Hello

Our power truly rests in how we respond to what comes to us.

It is our ability to respond quickly, effectively and mindfully that brings us the most success.

Emotion can be revealing and helpful from an awareness point of view but it can also be a blockage and a deterrent to mindfulness.

Knowing which is what is an important task.

This is to say knowing when to ignore or set aside an emotional feeling and when to respond to it is paramount for effective decision-making and fruitful interactions.

Anger and fear, and powerlessness can be the most confusing.

When one feels the need to defend, or to be defensive one is in a reactive space.  When one feels powerless one may not be able to act.

Knowing when to actively defend because there is a real danger versus when to simply allow the energy/qi to go by as one does in the martial art of Aikido – allowing it to go by of its own force, to step out-of-the-way of the energy, that is the key.  And with respect to powerlessness, knowing how to wait actively while being still is difficult.

The most difficult aspect of mindfulness is remaining neutral and not reacting – once you can do that allowing in compassion and evaluating all the options from a 3-d perspective is like breathing.  That is response-ability, the neutrality allows for our full ability  to respond to be available to us.

It takes practice.

Stress will create an increase in reactivity and a decrease in responsiveness.

There are physical stressors such as hunger, sleep deprivation, and illness.  There are also emotional stressors; in example, internal expectations regarding our own behavior, or attitudes of perfectionism, or a sense of being overly responsible for others needs being met.

This latter one is often mistaken for being responsible.

It is a mistaken idea that sets up a habit reaction pattern that resembles co-dependency.

There is a difference between being responsible for and being responsible to. Responsible for takes on the energy and expectation of a co-dependent relationship and removes response-ability out of the equation.  Response-ability is a responsible to action.

Responsiblity for and co-dependent relationships impede our ability to connect to our own personal power and it disengages our capacity for action from our own center.

Co-dependency is where two people come together to make one – not in the universal we are all one theory but in a reductionist philosophy – they are two halves alone and only make one together.

Healthy interactions and acting from one’s center has the boundary of responsible to each other, it is an interdependent structure not a co-dependent structure.

Interdependency is where two whole beings come together and make something that is more than one through their interdependent relationship.  They maintain their connection to self while together creating something more wherein they are not reduced by their separation and they are increased by their connection.

Responsiblity to has to do with being reliable, having integrity, having boundaries, mindfulness, and balance of self and other needs and expectations; it is an increasing type of expansion through connection that is not reductive.

It is a very important component of having healthy,  positively functioning relationships.  It also is a way of maintaining a clear boundary of where one individual ends and another begins.  Responsibility for blurs that boundary and so interferes with an individual’s availability to himself and his center.

One way to know that you are maintaining a connection to yourself and remaining in your center, so that you are able to effectively respond, is to think about how you view your ability to respond in a particular situation.

If you feel that you are powerless than it may be that you are coming from a responsibility for perspective and need to shift your perspective, notice the boundaries and get into a responsibility to paradigm.

Maintaining a stance in the world of responsibility to will help you to remain in your center and shifting into it can help you to get to neutrality so that you can respond mindfully.

This can be used like focused breathing.  When you notice that you are feeling an emotion that is creating a reactivity in you, then think about these terms and focus your response-ability.

Apply the responsibility to structure to the situation and you may find your reactivity gets diffused and you can shift your perspective so that you can respond mindfully.

Responsibility to can have a beautiful effect on your blood pressure.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

Thich Nhat Hanh wrote an amazing piece about Hope as an Obstacle.  This information has had a profound effect on my focus in my life.

In Thich Nhat Hanh’s  book Peace is Every Step he writes: 

…that hope is important, because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear.  If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.  But that is the most that hope can do for us- to make some hardship lighter……he goes on to discuss the tragic nature of hope…..since we cling to our hope in the future, we do not focus our energies and capabilities on the present moment.  We use hope to believe something better will happen in the future…..Hope becomes a kind of obstacle. (pg 41 in Peace is Every Step). 

He reframes the concept of hope so that rather than helping to create the change, hope becomes an obstacle to our actual opportunities, capacities and actions for change in the present moment.

I like to think about this in this way – Hope moves us into a passive place whereas Faith has an active quality and moves us back into the present moment. 

When we have faith we are actively focusing on the thing we are desiring while simultaneously working on creating that thing.  Being in faith also increases our availability to compassion and forgiveness.

Change can only occur in the now, the present. 

