Th'Muse

Eric Whitacre: A virtual choir 2,000 voices strong | Video on TED.com I was reduced to tears. The sweet sincere faces, the gentle sounds, the message. . . music truly does unite the world. I don't do this, but I have to share this astonishing accomplishment. MSK

Today I’m sick.   I feel rotten.   While that isn’t what I want to talk about, it is what made me think about pleasure, spoiling myself, hot soup and fuzzy slippers.   Sometimes when life smacks us, whether it is emotional, physical, relationship, financial, whatever, it is the time that we take a time-out.   Settle into those comfort ceremonies that warm our soul and allow us to close our eyes for a moment and forget the momentary circumstances.  For me, it is many things, but one of them is hot soup and bread.    Few things make me feel as good as quickly as something that tickles my senses in more than one area.   Great scents of homemade soup and piping hot bread and butter brings me back to when I was a little girl and being taken care of by someone who loved me.   What is yours? Another of my Ceremonial pleasures is my morning devotional.   If I don’t start my day with about 30 – 45 minutes of contemplation, reading, ...

What Is Missing - Really? ~”Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man. . . that he didn’t, didn’t already have!” ~ America – Tin Man Usually we have most of what we need. The missing part is usually the catalyst. A good coach who can point it out for you and put the pieces in the right place is the coach who can invite you to recognized the best YOU. “Listen to where it hurts.. the body and the spirit speak softly first, then more loudly the more they are ignored.” ~ Carol Montoya I’ve been doing a lot of EFT lately. Emotionally Focused Therapy. It is a system of acupressure releases that takes stuck and stored up energies and helps the person release that energy through gentle taps and questions and statements. It is simply astonishing how easily old hurts, physical pain and even stress can disapate with the simply applied principles. This isn’t something that you need an appointment for, or a long list of supplies or even a long training session. It is a wonderful tool that can...

If what you are doing, isn’t working. . . do something else! I am working towards my NLP (Neuro-Linguestic Programing) Certification. Today’s lesson was on ‘chunking up’ and ‘chunking down’. What that means is moving away from a current way of thinking, to a lesser detailed way of thinking, or one more specific or detailed. For instance. If you would like to change one aspect of your life, what do you consider when you think of that change? Does it seem too huge to accomplish? Are you overwhelmed? Or, maybe it seems like there are just too many details to accomplish. Consider asking a couple of questions of yourself. Like, “What is the bigger part? What is my intention in wanting this change? or even what is my purpose?” If I wish to teach a class on something I’m good at for instance. I may feel overwhelmed and inadequate. I may feel like I can never fill up a semester of information and be successful. However—if I chunk down, I can think of it as only the FIRST class. IF th...

Jason Wright says that a life can be changed in about seventeen seconds. He calls them miracles. There is even a book and a website and a facebook application to record those that happen to you, and those that you engage in and perform. I know Jason personally, and can say easily that his life definitely reflects the sense of fun and service an d the joy of existing that a little bit of extra effort produces. My thoughts today surround my own little seventeen second miracles. I call it Feedback. It is something that often takes just about seventeen seconds (or a minute or two, depending on how verbose you are!). It is the little moments we take to respond to someone. It can be about a service, a little ‘Thank you for. . . ‘ or a birthday. . . I had almost a hundred people wish me a great day. It absolutely surrounded me with awe to think that that many people thought about me, and took the seconds required to tell me so. I’m still walking around in the glow of it. Yet I doubt that ...

We just had the wonderful experience of hosting a Japanese student for a couple of weeks. We had a wonderful time showing him our world. He was delightful and curious, loved everything about America. (Except oatmeal and tomatoes!). Many tastes were new experiences for him. He loved RootBeer, though his friends said it tasted like medicine. He took a six-pack home. While we were taking him around and listening to ‘Oooo, it’s gootd, so goodt’ a lot, it occurred to me that perhaps I was missing much of the ‘soo, soooo goodt’  things in my life. Diane Ackerman, a sensual (as in the five senses) writer who describes things in succulent language filled with imagry, talks about the dulling of the senses in the modern world. So many times we forget to just stop, take a long look at something with new eyes. Having Kakeru here did that for me. I often wondered what he thought about things. How we appeared to him and what sorts of ideas he was getting with the ‘too much English!’ all...

Frankly, neither does ‘won’t’ power. Let’s face it. Strong-arm muscling goals gets us mostly just frustrated, down on ourselves and shoved into helplessness. Ever tried to ‘push a river’? Going against the natural flow of things makes life rougher, not easier. Struggle wasn’t meant for an every-day lifestyle. So, how do we improve? How do we get out of bad habits and into good ones? The trouble is, bad habits are EASY to start, and HARD to break. Good habits are HARD to start and EASY to break. I know, not fair! But it is what it is. You have spent years learning how to do things a certain way. Think a certain way, act and respond a certain way. You have all these wonderful desires, and want to do things a NEW way, so you sit down, make some ‘goals’ and then expect change to happen quickly! Guess what. . . it doesn’t. You usually fail, then berate yourself, give up, become depressed and decide it wasn’t possible anyway. What if you are just going about it in the wrong way? A riv...