Image by Cher Odum

Is it just me or does it seem at times that there is a diminishing point of returns on effort?  I look back over my journals sometimes and am alternately embarrassed or appalled at how many pages have been filled with intentions, goals, prayers and pleas, statements of desire and determination to ‘self improve’ or ‘self develop’ or hit some new high in any or all of life’s arenas.

I look at the list of books on my Kindle and wonder how many gurus I’ve helped to feed or send on vacations only to keep filling up those journal pages with my statements of desire, intentions, goals, prayers and pleas . . .

I’m not knocking personal growth.  I’ve devoted a huge chunk of my life to it and have counted some hugely profound and pivotal shifts and transformations among the hours spent combing the pages of this or that personal development book or blog, journaling and otherwise contemplating my navel.

But every so often I stop and ask myself, “How much more of this will it take for me to feel like my self no longer needs improving?  When do I get to look in the mirror and just say, “Me likey.”  When do I get to stop trying to be better than I am?

How bout now?

We would suggest that there is no time like the present to stop trying.  Just stop.  Stop what you could legitimately call this insanity.  Because that truly is what this is—crazy making.

Stop—trying.

You have been trying so hard for so long that you don’t remember what it feels like not to try.  You’ve been trying to please.  Trying to understand.  Trying to ‘grow’. Trying to learn.  Trying to be ‘aware’.  Trying to be in this relationship or that.  Trying to succeed.  Trying to listen.  Trying to put yourself together in some way that resembles some image of you that you’re forming as you read or listen to everyone’s elses’ ideas about who or what or how you should be. 

Stop trying. 

Stop trying to be wise.  Stop trying to be aware.  Stop trying to be creative.  Stop trying to be worthy.  Because as long as you continue trying to be or do or have all these things you are really only succeeding in living the lack of these things as you perceive it. 

You don’t try to be what you already are.  You just BE it.  You don’t try to be loving—you just love.  You don’t try to be giving—you just give.  You don’t try to be worthy—you just ARE. 

You will never be able to try hard enough to do or be or have what you think you need to feel the joy or peace that you think you lack or are wanting to feel—wanting to feel it because you are trying to hard to have it and trying so hard to have it because you’ve forgotten you were never without it. 

Stop trying. 

There is no one to please.  No one to convince.  No one to persuade that you are loved or that you are worthy, except the one who is trying so hard to be lovable and worthy. 

You did not make a mistake when you were born that you need to correct.  You are not an error.  Nothing broke when you came forth that you need to find a way to repair.  Release this lie, that you must earn your keep in this Universe, that you have fallen short and must make up for what you did or for what you didn’t do or for what you don’t know. 

You look at you and see the Prodigal in the story so many of you know and like to re-tell . . .  see someone who somehow went astray.  You see a mistake, a wrong, a deficiency, a sin.  But your ‘Father’ or “Mother’ or Spirit or God or Goddess or Source or Universe or whatever you choose to call All That Is, sees you pausing—broken, tired, beaten down from all your trying—and literally runs to you with open arms and vast open heart, with everything you thought you’d lost and needed to win back or to earn or to learn and simply says ,”Welcome home my son . . .  my daughter . . . you are so loved.” 

Stop trying to deserve to go home.  Open your eyes—you’re already there.

Sometimes—often in fact—I stick my tongue back in my cheek after the Team responds to whatever I’ve lobbed into their court that day.  Among many other things, they’re good sports and they enjoy a good laugh as much as any of us.

But now and then all I can think of to say to them—all I can feel or offer in response to the way that they turn in my direction and truly ‘shower’ me with something I can only describe as love . . .  is the sincerest possible ‘Thank you’.

Parting aFLOWmation: What else is there to say?  “Stop trying.”

For more information about The Shower Channel blog please visit my home page. Previous posts are available in the Archives. Contact me if you have questions/topics you would like The Shower Channel to address–or to request a private reading/consultation.

‘Wisdom’ and Other Words To Live By From a Wet-Behind-The Ears Oracle

Just when I start to think I’ve faced all my demons, cleaned out all my closets, aired all my dirty laundry, dealt with all my you know what . . . I stumble upon yet another unexamined and unacknowledged piece of my oh so examined life. There’s nothing quite so humbling as finding another part of me that’s been hiding, especially when I’m the one who scared it away and ordered it to leave me alone.

After another such revelation following one more round of unintentionally cleaning house, I wondered to The Shower Team about the skeletons still rattling around in my closets—and what they might need other than a great big sheet thrown over them . . .

