Good Fortune

     

 

My husband Frank makes beautiful glass, both art and architectural works.  Not too long ago, he made this door with black glass undulating beneath the Chinese characters for happiness, blessings, and good fortune.  I came across this photo of it recently and it reminded me of all of the good fortunes that I have received, not only in my life, but also in Chinese restaurants over the years as I have enjoyed their delicious fare.

Being as spring is upon us and as it brings its promise of renewal and the good fortune and bounty of summer ahead, I thought I’d take this opportunity to share with you some of the good fortunes that I have collected and saved from the many fortune cookies that have blessed my dining table and my life.  I share them with you now, like affirmations to brighten your day as they have continued to brighten mine.  

Let yourself think of these like a waterfall of blessings showering over, around and through you.  And, as a little experiment, let yourself believe each one.  

You are always welcome in any gathering.
You have an ability to sense and know higher truth.
You should be able to make money and hold on to it.
You enjoy giving gifts of yourself to others.  You will be rewarded.
You are going to have a very comfortable old age.
Consider gain and loss, but never be greedy and everything will be all right.
Things are not always what they seem.
You have a captivating style all your own.
Elegant surroundings will soon be yours.
You will inherit a large sum of money.
Your energy is at its peak.  Channel it into fun activities.
You will be showered with good luck.
You will spend many years in material wealth.
Your love life will be happy and harmonious.
Your air of confidence naturally draws others to you.
The star of happiness is shining on you.

May we all be renewed with the love and joy for life that spring so often brings.

Josephine Laing
© 2024

Cast Adrift

 

Cast Adrift.  That's how we feel sometimes.  It's as if we don't know where we are going, or even why.  But often the soup just has to cook.  Time spent not knowing, just simmering has proven, in the past, for me, to be extremely beneficial.

The clouds of not knowing can settle down around us with a damp chill, closing in about our bodies and minds, leaving us feeling directionless, purposeless.  Sometimes, it's illness, sometimes it's financial devastation.  It can be social or environmental injustice, or simply a lack of connection with others and their support.  But if we hang in there, give it a little time, and our consideration, let the flavors, ideas and feelings meld together, our way forward gradually comes clear. 

I like to use affirmations and gratitude practices during those darker days to help me keep hope and trust alive.  All of the spiritual practices that we have learned can give us some direction.  Prayer, mantras, along with inspirational stories, poetry, music and art, these are the tools I turn to, to help me find the light ahead.

I remember years ago, while I was healing from a major injury, wondering day-after-day, why this devastating thing had happened to me.  What was to become of my life after so many changes had occurred, flipping everything I trusted and knew on its head?  I had gotten a degree in horticulture, had been running my own landscape business, had employees, had just bought a home and was planning to remodel and then everything stopped. I had to let the business go.  My financial situation shifted drastically.  I became sincerely dependent with no guarantee that I'd ever recover.

In that dim light of life, with the heat turned way down low, I simmered and grabbed what ingredients I could and tossed them into the stew pot of my days.  Meditation, dream-work, time spent musing quietly, alone with my thoughts, taking what small steps I could to help restore my peace of mind and my physicality.  It can be a slow process marinating in transformation.  The egg in the nest takes time to change and open.  The seed doesn't sprout overnight.  Dismal news can come.  We just have to let it go and keep focusing on the next one or two possible steps that we can see for the way ahead.

Peace Pilgrim used to say, "Stay in the present moment.  Do what needs to be done.  Do all of the good you can each day.  And the future will unfold."  This is a lovely prescription for finding one's way.  It has helped me greatly over the years.  It's the little steps that matter.  One at a time.  There is no rush.  It's a long life, and from my perspective, there are plenty of them.  So, we don't need to hurry.  We can take our time and go slow.

So, there I was, all those years ago, stuck in bed, doing next to nothing except visiting my chiropractor once a week, and slowly, incrementally, finding my balance again.  And that's when my empathy, my clairvoyance, my ability to see and know what was going on in the health and well being of others, started to emerge.  It certainly wasn't anything I had expected to have happen.  I had guided the ship of my life in a totally different direction.  But there it was, arising quietly and consistently from within me.  It took a process of many years to refine and smooth off the rough edges of my psychic skills.  But, as sure as the lady bug transforms from the larvae, a new me emerged.  When we trust ourselves and let our lives flow, riding the hills and valleys as gracefully as we can, our path eventually comes clear.

I remember hearing the story of a young man in Great Britain who had gotten off on 'a wrong foot,' and began his early adulthood stealing things.  He wound up in jail, got out, took on a small job that at first he didn't know how to do, but learned.  Then he found himself helping others, newly out of prison, in finding work and learning how to do those small jobs as well.  In time he had founded a nationwide service providing support for others who had walked a similar path and his purpose in life was revealed.  

We never know where these roads will take us, but if we hang in there, and do what we can to stay present and work daily to hold our heads above water, and help others whenever we can, the way before us will unfold.  We find that we were never really cast adrift, we just needed an unexpected course correction, to set us on the good and right road that was always before us.  From there we can look back, at the end of our lives, and see that the way was really always clear.  We just needed to simmer a little, let all of the ingredients meld and blend and create the true sustenance of our beings.

