Yes We Can!

Wednesday 6:54pm 5Nov08
Dreaming the impossible has been blown wide open in the last 24 hours. Blown wide open.

All the dreams we've been told that we couldn't have or should change, all the dreams that we hoped our own children wouldn't have to avoid the hurt and the pain ... everything has changed now. All the mixed race children who have felt like they've had to deny one side of themselves just to make life easier. All the mixed race children who have hated something within themselves and have felt the confusion are given another bigger and better option embracing all of who they are.

And just like that old commercial where she tells two friends and they tell two friends and so on and so on, all the possibilities expand out into infinity from race to politics to history to imagining positive changes in our world.

What an exciting time it is now in the United States. What an exciting time that so many of us had hoped for since Sept 11, 2001 when the United States had the world's attention and love and sorrow and people were helping strangers and volunteering to lend a helping hand and hug. 9/11 showed us and reminded us that in a crisis the best qualities of people come to the forefront, deep inside all of us lives good.

I didn't cry last night as I watched the election results. I didn't cry when Barack Obama came out and gave his victory speech. I stood in front of the television and I watched and listened in awe. I nodded my head each time he said Yes we can and I bathed in all the possibilities of that little phrase.

Yes we can dream big and set unreasonable goals because they are only unreasonable until we realize them. Yes we can be the ones to live in possibility, to try something different than what we've always done that hasn't been working. Yes we can think of what community means to us and create it and help others and share with each other. Out of many we are one.

I want to embrace these hopeful enthusiastic feelings on a daily basis. I want to believe that we can heal our troubled world. I want to imagine that we are approaching a higher level of living with each other where our first choice is to show our best qualities that we automatically show in a 9/11 type crisis. Because it is human nature. If we have it in us during a crisis, we can live it without a crisis. It sounds unreasonable doesn't it? But it's only unreasonable until we realize it and if we all focused on our possibilities step by step, minute by minute, person to person... well just Imagine.

Just imagine that we can. Oh Yes we can

Shelley-Lynne Domingue

Practice

Saturday 8March08 12:26pm

Some of the pieces I have added to my daily practice include which began on my writing retreat:

Rumi Wakeup - I got this from Wayne Dyer's book Inspiration, Your Ultimate Calling (one of my favorite books). He discusses that time in the early morning when you wake up (between 3am and 4am) and you don't have to get up. The thing is to actually get up. It's based on a Rumi poem that says something along the lines of, "The morning breeze has something to tell you, don't go back to sleep." I'm not always religious about it because I love sleeping but eventually I will be. I love the 4am hour for its peacefulness. I do stream of consciousness writing and record my dreams from the night before.

I do the Adi Mantra from Kundalini Yoga - Ong Na Mo Guru Dev Namo. Which means I bow to the Creator, to the Divine teacher within. From that I move into my stretches and a Kundalini Yoga set and another chant. I'm slowly starting to add 15 minutes of silence, that I want to do twice a day before I write. It's kind of hard to sit silent for 15 minutes straight but I'll get it. As Quincy Jones would say, "It's ragged but I'll get it."

I've been doing a couple of writing exercises to get the words flowing. One is from 30 Ways to Help You Write by Fran Weber Shaw, which I used to do years and years ago. You write "Now I'm Sitting Here and..." at the top of the page, then relax all the muscles in your body and listen to the sounds. Then you write nonstop for two or three pages and stop. That was how I used to do all of my writing, so needless to say, I'm getting back to beginner's mind as Natalie Goldberg so aptly calls it.

And another exercise that I got from a writing newsletter where you write down three random words like 'pimps, women, black music' and with those words write a scene for my novel. You basically come up with three words for 15 scenes of your novel and write each scene starting the first sentence with one of those words and including the other two words in the first paragraph. I guess it gets your mind away from thinking about how to start. It's crazy but it works.

I also write a series of affirmations in my steno from an article I read on manifestation in Mind Power News, an email newsletter that I receive. I'll look for the article and post it. Basically it's 4 affirmations: 1- What I am doing now (some goal that I want to realize) 2- How I support myself in realizing that goal 3- The good feelings I have for realizing that goal and 4- A Thank You to the Universe or God.