We can only change what we can identify; and we can only use the tools presently available to us.  By taking ourselves out of the present moment (hoping) we put ourselves into the future (hope for something better to come) where we have no actual power. 

Our only power over the future is in the present and what we do in the present. 

How we act in the present can change the future but waiting for change (living in the future – hoping) puts us into a passive, unempowered role.

Living mindfully is the most empowering tool available to us for actual and enduring change. 

And the most important avenue for staying mindful is getting to and remaining neutral, or in your center, so that you can respond mindfully.

Hoping takes us out of the present and so out of our center, faith allows us to remain in our center.

So try this. 

Think about something that you are being passive about – or trying to control but that you don’t have power over and you are hoping will turn out as you wish.

Try changing the word Hope to Faith and see if you find something that is empowering that you can do or focus on in that situation.

You may find that you have increased resources and energy to change your situation in a positive way toward what you wish. 

If you are wishing for something that is out of your control, you have to focus your faith and your energies on shifting your response to the situation in a positive way.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

So it is my observation and assertion that each of us has our own language.

Successfully negotiating relationship is the process of learning eachother’s language.

Individuals in long-term relationships, children and caregivers, and close siblings (especially twins) have their own shared language.

This increases the intimacy between the shared language group and excludes those outside the group.

We see this in high school where small groups develop new words with personal meanings that hold them together as a group and exclude those who don’t know the language.

What words mean to us, how we see the world and communicate within it, these things are dramatically affected by our experiences and our interpretations of those experiences.  That whole, internal, 3-d meaning is called a frame of reference.

Since everyone has a unique personality and unique experiences then this process results in unique meanings in language and even interpretation of behavior and actions.  I think of this as a phenomenological process.

Let’s use a word to illustrate this point. 

Grace This word has religious connotations, and it signifies beauty of a delicate nature and movement that is easy and looks effortless – graceful.  It can be interpreted as beneficence, prayer, a state of being under divine influence, and good will.  And I use it as a way to describe being in line with your path, being in-sync with your true nature, and being in-sync with your spiritual path.

How you interpret Grace or translate that word for yourself has to do with your experiences and internal relationship to that word. If you belong to a religious group which uses it in a specific way then it will be imbued with that specific meaning for you.

Knowing yourself means understanding what has meaning for you and how much of that is transferable to and/or agreed on in your relationships, work, groups and situations.

It’s important to know yourself and know the person with whom you are in relationship.

I think interpretation is sometimes one of the ways that communication breaks-down because an individual interprets from their own frame of reference rather than that of the speaker.

So I think it’s important to be a translator; to take time clarifying your meaning and language – your frame of reference, as well as to spend time learning about the other’s meaning and language – their frame of reference.  Doing this encourages the opportunity for real or full communication to take place.

This is and act of mindfulness and allows a synergistic relationship of the two languages to be achieved.

In groups there are as many languages as there are people involved.  So this is an awesome task.

One way to begin to identify and translate meaning in your own language and that of those close to you is to notice when you have/hear emotional expression with specific words.

I have written about this as responding to sensory awareness so that you can act in present time, in a neutral/unattached, compassionate, and mindful way.  This is an opportunity to use the stop, look and listen strategy in interaction with others.

Try to follow the thread of that emotional expression back to its source.

Do this as an internal process for yourself when you are noticing an emotional attachment to a word – and do this with the other person in relationship when you hear an emotional attachment to a word.

It can be revealing.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

I think of mindfulness as a concept that includes spirit, mind, and body responses integrated with information to guide our actions and cognitions.

Mindfulness is best developed through love, compassion and clarity.  This is what I call the Path to Grace.

Our minds are full with a focus on perception, attention, perspective, and intention.  These are the foci that allow us to see in 3-d – giving space for figure/ground and paradigm shifting.

Intuition provides a blink response. A cue that there is something wrong or right.  It allows for us to integrate our observations of our sensing system with our knowledge to guide us.  The blink quality may allow for this integration to come to us as a whole and in an instant.

Anger and fear are not blink responses they are triggers – it may be a trigger to alert us that there is someone crossing our boundaries like an internal sensing alarm system.  Or they may be emotional triggers to survivor scenarios.

Feeling sorry for oneself seems to be in this later category.  This is how depression can erode at our being in an insidious way.

