Stay in the process - no matter what!

            One day my printer just would not work.  I changed the ink cartridges. Nothing.  What to do?

I had a printer stored in the garage for just such an occasion as this.  Got it out, set up and the software was not compatible with my computer’s operating system.  Now what?

As I am pondering this question, my computer screed turned blank and black and very slowly came back to its glorious blue color.  Ah Oh!  As I thought back to the years of great service I had with this computer, I decided that maybe it was time to retire it and get a new computer.  I did.

The printer worked!  Great!

Oh! NO!  All of my last year’s tax information was on the old computer.  But wait!  I backed up my information on a Zip Disk!  Yeah!  How do I get the information off the Zip Disk and into my new computer?  I’ll just go down and buy a Zip Disk Drive.  I did. 

I got it all set up.  Put in the software disk and it said that it was not compatible with my operating system.  Groan!  Now what?  Call Iomega and see if they have a newer system out.  Anything has got to be easier than reentering all of the information for a whole year. 

Finally, getting to tech support, the guy said, “Throw away the software and just plug it into your USB port and use it.”  Do what?  This can’t be that easy?  He said, “Just do it.”

I did and it worked. 

            

Abounding Opportunities

At a club meeting recently, I was saying goodbye to a club member who was no longer going to be attending the meetings.  In the course of our conversation, Les told me that he “enjoying coming to the meetings because I brought so much energy” with me.

That next weekend, I did a memorial service for a long time member of our community and the funeral director told me what a pleasure it was to “work with someone as professional as I was.”

That afternoon, I did an email spiritual mind treatment for a member of our community and the reply was that “the treatment was very good and went far beyond what he thought.”

That evening, while having dinner with the neighbors, another guest and I were talking about having to get up early to go to work on Sunday and she asked me what I did.  When I told her I was a Spiritual Leader, her face lit up and she said, “I knew there was something special about you.  Your face radiates light.”

I got home and thought, “Glory Be! Four times in one week, I was certainly validated.”  Immediately, the thought popped into my head that these were like opportunities, possibilities and potentials.  They are all around us all the time, but I haven’t been paying close enough attention to them.  It took four, count them, FOUR times for me to get that opportunities abound all the time.  It is time for me to wake up to the good in my life.

What is the Kybalion?

We had just finished remodeling our office space when I looked closely at a picture with a quote printed beneath it.  It was from the Kybalion.  What is the Kybalion? 

I had prided myself on being familiar with most traditions, but this one was a new one.

Later that day, I checked it out on the internet and the web sites were in Spanish and when I clicked on “translate,” the results didn’t make any sense at all.

The next day I received a telephone call from a relative of a long time Religious Scientist wondering if I would like her library.  I said, “yes,” because what I didn’t want, would go to our center for our up coming Community Book Sale. 

While packing up her books, I picked up a small volume titled, “The Kybalion – Hermetic Philosophy” by Three Initiates.  I was spelled bound. 

I wondered how many things had to come to pass for me to look at the quote, for the book to appear and for me to recognize it when it happened. 

The real question is, what came first, the chicken or the egg?  

Feather time

“Each time you pick up a feather, it is a message that you are on the right path.”  Unknown

I love asking for signs for things that are going on in my life and I love finding feathers.  They show up for me in the most unusual places.  Even my poodle, Rusty, brings them in to me from outside.  Course, he brings lots of other things too.

One day a friend and I were walking along a street in San Francisco and I was telling her about looking for ‘signs’ to let her know that she was on the right path.  I was telling her that I would ask the question and then wait for a sign.  I usually found feathers shortly thereafter and I would take that as a sign that I was going in the right direction. 

“Does it always work?” she asked.

I was about to answer when this huge tail feather serenely floated right down in front of us and landed on the sidewalk.  I bent over to pick up the feather and when I looked at her countenance, I burst out laughing.  Her face was reflecting disbelief even as I was handing her the “proof” of the feather.

Like Lego...Just keep building

On a trip to Orlando’s Disney World, I passed by the Lego display.  I was overwhelmed with what they had built in Legos.  There were Lego cars, bridges, playhouses complete with furniture, windows, doors and roof.  There were miniature legos; giant legos and medium sized ones, round ones and square ones.  There were giant cranes, trucks that moved large Lego logs, dump trucks that scooped up more Legos.  I was even walking on a Lego surface. 

I turned in awe at all that I saw and realized that life is like that Lego Village.  We just need to keep building in various sizes until we get the result we want.  Just like the Legos we find in various sized containers, we have the choice of picking and choosing what it is that we want and in whatever color suits us at the time.  Yesterday was a yellow day.  Today, I will use green.  I can include circles, squares, rectangles and triangles.  Life is full of different sizes, colors and textures. 

When life becomes dull, boring or we forget why we are doing what we are doing, remember, that life was meant to be an adventure for all of us.  It was meant to be fun.  Go, out and buy a box of Lego’s and see what you can build out of them. 

Maybe some of us who take life to seriously, need a good dose of Legos in our life.  Play with them and when you are tired of them, give them away to some little person who would love to build, create, image what life is like.  Better yet, share the experience and see what you can learn.

What's next?

I read a quote by Thomas Edison that said, “If we did all the things we were capable of doing, we would literally astonish ourselves.”  I remembered thinking, “what would it be like to astonish myself?”

Several summers ago, I got into doing what is called pen turning.  This is putting little bits of wood on a spinning lathe and carving these wood pieces into cylindrical pieces and then assembling them into pens.  I love fountain pens and thought, “Wow! A new pen.”  So, I ordered the assembly pieces and got started. 

When it was finished, I loaded it with ink and sat down to write with it for the first time.  I pulled out my journal book and fully went into a feeling of overwhelm.  I realized that the journal I was using was the one I had written several years ago, the pen in my hand was one that I had produced and I just had to sit with the experience for a while.

I had an astonishing experience.  It was like nothing I had ever experienced before.  Now that I have had one, I want more.  So, my  next question is, “what else am I capable of doing?”

Support the roadside lemonade stands...

Driving through the neighborhood today, I saw a tiny table set up with a tiny sign that said, "Lemonade for Sale."  Two very cute girls were sitting behind the table anxiously awaiting their customers.  The price for the lemonade was $.25 or $1.25.  Interesting.  Did I want a quarter cup or full cup of lemonade?

Since buying my fancy car, I have secret hiding drawers in it and one of them is for the storage of extra quarters.  Instead of digging in the back seat for my purse, I used my stash of quarters.  So, I kept handing one little girl a quarter at a time while she counted and kept track.  When we got to the requisite $1.25, I just kept handing her more money.  "Stop," she said, "this is more than enough."

Her sign said that they were collecting for the Cancer Society so I told her to just keep taking the money until I ran out.  Well, her eyes got so big.  What fun it was to astound her with generosity.

One of the things I love doing is supporting other people in doing what it is that they love to do.  What would life have been like for all of us, had we had the generous support while being eight or nine years old?  We need to do everything we can to support our neighborhood entrepreneurs.  These tiny sales people made me want to drive around the block and come back and buy more lemonade.

Remembering that everything in our lives matter, including supporting those along our path.  If you can't astonish yourself, do something wonderful to astonish someone else.