and the creepy desires to feel superior or inferior or whatever bizarre silliness my brain comes up with next. Bring on the brainwashing machine and wash away! I am ready to feel strong, empowered and joyful. And as a very pragmatic friend of mine said on the subject of The Secret, "Even if you don't end up getting everything that you are asking for, well, you just feel better about your life. What's to lose?" Yup, it's pretty much a win/win.

I warned you about my digressive tendencies! Back to Sharon and Dave and our conversation. Dave became excited to watch The Secret and said that he would do so that very evening. Our conversation turned again to how things are changing and people are growing and ideas are flowing. I mentioned that I had seen Tammy Faye getting acupressure and doing yoga and we discussed how wild that was. Also the popularity of The Secret and other such films. Not to mention the popularity of yoga, meditation and (so called) alternative therapies. I mentioned that I design t-shirts with the intention to inspire and bring joy. Sharon chimed in that my t-shirts would be great for Dave's grandmother to wear at her yoga class. lol

I can only speak from my perceptions and experience. In my 39 years I have watched public perceptions of yoga, meditation, (so called) alternative medicines and (so called) alternative lifestyles metamorphose from feared to tolerated to accepted to embraced. And I saw Tammy Faye doing yoga, baby! Rock on, Tammy Faye, wherever you are. Change is here and change is now and I want to express my gratitude to every person that intended this and every person who manifested this and continues to do so, including myself! We are on our way gang! Keep up the good work!

Gratitude Revisited

You might think this topic would be more appropriate at Thanksgiving time... I beg to differ. This is a year round topic, it is a New Years Resolution topic. I don't generally do New Years Resolutions but this year will be my first really genuine one.

Many years ago I was living in an ashram in India. One sunny day I was sitting in a beautiful marble courtyard listening to my teacher who was giving a talk on the subject of gratitude. I became increasingly intrigued as she spoke about the joy that true gratitude offers. She told us that this was a spiritual experience that could be cultivated over time. I really wanted the experience that she described. So, I decided to attempt to cultivate the experience of gratitude. Every day I would approach my teacher and as I placed my head on the floor in front of her I said silently to myself, "Thank you!". It was no stretch to feel grateful to my teacher, I already felt that, but that feeling was not exactly what she had described in her talk. Still it made my chosen task pretty easy. About two weeks after I'd begun my silent gratitude I went and placed my head at the feet of my teacher and I said my silent "thank you" as always. This time, however, I received a burst of joy that would melt any heart, perhaps every heart on the planet!

After I got up and moved myself along I went to a chant that I attended every day at that time. I was giddy with joy as I looked around the room. Every person I saw glowed with golden light, I am not joking, golden light! I swear to God that for the next few weeks I was completely filled with love and joy. It was such a wonderful and powerful experience that when I contemplate it, even all these years later, I start to feel the joy again. It really gave me insight into the whole count your blessings thing. And yet oddly enough I somehow forgot about it again for quite a few years.

Then I bought the dvd "The Secret" and it re-opened the subject. I watched it every day for over a month. It completely changed my outlook which at the time was not fantastic. It was exactly the spiritual boost I had been looking for. Phew! Out of that experience came my gratitude journal. I decided that the only way that I would be able to maintain the practice of counting my blessings every day would be to write them down. I took direction from my past experience and of course from "The Secret" teachers and I started writing "Thank You for..." in a journal. I have been doing it every day since. Not because I feel obligated but because I feel freakin' amazing! On days when I do not feel 'juiced' I read what I have written on previous days and boy does that juice start flowing! Then I write a few pages and you cannot believe what a powerful and fantastic practice this is.

If you don't know what I am talking about then try it. Get a journal and just start writing about the things that you are grateful for every day. See what happens! You will be truly amazed. Also check out "The Secret" if by some remarkable chance you haven't already. I was so inspired that I started a new business designing t-shirts.(TempleGreen.Com) I have never been more joyful and at ease, for this extended a period of time, in my entire life. I take "Follow Your Bliss" very seriously these days. Well... seriously may not be the best word, I try not to take anything too seriously. I'll just say that I definitely follow my bliss now and it feels pretty darn fantastic!

http://www.thesecret.tv/

http://www.jcf.org/bliss.php

http://www.todoinstitute.org/gratitude.htm

http://www.templegreen.com