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Each new paradigm births through its predecessor

Hello and Welcome!

Habits and paradigms are tricky.  A habit can be defined as something that guides you toward success or shifts you into a rut out of which you are always struggling to evolve.  Paradigms give you your first structure of morality, right/wrong stories, and modes to interpret the world.  Habits and paradigms work right up to the point they become obsolete.  When you feel stuck or clinging to a habit or paradigm that feeling may be a sign that you need to birth through to the next way.

Challenging your paradigmatic perspective including your habitual reaction patterns allows you to discover a deeper and fuller experience in your relationships and work environment.

Not long ago I encountered a dead-end on my path.  At least I thought that was what it was at the time.

I had gone as far as I could in the pursuit of something.  I had reached a stopping point but not reached the goal.  At least that stopping point didn’t look like my picture of the goal.  I felt discouraged.  I didn’t want to turn around and go back, but I could go no further.

So I sat down where I was.  I stopped pushing.  I looked around.  I looked within.  I began breathing and focusing on what I felt as well as what I saw.  With my breath and focus the energy around me shifted.  It was as if I was vibrating into a new level of consciousness.

As I sat there I felt inconsolable.  I had become attached to the goal I was pursuing.  At first my attitude didn’t allow for me to see anything positive.  I could only see through the eyes of my disillusionment.  Then I began to see through an attitude of gratitude.  I began to notice some wondrous things around me:  extraordinary relationships and family;  time and freedom to pursue my dreams; support; love; space; an inner awareness.  This awareness, breath, gratitude, and peacefulness filled me and opened up an inner imaginal world filled with plausible creations.

I realized the dead-end was a logical conclusion of my limited thinking and perception – an inner shifting of paradigms and habits.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t reached the goal, it was that my goal had transformed.  I had shifted from pursuing an independent, proving, route to experiencing and developing a collaborative, integrative, holistic, path.  This required me to shift my perspective, my habits, and my capacity to take in what was around me, to see through a different lens.

At once, with this realization, I noticed a beautiful path that veered off  just to edge from my sitting place.  It was a slightly elevated pathway that was not immediately noticeable, hidden from view when looking straight ahead or downward.  It was light and airy, covered in a material that was vastly different from the path on which I had been walking.  I could only see the way, through my new perspective of present moment now and receiving joy.

The hard work, perseverance, and hard choices, the trauma and difficulties of my youth had created a primary paradigm that anything of worth required this set of behaviors.  And that I had to prove who I was, a doing, rather than being style of living.  What I had endured to get to this point could only bring me this far on my path.

Only via these new lessons of ease, joy, laughter, love – that lovely concept of flow could I see the way through.  An evolution of consciousness was the action required to take my next step.  And this evolution comes from a releasing, a relaxing, and a letting go rather than a persevering, pushing attitude.  The shift in consciousness creates the new paradigm in a quantum-style movement, rather than a linear movement.  Each new paradigm births through its predecessor through a natural shifting of perspective.

If you are feeling stuck or clinging intensely to your habitual style of behaving, thinking, or believing; if you are feeling defensiveness, anger, anxiety or discouraged stop where you are, both metaphorically and physically.  Take the time to feel into your ideas, your habits, your goals, and beliefs.  Open yourself to the attitude of gratitude, notice everything that is working in your life, environment, relationships, and work.  Through this space you will find an evolution in your consciousness so that you can shift your perspective and birth yourself into a new paradigm of living and being.  in love and light, beth


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awareness and allowing give space to respond effectively and change your behavior

Hello and Welcome!

Following these steps to increase awareness and allowing creates space to respond effectively and change your behavior.

An easy way to begin is the  Stop, Look, and Listen method.

Stop multitasking or whatever action in which you are involved that may split your attention or where you feel you are being pulled along a track in an habitual thinking/behaving way; Look, or pay attention by bringing your attention to the situation at hand, pay attention to the actions of others and yourself and how relevant these are to the whole of the situation; Listen to your inner voice and the style, tone, timber of your and the other’s voice.  Stop look and listen is focus, see, and hear in the present moment, the now.  This is a simple unambiguous phrase that brings you into mindfulness.

