Yes, it’s that time of year…Christmas. There is a lot of joy around. Happy and bright. Ho, ho, ho. Sleigh bells ring. Silent night. Joy to the world.  This season brings out the best in us. Family and friends and holiday cheer. It is a most wonderful time of the year.

It’s wonderful because caring and giving take center stage. We think of others…not just our own self. We take time and make efforts to consider what others might want or need. This one thing changes the vibration of entire communities…even the world!

It’s wonderful because we slow down enough to recognize our own good fortune. We look at the lights, listen to the music, sit in the stillness and feel the holiness of life itself. If you feel the wonder in this season..it is the hap, happiest season of all.

Yes, it’s that time of year…Christmas. For some, the wonder of this season doesn’t feel so wonderful. There is loss and grief and loneliness. A short supply of happy and bright for many reasons.

If this is where you are…please take care of yourself and don’t try to pretend. Respect and care for yourself as you are. Reach out to someone if that feels right. Ask for what you need. Start a different holiday tradition…maybe. Let these days be simple.

My Christmas prayer is for love to emerge through every heart and light every dark place. Amen.
Merry Christmas.
Much love
Paula

I saw this quote from Abraham that caused me to pause…

If you need to be understood to feel good…you’re screwed.

I deal with this one every-single-day-of-my-life. Really. I’ve gotten past the needing to be right or getting my own way…most of the time. But I do have a very high expectation of being understood. And it definitely messes with how I feel about myself.

If I’m not understood I blame myself for not communicating well enough. Blame does not feel good. If I’m not understood I think the other person is not listening to me. Judgment does not feel good. In both cases I feel frustrated…not a good feeling. It’s like poking myself in the eye…ouch!

Abraham is saying, feeling good has nothing to do with being understood. It has nothing to do with what other people understand about me, what I’m going through or what I’m trying to say. Sure, it’s important to me that I communicate clearly. At the same time, it’s most important to feel good. Feeling good in myself and about myself comes before anything.

Feeling good first, lays the groundwork for a joy-filled life…one that ebbs and flows rather than one that crashes and burns. I don’t have to be understood to feel good. I can decide to feel good about me every-single-day-of-my-life.

Whew…still practicing.
Paula

I don’t get surprised often. I was really surprised for my 60th birthday when my family showed up to the restaurant where I thought just Renee and I had a reservation. My mom and one sister from Pennsylvania, my brother from Charleston, my other sister from here in Wilmington. I was speechless for a good while. That kind of memory is still fresh for me.

I was surprised again this past weekend…although maybe not speechless…by a group of self-described goddesses who planned a Sunday lunch for me. I didn’t know it was a lunch FOR me. I just showed up with no expectation, really. What I got was a showering of love and joy that hit me in the heart. I was moved to a few tears and then we prayed in a circle and enjoyed a few hours on a Sunday afternoon together. It was just perfect.

Today I am still moved by this experience. There have been times over the past almost two years when I wanted to give up. I was tired of talking to the camera. I wondered if anyone listened or read anything I wrote. I wasn’t sure all of the effort really helped anyone. Was Spiritual Soul Center meant to be? Why haven’t we found a space yet? What am I doing?

As happens sometimes, it seems the Universe conspired to give me a nudge in the ‘right’ direction. Not just one person, but my very own twelve disciples showed up…showed up with gifts and appreciation and love. How cool is that? You have no idea.

Thank you Beverly, Maggie, Holly, Barbara, Mel, Brooklin, Kathy, Fran, Val, Gloria, Christine and Renee. And thank you to those who were there, just as importantly, in spirit…Debby, Olivia, Jill and Angel. Your presence is a gift in my life.

With great humility and joy,
Paula

Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Early Bird Specials, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday. Sale, sale, sale. The top ten best deals. The must have top twenty five. Hurry before stock runs out. Deal, deal, deal. The countdown until Christmas. But wait, that’s not all…order now and get ‘this’ FREE!

I am exhausted just writing it down. Don’t blame it on the media or on retail. They wouldn’t be using these gimmicks if they didn’t work! It works because we buy into it (pun intended). We get harried and hurried. Excited about a deal…they said it was a deal, right? More, more, more. Bigger, better, brighter. Bring-it-on. They catch us every year…hook, line and sinker.

Are you on the hook?

There is not a right or wrong here…just an invitation to observe yourself as you navigate another holiday season in the world of retail. Be honest with yourself. Are you satisfied with…you? Are you making conscious choices, the best choices for you?

Here is a reminder…Matthew 6:19-21  from The Message Bible.

Don’t hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or worse, stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it’s safe from moth and rust and burglars. It’s obvious isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.

Check in with yourself. Where is it that you most want to be?

Much love
Paula

I had another experience of…you just never know. You just never know what is happening in another person’s life. It may look one way to you, from the outside, but you just never know what someone might be holding inside. Maybe they are afraid or too proud to let it show. Maybe they feel they won’t be heard or maybe they aren’t ready to face their own demons.

You just never know for sure…even about those you consider close, those you love and who love you back.

It’s uncomfortable to be vulnerable all of the time. It takes courage. Sometimes sharing the truth is painful. And let’s face it…we all aren’t the best listeners. And we all have a tendency to want to fix rather than to be with the pain of another.

You just never know.

I think we should stop trying to know. We really have no idea about the life of anyone else. We simply haven’t lived it. If we have lived a certain similar experience I can assure you that it wasn’t the same. It couldn’t possibly be the same. I am me and you are you. Kind of stating the obvious.

