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Sunday, January 18, 2015

The Facebook Log off Week and the inspiration that followed.

As I mentioned last post I’ve been doing the artist’s Way by Julia Cameron over the past few weeks and the results are mind boggling. I have found myself burbling up to the surface, barely aware that so much had been gently being ignored as it was shoved under my consciousness. Crazy isn’t it?  A woman who writes under being Spiritually Aware suddenly finds out that maybe I haven’t been quite as Aware as I’ve been wanting to be. Hence the lack of posts over the past couple of years I suppose.
But like all unawareness the coming back into awareness is sublime. Like a wonderful page-turning novel I am discovering so much about Me and what I’ve expanded to over the past few years. Its like catching up with an old friend.

It is reminding me that is exactly what life is about. We are spiritual beings in a physical reality. We come here to live and often in that living we become closed off from the spiritual being we really are. If we live entirely from the Spirit perspective, we feel closed off, like observers to a movie scene. We are involved, but sometimes a little distant from the human experience. Yet, when we are unaware of the Spiritual element of life, we get so caught up in the illusion of it all, in the game that we become a victim to our own reality. Balance. The great Teeter-Totter of life.  I am back to LIVING my life, no longer distantly watching it or getting caught up in it, LIVING my day to day. CREATING my day to day and greeting the sun with a smile and a wave.

I was so excited on this new journey that I almost didn’t notice my exercises last week, until my jaw dropped. Cameron had suddenly announced the week of reading deprivation. No newspapers, no books no reading. Well that would be OK if it was twenty years ago when the book was written. Now, here in 2015... it meant no Facebook.
We run a small business. I post on SAP all the time, I email. Suddenly I found myself ponder, how was I to go Internet surfing free. I gave myself guidelines. Writing, no reading. No scanning newsfeeds, no clicking on links, only emails and posts to write. I was on for about 5 minutes twice a day. My computer wasn’t even turned on at home. I was free.
Yes, seriously. From dreading it, wondering how I could do it and horrified at my own habit, feeling like an FB junky, in a quick switch, I was free. Not only that, my posture improved, I stood straight and I focused on my family more. I could feel energy from my head to my toes and like darling Julia predicted, my thoughts were my own again.
That’s the idea. We are bombarded by thoughts all the time. We are inundated with information (plug, my husband wrote a song called Information Overload which he will be releasing on his next album, keep in touch at www.vibrationraisers.com) and it literally is forming what we think. It tells us how to see the world. Our perspective, which is really our own identity, is being formed by the information we take part in and now, in the age of the internet, we take part in more than before.  A day into my internet free week and I made a scary discovery. My emotional detachment, my sense of observing which I often had thought was a sense of spiritual awareness was none other than a symptom of information overload. Yes, I was observing life, but not for spiritual expansion, but for the postability of the event. How could I share it with others? How could I take a snapshot of the experience? Meanwhile, I was too far removed to experience it myself.
Yes, I’ve called myself back from the Facebook Abyss. I’m demanding my emotions back again. After all, yes, positive thought is the key to happiness but avoiding feeling offness cuts you off from your inner guidance system. FEELING is key to living! I needed to hear that inner voice again.

So, I enlisted one of my favourite tools. A tool I have passed on to so many. The wonderful world of Inspiration boarding. I went to my library, who had just sorted out their past issues of various magazines with very good timing, and I brought back a stack of everything from Parent Magazine to Architectural Digest. I browsed, I scanned and everything that made me feel good I cut out. Soon I had a box full and yesterday I started. My new desk I got a few weeks back had a glass top, so I carefully removed it and started scrapbooking underneath it. Nature images, quotes, pretty things, Opening French Doors with sunlight pouring in, beaches and one simple antique desk with a pulled out chair inviting me to sit down, now greets me when I sit here to create. I’ve told my children it’s my place for escape. I can visit any one of these images whenever I wish. I can imagine walking on the beach or sitting under a tree. I can do as I wish. What’s fascinating is the selection of images. As I cut them out I found myself re-introduced to my own inner self, learning I’ve grown and expanding as a person since starting the SAP site 5 years ago. That was the last time I did an Inspiration board (and from then to now a lot of what appeared on there has manifested into real life) and the difference is incredible. From my board based on cozy home life, on little children, babies, warm kitchens and comfy chairs, my new one is expansive, wide open spaces and inviting doors.  Its full of the unknown, full of adventure. It’s exciting.