So, hang in there.  Trust yourself and the Universe.  Stay in the moment.  Stay the course and expect the best.  A deeper part of you already knows the way.  We just need to let it all gradually and gratefully unfold before us.

I will leave you with a little haiku-like poem that I wrote years ago.  It came to me after I awoke from a dream where I saw three of my footsteps in front of me, in a forest, in the deep snow.  Just three footprints.  On a clear bright sunny winter's day.

My feet are always falling - steadfastly - on my path before me.

© Josephine Laing 2024

 

Forgiveness

This seven minute video can help to heal our psychological wounds and create healthy changes in our lives.   Forgiveness frees us to process our experiences and unburden ourselves so we can come to greater understanding and more gentleness with ourselves and with others.

© Josephine Laing 2019

Manifesting Joy

When it comes to manifesting joy, the trick here is that it is not really in our hands.  The manifestation of our deepest wants and needs is the soul property of the highest good for all.  Yes, we can let our desires shine to light our path.  We can mine our sub-conscious minds to clear away any lingering obstacles, and let our sincere and heartfelt feelings guide us.  We can hold our thoughts to the positive and speak out our affirmations with confidence.  But the bottom line, when it comes to finding our joy is surrender.  It is giving ourselves over in service to something greater, something beyond our own individual aspect of consciousness.  

On the inside of my closet door, so I can see it every day, I have pinned up this quote by Mahatma Gandhi.  "God demands nothing less than complete self surrender as the price of the only real freedom worth having.  And, when we lose ourselves, we immediately find ourselves in the service of all that lives.  Such service becomes our delight and recreation.  We are a new person, never weary of spending ourselves in the service of God's creation."

Now, I realize that the word 'God' is a tricky one for many.  There has been so much self-serving and irresponsible theology in the world, leaving death, doubt and destruction in its wake.  So it can be a challenge to embrace the thought of 'God.'  Because of this, the great spiritual teacher of how to heal our lives, Louise Hay, never uses the word 'God.'  She uses 'Life,' instead.  She'll say, "Life loves me."  And I think that looking upon Divinity as 'Life' is a lovely, generative alternative to what has come before.  

I also like Joseph Campbell's definition of God.  He said, "God is a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all human categories of thought, even the categories of being and non-being.”  What he is saying here is that trying to fathom the ineffable is simply beyond our limited human capacity.  

Peace Pilgrim, who is probably my favorite spiritual teacher and perhaps our only true American Saint, also refrains from religious associations when describing or referring to 'God.'  She speaks of her own entrance into a life-well-lived by sharing how she felt moved to walk out into the woods one night, motivated by a feeling of deep seeking for a meaningful way of life.  And after she had walked almost all night, she came upon a clearing where the moonlight was shinning down and she found herself speaking aloud and she found herself saying, "If you can use me for anything, please use me."  And she found herself feeling, "Here I am, take all of me.  Use me as I am.  I withhold nothing."  And with that she felt that she had found what she was looking for.  She experienced the complete willingness, without any reservations whatsoever, to give her life to something beyond herself.  She said that from that time on her life became meaningful, because she began to live to be of service; she began to live to give instead of to get.

This is where the journey of manifesting a life of true and lasting joy begins.  And, there is still a bit of road to travel until we actually experience the complete giving over of ourselves, the surrender of our life, to the whole.  

In her experience of it, Peace said that this aspect of the journey seemed like a struggle between two parts of herself, what some might call the ego and conscience, or what many have referred to as 'my will' and 'thy will,' or what she called the low self and the high self.  The two viewpoints are quite different.  And each one of us must reconcile this difference before we step fully into a life of harmony. 

While we are working through this stage, initially we get glimpses of our life lived in union with the whole.  And as we progress, we find ourselves there more and more frequently.  Then we start to really miss that immersion in pure love, when we find that we have slipped out of it.  Finally, as we reach harmony, and as Peace says, "You will know your way from there."  

With this, we can imagine the beautiful results that we are hoping for; and we let the way to achieve them gracefully unfold.  We strive to do all the good things that we find ourselves motivated to do, to help make the world a better place.  And we find that our life is characterized by a deep seated sense of joy; and it is that joy that unerringly guides us right onto our path before us.

I find it quite miraculous really to think that there is an energy or a force, a benevolent field that is attuned to our every thought, awaiting our alignment with the whole.  And as we give ourselves over to it, more and more completely, motivated by love, we enter into the great cosmic dance of the river of life wherein we manifest whatever we need because it is completely attuned with everything.

These are not the wants and needs of the ego, trying to get ahead of others; nor is it the part of us that holds ourselves as separate, better or less than any other.  No, this is not that analytical, critical thinking part of our self that feels 'a business plan' is the way to go here, oh no.  This is the open, benevolent, expansive lover of all, that we each hold inside our hearts.  This is the part of ourselves that unquestioningly reaches out a hand to save another, knowing that at our core essence, as Joe Campbell exclaimed, "You and the other are one!"