It is a simple way to interrupt habit-reactive firing of behavior.  This method slows down your reactive-linking behavior. Through present moment refocusing of your attention you can gather information and then develop a response that meets the present moment situation.

This recovery process can be applied to any habit that has gone awry.  What’s really great about this set of actions and behaviors is how they help in every instance when a habit has simply overtaken your life as the driver of your behavior rather than the mechanism of your comfort or alleviation of difficulty.

Here’s how to decipher if you are dealing with a habit reaction pattern.

  • Check in with your senses and intuition.  If you feel that the experience is familiar or a pattern then you may be participating in  a habit reaction scenario.  If you feel that you have trouble trusting that things can/will go well for you, then your early history of having to survive is coloring your current day choices/actions.
  • If you have an immediate feeling of anger, like someone has crossed a boundary and your feeling is charged in that the level of emotion (intensity) doesn’t match the situation or boundary crossing, this is a sign that you have been triggered.

In this instance, proceed in your actions with thoughtfulness.  

  • Query yourself on whether your intense feeling is consistent with your overall experience of the person or the environment toward which you are feeling the intense reaction.
  • Stop, look, and listen – think caution in proceeding.
  • Invoke mindfulness and centered, present moment attention to the situation.
  • Work against the pull of the groove into the habit reaction pattern.

This is how you can engage the a more balanced attitude. Focus is the key.  If you are in danger, utilizing your reaction  skills to get out of the situation is paramount.  If you are not in danger but rather caught in a habit reaction pattern then focus your attention on what you want rather than what you fear as the best response.

Use mindfulness to re-view the circumstances in relation to your emotion.  This is the stop, look, and listen component, it will help you identify whether this is danger or not.  In example, if a stranger is doing something that feels dangerous allow your survivor reactions to move at lightning pace.  If however, the situation is with a loving partner, or friend – you need to view your emotion within the context of the relationship in present-time and with clarity and genuineness.

Awareness, Breathe, Wait it out, and Reveal.

  • The most difficult element of confronting a habit reaction pattern that is driving your behavior is the stopping part.
  • If your car is out of control, you need to stop its forward movement – this requires first, a recognition that you have lost control of the car, and then second, an action to gain control.
  • This awareness is key.  Once you are aware you can begin to take back control of your thinking and behaving/actions.

Stop look and listen focuses you on increasing your awareness.  Breathe, wait it out, and reveal focuses you on how and what to change.  It requires a shift in how, and on what, you focus.  It requires a re-view of yourself through a centered, mindful attention to yourself, your skills and limitations, what brings you joy and centers you in your best self.

Shifting perspective actually creates the power that you feel you have lost.  It is a relaxation of the struggle to survive or fight and a gentle movement into the mindful, balanced living of life.  Consider the simple action of relaxing in a hold, this action alone telegraphs to the holder to lighten his grip and causes laxity so that you can wiggle out of the stranglehold.

Lightening your grip, your need for habit reactive linking behavior allows you to move through situations and your environment in a mindful and relaxed way, still nimble in your attention and responses to act if necessary to a dangerous situation but not reactive, held or tight in your nature. in love and light, beth


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The four agreements, plus one: life in balance

Hello and Welcome!  Many years ago a book called The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz was released.  It spoke to me.  I thought it was a must-have for everyone I knew.  It had this simple message to live with integrity and to live in a way that centers internally, harmony with your inner knowing, speech and actions.  I felt the simplicity was perfect and that it was written with clarity to guide anyone who chose to read it toward a centered, existentially responsible style of living.

The agreements he wrote about are simply:

  1. Be Impeccable with your Word
  2. Don’t Take anything Personally
  3. Don’t Make Assumptions
  4. Always Do your Best

It was my holiday gift that year to every one of my family members, and all the people that mattered to me.  I wanted to share this truth with everyone, because I thought it would assist them in upleveling their consciousness.  I felt it held information that would unlock the prisons in which people lived.