So, why blog about this? Why confess to you that I, a Spiritually aware living coach, has been off lately and just connected? Because, I surprised myself with how the computer disconnected me. It blocked me. Before I went offline I read an article saying that children are actually becoming unable to recognize  human emotions through facial expressions because of screentime. It was a study performed somewhere. But I think its deeper. WAY deeper. I think we are being shut off from our emotional guidance systems. I think we are exposed to so much we are observing our lives, not as Spirit, but as.... as a viewer. We need to claim ourselves back again. Now will I be back on FB?...um yup. I’ll be posting and interacting. Will I scan my newsfeed and check out the Trending column, probably not. I love my FB community of SAP, it fuels me up with the interactions and people I’ve met. But I’ll also be logged off a lot more. I’ll be lying on a beach... somewhere in Spain.... or walking through a sunlit door... or walking down a bluestone path... and I won’t even have to leave my chair.

Thursday, January 8, 2015

The Artist's Way and the Morning Pages Process

For the past few weeks I've been taking part in Julia Cameron’s course, The Artist’s Way. It’s a twelve week course, meant to help you tap in, tune on, and let the creativity flow. After a year and a half running a food business with my family and my writing becoming less and less frequent and... well flowing... I figured it was a good idea to start. 
It’s an exciting journey. It’s a hard journey. I've still yet to take my “artist’s date”, an outing where you are suppose to do something for yourself, something to satisfy your inner child/artist. A coffee date, a movie alone, a bookstore hunt, even a bath; two hours, planned ahead, scheduled and achieved. It’s made me aware that my life is pretty jammed packed. But it’s also made me aware that if I have 2 hours alone, I’d sooner be in front of my computer or pen and paper writing, creating and tapping into the flow more than anything. This is my date. I didn’t plan a babysitter, I didn’t plan what I was going to write. I just sat here, and said “flow”.
What I am getting the most out of is the “morning pages.”; which I’m proud to say I’m doing rather religiously. Sometimes my five year old wakes up and sits beside me to do his “pages”, scribbles in his notebook which are lovely, and my daughter will sometimes do some in her diary, when she gets up in time. The idea is 3 pages, first thing or as close to as possible, handwritten about anything. Every little niggle, every little morning fleeting thought, every buried dream, every wishful thought, but mostly, those boring daily doldrums that seem to be put on repeat without us even noticing it. You know what, when you write them three days in a row you start to notice them. I’ve noticed a lot.

 So I’ve started looking for new thoughts, which suddenly means breaking down old thought processes. Suddenly, Morning Pages are miraculous. Suddenly Morning Pages need capitalization. Julia Cameron breaks it down that as long as you are doing morning pages, you are doing them right. You write them, don’t re-read them, lock them up, seal them in an envelope, burn them, whatever feels right, or like me, write them in a notebook and never look back. I don’t have the time, I’m too excited to move forward, to see what will come out in the next page. I've been sorting out things, asking questions, getting answers, Source, Universal powers, God, jumping onto the flow of words getting me messages and nudges. Yesterday I saw an Abraham Hicks quote saying that writing is the most focus a human can establish in physical reality, therefore it can quickly shift vibration, suddenly through my morning pages I’m doing visualizations, painting pictures of thoughts that make me feel good, my dream life at the moment, stories of laughing children and stress free living.


When I started my pages four weeks ago, I struggled filling my three pages. I felt ridiculous. I’m a writer. I write. I’m suppose to let lose my sub-conscious and just write the thoughts, the monkey mind chatter that is rolling by. But I’d lose focus, I’d get bored, they weren’t real thoughts. Now, I get to the end of my third page and I wonder if I’ll just flow over to four or five pages... but then my boy looks over, counts the pages I’ve done, raises his eyebrows and says Mom, I’m hungry, you’re finished. Let’s have breakfast!

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Guest Post- Supporting Intuition in our children by Simone Wright

