Life and Living

Grab that Peace of Christmas and Peace of Mind.

December 21, 2019 / / GAYA, Gratitude, Life and Living

It’s all a matter of perspective!   I have three decorations up this year…no tree…yet there’s a hint ‘Tis The Season to Be Jolly!  I’m not playing Christmas music yet, and don’t know if I will.

A couple of weeks ago I celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas with my son.  It was the traditional couple of days of prepping and cooking and at the end of the day I was whipped!  It was worth it, but at this time of my life (82+), I’m planning to downsize in this department too.

I have found as I age there’s a lot of modifying that goes on.  Call it accommodating.  It’s smart, for the body’s sake and keeps me mindful that some of the traditional ways I’ve done things for years can be approached differently…accomplishing the same thing, albeit slower.

I’m giving myself a jar-opener for Christmas!  I also bought a long-sleeved cashmere sweater and gold-plated small hoop earrings.  The ones I have are 8 years old and really dull.  I still have my cashmere sweaters which I toted here from Minnesota thirty years ago…have always worn them with jeans.  Love ‘the look’.   These things will make me happy.  People see me on my live streams and may notice I pretty much wear the same thing over and over again.  That has been ‘my way’ through the years…”Waste not, want not” was something my mother said fairly often in my upbringing.  Not a bad mantra.  I have never gone without in my lifetime, and for that I’ve always been grateful.

I’m happy each year I have enough to pass forward.  My donations focus on children and animals.  I know every amount counts up, and I’m grateful I am doing my part.

I haven’t gone to the stores much this month.  From Black Friday after Thanksgiving onward, parking lots are outrageous, people are streaming everywhere, and the whole energy is Buy, Buy, Buy.  When I see people walking out of the stores with carts brimming, somehow I relate to gluttonous eating.  Such overkill in one seasonal fell-swoop to celebrate and please others.  It’s like ‘drop what’s gone on all year’ and put on a “Happy Face” for the gala.

I do admire those who decorate their homes and outside yards for others to enjoy.   I do believe these people thoroughly enjoy the season and entertaining others with their creativity.  It’s a very sincere way of giving I think…for the hard work it takes to pull it off.

I spent so many years overspending at Christmastime when my sons were young.  Talk about a brainwash that it’s a ‘must’ to have way too many presents under the tree for children.  I recall one year my one son played with the vacuum cleaner all Christmas morning for a long time…he was around 2.  He liked his presents, but it’s whatever catches the fancy that gets the attention at the time.

I’ve said before, ‘Age is No Free Pass to Wisdom,’ but I will say, it’s a blessing to lift the burden of the ‘have-tos’ and ‘musts’ and finally do exactly what makes me happy…and fits my budget too.

SEASON’S GREETINGS TO ALL.  MAY YOUR DAYS BE MERRY AND BRIGHT.  BLESSED BE.  TO ALL BE BLESSED.

PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TOWARD MEN.

Namaste’

We thrill to your full heart, Kaye.     ~Gaya

 

WHEN I RESIST, I AM MAKING A JUDGMENT CALL AND THE WALLS CAN’T TUMBLE DOWN!

April 4, 2019 / / GAYA, Grace, Gratitude, It's all in the Energy, Life and Living, Mindfulness, Peace and Understanding, Self-Realization

There’s nothing like dusting off and shining up a glass-topped table!  It comes to me that this is not unlike clarifying my thoughts or experiences as I continue to pick up some pieces of my long life and drop off as many others as I can, fully knowing they don’t serve me anymore.

I work with wanting as much Peace in my life as possible, and to get this Peace, I must travel the same roads that caused the chaos and dis-ease within me.  I’ve had to acknowledge that my reactions to the myriad series of events in my life are exactly the driving force which bring about outcomes and these outcomes remain ‘alive and in play’ as I move along my Forever Path.

Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty here!!!  If I’m in a happy state, I have no resistance to Happiness…I am essentially at Peace and I like what goes on within me and around me as well.   However, when I decide/judge or predict some negative conditions are looming, I stiffen up and ‘prepare’ for the onslaught of what I alone have predetermined to be adversarial to me!   The War Is On!

All the more reason to be mindful of letting life BE  and be very mindful of keeping myself out of the fray of it all...being the observer not the participant of what happens around me, and not allowing it to happen TO me!  I am the puppeteer, and the puppet…I am the ventriloquist and the dummy!  If I stay within my Soul Beingness as much as a conscious human being can accomplish this, I can place myself in a Peaceful State AROUND and not IN a chaotic circumstance.  It turns out Soul Business is key and it overrides Ego Business if I am mindful to this to the best of my ability.

