Give a Party with Meaning

Two of my clients have recently had surgery for cancer - one for third-stage ovarian cancer and the other for metastatic breast cancer. Both these women are intelligent, resourceful, creative and courageous. Both are working with traditional and alternative healing approaches. Cancer has inspired both to find deeper self-awareness, ask profound spiritual questions, and to live more consciously. They both respect and are grateful for the challenges and gifts having cancer has brought to their psycho-spiritual journey through life.


Both are aware that many of their friends and family aren’t comfortable including the big “C” in their conversations or expressing their big “C” caring and concerns. I am blessed as my role as counselor means I must be authentic in my listening and my speaking around all kinds of “big” and awkward subjects. The context of my relationship with both of these clients gives me permission to ask real questions and offer my perspectives and support.

I care deeply about my clients and in meeting their needs for a counseling friendship and serving their personal development, I always learn and grow and heal. In addressing a particular situation, I often experience an inspired truth or creative possibility that has benefit to all of us, not just my client.

In conversation with one of these women around the dilemma and burden of the “unspoken” thoughts and feelings in their friends and family, a new opportunity appeared that I want to share with all of you. It is not just about cancer, its about so many aspects of our life journeys and our loving communities.

Have a party! Not just gathering people together for food, drink and chatter. Add a deeper dimension of a shared expressions of meaning and love that’s fun and profound.

The party can be hosted by the “center of attention” or by someone who loves her or him. The party can be any size but 4 to 16 is a great size for comfortable expression.

This is a love feast - a party with love as the reason for showing up and being present.

After the initial food, drink and conversation, ask everyone to gather in one room and let the meaning begin. Everyone is asked to express their love, feelings and wishes for the center of attention, the one sitting in the “love seat”.

Here are several suggestions for a creative and liberating process of expression.

An Image of Love

Have large sheets of drawing paper, lots of crayons, markers, colored pencils, magazines and glue sticks. For 30 minutes or more let everyone create a work of personal imagination about their feelings around the cancer (or whatever crisis is being experienced like divorce, loss of a job, etc), their friendship and their offer of love and wishes for the future. Assure everyone that this is not about artistic skill but about love and meaning. Ask everyone to share their “work of Love” and describe the meaning behind each image, color or form and what they were feeling while they were working on it. Give them permission to express their truth (which includes, saying they need to pass on the sharing).

A Card of Inspiration

Get a set of angel cards or any other set of inspirational cards. Have everybody choose a card. Go around the room and share what the particular card expresses about their feelings in regard to the cancer, their friend and their shared relationship. They can also share what the card inspires in them.

The Index Card

This is probably the least threatening exercise for those who aren't used to expressing feeling in pubic. Give each person an index card or a sheet of paper and a pen. Ask them to write down their feeling and wishes. Have them fold it up and place it in a basket or bowl. Then ask one person to read them all out loud. You can bring in humor with this exercise by asking people to add something funny about the “center of attention” - I’ve even suggested they make up something wild and crazy.


The relaxed and warm feeling of a party and the permission, encouragement and creative means to express love will give a memorable, liberating and healing experience for everyone, especially one in the love seat.

Yes, giving and attending a party of meaning can be a moving experience, so have a box of tissues for all the tears of love. It is so special.

On Completion and Hope

Spring is a time of beginnings. I love beginnings. I love the creative potential living in beginnings.

And, I have a certain uneasiness, maybe sometimes a terror, of completion. This is probably because I confuse completion with ending, death, nevermore, impossible to alter or evolve, ultimate separation.

So I feel I am overwhelmed with incompletions. Paradoxically, this is hardly true as my life is full of completions. I get things done and done well. Yet, I seem to avoid looking at and recognizing the completions and closures that abound in my life.

I am going to use this post as a way to explore my feelings. From my experience as a counselor I am aware many people have similar issues. If you are one of those lucky individuals with a clear sense of process – of beginning, middle and end – I would ask you to post your words of wisdom to share with the rest of us.


What is a way I can reframe “completion” so that I feel safe and alive?


I just looked up the definition and the etymological root of completion. I could write a book on each of the definitions.

From the Latin root I get the picture of “fulfill.”