And from my perspective, 'The One' is vast!  It includes not only all of humanity and Gaia, our planet, but also our solar system and the massive spiral arms of our galaxy swirling out into the unending space of the Universe.  I'm talking here of the fundamental consciousness, that is not only in me and in you, but that pervades everything and beyond.  This is the flow that we must tap into, (that we are already tapped into) and align with, (that we are already aligned with,) in order to really manifest what we'd like to see in our lives.  And all of this is already fully accessible within us.  All that is needed is a little shift in our perspective.  Here we embrace everything with love, even the stinkers, and those who have not yet found their way.  Here we serve all.  And, incidentally, thereby serve ourselves.

Our good intentions, our desires, our inspirations and our feelings of deep fulfillment will all point the way.  They are the compasses that help us to align.  They are the keys that open the doors to the deeper meaning of life.  But it is our surrender to our unique service in life, to our own pathway of giving, that brings us to our knees with Joy!  And here we find that the Universe has lain the road open wide before us, bountifully bedecked with everything that we truly need.


© Josephine Laing 2017

Forgiveness and Understanding

Sometimes it's not so easy to forgive.  We find that we are stuck and can't move ahead in our lives.  When this happens, it is most likely because somewhere in our psyche we are holding onto emotional injury.  But the best way to free ourselves, when we are stuck like that, is through forgiveness.  So, this presents a challenge, because forgiveness is the key that opens the pathway to love in our lives.  

It is important to remember that forgiveness is not condoning the wrong doing of another person.  Forgiveness is simply letting it go.   Our emotions can be like broken records sometimes, playing an event over and over again.  And this takes our energy.  The negative emotions or feelings that we may have toward another person have little to no impact on the wrong doer, but they have a big impact on ourselves.  So it is a good idea for us to figure out how to clear those angry or resentful thoughts and let them go. 

Given our own situations, our past difficulties, challenging upbringings and what have you, sometimes it can seem impossible to forgive.  But a very wise friend of mine once shared with me that in those tougher times, she could become "willing to forgive" or "willing to let go."  This is a good step in the right direction.  Another strategy is to, "Fake it until you make it "    

Years ago, I came across this forgiveness affirmation that Louise Hay teaches.  It goes like this:
 "I forgive you for not being the way that I wanted you to be.  I forgive you and I set you free and thereby free myself."  I love this one because it includes some self-responsibility for our own assumptions and expectations that we so often hold about other people.

I also like to use this set of three forgiveness affirmations.  I don't remember where I got them.  But they have certainly served me well.  These let us see forgiveness from three unique perspectives.  And again, they remind us of our own self-responsibility.  They also help us to remember that pain is most often a two way street.  Here they are:
I forgive you for any pain that you may have caused me.
I ask that you forgive me for any pain that I may have caused you.
I forgive myself for allowing you to cause me any pain.

A practice of forgiveness helps us to move beyond our holding patterns.  As Gabriel Roth, the modern dancer said, "If we are not holding on, we don't have to let go."  But, if we are holding on, spirit is not free to move…and our healing becomes stuck.   My spiritual mentor, Jana Massey used to refer to forgiveness as "The Law of Erasure."  She would say that it erases the hurt so the truth can be made known.

Another mentor of mine is Peace Pilgrim.  Her book is titled: Peace Pilgrim, Her Life and Work in Her Own Words.  Peace Pilgrim would often say that our problems in life are here to help us grow spiritually and that a life without problems would be a barren life.  I've come to see the truth of this  because our problems are our teachers.  They help us to learn and grow.  

When speaking about forgiveness, Peace Pilgrim once said, “One thing that helped me a great deal was the realization that no outward thing, nothing, nobody from without, can hurt me inside.  I realized that I could only be harmed spiritually by my own wrong actions, which I have control over, or my own wrong reactions.  They are very tricky things, but I have control over them also.  When I realized this, I just felt so free.  And I stopped hurting myself.  Now, someone could do the meanest thing to me and I would recognize that person as a sick person, as an out-of-harmony person.  I would put him in the same category as a mentally sick person.  I would feel great compassion for this sick person who is capable of doing mean things.  I would pray for that person.  I would certainly not hurt myself with a wrong reaction of bitterness or anger.  You have complete control over whether you will be hurt inside spiritually or not.  And anytime, you can stop hurting yourself.”    

I find the insight in this statement to be so very profound.  Here, Peace Pilgrim is teaching us that with deeper introspection we can reach for understanding.  This can help us to move, even beyond the need for forgiveness, because we come to see that those who have done us wrong are coming from their own set of circumstances, which might even be deep psychological imbalance.   If we look at a situation like that, from Peace Pilgrim's perspective we can see that someone who is that unsettled, actually needs our compassion.   Sometimes this can be very hard to swallow but, digging deeper for understanding is the key that helps us to keep our own souls from becoming entangled. 

Our job when we feel that we have been wronged is to rise up out of the mire and not stay there, or to not even fall into it in the first place if we can.  We can take a different street and avoid the whole mess.   We can realize that no matter what someone else may have done, they can not harm us inside.

© Josephine Laing, 2015