It is a wonderful Forever Path that ALL choose

when they hold up Gratitude and Generosity of  Spirit Heart

and reap the Abundance and Grace which is awaiting them.    ~Gaya.

There is No Cross to Bear! It May Be A Huge Lesson to be Learned!

March 15, 2019 / / Energy Connection, Faith and Trust, GAYA, Life and Living, Peace and Understanding

My upbringing was religious in the sense my maternal grandfather was a minister, after all, in the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church.  I recall in conversations, whether in my immediate family or among others in our extended family,  the phrase  “cross to bear” was used,  referring to someone who had an extraordinary burden in life.

As happens with me, I get thoughts which cross my mind, and if the same thought crosses more than twice,  I begin to think I’m being signaled to some kind of awareness.  This is one of those instances.  I’m coming to believe that none of us has a ‘Cross to Bear’…an extraordinary burden in life which we may interpret as ‘a test’ or ‘a punishment’.  Instead, based on my own life, I think this ‘burden’ may be the accentuation of a very important lesson I came to this planet to learn, and until I get it (hopefully, so I don’t have to carry it over into future lives),  I’ll be dealing with it somehow some way until I’m ready to open up to it!

Using this aforementioned theory, I am now beginning to meditate and work with this probability. Information is coming forward to me and ‘The Soul Plan’ is becoming more clear.  I have to say, it’s interesting – rather like negotiating a maze, or solving a riddle. I want to reach the solution and I know that because I have taken this fork in my road, I am on my right trail.  To my way of thinking it has to be a connection from past lives and some loose ends need to be tied up, once and for all.  I’m confident that my intention will reveal yet another awareness and allow me even greater Peace.  I feel I am on the brink of something wonderful that will truly expand my Soul…my Conscious Awareness…my Wholeness.

Keep those doors and windows open, Kaye.  We’re always ready to help!   ~Gaya

 

Of course! Who Wouldn’t?!

March 11, 2019 / / Conscious Awareness, Consistency with consideration, GAYA, Gratitude, Honoring Intention, Humility, Life and Living, Love, Manifesting our goals and dreams, Mindfulness, Peace and Understanding

Of course, I love sincere Compliments!  Of course, I love to be Missed!  Of course, I love being Welcomed into a room!  Of course, I love it when someone mentions they enjoy being Around me!  Of course!  Of course!  Of course!  Don’t we all love being on the receiving end!  But, clearly there’s more to living a life as a receiver, and that goes for all the BS we hear and receive and take into our being…some may be directed to us, some is peripheral noise that swirls around us, whether we’re at work, play, shopping, even conversing with someone else.

Mahatma Gandhi famously said, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” This says it!  This means I am in that driver’s seat all of the time.  Being the change in my own world!  When I deem there are changes I want to see in my own world, it is the very beginning of my own Peace and Happiness.  When I am in Peace and am Happy, everything around me takes on being ‘well with the world’ at large because I am making my own difference.

We know happiness comes only from within.  We also know when one is complaining it is the signal that there is unhappiness from within being projected outward.  Doesn’t it make common sense, then, when I concentrate on my own happiness and self-fulfillment I give out this same countenance and, therefore, this fabulous energy spreads to everyone and everything around me.  To my view, yes it does!

No getting around it, we still have to be sweeping our own front doors all of the time.  There is never an extra moment we have to be concerned of what another person is up to, except when we perceive someone is hurting in some way and if we are in a position to give a kindness, we must give it.  This fills us up too.  Our actions do speak louder than words…and is it our Ego straining to receive, and are our actions demonstrative of what we are entertaining for our own welfare?

We need to gather ’round our own flagpoles that celebrate our existence on this planet.  We need to operate with gratitude all of the time for our very breath.  There wouldn’t be time nor inclination to be tearing down someone else, making note of the differences instead of our similarities, if we were much more conscious where our own behavior is taking us.  It comes to my mind, this is truly selfish when we always have to be satisfying our own ego needs.  Instead, ought we not be thinking how to satisfy our own love needs? Ego satisfaction is fleeting and never satisfied.  Love is permanent, and the gestures made in the name of love are enduring in all times.  Again, it starts with Self.  Yes, I want to BE the change in MYSELF FIRST.

I’ve come full circle now with the help of Gandhi.  I do want to be the change I want to see in my world.  I belong to it, and all that live in it too.  As long as I have an attitude of Hope and Willingness to Change something in my own small world, I am automatically making a positive difference to my World at Large.