The dictionary offers several definitions:

• Collected together – ordered.
• Run its course – finished, done.
• Entire, full, to the greatest extent.
• Successfully throw to a receiver – boy, this is important for me as I am a message maker and need to get the message to my audience. If I have difficulty completing I will never fulfill my life’s purpose.
• Make whole or perfect – I am so stuck with not feeling whole or loveable/perfect that I project it on to my life and my work.

Hope never lets me complete!

There is an insight forming in my soul as I write. It is about hope. Hope keeps me from being aware of all my "completions." Hope keeps me focused on the future. Completion is a focus on what has been done in the past.

My painful childhood developed in me such a strong sense of hope and an strong identity with hope. Hope was my survival. To survive I needed to endure and hope. I hoped for rescue. I did not plan an escape. Rescue is wishful and passive. Escape is intentional and active. I did not have a plan! I did not have benchmarks of accomplishment. I had hope.

Like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, I thought sleep (even with all the nightmares) was the way to pass the time until the rescuing kiss touched my lips. Hope kept telling me all I had to do was go to sleep and dream. I did not need to have a plan of action with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

My identification with hope as the path to fulfillment was so powerful that all that I was actually doing to shape my life (when I wasn’t just hoping) seemed like a vague disembodied dream. I couldn’t experience process or completion. I only felt real and my life only felt real when I was hoping.

Hope can be addictive. From a neurochemical perspective, hope triggers the release of dopamine, the pleasure reward neurotransmitter that is the root of addiction. We call addictive, dopamine-producing drugs, dope. My dope has been hope.

How can I give up hope? Hope has been such a good friend. I could whisper to hope all my dreams. Hope just listens and smiles. Yes, the smiles gave me comfort, but what I really needed was courage and a plan. Hope doesn’t change things and doesn’t complete things. Hope does not get things done. Hope just produces more hope or fades and sends me crashing into despair. Hope is my dope.


Now I need to face hope withdrawal. I need to be conscious of process and completion. I need to no longer look at completion as death mere evidence that “my dreams have come true, my wishes have been fulfilled.” Damn! Dreams and wishes just call forth hope. Now I must set intentions for results, take action and live without hope. I can have a life of completions or I can have a life of hope. This should not be a hard choice, but hope feels so good and so familiar, can I really live without it. Yes!!!

My life going forward is shaped by completion consciousness. Each day is filled with getting things done and building more and more awareness of what was completed, what benchmarks were met, what I did. Noting how I move toward completion is an accounting system. I manage my will/intention/completion accounts each day.

Now I understand why taking a course on Conscious Bookkeeping included homework on completion. (I took this teleseminar in February) I wanted to give up hoping I would have enough money and learn how to keep a complete accounting of my financial life so I would know how much money I had. The warmth, sensitivity, and practical wisdom of Bari Tessler-Linden, who designed Conscious Bookkeeping, and the rest of the group on the teleseminar, created an opportunity for me to begin look at my financial challenges from a new perspective – my relationship to completion. Working with completion in this post has led me to the key obstacle to my sense of my daily accomplishments, my addiction to hope.

I am giving up hope and becoming accountable for past, present and future. Learning the art and science of accounting is clearly changing my approach, not just to money, but to counting up and counting on my completions in life.

All the books I have read and all the coaching I have received on being productive and living the life I want, ever included guidance on giving up hope. No wonder I never got results.

I just found this quote from the writer, Rita Mae Brown:

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts.

And never hope more than you work.

If you are addicted to hope, please write a comment about your addiction and the possibility of giving up hope.

I am so excited by being hopeless, I am going to give complimentary 40 minute consultations to the first five people who email me.

Inspiration

Garr's blog and his questions started me expoloring and expressing my thoughts on inspiration. I've posted them for you. Please share you musings on inspiration, moments, moods, circumstances, whatever makes inspiration happen for you.

Just yesterday, I attended an inspired and inspiring workshop. I woke up this morning flooding with insights for my Inner Lent programs tonight and tomorrow. I was also inspired to share my thoughts on inspiration.

Questions that don't have definitive answers and place me in the blessed state of wonder, fill me inspiration. They set me free from all the givens, prejudices and conventions.

Resistance from anything that says "no, not this way!"

The stillness in my heart- in those rare moments of inner silence when I let myself feel the tranquility, inspiration appears like a whispered "Hush!" asking for deeper quiet.

