I apologize for quoting a comment in it’s entirely but I found this so beautiful and thought-provoking that I wanted to repeat it.

My sister Sarah wrote:

Vera, here is a thought about abundance that may or may not make sense to anyone else.

Are you familiar with the concept of ‘Thin Places’

Maybe there are thin places in our lives that are not necessarily physical spaces but are more related to specific activities. For example I cannot separate spirituality from working in my garden. I don’t think of the physical space of my garden as a thin place so much as the actual time spent in gardening activities.

While gardening I feel so much gratitude, gratitude for the developing fruits or the fragrance of herbs or the song of a bird. No matter what else may be going on in my life I feel thankful. In those feelings of gratitude I feel closer to God.

Anyway, if you’re still following me and this makes any kind of sense, I think we find our abundance when we find the thin places in our lives, those places where we naturally feel gratitude.

By abundance I do not mean financial abundance. (If you can turn that area of your life into a source of income that’s icing on the cake.) What I’m talking about is finding some aspect of our life that brings an abundance of gratitude.

Sarah,
You have great points and I agree with you completely. When I first read this I did not remember what a thin place was. I looked it up on google and learned that it was a sacred space where the veils between the sacred and everyday life become thin. The concept is understood in many traditions. We also understood that a thin place may not be a physical place.

I do not have a physical place that I relate to as a thin place, though my living room couch with a certain inspirational magazine open would be the closest.

Like my sister, for me my couch is not particularly a thin space but the time spent there in inspirational reading and meditation is.

I find a thin place in my breath. I am a person who walks and hums and I find a thin place there. I know how to calm myself with my breath, to meditate, to listen.

Sometimes, I do not go to this place on a regular basis but it is always there for me when I choose it.

I continue to divide myself into parts. There is the part of me that understands thin space but that joyfully shares that space with other parts that are not so thin.

I so appreciate my sister relating the idea of thin spaces to gratitude and to abundance. She expresses the idea that the thin place is preferable to material possessions.

To take an idea from my sister, Jesus taught us not to store up material goods but to seek the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom is a thin place.

I wrote about Mercury retrograde and the need for patience. Patience is in order because the timing is not right to make certain kinds of moves and changes in one’s lives. To be clear, this is an astrological concept, not a scientific one.

I have been exploring a big move; one that will require a great deal of patience and planning.

I am looking at moving to another state. I will be retiring in about 21 months. I have started to look at what this will mean. I want to continue to work, possibly as a web designer. But, I will experience life-altering changes in location and lifestyle.

All of this during the turmoil that we call the current economic crisis.

I have been tuning out the news stories about how bad things are right now. For one thing every person’s situation is different. For another, I believe that I can live conservatively and support myself in my change.

But, how do we bring the economy back? I am not sure this is the right question. I think the right question may be “How do I live abundantly now?” I am not sure that the economy that we are mourning the demise of really served me on a personal level.

I do not know what the US economy will become but I am convinced that my source of abundance is not money; it is experience.

In my career I have enjoyed the experience of writing computer programs and solving problems.

Perhaps it is time for me to gain experience growing vegetables and enjoying sunshine.

I began with the idea of patience and mercury retrograde. Mercury will go direct on February 1 so the snafu influence should abate for a while. The need for patience will last much longer. I may not get my dream of a retirement home overnight; patience is intertwined with dreaming the dream.

Take a breath

Drink lots of water

These are what a friend tells me to do.

Do you know about Mercury Retrograde? If you positively have a negative reaction to astrology please go to some other blog that nourishes your soul now.

For the rest of you, Mercury Retrograde is when the planet Mercury appears to move backwards. It happens three or four times a year. Here are the dates for 2009:
1. Jan 11 – Feb 1
2. May 7 – May 30
3. Sept 7 – Sept 29
4. Dec 26 – Jan 15, 2010
During these times communications appear to get snarled. Computers and electronics are more susceptible to malfunction during Mercury Retrograde.

Do we have more computer problems during this time or are we more aware of them? Here is a link to learn more:
http://www.alphalifetrends.com/mercuryretrograde.html

Does Mercury Retrograde act as a predictor, an excuse or a cause?

If you are following me this far I suspect you may understand how it can be seen as a bit of all three.