I was a younger therapist then – enthusiastic, earnest, passionate – I really wanted to make a difference and change the world.   I gave this book in this way with heartfelt love, and a deep desire to help.  I thought it held a treasure worth more than a typical holiday gift because it offered freedom and a deep inner peace.

I am pretty sure none of these important people in my life read that book, at least not that year.  For whatever reason it wasn’t the time for that kind of transformation then.

This had been the story of my life, for many years; I could see the way but what spoke to me so clearly did not always speak to others.

Over the years I have had unusual success as a therapist through my neutral clarity, and compassionate communications.  Those who have chosen to seek my guidance have discovered a wealth of effective, compassionate, and life-changing counsel.  Recently, I have noticed that those in my inner circle are too experiencing the positive effect of my writing and guidance… this is a sweet gift to witness the positive growth and happiness of those I deeply love.

Reference to the four agreements are also on the rise in spiritual teachings,  in Yoga articles, and other pieces on spiritual growth.   Perhaps the time is now, for a more comprehensive alignment to take place.  I noticed in these references that there is a new book which identifies a new agreement:

5.  Be skeptical, but learn to listen.

So apt for the capping to the first four – it aligns the focus even further within, it allows for a deeper inner review and a consolidated expression of love, acceptance, mindfulness, and responsibility for knowledge, speech and action.

For me these simple statements refocus power and energy within; they are the opposite of projection and divisiveness.

These four agreements, plus one, are an easy way to center yourself and focus your energy where you actual have power, in the here and now and within yourself.  The energy behind these agreements is to shift your focus and awareness inward, with integrity in speech and action, while through self-love and compassionate action toward others you can increase your mindfulness.

Here is a lovely site about this work and more information about how to use these four agreements to guide your life, http://www.toltecspirit.com/.

And remember be skeptical – listen with your inner ear and through your internal sensory guidance system of five plus one senses, seeing in 4-D.  In this way you will be in the driver’s seat of your life and creating precisely what you want and consciously mean to create.  in love and light, beth


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Listen without attachment, Hear truth

Hello and Welcome!

Listening is an active process.  It is active in that it requires focused attention and neutral or accurate interpretation.

Hearing is a function of this process of focused, unattached listening.  Meaning is the by-product – it is what you hear.

When you listen fresh, and without attachment, you free yourself to hear the meaning sent versus your internal negative dialogue or grandiose spin on either the speaker or your self perceptions.

What you hear reveals information about yourself when you hear through the filter of this inner dialogue.

In addition when information is heard through this inner dialogue filter, what another hears you say has more to do with him than with you.

There are levels of information sent in communication.  This can be clarified and understood in context when your own filter is removed.

Knowledge is not an inaccurate filter.  So that placing the message sent within the context of the sender allows you to accurately interpret the sender’s meaning.

The personal filter through which you hear can interfere with your capacity to do this, your capacity to be neutral.

Fears, misperceptions about yourself such as insecurities or historical relationship information that do not apply to the current relationship are all filters which will interfere with accurate hearing, and will result in inefficient meaning making.

Follow these steps to create clarity and move yourself into a neutral posture for active listening.

  1. Be open to clarity. Clarify what you heard – Repeat what you heard including the hidden message, and request if that was the message sent.
  2. Be neutral – face your inner fears, inner insecurities, and inner mis-perceived paradigms or pictures by questioning yourself about their veracity.
  3. Utilize an integrated listening and hearing system – integrated spirit, mind, and body.  Do this by paying attention to what you feel, sense, and experience when listening to the message.  Does the information feel right in your heart, does it cognitively go in straight, do you have a physical catch or block to the information?.

Your spirit, mind, and body sensory guidance system guides you to the truth – it cuts through the internal negative or grandiose dialogue and allows truth to be revealed instantly when you are willing to actively listen and remain mindful and present.  This is a type of listening with your third or inner ear.  It is a hearing, feeling, knowing experience.  It is multidimensional in that you know it in your mindfulness or unattached cognitions (understanding), feel it in your body (a sense of flow and ease) and hear it in your heart (a sense of ringing true).

Being present, connecting to listening, and the information, in a present-moment way that incorporates what you know (but discards insecurities, historical patterning in your relationships,  and what you fear) is listening without attachment.

