Cowgirl Interlude – Time of Your Life (Good Riddance)

“Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)”

Green Day

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
So make the best of this test, and don’t ask why
It’s not a question, but a lesson learned in time
It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

So take the photographs, and still frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time
Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial
For what it’s worth it was worth all the while

It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

Shampoo Series – Broken or Just Not Yet Blooming?

I started this blog over a month ago and I still feel like I’m fumbling with concepts that have to be experienced to be understood.  I have trouble thinking anyone can read this blog and “get” what I’m talking about.

I was thinking about Paul, about how we don’t seem to “meet” in most of my worldview and concepts. I mistakenly gave the impression that I felt he was “broken.” I was driving along one day, thinking about that, and wondering what would be a better way to say it, and I decided that it was closer to say he just wasn’t in full bloom. Maybe.

Then last night at a Gathering for the Work of Byron Katie, Sashen talked about cause & effect in terms of a rosebud.

What Sashen was saying is that we do these “non-technique techniques” and think that we caused something, when actually, if we threw the rosebud in a closet, it would still bloom.

Most likely, when we came back to find the rosebud in full bloom, we would think that our “technique” did it, when actually, the rose would have bloomed had we done nothing at all.

I used to think no one could have these “blooming experiences” with words. I was wrong. I’ve had some really amazing experiences from ”just words” since then.  

“Which words?” you may be thinking.

The ones I write about here – The Work of Byron Katie, Instant Advanced Meditations (IAM) by Steven Sashen, and Jason Shulman’s book Kabbalistic Healing are my best examples.

But Steven is right. These are not “techniques” the way we usually think of them. And furthermore, when we use them to get some predictable outcome they don’t “work.”

Counselors & healers seem to think people are “broken.”

That’s part of why I have never worked as a counselor in an agency. The DSM IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Volume IV) is just a big storybook about how people can be “broken.”

I don’t buy it and I certainly can’t sell it.

Of course, what I do buy can still be used as a way to “help,” “heal,” or “fix” things.

The minute we do that they don’t “work.”

It seems to be when I just play around with them to see what happens, some of the most amazing things “happen.”

Sashen, Katie and Shulman, and come to think of it, David Deida’s “opening as,” and Eckhart Tolle’s Power of Now are all word-based things that seem to create some kind of “experience.”

I used to call those experiences “healing.”

But that would imply I was sick.

Was I?

I don’t think so. I was just doing what humans do.

Hopefully, Steven’s monthly IAM Chit-Chat tomorrow call will shed some more light on this . . . and how to talk and write about it.

Love, Ann

PS – I know Paul and some of his friends read this blog. Would you mind dropping me a comment or an email to say whether this is clear to you or not?  Thanks!

Space – From 8 Angles

How do I tell you how important I think the subjects and ideas at the following link are?

And how creative?

Post them as the only item in today’s blog.

Maybe that will do it.

http://www.hrmacmillanspacecentre.com/calendar.htm

http://www.hrmacmillanspacecentre.com/pdfs/Spider1.pdf 

      Let’s Start Wasting Money in Space

http://www.hrmacmillanspacecentre.com/pdfs/Spider2.pdf

     Sustaining the Thrill

http://www.hrmacmillanspacecentre.com/pdfs/Spider3.pdf

      Space’s Best Kept Secret

http://www.hrmacmillanspacecentre.com/pdfs/Spider4.pdf

   They Shoulda Made a Pile of ’Em

http://www.hrmacmillanspacecentre.com/pdfs/Spider5.pdf

   The Best Umbrella You Can Get

http://www.hrmacmillanspacecentre.com/pdfs/Thrilli6.pdf

     Shoot Out at the O.S.T. Corral or All You Need Is Delta Vee

http://www.hrmacmillanspacecentre.com/pdfs/Thrillin7.pdf 

      The Sky is Alive

http://www.hrmacmillanspacecentre.com/pdfs/Thrillin%27%208.pdf

     Space Generation

Yes, by Spider Robinson.

Love, Ann

“Those whose power is genuinely absolute are incorruptible.”

            - Spider Robinson
              In both “DeathKiller” and “Time Pressure”

Relationship Break Ups – A Guide to New Relationships?

One of my favorite questions to ask someone I’m considering dating is this:

Tell me about how your last few relationships broke up.

No, I’m not really interested in the story itself. What I’m interested in is what it tells me about the person telling the story.