The fire in my dreams - in those rare moments of courage when I can be alone in the fierce heat of my destiny, I find inspiration.

In the depths of my suffering, when all the lights go out, all boundaries disappear and I find myself falling into the abyss of nothingness, inspiration rises up as a light or a warmth that floats me back to myself.

Inspiration is not a sentimental feeling that generates more sentiment, it is a spiritual feeling that enthuses our thoughts and our deeds. It does not appear as merely awe, but awakens true devotion.

Witnessing inspiration in others inspires hope that I, too, may be inspired and inspire others. In fact, if I am not inspiring others, I have not been inspired. The inspired always inspire. Pass it on.

And remember... inspiration is never familiar or safe.

How We Remember

My former husband crossed the threshold of death yesterday morning. He was 86. I am full of many complex feelings. I married him two weeks after our first date. I was 24. He was 49. We had 18 years together, most very loving. Our two children are amazing human beings. Yet for most of the 18 years since our divorce, he has demonized me.

Over the last week, as my daughter was at his bedside, I gave my attention to his memorial and to memorials in general. How do we remember and acknowledge the expressions of a lifetime?

As human beings, we express ourselves through thoughts, feelings and deeds. Usually, one form of expression will dominate: there are thinkers, feelers, and doers.
In contemplating the life of an individual beyond memories and emotions, we can bring our questioning attention to their life of thoughts, feelings and deeds.

George, was a charming monk. He had enough personal wealth to not work. He read. He thought. He wrote. He had this amazing gift for sharing what he read - vast amounts of ideas - with elegant enthusiasm. His listeners would sit in awe while he brought many complex ideas into beautiful images. His thoughts were revealed in his writing of aphorisms, poetry, plays and essays.

George leaves behind his thoughts. His memorial, beyond the loving anecdotes, should celebrate his thoughts.

He was not a doer. I can't imagine anyone recalling a life of deeds in the world when they remember George. Nor was he a feeling type engaged in nurturing relationships.

His feeling life and his will life were embedded in his thinking. With great and glorious success.

When you think of those who have passed over to the world of spirit, left the world of the senses, do they live in your heart as individuals enriching the world with ideas, with relationships, or with activities of enterprise? We can build such a sense of the soul of an individual by attending to this three-part image. Was your connection to this person established and sustained through their head, their heart or their hands? If you look at what you admired most was it their ability to think, to feel or to will?

What do you want to be remembered for?

My daughter asked me if I thought her father had been happy. Her question inspired the recognition that, a more important question would be "Did he learn his lessons? Did he morally develop?" We don't necessarily come into life to be happy. We do come into life to evolve our humanity - our ability to love and to be free. If George learned his lessons well his soul is now at peace. He celebrates his own life as he relives it, memorializes it, on the other side of the threshold.

George gave me a great gift. The feelings I felt through our relationship, awakened new thoughts in me. He inspired my thinking always, even with his resentments and even with his death. He did not evoke feelings in me nor did he encourage me to action. His thoughts nurtured my thoughts. He blessed my thought life and I will always be grateful for that blessing.

I hope these George-inspired thoughts, inspire thoughts in you. Please share them.

Conquering Demon Thoughts - Part 1

Recently, I was working with a client who was struggling with a negative obsessive thought. You know, the kind of thought that won’t go away and causes a ridiculous, often overwhelming amount of anxiety, fear, or anger. This is a demon thought that grabs hold of you and makes your life miserable.

Right now with the economic challenges, many are having demon thoughts about finances, managing debt, paying bills, securing retirement, giving your kids a college education, etc

The demon thoughts loop through your day and night with endless repetition leaving you feeling helpless. The demon thought has you - you don’t have the thought. These thoughts suck up your energy and can create a kind of paralysis in your motivations and activities. They disrupt and disturb your focus. Obsessive, repetitive thoughts throw your feeling life way out of balance.

Can you take charge of a demon thought? Yes, you can.

First, it helps to understand the biology of a demon thought. Our nervous system is designed for efficiency which means certain neural pathways get programmed and certain impulses develop patterns. These long-term patterns and tendencies are very effective but like any habit they can become a curse. When we are in states of stress certain aspects of the nervous system go automatically to a patterned mode of operation. When we are stressed out and a demon thought appears it gets sucked into our patterned, repetitive mode of operation and we are trapped.



