Thursday, September 25, 2014

"Rock Bottom" = My Salvation

View this with whatever mind you choose to use...


For myself, it's time for letting go.

Friday, September 19, 2014

Why I Am Still Alive Today...

I wrote the following post this last spring. TODAY, is the 15-year anniversary of the day in 1999 that I'm speaking of below. Fifteen years ago today - on September 19, 1999 - I saved my own life as I made the conscious and deliberate choice to start "doing" my life differently. As I made the conscious and deliberate choice for PEACE (over and over again, beginning on this date all those years ago), that IS what became my own personal spiritual foundation, on which I currently stand.

I happen to love this date and what it means so me, and the following post expresses that meaning beautifully, so I now share it with you again, on the date that it is meant to be shared, with joyful gratitude for the extra fifteen years that I gave to myself when I made the choice to change who I was in that relationship. If not for that choice, I would have died a violent and painful death at the hands of a man who said that he loved me.

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Sitting here at my computer, just contemplating... asking myself what is THE most important thing to me, and recognizing that there's a reason that an experience I had fifteen years ago has cropped up in my memories and in conversation more than once over the last several days.

Fifteen years ago, in 1999, I was still in my last abusive relationship. I was VERY unhappy, and I can remember thinking over and over that all I wanted was peace. I just wanted peace. I wanted just one moment of not having to be on guard... just a moment of not being afraid of the fist that could come out of nowhere at any time and punch me in the side of the head.

I had gone beyond wishing for love. At that time I was just barely coming to understand that he was in so much emotional pain - that he had always been in emotional agony - that he was not capable of being truly loving. And me? I did not know how to BE loved.

So I decided to look for something deeper than that. Something that would serve as a foundation for a happier and more loving life, which I wanted to believe could be possible for me.

What I was looking for was peace. You know, real peace. "The Peace that passeth all understanding." (Although, at the time I had no idea that THAT was the peace I was looking for. All I knew at the time was that I was tired of living in constant, acute fear.)

In September of that year I was introduced to an idea that was very new to me. The idea of personal responsibility. The idea that there was nothing "outside of me" that was - or ever could be - responsible for my own personal peace. I was introduced to the idea that my own peace begins with me, and a quote from A Course In Miracles that says, "I can choose peace instead of this."

That was the beginning of an amazing journey for me. A journey that has brought me to this place, right here. My whole life changed, simply because I decided to apply that one idea as I lived each moment. I began living FROM the idea that I really CAN choose to feel peace, no matter what is going on "outside" of me.

Looking back from here I can see that every time I chose to feel peaceful no matter what was going on with him, OR inside my own thoughts, I was aligning my own personal energy with that of Divine Peace. And as I did that consistently, my whole life changed around me... because I, myself, changed within my own life.

Wow.

As I was sitting here and asking what was the most important thing to me, and "Peace" was the answer that kept showing up, I was being a bit hard on myself about it. Because, well, shouldn't "Love" be the answer to that question? Hmmmm.... Nope. The answer was clearly, "Peace."

PEACE is "my thing." PEACE is the most important thing to me. PEACE is the foundation on which I choose to stand, because from that place of personal alignment with the Divine, I can deliberately see the Divine in others, no matter what they are doing... no matter who they are being in the moment. And there is NOTHING more loving than that.



Tuesday, September 16, 2014

History...

So fifteen years ago today I had NOT had my big "Ah-ha" yet. I was still a victim and I still had no idea about how profoundly powerful REAL "personal responsibility" really is. I was miserably unhappy and I was wondering why I had ever been born.

There was no way I could know that in just three days my whole way of "doing" my life was going to change. There was no way I could know on THIS day that in just three days I was going to discover just how powerful I really was in that circumstance.

On this date fifteen years ago... All I knew was that I was willing - consciously, deliberately willing, for the first time ever in my life - to believe that a different kind of life was possible for me.

It brings me such joy to look to this piece of my history and watch those last few days unfold in my mind's eye. From here I can see what was just ahead of me there, and I am very, very grateful that I persevered with that simple willingness to believe in possibility. 

That was my very first "Open Moment" experience and I can still remember how it felt... To be in a life that truly, truly sucked and just... be... willing.

And this is why the Open Moment is Tool #1 in Successfully MidAir. I quite literally owe my life - and my current healthy happiness - to it.


Saturday, September 13, 2014

About Personal Empowerment

The quote in the attached meme is not actually IN Successfully MidAir (except for my hand written note to myself on the title page of my personal copy), but it IS the purpose for which Successfully MidAir was written... to give the reader tools that they can apply right in the midst of their situation to deliberately create their own experience of their situation.

How do you perceive your world? You do get to choose, you know. And when you deliberately control your perception of the world, you will find that you ARE in control of your experience of the world.

Photo by Linda M Wilson

The instant that you figure this out for yourself, you will then understand that - whether consciously or unconsciously, whether deliberately or by default - you are ALWAYS the only one who can control your personal experience of the world.

I've decided to make this my "I Choose" for this week... I choose my PERCEPTION of my world, and in the purposeful choosing of my view, I know that I am also purposefully creating my own  individual and unique EXPERIENCE of my world.

Dr. Wayne Dyer says that "when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." I know from personal experience - having deliberately applied that statement in 1999 for the purpose of changing my experience of an abusive relationship - that he is absolutely correct!!

THAT is what this week's "I Choose" is about.

Join me if you'd like. You have NOTHING to lose, and the life of your own choosing to gain.