Spirit In Gear

Embracing My Gray

I first confessed to an envy of silver hair in The Gifts of Age, back in the spring of 2009. 

Since that time you could say I've embraced my "inner gray," the confidence to be myself, to be my age.  Now if I could just embrace my outer gray. 

My goal is to sport a head of au natural hair by the time I turn 60 in August of 2011.  However I had no idea it would be such a pain to grow out my permanent hair color.  My hairdresser and I began our color strategy March 1st.  At that time she used semi-permanent hair color to touch up my gray roots, instead of permanent hair color.  She said the semi-permanent dye would fade in 4-6 weeks.

My healthy hair has a mind of it's own, apparently.  The semi-permanent hair color hasn't faded one bit and remains stubbornly perky and colorful.  Plan B began two months later, when my hairdresser switched brands of semi-permanent color.  Darn!  It still hasn't faded.

Earlier this month we went to plan C.  She is using a very light semi-permanent color to blend in with the gray roots.  It's called "low-lighting."  Only problem I can see with this strategy is the demarcation that becomes more noticeable as my hair grows out.

A couple of days ago I googled this topic and found innumerable articles on growing out the gray.  It sounds like we are on the right track.  But with my chin-length hair, this will take a long time.

Yesterday I took a measuring tape to my hair.  Measuring from the bottom, I have 5 inches of permanent hair color.  Moving up, there are 3 inches of semi-permanent color, and then the new low-lighting which accounts for about an inch or so.

Unfortunately I have learned from my hairdresser that we can't just dye the 5 inches of permanent color gray while we wait for the roots to grow out, since the part of my hair is already colored.  So it will take until early next year, I estimate, to be done with the last vestiges of the permanent color.  This should prove interesting.

Of course I could speed up this process by cutting my hair very short.  NOT!  Maybe wear it an inch shorter, but that's it.  I guess I'll just have to tough it out.

If you are still reading this post, more power to you.  In the perpetually young culture we live in, I find myself in a tiny minority of women who want to go gray.  I can afford the money for hair color.  I can make the time for it.  Just don't want to anymore.  There's something freeing about not having to pretend to be five or ten years younger.  Freeing in the sense that I don't have to use my energy to think about it anymore.  That's a big deal for me.

Wish I had the ability to see into the future - to see what my gray locks will look like.  Will I need to use  a temporary rinse when my daughters get married in the future?  Or not?  Only time will tell.  You can bet there will be a future post on life in the "gray" lane when I get to that point! 

Any gray-haired readers in the blogosphere who'd like to share their perspective?  Or wannabees?

[Photo Credit:  Getty images, shown on www.momlogic.com]

What Birthdays Remind Me Of

Lately I have been taken down by my inner critic.  I harbor feelings of self-loathing.  I wonder at times why I do what I do, and say what I say.  The inner turmoil saps my energy.

In this space of feeling frustrated with myself, my birthday arrives yesterday.  From the moment I get up in the morning, til I fall asleep at night, I am graced and lifted up by others.  Some have known me for years, like old friends, and others for a few months.  Some I have never met in person.

The birthday greetings come in person, by snail mail, email, voicemail, by "live" phone, by text, and most popular, by Facebook.  Each sentiment gently flows over me, taking with it bits and pieces of my self-loathing.  The greetings remind me to appreciate myself amidst my flaws and imperfections. 

Being acknowledged for who I am, on the day celebrating my entry into this life, far surpasses any material gift I can receive.  My heartfelt thanks to all of you who took the time to remind me, on my birthday, that I matter.  And that self-appreciation is in order for all of us who believe we are part of God's creation.

In this "crazy" world of ours, amidst the "Left" talk and the "Right" talk, the Tea Baggers and the Tree Huggers, we are bigger than ideology.  Birthdays help us connect at the heart level.  Which is why my right winger brother sends his liberal sister a card on her birthday and calls her up.

Most of all, birthdays remind me to open my arms and receive.  Last Sunday at church the homilist shared a scriptural quote that leaves me in awe:

Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.

- Luke 12:32

May I remember to open my arms and say "yes!" 

[Photo Credit:  Ariel da Silva Parreira]

July - Both Challenge and Celebration

[Get comfy . . . this is a long post!]

Think of summer, and what comes to mind are longer days, slower, relaxing rhythms, and fun times spent at the beach, the mountains, or the amusement park, screaming on the roller coaster.

July opened up with a pleasant stay at a B & B, with a mountain view, over the 4th of July weekend.  As I entered the post holiday work week, I found myself feeling like I was being plunged up and down on an emotional roller coaster.

