Cultivating Joy in Changing Times

Yes, it’s true.  Our world is turning itself upside down.  Whenever we humans find ourselves on the brink of a major shift in consciousness, the old paradigm grabs on tightly to try and hold on.  But the new is already underway, so the divisiveness becomes even more inflated.  And sometimes it is hard to know what to do about it.  But I say, ‘Hold your thoughts and actions on what you would like to see.’  Poke your head up out of the sand; there are already plenty of places where we can start to build the new.  Simply doing something, anything, can help us to feel a little bit better about all of this change.  Here are ten things to consider.

1.  For my part, I’m a gardener at heart.  So, I’ve started growing food plants to share.  Frank and I have put in eleven fruit and nut trees this past month.  The last of the bare-root plants, in the nurseries, came into their end-of-season sale, so we jumped on it.  
Several years ago, we adopted an untended parking lot near our home and cleaned up the trash, began to build the soil and now have it blooming from spring through fall with hardy florals and flourishing native oaks.  
During WWII, when the Germans tried to starve the island nation of Britain out, she created her “Victory Gardens,” in every backyard.  With the changes that we are about to experience, food prices may well jump sky high.  Certainly federally funded care programs providing nutrition for the young and the elderly are at risk.  Fruit trees yield the most food per acre and potatoes can be abundantly grown in banks or in bags.  Oak trees have provided native peoples world round with balanced nutrition in easily stored acorns.  As federal funds are further removed from Agriculture, producing our own food may well become increasingly important.  Gardens are bountiful.  They make it easy to give and to share.  And working in them brings us exercise, serenity and great peace of mind.  

2.  Sing and dance or play music.  Music connects us.  It is the song of life and we all move to that rhythm.  I’ve heard it said that if you are not singing and dancing, you are not truly alive.

3.  Align your purchasing power with your ethics.  To get you started, visit Goods Unite Us.  
https://www.goodsuniteus.com/
Or get the book for The Better World Shopping Guide  https://betterworldshopper.org/

4.  Try not to drive or fly, and avoid using plastics, which are made from oil, as much as possible.  

5.  Go to the website DuckDuckGo and switch your search engine to theirs so all of your on-line research and data is no longer being easily and shamelessly tracked and sold for advertisers and others to target.

6.  Write to your members of congress, state and federal.  You can get their postal addresses at  https://www.govtrack.us.  Click on congress for current federal representatives and senators.  Let them know that you expect them to honor their oaths to defend our constitution and to respond appropriately if they’d like to continue to gain your support.

7.  Spend time with friends.  Get together with neighbors.  Host Monday night potlucks.  We may need to depend on each other a lot more in the future.  Forming relationships now and creating community can ease this sort of transition, should it occur.  Plus it is fun.  And if you wish, governmental study groups or affinity groups and forums can be formed.  Visit sites like Choose Democracy at  https://choosedemocracy.us/what-can-i-do/    And sometimes it simply helps to band together and share our feelings and experiences.  
One of my guiding lights, Peace Pilgrim, had wise advice for those with concerns over what the future might hold.  She said, “Stay in the present moment.  Do what needs to be done.  Do all of the good things you can each day.  And the future will unfold.”  For me, her words are a steadying influence. They bring me both direction and peace of mind.  
 

8.  Figure out a way to get yourself laughing again.  Play with some children.  Kids laugh hundreds of times a day.  Adults not so much. Watch and rewatch shows of your favorite comedians so you can laugh.  (I like Kathleen Madigan’s “Don’t Bother Jesus.”  Raised a catholic, she was supposed to first go to her priest for absolution.  She could also appeal to her guardian angelk available 24/7, just for her.  If the situation was dire enough, her priest might recommend a Saint, specific to her need.  If that wasn’t adequate and if she, the repentant one, was really good, she could hang with Mary.  But no one was really ever supposed to bother Jesus.)  
 

9.  Eat clean and get plenty of exercise.  Let those endorphins flow and build your own health and strength for the work and times ahead.   
 