So many of you so often operate under the assumption that you should show only what you regard as the best of you not only to others but even to yourselves. In your never ending quest to be the best you that know how to be, you will often end up banishing those parts of you that do not please you or that you cannot easily understand or face or find a way to accept as part of who you are.

Essentially you hide from you, treating these aspects of yourself as shameful or unworthy, pushing them back to the darkest corners of the remotest closet, literally treating these parts of you as skeletons in that closet and refusing to acknowledge much less love them as the lovable and just-as-worthy parts of you that they are.

We do not encourage you to fixate on the things about yourselves that hold you from your joy or from your innate understanding of the well being that always abounds. But neither do we encourage you to deny the truth—the full and inescapable truth—of who you are. We convey to you repeatedly that you are brilliant beings of light, here to expand your experience and awareness of joy and well being, here to create the blessed life that every one of you is capable of, that every one of you intended when you came forth.

You find limitless ways to limit yourselves and one way in particular that you do this is by refusing to really see yourselves . . . see what you call flaws and imperfections, what you call weaknesses and wounds and failures, what you call shame and embarrassment . . . what you see as shadows blocking or diminishing your light.

You push away these allegedly unlovable parts of you, unable or unwilling to recognize that in fact those parts of you that you so often see as unlovable or unworthy are the parts of you that hold you nearest to the larger part of you that is Source. For they are the parts of you that call the loudest for the light, the love that ‘is’ you . . . the parts of you that call most clearly to you for acceptance and for understanding and for the warm embrace of acknowledgement and yes, even for appreciation. They are the parts of you that you so often label, ‘wounded’ or ‘human’ . . . as though there were some disgrace inherent in that label . . . as though any part of you could be held in the loving eye of Source and seen as anything but pure and dear and worth every bit of love that flows to you in every single moment of that experience you call ‘human’.

We would like for you to understand that you will never know the fullness and the blessedness of who You really are as long as part of you is kept in hiding. You can expect love from Source that is always unconditional, that never requires anything of you but you . . . but you will only find the full experience of that unconditional love when you allow yourself to offer it to yourself, when you can turn and see every part of you as worthy of that love.

Then and only then will you be free to give and to receive the love that each and every one of you came from, and that each and every one of you came forth to be, and that each and every one of you will fully and unconditionally return to the moment that this perfectly imperfect ‘human’ experience for you ends.

I guess it’s worth remembering that sometimes cleaning house means finding things we’ve lost or hidden that should not be thrown out like so much garbage or even shoved into a dark corner of a dusty and forgotten attic or basement or drawer. It may still be a little early for Spring cleaning but perhaps the time is exactly right for digging up what’s buried in the back yard and deciding if it deserves a second chance to demonstrate its real value.

Parting aFLOWmation: “Love you.  Mean it.”

‘Wisdom’ and Other Words To Live By From a Wet-Behind-The Ears Oracle

One of my favorite quotes is from psychologist Carl Rogers, who said, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I can change.”

That statement has always had a sort of zen quality to me.  Lately it’s also become a recurring question in my mind relating to things I hear or read, especially in spiritual literature, about making peace with where I am.    In fact a friend wrote to me recently after a blog post, and he was wondering if I really buy into this business about the best way to improve a bad situation being to let go of needing things to be different in order to feel better

I’m a sucker for a good paradox, so I asked the Shower Team, “How are we supposed to make peace with where we are when where we are sucks?”  (Note to self:  Reduce usage of word “suck” in future blog posts) . . . .

Making peace with where you are doesn’t mean what you tend to assume that it means.  You hear that and you interpret it to mean that you’re just supposed to be resigned to whatever fate you feel is being thrust upon you or you are just supposed to grin like an idiot and babble affirmations no matter how miserable you are.  A much better way to say it is, “Make peace with YOU—wherever you are.”  Because the point is, that YOU are truly fine . . .  truly okay . . . truly blessed . . .  truly loved and supported . . . no matter where you are.  No matter what you’ve created.  No matter what kind of mess you feel you’ve made.  No matter how long or hard you’ve been struggling.  No matter how beaten up or abandoned you feel.  No matter how worthless or stupid or inept or foolish you feel—or believe others feel that you are. 

