Saturday, October 18, 2008

The Queen’s Chronicles: SAY SOMETHING!

It is so damn easy to feel depressed, frustrated and disillusioned right now. These are terrible times of artificial division, manipulated resentment and palpable fear. The real dynamic being played out right now is not about warring religious, economic, political or nationalistic factions. Not about the economy. Not about war. The struggle is actually between those who believe that the world is defined in terms of opposition — war or peace, right or wrong, rich or poor, with us or against us — and those who are able to see things in a more holistic, congruent manner.

These are deciding times. It is imperative for those of us who see the big picture to decide, to commit, to make a concerted effort to reach out in ever-expanding circles of affinity and embrace. Now is the time to create healthy, functioning networks in recognition and in honor of our mutual state of being and our common fate.

Because there really is still a chance for peace — and that chance will definitely increase if we each do our piece. It is ultimately up to us, each one of us, all of us, individually and together, to create the kind of world in which we want to live — starting right here, right now. Within the context of our immediate lives, within the concentric circles of our ordinary interactions.

I once gave a presentation in Washington, D.C. about creating peace in our world and in our lives. During the question and answer period, a woman commented that she wished that she could drop her job and just devote herself to working for peace.” “What do you do?” I asked her. “I’m a therapist,” she replied. Surely she has many opportunities in her professional capacity to create peace every day.

Some might argue that we don't have any choice in this upside down dangerous world and that we can't effect what will happen. But even if we can't immediately alter the course of human events on the world stage, we can certainly create change in our own lives and in all of the lives that we touch. And our thoughts are the seeds of that change.

Dr. Christiane Northrup writes, “Use your thoughts wisely. Understand
their power. Thoughts have a tendency to become their physical equivalent. This is one of the fundamental laws of the universe. Another one is the law of attraction, which states that 'like attracts like.' Because it is consciousness that creates reality, the kind of consciousness you hold — your vibration — actually creates the kind of life you're living.”

So our first order of business must be to stay positive. To entertain only positive possibilities. To imagine only affirmative alternatives. To surround ourselves with wholly uplifting, life-affirming people and influences. To align ourselves solely with the greater good so that our actions will be born of only the finest of our best intentions.

What we all have to do from now on is to stay alert, stay centered, keep connected and most important of all, keep talking. Talking, writing, protesting keeps the light of truth and tolerance shining upon the hidden agendas of governments, industries, institutions and individuals. Silence, like the dark of night, shelters nefarious deeds. Silence forgives violence.

I have been haunted recently by the words written by a Protestant minister after the downfall of the Nazi regime. “First they came for the gays. I am not gay, so I didn’t say anything. Then they came for the Gypsies. I am not a Gypsy, so I didn’t say anything. Then they came for the Jews. I am not a Jew, so I didn’t say anything. Then they came for the Catholics. I am not a Catholic, so I didn’t say anything. When they finally came for me, there was no one left to say anything.”

Be bold.
Make a statement.
Make a stand.
Make a difference.

In light of the widespread oppression, manipulation, intimidation that surrounds us today, we most certainly need to say something. We need. In fact, to talk to everyone who we meet, actually engage on a human level with those who we encounter as we make it through our day. Not just our families, friends and colleagues — those of presumed like-minds — but also the shoe repair guy, the waitress at the coffee shop, the post office clerk, the bag boy at the super market.

A good example is Dianne, one of the wonderful people who regularly attends my healing circles. She not only prays for the homeless men and women who live on her block, she calls them each by name. I am so impressed and inspired by her personal outreach to the “untouchables.” Everybody is, after all, somebody.

If we ignore, exploit or patronize those people whose lives intersect with ours, how can we expect international relations to be more civilized? We need to walk our talk wherever we go, whatever we do, remembering always, that by doing so we do make a difference. Let us each be a sun, sending our caring energy out into the world, shedding light wherever we go. You never know whom you might touch with the radiance of your warmth.

I have an outgoing message on my answering machine that doesn’t even say, “Hello.” It just starts right in with, “You know there really is still a chance for peace and that chance will definitely increase if we each do our piece. So let’s make peace — in our homes, in our own hearts, in our relationships, in our communities, in all of our dealings and in the world. Peace be with us all.”

Much to my surprise, the very people whom I never would have thought would respond favorably have. The overwhelmingly positive reactions that I have received from workmen, telephone solicitors and service personnel has been an important lesson about the necessity to reach out beyond the boundaries of our biases, assumptions and expectations.