10.  Spend time out in nature, even if it is your own back yard or the city park.  Let nature speak to you and guide you.  Answers to our problems always come to us more easily when we are out in nature.  As John Muir famously wrote, “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”
 

Okay, one more, and probably most importantly,

11.  Imagine what you’d like to see.  Use your right brain.  Get creative.  (Remember that caffeine holds us in our left brain where we focus only on known solutions and tend to contract around fears about the future and worries about the past.  So consider herbal teas instead.)  Cultivate your right brain potential by laughing, day dreaming, and playing.  This is the realm of cooperation rather than competition.  It is expansive and collaborative and it cultivates and holds you in joy.  
(For more about accessing our right brains, check out Jill Bolte Taylor.   See either her TED talk  at  https://www.ted.com/speakers/jill_bolte_taylor   or read her book, Whole Brain Living at   https://www.drjilltaylor.com  )
(For more about the effects of caffeine on our brain's health and well being, read Michael Pollan’s This is Your Mind on Plants.  https://michaelpollan.com/books/this-is-your-mind-on-plants/) or read Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.   https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-We-Sleep/Matthew-Walker/9781501144325)

We are all in this together, so together let’s find ways to create anew.  
*Love is stronger than fear.  We shift the energy with our mutual support, while listening within to find our unique service.  
*Create something alive and empowering.  Follow your calling.  Share your experiences and knowledge.  Ask for and give help.
*As we gather together in small groups of support and connection, we build resilience and find our clarity.  Doing this is disempowering to realms where fear and division reside.  
*Learn from the children.  They know how to laugh.  We’ve all witnessed kids cracking jokes even right after they’ve been in trouble.  There is always something fun and funny to see and do.  Charge into that.  
*I recently heard that heroes are just ordinary people.  They happened to be at the right place at the right time.  And they just simply held to their values and ethics.  
*Trust in the larger vision.  This is after all the Age of Aquarius.  It holds the promise of harmony, egalitarianism and understanding.  It was the dawning of this age that brought us the Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Liberation, Gay Rights, AIM the American Indian Movement, and The Environmental Movement.  These movements now have deep roots that have firmly taken hold and risen strongly.  They have provided insights and support into the eons of beauty and equality and justice that lie ahead for us all.  But first we have to clear out the old.  And that dying grasp is making one last powerful lunge back into the unsustainability of massive consumption and resource depletion and all that that brings with it.  

Years ago I heard a talk by the feminist, Sonja Johnson.  She was driving into the city to work one day when she passed through an open space of beautiful green forest and meadow.  She was so moved by its beauty that she stopped the car and got out to marvel at the scene.  When she did this, she was swept up in a moment of profound epiphany and compared the truth of nature to the falseness of the city that she had been heading towards.  She found herself realizing and deeply understanding that we are all doing everything all wrong.  And there is truth to this, we have become completely lost in the citification, or the ugly-fication, of the natural world.  And our massive over consumption has become more than critical.  So, yes, things do need to change.  And we are here, older, wiser, ready to create what is new.  And creativity is fun.  It brings us joy.  I’ll leave you with these words from Louis hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life.  

“All is well.
Everything is working itself out for the highest good.
Out of this experience only good will come.
And I am safe.”

Josephine Laing
© 2025

Oneness and Wonder

Wow!  What’s That ! ? !

We’ve all had such a moment.  Hopefully many of them.  Hopefully nearly every day.  Frank and I just had one yesterday.

We were standing in the kitchen and by some trick of the afternoon light, the wall under the desk, in the office, right below the closed shutters, looked like it was iridescent or had suddenly turned into an awakening computer screen, only much deeper and imperceptible in it’s nature.  We were both startled and felt compelled to walk toward it to get a better look.  It was so weird and surprising.  We wondered, ‘How could such a thing be?’

As we walked closer, we could see that it was just the wall, with the usual cords and whatnot draped down from behind the desk, and somehow the bright afternoon light, reflected off the back of the shutters or the back of my old metal computer monitor, or something, was illuminating the wall in a way that either hadn’t ever happened before, or that we simply hadn’t ever noticed before.  The moment passed.  We brushed it off, still a little surprised, as ‘just the wall.’  Then we left it and went about our business.

The interesting thing to me, in hindsight, was how it stopped us both.  It caught our eye, gave us pause, knocked us right out of our thoughts and activities and drove us into action, in this case, the need to investigate.  We both jumped right into the present moment with an excited curiosity, almost a touch of fear and an alluring love at the same time.  

These are the qualities of awe and wonder.  And when we get there, we step right into the right hemisphere of our brains.  Time is replaced by a sense of flow in the present moment.  There is a pause, we open our mouths and our eyes.  We listen.  The surprise that we feel at the same time demands a moment of recalibration as we consider the newness and the allure.  We loose a sense of self and feel called forth into action or response, the need to do something.  All at once we suddenly tap into a flood of possibilities, new ideas, creative potential and a feeling of healing or well being.  All of this, all at the same time.  