It began, the previous month, with a commitment on the part of my business partner and I to double our advertising budget to attract increased leads for our real estate wholesaling business.  We added an additional mail campaign which tripled our leads for the month of July.  All good stuff, ("Celebrate") but the challenge lay in handling the pace of my work day as it intensified dramatically.  I fell behind in other areas.  I found myself occasionally working in the evenings and on the weekends to catch up.

While this was going on, our primary business website for our leads, Cash for Homes Upstate, got accidently deleted!  Gone.  Kaput.  No more.  When I contacted BlueHost to cancel a different domain that was now hosted by someone else, they also deleted the website unrelated to the domain I canceled.  I spent a frantic 24 hours talking with 4 different techs at BlueHost, who told me that our website had even been deleted from the back-up servers.

What You Probably Do Not Know About BP

Hard to imagine pairing these two words together:  corporation and integrity.  Or how about this - a giant corporation learning to create three profit lines:  People, Environment, Shareholders.  Which profit line must come first to create the best bottom line profit?  Smart person that you are - yes, it's people.

I intended to write this post several weeks ago, when I first read what I share below.  Another good intention bites the dust, as I allow life and work to consume me.  Overdue?  Yes.  Still relevant?  Yes.

Now for some context.  I've been reading what I consider a brilliant book on the next level of human evolution - The Translucent Revolution, by Arjuna Ardagh.  Bare-bones definition - "translucence" allows us, if we choose, to awaken out of the ego-based trance of fear, doubt, and anxiety.

People become translucent when they wake up from their contracted self-preoccupation and feel themselves bigger than their personal story.  They discover they are both no one in particular and at the same time part of everything around them.  From this recognition of connectedness, translucent  people become more humorous, more honest, and less fearful.  Their lives get reorganized around service and contribution.

Imagine this . . . organizations that display translucent qualities, moving from a focus on fear, lack, and profit at all costs, to one of creativity, inspiration, honesty.  Organizations that reorganize around service and contribution, to their employees, to society and the environment, and to their shareholders.

Ardagh's book discusses in detail companies that have begun reorienting around translucent qualities.  He contends that there are thousands of conscious businesses throughout the US and Europe who "compete well with the global giants, because they offer something that economies of scale can never purchase on the cheap:  heartfelt integrity."

Imagine my shock when I read that BP was included in this group.  This same BP that recently created the worst environmental disaster in history through negligence and focus on profit at all costs.

Sending Well-Being to the Gulf

Japanese scientist, Dr. Masaru Emoto, has published extensively on the characteristics of water.  His research reveals that water responds to emotion.

Taken in that light, he offers this prayer to set an intention of love and healing, amidst the anger and turmoil raging in the current Gulf oil crisis:

I send the energy of love and gratitude to the water and all the living creatures in the Gulf of Mexico and its surroundings.  To the whales, dolphins, pelicans, fish, shellfish, planktons, corals, algae, and all living creatures . . . I am sorry.  Please forgive me.  Thank you.  I love you.

I invite you to join in this prayer, or in words of your own making, to begin to send our waves of love and positive intent to Mother Earth.

 

Why I Write

I'm aware, of late, that I have been avoiding writing blog posts.  I went through a period of feeling emotionally unsettled, and vulnerable, and didn't feel like baring my soul in public.  But what I regret, what didn't occur to me, was to write for myself, in private, where no eyes but mine see the words.

I'm in a better place now, and forever grateful for this gift of emotional resilience I seem to possess.  I am writing for myself again.  And maybe someday it will be public.  But that's not the point.  We write for so many different reasons. 

Like me, you may find commonality in your reasons to write in this hauntingly real poem by Meredith Heller:

I write to hear my voice,
because there are places of honesty
and beauty that I go in my writing that
I can't always go in my life, and I must.
When I write, I let the parts of me that hold
my breath, breathe.  I write to let light into my
being and let darkness out, to own myself, capturing
the rhythms of my cycles; journeys into the abyss,
travels through glory.  I write to allow myself to feel,
climb inside my emotions and explore their reaches and
textures, summon my tears, let them wash me hot and
clean then drain me empty and free.  I write myself alive and
reborn, whole and holy to experience myself transformed.  I
write because I hurt and because I love, and so I won't lose
anything.  And because I am lonely, sensual, and spiritual,
and I need to make contact with the divine, and writing
for me is like touching:  it is rubbing and rolling my
body against the divine until my boundaries dissolve
and I no longer know where I start and where I stop:
I become part of the universal hum.  I write to make
myself external, leave a piece of me stained into the
ethers.  I write because I believe Goddess listens
for the places where we love and own ourselves.
I write to keep myself company, keep
myself honest, keep from watching TV.
I write to keep my Muse intrigued.
I write because I can't draw.

