Official blog for the book "Just Behind the Door"

Posts tagged ‘destiny’

Allow Yourself to Heal

I talked to a person recently who said that they no longer feel joy in their life since losing their loved one. They feel anxious, unable to concentrate and just basically empty inside. I understand. I have been there. From the moment you wake in the morning a heaviness descends around you and you have to absolutely will yourself to take that first step of the day. The loss of someone you love is not easy to put into words. Loyalty, trust and joy are just a few of the emotions felt when we love someone so deeply. We think to ourselves, now all that is gone from my life. Our grief is not only for today but the many unrealized tomorrows.

An important part of healing from loss or even just making it through the challenges of living as we learn our life lessons is to ‘allow.’ By definition, allow is ‘to permit.’ To give yourself permission to feel, grieve, remember, even momentarily to wish things had been different, and it is a natural part of grieving the changes that happen in our lives.

We are so used to making things happen that to just allow life to unfold seems counterintuitive. We may feel that it is a cop out, an excuse to do nothing. Quite the contrary. If we turn the kaleidoscope in our minds ever so slightly, we will see that when we allow, we resist the urge to try to control everything or to demand life be a certain way to make us happy. We still strive to become all that we can be but as things happen that hurt or derail us we look at them not with indignation but with a deeper understanding as we search for the personal lessons contained within them. To learn to allow is a hard lesson. To me, that one little word – allow – means a combination of acceptance for what is combined with a belief that ‘all is as it should be.’ It speaks of a power, an energy, greater than ourselves

Take some time over the next few days to think about the word ‘allow.’ How would your life be different if you looked at events, challenges even losses in your life and thought to yourself, my life is about accepting that the Universe is unfolding in perfect order. When you learn to allow, a sense of peace envelops you and you begin to exhale the stress that is so deeply bottled up within you.

A poem that has been meaningful to me on this lesson of allowing life to unfold was written by R. Bach.

A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction
and at such a speed,
It feels an impulsion…this is the place to go now.
But the sky knows the reasons and the patterns
behind all clouds,
And you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough
To see beyond horizons.

Have a great few days!

Category:

General

Tagged with:

All IS AS IT SHOULD BE – REALLY?

A dear friend called to talk about the blog from Wednesday. She said, “I can accept what you are saying in the blog … all, that is, but the last statement, All is as it should be.” She went on to explain that we may have free will but the lack of ownership by others for their life and their lessons have a compounding effect on those of us close to them. I agreed, but once again repeated, what do YOU need to learn from these situations involving others. She made a great point. I know what I mean when I repeat the statement, “All is as it should be,” and those of you who have read my book, Just Behind the Door, understand that this has been THE ongoing statement that my son, from the other side, has communicated for over a decade. It makes so much sense to me but I have lived through this communication with Ronnie for so long that it is natural. So to be clearer about the intent in the phrase let me explain.

I believe each of us agrees, pre-birth, on the lessons we will work on in this lifetime. The themes are numerous, but to list just a few: emotional independence, overcoming feelings of powerlessness or unworthiness, overcoming our fears, forgiveness, gratitude, unconditional love, the list goes on and on. We agree to experience situations in our life that will help us learn the lessons we have chosen to learn. The challenges that are presented in learning these lessons can take us to the brink of denial, anger, rebellion, withdrawal even total helplessness until we finally get it, recognize it and learn from it. Remember no one but YOU agreed to work on the lessons that you are dealing with in your life. It is, as if, first God/Universal Energy whispers, (this is the first time the lesson is presented) then speaks ( a similar, more dramatic experience presented a second time) then shouts with an even more difficult, challenging situation the third (or more) time the lesson surfaces. The experiences just keep adding up, causing us tremendous hurt and challenge until, one day, we GET IT. There is no one to blame, no one to rail at because we chose to work on the particular lesson(s) until we internalize the learning.