In wonder, we also find a locked in unity, a sense of togetherness or oneness.  When Frank and I saw that light, we both experienced the same body movements, a lifting of the head and chest, a dropping of the jaw, then a peering closer, focusing on the same point, listening, then moving forward, both of our minds and our sense of consciousness, open and as one.  We were moved to respond.

Fascinated and fascinating.  A widened perspective.

Babies and small children experience this sort of state on a regular basis.  It is part of everyday life.  Everything is new and calls out for our attention.  Everything invites us to wonder, to try to figure it out, to open to all the possibilities that could possibly be in play.  “How does that fly fly?”  “Wow!  Look at the shadows of the leaves playing on the sidewalk in the sun.”  This is where art dwells, imagination, creative flow, discovery, the unified whole.  And it’s all imbued with a sense of love.

As infants, with mommy or daddy near, we feel safe and protected. (Given the natural parent/child bonding experience.)  Our parents even join us in our surprise and delight, as the world of exploration opens before us, reliving for themselves the joy of discovery and the love that we all share.

When we bask in this state, we slip ease-fully into Divine Placement in the grander scheme of all things.  Our ego or sense of individuality falls away and we enter the flow of oneness.  All is right with the world, everything is possible and it’s all moving toward love.   In the pause of awe, we become free.  We open our hearts and minds and become one with everything.  Just like any other creative moment, be it singing or dancing, playing music or painting, splashing in the waves, digging in the sand, or stringing beads, we feel ourselves fitting nicely into the whole of the greater totality of being.  And, at the same time find ourselves gratefully opening to the unlimited potential and the wider perspective that dwells there, amongst all possibilities.  

So, let’s remember Oneness and Wonder.  Let's let ourselves be caught more often, even daily, if we can, by the jaw dropping beauty and mystery that surrounds us in every moment of every day.  Let’s not brush it off as something nameable or explainable.  Let’s be baffled for a moment before things start to come clear.  Let’s twirl in the miraculous wonder of it all and move together toward greater healing and love, where new ideas and creative solutions pop up in front of us, coming seemingly right out of nowhere.

 

Josephine Laing
© 2024

A Few Thoughts on COVID-19

 

This is a challenging time.  We've experienced nothing like it in modern history.  But, big challenges can come with big opportunities for positive change.  And we all know that positive change is what is dearly needed right now.  We can benefit from and direct that change toward desired outcomes through training our brains.   Some of you may want to visit the feature length film, "What the Bleep Do We Know," for further guidance on how to do this.  And, for more information on the importance of time spent idly, please read, Do Less, Be More by Susan Pearce and Martina Sheehan.  My gratitude goes to both of these authors for reminding us how vital time spent quietly can be.  In closing I'd like to say,
May the promise, that this season of spring brings with its new life, be a reminder of the possibilities that lie ahead of us, waiting to unfold.  And with that in mind, in our heart-minds, let's direct our thoughts and our imagination toward those of the best possible outcomes and the Highest Good for all.

 

 Disclaimer:
As a Clairvoyant Healer, Spiritual Counselor and Intuition Instructor, I share many tips for leading a healthy and fulfilling life.  Please be advised that I am not a doctor. Nor am I licensed in any healing modality. However, I have had years of experience in alternative and complementary health and healing. All healing programs, including standard western medical protocols in addition to natural therapies, can cause harm rather than the benefit that you may be searching for. After all some people can have a strong reaction to something as seemingly innocent as peanuts or strawberries. Therefore, anything that I may recommend in these blogs and videos could be dangerous for you to try. So, it is important that you Ask Your Doctor First before trying any natural healing protocol. However, most medical doctors have little experience regarding natural healing programs and herbal medicine. So please understand if your doctor is unfamiliar with these ideas.

 
© Josephine Laing 2020

Self-Care, Self-Acceptance, Self-Respect & Self-Love

Here we all are at the start of another New Year.  And, as always, there is much in the world that we can not control.  But, blessedly, what we can take hold of and be responsible for is our own happiness and peace of mind.  We've all heard that 'Peace begins within.'  And this is true, because when we increase the peace and love within our own hearts and minds, we increase the total amount of peace and love that is present the world. 

New Year's Day is often a time for all of us to begin again, to get back to basics, to check in with ourselves about what really matters.  It is a time to tend to self-care.  Too often the unsettled state of events in the world around us can unsettle us within.  So here in this first week of the New Year, let us remember how to calm ourselves.  

We can start by accepting whatever is going on.  The resistance alone can cause our bodies to tighten with stress and our minds to spin off on negative scenarios involving a lack of love, not only toward others, but also for ourselves.  