Supporting Intuition in our Children: Empowering Esteem & Awareness
As parents one of our main concerns is ensuring the safety and security of our children. With the occurrences of bullying, abuse and abductions happening more frequently, and hitting closer to home, how do we empower our kids to navigate and thrive in their environment with a sense of confidence, certainty and self-esteem?
Empowering their Intuition should be considered an important first step.
Intuition is highly efficient and effective survival tool. It is a multi faceted, multi dimensional wisdom that guides us to our highest level of evolutionary possibility. It is the voice of our highest wisdom and we are constantly and continuously directed by it. Our children are already linked to it, we as parents simply have to remember that we are as well.
Children are ‘feeling beings’ – not thinking beings
From birth to about the age of 12, children have no energetic filter system yet developed in their brain. They do not possess the higher intellectual power of discernment or conscious selection.
Because of this lack of intellectual development, children experience the world through their ‘feeling intelligence’ and interpret and navigate their environment through that sensory awareness. They make sense of their outer world and their place in it, through the feelings of their inner world.
When we encourage this connection to the feelings communicated via this inner landscape, we empower our children to trust their impressions and instincts and take action accordingly. Thus empowering them with a sense of ease, wellbeing and confidence that most adults to do not even possess.
5 Tips for Supporting Intuition in your Children
#1. Start using your own Intuition.
Start setting the example of being someone who knows about your own guidance system and let your child know that they have their own system as well. If you develop the belief that you possess an inner wisdom that can and will guide you to any solution or outcome you seek, your sense of inner security will rub off on them.
#2. Cultivate an energetic ‘time-out’.
Take a few minutes every day to cultivate your own private quiet time. This allows you to reconnect to the feeling and resonance of your own inner voice. Morning meditation is especially powerful in balancing all of the intelligence systems of the body that will connect you with that inner guidance.
Insist on time during the day when your children are free of all technology or scheduled things to do, and simply allow them to create, draw, day dream, play with their pets or look at the clouds. Intuition thrives when there is energetic room to create and imagine.
#3. Be real with your kids.
Because children are ‘sensing’ beings they can tell when you are saying one thing and feeling another; these mixed messages cause confusion and uncertainty. If you are unhappy or worried about something, without going into detail, gently admit your feelings. Assure the child that your feelings have nothing to do with them, and that it’s not their job to make it better for you. Let them know that your guidance system will help you find a solution that will allow you to feel clear and certain once again.
This degree of energetic integrity allows a child to feel safe in trusting that what he is sensing from you is in alignment with what you have told him to be true and shifts him out of fear and worry and into greater security and well being.
#4. Honor what your child says he is sensing or feeling.
Be aware of when you diminish or dismiss what your child is feeling or declaring about a certain situation.
A child might say, “I’m cold, or I’m tired or I’m not hungry” and a parent will dismiss it by saying, “No you’re not – you’re fine.” Or the child might be hesitant or stand offish around a certain person, or say, “I don’t like that person.” (Known or unknown) and the parent will disregard that uncertainty by forcing the child to ‘be polite’ and engage with that person.
In these moments the inner feelings that a child is experiencing are deemed as incorrect and they are taught not to trust what they are experiencing. This pattern of being told that what they are sensing is wrong, breaks the link to trusting their inner guidance and trains them to begin looking to external validation to feel secure. This sets them up for lack of self-esteem and self-trust and an inability to apply self-direction.
#5. Engage in creative solution finding.
Just as you have your morning energetic time, use their bedtime to engage in creative solution finding. The time just before sleep is especially effective to engage in cultivating creative/intuitive solutions to whatever may be concerning them. (Do not try to find a solution in the middle of a melt down or temper tantrum) It is beneficial to start making this a regular practice before there are any major problems to solve; as there will be a momentum that you can apply in real time.
Instead of reading stories about other children and their adventures, encourage your kids to create stories about themselves, your family or their circle of friends. Allow them to make themselves the hero/heroine of their tale and creatively discover solutions to their current concerns. Invite them to use their imagination (which is an aspect of intuition) to become their own problem solver.
Ask questions that engage their broader perspective – ‘What do you think the best solution is to this problem?’ ‘How can we make this a good situation for everyone?’ Do not offer your opinion; simply ask empowered questions that will support them in discovering empowered answers. Then support them in applying these solutions.
This is an effective way to help them create positive situations with family, friends and other people they may come into contact with throughout their day. This win-win component is another aspect of intuition that cultivates the best outcome for everyone involved.
We’ve ALL got it.
Everyone has the natural ability to use their Intuition to serve them in powerful ways. It is not a supernatural skill gifted to some but not to others. When we accept this simple yet powerful understanding, we allow our Intuitive intelligence to guide and direct us to our highest good.

Putting these tips to use can be an easy and fun way to encourage and develop intuition in you and your children. Developing this natural skill can be a deeply rewarding adventure for everyone in your family that guides them to greater levels of happiness, security and well-being.
# #  #
Simone Wright, “the Evolutionary Mind Coach for Elite Performers and Visionary Leaders,” is the author of First Intelligence: Using the Science and Spirit of Intuition.  She has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show and uses her intuitive skills to assist in police investigations, missing children cases, and corporate business strategies. Visit her online at http://www.simonewright.com.