If you find yourself feeling defensive, angry or feeling poor me, to avoid an error in course you can have an internal note to yourself, as well as an external one, to remind you these emotions may be more of a habit reaction pattern than an accurate assessment of something happening in the present moment.  

Mind – fullness is a concept of utilizing one’s emotional sensory guidance system, and physical sensing system and the Full capacity of our cognitive and problem solving skills to evaluate situations and experiences in order to create and guide our way.

Meditation is a very useful tool to develop a sense of centeredness and to allow for mind-fullness.

One of the most useful forms of meditation to help develop this skill is actually a meditation on emptiness.  Isn’t that fascinating?  In order to allow for mind-fullness we have to develop our capacity to be with emptiness.

This meditation is wonderful and can increase peacefulness.  You begin with a comfortable sitting position either on the floor or in  a chair.  You begin with breath.  Breathing in and breathing out.

Just breathing in and breathing out.  As you allow the breath to come in, notice it and as you allow the breath to go out, notice it.  Here’s how it looks to me – I use breath, some use a mantra as a focal point:

Follow breath–Attention, awareness, calm, flow—–>———->distraction –-attention, rumination,worry, spin-out——>-important awareness, observation ——->Redirection, Re-orient attention —–with attitude of kindness, compassion, curiosity,—–>Follow breath--Attention, awareness, calm, flow—–> —— > ——- —->— ———–>distraction-——attention, rumination, worry, spin-out——>-important awareness, observation—> ——–>Redirection, Re-orient attention –—-with attitude of kindness, compassion, curiosity ————> ————->Follow Breath….. and it continues until breath is all

You can do this for a few minutes at first and then as you become more comfortable with the process you can increase this to ten minute several times a day.

I also like to use much shorter sessions of focused breathing to help me find my center when I am spun out by conflict or intense, difficult interactions –  just 30 or 60 seconds of breathing in, and breathing out – just breathing in, breathing out – allows for the space to get to mind-fullness to allow for a neutral compassionate style of being in the world.

I have taught this to my daughter to help her deal with her intense emotions.

It has been a wonderful tool for her, especially when she wants to get re-centered.  She experiences this tool as empowering.

I encourage you to try this exercise and practice it for a few days.  Notice how you feel after the exercise.  Notice if the triggers seem to have less effect after this exercise.

There is all sorts of evidence that this kind of meditation can reduce anxiety and one’s blood pressure.  Notice for yourself what happens.  I think you may find it useful in our fast-paced, multi-tasking culture.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

So I bet a lot of you who actually have a TV have seen Simon Baker in the Mentalist.  I love the way he observes and integrates his observations with his knowledge and comes up with calculated guesses that are often right – it is as if he is psychic.

It’s a cool concept – If you have access to the USA channel then you have seen it on Psyche too, with a lot of tongue in cheek humor.

That is my life.   Not watching TV – this integrated mindfulness – And it’s the life I am encouraging you to develop- Observation Integrated with Knowledge.

I think of it as Applied Intuition and it can look like psychic skills.

It’s basically trusting your hunches, listening to your intuition, and paying attention to your senses.

It’s the Blink response made famous by Malcolm Gladwlll, in his book by the same name.

Have you ever been listening to your partner or child as they tell a story of an event and you think there is something not quite right here?  That’s paying attention to something that is not tangible.  It’s a gut feeling or a sense that something is off.

Have you ever watched someone being interrogated about something and they give you a tell a quirky action that tells you or telegraphs to you huh there is something not right here.

Great poker players say everyone has a tell it’s a thing they do when they are trying to give the impression of one thing when something else is the truth.  Tells can be like a tic – extra movements, avoiding eye contact, blinking, but they can also be an absence of a behavior that one would expect – a flatness or lack of action.

The theory behind this is that your body is always fully transmitting information; it’s what the lie detector test is based on; and it’s what people describe when they are trying to teach you how to read other people.

Usually it’s picking up on some non-verbal thing that communicates something different from the the verbal information.

On the TV show NCIS it’s Gibbs’ comments that there are no coincidences.  For his character this is something that makes his gut say there is something wrong here.

What ever it is it requires observation of non-verbal information, internal bodily sensations (like the hair standing up on the back of your neck) – observation of things that seem to be out of order or not fitting into a pattern.

This, then is connected to your knowledge base – paradigm shifting, knowing of the person or what seems normal for that person’s behavior.