It has also been said, 'As within, so without.'  Freeing our self, in our minds, frees the world around us.  Remembering to breathe, consciously, or getting some exercise can be of great benefit because these activities open us up to the more right brained focus of the present moment and begin to let us sense our commonalities.  They help us to let go our left brain's near constant analytical tendencies and bring us closer to accepting the world and to self-acceptance. 

Our left brain's focus is a beautiful part of ourselves, but it doesn't have to dominate the scene all of the time.  We can respect it, be grateful for it and we can also give it a rest.  We can let that ever-evaluating, constantly-calculating, past and future-focused inner-critic of both our selves and the world around us take a little time off.  When we do, we gain more self-respect for the totality of who we are.  Because, we are not just our little separate selves, alone.  We are also expansive, energetic beings completely interconnected within the family of consciousness that comprises the entire universe, perfect, whole, beautiful and present, right here and right now.

These are some of the ideas and ways, which we can embrace, that help us to love ourselves more fully.  As we cultivate self-care with self-acceptance and self-respect we open the doors to greater levels of self-love.

With all of this in mind, I'll leave you with three little walking and breathing meditations, which I enjoy regularly.  They each help me to calm myself and cultivate more love for myself and for all.  They are from three of my favorite spiritual teachers.  The first is from Thich Nhat Hanh, the second from Ram Dass, and the third from Peace Pilgrim.  

I enjoy reciting these to my self, either silently or aloud while I'm moving through my day.  The imagery and the action brings me to the present moment and to a sense of oneness with everything.  They are great ways for me to care for myself and they open my heart to respect and allowance for myself and the world, while they shift my being into a state of peace and love.  I hope that they serve you as well as they have served me.  
Blessings to you all, with a Very Happy New Year!



1. )  "Breathing in, I calm my body.  Breathing out, I smile."


2.)   "May all beings be happy.
May all beings be free from suffering.
May all beings be peaceful.
May all beings be free."


3.)   "Peace, be still, and know that you are God.
Peace, be still, and know.
Peace, be still.
Peace, be.
Peace."




P.S.  For this New Year, one of the gifts of self-care, self-acceptance, self-respect and self-love that I am giving to myself is a slightly lighter schedule.  So, instead of offering my blog weekly as I have done for the last two and a half years, I will now be posting monthly.  May you also find a way to give to yourself the blessings of inner peace and calmness in this fresh New Year as well.  My love to you  all.  Enjoy.

© Josephine Laing 2017
 

The Final Judgement Day

What if the final judgement day is just that, the day when we all finally stop judging?  I think that is when we will enter the gates of heaven and it will be right here on earth, while we are alive.  We don't need to die to find Nirvana.  Many of those among us who are living have gone there and come back to tell us the tale.  Jill Bolte Taylor, with her book, My Stroke of Insight and Anita Moorjani with her's, Dying To Be Me, have both already shown us the way.

When Jill found herself only in her right brain consciousness after suffering a massive blood clot in the left hemisphere of her brain, she experienced the euphoria of oneness.  She found herself totally immersed in the magnificence of the energy around her and became the life force power of the universe.  She said that her experience was beautiful, compassionate and loving.  And when Anita died from end stage cancer in 2006, she realized while in the depths of her near death experience that God was not a being, external to her, but a state of being that is a part of her.  She explained that the God-self is accessible to everyone of us, when we shift from judgement to compassion and understanding.

Anita went on to share her view of hardened criminals, saying that they are only acting out of their own pain and fear and that their actions are fully understandable from a compassionate, empathetic pint of view.  This perception let her drop judgement and fear.  She was also able to see that it was her fears that had created the choices in her life that resulted in her disease.  Releasing those fears and opening up to her God-self caused her disease to vanish.

All of this seems like a very good idea to me.  What do you say we try a little experiment in consciousness and explore the edges of human evolution.  Let's develop our right brain awareness and drop our judgement by reaching for understanding and see what happens.  It sure would be nice to step into heaven on earth and have that final judgement day.  I'm game.  How about you?

© Josephine Laing 2016

Growing Our Consciousness Through Right Brain Awareness

Humanity has accomplished such great strides with our technological advancements.  But I think that our next great human evolutionary step will not involve technology or be external, I think it will be biological and internal, through the way that we think and perceive our world.  Though generalizations about the traits of our right and left brain are overly simplified, they do serve to inform us about how we process information and the way that we think.  

Both of our brain hemispheres are completely separate.  They do communicate fluidly from left to right, but each processes information and thinks about things in completely different ways.