We are in harmony when vision expresses itself through awareness.   ~ Gaya

 

 

Two Steps Forward, One Step Backward…What Is, IS!

January 6, 2019 / / Conscious Awareness, GAYA, Humility, Life and Living, Life's Impressions, Living in the NOW, Think

Not this year, 2019, nor any other year in the near future, will I “arrive!”  Actually, I’ve always believed this and never think of my life along these lines; however, I have had hopes I learned some lessons ‘FOR GOOD’, if this makes any sense.

Now, after having to backtrack my tracks, and rethink again my actions and reactions, I’ve begun to believe that because things and people and circumstances are always changing moment- to-moment, it’s all I can do to keep up, and keep my head on straight, as I try to do the right thing at any given moment in the NOW of anything and everything!  This is a mouthful and a brainful too!!

As old as I am, nearing 82, it is never “Too soon old, too late smart”, as the saying goes.  Guess there’s no real reason to always try to figure out stuff. Living in the NOW for nearly a year, I take everything as it comes for the ‘start up’ of each of my days, but now I’m finding out I don’t take the ‘end up’ of my days so well when I have some troubling experience pop up!  It is still the NOW, but why is it so difficult for me to navigate this? What a conundrum!

As much as I love to look around every corner for the surprise of life, I think I’ve forgotten I also need to accept the surprises  that occur, which may stem from familiar ground, but that ground hasn’t been remaining the same and, therefore, circumstances and people and things have been changing as well!  True enough, nothing is carved in stone, no matter what!

What have I learned?  Don’t come to a conclusion about anything.  Always be ready for anything. What IS NOW is ONLY NOW.   Everything presented to me is NEW IN THE NOW NO MATTER WHAT! 

I don’t think I have to go back to my drawing board, but I fully intend to broaden my scope of thought about MORE (which may suggest futuristic thinking), from NOW on.

Happy New Day Everyone.  I do believe I gained my one step back, and added another one ahead.

Let’s hear it for giving ourselves some ‘wiggle room’.

Kaye finds it difficult to drop the reins of her life and accept fully ‘what Is’.  Of course, this stems from early childhood when it was near impossible to control her circumstances.   Every day she comes closer to us with full Faith and Trust that ALL is perfectly fine.  There is never a reason for her to be concerned.   She knows she is part and parcel of  ALL.             ~Gaya  

Blessed Be.  To All Be Blessed.

 

 

 

 

 

Today Is My Forever…I Can Work With That!

December 26, 2018 / / Conscious Awareness, Energy Connection, GAYA, Honoring Intention, Life and Living, Life's Impressions, Living in the NOW, Love, Self-Realization

I awake and it is ‘Today’, and if I live through the night, I awaken to another Today, and so it goes.  I guess there really is no time.  We put it into segments to be orderly for work hours, we separate night and day and we have created weeks and months and years.   We age ourselves from our birth dates, and in our early years of development we monitor such development by standard, and in our later years we monitor our decline, again by standard.

I spent every New Year’s Eve for more decades than I can count monitoring my past year’s accomplishments and then fast-forwarding 10, then 5 (as I aged) years ahead  semi-seriously dabbling in what I thought I might want to do in that future time space.   This was an elaborate exercise of listing things to do, looking to the future, and somehow trying to bring the dead past to life with the reminiscence of it all.   It all seemed to be so valuable to me, and none of it had to do with the PRESENT, the TODAY OF MY LIFE.

No more of this for me…I hinted last year was to be the end of this practice for me, and so it was! It’s my TODAY I breathe, touch, smell, feel, think about and do something about…My NOW!

No holding onto past accomplishments – that was then, this is NOW! No waiting for a set of circumstances to be perfectly in place before doing something.  It’s called strike while the iron is hot!  Our heart has a perfect way of letting us know when we want to do something.  It’s our mind that starts doing the calculating, provisioning, and conventionalizing our heart’s desire, until we finally can’t see where to begin…it becomes a downer instead of a motivated wonderful dream intention which our heart brought forward for us to act upon in the first place.

I have all I can do to take care of my own business and stay out of that of others; it’s the same about working with each  TODAY I’ve been given.  It requires devotion to myself, love of myself, filling each moment I am  breathing with an attitude of well-being, recognizing my gratitude and Blessings and my own POWER TO MAKE MY LIFE BETTER  during EACH DAY!  There isn’t much more time for anything else that I can do anything about.  The future isn’t in my grasp until it is TODAY.