So where does this bring me? Listen…if you never know for sure, act like it! Stop making assumptions and creating stories and then believe they’re true! You don’t have to understand it or fix it. You don’t have to judge it or make sense of it. How about instead…just be love.

Be love in a world that needs love more than anything else. Be love.

Paula

Thanksgiving is right around the corner. It is a day dedicated to offering gratitude for, well fill in the blank. It’s good to pause and consider our life from the perspective of appreciation…to take a minute and consider how amazingly we made it to this very moment. All of the twists and turns, ups and downs, and here we are.

But I believe the fullness of gratitude resides in us as a state of mind and a way of being…not just appreciating what we have. It is walking all of the time, through all seasons, with great humility. What it means to be grateful is what it looks like…not what you say or even what you mean. But how it looks and how it feels. I think humility is how gratitude looks. And I think a humble heart is how gratitude feels.

To walk with great humility is to walk conscious of my own limitations and imperfections. To look through the lens of humility and recognize my appreciation for this life and all who are in it…as if exactly the way it is is an incredible miracle.

With a humble heart I can appreciate everything.

Much love
Paula

Over the last three weeks I listened to a class online sponsored by the Jung Platform. It was a class called Aging in a Soulful Way, presented by Connie Zweig. She reminded me of what Jung calls the shadow.

The shadow isn’t anything dark or bad. It is simply unseen. It is our personal unconscious…the storehouse of our beliefs, attitudes, fears, images and stories. We develop our personal unconscious beginning in childhood and we continue right up to today. This storehouse affects how we feel and how we bring ourselves to life.

Shadow work is pausing long enough to recognize what’s in the storehouse…and then deciding if it’s worth keeping, if it is still useful. When we become aware, we can make a choice to change, tell ourselves a different story, release an old, worn out idea, come into greater ease and acceptance of our self.

Shadow work is easy enough to begin. Be curious about your own self. Ask yourself questions about a reaction you had, a hurt you feel, a fear you have. Is it true? Where did it come from? Is it time to let it go?

If you are brave enough to do some shadow work I am confident the result will be freedom. That’s enough of an incentive for me!

Much love
Paula

It’s November. The holiday season is starting…already. For some, there is great anticipation for decorating, celebrations, warm and cozy togetherness. This anticipation feels good and exciting. For others, it will be the first time they will be without a treasured loved one. This anticipation is more about emptiness and maybe even dread. It feels hollow and sad. There are many places in between these two experiences of anticipation. Something to think about.

This exact thing happens every-single-year.

Knowing this clarifies two things for me. First, that it is important to make conscious choices for engaging in this season…to make the best choice for me wherever I find myself along the spectrum of anticipation. I don’t have to get caught up in what others decide. I can be true to me. If you needed it…permission granted!

Second, be kind. Really. Resist the urge to judge or condemn. Stop the gossip and story-telling about others we know precious little about. Be kind. Offer a smile, complement them on the decor, allow others to be who and how they want to be. Don’t discount their feelings or tell them how they should feel.

These are important reminders for me. They really apply all year long. They are the practices of self-acceptance and kindness.

Deep breath
Paula

Life doesn’t always turn out like you expect it to. Now there’s a statement everybody can agree on! I mean everybody. I don’t think there is a single person in the world who would say, “Naw, that’s not true. It always works out the way I expect it to.”

So, if this is true, why do we get so whacked out when things don’t go our way?

I’ll tell you why…because it feels crappy when it happens. You expected this and instead it was that. Disappointed, enraged, out of sorts, depressed, lost, hurt, angry, deflated, frustrated, overwhelmed, grief-stricken. Some would say the best way out of this mess is to not have any expectations to begin with. What I realize is without expectations…like of things working out that way I had planned…I have no excitement in my life. Every day is slow and low and boring.

Don’t get me wrong…I’ve learned to let a lot of things roll off my back. But still, there are some things that happen that are too painful or exhausting to let go of right then and there.

So here is what I think. You just gotta let yourself feel it. Give yourself the space to feel it. Don’t lock it away somewhere or pretend it’s all okay when it isn’t. Allow yourself to feel it…all of it. Don’t burden someone else with it, or worse, take it out on them…just go ahead and experience it. Consciously. When you can, take some deep breaths, go to bed early, take a long walk, sit and stare, take a few days off from work or other obligations, call a friend, ask for some help. But before that…let yourself go through it.

And then remember…this too shall pass.

Thank God, this too shall pass.
Paula

Who knows anything for sure? We think we know, we do our best…mostly, and still we just don’t know for sure. I remember a Garfield button my mom gave me long ago. It had a picture of that orange cartoon cat saying…Exercise, eat right, die anyway. My mom and her bits of wisdom…priceless!

It says something about the impact of this simple little bit, that I even remember it thirty-five years later. I can tell you, it did not sink in right away. I chuckled and probably threw that button in a drawer. This many years later, though, I find myself more at ease and appreciative. I remember Garfield.

The wisdom: keep your life in perspective and learn to take a wider view. Don’t get too stuck in one thing. No need to be so serious all of the time…enjoy yourself. We have just this one opportunity, we call it a lifetime, to be and do. Choose wisely. We never know when our time will be up.

Thanks mom…and thanks Garfield.
Appreciating my life as it is,
Paula