Nearly all of our modern advancements have happened through what are loosely known as our left brain skills.  Here we use our analytical thought to evaluate past experiences and critically consider future possibilities.  Our predominantly right brain skills certainly come into play with flashes of insight, however, it is what is thought of as the left brain, that is the work horse, when it comes to the current day human achievements like air travel and weaponry for defense.   

And indeed, all of our physical body movement, perceptual and thinking skills involve both sides of our brain, but what is important here is what serves us for our understanding.  So, please forgive me for using these generalizations, but they help us to more clearly understand our strengths and our deficiencies.  

With that in mind, we can see our modern Western cultural way of being as the end product of what can be thought of as an essentially left-brain-focused thought filled world.  And we have indeed accomplished much.  But the spotlight has thus far always been on "me," rather than "we."  A typical example of this might be something like, "Better profits for my corporation," at the unfortunate but "necessary" expense of a loss of biological diversity.  

It seems to me, that the time has come for us to consider the more holistic, more all-encompassing, more right-brain view if we are going to survive these kinds of "side effects" from what could be called our non-inclusive left brain perspective.  

So, one might ask, "How do we switch to a more holistic view?"  The good news is that we don't have to re-invent the wheel.  It's all already been done before.  Many of the indigenous cultures that have preceded our Western one, here in North America, were well aware of the tendency toward what can be called left brain dominance.  They intuitively understood the long term survival benefits of a more right brain focused way of thinking and incorporated it into their way of life.

These cultures did this through the use of pictographs instead of words, storytelling and oral traditions instead of written languages.  They knew that time spent in ceremony or fasting or in vision quests opens the psyche to inspiration, imagination and flashes of insight.  Art and creativity, music and dance, additionally are key aspects to what can be called a right brain embracing world view.  

Another cultural skill set, loosely attributed to the right brain, is the well developed use of the senses in the present moment: feeling the direction of the wind, listening for sound, tasting the plants or the water.  When these habits become a part of everyday life they bring us to the here and now or present moment consciousness.  They also help bring our awareness to the bigger picture.  We see the whole forest, not just the one tree.

As we continue to wake up to the problems inherent in our essentially more analytical and self focused view, I see us making changes accordingly.  The women's spirituality movement is rich with ceremony.  Personal retreats, where one can receive insights and inspiration, are gaining popularity.  Yoga, photography, music, art and dance are being seen as valuable, albeit largely missing, components for education in our schools.  And the environmental movement, women's liberation, gay rights and AIM are all helping us to be more inclusive and to see the bigger picture.  This is what could be known as the right brain rising.  Now all we have to do is to let it come into play more fully by stepping into this magic that already exists in me and in you.


© Josephine Laing 2016

An Elder's Simple Wisdom

A friend of mine was raised in Peru.  She was there recently visiting her elderly mother and was reminded of a beautiful instruction her mother had given to her when she was young.  It was this, "While you are out walking, it is good to sing and smile.  Then, no one will be afraid of you.  And if you can't sing, then whistle."  

My friend also said that while she was growing up they had a neighbor who would sing out his songs in a booming voice.  Everyone always knew where he was and how close to home he had come.  I shared this with my husband and he told me that one of the elders he had met sometimes said that it is a bad man who has no song in his heart.  

Such profound and simple wisdoms, and we know them to be true.  Most all of the time, when we hear someone singing or whistling as they walk by, we are instantly put at ease, especially if they grace us with a nice friendly smile.  

After a severe head injury, another friend of mine was very distressed to realize that upon awakening she no longer had a song playing in her mind.  She mourned and wept for the loss and then was ecstatic some months later as her healing progressed and her day-to-day songs were returned to her once more. 

Some years back, still another friend of mine shared that her daughter had found the man she wanted to marry and introduced him to her parents.  I asked my friend how she liked the young man.  She said, "He's great!"  We love him!  And guess what, he whistles!"  She was overjoyed because as she said, "It's always the sign of a happy heart."

Our brains and hearts and minds are remarkable and as we sing and whistle and smile we connect with others and feel that all is right with the world.  And we stride forward into the beautiful moment of Now.

© Josephine Laing, 2016

The Art of Tea Leaf Reading

Before the days of therapists and counselors, we used to simply sit down with a dear friend and a good cup of tea.  There at the kitchen table, we would pour our hearts out and spill our secrets into the saucer with our tea.  Wonderful insights would occur to us as we would share our stories.  Our dear friend would take them all in and tend to them, carefully and with as much depth of consideration as if she were holding one of our new born babes.