And overall, I'm enjoying the abundance I already have in my life. I have books galore and enough inspirational CD's and meditation tapes and CD's to cure all of Toronto. Ha Ha! So I'm making it a point to listen to and enjoy what I have. I belong to the Spiritual Cinema so I have all these great movies and short films. I'm building a DVD collection because my breakfast buddy buys me DVD's for birthdays and Christmas. And Music? Well anyone who knows me knows I have an insane amount of music, what with working at Sam's years ago and having that itunes addiction and importing anyone's music collection that I can. And I also belong to Simply Audio so I have a decent amount of audio books. If I didn't leave my house for a year I still wouldn't make it through all the stuff I have. And with my comfy bed? Praise God I am blessed!

I'll see if I can find the manifestation article...

EY

Building Momentum

8March08 Saturday 11:46am
It's another snowy day in Toronto. I can't believe how much snow we've had this year. Most people are complaining but I don't really have much to complain about. I really do enjoy when we have distinct seasons. It always bodes well for the Summer. You have to live through the dark in order to enjoy the light, or something like that.

I am finally feeling like I'm living in more light and less dark, which is always a good thing. And the best part is that I'm feeling grateful for the light. So snow schmoe, no worries!

I made it past another birthday. I wasn't sure how that was going to pan out since the money is still funny from the big pain of 2007. I had no ideas what to do for my birthday and I was contemplating letting it pass by unmentioned. My friend frogs legs had the brilliant idea to go to Southern Accent for eats and a psychic reading on Feb 29th, the day before my birthday (otherwise known as my alternate birthday). It was six women and a very cute, flirty server and lots of laughs. My girlfriend Jojo provided most of the entertainment regaling us with her stories. It was great being in the company of all strong minded women. And the psychic reading was stellar! That never hurts. Plus what she said fell in line with my goals for my personal 2008, which began on March 1st. The night was ended with a few hours of Karoake, the Carpenters (Thanks frogs legs), much laughter and a promise to do that shit again!

On the Wednesday before my birthday, I had the brainwave to extend my weekend and turn it into a writing retreat in my apartment. That I could afford. I used to do them periodically but with the big pain of 2007 and all the other dramas it sort of fell by the way side and then some. All of a sudden I was super excited about my birthday. I worked on my itinerary (writing, meditations, juices and healthy foods, inspirational CD's, and mild workouts like stretching and Kundalini Yoga). It was a fantastic weekend which helped me to ground myself, get back in touch with my novel in progress and make a commitment to the practice of Kundalini Yoga. After several years of following/reading Guru Rattana's New Millenium Being and doing some of the chants she recommends in it and really feeling the benefits of it, I found that it was time to make it my daily practice.

My three day weekend was a perfect way to build momentum for my goals and get away from the chatter. I didn't watch television, no telephone and no internet (although I did go on Facebook a couple times to check out the birthday wishes, but it was mere moments.) On the Monday, I went to the book store and bought Kundalini Yoga, The Flow Of Eternal Power by Shakti Parwha Kaur Khalsa as taught by Yogi Bhajan. And I went on to itunes to buy various versions of the mantras that I wanted to practice. I burned a couple CD's of the mantras. I've been sleeping during the week with the main CD on and find that I have calmer, more peaceful sleeps and I feel more able to deal with the frustrations that come up at work and in life. So it's all good.

My next thing to save up for is the offerings at Guru Rattana's website www.yogatech.com. She has packages with DVD's and books that I would sure love to order. I've been finding that the exercises (sets) that I've been doing each day have been relieving my arthritic feet which is a huge bonus. And my writing focus has been great.

Life is always going to have it's elements of frustrations, I figure, but it's sure nice to have a practice that helps me to cope without sabotaging relationships or being a total shut in.

EY

What's in my heart?

Saturday 11:32am

Upon thinking about my previous entry my thoughts bounced around:
What's in my heart? Leo is about heart. August has been a far calmer Leo time for me compared to July Leo. Hm! I should look at the New Millenium Being newsletter again for Leo to see what I get out of it.

I immediately opened it to the pages I've highlighted and read this:
- complete or clarify relationships
- a new perspective and commitment
- sustain only that which is in alignment with your path
- concentrate on your next step
- stay focused and eliminate all distractions
- examine your motivations and align your goals to match your heart's desires
- devote your available time and resources to working toward what you really want

And for the Leo New Moon tomorrow:
Follow our hearts at this new moon. Set aside time to be with yourself and examine
1 - What you are currently creating and what you wish to create?
2 - What kind of light are you shining? How can you shine your soul light a little brighter?
3 - What is the nature of your soul blueprint? How is it guiding you toward your spiritual destination?