I have experienced the death of two husbands, my son, two sisters, mother, father and close friends. In addition, I have experienced divorce – more than once. For each experience, I railed at the Universe. Why me? What have I done wrong? I demanded that the situation be different. I felt I should be able to fix it, if I just tried hard enough. Gradually, as I learned more, an “aha” happened. Now, I realize that my life is about accepting that I cannot control everything, to have greater faith in God/Universal Energy and, along the way, to learn to love myself. I guess I was a remedial learner who needed to experience many losses to finally get it!

So, when I say, “All is as it should be,” it is. When we look back – hindsight is always 20/20 – we have a greater awareness, if not acceptance, as to the why.

What lesson are you working on?

Category:

General

Tagged with:

Happiness from the Inside

Last night I was talking to a friend and said, “I am happy from the inside out.” Having lived through many life traumas, most recently the suicide of her husband, she said, “Wow, I never thought about happiness that way.” Those of you who have been following my blogs or who have read my book, Just Behind the Door, understand that I have also experienced many, many losses in my life. I do not talk from theory but from experience.

It may seem strange to talk about happiness on a website dealing with loss but it is something worth considering. Research has found that prosperity, health and physical attractiveness are only MINIMALLY related to one’s overall happiness. True, genetics does play a part in the happiness level of each person but ONLY a part. In fact, researchers have actually written a book on the topic of our “happiness set point.” Their work concludes that beyond circumstance and genetics, each of us has an additional 40% that we control in reference to our happiness index. Just think about that for a moment, 40% control – totally at our discretion – to determine how we will live our life. Amazing, isn’t it? We have the power to determine if we will be happy or sad, kind or offensive, giving or taking. The choice is always up to us.

The loss you may have had in our life will not be made easier by seeing your cup as half-empty for the rest of your life. Please think about how the loved one that you lost would want you to live the rest of your life; in sadness and remorse or ultimate happiness because of what you had the opportunity to experience.

We hear daily about the importance of having an optimistic attitude. Realizing that we CHOSE this life, with these lessons, takes away any possible issue of blame. It simply is what it is because we chose it. Accepting that allows us to forgive ourselves and others for the events of the past. We then can develop a sense of wonder – amazement even – for the people and opportunities in our future.

Make tomorrow a great day and remember, “All is as it should be.”

Category:

General

Tagged with:

Signs From Our Loved Ones

We know that when we ask our loved ones for a sign that they are with us, the signs come in various forms. It may be a phone call and their name shows up on caller ID, lights that flicker, something out of the ordinary happens in your life that only you and the person who has passed on would relate to – the signals are too varied to list all of them. When I just wanted reassurance that my son was close, I would ask him to send me a sign and I even specified the sign that I wanted, “Just show me a penny so that I know you are near,” I would think to myself. Within hours the pennies would start showing up. In my kitchen drawers (which I do clean out regularly) on my floor or carpet that I had just cleaned, in front of a chair that no one ever sits in, in my car and on and on. One day, I was at the car wash and was getting out of my car when the attendant asked me to move my car to another bay. No problem, I thought. As I opened the door to get out of my car once it was in the open bay, there is was – a penny. I naturally looked over to the first bay I had pulled into and there was no penny to be found. If a day is unusually challenging, sometimes I have found 4 or 5 pennies. It puts a smile on my face and I just say, “Thanks, Ronnie, I needed that!”

My daughter-in-law knows of this thing with pennies and recently sent me a poem about them. I googled the poem to be sure I gave the author proper credit. It turns out there was no known author. But imagine my surprise when I read a story from a man that said after his 18 year old son had died he was walking out of a store and started seeing pennies. Not just some – but many. In fact, he said by the time he picked them all up, filling both of his pockets, he had $6.00 worth of them. There were many other stories about the topic of signs on this website as well. Makes me realize how hard our loved ones are trying to get our attention and open the lines of communication with us. My son has proven to me that he always around. I am humbled and grateful for his unconditional love and ongoing communication.

The Angel and the Penny

I found another penny today
Just laying on the ground
But it’s not just a penny
This little coin I’ve found
That’s what my Grandma told me
She said angels toss them down
Oh, how I loved that story
She said when an angel misses you
They toss a penny down
Sometimes just to cheer you up,
To create a smile from a frown
So don’t pass by that penny
When you are feeling blue,
It may be a penny from heaven
That your loved one tossed to you!