It is amazing how much information you get about a person this way. You find out something about how they blame or take responsibility. You may find out whether they are vindictive. You may find out how considerate they are of others.

Let me spell it out for you:

If you get a story where every sentence begins “He (or she) blah blah blah” and then goes into everything he or she did wrong, well, you’ve got a lot of blame there. Are you interested in a relationship with someone who continually blames the other person? I’m not.

If you get a story all about how “I showed them. I showed up for the divorce hearing in my wedding dress.” Well, you’ve got a bitter and vindictive person, someone who can’t let go when someone else says they are done. Do you want that? I don’t.

“We went for counseling, but nothing worked.” Hmm, I’d need more information. Okay, they tried counseling. Tell me more?

You may hear how they refused to return belongings or how the other person refused to return theirs. You may hear about disagreements over children and property. Pay attention. You’re learning something about how this person handles shared property and the lives of children.

Maybe they tell you they don’t go to certain parties or clubs anymore because their ex goes there. Details may tell you they’re honoring a request for no contact for a certain period of time for healing. I wouldn’t mind that one.

Or maybe they are still in so much pain that they can’t stand to see their ex out having fun? If so, they’re still deeply in their healing process, on the rebound, as they say, and not ready for a new relationship at all.

I love the stories where they say, “Well, we didn’t live well together, but we make great friends now.” or “Our lives were going in different directions, but we still stay in touch.” or “I see him for lunch when he’s in town.”

That’s maturity. That’s responsibility. That is likely to be someone who would be able to have a good relationship, recognize when things aren’t working, and part as friends.

“We were right for each other at the time.” That’s great. They recognize that we do our best and that some things aren’t meant to be forever.

Do you know my favorite story about how someone I was dating broke up with their previous girlfriend?

“We just looked at each other and I said, ‘Are we done?’ and she said, ‘Yeah, I think we’re done.”

Beautiful! Let’s do it like that!

Love, Ann

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.

                                              - Marcus Aurelius

Someone can hurt me. (a belief)

Is it true?

                                             – Byron Katie

Cowgirl Interlude – Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Jen Lancaster? She Rocks.

I am so totally getting into this book by Jen Lancaster: Bright Lights, Big Ass.

http://www.jennsylvania.com/

I tried a part time job at my favorite major bookseller, Borders. I was hoping to garner enough to pay rent on a part time, later hours job, so that I could entertain myself writing this blog in the mornings, and eventually, the book of Ann’s Tale.  I twisted my ankle at Paul’s son’s graduation back on Memory Day, and reluctantly took my leave of the 8 hour shifts of standing. Well, I don’t miss the standing part, but I do miss working with book people and getting paid to tell people what to read all day. That was awesome.

Did you know the whole store is your personal library if you work for them? Ooo la la! And you can check out the publisher’s advance copies of beaucoups of fabulous new books. Man, oh man. Book Worm Heaven!

So, our trainer, Reba, she told us one day we could take any book we liked from a stack of these promo copies. She said she personally recommended this Jen Lancaster book, Bright Eyes, Big Ass. So, I went for it.

And Jen? Jen can write like a Valley Girl Erma Bombeck.

Oh. My. God.

Like that.

You totally know what her voice inflection would be like if she was sitting there sipping coffee with you while you laugh your ass off at her book. I mean uproariously. If I weren’t so unselfconscious and exhibitionistic I would not read this in public! I laugh at this book like there is no tomorrow.

I am kinda known for my laugh anyway. I really let myself go when I laugh (or cry).

I’ve already found myself at the Braying Donkey, a new coffee shop,  with a girl who refuses to speak to me because I once moved in – as a roommate – with one of her exes she broke up with 2 years before that!1 Well, I was reading Jen Lancaster and looked up to spy Becky just sitting there, turned in her chair so her back was to me, so she could, like, pretend she didn’t know I was there. But then I’m laughing to beat the band at this Jen Lancaster book. There’s no way on Earth that everyone didn’t know I was there. People passing by on the street looked in to see what was so damned funny.

Honestly, when I first looked at the book, I thought there was no way I was going to like it. Why? It wasn’t science fiction. It wasn’t a mystery. And it mentions current events and celebrities. 2

But I? I heart Jen Lancaster.

My trainer used that one, too. Pretty clear what it means. Who knew that ancient bumper sticker would become a colloquialism?

Jen writes these cute little footnotes to her stories, too. 3

She spices up the book with little emails she writes to her girlfriends about her day. I won’t try that one here because I don’t know how to put it in a text box and make it look right.

She reads like your favorite gossipy neighbor next door. And it’s amazing how hilarious that can be . . . and how hopeful.

So, look her up if you need a laugh, and sometimes I just really, really do. It could relieve your depression.

Jen Lancaster, the next Erma Bombeck.

http://www.jennsylvania.com/

Besides, I like anyone who hates Halloween as much as I do!

Love, Ann

1 – I tried to call her about it and she never returned my phone calls. I figured he was being a better friend than she was, so I packed my bags and moved in, trading cooking for rent. Our rooms were on opposite sides of a living room in a remodeled high school and I swear I never touched him.

2. I don’t even watch TV and very few movies.

3. Like this, but she knows how to superscript her footnotes and I haven’t figured that out on WordPress.

Egoscue Method of Healing Through Motion

Well, I never thought I’d find something I think will replace Flow Chiropractic (formerly Network Chiropractic) in my life, but it looks like I have. 

Steven Sashen mentioned Egoscue Therapy to me months ago, and I just now got around to checking it out. I ordered a used copy of one of the books and nearly every word I read rang resoundingly true to me.

The first chapter of the book I got points out that the body is designed to move.

Well, yeah, but due to various traumas in my very very early life, mine never has. I have sought help through many modalities. I’m doing great with the mental/emotional/spiritual healing. No problems there (Remember… “There is a problem.”  “Is it true?”)  And I still have body things that aren’t feeling good. Pain is my messenger.

Not being able to move, I gain weight. It doesn’t take a lot of movement for me to start losing weight but it HURTS to move.

Not having seen Kelly, my chiropractor in about 3 months, my body was in sad shape when I met my Egoscue therapist yesterday for the first time.

Network Chiropractic, then Flow Chiropractic has kept me relatively out of pain for about 14 years, but movement? Movement is supposed to feel good?  Can’t prove that by me! (Well, maybe sex, but that’s all and even dancing has fallen off my calendar.)

After an hour with the Egoscue therapist yesterday, I was moving more fluidly than I ever remember moving in my entire life, far better than after even my best chiropractic adjustments with Dr. Lance Wright, *and* I left with a menu of ecises to take home and do the same exact thing FOR MYSELF. Some of it is based on yoga and other therapies.

The ecises are designed to get the body back into balance with shoulders, hips, knees and ankles functioning according to design. When we’re out of balance hips try to do the work of knees and ankles try to be shoulders and things like that. It doesn’t work.

The disclaimer in the books basically say that if you need a disclaimer and are not willing to take responsibility for your own health, put the book back on the shelf and walk away. Wow.

If you feel drawn, try it. It’s pricey, but I have been graced with a gift from Paul to get started on it and we’ll see how it goes from here. (Thank you, Paul!)

Here is the web site so you can find someone doing Egoscue Therapy in your area.

http://www.egoscue.com/htdocs/index.asp

Travel Clinics in various areas are at: 

http://www.egoscue.com/htdocs/painfree/travelclinic.asp

You can get online ecises tailored to your body on the web site.

http://www.egoscue.com/htdocs/index.asp

There are books & ecise DVDs at Amazon:

The Egoscue Method of Health Through Motion

Pain-Free, A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain

Pain-Free For Women – The Revolutionary Method for Ending Chronic Pain

Pain-Free at Your PC

Egoscue: Painfree Workout Series, Vol. I & II (DVDs)

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/103-9103677-6115007?initialSearch=1&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Egoscue&Go.x=14&Go.y=9

Ask me questions, check it out, let me know how it goes for you.

Love, Ann

“What is not happening is adequate motion.”

                            – Pete Egoscue

Ping

My Yogi Tea tab today says:

“Where there is love, there is no question.”

My friend in London sent me a gorgeous voice recording of Sonnet 116 by Shakespeare. I’ll post that as a Cowgirl Interlude soon.

Paul sent me “On the Street Where You Live” from My Fair Lady.

He is on his way to Phoenix to meet my mother and her husband?

Oh, how did that happen? Well, Mother is cleaning out some books. She had a couple of Linda Goodman’s astrology books to give away and wondered if I wanted them. I don’t, but Paul was interested in taking a look at them. Okay. Now he is on his way to Phoenix. He has business there, and he will be visiting his parents. Then he will have dinner with Mother and her husband on Thursday.