This uplevels your consciousness, truth is revealed and you may take action from an enlightening and powerful place to create relationships and environments that are prosperous. in love and light, beth


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Turning ME to WE: The Art of Partnering with Mindfulness preview

Hello and Welcome!

Thank you to the sweet and loyal followers to this blog!  You are each a treasure in my life!  It has been such a lovely collaboration, to write and create a space for support and learning regarding self-development, mindfulness, paradigm shifting, mindful parenting, and an evolution of consciousness.

A number of people have asked for a book on relationship/partnering that offers useful, insightful guidance.  So it is almost here.

Here is a preview:  Turning ME to WE:  The Art of Partnering with Mindfulness; Shifting competition and narcissism (ME) to collaboration and connection (WE).  It delineates quick and easy tools for developing profoundly successful relationships in work, home, and love.

Intertwined within these strategies are ways of re-setting, re-focusing and re-aligning your internal compass to create a new space for collaboration and connection while allowing  space for your personal self to grow along with your relationship/partnership.  It focuses on an integrated spirit, mind, body approach dealing with communication, context, paradigmatic beliefs, and form.  And, it offers ways to shift out of various forms of thinking/seeing/communicating and contexts that are unhelpful, do a disservice to you in relationship, or interfere with connecting and collaboration.

When you look at the letters M and W you can see that within their form you find a closing off (M) or an opening up, connecting (W) quality.  This is a synchronous image.   The general characteristic feeling of the words ME and WE and the behaviors of dependence, independence and interdependence are represented in this synchronous view of the letters.  This offers an imprint image to show you how to shift your perspective.  Me is singular, self-oriented, and individualistic, even narcissistic or competitive (consider the statement standing on my own two feet); while, We is plural, inclusive of other’s needs, open to information, and collaborative (consider the statement We can get through this together, each pitching in).

ME is an important developmental station in development.  It is a required station.  You can’t get to WE without developing ME, first.  In childhood, your first developmental relationship is Dependent in nature.  Then in young adulthood you develop a sense of Independence.  Partnering requires that you have developed a sense of Interdependence.

Unfortunately some people get stuck at ME unable to continue their development to incorporate a sense of WE, or interdependence.  This requires a wholly formed sense of Me that is not rigid or intractable but rather is solid and firm with an openness and flexibility.  Negotiation is a WE interaction.  Compromise is a ME interaction.  There are different forms of how WE can relate in groups and some of these do not fit outside of certain developmental stages or are related to habits that don’t serve you.  Co-dependence is a skewed perspective of WE, it is not a true WE experience.  This is a situation where the core ME has not efficiently developed – so it’s really two incomplete MEs with a tenuous thread between them.

Shifting ME to WE is a paradigm shift like an inversion in Yoga, a head stand that allows an evolution of consciousness development.

This book has a lot of innovative, new information not previously published.  Although there are a few expansions on blogs previously seen on this site, the majority of the information is a new vision about relationship incorporating information on how we view and look at partnering in relation to security, belief systems, support, connection, exchange patterns, and paradigmatic belief structures (like romantic love).

It is a lovely companion to my first book, Turning NO to ON:  The Art of Parenting with Mindfulness.  For those of you who have read that book, thank you for all of your supportive comments.  A few of you have left comments on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com  about that book, thanks, these are great support for others to see the benefits of the book.  Anyone who has read the book can leave a comment and the site appreciates them, as do I.  Another way you can show support is to like my page for the book on Facebook.

So the arrival date for Turning ME to WE:  The Art of Partnering with Mindfulness is just around the corner.  Thanks for your support and I hope this new book meets your needs and offers the information you desire – I think it will.  in love and light, beth


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on my way to enlightenment I discovered my flaws

Hello and Welcome!

Energy (read creation) follows vibration and intention.  This theory implies that if you think about something efficiently and powerfully you can create that thing.  When living by this theory it’s important to remember fears, worries, and habits are efficiently and powerfully energetic.  So that if You DESIRE to be A and you worry, fret or fear that many things may interfere with you creating A, then, you are actually working against your own desire via these energetic worries/fears.  In psychological terms, this may be called anxiety.  So that anxiety interferes with the process of creating A, whereas self-confidence enhances the process of creating A.