Demon thoughts are inflamed thoughts circling through our consciousness in a closed loop breathing fire. Inflamation truly burns through our thought life and we lose the ability to deflame and cool down.

Under stress our capacity for free control of our thoughts is diminished as our biology overcomes our free consciousness. We go to survival mode. Our perception of reality and mastery gets overwhelmed by our need to survive a demon thought of doom and disaster.

How do we break free? How do we cool down our thinking? We must restore our creative will in our thought life in simple ways.

Here is a very effective exercise that transforms your thought life biologically and spiritually.

Begin with writing down the demon thought. Here are three simple examples that many of us will identify with:

I will have no way to earn money and will be on the street.

If I leave this relationship I will be alone forever.

This mark on my leg is a melanoma and I am going to die.

Write the thought a few more times, perhaps getting more specific. Some of us will find we need to write a paragraph or two. If you need to do this, go ahead but them reduce it down to the core experience. Each time you write it down you are in control of the thought. You are getting the thought outside your body.

You can also begin to write down the sensation and emotions that are attached to the thought. Often simply focusing on the sensation will reduce the intensity and power of the demon thought.

Sick to my stomach and very scared, I just want to vomit.

A tightening vise around my heart and a grief so deep and heavy I want to scream but I have no voice..

My gut is burning and I am raging yet helpless.


This writing down is naming. When we can put a name on and describe a demon thought and the feelings and sensations of the thought, we begin to have power over it. In a strange way, we find a sense of balance, maybe a little wobbly, but the deed of articulating in writing, changes our relationship to the thought.

Now take the demon thought and begin to evolve it. Eventually, taking it into a higher meaning. You can do this just one word at a time or add a new phrase to the thought. Try changing the punctuation from a period or and exclamation point to a question mark. You become the transformer of the thought and the creator of a new reality.



I will have no way to earn money and will be on the street. I am doomed and stupid.

Have I no way to earn money now? I do have a home today. I have time.

I have a way to earn money although I don’t know what it is.

I can make a list of my skills and learn new ones.

With these skills I can make a contribution to others and support myself.

I will make a list of the skills I already have and the ones I want to develop.

I will ask my friends what talents I have.

Eventually, as you take charge of metamorphosing the demon thought, you will get to new feelings and sensations. Begin to notice moments of freedom and love appearing like little twinklings of light. When you reach a higher expression, write down an action to take - this will release the sense of paralysis and victimhood.

You have taken control and maybe, killed the demon.

This writing exercise develops the capacity to control your thoughts. Biologically, the exercise builds cognitive strength, agility and grace. Spiritually, it raises the dominion of your higher self over your stuck and instinctual patterns.

Other ways to achieve this are more artistic. Use the written thought to be the basis for a poem or a painting. With this artistic approach, I suggest you follow the Joseph Conrad wisdom, “In the destructive element, immerse.” Demon thoughts get their power from our resistance. Stop resisting, dance with your demon thoughts. Remember to use the art to express your emotions and sensations. Most importantly give your self permission to write a bad poem or paint a bad picture so you don’t let perfection to keep you from full expression of the demon. These are artistic exercises and healings to be explored and understood and not works of art to praised or critiqued.

I do want to say that there are some of us who have serious neurochemical imbalances, food allergies, toxic environments or post-traumatic stress disorder and though these exercises will be helpful, we may not be able to conquer the demon. These individuals need to seek professional assistance. Do not be ashamed. Seek help.


Learning how to deal with demon thoughts can begin in childhood. You can lead your children through these exercises. Be mindful of how you approach this with children under the age of 9. With young children, tell them fairy tales. Help them see the demon thoughts as stories waiting to be told so that the “happy ending” can be found. As they learn the comfort of your story-telling they will then know that when they get scared, sad or angry, you can guide them into a sense of personal strength. Eventually they will realize that they are their own storyteller. (How I wish my parents had empathized with me and been story-telling mirrors to my developing life of thought.)


If you succeed with this exercise and want to share your process with the readers of the Live In Full Bloom blog - please share it in the comments. Also if you have difficulty, share it with us and you will get help from me and others. Thank you.