Too often what most of you try to do is to improve how you feel from the outside in.  You observe the conditions or circumstances that you are experiencing and your knee jerk reaction is to say, “I’ll feel better when that’s different.”  Or “I’ll feel better when this is no longer the case.”  So you change your hair style or your wardrobe. You go on a diet. You buy a new house.  You quit your job. You leave your mate. You move to another neighborhood or city or state or country.  Some of you would head for another planet if you could—always trusting in the same illusion:  that it’s where you are that makes the difference.  “If I can just be over there, not here—everything will be fine.  I’LL be fine as soon as I’m over there.” 

It is very hard for you to hear us say, “It doesn’t matter where you are” and understand it much less believe it.  You hear words like “wherever you go, there are you are,” and you laugh and you recognize some truth in it but then you go right back to shopping for your new clothes or your new partner or your new career . . .    What we want so much for you to understand is that, while these externals may distract you from how bad you feel or in some cases, even allow you to take the much longer route to feeling better about yourself—there is a much simpler, swifter way for you to get your bearings and to feel the power that you always have to feel better no matter what’s going on in your life. 

YOU are never a mess.  YOU never need a makeover.  YOU never need to be anything other than who YOU really are.  And until you allow yourself to be at peace with YOU—apart from any circumstance or condition or situation . . .  until you understand that YOU are blessed and adored and supported and perfect as YOU are,  then you will be constantly striving for some other way to be.  You will be constantly trying to remodel your life based on the mistaken belief that how your house looks to passers by has anything to do with how it feels as a home.  You can create a showplace that anyone looking at from the outside in will admire and applaud.  And it will still feel like an empty, hollow, cold, lonely space until you understand that YOU are the life in it.  You are the warmth in it.  You are the spirit that inhabits your life and makes it livable.

What you must understand is that YOU are your home, that peace is a choice you make . . . . . it is a recognition that what matters is how you feel in your skin and in your heart . . .  and that everything you really want is right there where you are.  

When you understand that you don’t need anything to change in order to be at peace, that there are no renovations needed, no permits to apply for, no sins to confess and atone for, no sentences to serve or fines to pay, then you are free to change anything you want, simply because you enjoy the changing of it.  It becomes a game you’re free to play because it’s fun to play it . . . not an act of desperation or a deception that anything going on around you in any way determines who you really are or a driving need to match your life to something you’ve seen in a catalog or a movie or an infomercial or a sacred text or a self-help book–or for that matter, a blog.  Make peace with YOU, wherever you are because if you don’t, you’ll have no real peace, no matter where you are. 

Wonder if that blog crack was intended for anyone in particular . . .  I’ve certainly learned the long and hard way that I can’t move far enough away from anything that’s holding me back from feeling the way I want to feel about my life.  I’m still not sure how much happiness money might buy—it’s a theory I wouldn’t mind having the opportunity to test somewhere down the road.   In the meantime, it seems worth the effort to see how much I can like the me in the middle of whatever it is I’m not liking.  And that leaves Me/Us, for the moment, paradoxically complete.

Parting aFLOWmation: “You dropped your peace–pick it up.”

I find an overlook where I can see
the stained glass lake
reclining, shining, letting
sun and clouds do what they will.

I greet the nodding evergreens.
We agree to share this space,
making no demands.

The mountains and the lake and trees
all have much to say
but they are not the ones
I’ve come to hear.

I wait and listen for the wind,
the wisdom flowing in high places,
voices carrying through the ages
and the swaying branches,

sages sweeping their wide arms
across the surface of the lake,
fingers brushing the worn face
of rock and wood and leaf.

I used to throw my questions like a pair of dice
and wait for lucky revelation,
truth that I could pick up like a pine cone
and take back to my dresser,
next to keys and watch and my ID.

I used to think what mattered
was a message I could fit in my back pocket
that would nag my ass until I got it.

But the mountains and the lake and trees
offered just the simple statement,
that these heights are all perception,
a point of view, a blink, a dream . . .
that any looming truth
was tiny in the chipmunk’s paw.

The sun set and the moon rose.
The mountains and the lake and trees
had no comment,
their silence fluent as the shadows,

and the wind with all the knowing
also held its tongue,
let my questions babble like a childish brook,
continued blowing.

‘Wisdom’ and Other Words To Live By From a Wet-Behind-The Ears Oracle

Do you ever wonder (imagine my best Andy Rooney impersonation) why it is that we seem to have so many moments in our lives when happiness feels like something we’ve lost and just don’t know how to find?