Self confidence enhances the process through vibration and intention.  When you are self-confident your vibration and intention are stronger and more clear so it directs energy to the creation desired.

The fear neutralizes your movement toward the creation of the thing.  Fear creates a current away from the desired thing.  In this way you are energizing two currents, one toward your creation and one away from your creation.  The result is either to move toward, and away from, in an alternating fashion or to remain stuck in place.  The pragmatic person says this recognition of problems is an important part of being responsible but the more effective concept of responsibility is the ability to respond.  Such that, although you may be aware and note through non-attached observation that there may be conflicts or bumps in the road in creating A, you feel that you can respond to these effectively and persevere to create A.

This behavior/thinking/faith is a current toward self-confidence and the desired creation and a diminishment of the current of fear or worry.

You can see this in  the process of learning Yoga.  Correct movement into the position (asana) requires a working with your body.  Your focus is in creating an asana that is correct and to get there you must have non-attached concentration, attention, and breathwork.  The non-attached component is the part that observes and corrects posture and placement without an evaluation of  good or bad (non-attached).  Focused breathing while attending to your posture and release of tension is the intention the energy follows, for the practice.  Being in the present moment, with your breathing and body, is the non-attached attention and concentration.

It is an accepting and allowing process of breath and movement. Fear blocks movement and binds the energy from flowing.  Deep, intentional breathing shifts the energy and releases blocks, both physical and emotional.

You can see this in the practice of mindful meditation.  Breath, non-attached observation, in the present moment expands your understanding and your access to fuller information.  It deepens and broadens your perspective.   So that rather than, proving your point and digging in, you clarify your understanding and deepen your compassion.   From this place you may focus your energy toward your desire and focus your intention and energy.  Breath, along with present moment attention, and non-attached observation, focuses intention and allows balance.

Since energy follows vibration and intention, creation of desires happens most easily and quickly when the desire is unopposed, which is to say clarifying your intention and vibrating in a space through breath of present moment awareness and clarity of intention, assists the process most efficiently.  Actions taken from this space will give rise to information about how you are interfering with your intended creation through fear, worry, anxiety and/or insecurity.

Standing in your center

  • mindfully through unattached observation and acceptance of truth,
  • spiritually through your faith and clarity in your capacity,
  • and, physically through breath and confident action

allows for energy to flow directly toward your intended creation and result in delivering what you seek.

This allows for enlightenment through the acceptance, reframe, and release of perceived flaws.  Energy follows vibration and intention so when you find you are stuck, look to reset your intention and your vibration through mind, body, spirit alignment and centering.

Visualize yourself in the intended creation.  Feel it, see it, accept it and stand in gratitude of it – this amplifies your vibration by removing the worry, anxiety, fear, and insecurity.  Once you allow the removal of the current which pulls you away from your intended creation, you will immediately observe an elevation in your progress toward your intended creation.

Being grateful for where you are and for the intended creation as if it has already taken place will serve to strengthen your vibration, and intention and your self-confidence.  BE the change you wish to see in the world.  in love and light,  Beth


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Know thyself, know your partner, use mindfulness

Hello and Welcome!  Partnering is one of the most important and trickiest of ventures.  I have been watching partners break apart for years but recently I have been noticing an interesting pattern.

Agreements are set down in relationship, I’ll do this for you, you do this for me.  This is part and parcel to developing partnerships.  These can be explicit or implicit but they are there.

Pay attention to what you agree to implicitly.  When relationships break apart the more the agreements were implicit the more there is disagreement about the agreement.  The less spelled-out, clarified, identified the equation of exchange,  the more each party puts his or her own spin on the particular exchange components/expectations.  This is especially true in partnerships where one party gets a lot of recognition for what perhaps both parties are doing.

This is usually a power exchange.  I will do this to promote you and you do this to promote me.  The one who doesn’t get the recognition feels betrayed but it is difficult to really get to what the true exchange was.