A few weeks ago, I came home to a message from the plumber who was making an appointment to fix my sink. After listening to my taped pep talk, he answered in his gravely Brooklyn brogue, “Yeah, what is this war all about, anyway? Why are we fighting those people? They never hurt us.” This, from someone I would have assumed to be a proponent of the war.

The electrician, another guy who really shocked me, loves the message and calls in daily just to hear it! Once I was here when he called and when I picked up, he complained. “Let me call back again,” he implored. “I want to hear the message. It makes me feel good.” The reason, he explained, is that it is not political. It is personal. And it touches his heart.

But why was I surprised? People are just people, after all. When you think about it, all people are of a like-mind when it comes to living a life unthreatened by hatred and violence. The urgency for war only seems enticing when it is waged elsewhere. Ask anyone. "Do you want bombs and missiles to blow up your house?"

Every parent has the right to put her/his child to sleep each night without any risk of that child being shot, trapped in the midst of some hostile crossfire — be it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ireland, Angola or the South Bronx. No one wants to live and work in a war zone — in Palestine, Bosnia, Zimbabwe, the World Trade Center or East L.A.

So, buck up and say what is on your mind. The more you do so, the more empowered you will feel.

We become just by performing just actions,
temperate by performing temperate actions,
brave by performing brave actions.
—Aristotle


With blessings of speaking your truth,

xxQMD

Thursday, October 2, 2008

The Queen’s Chronicles: HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

It is hard to stay hopeful when you are worried to death. It requires determined attention and an exquisite combination of focus, concentration and surrender. It is an exercise of discipline, a test of faith, a karmic obligation.

During a recent ceremony of deep cleansing and release, I passed a set of Guatemalan worry dolls around the circle to help us relinquish the nagging apprehensions and insidious anxieties that sap our strength and resolve. All those sneaky, nasty, niggly worries that worm their way into our brains and take up our good time.

Worry dolls are wonderful. There is nothing you can’t tell them. Absolutely nothing shocks them, they’ve heard it all before. And whatever it is that troubles you, they take care of it. Get rid of it. Swallow it. Spirit it away. It is their job, and they are professionals.
What at tremendous relief it is to hand over your distress to someone else to deal with.

As each participant took the tiny figures into the palm of her hand,
s/he would allow the flood gates of her heart to open, and let loose a stream of sadness, stress, panic, guilt, worst-case scenarios, and catastrophic fears.

When the dolls reached Anita, a woman in her late sixties, she calmly declared, “I don’t worry. I hope.”

Brilliant! I felt five decades of self-conscious, conscientious pollyannaism vindicated by the tranceparent truth of that one simple statement. Talk about positive reinforcement.

There are those who say that hope is futile, a waste of time, of precious energy. They contend that hope is completely unrealistic. Simply wishful thinking, they insist. And I say, “Yes. It is, and thank goodness!”

Studies show that optimistic people consistently out-perform those who consider themselves to be more realistic, because they place fewer restrictions on themselves. If you don’t know that something is impossible, you are more likely able to be able to do it. “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.”

While we often have little or no control over the situations that affect us, we do have control over our own perceptions of them. We do have the very real and extremely potent power of perspective. And we definitely possess the crucial and vitally influential choice of how we will deal with whatever comes our way. How we will handle ourselves.

In a wide range of happiness studies conducted lately, including several with major lottery winners, it was clearly demonstrated that professional, educational, or financial success are not predictors of contentment. Nor are gender, age, race, religion, health, or ethnic background.

The key, common factors across the board that seem to determine satisfaction, peace of mind, and yes, happiness, are: optimism, self-confidence, self-control, connection to community, and living sense of spirituality. And, I might add, the desire to be so.

Take me, for instance. I was the most miserable of children. Painfully shy, sadly confused, and badly bruised; constantly abused by great chilly blasts of debilitating negativity. All I ever wanted was to be happy. When an adult would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would — in my imagination where I dared — answer, “Happy.”

I hung hand lettered and illustrated affirmations (before there was a word for such things) all over my room: I WANT TO BE HAPPY. I WILL BE HAPPY. And then, when I was eighteen years old and living away from home for the first time, it suddenly, incredibly, indelibly occurred to me one marvelous morning that I could be anybody I wanted to be. I could be a happy person!

Happiness is fleeting (as is pain.) The trick is to court it, to recognize it — even in camouflage, to acknowledge it’s presence when and where we least expect it, to celebrate each second of the healing heart and soul of it, and to rejoice in our own exhilarating ability to create it for ourselves and others at any given moment, in any circumstance.

“If you are happy and you know it, clap your hands.”

With blessings of inner contentment,

xxQMD