Somehow this brings my thoughts to our paths, whether we consider it spiritual or otherwise. It's so funny how some people will insist that when our paths veer in different directions that they are on a path but we're no longer on a path. If I can say that I believe in anything at all, I can say that I believe that we are all on our own path period. Whatever we choose to call it. Mine is a spiritual path.
As I truly embrace this belief more and more, I also find that I am placing less and less demands on others. If we are all on our own paths, right now, who am I to say that someone should be obligated to me? I don't have the right to ask that of anyone. Nor does anyone have the right to ask it of me. Which is my permission to myself to hibernate or take a break from all the social interaction or participate in the social interactions.

EY

Power Struggling Leo

8:48am Saturday 4Aug07

Well, July Leo was all about power struggles. The person who took on the main Leo characteristic of wanting to be the king of the beasts was making a good go at beating me down and proving her point. It brought me back to my childhood, to some extent. I mostly didn't get it, why the one step sister was in such big competition with me, mostly because I wasn't in competition with her. I didn't get that she believed I had some sort of mysterious power that had she paid any real attention she would have seen that power was not one of the things I could have put on my list of stuff that belonged to me.

When I finally got mad in my late teenage years, I came into my own power but that took a good 6 years before I tried those shoes on and a good year before I could walk comfortably in those shoes.

As I look at present day power struggle, I realize that, a portion of it has to do with my looks. When people can't tell how old I am they have a tendency to think I'm 20 years younger than I am. When in a position of power, the people with the power treat a person of 23 years far different than a person of 43 years. And of course there is the assumption that I'm out partying all the time, which the people who don't know me well assume I'm doing. Plus I'm also, God forbid, not married. So clearly that means that I don't have the same level of seriousness as those childbearing marrieds. And finally, just like in childhood, I feel no need to prove myself nor set the record straight.

Believe what you want to believe about me. I feel no need to control your thoughts or perceptions.

As the one who wants the power puts on the pressure, camps are created and my everpresent predictions. If she fucks up she will have the rude awakening when no one covers her ass nor backs her up. I hope to see this prediction happen in Scorpio. Scorpio is such a great time for revenge. Scorpio's as a whole are the best people for remembering a slight and preparing for that one time when they can sting you to death. I'm not wishing this on her, mind you, I just know that it's inevitable. You can only step on so many toes for so long before all hell breaks loose.

And in the meantime, in order to cope, I've written myself a new affirmation:

I believe that the daily frustrations are the Universe's way of telling me to focus all my energy on my writing. Power struggles are a waste of time.

EY

A Religious Experience

Thursday 8:39pm

I was on my lunch sitting outside the tower, eating my yellow peppers and mini carrots and drinking my beet juice. I've been reading Marianne Williamson's book a Return to Love. I'm sitting there quite enjoying the greyness of the day with the nice cool breeze. I was also enjoying the book.

I'd read a little and think about what I'd just read... "if you go deeply enough into your mind, and deeply enough into mine, we have the same mind. The concept of a divine, or "Christ" mind, is the idea that, at our core, we are not just identical, but actually the same being. 'There is only one begotten Son' doesn't mean that someone else was it, and we're not. It means we're all it. There's only one of us here."

I sat and thought about that. Imagine that person that just walked by is me. Imagine that my co worker who works my last nerve is me. It's not like it's something new, I've heard this before but how, if I chose to, could I inhabit that with acceptance?

I read some more: "I accept the Christ within" means, "I accept the beauty within me as who I really am. I am not my weakness. I am not my anger. I am not my small mindedness. I am much, much more. And I am willing to be reminded of who I really am."

And

"our entire network of fearful perceptions, all stemming from that first false belief in our separation from God and one another, is called the ego."

And finally

"remember, there's only one of us here: What we give to others, we give to ourselves. What we withhold from others, we withhold from ourselves. In any moment when we choose fear instead of love, we deny ourselves the experience of Paradise. To the extent that we abandon love, to that extent we will feel it has abandoned us."

I sat and thought about that. How might I put these ideas into practice? How might I make use of them in one of my novels?

I got to the section on the Holy Spirit and read this wee quote, "The Holy Spirit is the call to awaken and be glad."