These agreements may be spiritual, emotional, or physical.  Problems develop on both sides, if the individual who gets more recognition is truly depending on the less-recognized partner to make it happen, that person stops doing what is required or leaves and takes that work with him, then, the person who is getting the recognition is left unable to move forward and looks a bit like a fraud.

From the less recognized perspective if the person getting the recognition is able to use that to move into another position and doesn’t take the less recognized partner with him, then, the person who has actually been doing the work may be left with nothing.

The place where this is most painful is when someone is exchanging his hard work to simply receive love.  This is a more spiritual agreement that is broken and injures the person who sees the love leave with the partner.

Identify what you see, feel, hear, want to give and get out of the relationship.  When creating partnerships, avoid making assumptions that you and your partner have the same understanding about your participation and outcome.

Know yourself, know your partner, use mindfulness.

  • Be prepared to have a full and complete conversation about what you desire from and give to the partnership.
  • Look underneath the surface of what your partner is offering – pay attention to what you see has happened previously with that person, in relationship.  Do not presume that if he has historically abandoned his partner that he will be different with you – unless you are aware of a fundamental experience in that person’s life that supports a fundamental change in relating.
  • Personally evaluate your true intention and agenda in the partnership.
  • Be open to the fact that you and your partner are dynamic and therefore your, or your partner’s, needs, expectations, and capacities may change over time.
  • Keep the conversation going, check in on a quarterly basis and make adjustments.

These actions may not keep the partnership going, but you will have a dissolution when and under circumstances that promote your and your partner’s health rather than injury.  in love and light, beth


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Visioning anew – developing your allowing muscles

Hello and Welcome!  Creating a new vision requires you have a sense of what you want.  This is a challenge if you have spent a lot of your life either swallowing whole what you determined other’s wanted for you or reacting against the image you perceive they wanted for you by doing/being the opposite.  Both lifestyles are without an internal connection to yourself.  Visioning is an active rather than passive (swallowing whole) or reactive (oppositional) process.

It starts within.  The trouble with focusing inward is there is no guide, no perfect step by step process that promises success.  It is a feel/know experience.

If you were one of the lucky people, who were modeled this activity by your parents (or grandparents) then you are in luck; you are familiar with what it feels like to trust your intuition and go with the internal flow.  Everyone else has to learn how to let go, release, allow, trust and go within to get acquainted with self.  In order to develop a connection to self, to your inner guidance you need to develop your allowing muscles.

These processes develop your allowing muscle.  Practicing some form of meditation, prayer, Toning, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, or Yoga allows for you to develop the integrated structure of breath and spirit to that mind/body movement, and the aha experiences of see/feel/knowing.  School, and general socialization patterning develops your working, focusing, and making things happen muscles – these are only mind/body integrated.  This integration patterning is useful in many ways, but is limited to movement within already formed structures, and already formed visions.

Visioning requires integration of spirit, and breathing to develop the allowing muscles.  These guide you through your heart center and allow your mind/body to integrate with spirit thereby strengthening you as a vehicle of profound creation.

Being a vehicle of profound creation means allowing your pure self to blossom and develop into your full potential and joy.  This active process moves your through all aspects of your life and relationships such that you can create precisely what you want and what you create integrates with your community for success.

Start today.

  • Breathe.
  • Check into your heart center, are you happy?
  • Do you bring the same joy to washing the floor as buying that new  _____  (fill in the blank)?

With every action have an internal dialogue of self-love and mindful connection.  The attitude of gratitude is great for getting you into that heart center.

  • Look underneath whatever ill feeling you have, tip the issue on its head you will find something for which you are grateful.  Use that as your single point of focus and joy will erupt through you and be transmitted through your actions.

~ie:  I hate washing the floor…  shift to I am grateful to have this home, to have the ability, strength and opportunity to be able to wash the floor…whatever is underneath the chore...

