Can we Manifest Guilt?

Does thinking guilty feelings manifest more in the future?

The Law of Attraction exists to deliver to us the things on which we focus.  Visualization can be both a blessing and a curse, depending on how you use it.  As masters like Abraham advise us that the Law is here to provide for us anything we need to fulfill our life’s goals of experiencing God’s magnificence and the gift of free will, the Law makes no judgment of good–or bad–in what we request.

So if you are consistently focusing on, let’s say, your sickness, and ignoring the rest of your body which is in total health, then you will bring about more sickness until it becomes your complete reality, taking over the healthy areas of your body.  Alternatively, if you focused on the healthy parts of your body, showing gratitude for that health despite the small area of you which is resisting it, then the Law will deliver more health–eventually healing whichever ailment you may have.  The Law doesn’t care if it is delivering you what you consider to be GOOD or BAD–it only delivers to you what you ask for.  And whether you are focusing on your sickness–or your health–you are asking for more of the same.

So why would anyone ever focus on the negative?

Look around you and ask yourself if you know many people, if any, who don’t.

We all know those people who love to talk about their most recent ailment, whether it be a perpetually bad knee or the constant migraines, or that their husband is a fat slob, or that they just can’t seem to lose weight.  They relish in the audience they receive, despite the fact that no one they speak to really wants to hear about it.

And guilt is about as negative as it gets.

Guilt is something no one wants.  Aside from your passive-aggressive grandmother who layers it on like cream cheese icing if you don’t visit often enough, there is no room for guilt in anyone’s lives.  So why do we feel so much of it?

We feel guilt because we think we should have done something differently from what we actually did.  And the Law says that our actions are based on focused thoughts and their resultant feelings.  So my deduction here is that we did something that we KNEW we shouldn’t have done, and now we feel bad about doing it.

We were focusing on the negative.  We did what we knew we shouldn’t have done.  And now we feel guilt.

So next time you feel guilty, look backward (but only briefly!) to your thoughts and feelings about what you were thinking when you didn’t do what you knew you should have done.  Note these feelings, and then move on.    If you continue to focus on your guilt, then the Law will bring you more of what it thinks you want.

And don’t forget to visit your grandmother once in a while.

What your Children Learn from your Kind Acts

Your Children are Watching You

There’s something about learning by doing. After the January 12 earthquake in Haiti I learned more about my son than I had known about him in the first 12 years of his life. As he watched the people crying on CNN, being dug out of the rubble, bloody and homeless with no food or water, I saw my son’s eyes well up. He turned to me and he said, “We really need to help them! Look at those children; they have nothing to do.”  The thoughts of a child, concerned about the welfare of other children, because he had been in their place at one time.

And so with that, he conjured up the idea of sending yoyos down to the children so they had something to play with while Haiti was being rebuilt. We set about creating a website, yoyosforhaiti.com, and he wrote letters to all of the major yoyo manufacturers, who applauded him for his kindness and thoughtfulness towards the Haitian children. All but one contributed, as well as many individuals, and some went way out of their way to ensure that he met his goal of 500. It took a little while and some diligence on his part, but he followed through and he reached his goal. We took pictures along the way; we sent the press releases to CNN and the local news came to interview him. They asked him where his idea had originated, and his answer surprised even me. He said, “I know what it feels like to lose it all. I was homeless and I lost everything–even my cat–in Hurricane Katrina, and so I can understand how these children feel and I want them to feel better.”  My eyes welled up, as did those of the cameraman and the anchorwoman. For I thought that he had been too young during the Hurricane to equate it with a more adult-oriented sense of loss.

Here was true human compassion albeit in a small package; but it shows that kindness is still prevalent in our world and it gives me hope.  This is how we should want our children to grow up.  I was proud see my son display such love and empathy towards children he will never meet. I wanted to avoid taking any credit for myself. Yet when I look back at the little things that I’ve enjoyed giving to other people: those I don’t know; animals; children; the homeless–I  realized that he had been watching from the sidelines all along.  I was setting an example without even trying. And my mother had done the same thing before my own childish eyes, always giving as much she could despite having very little. She always had a smile for everyone she met, as do I to this day.