The Paradox of Peace

September 21 is being celebrated as the International Day of Peace. Since I attended a meeting of NGO's to discuss how to bring awareness of IDP to the world at the UN last May, I have been spending serious moments considering peace.

Here is the short video I made to acknowledge the day.




The vocalist is Derek Stroh. I think he brings a genuine sensitivity to Imagine. Tony Woodroffe, a great friend with tremendous heart and tremendous talent, works with Derek and suggested I create the video.


Now I will share with you some of my challenging thoughts on the Paradox of Peace.

Maybe it is my personality or the years I have spent working as a counselor, speaker, writer and workshop facilitator in the realm of personal awareness and development but I found myself questioning the major gesture of this Day of Peace. The gesture felt more like having a party for peace rather than participating in peace. The gesture felt comfortably intellectual and not uncomfortably intimate. The planners, who were heart felt and passionate, were focussed on inter - NATION -al peace and inter - GROUP activities rather than inter - PERSONAL development of a consciousness of peace, a feeling for peace and a will to peace.

What is peace?
Can there be peace among nations, among groups, if there is no peace within souls?

I have the feeling that the meaning of peace in the International Day of Peace is simply the opposite of war. No more war is a good thing. But just military war between nations? What about verbal war between persons, between lovers?

I think Peace is so much more than the absence of war. I feel peace is a complex language that none of us yet knows how to speak. Or maybe we know the language but lack the courage to speak it.

How do we learn the language of peace and find the courage to speak it?

When in your life have you felt inner peace? Was it merely the absence of inner war or was it more?



Do you have any peaceful relationships? What is a peaceful relationship? Is it a relationship without little wars?

Could you name and define four qualities of peace? Not qualities in the abstract, but qualities you and each of us can develop in order to be at peace.

Can we create and sustain peace and still feel we and our beliefs and behaviors are the only right ones? Can peace contain differences and disagreements?

Can we create and sustain peace and still maintain boundaries? After all each of us has skin defining where “my” territory is.

And if we had peace, what would we do for entertainment? So much of entertainment is dependent on the absence of peace, truth and kindness. There was a great suggestion that for International Day of Peace all media withdraw any programming that contained violence! Imagine that! Could we ask newspapers and blogs to do the same? could we ask Netflix and video stores to not rent videos containing violence for just one day? Could we ask those who play video games to not play?

There are so many aspects of our lives and our economies that depend on the absence of peace. Just think about it.

Would peace be boring? I know enough about neurochemistry to know that risk, uncertainty and threat are arousing and give us a feeling of being intensely alive. I also know that love, belief, and passion generate levels of commitment and a willingness to defend until death. Can we have peace and still have great love, great belief and great passion?

I do hope I have stimulated your thinking about peace. Please spend some of September 21, the International Day of Peace, thinking deeply about peace. Please, too, share your thoughts here on the blog.

Think peace. Find peace. Create peace. Sustain peace.
Engage peacefully. React peacefully. Love peacefully.

Sweet Sleep

Ideally, one-third of our lives, 8 hours out of every 24, are spent sleeping. Insomnia, the inability to fall asleep or stay asleep is a huge challenge for many of us. This post is all about getting sweet sleep.

Sleep is not just physically restorative, it is spiritually restorative. Sleep is the time the body heals, the mind digests (let me sleep on it!) and the spirit inspires.

And if tonight my soul may find her peace
in sleep, and sink in good oblivion,
and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower
then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.
~D.H. Lawrence

I want to share a a very calming, nurturing, and centering exercise with you. It is simple and short. This exercise is practiced before falling asleep and is great for everyone including our young children and our elderly.

The Sweet Sleep exercise may or may not cure insomnia or nighttime stress, but it will definitely sweeten your soul and sweeten your sleep. A paradox lives in the sweet sleep exercise as it celebrates your waking life while enriching your sleeping life.

You quietly celebrate what you receive each day, what you accomplish each day and then whisper to your soul your intentions for the following day.

the sweet sleep exercise...

I suggest you journal this exercise or speak it out loud to yourself or your partner or better - both write and speak the three parts:

Reflect on your day and recognize:

at least 3 "things" you are grateful for...