It’s sort of like the keys we’ve misplaced or the item on our To Do list that we just can’t seem to remember.  Try and try as we may to find it-or to remember where we put it, it continues to elude us.  We search and search, we read books (and blogs) about how to find it.  We go to workshops, we seek out gurus, thinking maybe we’ll stumble upon it, but often those efforts have the opposite effect-they only seem to make us more aware of what we feel is missing.

I asked The Shower Team to help me get a handle on how we get ourselves into such a lost place.  How can such a seemingly simple, easy idea as being happy, be so hard to get our hands on?

“Where is my happiness?” you ask.  And we say, “Right where you left it.”  Then you say, “But I can’t find it anywhere.  I’ve looked and looked.  I’ve done everything I can think of to do.  I’ve paid attention to what other people told me.  I’ve listened to advice.  I’ve read dozens of books.  I’ve made continual efforts to be and to do and to have the things that I believe would bring my happiness to me . . . “  

And we say, “There’s your trouble.”  You’re looking for happiness the way you tend to look for love:  in all the wrong places.  

The one thing you so often neglect in all your striving to be happy is to allow yourself to know what you already know-that happiness has nothing to do with any of the ‘things’ you believe it is attached to.  You believe a lie when you set out to find happiness by acquiring anything outside of yourself.  You confuse ‘happiness’ with the always fleeting satisfaction of some achievement or acquisition or some change in your circumstances. 

 By doing so, you live as though it were law that your conditions control you.  You are basically creating a life based on conditional love, on the notion that you are completely subject to whatever conditions you encounter.  Another way of saying this is that you are a victim of circumstances, a prisoner of whatever momentary conditions you are finding in the world you came forth to enjoy. 

 When you decide that happiness is attached to anything-ANYTHING-outside your own knowing of who you really are . . .  then you have essentially decided to remain unhappy for the duration of your time on this planet, because there will never be a ‘happiness’ from any external source that stays around long enough to truly satisfy you.  As soon as you have achieved or acquired or somehow manipulated your circumstances in some way that you like, something will change or you will become bored or the variety of your experience will once again point out to you something you want that is not yet present.  And as long as you are continuing to agree with the idea that you can only be happy when you have something you don’t currently have . . . then the happiness that you desire will continually elude you. 

 You set up this vicious cycle for yourselves and then you shake your fists at the forces of the Universe that you are convinced are conspiring to prevent you from having what you think will make you happy.  But in fact, your happiness is always right there, waiting for you to see it and feel it. . .  waiting for you to claim what is your birthright, your true nature, waiting for you to stop long enough to recognize that what you want is never lost, never gone, never out of reach . . .  only that you have removed your attention from it. 

 You will argue and argue about “the real world” that you must live in and you will insist that the ‘things’ you want or the things you think you need are necessary for happiness in that ‘real world’ when in fact that ‘real world’ is simply an illusion that you have decided is fact.  You have decided that happiness is contingent upon some particular or specific sort of experience in that world, when You always know the truth-that you brought your happiness with you when you came forth into this world and that you will take it with you when you leave . . .  that in fact ‘happiness’ or joy or the unfailing sense of boundless wellbeing is really the only continuity that you have from one lifetime to the next. 

 You can always choose ‘happiness’ as easily as you are choosing dissatisfaction or despair or discouragement or frustration or sorrow or anger.  But you don’t wish to believe this because to do so makes you solely responsible for whether or not joy is the nature of your experience.  When you can no longer blame the conditions of your life for how you feel . . .  then you must accept the reality that you do in fact create your reality.  Then there is no one left to ‘blame’ but you for the experience you are having.  

You can use any situation you choose as your excuse for holding yourselves back from joy.  But it will never change the fact that joy is still available to you if you choose it-no matter what circumstances you may find yourselves in. 

 And you will say, “But how can anyone be expected to be joyful under these conditions??”  And we say, “The same way you expect-and thereby create-any other outcome:  by the attention that you are giving.”  You can choose to continue striving and struggling to make your circumstances what you think they need to be in order to feel good.  Most of you take that approach, and even though it’s the longer, harder route, most of you still manage to do pretty well. 

 However, when the striving and struggling no longer seems to be working, and you find yourselves feeling lost or separated from what your heart truly desires, it is always because you have decided-consciously or not-that what you ‘need’ to feel good is something you are missing.  And what we most want to remind you of and to help you remember, is that nothing you ‘need’ is ever truly missing.  There is never anything about you that is lacking or failing except your decision to believe you are lacking or failing.  

You get to decide the criteria for your joy or success.  You decide who decides whether your life is a happy one or not.  You can give that power away.  You can look around at others and compare your experience to theirs and you can decide that yours doesn’t measure up somehow-even though you have no clue what their experience really is.  