This beautiful kitchen table magic is not lost to us.  And it can be even further enhanced when combined with the fine art of tea leaf reading.  Tea leaf reading, similar to the I-Ching, the Runes and the Tarot is a form of “Giving Divination.”  It is very like looking at clouds or gazing into a crystal ball.  Images appear and they can help us gain insight into a given situation.  The seer uses their soft vision, not a hard focus, to let shapes appear to them and then shares impressions that may accompany their impressions. 

Though we can certainly do tea leaf readings for ourselves, it is very nice to nice to do this with a friend or a companion.  Like the wise stranger we once met on a bus or a train, sometimes our best advice can come from someone that we don't really know. 

For tea leaf readings, you need a loose leaf tea.  It can be herbal, black or green, but it must still have some shape to the plant parts and not be powdered.  Then, while sipping the tea, the person who is having some difficulty shares their problems with the listener.  They tell the whole story, all the ins and outs, everything they can think of and how they feel about it.  All the while, they are sipping away at their tea. 

When their cup is almost empty, holding only one or two more swallows, they focus silently on the entirety of the problem and formulate their ideas into a question.  It can be something like, "What is the best course of action for me to take here?' or "What would be in accordance with the highest good for all concerned in this situation?"  Then they take just one more little sip so there is just barely enough liquid left in the cup to enable them to lightly swirl the leaves around.  And then they turn the cup upside down, spilling it's remaining contents into the saucer.  Some of the leaves will spill with the liquid into the saucer but some of the bits of leaves will remain on the sides of the cup. 

The friend who has been listening then takes the cup and using their soft eyes, they look at the leaves, just like how they might look at the clouds, to see if they can imagine images there.  Similar to laying out a card deck, areas within the cup can be used to represent: the past or the future, a base of family support or destiny coming from on high.  The bits and globs of soggy tea leaves located on one side of the handle area might represent where you have been in your life, while the bits located on the other side of the handle might represent where you are headed.  It is all very arbitrary and each seer develops their own ideas regarding the of placement of the remaining leaves within the cup.

Some bits of tea may look like birds swirling on thermal drafts or airplanes in flight.  Just like with dream images, these can mean different things.  For me, birds and planes represent spiritual flight.  Bicycles can be balance, cars or buses can represent our bodies.  It is all good.  Trust the process and let it flow. 

I like to encourage beginning tea leaf readers to just keep talking.  Whether you think you are only making stuff up or you think that you are accurately perceiving psychically, just keep on talking.  It gets the ball rolling and the information will begin to come to you.  Try not to judge it.  Simply trust it.  And I'm sure that you will be pleasantly surprised by the feedback you get from your friend.  Most likely they will be blown away by how perceptive you are, by the insights and wisdoms you were able to share and by the accuracy of the information that you were able to give.

So have some fun.  Let your consciousness align with that all knowing, all seeing part of you that is a part of us all.  Get out some tea, a little cup and saucer and put the water on to boil.  Enjoy.


© Josephine Laing, 2016

Just Being Me and Creativity

One of the best ways to increase our creativity is to do what we did so well in childhood. I referring to devoting little moments throughout our days to "Just Being Me." It is simple and easy and brings us adults great reward.

© Josephine Laing, 2015

How We Think

We are often taught what to think, but we are not usually taught how to think.  Please enjoy this short video on how to become aware of the different ways that we think.

© Josephine Laing, 2015

Step Into the Magic of Your Right Brain

We live in a left brain dominant culture.  The half of our brain that is located in the left side of our heads holds the perception of the analytical, linear, sequential and time-bound aspects of our reality.  In this part of our brain our thoughts are filled with language and numbers, worries about the past and fears of the future.  Our left brains like established routines and well-known solutions to our problems.  Whereas, the thoughts in our right brain are much wider in scope.  Our right brain thinks in terms of the whole forest rather than just the tree.  The knowledge held in our right brains is way more astute in many ways, not only socially and emotionally but also psychically, being able to see the entire context, like the whole shoreline instead of just one grain of sand.

Dropping our left brain dominance and embracing the thoughts that we hold in our right brains has great implications for our collective and global good because our right brains are so much broader in  perception.  In the right brain it is all about 'We,' rather than 'Me.'  And, when we enter into the right brain, we stop all our busy little left brain internal chatter, it just goes away, even if for only a moment and we begin to move into a consciousness that embraces more than just ourselves. We see that we are vast and a part of everything.  Our right brains also hold the consciousness of peaceful euphoria and pure love.  This is how we think while we are in the right side of our brains.