- Meredith Heller 2003

Why do you write?

Fav Blog Posts to Check Out!

I find myself in an emotional muddle, with nary a cohesive thought to write.  Yesterday close friends in our neighborhood just moved away to a distant state.  Today my washing machine just quit with a load of wash still sitting in water.  Since I'm not in the frame to write, I do the next best thing and find solace in hanging out in the blogosphere reading the words of my blogging buddies. 

It is apparently what the doctor ordered, as I have found much candor, wisdom, depth, and humor in the following posts (in no particular order):

For sheer candor in the art of being human, take time to read these posts:

- Tom Volkar - When Doubt is Good.  Tom's post, sprinkled with earthy language, shines with transparency.  I find myself laughing out loud.  We all go through periods of doubt.  If we can recognize when we are in the period of "good doubt," we can find the courage to hang with it to get to the next place.

- Liz Strauss - The Minute I'm Sure I"m Right, I'm Most Certainly Wrong.  Liz discusses how support can hinder others.  How difficult we all find it to admit we are wrong, but to go public takes a big person.

- Barbara Sliter - The Unintended Impact of Certainty.  Certainty is valued.  Uncertainty is pooh-poohed.  Yet being "less certain" can make room for other voices.  Thanks to Barbara for opening up this topic in a new way.

For your daily dose of wisdom, enjoy these posts:

- Dan Oestreich - I Am the Pot.  What leaders can discover when they are silent  . . . and listen.

- Chris Bailey - Open Letter to Fellow Career Zigzaggers. Why the world needs both straight-liners and zigzaggers!

- Marcia Reynolds - Your Goals May Be Killing You.  The distinction between creative productive goals and outcome goals, and how the former can bring you more happiness.

- Andrea Hess - Shredded Cheese and Manifesting Money - Read how attracting money should be as easy as picking up shredded cheese at the grocery store.

- Terry Starbucker - The Most Useless Word in the English Language.  Go check out the link to find out the word!

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Meditation in a Moment

 

What is life?  It is the flash of a firefly in the night.  It is a breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.  It is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

- Crowfoot, a Leader of the Blackfoot Nation

In middle age I discover that the only place I can live my life is in the moment.  In the here and now.  Kind of a radical notion of stillness for people, like you and me, constantly on the go.

So you will understand when I tell you that my eyes did a double take when I saw a book entitled One Moment Meditation (author Martin Boroson) a few weeks ago.  My husband and I had taken Friday afternoon off to wander around downtown Hendersonville, NC, and we ended up in a cool bookstore called Zen,etc!

Two hours prior to our trip I had received word that the buyer for a home we just rehabbed and listed has backed out of the purchase contract he signed with us several days prior. I'm feeling stressed and harried from this news.  It is in this frame of mind that I step into the bookstore. 

I feel a powerful sense of synchronicity and guidance when my eyes light upon the above mentioned book.  I pick it up and glance inside for a quick scan.  I put it back down.  I wander to another pile of books.  I return to the first book.  Again, I pick it up.  And I carry it around with me as a talisman of sorts, as I look at other items of interest.  Then I purchase it.

In the book I learn the 1-minute meditation.  I've been practicing it since mid-March. During the first 30 days, it is mandatory to use a timer to do the one-minute meditation.  I purchased a battery-run electronic timer for $4.95 at Walmart.  It's small and compact, and easy to pack. 

No matter what my schedule is like, or whether I am at home or out of town, I find this practice portable and doable.  After all, you can find 1 minute in your day, I hope! (and if you cannot spare one minute, please have a loved one commit you to a hospital asap!).

The author debunks myths around meditation.  He makes the distinction between becoming peaceful, and being peaceful.  The former involves striving and adds stress.  The idea of peace always being available is intriguing, isn't it?

I've progressed to the second level in the book, and that is practicing the 1-minute meditation without a timer, which involves counting breaths.  As I continue with this practice, I will eventually learn how to experience the benefits of meditation in less than a minute.