I looked across the street, then looked between the buildings across the north side of the street at the air and saw water droplets falling. I couldn't really process it. I looked up at one of the buildings insisting that it must be window washers but couldn't see a swingstage. Hmm? I look east and see people running and I can't figure out why they are running. The people all around me are calm and smoking or talking or eating their street meat or whatever. Finally I see that the sidewalk across the street is getting wet. Then On my side of the street but east of me people are running. I look at my clothing to reassure myself that yes I'm really dry, nothing is coming down. Then I lift my head up to the sky directly above me and I think, "Am I having a religious experience? It's raining everywhere except for on me."
No sooner did I think that one of three women says out loud, "Oh My God! It's raining everywhere except over here!"
I burst out laughing, turn and say to her and her friends, "Oh You see that too? I thought I was having a religious experience!"
ha ha.
Then we all screamed, "It's coming!" and ran under the buildings awning.
I stood with them and told them what I was reading about how it's about Christ and God and Love and then this freaky rain thing happens and I'm thinking I'm getting some message from God. I had them in hysterics.

If the rain had stayed off me just long enough, I might be a devout monk now.

EY

Jane Fonda

Note: previous entries mentioned in this entry are on my writing2live blog.

Wednesday 5:34pm

Have I said this about a hundred times? I'm slowly going through my tapes and when I get to Inside the Actor's Studio there is always someone who I think, 'I don't have to watch this one. How interesting will so and so be?' Then I catch the beginning and am engrossed in the whole interview.

Of course that just happened with Jane Fonda. But even better, I watched it this morning and it was so good I rewound the tape to watch it again this afternoon and write notes.

You know so many questions are popping up and out of me lately. Between the Pisces kiss and the subsequent revelations and what made me so mad about it all. I can recall hearing someone saying something along the lines regarding depression that she wanted to make her life less about not being depressed and more about living an intentional life. I can't remember who said it and I never wrote it down because some things that are said just resonate so wholly within my being that I know I don't need to write them down. It's like it inhabits my subconscious in a magnetic sort of way and the right ideas start to stick to me. That's where my idea for embracing my singleness came from.

I don't know if I've expressed embracing my singleness well enough. It's not that I don't want to be with anyone or that I've been overly unhappy alone. I basically said to myself, "what if this is the last time, for the rest of my life, that I will be fully alone? How can I make good use of this time and be able to look back with fondness?"

When I was in constant survival mode and I was between jobs I was always so stressed about finding another job that I never enjoyed the time off work. Then when all worked out and I got a new job I'd always wished that I just relaxed enough to enjoy the time. That's what I'm trying to do now with being single and not having a group of friends to hang out with. Enjoy this time. Discover the things that I really like to do whether I have company or not. Live and enjoy my life despite not having a closet full of money.

Smoking to some extent falls in line with that. There's something that I feel is missing that smoking fills. It's something to focus on to take me away from discovering what that void is that needs to be filled. Jane Fonda talks about addiction and the space that is left when you give up an addiction(s).

My early notes from the first viewing were about her discussing, 'entering my truth'. I had to ask, "what is my truth?" A big question that may take me years to discover a full answer to. Maybe starting off with What do I really feel?

Yesterday morning I caught some police drama on A&E and Anthony LaPaglia's brother is in it and he's trying to get his woman to come in but she won't. I asked out loud, "Why did she bother going there then?" and I felt this ache. I had to ask, What is my ache regarding love? I have one, obviously, but how do I get to the meat of it and past the stories of, "I saw the kind of men my mother was with and what men can do to women" I guess the question is, 'How do I live MY life now with all the love I have to give and actually give it?'

My madness toward the man and his kiss is that I am coming to realize that I feel good enough about myself that I know that what he is offering is bullshit and that he would think it's okay to only offer me scraps that you give a dog. And because I can see different points of view, I'm even madder about the fact that he is with a woman who may or may not know that he is giving HER dog scraps. There's nothing wrong with being a dog but be a single dog and give women the opportunity to say yes or no.

Jane Fonda talked about her first marriage to a man who regularly brought other women into their bed with them. I wrote quickly, "not feeling good enough about yourself enought that you would allow a man to bring another woman into bed with the two of you. Feeling that the only way she could keep this man was to accept that she wasn't enough for him."

It's funny, it always brings me back to what I've always said since I was a kid watching my mother, "I'd rather be alone than suffer through that shit for the sake of having a man."
Jane also said, "It's in relationships where a loss of voice manifests."

Ahh! A loss of voice. I write to give myself voice, even if it's only my eyes that see the words...for now anyway. I leave men when I feel that I can't express my true voice, what I need, what I want, what I feel is missing. I've always wanted to have a relationship, it just so happens, that I've needed to be able to hear my voice more than be in a relationship.

With all my insecurities and feelings that I am so fucked up (I'm not denying that I'm not fucked up) I am discovering that I am more than enough. I do not need to be with someone who convinces me that I'm not enough for his own gains. And isn't there a piece of fiction following a man and a woman through that all? Where the man really sees what he has done to his woman because he could, because she let him, because she didn't think she was enough to keep him.