Have a great few days and watch for signs from you loved one!

I have 2 book talks coming up for anyone that can attend: Kazoo Books, 2413 Parkview, Kalamazoo – 6:30 PM and Michigan News, 308 Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo – 5:00 PM

Category:

General

Tagged with:

Endings, Beginnings and a New Tomorrow

When we experience the end of something we often grieve and can become immobilized with hurt and uncertainty. Fear (although we may not label it as such) seems to surround us. We want to hold on with all of our might to what we had and yet it seems to slip away – sometimes in a rush and sometimes slowly, gradually, while your heart seems to be breaking. I know about the ‘ends’ of many things in life, I have been there. The toll endings can take on you seem immense at the time. It is, as if, the overcast skies last forever, and when the sun finally does appear, it no longer seems to give you the energy for a new day.

There is a quote in spiritualism that says, “When the student is ready, the teacher comes along.” The teacher may be something you read, someone you talk to, something you hear in the media or a thousand other things. The important issue is that similar to Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, from Roman mythology the ‘teacher’ helps you connect the dots in your life. At just the perfect moment, you seem to receive a flash in your mind, you make a connection and experience an ‘Aha’ regarding the situation. Things suddenly becomes clearer to you. Remember, hindsight is always 20/20. Whatever form the ‘teacher’ takes, the message received can change your life and give you a renewed sense of hope and belief in tomorrow. Sometimes we need to humble ourselves enough to seek out others to help us rethink our situation. Humbling ourselves, from time to time, can be a good thing. It helps us realize how important others are in our lives. We may need someone to gently turn the kaleidoscope in our minds to better illuminate the situation, to help us see a bit differently, with more light or color, until the moment of insight – the ;Aha’ arrives.

The Universal Energy/God doesn’t make mistakes. You were part of planning your life this time around and thus had a part in the planning of this particular event – this particular ending. Consciously, we can say “No way, I didn’t want this to happen.” Of course you didn’t on this level. But there is a level far beyond where it was important, for some reason, for you to live through it. There is no one to blame, nothing to rail at, just lessons to be learned. I have learned that it is important to recognize the anger, grief, sadness and any other difficult and painful feelings their rightful place, rather than burying them. It is an important act of compassion and healing for each of us. Think about the ending – the event that happened – what is it that most unnerves you about it. What is it that seems so unfair to you? What are you having trouble getting past? Once you surface the answers to these questions, you will be able to inhale, relax a bit and recognize that, as my son has told me from the other side, “Mom, everything is as it should be.”

Category:

General

Tagged with:

Do You Have Faith in Tomorrow?

Watching bits and pieces of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee celebration this weekend, I was moved to see the thousands of well-
wishers demonstrating such pride in their queen and country. The queen’s background is fascinating. When she was 14 and England was being bombed, she made a radio broadcast to the children of England stating, “In the end all will be well for God will care for us and give us victory and peace.” At 26 years of age she became Queen. She was no longer free to be a person in her own right but had to become all things to all people. She started weekly meetings with Winston Churchill and has continued the practice with every prime minister since that time. In addition to being the mother of four children she had a 24/7 job. As she witnessed divorces, separations, and deaths in her immediate family she just had to keep going. She adapted to the changes and losses in her life regardless of how difficult they may have been. She has the same human emotions that we all have as a mother, sister, daughter and wife and yet her 24/7 job, for the rest of her life, continues. There is no such thing as retirement for a queen – until death. In a televised address she called the celebration “a humbling experience.” Well done!

Luckily, we have not had to deal with the 24/7 expectancies in our lives that she has shouldered. We have had time to live our own lives, raise our families and even take time out for grief, when needed, without the mantel of expectancies hanging over our heads. I wondered to myself, how many of us can say that, like the queen, we have truly adapted – made changes for the positive – as our lives and our worlds have become more challenging. Do we look at our own lives optimistically, knowing that everything will work out as it is supposed to, or do we become bogged down in our lives wondering when ‘it’ will pass. The ‘it’ is called life. It won’t pass until we do, when our lessons are learned.