It is our right brain awareness that we are striving for and practice achieving in meditation, but this quality of awareness can also happen spontaneously whenever we are taken with the beauty of something, find love, listen to a melody or move into the present moment.  In his book, Polishing the Mirror, Ram Dass says that love is the doorway to oneness with all things, to being in harmony with the entire Universe.  He says that this is what we all long for and that once we touch this state of pure being, you can never completely forget it.  He goes on to say that 'being here now,' which is the quality of our right brain awareness, is never more than a thought away.  One of my favorite ways to access my right brain is to step outside to listen for the song of a bird,  Here we find a calm, self-assured presence from which we can access the state of oneness with everything.  It is from this inner perspective that our inner guidance arises.  As Rumi said, "Everything in the Universe is Within, Ask all from yourself."  

In her epic journey into the right side of the brain, Jill Bolte Taylor, who wrote My Stroke of Insight, found the potential for a world full of beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people who knew that they could come to this space at any time.  She saw how we could all purposefully choose to step to the right side of our brains and find this beautiful peace.  This motivated her to take that long eight year journey of recovery from her stroke, so that she could share this, so that we could each see that all of us together, can embrace peace, which I personally feel is humanity's greatest desire.  

When we are in our right brains we know that 'All is Well, All of the Time.'  It is from this standpoint that we can connect with spirit.  It gives us access to our God Space or our Collective Love Consciousness.  This is how we can commune with angels and nature spirits or deceased loved ones.  It is our Higher Self, our Super conscious mind of compassion from whence we are totally interconnected with everyone and with everything through all time in the eternal moment of now.  It is this aspect of our awareness that lets us receive inspirations that bring us into harmony and joy.
When we are in our right brain consciousness, we find that we are spontaneously fulfilling all of our needs while serving The One.   This is our right brain.  And I think it is time that we all start regularly practicing the fine art of freeing ourselves to step into the magic of the right side of our brains.

© Josephine Laing, 2015

Communicating With The Natural World

 
We humans have been reading the subtle communications of nature ever since time began.  From the simple request of a cat wanting to be let outside to the complex structure of weather patterns, if we pay attention, we can tell what nature is saying.  We can also receive intent, inspirations and even energy from nature.  This does require a shift in our awareness and our beliefs.  Whatever we believe is true, whether it is that the glass is half empty or the glass is half full.  If we allow ourselves to believe that we can, we can!  This simple but profound shift is what lets us sense subtle energies from the worlds of animals and plants. 

Contemporary research has shown that plants communicate with each other, they cooperate, they eavesdrop on their neighbors, call out for help, and even nurture their young.  Plants do have a social side.  They behave more like animals, and thus like us humans, than we have formerly believed.  They don't have eyes or ears, but they do interact with their environments, and that includes us.  Not only does this happen on a purely physical level, but it can also happen on a more etheric level.

When we stand outside in nature, rooted in the present moment, we can enter our right brains.  This lets us be interconnected, nonjudgemental, expansive, open, creative, subtle, nuanced, and insightful.  We become filled with new and novel perspectives.  This lets us realize that we are full of possibility, while being completely aware of everything around us and one with all.  When we let ourselves do this we can easily hear the voices of nature.  

We use our right brain all the time.  When we walk, when we talk, everything that we do involves some of our right brain skills and function.  But it's our left brain, our analytical brain, that is dominant in our contemporary western culture.  This hasn't always been the case.  Ancient peoples the world round were well adept in right brain function.  They have long communed on deep and profound levels with nature.  We can reclaim this skill, quite easily, if we try.

I first began this exploration when I wondered, How in the world did people of old discover the medicinal qualities of the plants around us?  So I decided to go out into the garden and try it for myself.  I sidled up beside a Hypericum plant and sat in meditative silence.  I knew nothing about the medicinal qualities of these plants at the time.  But I decided to have a go at listening.  Why not?  And before I knew it I was feeling things in my body, I was receiving ideas as if they had been planted in my head.  I just let the Hypericum talk to me, and it was delighted to do so. To my great and pleasant surprise, everything I received was accurate. 

The natural world is just waiting for us to connect.  Why not step outside and give it a try? You might not be interested in medicine, but maybe you'll find that the answers to your problems, inspirations for things you'd like to do, or directions you'd like to take in life, will suddenly pop into your head.  You may even find that you like it.  