An example is when you feel it’s too quiet and you ask your child who normally is very talkative and active what she is doing and she says nothing with a feeling of something in how she says the word.  Observing the dissonance between how she is acting and how she normally acts allows you to say hmmm I better go check on what she is doing…. and you find she is doing something that is outside the rules.

Or if you are interviewing someone for a job and they give all the right answers but it doesn’t feel like they are going to actually act in the way they are identifying – somewhere you have picked up on a disconnect in verbal statements and non-verbal behavior.

Hunches, gut reaction, paying attention and focusing our awareness of patterns, and strict observation are how we develop our mindfulness.

This works through the process of slowing down the input of information and increasing our gathering of information.  It focuses us onto the process of Stop, Look, and Listen.

This is really helpful in relationship building, team-building, communication and parenting.

It’s also important in personal growth development and health issues.

What about when you start to feel fatigue but you are generally an energetic person.  That could be your body saying to you hey I think there’s a problem here – check it out.

We are always communicating with ourselves but if we aren’t paying attention to thsoe communications then we can miss out on important health concerns.  Think about individuals who may be allergic to gluten or lactose intolerant they may not properly attribute issues to the correct thing if they are not mindful in how they respond to the inner feeling of huh I think there is something out of place here.

We have to look for the tells.

The same is true for our kids – when they have a change in personality we need to  Stop, Look, and Listen.

Try to unravel the place that the change occurred so that you can get a better understanding of what may have gone wrong – and how – so that you can try to set things back on track.

Kids can respond to stress both at home and school with a regression in their developmental stages – some of this is also part of the developmental process – so you have to stop – first notice the change and then look by increasing your knowledge base of the developmental stages.  You also have to spend time being with your child to listen to what may be going on.

Children, like our bodies, are always communicating to us and telegraphing information to us – if we can understand how they’re doing it and what they’re trying to say.

So we have to know what is normal and then incorporate what is out of place – we have to look for the tells.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

One of my favorite quotes from Richard Bach in Illusions is We teach best that which we need to learn.

To me it relates to the concept that research is me-search.

When people get involved in research often they have a passion to figure out something that has in some way touched their lives.  Talk to people who work on cancer research and often those on the cutting edge can tell you a story about how they lost someone to cancer and they wanted to find a cure.

In psychology and child development you find people who want to explain how they can see patterns in front of them.  Like Izzy Kalman and his development of an entire program to deal with anger management in response to the horrendous killings by children feeling victimized by other children.  He sees our current resolution as partly creating the problem of bullying and wants to re-create a new solution that allows for more peace.

We often find therapists who had early losses and went into therapy to help others through such circumstances.

In each of these situations the individual is beset with a difficult situation about which they want to discover a solution – research; I think of it as a soulution – it’s me-search.  They are not just investigating the big picture they are trying to resolve their internal conflict.  These are often spiritual traumas so that’s why I think of these as soulutions.

I have been writing this blog about mindfulness for several months now and teaching mindfulness in my practice for many years.  Yet, I still struggle with it.  I still react, and infer incorrectly what others say, and think uncompaasionately.  I still get angry.  I have not perfected this skill but I have developed a way to get on track and get back on track through the methods I have presented in the blog and my practice.  This has been the focus of my research – my me-search.

I have had to deal with anxiety, with debilitating negative self-talk and negative self-concepts, for all of my early and middle childhood long into my twenties, especially when stressed.  In addition, as a young person, I had a number of traumatic events in my life, emotional and physical.

Either of these experiences alone are typically debilitating for a person and greatly impede an individual’s opportunities and ability to create a successful life.

I have been able to create a great deal of success in my personal and professional life due to mindfulness, my strong spiritual connection, and my unending belief and love of humans even in the face of the trauma I experienced.  I credit the intensely strong parents that I was lucky to have.  Their values, beliefs, and styles of being in the world created a foundation upon which I could build a resilient character even in the face of my difficult path.

I also credit my unwavering ability to accept what I was feeling while arguing with it – applying the principles of mindfulness, with compassion, forgiveness and lovingkindness toward myself and those who hurt me.  To trust my inner knowing that the negative self-talk was not real but an anxiety reaction – through evaluating the figure/ground and facts in an unattached and neutral way.

I had to learn this.  In order to survive I had to learn this – I was a pioneer – my parents could not show me the way and there were no guideposts available for me – there was just my me-search with my particular set of tools.