 Or you can decide that your experience is really the only one that counts when it comes to how it feels to you.  And you can decide that you want to feel good about that experience, no matter where it stands at any given moment.  The fact of the matter is that nothing you’re experiencing, nothing you’ve created is permanent.  Your experience is by nature temporary, whether it is currently described by you as good or bad.  Either way, it is fleeting.  Something else is always on the way. 

 You can have much greater influence on what is on the way, by choosing to see yourself as already being all that you need to be in order to feel happy.  You CAN choose that perspective.  You can practice a point of view where there is nothing lacking, where you have all that you ‘need’ right there with you and in you.  You cannot hold that perspective and at the same time feel the lack or shortage of joy or satisfaction.  You cannot see yourself as you really are and not feel happiness. 

 You can continue to reach for things outside yourself, to strive for things you have not yet held in your hands or observed in your experience and you can continue to tell yourself that happiness will only come as a result of that thing you are striving for.  And as long as you do this, you will keep wondering-over and over and over-”where is my happiness?” 

 Or you can recognize that the asking of that question is the ‘problem’ for as long as you continue to ask it, you are actually refusing to see the answer-right there in front of you, waiting for you to claim it and feel it-right where you left it.

You’ve probably noticed-like me-that in practically every case where I think I’ve lost something-where I can’t find something that I want-in virtually every case, nobody else had taken it.  No one else had secretly or furtively or maliciously or even mistakenly appropriated what I was looking for.  It was right where I’d put it.

And each time that I eventually found it, more often than not I remembered putting it there.  I recognized that the ‘losing’ of it and the finding of it-was all up to me.

It’s both a comforting and a somewhat sobering thought-the idea that the only Lost and Found box that matters is the one I make, and that no one has access to it but me.  There’s something about it that helps me feel a little more found-or at least that suggests I know where to go for whatever I’m looking for.  Who knew that being told where to go could feel so good?

Parting aFLOWmation: “Happiness is usually the last place you look.”

For more information about The Shower Channel blog please visit my home page.  Previous posts are available in the Archives.  Contact me if you have questions/topics you would like The Shower Channel to address–or to request a private reading/consultation.

My Mother and Father . . .  my Maker . . . Infinite and unlimited Source . . .  All That Is and All That I AM .  .  .  Creator within as without, I honor and welcome you.  What dreams may come, let them be done.  Let me see and believe that I have no need, that all I ask for is given, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

‘Wisdom’ and Other Words To Live By From a Wet-Behind-The Ears Oracle

May I release the fears and the judgments that hold me apart from myself and others.  May I remember who I AM . . .  receive the warm and loving embrace of joy, of the wellbeing that abounds.  May I see and hear and feel and know and express and manifest the wonder, the magic, the love and the light . . .  the Creator in Me.

For mine—and ours—is the ever expanding kingdom, and the power, and the grace and the gift and the glory, forever and ever.

So it is.  So I AM.  Blessing and blessed be.

‘Wisdom’ and Other Words To Live By From a Wet-Behind-The Ears Oracle

Every time I turn around these days I’m bumping into some new marketing guru’s seven steps or ten tips for making the world want whatever it is we have to offer.  It seems it’s never enough anymore to be the creator of something beneficial or beautiful, we must also be willing and able to nearly make a full time job of peddling our product or service—or willing to pay someone who’s willing and able.

I admit I don’t like it.  If I wanted to be a salesman I would have been a salesman, and I’ve never taken kindly to anyone telling me I have to be something I’m not.  And yet there those realities seem to be,  staring us in the face and daring us to be a success if we don’t bite the bullet, suck it up, and show off in the ways that the experts and their statistics tell us is necessary.

I’m pretty sure I’ll never be the Marketing Magician that so many insist I need to become.  Just the thought of it exhausts me.  And yet there’s the dilemma of how to be a successful, fulfilled writer or photographer or anything else when only a handful of folks may ever read or look at what I do.  So I asked The Shower Team:  What’s an alleged genius creator who’s also a reluctant self-promoter to do?  How do I create a life—and work—that I love regardless of the feedback I do or don’t receive?  How do I live and work and play and create joyfully and productively and genuinely not care what the responses to me are?