~ie:  I hate fighting with my child…  shift to I am grateful to have the child, what may be going on underneath these fights – from there you can look for ways to align with your child to be on the same side against the problem…. whatever is underneath the conflict – you will find something to be grateful for…

~ie:  I hate that everyone always pulls on me… shift to I am grateful to have so many people who love and depend on me… from there you can look to see how to shift the degree of dependency so that you can have more space for yourself…

Gratitude, Joy, and connection these are the feeling experiences that bring you into your center and integrate the allowing muscles, listening to your inner sense of pure love, joy, and gratitude, so that you can vision anew how and who you want to be in the world.  This will affect every one of your interactions and actions.

Obligation is a mind/body integrated muscle, it isolates and separates you.  Action through love, and joy includes spirit into that muscle to allow your actions to uncover a new vision and connection with yourself and your community.  in gratitude, joy, and love, beth


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Collaboration, coolness, and the evolution of consciousness

Hello and Welcome!  In Hippies, Hipsters and Hypnotic distortion, blog 6.11.12 two important tips were discussed in assisting your children by instilling your values and maintaining open communication lines,  the third tip is to consider how dynamic society is.  This means that as generations grow they effect change and are faced with different issues to tackle and work through then those previous.  So movement forward will be a multilevel combination of values, expectation, experience, opportunity, and survival/thriving requirements.

Because of the growing global interconnections of society, even basic ideas of how to proceed may require an internal focus within yourself, and your child’s environment, to uplevel consciousness away from the concept of competition for limited resources to a form of collaboration and movement through issues with a win-win perspective.

A shift toward collaboration isn’t taking something from the one who has it and giving it to the one who doesn’t but rather seeing our whole community as one world and each person finding his or her place within the teamwork and framework of collaboration and then working together to actually create equality and equity from an internally focused and guided collective of truth.

The next level of consciousness includes a re-invention of how Cool, and Hip are developed in society – a shift to placing this identification solidly  within the quadrants of what is valuable and valued – away from marketing propaganda, focus on materialistic, money and fame, away from the movie-star, rock-star, politician cool – to something that will increase the opportunity for your child to create prosperity that is based in an integration of spirit, mind, and body – rather than limited resources and winning the game.

This would shift the form and idea of coolness away from ways to be in opposition from the previous generation or others to form and ideas of ways to be in sync –   health, kindness, compassion, understanding, doing the right thing rather than getting away with something.  Actually living congruently, growing our communities organically not just with natural resources shared but with collaborative intention and attention to all aspects of our community.  Children would be the center not in the narcissistic, permissive style of earlier generations but in the solid growth promoting way of creating strength and stability through dependability, interdependence and trust.

For the continuation of our planet and community, mothering and parenting deserve a higher spot on the value ladder and a more valued place in the life of an adult. Caring, acting in a compassionate manner, forgiving and understanding through compassion – eating healthfully, exercising mind, body and spirit in a holistic fashion all ways in which the human race can increase longevity , uplevel consciousness, and work toward utilizing natural resources more efficiently and effectively.

These things have to shift – Escaping in alcohol, drugs, sex not connected to the whole human being, lack of self-care, and being taken care of , and a lack of moving through the whole life cycle and relationship interchange (or pushing children into the roles of parents and sexual objects.)  These behaviors need to be extinguished through a natural internal understanding that they are not productive and not in line with what is cool.

Right now an example of what is being encouraged through the hip movement is by the time a girl is in fourth grade she is talking about sex and wearing overtly sexual clothing, – music is about sex, drugs, and crime, grabbing power however you can; the goals of young people are to be like movie stars, make money quick and buy, buy, buy.

There isn’t a sense of what is my best skill or talent – what am I here to do; – spirituality and especially the Judeo-Christian religion is out and uncool.  Doing the right thing is seen as weak.  Being kind = weak.  Doing drugs, getting high, drinking too much = cool.  Getting in trouble with the law = cool.  This pressure to be part of the group is inherent in the human psyche – to create being part of the group as damaging to yourself and unfocused with a lack of spirituality is to deny two parts of the human condition, mind and spirit to be left with only one part guiding human action body through pleasure and pain.