In the meantime, I notice that, as a result of this practice, I am simply more conscious.  I notice what is around me.  I don't speed as much (either in the car, or outside of it).  When my mind races ahead, I tug it back into the here and now.  Maybe, just maybe, I will generate less stress by the way I move and respond to life.  It is an hypothesis worth testing!

If you'd like to practice the one-minute meditation, visit the author's site, where he spells  out the steps for you. 

Wouldn't it be cool if our health insurance premiums could go down if we practiced the one-minute meditation?

[Photo Credit:  Miguel Saavedra]

Following Guidance Takes Courage

If following inner guidance was easy, we'd be doing it all the time, right?  But when it doesn't make sense to do so logically, we tend to second guess ourselves and struggle.

This morning I receive an email from a follower of my blog.  She relates a powerful story about acting upon inner guidance.  She recently took a new job in a field she has worked in for 19 years.  As soon as she begins her new job, she feels a sense of danger she can't shake.  And within a short time, she decides to quit. 

Meanwhile, the bills are due.  Her family thinks she is crazy.  She is living 12 hours from home on an air mattress.  She feels scared.  And she feels something else - "the peace at times is the
most real, purest peace I have ever known.  My inner most part of me, maybe that small still voice tells me everything will be alright."  Even when she doesn't have anything else lined up.

It may be that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. - Wendell Berry

This reminds me of an inner urging I felt in 2003.  My husband had just been named project manager for the largest job he'd ever do, which would span at least 2 years.  Our younger daughter was getting ready to enter her senior year in high school.  We had no desire to move from our home.  And yet, I felt compelled to get our home market ready for sale.

It didn't make sense at all.  But I trusted that urge enough that we created a punch list and checked off the items on the list over the next few months.  Shortly after that, my husband received word that the project was called off.  The client was in a financial downturn.  Within 3 more months, my husband's company decimated the engineering department.  He was offered a transfer out of state.  We both agreed the transfer would work.  Because our home was market ready,we sold our house in 1 day.

In between these decisions and actions lay a sense of uncertainty, worry, and fear.  And out of all that courage comes forward to prevail and lead the way.

When have you acted upon an inner urge when it didn't make sense?

Guidance on the Go

Higher Guidance doesn't always require a meditative space to show up in.  It can show up without our direct request for answers.  Or we may get our "guidance on the go" if we pay attention, stay present, and steer the pace of our hectic lives, as I addressed in a recent post, Moving at the Pace of Guidance.

For example, about three weeks ago I experienced a swift download of guidance "on the go."  The story begins when I receive a phone call from a real estate agent who wants to show a house we just rehabbed and put up for sale four days prior.  I give her the lock-box code and return to my meeting. 

The agent calls me back later that evening to tell me her client is making an offer and she will fax it to me.  There is something about her tone of voice and sense of urgency that makes me immediately resistant.  For some inexplicable reason, I don't have a good feeling about this.  (One of the primary ways guidance comes through for me is an energy I feel in my body).

The offer arrives and proves to be a low-ball offer.  I craft a counter-offer designed to make them go away.  Or so I think.  They respond to my counter-offer with our asking price.  I sigh and say to my business partner, "Well, I guess we have to accept it."  Now that is definitely an irrational response to have when someone offers to buy your house for your asking price!  But not so in the context of what was coming through for me at an intuitive level.

We decide to sign the offer and set things in motion.  I continue to feel very resistant and restless for a few days, but I decide to let it go.  I know that this will play out and we will know if it is going to work within a couple of weeks. 

Nine days after we accept the offer, I receive an email from the agent asking us to sign a release of the contract - the buyer no longer wants it, based upon inspection.  Why am I not surprised?  We sign the release and put it back on the market, with the realization that we have lost some precious marketing time.

In this particular situation, Guidance came through in a strong and sudden way.  I acknowledged it, and, at the time of accepting the offer, created a plan in my mind of how to salvage the sale of our house if things didn't play out as we hoped. 

The more readily we recognize Higher Guidance, the more quickly we can benefit from it.  This may be a good time to refer you back to some older posts I wrote which spell out how to distinguish "True Guidance" from "False Guidance:" 

Post #1 discusses the following characteristics of Higher Guidance - the supportive quality; the consistency; the focus on life purpose; the focus on joy in the present.

Post #2discusses how Higher Guidance is strong and powerful; sounds familiar; speaks in second person; and feels like a warm hug.

Post #3 focuses on how Higher Guidance empowers you; is direct and to the point; comes suddenly and completely; and does not put you above or below others.

What examples of "guidance on the go" have you received?  Did you recognize it as such?  How did you respond?