I have developed this program, this theory, this application from the inside-out.  It can and does help others deal with their various kinds of anxiety.   You teach Best that which you NEED to learn.  I can teach this because I have had to walk it, be it, fail at it, and find my way again.  It is part and parcel to my whole being

I have been able to weather the storm waters of my life due to my strong centered, focus on mindfulness, paradigm shifting, and figure-ground concepts.

It is no surprise that I was drawn to existential writers, phenomenological philosophy, Gestalt therapy and Jungian Analysis; no surprise that I developed practices in mindfulness meditation, prayer, physical breathwork and athleticism; all of these together were the practices required for dealing effectively with debilitating anxiety which was a product of mind and experiences.

For me it’s about language and meaning, figure and ground, the idea of paradigms as ways to order your world and the need to shift those to create mini-internal, cultural revolutions using mindfulness and making connections and seeing how to integrate disparate views and disparate actions.

Mindfulness offers the process to observe, notice and stop habit reaction patterns.

In psych there is the “aha experience” it’s like a strong insight or epiphany,  where someone has an internal feeling of “aha, that’s why I do that or that’s what this is about “- it’s a coming together of a whole and a  paradigm shift at once.  These are profound experiences and the more one uses mindfulness to approach their interactions and situations the more opportunity for these quantum-like shifts in perception are possible.  I think mindfulness is less of an “aha” experience and more of a “huh, or Hmmm” experience.  It opens the door to look for and create a soulution to a problem or conflict.  Mindfulness leads you to the “aha” experience.

Think about what really matters to you; think about what really bothers you; think about what situations you keep finding yourself in from which you have to extricate yourself.  These will give you a sense of what your me-search may be about and how to get yourself focused on your path of soulution creation.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

I remember in college I came across something called Creative Visualization, by Shakti Gawain.  It was developed from a concept that through meditation you can create the world in which you want to live.

There is a strong mindfulness component to this process.  You have to be able to clarify your creation from the inside and then take the required actions to formalize and concretize that vision externally – on the outside.  I thought of it as a Platonic concept, that things are created twice, first in our minds and then in the physical world.

Visioning is a process where an individual or a group creates a picture either physically or imaginally of where they want to be in a future space and time.

I really like the practice of this for individuals because I think it increases a person’s awareness, observational skills, and mindfulness.  It develops the skills of attention and intention, perspective and perception, as well as a course to get where you want to be.

Leadership consultants are always talking with corporations and professional groups about the concept of visioning; using Mission statements and developing a verbal/written description of the guiding principles and vision of their purpose and outcome.

In theory this idea is GREAT, but in practice I have some concerns about how to maintain and create from a visioning perspective in a group.

There are several steps in the process of visioning.

It needs to be intentional and collaborative if it affects a group.  First there is an evaluative process where one gathers information to develop the vision.  This is a process of development – many pictures will be developed and refined until one feels they have created the fullest and best picture – their vision.

Then there is an identification process where one describes and makes tangible the vision. This too is complicated and requires thoroughness, stick-to-it-iveness or perseverance, and a combination of strength and flexibility.  Working through this step and the first step, requires an inner knowing of what Has to be there and what is negotiable.

Then there is a group or an individual who acts to hold the vision as various steps are taken to put into place the tangible aspects of the vision – the concretization of the vision.

Holding the vision actually is the most difficult job.

This is because as the vision is translated to the whole of your community  – whether that be your family or a larger community – there is a reaction and reverberation to it which causes a change to the vision – the holder of the vision has to be standing in the center of the vision in order to keep the vision clear.

When a consultant comes into a group to develop the vision, the consultant is often the best holder of the vision but she is often not part of the group – she leaves after her job is finished in developing the vision.  The vision is then given to someone to hold its clarity.

This transition from one vision-holder to another is where I see a natural and often debilitating break down of the vision.

Any lack of centeredness, or minor confusion or dissonance with the original vision-holder can begin to reverberate out and cause a distortion in the vision.  It’s like static electricity and how that can affect or distort your TV picture – sometimes eradicating it.

The holder of the vision must maintain a stabilization of the picture through their own being.  If that person is not wholly standing in the center of the vision, clearly, she will be thrown off by the many small differences of opinion regarding the meaning, intent, and description of the vision.

This spin-off can feel really disconcerting and the reaction of others toward the vision-holder can include feelings of anger and frustration.  This then, can derail into a negative set of interactions further degrading the vision – all as a result of normal static to the vision when the vision-holder is even slightly unclear or slightly unable to describe effectively the vision.