Here’s what we would urge you to do.  Call it “Source’s Steps to Successful Self Promotion.”  First, forget doing anything you NEED a response to.  Do what YOU respond to. Offer what gives back to you in a way that you think will feel good.  When you share anything at all, express anything at all, share it because you love it, never because you need anyone else to.  The moment you feel you need another to approve, pause . . .  pull back . . .  wait until you have something to offer that you love too much not to offer it, where your enjoyment and appreciation of it is your only reason for offering it.

Be YOU, for the truth in this is that any lack of response you might perceive is actually a lack of response to your needing a response.  The silence you sometimes notice in response to your efforts, is the silence of others who cannot give you what you seek. It is the silence of no one being able—or responsible—for making you feel good enough.

Check your reasons before you share. Ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?”  Then follow these guidelines:

• Share only what lifts you up.
• Share only what lights you up.
• Share only what makes you smile.
• Share only what you find beautiful or beneficial or compelling
• Share it only because it feels too good not to share it. 

We would also add to this our view of the diminishing returns of your watching numbers as though they tell you anything of ultimate importance.  We would call this the Myth of Marketing that has been gathering considerable momentum in your physical experience.

More and more of you are believing that your value is based on numbers, be they in the form of dollars or readers or viewers or subscribers or paying customers.  This lie has crept so steadily and so powerfully into your consciousness and taken root in such a way that it is increasingly hard for any of you to see around it to the larger truth that who you are—your value—is never quantified that way by Source, or by the part of you that is aligned with how Source sees you.

Measuring your value this way will never bring you the true joy or satisfaction or fulfillment that you seek.  Even some of your so-called spiritual teachers are now suggesting to you that your message is only as worthy as the size of your mailing list, that your self-worth is only as rich as what you are paid for offering it.

We cannot begin to convey how screwy that notion is from broader perspective, or the degree to which it is bound to trip you up sooner or later.  The truth is you will never get where you want to be by assessing yourself this way or by this outside-in approach to quantifying your success.

We see and we understand the power of this trend that roars through your world.  You observe it and you find it increasingly hard not to buy in to it (for as you’ve noticed, there is nearly always a price tag attached to the picture that has been painted about how to promote yourself). But we say to you, again and again, the numbers do not tell the story.  Trust them and you will sooner or later come to see the illusion behind them.

The more you rely on the statistics that are offered to you as some real or true measurement of your worth the more worthless you are likely to feel in the long run because you will never be able to make those numbers big enough to keep proving what they never proved in the first place—that your worth is measured by the number ONE.  That is, it is entirely about the ONE who offers whatever you are offering because YOU appreciate it, YOU respond to it, YOU care about it. 

You are ONE with All That Is, and any gift you offer expands, moves, enlarges, delights, thrills All That Is and makes the Universe you inhabit bigger and brighter and better . . .  and has nothing to do with anything you will ever find on a sales ledger or a site report or a royalty check.

Look for the true value that you bring to your world by joyfully offering you to that world, the you that no one in your world can effectively or truthfully tally, but that Heaven and Earth applaud you—and reward you–for being.

Well, I bet none of that makes it into a bestselling How To book.  I both love—and am usually somewhat mystified by—the Team’s take on most of what passes for collective savvy in this ever challenging time/space reality.

I’m sure many—myself probably included—would argue it’s easy for them to pooh pooh marketing and promotion when they don’t need those subscribers or sales or royalties to expand what’s in the cabinet or refrigerator or to light up the rooms in one’s house with electricity.  Still, I hate it when I can’t just pooh pooh their pooh poohing.

Do the numbers deceive us?  Do we not need what we think we need ?  Are we just myth mongers—misguided sheep following a herd that believes the grass is actually greener over there where that grinning guru of a shepherd is waving his state of the art staff?

As usual I’ll leave the answers to The Team and see how long I can go without seeing how many “Likes” I just got on Facebook.

Parting aFLOWmation: “Value what you most appreciate, and it can’t help but appreciate.”

For more information about The Shower Channel blog please visit my home page.  Previous posts are available in the Archives.  Contact me if you have questions/topics you would like The Shower Channel to address–or to request a private reading/consultation.

‘Wisdom’ and Other Words To Live By From a Wet-Behind-The Ears Oracle

Passion and purpose are words I see and hear a lot in the ever-expanding literature of self-development. I don’t know a life coach or a spiritual advisor or self-help guru who hasn’t included some mention of these concepts in his or her book or seminar or blog or speech.

I read those books and blogs and listen to those tapes and get as caught in the notion of a passionate and purposeful life as anyone. Who doesn’t like the idea of living his/her dream, following one’s bliss, etc.?