And so we pass the tendency for compassion down from generation to generation. We should be planning these lessons if they don’t come naturally to us, and we must ensure that those little acts of kindness are seen by our children and those around us. And when you see your child perform an act of kindness, make sure that praise and show appreciation. Because with the ripple effect, anybody who sees such acts is positively affected by them–whether they be a smile, a cold drink or a yoyo–and each observer will positively affect another in some small way.

Misjudged First Impressions

Recently, I was shopping for a horse that I could just throw a saddle on and ride around the neighborhood. I already share a beautiful Arabian mare, but she is a prima donna that hates to get her hooves dirty. Not the right horse for riding around the neighborhood.

I scoured the papers, online classifieds, Horse Training Sites, and the feed store bulletin board for the perfect horse. There were gorgeous options–Quarter Horses, Friesians, Saddlebreds and Paso Finos with shiny coats and proud stances.

And then I came across an ad on Craig’s List: “APQA Paint Horse, $900″

And memories of my childhood dreams arose of riding bareback across the plains just like Pocahontas did…and I had to further investigate the advertisement. The pictures were fuzzy, but there was a You Tube video that showed the horse jumping in an arena. From a fuzzy distance, she looked like a decent horse for the money. So out I drove, all the way across town, to see her in person.

She was mixed with 26 other horses, grazing in a field. Her markings were, well, odd. Not the beautiful cow spots that most of you are used to in a paint horse. She is an overo, which looked like someone had splattered bleach on her brown coat, leaving tiny, irregular white spots in really strange places. She is no beauty; she was a hundred pounds underweight, filthy and had matted mane and tail–but her eyes were clear, and she seemed to have the disposition I was looking for. Calm, easy to ride, not readily excitable.

It turns out that this owner had taken the horse as repayment of a debt that was owed to her–exactly $900–and wanted to turn the horse into cash, thus eliminating one more mouth to feed. It was obvious that she didn’t want to put too much effort into restoring the horse back to health, although I give her credit for taking better care of her than her previous bankrupt owner.

So I wrote the check, and she delivered the horse, complete with papers, to the riding facility where I had rented a stall. This facility housed show horses, and sported teenage girls posting with their black velvet caps darting up and down on their perfectly clipped trotting mounts. The arrival of my horse caused quite a stir–a silent one, if you get my drift–not because of her beauty, but rather because of the lack of it. On this property full of high-maintenance show horses, mine stumbled out of the trailer like a homeless bum after he finishes his wine in the bag. Shaggy, dirty, with hay in her forelock, she looked around in fright at all of the horror struck people with gaping mouths.

I had bought a nag.

“She’s got a great disposition,” I told my disbelieving friends. “She just needs a little training and care.” They said nothing, but their lips were pursed, and their gazes turned away from my new horse and far across the field.

The trainers were ever positive, since they were being paid well to do as much as they could do in 30 days. They made no promises. We put her in her stall, which must have looked like Plum Sykes’ penthouse to her, where she ate for 2 hours straight. I named her “Tuesday.”

At first, the reports from the trainers were grim, and the other horse owners made a wide berth when we went a-walking. But then, last night, we worked her again, and the real Tuesday started to emerge. With food in her stomach, and attention directed toward her training, I could finally see a glimpse of the horse she would be. She held her head higher, her gait was more steady as she regained musculature and balance, and her willingness to please her rider was evident now that she was no longer starving.

I am not so sure she is the kind of horse I can just throw a saddle on and ride around the neighborhood.

But I am sure that she was meant to be with us at this time…to teach us that first impressions aren’t always right, no matter what psychologists say the statistics are. After all, what if she were human? Unkempt, unfed, forgotten and lost. We see them all the time, and many of us are quick to judge the external appearance rather than considering the soul that is trapped inside.

Here’s a video of the real “Tuesday” the day before I brought her home.