I suggest you practice creative visualization – creative inner picturing of what you would like to create in the future – individually first, before participating in a group or community visioning process.  In this way you can develop your skill at vision-holding: standing in the center of the vision.

If you would like to embark on a visioning process.  Start with developing a basic description of what you want to create, or where you want to be, or how you want to be described, in the future. You can do this with writing out goals or a description of what you want to create.  Make  a collage or drawing of the different aspects of how, what, where you want to be.

Then refine that through writing, evaluating and investigating it from all perspectives.

Keep the idea/picture close to you.  Do not share your idea/picture until you feel you are standing in the center of it and have a good handle on how to create it.  This allows you to remain in the center of the vision without being thrown off by others’ mis-perception or disagreement with you.

This can be a very educational process – have fun with it so that your joy can infuse the visioning process.  You can use focus on figure/ground, and paradigm shifting and mindfulness to help you in discovering and re-discovering the vision.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

Reframing the Princess Myth.

The concept of reframing is allowing for a new way to view a situation, experience or thing.  To reframe is essentially to shift focus and paradigms and allow for figure/ground perspectives to emerge.  Reframing allows for an unlinking of unuseful information from useful information.

Nursery rhymes, and children’s stories are often myths that have a message in them meant to socialize children into the norms of society.  Current-day Moms were themselves raised with Princesses.  And if you were to take a poll there might be discriminating beliefs about whether the Princess myth is helpful or not for their daughters.

I loved The Wizard of Oz, The Sound of Music and Pygmalion so I clearly had my own taste of indoctrination as a child.

I remember my pre-mommy planning was to not give my daughter Barbies or Princesses because it wasn’t the message I wanted her to have –  that she needed to catch a man to be safe or successful.

That plan didn’t last long as she grew up, due to the hard marketing tactics of Disney toward our sweeties.

I felt disempowered to determine what came into our home – between friends, family and TV – Barbies and Princesses were ever present.  I determined to create a plan to negotiate the princess myth so that it could enhance her life rather than be made into a survivor scenario, or a negative habit reaction pattern.

Remember what survivor scenarios are?  A style of being in the world that has at its core an injury that develops into a habit reaction pattern.

Survivor scenarios interfere with thriving and mindfulness.

To raise my daughter with a sense of internal empowerment, I had to be prepared to deal with the Princess Myth.

I had to extricate the positive elements of the myth from the scenario action.

Here’s a quick synopsis of the Princess Myth, Cinderella, to further elucidate this:  Cinderella’s Mother is wonderful but dies early in Cinderella’s life. Cinderella’s Father is wonderful but is unavailable.  He remarries a woman who he thought would help him raise Cinderella, but he is not present to check on what actually happens.  The new, step- mother has two daughters that she loves more, and they bully Cinderella which the step-mother allows and models.

The new, step-mother in this story is in a persecutor scenario in the survivor scenarios.

She is acting under the paradigm that there are limited resources and in order to help her own daughters survive she must sacrifice Cinderella.  That’s the victim scenario that Cinderella has to survive.

Here’s the Princess part:  Cinderella sticks to the values, somehow instilled in her in the few years she was with her mother and father in her early life – believing in responsible action, trying hard to do the right thing, remembering the goodness of her mother – through these actions she develops into a compassionate, beautiful, balanced, mindful person.

The prince in the story, sees through the phoniness to the ugliness of the non-caring, materialistic nature of the sisters and step-mother.  And he sees through to the inner beauty of Cinderella and falls in love with her – he searches for her, finds her and saves her from her difficult circumstance and she is rewarded by being made into a princess.

It’s a survivor scenario due to the paradigm of the step-mother and the inference that it is through the right behavior of the other/prince that she is saved.

Within it there is beautiful, solid, important information about how to be in the world as a balanced, mindful, thriving, individual but it’s wrapped up in a survivor scenario and becomes a caricature of compassion as the princess myth.

You can extricate the positive elements of the myth from the survivor scenario action by focusing on teaching your children, and modeling for them, the following behaviors and attitudes:

• The importance of staying in your center, knowing yourself, and not letting others define who you are; as well as holding close to you, positive memories and experiences, to remind you of what is right.  And promoting the attitude of not retaliating from a habit reaction pattern, instead mindfully acting and responding to your environment and circumstances.