But when I take off the reading glasses and look in the mirror clarity sometimes seems to scurry out the door, leaving me with a lot of questions about where I put my passion and purpose and how to retrieve them, assuming I ever really had them to begin with.

I look at what at I’ve done and what I’m doing and I wonder things like, does any of it really matter? Does anyone really care? If I continue—or stop doing it—or do something else, will anyone even notice?

So I asked the Shower Team: “Where’s the value in what I do or in what I have to give? How can I know that what I have to offer or if what I regard as my passion or purpose has any real value?

It’s a tricky question you’re asking, not because the answer is difficult or even all that complicated, but because there are some powerful false premises attached to the way that you’re asking it.

The simplest and purest answer to the question, How can I offer something of value?” is to just decide that you’re going to offer yourself something that you value. That is, you should always start with you. Start with what lights you up or makes your heart sing and your feet dance and your smile beam. Start with what delights you that you can’t help sharing because that is the joy that no one can really resist. That is the gift that your world most needs and that will be most appreciated because there’s no way not to appreciate a gift offered from such a sweet, honest and joyful place.

But, this notion trips you up because it seems to conflict with your longstanding and oh so seductive perspective about ‘service’ to others and the only honorable route to such service being to put your own desires and dreams and “selfish pleasures” in the backseat where they supposedly belong.

You have a hard time believing that anything that feels too good can be a good thing for yourself much less for anyone else. So rather than making your passion—your bliss—your life purpose, you dig around in the dirt for something that looks nobler or feels like more of a sacrifice because you’ve trained yourself to believe that if it doesn’t hurt at least a little—preferably a lot—if it doesn’t cause you to suffer or to give up something you really like, then it can’t much use to anyone else. After all, how can something you truly adore and find absolute joy in doing possibly bring any value to anyone if there’s no evidence of what it cost you?

The other tricky part of your question is that embedded in it is the notion that someone other than you gets to decide the value of you. And while we can se how this notion arises from the conditions you observe of others placing price tags on products and services and creations, when some ‘they’ out there appears to be deciding how much this or that is worth . . . while we can see why you might conclude that you not the ultimate authority on how valuable your gifts may be, we still say to you that from the broader perspective, no one else decides this for you unless you let them. You may be one who sells some creation of yours for what some would call an obscene amount of money and never really believe that your creation was worth the paper or canvas or plastic or wood or whatever other material on which it was rendered.

If that offering had no real value to you, the price tag dangling from it or the dollars flowing into your bank account from the sale of it will mean next to nothing to the one whose opinion of it matters most—the one who created and offered it. Without your agreement on its value, any quantifying of that value is just economics, and economics continues to be one of the most persuasive illusions to which most of you ascribe.

So, you ask how can you know what is in you that is of value? What gifts do you bring to the world you inhabit and the people who inhabit it with you? And we continue to say that you will never sacrifice or suffer enough to improve the world you inhabit or to make a difference to those who agree that your only worthy option is to sacrifice and struggle.

You will only see reflected back to you the light that you allow to shine through you—and the only real way to be that light is to be who you truly are, to identify and express the most passionately selfishly true joy of your being, whatever that might be . . . and to offer that as your gift first and foremost to yourself, and then to offer it to those (and we promise you there will be plenty) who are able to recognize and receive the incomparably unique value of that perfectly offered gift.

It’s curious to say the least, how much easier it seems to just join the clubs whose creed is that nothing worth having-or giving—comes without sacrifice or suffering. Membership is open 24/7 and never stops growing. You see their flyers everywhere.

Could finding and living with passion and purpose really be as simple as just being myself? Am I even truly willing to belong to a club that would have me as a member? Far be it from me to argue with The Shower Team, but don’t be surprised if you see me tripping over that truth a few more times before it really sinks in.

Parting aFLOWmation: “Be the gift to you that keeps on giving.”

For more information about The Shower Channel blog please visit my home page.  Previous posts are available in the Archives.  Contact me if you have questions/topics you would like The Shower Channel to address–or to request a private reading/consultation.

“What you are regarding as bad or wrong in this instance or any other is really just guidance that you are judging because it is what you have learned to do.” 

Few things can leave us as drooping in the dust the way a relationship gone awry can. When love goes off course or comes to a crashing halt it’s one of the worst feelings in the world and can leave us standing either in front of our partner—or a mirror (often they’re one and the same)—declaring “You suck.”