© Josephine Laing, 2014

We're Working On It

Isn't it interesting to note that in people with Multiple Personality Disorder, one personality can be very sensitive to sugars in the diet, and have an advanced case of diabetes, while another personality in the same person, a mere moment later, can be absolutely disease free?  That's the incredible power for healing ability that each one of us holds inside of ourselves.  The trick lies in cultivating this skill, which we haven't yet learned.  But we're working on it.

It is our sub-conscious mind (SCM) that holds the potential for us to harness this ability.  This is the part of our consciousness that can accomplish that degree of healing instantaneously.  However, it's a very rare mind that has gained that type of control. 

The good news is that the SCM follows our directions.  It reasons logically and is our beloved protector, always dutifully following our deepest beliefs, even when we have long ago consciously forgotten them.  Its main language of communication is our emotions, either positive or negative.  It also responds very well to repetition.  

The SCM is the part of ourselves that we get in touch with when we access our brain's right hemisphere through hypnosis.  As we tap into the right side of our brain, which is connected to our higher consciousness, we can not only heal anxiety, depression, and addictive patterns, but we can also see tumors disappear, cartilage grow back, and even the "impossible diseases" turn around and heal.  

Think of a world, if you will, where all of our suffering drops away and we open ourselves to the beautiful creation of our heart's desire.  See in your mind's eye, if you can, teachers in schools offering techniques to the smallest children to help them positively manage and cope with their feelings and emotions.  We hold this potential in the palms of our hands and in the depths of our hearts.  It could free us all to find and live our true purpose every waking day.  

With journaling we can pour all of our negative thoughts out onto the paper and begin to notice our mental patterns.  Some of us have patterns of self-criticism, or self loathing.  Some of us are always complaining or choosing to take offense.  As we express ourselves and put our thoughts on the page, they don't need to constantly repeat themselves, like broken records.  Observing these patterns in ourselves lets us begin to make choices so that we can think differently.  

As we learn and start to apply basic spiritual practices like kindness, gratitude, understanding and forgiveness, not only do our negative patterns start to loosen their grasp, but our thoughts also change.  When our thoughts change, our beliefs change.  And now we are in the realm of that great powerhouse, the sub-conscious mind.  As our beliefs change our subconscious mind dutifully follows suit.  This is how we shift our paradigm.  

© Josephine Laing, 2014

We Are All One

Throughout spiritual literature we find the phrase, "We are all one." I am sometimes asked, how do we find oneness when we all feel so separate? I love what Aldous Huxley said about the brain. He said the brain is like a reducer valve, mitigating all of the information from the universe. A reducer valve is something that makes the flow of information or material smaller. For instance, the water out at the street flows through a four inch pipe. We've all seen a fire hydrant blow, it's a tremendous geyser. If that amount of water pressure came out of our kitchen sink it would blow the sink right off the wall. So instead, there are reducer valves to manage the amount of water that flows from the street into our homes. Our brains are the same way. If we had access to all the information of the universe, all the time, it would short our circuits, much like that exploding kitchen faucet.

However, we can access our little part of that entire creation by simply stepping into the right side of our brains. Here, in our right brains, we find the present moment, the eternal now, the quiet mind, psychic perception, limitless possibilities, and new insightful solutions. Here we are the observer, where everything is perfect, whole, and complete. This is the place where we are connected to everything. There is an innocent openness, a rich sense of abundance, and euphoria. 

One of my favorite analogies is that of the drop of water and the ocean. A drop of water is a part of all water, however it is differentiated into a single drop. It is no more separate from the rest of water than my baby finger is separate from me. My finger is not separate, but it is different from the rest of me. Similarly, our consciousness is a unique part of divinity. Not separate, but different, with access to all being a part of the whole. When we look at the world and ourselves this way we see the illusion of separation for what it is: merely an illusion.
 
This idea of separation can be very dangerous. It is the source, after all, of war. It causes the them vs. us mentality. When instead we see everyone and everything as a part of the same whole, but delightfully and interestingly different, then the whole world becomes our family. And we are in love with everyone and everything.

In closing, I'll leave you with a little guidance for how to step into the right brain. My favorite is to spend some time out in nature. Nature opens us to an expansiveness and a clarity that allows us to receive inspiration, which always comes right out of the right brain. Another great way is to spend time with a dog. Dogs are loving, in the present moment, accepting of everything. They are perfect expressions of God, which is dog spelled backwards. Perhaps my favorite way of accessing the right brain is to take a moment to listen for just a second to that birdsong that just sounded right outside the window. Try it right now, see if you can catch it ... did you notice, that for right then you didn't have any thoughts? You were open and receptive. Enter there. 

© Josephine Laing, 2014