Through these actions you are consciously creating for your child a positive sense of herself, self-confidence, and resilience.

Recently, I viewed a movie – by Disney – that was more in keeping with this picture of mindful, responsible princess behavior, called the Princess Protection Program.

I have to admit I was impressed.  In it the princess character talked about the importance of evaluating the beauty of someone as represented by their character, actions and right behavior.

Evaluating what’s on the inside, to see if it correlates to one’s outer appearance to determine whether or not to choose them as a partner.  He looks like a Prince but I wonder if he is as beautiful on the inside – referencing his character.

It had a lot of references to the importance of one’s character to being a real princess.

Consider ways you can communicate a reframe of the princess myth for your daughter, or for yourself, to help you unlink the helpful guiding aspects of the story from the survivor scenario.  Then you can build on the guiding aspects.

It will encourage a lot of mindful interaction and may end up being a lot of fun.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

I keep hearing  and reading about references to transformation.

From a political perspective people are talking about changing how we relate to a number of industries.

In the energy world from the perspective of astrology and the planetary energies there is talk about transformation:

Today’s Full Moon is rich in texture, as Mercury reaches the culmination of its retrograde period at the same time. This brings profound wisdom into the light of consciousness, which will unfold in our lives through the end of May. It will come sooner if we don’t look at it or wait for it to happen. Action starts no later than May 11. What’s coming your way?  Terry Lamb

From my perspective, I have been writing about using your emotional guidance system to allow a natural transformation in your life to the next big thing, or your next big self.

Using Mindfulness as a way to create a flow into the synchronicity of life.

Those of you on the blog subscription list for the posts don’t usually get to see the comments others make about the posts.  A colleague and sister blogger, Elene Gusch, http://elenedom.wordpress.com left the following comment on my blog Home is where the Heart is, where I was attempting to connect transformation and synchronicity:  Great, as usual, but this isn’t what synchronicity means, I’m afraid.

It’s true; what I am suggesting is to find your way into the flow using these various mechanisms.

Synchronicity from the perspective of Carl Jung is about how things happen in a synchronous fashion when you are in the flow and connected to the collective unconscious.

Something like this:  You enjoy writing and often feel better after doing so, you have a strong desire to write, and you put together a resume and set of short stories to exemplify your work.  As you are getting ready for your day, you have a thought to take these writings with you in your purse to review while you are grocery shopping.  When you arrive at the store you feel drawn to the vegetable section of the grocery store. You go there first even though this is not your habit.  Looking at the fruit you bump into a woman and drop an apple.  She picks it up and hands it to you – and as she does so she sees your writings in your hand.  She asks to look at them because she notices the title and states she had just been thinking about that phrase.  Then she  says she is looking for someone to hire as a writer; she reads your writing and offers you an interview for the job….These seemingly coincidental experiences are a description of synchronicity.

In this example an emotional desire guides you to write the stories; an intuitive impulse is responded to by taking the writings with you – then the synchronicity component of the collective unconscious and how the other person, who is also in the flow, is looking to connect with the perfect writer.  The flow guides, leads, brings the other person who was following her intuitive and sensory guidance system to find her way to you, and you to her.

Everything falls into place as if neatly planned but it is happenstance – that is synchronicity.

So as you can see synchronicity is good – it is the immediate integrative response to desires.  Any one would want to be able to create that clearly and quickly.

I think of Synchronicity and Grace as similar experiences because I see a spiritual component to being in the flow.

I have identified a set of mechanisms, actions, styles of being in the world which brings us into the flow of synchronicity or onto the Path to Grace or connects us with The Tao or The Way.

The use of mindfulness, figure/ground perspective understanding, paradigm shifting and attending to our emotional guidance system all help us to be in our center so that we can then mindfully interact and identify what we want – that which  is in our highest and best interests.

Previously I wrote about this as mini-internal cultural revolutions and that these are a kind of transformation from the inside out.

I encourage you to lightly and without attachment start listening to that quiet voice that guides you intuitively.

Use your mindfulness to get you into and keep you in your center so that you can respond from there to the possibilities that present in your everyday life.

Remember that fear and anger can allow you to get clearer about what you do not want, to help you focus on what you do want.

A transformation into a better more fulfilled picture of yourself, your work, your parenting and your relationship, may be just around the corner – maybe, even waiting in the vegetable section of the grocery store.

See you tomorrow.

Beth