Having had what feels like at least my fair share of those particular blues over the course of my lifespan to date, I wondered to myself and then to The Shower Team, “Why do I seem to keep missing the mark here? What’s wrong with me that I keep getting it so wrong?”

The first thing we would say in response to that question is that what’s “wrong” (your word, not ours) is the question you are asking.  That is, what’s wrong or misguided is your belief that something is wrong in general or wrong with you, which you will never get us to agree with. 

We understand that you have experienced or observed something in the context of a relationship that is unpleasant or uncomfortable or discouraging for you and that is calling you forward to something better that you desire.  And we get that the gap between where you are and where you desire to be feels uncomfortably wide in such moments.  

That is, you don’t like the way that you are holding yourself (and we promise you that you are) back from the joy that your Higher Self or Soul or whatever you wish to call Who You Really Are clearly understands is yours to have.  You don’t like the way you’re thinking about you or your situation right now because the way you’re thinking is not the way Source thinks about you.  That discrepancy or disagreement with yourself never feels good. 

And so, in other words, what is ‘wrong’ with you that is not really wrong is the way you are choosing to label or judge what you are observing.  And the moment that you allow yourself to choose a different way of observing and thinking about what you are choosing, you will feel the relief you always feel when you recognize that what you think is wrong is really just information that you are interpreting in a particular way, usually a way that you have trained yourself into and which you barely even recognize as your choice. 

Even though it doesn’t feel like a choice, we assure that it is, just as we assure you that other choices are available to you.  What you are regarding as bad or wrong in this instance or any other is really just guidance that you are judging because it is what you have learned to do. 

In other instances you do not judge such guidance.  You do not, as a rule, see a sign on the highway that says you are further from your destination that you realized and conclude “Oh something must be terribly wrong with me for not being there yet or for not being further along than I am.” 

But in this specific area of your life-in your close connections with others—you do exactly that.  Instead of simply acknowledging the information you’ve been given as evidence that you have not yet caught up with where your desire is taking you, that you are not quite there yet, you stop and criticize where you are and blame yourself (or your partner) for being there when all you really need to do is see where you are, feel the direction that you’re being called toward and choose the steps and the point of view that moves you in that direction. 

You instantly know what moves you in the ‘right’ direction by how it feels to turn that way.  If the way you or your relationship is going or has gone feels wrong then it is only because you are thinking something about that relationship or about you or your partner that is not in agreement with how Source is thinking. 

What does Source think about you or your problem or your relationship?  We can assure you that what Source is never thinking is that you or he or she or it is ‘wrong’.  What Source is thinking is that you have created something wonderful and fulfilling through the purity of your desire and if you will just pay attention to the guidance you are receiving and move in the direction of the desire that calls to you, neither you nor your partner nor your relationship or even the ending of your relationship will feel wrong to you.  In fact, you will see—and be amazed at—just how remarkably right it all is for the way that it is pointing you toward the joy still ahead of you.

So, the only thing wrong with me is my feeling that something’s wrong with me? Sort of sounds like being told it’s crazy to wonder if you’re crazy. I do know that I have an unerring tendency to go in the opposite direction from my intended destination. Just follow me in and out of stores at any mall.

With all due respect to The Team, the message has that “easier heard than felt” feeling to it. “Words that wiggle a bit” you might say. So for now I’m off to have my compass checked—and while I’m at it, to once again question most of my assumptions.

Parting aFLOWmation: “Wrong is the other right.”

For more information about The Shower Channel blog please visit my home page.  Previous posts are available in the Archives.  Contact me if you have questions/topics you would like The Shower Channel to address–or to request a private reading/consultation.

In previous dreams
it took me to a lover’s arms,
open as a rose in bloom,
warm as dawn.
He always waited,
ready with a kiss, a fire,
a comfort I could hold
and bring up to my lips.

On this beach no stranger’s face,
no usual deity or angel in disguise
reached for me like an answer to a prayer.
I thought I’d been betrayed,
started to accuse the dream,
“Why have you forsaken me?”
then I felt him tug my sleeve.
I recognized his face,
the innocent and hopeful eyes,
the flush of expectation,
a giggle that he seemed embarrassed by.

This was a different dream.
I knew the little boy so well,
knew the man who had forgotten him.
but not the reasons why.
I felt the punch and pinch of grief, of guilt,
assumed how angry he must be
for all those years he’d waited for a friend,
but no cloud covered him.
Only sunlight in his smile,
a welcome wide as morning sky
and violets in his outstretched hand..
I knew they were for me.