To remain optimistic requires that we believe in something bigger than ourselves. It has been said that, “One either has faith in God/Universal Energy or faith in our fears.” Whenever you begin to worry just think about that for a moment. Fear comes in so many forms and can paralyze us. When we lose someone it is natural to go through a period of mourning and fear. After all, life has suddenly changed –
oftentimes – without warning. As I discussed in my book, Just Behind the Door, the future can feel so uncertain after we experience a loss that we may need to seek the help of others to keep ourselves moving forward.

If we all work at fearing less and loving ourselves and others more the world will be a better place. It starts and ends with us. Take time to examine your own life. Don’t you find that 99% of what you worry about (fear) never happens. Yet many of us continue to waste the precious time we have on this earth worrying. We choose fear rather than belief. I don’t think it matters what name you give the power greater than yourself, it only matters that we realize that there is such a power and we are ALL a part of it. Like Queen Elizabeth II, let us give and receive love, have faith in our future and make the world a little better off when we leave it.

Category:

General

Tagged with:

Loss – Responsibility – Life Lessons

Healing yourself after a loss – whether it is a death, divorce, or other type of separation is difficult and can be life changing. I have described in my book, Just Behind the Door, the many losses in my life, so I know from experience that healing takes time. I have read that after a loss, the average person expects us to ‘move on with life’ after a few weeks. Really? I don’t know what planet they are from but I do know that moving on with grace and dignity takes much more time than a few weeks. Your love was real, your grief is real. You do not need to try to hide the fact that you have been deeply affected. Honor your feelings and be good to yourself in the meantime. Try to find others who will listen with a caring heart as you relive the life experiences involved in your loss. Everyone has a story to tell and it deserves to be heard. There are people out there that care enough about you to take the time to focus while you mend your broken heart, regardless of the time it takes.

I do believe that we experience losses for the lessons they can teach us. What have you learned from this journey so far? Has it changed anything about you or your perspective? This is an important question. I have found that life has a way of repeating itself when we don’t learn the first time a challenge is presented.

I heard a speaker recently who talked about how to achieve a greater sense of healing. She said we must examine our life path and accept the responsibility that nothing happens by accident. We were part of our initial life planning – including the loss that we experienced. She feels that people who get stuck in grief do so because of one of two possible reasons. Either they believe that God or some other power did this TO them or that they just seem to continually attract random acts of negatives and catastrophes in their lives. In other words, they feel helpless and, at times, even hopeless, because they refuse to accept any responsibility.

I know that trying to wrap our heads around any possible role involved in a death or any other type of life changing loss is incredibly difficult. You just want to say, “Are you kidding, you think I wanted this to happen!” Of course not, at least not on a conscious level. However, as hard as it is to think that we had some part in the planning of our loss, I do believe it to be true. Why? Because my son, on the other side, has told me so. There was something that I needed to learn from it.

Regardless of what happens, I do not feel that some entity out there does this TO us or that we just experienced dumb luck. No, I believe it is much deeper and more spiritual that those beliefs.

I would love to hear how you feel about this perspective.

Category:

General

Tagged with:

Virtues and Reasons for Life Challenges

The 27 Divine Virtues that Robert Schwartz talked about in his lecture, is to help us to determine what particular areas we are working on in this lifetime. Usually 3-5 seem to pop out as areas that are the most difficult for us to accept, believe in or practice. Going more deeply into the why we may have chosen particular virtues to work on, he has discovered 4 main reasons. They are explained in greater depth in his book, Your Soul’s Gift.

He first talks about KARMA. He defines karma differently. He feels it is not a ‘cosmic debt’ that we are trying to repay but rather as something our soul needs to experience to more fully understand the emotional lessons involved in fully learning the virtue. He further explains that karma can be for 1 of 2 reasons. Balancing or releasing. Balancing our karma is when we have purposely designed life lessons to help us experience all emotional sides or an issue for deeper understanding. The result then, is a 360 degree view of the virtue. You really, really get it at that point. Releasing, on the other hand, is achieved when we finally understand the underlying root cause of the imbalance and can release it. For instance, if a person looks at life as if the cup is half empty, scarcity or the fear of not having enough of something, may be at the root cause. FEAR of … (you fill in the word) is usually the cause of our imbalances in life. Once we truly internalize that anything (including fear) that we give emotional energy to, we are actually drawing more of it to us, we will stop. If you don’t want scarcity in your life stop dwelling on it. Think abundance and believe that there is more than enough in this Universe for everyone. Refuse to be crippled by fear of anything!