I’m feeling wonderful about this shift in my thinking.  It falls into perfect place with my view on aging too.  As I’ve said before, I have no end game. My life IS, until it ISN’T, and when that happens, it will be ‘a TODAY’.

HAPPY NEW DAY EVERYONE!   Blessed Be.  To All Be Blessed.

 

 

 

 

 

I Am My Own Ripple Effect!

December 2, 2018 / / Conscious Awareness, GAYA, It's all in the Energy, Life and Living, Peace and Understanding, Self-Realization

When I come here, I’m travelling in my small world.  I’m working with my NOW, as Life appears in front of me.  I guess I receive my own “Liferays”!  I do believe I am connected to ALL THERE IS.

Last evening, I learned from the well-known spiritualist, Ram Dass, about a quiet meditation with nothing more than a repetition of  the mantra “I Am Loving Awareness”.  Initially these words come from the brain and then I move my experience slowly to my ‘spiritual heart’…continuing to silently repeat the mantra, waiting for another door to open to an expanded place of awareness.   I was reminded that Loving Awareness is loving everything I am aware of.

This is remarkable to me because I often say out loud, “I love this”, when I’m doing stuff around the house.  Whatever the eyes rest on, or whatever warm feeling I have inside, there is that added space of awareness where I audibly acknowledge ‘I love it’! Believing everything is part of me, it follows IF I LOVE MYSELF, I LOVE EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE AROUND ME AS WELL.

This is no ‘arrival’ for Kaye, but rather a new door which is opening in her personal journey.  We welcome her search and meet her with support and guidance which is exactly what she invites.  What is wanted and needed is what we provide to ALL who ask.       ~Gaya

I find it fitting that I have apparently entered a new phase of understanding and I look forward with excitement to what will present.  This business of living in the NOW continues to amaze me.  Yesterday, I wasn’t thinking like I am today!  Nothing stays the same.  Life is an exploration of thoughts and things we do, who we think we are, who we think we want to be, what we think we like, what we decide to discard…I guess we are in a movie, and may as well sit back and take it all in.

It makes so much more sense now when I remarked  a while back I didn’t think I would be continuing my New Year’s Eve “encounter with my life”.  Thoughts change, things change, life changes, and I’m changing right along with it.  Changing for the better, I’d say!

A new second, minute, hour, day, month, and soon, new year.  Time begins to mean less and less.  ‘It’s’ IT!  What ‘Is’, IS!…but FOR NOW.   I’m learning to savor it ALL in its time.

Blessed Be.  To All Be Blessed.

 

 

The ‘Inside Explosions’ are the Absolute Best!!

November 20, 2018 / / Faith and Trust, GAYA, Life and Living, Manifesting our goals and dreams, Self-fulfillment, Truth to Self

Something fabulous happened this morning! I just had to tell a member of my Literary Team,  the one who formats  my books and designs my book covers.  Just Sayin’.

In my earlier years, I just had to tell everything to everyone in my world… friends and strangers alike.  It appeared I was bragging. What I was really doing was trying to bring myself UP from the lower place of lack of self-worth.

My small world never heard how scared I was while I was raising my sons.  NO!  Everyone saw  “Of course, I can do it…I chose it, I do it, I survive, I’m great, I can twirl all the plates and juggle all the balls without blinking an eye!”  You already know that got me seven years of acute anxiety shaking!

Now, I ‘explode’ to my “Insiders”…the small circle in my small world.

The only ones that know me anymore are in my inner circle.  I realize I have been leading myself UP to every Today, every Now, and it finally occurred to me this morning that I have to be ‘caught on the fly’…because living in the NOW doesn’t have a resting place.  I don’t sit down and take inventory anymore.  I live, I respond from my heart, I see the fantastic results and I register absolute gratitude for everything in my life.

The world at large doesn’t need to hear an explosion out of me anymore. My life unfolds now. I am my example. 

Kaye’s explosive nature clearly is recognizing internally, she is resolute and content with the way we are continuously unfolding her dreams and desires to perfection.   ~Gaya

Happy Thanksgiving!  My favorite holiday.  My heart is full of gratitude.

Blessed Be.  To All Be Blessed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Love Hearing the Silent Sounds!

October 29, 2018 / / GAYA, Gratitude, Honoring Intention, Life and Living

Don’t ask me why and how I am truly moved to begin another blog…it’s those almost deafening ‘silent sounds’ that pull me to the page!

I’m hoofing again, and I think this has something to do with it!  I’ll never be able to explain how easily I can leave the hoof for so many months and then, when I return, it’s like I can’t figure out how I could have taken that hiatus from the activity that keeps me alive in so many ways!

It’s like my singing in the shower.  I know fully well why I started it up those 3+ years ago, and today, there is a fulfillment in it…almost a ‘swan song’, if you will, that screams to me silently, ‘You Did It, Kaye”!  I’ve always known what I was attempting to do and why I had set this goal inside of me.  It was all part of the onion-peel!  I knew what I was lacking and I had figured out a way I could slowly, but surely, bring it out of me:   Self-Confidence!   Now, it’s just plain pure pleasure when I let my ‘inside Angel’ loose as the water streams!

We told her this morning, she was meant to sing, speak and write and we are so happy for her and she is aware.  We found it comical and childlike.  She was four years old.  It was Christmas Eve in church with her parents…without any hesitation, she slipped from the pew and walked up to the front of the church and sang “Silent Night, Holy Night”, and then returned to her seat.  Pride, yet embarrassment, swept through her mother.  What a Blessing to Remember, Kaye.    ~Gaya

I enjoy my inspirations, and how I can muse to myself now with such clarity.  It’s hard to describe the peace and understanding that I feel and continue to enjoy every step on my Ladder(s) of Life.

My Ladder(s) of Life Progress are interesting:  I can easily come to a Vee.  I can move forward in certain areas of my life and then there are other areas which hold me as if I were in mud!  I always continue in both directions, and while I’m in the mud, I stay with it…trying for the breakthrough to veer back on the full-progress track.  Presently, my ‘mud’ is “Detachment”.  Loving those I love, while detaching from them in that love, and in this process enjoying the exquisite peace and understanding that as individuals we are duty bound to travel our own ways as we reach for our own successes and awareness.  Intellectually, I know this is attainable.  The integration of this whole concept takes its good old-fashioned time while the work continues.  I’ll share with everyone every step of ‘this way’.

Blessed Be.  To All Be Blessed.

 

 

FACE IT!

October 26, 2018 / / "Going for It", Energy Connection, Faith and Trust, GAYA, Life and Living, Peace and Understanding, Self-Realization

What’s in a face?  Why save face?  Why put on a happy face?  Face forward! Why use make-up to cover up the face?  There is nothing wrong with the REAL FACE!

A while back, in another exercise toward authenticity,  I was determined to strip away whatever labels I had attached to myself:  I went to a gym to strength train; I walked a mile in 18 minutes; I kept my weight pretty strictly between 130-132 pounds (and was proud of it!).  ALL…drum roll please…at the age of 78-80!  This was my picture of Kaye…I prided myself in it.  I had convinced myself this was part of the REAL ME!  “How Great Thou Art, Kaye”!

I’m getting better at recognizing when my  prideful EGO slivers into my consciousness and it is much easier to recognize and peel off  “that face, that face, that beautiful face”, and idle back to the ME that is  JUST ME!..The perfectly imperfect ME… the ME that I smile at every morning in the mirror  with fond recognition.  It’s more than  good enough for me, and that’s all that counts!

Facing facts  as I relax into my ‘easy peasey’ comfortable-with-ME space, I find I am far less concerned about what others are up to!  Everyone else can figure out their own stuff. It’s my peace I care about and my awareness that I’m continuously gaining because I do care more about me and love me more than anyone else.  I can be authentic around anyone, whether or not they are authentic with me.

Kaye has figured out that beneath ‘it all’, rests everything that is sweet and comfortable in her privilege of living her life to the fullest, and she knows it isn’t fancy, or loud or flashy, it is more on the mundane side of things because there is so much joy and happiness that extends to everything around and within her.  She has figured out that there is nothing specific that makes her happy.   She is happy for happiness’ sake.    ~Gaya. 

There is no question, I am working with another aspect of living in the NOW with myself.  I am more serious about what I have inside of me that must come out.  This isn’t necessarily about peeling my onion as much as it is about my Spiritual Nature, my Soul Self, my Higher Self.  I believe I have a Personal Emotional Guidance System and my consciousness wants a deeper connection to it.  I now have a sense that my innate ‘independent nature’ may well be that very System that has always been a part of my character.  I am on untread ground.  I am turning an unfamiliar corner far deeper within.  These aren’t answers carved in stone. This is how I pursue unanswered questions, as I stay interested and open waiting for answers.  ASK and I shall RECEIVE.

ABOUT FACE!!  BACK TO MY SPIRITUAL QUESTING!!

 

 

 

 

 

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