Me?

Oh Jeez. I don’t know!

It’s just the most romantic thing that’s every happened to me and I’ve had a lot of romance in my life, a lot.

I’m nervous. That’s what.

I only know one person who did a complete about-face on a relationship. Steven Sashen’s wife did that. The story is in Byron Katie’s second book,  I Need Your Love – Is That True? It wasn’t until Sashen really let go of the tension of wanting a relationship with her that things relaxed, clarity prevailed and she looked at him and thought that she could have the freedom and love she had always wanted.

Up until then, she was not interested in him.

That gave them a couple of years to become friends first. She says that made all the difference. Steven proved he’d be there, that he wanted more than a fantasy. That took some time.

And I’ve got time.

I will marry when it is simply the Next thing to do.

I will marry when there is no aching, needing, wanting, gotta have it on either side – mine or my husband’s. When marrying is the next obvious step to having the life that each of us wants. When it is not an attempt to fill some imaginary void inside, but an expression of the fullness of who I am, and who he is.

I want that decision to arise naturally and spontaneously from a place of peace and clarity.

I think you begin to understand that now if you’ve read a few of these blogs.

You also understand why, when we are “needing” and “wanting” it tells me clearly that in that moment, that this is not it.

And when we are clear and peaceful, I can see the possibility.

Now, when *I* am clear and peaceful about marrying someone - Paul or whomever – then and only then, will I say, “yes.”

Ideally, all decisions – cars, furniture, vacations – arise from that clear, peaceful, God-centered spontaneous place.

Love, Ann

“Success is a side-effect of clarity.”

                   – Steven Sashen

                    http://sashen.com/blog/

Shampoo Series – Inner Health

Health

I have learned that most health issues - physical, mental and emotional  - have to do with using our body as a toxic dump for things that were never meant to go in our mouths (or our minds.)

This is rooted in lack of spiritual trust, relaxation and peace.

We think we have to do things to support and protect ourselves from the illusion of attacks from “outside.” There is no “outside.” All that stuff we think is attacking us, be it other people, viruses, pollution, disagreement, countries, ALL of it, is our own THINKING.

“Reality is kinder than your thinking.”  Byron Katie

We terrorize ourselves with lies and stories about the past and the future and this keeps us from experiencing a True Present.

The habitual tension and stress keeps our bodies in a nearly constant state of agitation and red alert both waking and sleeping, which tears down our mental, emotional and physical health over the years. Depending on our diet and exercise habits, this creates illness (aka dis-EASE) of various types.

Meditation reconnects us with a true present and inner peace.

Then, and only then, can we really begin to heal.

IAM meditations are still my favorites.

Starting back in the 80’s I have sporadically done cleanses, mostly Arise & Shine – www.ariseandshine.com. If you like to read, I would highly recommend Dr. Richard Anderson’s book, Cleanse and Purify Thyself. Basically, we need to clean out the toxic dump that we’ve poured coffee, white sugar, white flour, cooked foods and other unnatural substances into all of these years. First, remove the toxins, then support it by not doing that anymore.

We use herbs, lots of good clean water, whole foods in their natural state, etc. to support that health.

We do yoga, exercise, sex and breathwork to bring our bodies into better physical balance.

We talk with others – counselors, friends, and support groups (like the 12 Step groups, and group counseling, seminars and workshops) to return to mental/emotional health.

We question our thoughts with The Work of Byron Katie, Quantum Wealth, Sedona Method and other paths to clarity.

And we continue to meditate and stay connected to our inner wisdom to know specifically which of these to do and when. We make no decisions for ourselves. We allow Guidance to arise from within.

Thus, when life’s seeming challenges arise – death of a loved one, divorce, a dis-ease, job issues, relationship questions – we go inside, find that inner peace in Wholeness, and we are guided in peace and truth.

I could say much more about the details of which healing modalities I have found valuable through the years, but I think the framework is enough for now.

I ran this much of the article by my friend in London and he reminded me of somthing very important:

It is just as stressful to make “health” a rule or a requirement.

If we try to use external “rules” instead of inner guidance then those external, stressful, imposed ideas or concepts about how things “should be” can be just as counterproductive as junk food.

Our Guidance may be to eat the chocolate chip cookie.

Love, Ann

“Health is a result of relinquishing attack thoughts.”

                          -  A Course in Miracles