Living a Guilt Free Chaotic Life

Chaos as a Way of Life

Do you ever come home from work and experience this in your first ten minutes through the door:  you are attacked by the dogs, face a whining family who can’t find anything to eat despite a kitchen full of food, skid across socks on the floor, deal with piled-up mail, answer the ringing phone and encounter still-unmade beds?

I deal with this every day.  After overtime on the job, I drive home in the solitude of my car (sometimes I don’t want to get out!) only to arrive home to what should be my sanctuary, but is rather a screaming zoo of chaos.  I can barely take a breath before something else is requiring my attention, and there I stumble, one shoe still on my foot, to put out another virtual fire between demanding loved ones.

So last week, I decided to take a weekend away from all of this, and go with a friend to Las Vegas.  I had my own room, with a big fluffy bed covered in pillows, room service and curtains that blocked out the light so I could sleep late.  Three whole days to myself with no one making demands of me!

Solitude isn’t what I expected it to be

Silence. Peace. Opportunity to go within. Freedom.
Boredom!

I was lost there, with the endless shopping and sightseeing and visual treats available to me. There were so many opportunities that none of them seemed appealing–because I had no one to share them with.

Missing the Chaos

I longed to return to the noise and the craziness, because that’s where my true interaction was. Not only was I missed at home, but they missed me; for they are an integral part of me, and I had left my most integral part of behind.

Enjoying your Routine

So next time you are faced with the temper tantrums, the spilled spaghetti and towels on the floor, remember that your presence plays a large part in the growth and community of others. Their–and your–needs are important, of course. A little quiet may–or may not!–refresh you.

Forgiveness Manifested

Forgiveness the long way around

The other day, I got yelled at–rather berated–by a woman on the phone.  In my position, hanging up on the bitch isn’t an option.  She called me stupid, asked if I was new, and if I was dropped on my head as a baby.  I felt myself bubbling up inside like magma under the surface, and I was ready to blow.  Oh, the things I wanted to say to her.  But I kept my mouth shut, solved her problem without so much as a thank you, and I maintained my cool.

Until later.

All that night and the following day, I envisioned the retorts I could have dealt out to that evil woman.   I lost sleep.  I cried and lamented about the lack of compassion she felt for a person whom she had called for help.  I saw her face contorted with hurt with my cruel and vindictive statements, the way she had contorted mine.  And I knew that these thoughts had to stop, for I would only be passing on those horrible emotions to someone else.

Forgiveness even though I didn’t want to

So in the darkness of my bedroom, while trying to sleep, I forgave her for her actions. I was sure she had a bad day, and was lashing out. And I remembered times in my past where I’d done the same thing to someone else. And I let her, and the anger that had been lingering inside me, go. And I fell asleep

The Aftermath of Forgiveness

Well, a few days later, she called again. She spoke to me in kind, sweet tones, with another problem to be solved, but this time with humility. I never mentioned how my feelings were hurt by our last encounter, and I kept my tone professional and warm. And we finished the conversation with “Thank You” and “Have a wonderful day.”

There was no need to gloat about how manifestation works for me, because I know that those who focus on the positive receive it. It just took me a little mental reorganization to get there.

What’s Your Daily Guilt Scale?

Are you perfect?  If so, you can stop reading now because you and I have nothing in common.

If you’re like the rest of us, then you probably go through your day feeling bouts of both goodness and guilt.  You may look in the mirror in the early morning, give yourself a wink of self-approval, and yet at lunch you catch a glimpse of yourself  in the bathroom mirror and you feel like an inner tube in a blouse.  Goodness can be replaced with guilt in a matter of minutes based on the decisions we make.  If you are like me,  then you may decide to skip the gym because you almost fell asleep while driving home.  Or perhaps you are staring at an empty bottle of wine when you planned on having only one glass.  Or a cigarette came out of nowhere and lit itself up in front of you.

When such things happen to me, the guilt takes over and I could spiral down quickly into misery–because instead of following the straight and narrow of a freak of nature that traipses the path laid out by perfect vegan yogis, nuns and healthy triathlete doctors and have no history of risky behavior, there’s me.  I admit–even to myself–that I 0ccasionally stumble off the path, trampling the posies and stepping on  fuzzy bunnies in my failure to follow the directions of those who want me to live to be 117 so that I can buy their products.

And although I am a proponent of a guilt-free life, I experience a sense of guilt every day; yet I have remodeled my guilty inclinations into a useful scale to moderate my behavior.  My scale is represented by numbers from 1 through 10, with 1 being the absolutely most guilt-ridden and miserable a person could be, and 10 being the happiest bliss-infused rainbow-riding earth spirit that lights up the room she enters.

Now I start my morning with a rating of 10 if I’ve gotten enough sleep and I remember my wrinkle lotion.
If I eat relatively healthy food and avoid inhaling an entire pizza, my Guilt Scale stays on the high side, although other factors such as being rude to a colleague, not carrying my load at work, or flipping someone off in traffic can drag the scale down as the  day goes by. If I go to the gym rather than crapping out, the scale remains steady, because by doing so, I have contributed to my own health and happiness by my own doing.  No one forces me to go, and if I decide one day that I just don’t feel like exercising, and mentally I am OK with that, then it’s not necessary for me to reduce the guilt scale.

The whole premise behind the Guilt Scale is that we are in charge of our own lives.  We make decisions about how to treat ourselves and others, and we can use the Guilt Scale to self-assess our behavior and how we feel about who we are right now.  If we progress through our day and loosely rate the feelings and emotions related to our actions, we can reflect on whether or not we are living according to our values.  And if we live according to our values, then we show integrity.

Please let me know if this is helpful to you.

Prejudice at the Gym

I work out at a gym that is full of stereotypes.  There’s the “meatheads” that pump up their biceps and then spend their rest time flexing them in front of the mirror.  There’s the college girls with the sports bra and low-rise yoga pants and sculpted stomachs.   Teased-up ponytailed lithe fairy yoga girls and over-aerobicized models lacking child-bearing hips.  Of course there’s normal people, too, with oversized t-shirts and sweaty backs toting their bottled water from machine to machine.

But there’s one regular denizen of my gym who was sure to send me into a tizzy every time I saw her.  She is maybe 5’2″, 90 pounds, with smooth tanned skin and size 56 DDD additions to her chest that she has a difficult time covering, if she had an inkling to attempt covering them at all.  Smacking gum like a junior-high student, she would work with the free weights, the exercise ball, the cable machines, all the time viewing herself in the ample mirrors.  Everyone–especially the meatheads–knows her, and she is jovial to anyone that speaks to her.  She never speaks to me, since I spend most of my time glaring at her and never attempted to strike up a conversation.  Of course my boyfriend knows her well, because they use the same machines in the northeast corner of the gym.

She’s a stripper–no surprise– but to me she was a threat for no good reason.  For she embodied the kind of person that spent all of her time focusing on her external appearance in order to please others.  After all, that’s how she makes her money,  pleasing others with the body she spends so much time perfecting.  She was the embodiment to me of the perfect little love doll that every man wanted purely for pleasure; and that to me was somehow sleazy, undermining healthy relationships with the allure of easy sex.  But as I watched this woman so different from me, I recognized a trigger in myself from some past experience where I had felt like I was not enough–and I redirected my thoughts to remind myself that we are all one.  She was simply different than me, but still a human with wants and needs and issues.  Perhaps she wasn’t the Jezebel I wanted her to be.  For all I knew she was putting herself through law school, or paying her grandmother’s nursing home expenses and dancing was a way to make that happen with the gifts she was given.

So a few days ago, I stopped glaring at her, and started smiling at her.  I haven’t received a smile back yet, but I am sure it will come in time when she realizes that I accept her for who she is, not what she looks like or how she earns her living.

Saying No to Yourself

It seems like when we were kids, we heard “no” far more often than we ever heard “yes.”  Of course, I know that it was in our own best interest that our parents made these decisions on our behalf, since they were protecting us from things and situations that we didn’t know were harmful.  But to a kid, it’s just a bummer to be shot down when our thirst for learning and new experiences is at an all-time high.  So when we grow up, we don’t want to have to say no to ourselves…after all, we are making decisions for ourselves now, and we are willing to accept the consequences for our poor decisions.