These are not "things" that occurred through your efforts. They exist through grace and generosity. Recall anything that was present during the day, however briefly, that supported or enriched your existence. You might recall something natural like a cloud, a flower, the feel of a breeze against your skin - or perhaps a statement of wisdom or beauty. A smile from a stranger. The sweetness of a piece of fruit. A surprise call from a friend.

at least 3 personal accomplishments...

accomplishments that required your efforts and will forces. These are three ways you made a contribution to the world. Ideally these are completions of deeds or completions of a stage of a deed. Something neat and complete, not a great, but unfocused or unfinished effort. You did the dishes. You kissed your children. You read a chapter of a book. You finished a project at work. You attended a meeting.

at least 3 intentions for the next day...

again these are actions that require conscious and focused will efforts. Do not wish or desire here. Intentions are a commitment to engage your will and deliver to the world. These can be simple or complex, be easy or a stretch, but make sure you can actually, fulfill the intention. You are free here to be self-aware. You may intend to take a nap. Call a friend. Look at the moon. Weed for 15 minutes. Take your supplements. Don't do this as if you were making a to-do list, rather create a list of focused and enthused intentions.

I suggest you carry out this exercise with a sense of reverence as if you are saying/writing a nightly prayer. You are preparing your soul for sleep. Your self-celebrating feelings are the guide. You are alive and life is good. Life has contributed to your joy and your accomplishments are of value to you and to others.

This is an exercise that strengthens your will from your heart. It is actually an opening conversation with the spiritual world, your angel, and God that leads to a fabulously restorative sleep.

withdrawing from all things tech before sleep...

On a strictly earthly, tech plane: Turn everything with a screen or a light off early!

I have lived with TV screens my whole life and with computer screens for the last 20 years. Everywhere I go in my home there are little lights on clocks and gadgets telling me time is passing and the power is on. All the walls in my apartment are filled with wires pulsing with electrical power. I don't know if all this power is harmful (I write with my laptop on my lap and every now and then I worry.) and I certainly couldn't live without my utilities no matter what they emit. However, I do know that this tech world is very stimulating and not natural nor nurturing.

Sleep needs a natural, calm and dark environment. Our eyes need to gradually experience darkness to stimulate the inhibitory neurotransmitter activity needed for sleep. If you spend your nighttime surrounded by lights and staring a screens that present rapidly moving images and bright colors, you may have difficulty falling or staying asleep and you are definitely stressing your neurological system.

Commit to turning off all screens for at least 30 minutes before you get in bed. My dream goal is no computers or TV's after 7PM. If 30 minutes seems too long, begin with 10 minutes and extend it by 5 minutes each week. Pixel images are addictive, so treat your TV and Computer needs as addictions - be easy with the withdrawal.

Buy some black tourmaline chips and place on or near all your tech equiupment. You can tape a small stone on on your cell phone.

Another option is to buy some Black Tourmaline Gem Elixir or Essence. I recommend www.alaskanessences.com. The essence bottle can be kept by your bed and will absorb all electro-magnetic forces near it.

let the bees sweeten your sleep...

A lovely nighttime ritual is the lighting of a beeswax candle while you do the Sweet Sleep Exercise and any other evening meditations. Beeswax candles do not drip - they disappear into the air as the flame burns. More importantly they emit negative ions which relax the body and support soul harmony. Bees maintain a constant temperature in the hive by beating their wings. The mood of an even temperament and emotional equanimity is truly felt in the presence of a burning beeswax candle.

Also the gentle light of a candle is very soothing to your eyes and the nervous system. It generates lots of GABA, the calming neurotransmitter. The candle flame will sweeten your sleep. Just remember to blow out the candle before you lie down in bed.

bedroom or sleeping room...

A bedroom is a room with a bed. A sleeping room is a room devoted to the activity of sleep. I have a bedroom. It has a bed in it - but it has a lot of other stuff in it, too. The bed is there for sleep, but all the other stuff is not conducive to the activity of sleep. My bedroom is a dressing room, a TV room, occasionally an office (I love writing with my legs stretched out), a laundry folding room, a collection space for books, newpapers, magazines, a manicure salon, a dining room and an everythingelse room.

I long for a sleeping room. Sleep is truly a sacred activity. If you could have a room just for sleeping, what would it be like? This is the question I will leave you with. Please post your thoughts on a room for nurturing sound and restorative sleeping. A room for sweet dreams. Just click on the word comments.