It takes me back to that question I blogged several weeks ago, "Can I trust you with my heart?" It's not that I can't commit. I can't commit to feeling not good enough and so I don't.

More quotes from Jane Fonda's interview, whose book I want to read, by the way:

"He would bring other women into our bed and it never occurred to me that I could say no. I assumed that it was that I wasn't enough and I didn't want him to leave me and being with him is what validated me. "

"I've come from a place where I would silence my voice, shut down my heart, betray my body because if he left me I would be nothing and fall down into a dark hole."

"I couldn't say to my husband. 'I don't want to anymore.' I couldn't say who I really was because I was scared of being alone."

"the need to please, the disease to please, the need to be perfect, is so pervasive in our society for women... usher perfection out the door and strive for completion."

"I don't want to die without giving voice to my wholeness with the man I love."

"What is more important to me is my authenticity. Being intentional about how I live."

"I don't want to have regrets at the end of my life. What will I have to do now so that I won't have regrets and then it's about being intentional about how you live, the way you live. It's painful but it's the right thing to do."

She was amazing and can I just say that when ever the camera panned the audience the women were wiping away tears.

And she said it, she is a privileged white woman and she still felt that she wasn't good enough. That's pretty powerful when you really think about that.

EY

My Confession - Patience

Saturday 24Mar07 11:04am

I caught the movie, Green Fingers, this morning. In it the old guy Fergus gets Clive Owen's character to plant violet seeds in an area where no one could believe that they could ever grow. Come spring the violets have grown and Fergus makes a comment about finding beauty in the most unlikely places. He suggests that Clive Owen's character (Luke?) find a way to learn how to embrace the adversity in his life even though they are prisoners.

Something made me think about the qualities we want to develop in ourselves. My latest quality of the last year or so has become patience. Not the losing your temper kind of patience but the long term patience of seeing things through. Of course when ever you decide on a certain quality you come face to face with it in a major way.

I am known for being uncommitted when it comes to relationships with men. Part of it is because I've been disappointed so often and for so long that I'd basically given up. If the truth be known. Why wish for something if it feels like it's not destined to ever happen in your life? It seems ridiculous to me. So I stopped wishing and worse yet, believing.

I met a man in December 2005. We were introduced in passing by a mutual friend. There was something about him the moment I saw him that I liked. I can recall thinking, "He's cute in a different way. I'd go out with him. He probably wouldn't look twice at me."

In February of 2006 our paths crossed again and over the last year we've become more friendly and have learned bits and pieces about each other. My original appraisal of him has turned into a full fledged crush. Of course nothing can be that simple in my life. With things not happening fast enough in my opinion I looked for other distractions i.e. other men to be interested in. I stayed away from him. I ignored him. I closed my thinking to him.

The male distractions never bore fruit in any substantial way. I was never that interested, my heart wasn't in it. I could care less if it worked out one way or the other. I finally read the signs and dropped all the distractions.

Over the last five months or longer I've resurfaced admitting to myself finally that I can't really get this person out of my head. I want to know more about him. I want to know if he's a worthwhile human being. I want to know what kind of man he is. And I've witnessed some pretty consistent remarkable things. Nothing has developed still and yet so much has developed.
I always have all these questions I want to ask him and all thoughts escape my mind whenever I come face to face. He does and says things that are quite sweet and leaves me wondering when action will follow or if any action will action follow.

He has become my patience meter. There are certain people that come into your life and you just know what purpose your connection to eachother is met. His purpose in my life is to teach me that long term patience (maybe even the patience of Job!) I've gone from running far away from him to that high school confusion of, "Does he like me?" Finally I've reached an inner calm (still with a sense of urgency) that acknowledges that whatever happens will happen. We could become great friends, something deeper, or we'll disappear out of each other's lives. Who really knows about anyone you meet, what your relationship could become?

Maybe it's not how long a relationship lasts or what it develops into but who I become because of it.

EY

Derek's Story

Thursday 7:58pm 22Feb07

He was a broker. He'd made his first million dollars by the time he was 28 years old. He said that he would have nightmares about money. He'd disappear for days at a time, running off to Vegas getting so doped up and thinking he was in Ajax. He'd call his wife saying he wasn't sure where he was. She complained to him, you're working too much, you're too focused on money, you need to spend more time with me and your sons.