This, of course, leads to all sorts of vices, as many of our decisions are made for the purposes of instant gratification–ask anyone with a sizable handbag collection and I’m sure they will concur–rather than what’s really best for us.  We don’t want to miss out on any situations that could bring us joy or freedom; but this can lead to decisions that we later regret.

Take a serious night of drinking for example, or the Ding Dong-eating binge one night when those little black and white rolled cakes just looked too good to leave any in the box.  And then the next day comes along, and we wish we had said “no” to ourselves much like our parents had.  And what’s worse, we don’t learn the first time we do it, either.  It can take multiple examples of the same miserable experience to learn that some actions just don’t serve us.  If perhaps we could learn from our experience the first time, then when that second chance at failure is presented to us, we can make an alternate decision–which may actually include the word “no.”

The Gossip Boomerang

Admit it…we all do it.  There’s the really annoying girl with bad habits two cubicles down that you just can’t wait to hear about.  After all, if she misbehaves on Friday night and your friends were there to see the debacle, of course they’ll talk about it.  And because it’s juicy information, you have to listen.  You may or may not pass the information on, but if it’s that torrid, wouldn’t you just be the informed one at the next gossip gathering?

Yet in this world of expanding awareness, I would implore you to think a step further than your immediate gratification.  If your friends are willing to talk to you about someone’s actions while the subject of the gossip isn’t there to defend herself, why wouldn’t they talk about yours while you weren’t there either?

Clean as the driven snow, are you?  Show me someone that truly is.

Now perhaps one in a thousand doesn’t really give a crap whether others talk about him or not.  But odds are, you’re one of those who does care.  For the rest of us, gossip is nothing more than disrespect for another person–and we partake in it for one of three reasons:

• It makes you feel better about yourself
• It takes attention away from yourself
• It brings attention to yourself

Let me explain each of these briefly:

It makes you feel better about yourself

Yes, you know what’s happening with ev–erybody and all your snitches trust you with this clandestine information…and in order to show others that you are in with the IN people, you demonstrate this knowledge to anyone who will stand around long enough.

It takes attention away from yourself

If you can dish out the dirt on someone else, maybe those who question your character or its actions may overlook your faults.

It brings attention to yourself

Love to be the center of the crowd, do you?  Did you bring your own soapbox to the party or did you use the host’s?  Chances are you love to be heard, and dealing out trash about others brings ears closer that may not have ever given you a chance otherwise.
Many years ago,  I visited a sports bar after work for a drink with a few co-workers.  I danced one line dance with a beer in my hand, played a video game and left 20 minutes later.  When I returned to work the next day to winks, nudges and cries to “show me more!” I finally had to ask someone why everyone was acting that way.

“Don’t you remember?  Maybe you were too drunk to recall dancing on the bar in your bra.”

Wow.  That wasn’t me, for sure.  But someone decided to play Whisper Down the Lane, and look what happened to my quiet night with one beer.

So next time you hear the gossip flying, stand up for the absent person and defend her.  Or if you can’t do that, walk away.  She probably only had one beer and went home anyway.

Do you accuse?

As humans, we need others to exist.  Short from being the guy who lives alone in the cabin on the mountain, we need interactions with others to live a fulfilled life.  And unlike the guy in the cabin, who probably takes nothing for granted because he must exist by his own hard work, we in civilization often take others for granted.

Think of the last time you had a disagreement with another.  Did you listen to the other person’s side of the argument or were you just waiting to more firmly state your own case?  Chances are, you did not.  For it is our ego’s responsibility to ensure that we withhold its standing, whether that entail being “right,” being “the more powerful”, or being “in control” of the situation.  You may have accused your partner of acting in a certain way, or of using unfair tactics.

When you accuse, you are taking love out of the picture, and letting your ego take precedence over the situation.  So unless you would like to chop wood and live like the guy on the mountain, remember that relationships are the most important aspect of life, and really the only reason we are here in the first place.

When you accuse, you remove love.

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