A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle

I invite you to join Oprah and myself in our weekly online sessions.

We will be studying A New Earth, but not as an academic subject or in order to acquire new theories or beliefs. Our aim is to explore through the teachings of the book the most important question you can ask: What is the purpose of my life and how do I fulfill that purpose?

It will be a course in self-exploration and awakening. It will help you see what the dysfunctional patterns are within yourself that create unnecessary conflict and suffering and prevent you from finding true fulfillment. Hopefully, it will also help you access a dimension within yourself that perhaps you didn't know existed or only caught glimpses of on rare occasions.

Don't be trapped for the rest of your life within the narrow confines of your personal history and your conditioned personality and allow your life to be transformed from within, through the power of consciousness itself. —Eckhart Tolle

I'm really excited about both the book and the class!

http://www.oprah.com/

A Leap Day "Friday Five"

From WillsMama and Songbird at RevGalBlogPals...

Tell us about a time you:

1. Leapt before you looked

I can think of many examples of that one!...

(a) Becoming a Christian for "fire insurance" right after I turned 16. Though I am still a Christian, I shake my head at some of the propaganda that passed for absolute truth in those days!
(b) Having a fling with my best friend in junior high. She initiated it. I shrugged my shoulders and went along.
(c) After being laid off from my job as a family counselor, unemployed for months, I was offered two jobs. The one I took changed my life! And I certainly had no idea what I was getting into when I took it!

2. Leapt to a conclusion

I have done that more than a few times with my son, who is 7 years old. Sometimes his intentions are more innocent than I thought. And sometimes, they are not!

3. Took a Leap of Faith

In November, 2007, my sweetheart and I were legally married in Toronto. She still lives in Canada and I live here in the U.S. We don't know yet when we will be able to live in the same country, but we decided to trust that one day we will.

4. Took a literal Leap

*No interesting stories here! Cheerfully leaps over this question :)*

5. And finally, what might you be faced with leaping in the coming year?

I am in the process of building my healing practice and I think the main thing I need to leap over is me and my limited beliefs about what is possible.

*practices making small Superheroine leaps on the way to making bigger ones*

The Bible: A Miracle in Spite of Itself

Tonight I went to Wednesday night supper at my church and then, had the Lenten Bible study with our pastor while the kids went to youth choir and youth group. The passage we talked about was Exodus 17.

It became apparent, through our discussion, that the "miracle" that occurred was more likely an incident where Moses went off to be alone for a bit, grumbled a little to God about the people he was travelling with and their complaints about being thirsty, and then, suddenly remembered a way to get water. Striking the stick against the rock to get water was something he would have known to do because he had been a shepherd.

It reminds me of what sometimes happens when I have misplaced something and I finally get exasperated enough to ask God where it is. Suddenly, I think of a place I hadn't looked and lo and behold, there it is!

I got several things out of tonight's Bible study...

1) When there are troubles, the best thing to do is find a way to be alone for a while and talk to God about it.

2) The answers are within and if we get quiet enough to hear God's voice inside, we;ll get them.

3) The "greats" in the Bible are likely to have heard from God exactly the way we do today.

4) Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear (things may not have happened precisely as described). As Marcus Borg says, I take the Bible seriously but not literally!

5) Given that the Bible we read today was written by humans (all of them men), all of them influenced by their culture, who likely made mistakes and may even have created a few accounts here and there, the miracle of inspiration is that there is a message of continuity that survived all that. We see a God of love and mercy who created us and wants us and we see that God in both the OT and NT!

That's the miracle!

The Bible managed to capture a sense of who God really is in spite of itself!!

Release of Rejection

Something unusual happened today. I was taking a walk with my son, across the dirt and under the trees, and when we got to the one we think of as the "love" tree, I didn't feel much love. I didn't feel much of anything!

Now, I've not been feeling well these past few days. But taking a walk outside almost always makes me feel better!

I realized that I was feeling sad and began to wonder why. Watching the Oscars made me sad, again, about Heath, but I was aware that that wasn't it, there was more. So I just let myself be and finished the walk. It wasn't until I was back inside that I remembered something that happened recently, an exchange with a friend that hurt my feelings and made me feel rejected!

It hadn't occurred to me when it happened that I would need to heal it, but apparently I did. So I began to work on healing it and several other incidences that have occurred in the past few months came to mind and I realized that they were presenting themselves for healing, too.

In about 15 minutes, I had healed the rejection, infused forgiveness and created the ability to connect again fully with the people who had hurt me (I did this using reiki and the Healing Codes). When I was done, that's when I realized something I think is rather important. I am used to thinking that trauma or really upsetting events lead to closing the heart. But today I realized it may happen far more frequently than that.

Each time we are rejected or hurt we react by closing the doors of our hearts. I'm sure it's an attempt to protect ourselves from being hurt again. But what that does is keep out the love that's in the air around us. From our husbands and wives, from our children, from our friends. From God or the universe. Love is all around, as the Mary Tyler Moore theme goes. But our ability to perceive it, to feel it, will be compromised to some degree, at least temporarily, if we have unhealed wounds, even small ones.

"Music Simply Overtakes Me!"

At the end of our day, Jonathan and I sometimes watch "Little Bear" on Noggin, and he loves one of the "commercials" where someone (a character whose name I do not know) sings a whole song about music. Jonathan invariably sings along and I love to watch him, especially when he gets to the line "music simply overtakes me"! He adds a little Satchmo-style with jazz hands and quite the increase in volume.

This morning, he decided to write a song based on yesterday's social graces lesson on "magic words". Then, he finished a book he has been writing about this year's birthday extravaganza.

I love his creativity!

Touching Earth

Another great homeschooling day, although I am still recovering from sitting next to someone with pets during the scrapbooking crop Saturday afternoon.

In the middle of our day, I had a break, for a meeting. The group of us who take turns facilitating Sunday School at church had a meeting this morning. We need to choose a focus for the next few months, but half of us weren't there so we put off making a final decision until next week.

Then, Jonathan had ballroom dance class, followed by social graces class.

Our day ended with a walk under the trees. But this time we were able to get closer then we usually do. Because people use that courtyard area for their dogs and often aren't courteous about cleaning up afterward, we don't go in too far. But the landscaping people cleared it out today and there was rich dark soil to walk on when we got back this afternoon.

So we walked up to our favorite trees, talked to them, infused their energies and connected solidly to the earth beneath us.

I'm glad the day is over, but it had some great moments!!

My son, Moses!

My church has a kids event every Sunday morning called "Creative Kids". It's a very creative church and the kids are often involved in the service by putting on skits, acting out the Scripture reading or singing a song.

But you never know what the plan is! It's always a surprise after the service begins. Sunday School ends, I take a seat in the sanctuary and then, I see what happens.

Well, this morning, Jonathan ran up to the stage with the other kids and he was carrying a stick. I was just excited to see him up there but then, suddenly realized he was Moses. And what an adorable one!!

Church was good today. But for some reason, I was bored!

It might be because I was so tired. We've been celebrating Jonathan's birthday for two days. And I spent all afternoon yesterday making a scrapbook for him with pictures of him and Shelly. Then, we went to dinner, I scooted him into bed, watched a little TV and had to get up again this morning, if you can believe that! :)

I really didn't want to get up and go to church. But I also did. So off we went!

But my day has been a little off.

Maybe I can catch up on sleep tonight?