He shrugged off her complaints. She wasn't complaining about flying off to go shopping with her best girlfriend on his money and not having to work for a living, he thought.

She left him.

He continued on his path.

She got in a serious car accident and broke her neck. The doctor's called him and told him to bring their sons in to say goodbye to their mother.

He brought them in then spent what was to be her final days with her in the hospital. He took a leave of absence from work and spent all his days at the hospital or taking care of his sons. She kept hanging on.

Eventually her situation started to improve. There was constant care but she was improving. The doctors put steel rods in her neck. He helped her when it was time to go home. He's continued to spend time with her and care for their sons.

One night they had a long talk. She said that despite loving her sons, she'd always wanted a little girl. They agreed and set out to get her pregnant. Doing what you do.

She's pregnant and it's a little girl. Derek moves back in with her in 6 weeks. He quit his job and got another low maintenance job.

He said, "now I'm having nightmares about having a baby. A little girl! Will she be healthy? Will the delivery be too hard on my wife? I'm a complete mess."

A complete mess? He's changed his life drastically. He listened to the message that the universe offered him. He's been given a second chance and he's taking it.

What a great story and I'm so grateful that he told it to me.

EY

Mesmerized By Uncertainty

Monday 12Feb07 5:59pm

I took a cab to work this morning and got to hear a portion of a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. In it he talked about people being mesmerized by uncertainty. I liked that phrasing. It's true isn't it? We do spend so much needless time being mesmerized by uncertainty, focusing on all the things that can go wrong, focusing on all the things that frustrate us, focusing on all the things that we can't control. Personally, I can get into that spiral so easily and forget that there are any other possibilities.

It's just as easy to focus on all the things that could go right for a change. It would certainly give me a boost of positivity. What if I could complete all my novels? What if I could write 3 hours a day, every single day for the rest of my life and love myself for prioritizing? What if that smiling guy actually feels the same way about me? Who cares if he doesn't, by the time I realize he might not I'll have moved on, anyway. What if tomorrow I can accomplish one goal and the next day accomplish two and build on my successes every single day?

I liked the quote that either Deepak Chopra or Wayne Dyer mentions in their talk together (Creating your world the way you really want it to be.) One of them says, " Stop worrying about things you can't control because you can't control them so why worry about them? And Stop worrying about the things you can control because you can control them so there's no point in worrying about them. If you don't worry about what you can't control because you can't control it and you don't worry about the things you can control because you can control it, there's nothing to worry about. So Stop Worrying!"

I finally get that sugar makes me sleepy and have successfully cut that out as an option. I'm going to try being mesmerized by certainty for change. See how high I can lift my energy. Things are going to happen the way they happen anyway whether I look forward to things or feel scared of some unforeseen fallout.

You never know. What if I could get everything I want?

EY

I'm On The Path

Saturday 1:42pm 3Feb07

I'm always thinking about starting on my spiritual path to enlightenment but I often get all caught up with the fact that I like the taste of beer. Some how I have it in my head that if i'm to follow this path I'm going to need to give up drinking beer and live some sort of puritan existence.

Listening to my Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer Cd's and the ideas that they discuss, I tick off that imaginary checklist of some of the things I already do. Some of the things I fell into on my own, like the 4am rising. I've spent the last few days reminding myself that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, doing what I'm supposed to be doing. It finally clicked in to my consciousness on Friday morning that I am already on the path. This is my path. I am a beer drinking woman on my path to spiritual enlightenment. ha ha!

Being on the path doesn't mean being perfect. And could I live with myself if I were perfect?

I discussed this with a girlfriend last night who listed off all the reasons why she is a failure or all the examples that prove that she has failed. I asked her if she ever felt like she was an outsider within her own family. She said yes. I told her that my interpretation of her life was that she has had to prove to herself that she can survive on her own, not leaning on her family. All the so called failures and failings and fuck ups were her way of proving to herself that she could survive anything.

You are already on your path. The things that you focus on that you feel bad that you haven't accomplished yet are only options for you to choose, if you want to choose them. If you want, you can choose something else.

A lot of people pay attention to me and what I do and how I think about things. What if I was the person to interest everyday people to notice what their path is? What if I am a guide to everyday people? Well I'd certainly be drinking beer with them, wouldn't I? I'd have a few beer and I'd speak to them in their language.

So I've decided that I am a beer drinking woman on my spriritual path to enlightenment. When my circumstances change so will my behaviour and when my behaviour changes so will my circumstances. And in the mean time I'm going to enjoy the taste of a beer or two.

EY