Based on the book First Intelligence ©2014 by Simone Wright.  Printed with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Setting intention at the beginning of the week.

I’ve been put on the spot now, what with a little sibling rivalry and mis-communications. The incredible thing about parenting is that there is no time for milling around, pondering what you really think and feel about a given subject. Sure, sometimes you can skirt an issue for a bit, saying “I have to give it some thought.” But when a 5 year old boy is feeling left out, mis-understood and bossed around, so he lashes out and older siblings come running, there’s no time to hum or haw. Which brings me around to the idea of intentions and how it affects all of us in a home.

As I sat with a boy on my lap as he cried saying he was sorry but I could tell the situation was beyond his comprehension or at least beyond his ability to deal with it solo, I asked him how he wanted it to be with his sisters. What was his intention? I painted the picture of the usual brother/sister dichotomy; a painful slurry of annoying actions leading to that ear piercing “MOM!!!!” that leads to me being put on the spot to deal with something that was a co-creation between siblings and I’ve been an innocent bystander, or a picture of 3 siblings, having fun, listening together, supporting each other and understanding each other. Now luckily there has been some of these moments lately, so he had a reference point when he said he wanted the latter. Intention set. I reminded him that it meant some things had to change. He had to start telling them things when he was frustrated. He had to come to me when he wanted to use his hands to tell them something, before people got hurt. He had to decide he didn’t want to hurt people. That he wanted sisters who were more than friends, but the kind of team that lasts forever. I told his sisters what the intention was and how some things needed to change, mostly perspectives on each other, meaning stop seeing your brother as the typical annoying little brother and give him a chance to change so that there was room for things to get better.

Our perspectives on things matter, in fact our perspectives is what makes matter! How we see the world, how we see each other, how we see ourselves, is what we get. If we expect to come downstairs in the morning to a gaggle of fighting children, 9 out of 10 chances is that’s what we’ll find. When we expect the weather to be difficult, it will be, merely for the fact that maybe the little bit of rain made a puddle just outside our car door. It wouldn’t affect anyone else, but our perspective creates the circumstance. It sounds like I’m suggesting that the world is creating circumstances just for us, and in a way it is, without calculation, without mass organization, the universe will always provide us with a mirror image of what we put out there. If we send out the perspective of being hard done by, the universe offers opportunity for us to feel like victims. If we have the perspective that money is hard to come by, we will always be broke. It’s a simple situation of offering an intention and the reflection of it coming back to us. It’s a simply fact of the Law of Attraction.... not unlike the law of gravity... it affects us all, we just need to decide whether we want to use it to our advantage or not.
Therefore, what’s our dominant intentions? They are often hard to word and might need to be found in images or feeling spaces. Sometimes, it’s just the idea of a happy home, an image of everyone laughing around the kitchen table, a happy bunch strolling out to the car, as everyone helps each other with their loads. The more we spend time in an image intention like that, the more the moments will arise when we can see them actually manifesting before us. We will notice them the more energy we’ve backed them up with.

Why do we fall into the trap of seeing the worst around us? By banging on the negative experience drum, by thinking how our dreams will fall to the wayside, by believing our house doesn’t ring out the way we wish it would, by doubting our financial situation will ever improve, we are crippling ourselves before we get started. All it takes is shifting that thought around a little, stretching the intention muscle slightly. Every stretch makes the intention stronger, so we can feel it and in feeling it, notice it coming into being. If a thought process is making you feel bad, replace it, it’s not productive. It is simply hammering home the reality you think is, rather than paving the way with a clearer vision of what you want.

I’m off to spend some time setting my intentions for the week. 

BE well, Happy and thrive.

Friday, January 2, 2015

Finding the Space of New Year Promises

It’s been a long time since I posted something on here. A long time since l looked deeply at my own path, looked at my family, breathed in our essence and then wrote about how things are. But it’s a new year. It’s time to take stock, time to admit to short comings and no longer hide behind things that Should Be, or pretended to be. New Years isn’t always about making promises, especially those that can’t be kept. Rather it’s about a time to be honest with ourselves. We get a week off of everything, from Christmas to New Years, and although we are trained to think it’s a busy time, it’s actually a time for a different sort of activity: One of self contemplation.