The second reason Schwartz feels that we may have planned certain challenges in our life is for HEALING. He explains that when we have unresolved negative energy from a previous lifetime (such as anger, guilt, blame, judgment of self and/or others) we may plan specific life issues to live through that involve these exact feelings so that we can heal ourselves from inside out and achieve greater understanding and peace.

Schwartz believes the third reason we may have chosen our life challenges is for SERVICE TO OTHERS. The phrase is self explanatory. We know that what we give, we receive and what we teach, we learn. He says that this area, service to others is an ‘accelerated path’ of spiritual growth. Remember the phrase, pay it forward? It applies here, for sure. When we remember that we are all part of God/Universal energy and when we help others we are also helping ourselves, the impact becomes that much greater.

He feels a fourth reason for our challenges on this earth is for CONTRAST. My understanding is that on earth we experience an intensity of emotional experiences. No kidding! We are in a classroom of nonstop learning! So our opportunity for growth (to become a better person) is greater. It makes me think of the fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson, The Princess and the Pea. Even under 20 mattresses she was able to feel the pea. Her physical/emotional awareness was so heightened from her experience as a princess. On earth, since our challenges are so vast and difficult, our own physical and emotional growth is heightened which allows us to develop a higher level of functioning and understanding.

Have you found anything from his work that seems to speak to you? I hope so.

STAY TUNED – ON MY NEXT BLOG ON WEDNESDAY, I WILL SHARE WITH YOU ABOUT MY BOOK. IT IS NOW AVAILABLE!

Category:

General

Tagged with:

The Unanswered ‘Whys’ in Life

Have you ever asked yourself when facing a tough time in life, “Why did this have to happen to me?” Possibly the better question for me to ask is, “Have you ever NOT asked yourself that question?” When we face difficult life challenges, loss of our loved ones or other heart wrenching issues, it seems our first response is simply, WHY. We are thinking beings who are just trying to understand. Maybe by understanding the why, it will make more sense and help us process through the hurt. Being human we seek a rational understanding of events; especially when they appear to be random acts of devastation in our lives.

I have been in search of the meaning of life since age 26. I’m not kidding here. Maybe I am just a slow learner when it comes to the big question of why are we here on this planet – at this time – and for what purpose. The why is the trigger for me. It has been a slow process of discovery. Just when it seemed like I was close to a deeper understanding, a new and more difficult challenge would appear.

At times I wanted to say to God/Universal Energy, “Really, are you seriously throwing this at me now – or again.” I truly did think those thoughts, more than once. I guess I was just feeling overwhelmed, undervalued and sorry for myself. After licking my wounds yet again, I would finally regain my sense of what I had discovered as truth and move through the latest challenge, nursing my bruises back to health.

This is what I have discovered through my years of searching for the meaning of the “whys” in my life.

1. There is a source of LOVING power in this Universe greater than ourselves.

2. It is available to us, at any time, simply by asking for help. ASKING is the key. One has to humble oneself to ask.

3. There really are no “random acts of devastation” in life. As my son, who has passed on, has repeatedly told me, “Mom, everything is as it should be.”

4. Everything I have lived through has had a lesson in it. Once I truly learned the lesson, it did not reappear in my life.

5. I chose these lessons to work on in my life to develop greater compassion, patience and understanding.

6. Most of all, I have learned that life really is fair. When we look at the lives of others and think they got a better deal – think again –
they have their own lessons they are working on which are as difficult for them as our lessons are for us. Unless we walk in their shoes we cannot fully understand.

Does any of this resonate with you? I would love to hear from you.

Have a great rest of the week!

Category:

General

Tagged with: