Love is all you need...

“All you need is love…” a catchy phrase from John Lennon’s song. Pretty cool, we sing it with our arms wrapped around each other. We try to emulate these words. We send love to our friends and loved ones. Love is the only way that healing can occur in our lives. Love is the only way that healing can occur on the planet. Love of others sometimes has come before love of our selves. Many of us have put ourselves aside, trying to show that we are capable of expressing love by giving it to others. We try to forgive while carrying anger towards ourselves because we are angry with ourselves. For many of us, intimate love that causes us to feel connected to another is also elusive. Even when we feel that we have found our soul mate/twin flame, the one who is the complement to us, we find that intimacy is a distant echo, an illusive that try as we might, we cannot catch. We love our children and even they seem to be rebellious, pushing the love we give them away. Each morning we wake up, we search for that connection with our self and everything else. We try to create a feeling that we are ok.

How do you feel about yourself today? Are you contented with your accomplishments? Do you like the person who you are? Do the words of John Lennon’s song reverberate through your spirit, your body and your life? You work hopefully at a job that fills you up, are you happy in it? If not, why? Are you happy and in love with your life? If not, why?

These questions are not meant to challenge you or make you afraid. Rather it is meant to starting you on an internal dialogue. I am sure you have asked yourself these questions. Sometimes the answers are elusive because we tend to judge ourselves harshly as we search. “Years ago, a colleague of mine, while she and I were walking in the hills around Sedona, Arizona, bent and picked up the red rocks that were strewn along the way. She broke each rock in two with her strong hands and then flung the offending rock back to the ground. After about ten minutes of enduring the hollow echo of the offending activity, I asked her what she was doing. She replied that she was looking for a perfect rock to take back home with her. She was looking for the perfect rock and instead of waiting until she found one that spoke to her, she destroyed many, disturbing the peace of the environment trying to find the one she desired.”

This story reminds me of how we seek our inner truth. As long as we spend our time criticizing our self for what we feel we did wrong or did not do, we will not find happiness. We discard much of what we feel and realize about ourselves because we are afraid of seeing our truth. We are so joyfully beating up on ourselves that we forget to love ourselves first in order to be able to see our truth. I would love for you to look at yourself and your life without judgment. To find a way to “see beauty even if it is not pretty every day…” Oriah Mountain Dreamer. Our children are precious. Please teach them to love themselves through our example of loving ourselves. It is not our words that convey the loudest message it is our actions that leave a lasting imprint on our children and our world.

 “All you need is love…” Be love by being in love with yourself. Be joy by being joyful within. Teach truth by finding your own inner truth. Be a lasting example of the greatest human being that ever existed by acknowledging your own divinity. Yes we can all be the greatest that ever lived. We can all cross the finish line at the same time it is called “a tie”. We can all lead it is called cooperation. We can all feel and be special it is called love.

“Love, love, love, All you need is love…” Let this song uplift you today, emulate it in your life so that it can flow from the source of your inner being manifesting in the greatest love fest the world has ever seen.

We are looking for the thing that will leave us feeling great about our self, that will make us fall in love with our self, that will make us more agreeable in our daily lives. We are so much judging our self that we have a hard time finding the elusive love, love, love.

Dealing with the heat.

My last post...such a long time ago, I wrote about the snow or lack thereof in Vancouver, British Columbia. I showed my gratitude for less snow which brings us to spring in Vancouver. Our spring is typical in Vancouver. Very rainy and cold. I have only just taken off the heavy coat of winter for lighter clothing wrapped in plastic rain wear. The past couple of years Vancouverites were complaining about the heat and mugginess. For the first time air conditioners were in great demand at the hardware stores as spring (what spring?) flowed into summer. While I was speaking with customers a rash of perspiration would slowly form on my forehead. As I stood there becoming drenched, acting like I was quite comfortable with being bathed in sweat, I would wonder if the individual with whom I was speaking thought something was wrong with me. They never said a word and neither did I.

I was suffering with the heat not because of the weather so much but because I was in menopause. Menopause shows itself differently for each woman. For many it may start at the back of the legs, from the solar plexus, for my friend just beginning to indulge in this pasttime that few womwen can avoid, her feet gets really hot. For me it began in my heart. In my chest. A wave of heat started to prickle in the centre of my chest and slowly, oh so slowly oozed over my chest, up my neck, into my face and up into my scalp, then down through my stomach. The heat was suffocating. It was debilitating as its intensity grew and rose up and over my body. It was as if someone took wool batting, and attempted to slowly suffocate me with it. I felt like I was being forced out of air with the heat and as I panicked the experience grow and became more intense.

Over my life I found that as I struggled to overcome a situation, it intensified. I learned that relaxing and surrendering to the physical pain and discomfort caused it to diminish. This is how I faced the hot flashes. I emotionally relaxed, which relaxed my body which caused the discomfort to go away quicker. When my mother went into menopause, I am not sure if she was aware of what was happening but she thought everyone was contrary to herself. She could not understand why people were wearing so much clothing when the environment was so hot to her. She did not understand, she would comment, why we did not put on much clothing when it was so cold. My mother's foray into the world of menopause did not last long because it was not her focus and the same with me. I have heard that the experience lasts for many years, mine lasted for only a short time - unless, I just got used to dealing the heat.

I am looking forward to our (hopefully) hot summer. I should not need to sleep with a fan running all night, nor stick my face into the fridge to alleviate the discomfort. So I am excited about dry picnics, outings and sleeps. Unless menopause is stalking me like my kitten Princess stalked my stockinged feet pouncing when I lease expected it and getting tangled up in my stocking with her claws.

The importance of change

In Vancouver, we have been pleasantly treated to a soggy, rainy winter. I believe the farmer's almanac predicted that we would be inundated by snow, this winter. I did not want snow. Snow can be inconvenient, blocking the roads, creating slushy transport not to mention traffic issues. I know that the people in most of the US and the rest of Canada and parts of the world can agree that snow is no picnic. My mother, enjoyed the short vacation of staying at home because the buses and subway where she lives were going no where. So, I relaxed in the divine view that I do not have to shovel rain. Many automobile owners had, in November, bought snow tires in preparation for the deluge expected, only to be let down by the lack of snow.

Imagine my surprise this morning when I woke up to snow. I was a little nervous at the big, fat snow drops that were drifting from the sky. I had become used to the rain. I know, not many people like the wet stuff, but I had become used to rain, to the safety that for me the rain provided, as opposed to the insecurity brought from the snow. Well I did not have to be discomforted because the snow went as quickly as it came. Whew!!!

So what does this have to do with the importance of change. I feel that change shakes us up. Enjoying the same thing on a day to day basic leads to a type of complacency. We become like the log lying in the forest, getting soggy and dried out until moss begins to grow on us. Soon mushrooms join the moss and we become hosts to complacency, the doldrums, fatigue and physical angst. Like the sand dollars in the oceans and the trees in the forest, it is a really good idea to embrace change. Even if it is a tiny change like rolling over, change is a really good thing for us to embrace.

Let's face it everything is changing. Time is changing. Nature is in constant change. We are also shifting and changing energetically, emotionally, physically despite our resistance. So, let us join hands and sing... (kidding). Got you worried didn't I. That is the shake up I experienced this morning which woke me from the little stagnation I was in. Enjoy the changes as they come...you can't avoid it anyway.