Each year I tell myself I love Christmastime. I decorate, I bake, I shop. The kids and I talk about how we’re going to do it differently this year, plan earlier, do Christmasy things, see the Nutcracker and watch It’s a Wonderful Life. Yet every year by the time I’m planning on packing up the family decorations again, I have a feeling of disappointment. All the work, the planning, the day, the time after, only to pick up where it left off and face extra bills. Why do I love that? : For the spiritual fact that the space in time it provides us with a chance no other time can. In fact it is forced upon us. Everything shuts down, we are faced with a time of ourselves and each other and we are asked what we like, what we don’t and what we want to do about it.

It’s amazing how fast we can run. We are in a society which has us pretty distracted from one thing to another. There’s chores in the house, left over jobs, meals to cook, there’s places to go, things to buy, not talking about money to make, and never enough so things to do to make more looming in the background. We spin and we spin and we spin, convinced that we are trapped with no way out than a lotto or miracle. We convince ourselves of lack; that it would take selling the house and buying smaller to save money, or achieve our dreams after the kids have grown up or the retirement fund kicks in. We hold off on our happiness, looking for excuses of why we can’t have it now. Christmas comes, the world stops and in the quiet whispers when we listen to them we are asked “why can’t you have happiness now?”

Happiness is our inherent right. With every sunrise comes the surreal reminder that the race we run is one of our own creation, like Alice in Wonderland we have our own caucus race, with us all going in circles. When we step outside the circle, the shift in perspective can have us asking why we are convinced Life is so darn hard. When we take that step away each day, we can start believing that it really doesn’t have to be.
There’s always something else to think about while we wash the dishes. There’s always a happy song to choose while we’re stuck in traffic. There’s always thoughts... and feeling better thoughts... and new thoughts.... and new attention to the world, which are like small steps to a great destination.
Science is proving it daily. Take the idea that positive thought has been scientifically proven to change how we see options. People who are optimistic have better peripheral vision, literally. They see more solutions, are better at problem solving, literally.

So Christmas time has passed. New Years is here and promises are being made across the board. Last year in our health business, we watched resolutions be kept for two weeks. It takes two weeks to go from the new habits created in the self contemplation of the holidays to fall back into the old habits that make up our lives. Why? What pieces to the puzzle are we missing? Honestly, it’s simply the feeling space of what change we want. It’s simple.

Take a deep breath and close your eyes. Can you feel the essence of you? Can you see through your mind’s eye and see through the eyes of the same person you’ve always been? The same eyes that as a child would focus on the rays of light that shine from a lightbulb when you squint just so. The same eyes that have gotten lost in staring at the distance, over an ocean, a mountain range, or even flames dancing in the fireplace. When you put yourself in that space, do you feel warmth running over you, from your head to your toes, until your toes tingle? Welcome to the grounding world of yourself.
From this place, introduce the resolution you wish to achieve. Want to lose weight? In the space of yourself, imagine how it feels to be the shape you wish. Play with it, laugh with it. Imagine going for a run, imagine stretching without being stiff, Imagine the lightness of having lots of fruit, vegetables and fresh water in your system, feel thinner. Then throw out the mirrors and the scales and live from that perspective. Suddenly through the feeling you are creating, you won’t feel like eating cookies, it just won’t feel right. So you won’t.
Playing in the space of Who We Really Are is the key to living the life we wish. We can be doing the same things we’ve had to do before, but the story is different.

I’m doing it too. As we speak. My story is changing and I only have a feeling to go by. My playing in inner worlds are hinting at exciting things and one of them is coming back to blogging, introducing myself all over again, relaunching websites and basically clearing the way. I’d like to invite you to join me. I’m also launching my coaching career. After spending a year and a half helping people across the counter, enough people have asked I sit down and do it professionally. So, here I am. I don’t like the term Life coach, it doesn’t fit me, but I can be a Spirit Coach. I’ll stand in the corner cheering your spirit on. That’s what I like to do. I’ll still do Parenting Coaching too, but sometimes we all need to parent ourselves as well.


Welcome to 2015, when it’s time for us to realize we can get off the caucus race, we can stand alone, facing whatever we chose to focus on. We can have fun. We can be happy, creative, fun loving people. We can laugh like we did when we were kids, and smile ourselves to sleep with a sense of satisfying security in ourselves. Happy New Year everyone, and may your year be filled with moments when you pat yourself on the back and say, Yes, last Christmas I reminded myself of Who I Am, and now I remember life’s easy to enjoy.