We need a new vision, a new set of goals, new air to breathe and definitely a new generation to lead us out of the sixties and into a new collaborative, loving, powerful strong consciousness of health and sustainability.  Change, leaning forward, and evolution are all important foci for the future but the definitions must include integration of spirit, mind and body if we are to have a society that survives and thrives.

I am really excited to see how this unfolds.  We are on the brink of creating something truly beautiful – especially if we all work together in love with mindfulness, and with compassion, and an eye to collaboration.  in love and light, namaste, beth


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Hippies, Hipsters, and Hypnotic distortion

Hello!  One of the challenging aspects of parenting is to stay abreast of the newest, hip new thing.  It allows you to use the information to connect, educate, and understand your child’s set of issues for development.

This becomes more difficult as you age because either you think the hip new thing is stupid or you don’t actually know what it is.

So my first tip is to look for it; you can find it in the popular dress, music, books, television and movies.  What is a bit tricky is that it may not be obvious, it may be slightly hidden – words and phrases may not mean what you think so you have to investigate and use your listening and intuitive skills.  This is especially important when the lyrics of your child’s favorite song doesn’t make sense to you – you can ban him from listening to it – but it’s more useful and effective to get a handle on what is out there so you can discuss it with your child and at least get your “spin” on the whole thing into his brain and heart so he can make better, informed decisions.

The second tip is that due to the serious marketing population of our children, at least in the United States, there is a whole level of what is “cool” that is just propaganda and it is infused with information that is written by people way older than your child, so make an effort to look underneath the generally acceptable story to what may be a skew of energy.

You have to figure out how to manage the effect of propaganda on your child.  And this issue of what is popular in their environment is key.

The best way to manage propaganda is to go to its source and to have a way of giving a fuller, broader and more in-depth, bigger picture – this teaches mindfulness and can help your child in learning how to develop his critical thinking skills.  Through this development he can find a way to see through propaganda and make decisions that best serve his real needs throughout the course of his life.

Since it is part of child development for children, teenagers and young adults to be attracted to what is popular and hip in order to fit in and find their place in the world, then depending on your child’s age he is also going to be  working though different periods of fusion and independence with and from you, his parent.  It is through this process of fusion and opposition that your child discovers his unique perspective and position in the world.  That perspective is going to be his unique experience of biography, experience, and temperament.  Of course a typical goal of a parent is to guide his child toward a perspective that closely aligns with his own perspective.

The key to having a voice that is heard by your child is to maintain an honest, open communication pathway.  This includes discussion and presentation of how and why you see the world as you do, what other opinions are “out there” and what you would like to pass on to your child.   You want to do this with an openness to how you and your child may be different in  – biography, experience, and temperament.  When you are out of sync in one of these areas you can share your perspective but may find a dissonance in how your child views the world.  In order to maintain that open communication pathway you need to be open to the possibility that your child may at least, go through periods of disagreement and opposition to your perspective and at most, choose to live quite differently from you, and impart a perspective that this is his choice.

This issue is central to why it is important to teach critical thinking skills early your child’s development.

Hippies was a negative term applied to youth in the sixties generation.  Although it has mixed connotations both positive and negative, at the time, it distanced the youth from their parents..  Hipsters was a term in the forties for young people connected to the then new musical movement of jazz – it was a fonder term.  It was later revived, in the late nineties and early 2000s, a later, more positive term, to refer to a group that aligns with retro clothing, independent music, and innovative style.  And hypnotic distortion is the way in which pop culture can lull the youth into propaganda that distorts their true options and sets up an intangible thread of control over youth for marketing and materialistic reasons – regardless of the overlay of hipness.

Discover what is hip.  Find a way to connect to it and to your child.  Distill information that assists you and your child in determining whether propaganda is at the base of the hip, cool, thing.  Stay connected to your inner guidance and teach ways for your child to remain connected to his true source.  Then he can wear the cool clothes, dance the hip dance, and sing the latest songs while remaining connected to what truly matters within.

Maintain a clear voice and assist your child in finding his voice.  Sometimes this leads to your child setting his own trends and finding his way, hip, while not hypnotic or distorted.  All you need is love – that begins with self-love.  Offered in love and light, Beth