1. As a predictor if describes the texture of this time period.
2. As an excuse, we are aware of each snafu and attribute it to Mercury Retrograde.
3. As a cause, much the same as #2 but the strong focus on the possibility of an outcomes actually brings it about.

I am not an expert. I have been feeling the effect during the past few days. I think I need to consider that it is predictive.

My friend Marianne went to Washington for the inaugural. Friday we finally had a chance to chat about her experience. Her glowing descriptions matched my impressions from watching MSNBC for the two days leading up to the day and then the day itself. Everyone was so happy she told me. People were talking to each other and bonding with strangers.

“Why can’t it be like that all the time?” I wanted to know.

It seems like we may be afraid to acknowledge this national moment of hope too freely because there is the suspicion that soon the euphoria will evaporate and we will be left to face another crisis. Why are we so tuned to crisis? These moments when people are drawn together in a single purpose don’t come around very often and when they do they usually result from tragedy. The inauguration was a moment of hope and I believe that there are millions of people who carry that hope in their heart. The experience was real. We can begin to recreate ourselves as a nation.

I would like to ask a question. Where do we stand in relation to having a department of Peace? Do you laugh that I ask this question?

I did a Google search and happily found that I am not the only one to ask this question: http://www.thepeacealliance.org/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/

“Appoint a Secretary of Peace in a Department of Peace” was one of the nation’s top 10 “Ideas for Change” presented to the Obama Administration by Change.org last Friday during an event at the National Press Club. See the press release at: http://www.thepeacealliance.org/content/view/648/1/

Does this bring back funny memories of my hero Dennis K
ave suggested that he could be the first Secretary of the Department of Peace.

When the economy is bad does anyone even focus on ideas of war and peace? I heard a statistic this morning that said that a very large percentage of Americans did not think that the effort to close Gitmo was appropriate at this time given the state of the economy. I cannot imagine that the people interviewed were the same people that had experienced the jubilation of the inaugural

Maybe when hope is high it’s easier to focus on more than one positive initiative.

Are we too afraid to ask the question?

I think that we should keep the hope of a Dept of Peace alive. Why should short term goals get in the way of long term goals?

I think many of us agree that we want real change. To me a Dept of Peace would be a signal that it was really happening.

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Memphis, TN, April 3, 1968 — the day before he was assassinated.

The above speech was made exactly 40 years, 7 months and 1 day before the election of Barach Obama as president of the United States.

Consider the Biblical imagery. King as Moses, looking over into the Promised Land but not being allowed to enter. The children of Israel (the US) wondering in the wilderness for 40 years. In the Bible 40 years is the amount it time it takes. 40 is the number of completion, in the Biblical sense, in the fullness of time.

During the campaign there was a term used in the Latin community, Obamanos. There were a lot of t-shirts with this phrase which means something like “we are Obama” or “Obama us.”

Today, I have been watching pre-inauguration coverage on TV. I look at all of the excitement and pray that the momentum can be maintained. Are we at the beginning of a new phase in history or is it just a flash in the pan like all of the other nonstop news coverage. I believe it is much bigger than a few days of nonstop news coverage. Obama himself has said that it will take all people to solve the problems we face now and I think there are a lot of people that know this to be true and are willing to chip in and help, whatever that means.

It seems that in the past few years I have gone from being apolitical to caring a great deal about what happens in the political arena. During the past eight years so much of this feeling has been seen through a lens of anger. I want hope to return. I want to see an end to the anger and cynicism. I want to feel part of the force for change that restores trust in the government. I know that it sounds terribly naïve but I want to believe in our leaders again.

The cycle of 40 years has taken up most of my life. I was 12 years old when King was assassinated. Is something just now shifting that will move us all forward, beyond that time. Tonight I am very hopeful that another era is beginning and that it will be one that I can believe in.

One of the goals for this blog is to capture my current life experience. I want to gain experience in blogging because I think it is something that I want to pursue more seriously in the next few years. As I have said previously, I have journaled for many years although not on a consistent basis. There are similarities between journaling and blogging although there are also, in my opinion, important differences. The main difference is that there are certain things that are private. The private self can merge with the public self but there are lines. And, I have not decided what these lines are for me. My private process may not be of interest to everyone that reads this blog. The previous post regarding my vision impairment (Tribal me) would certainly fall into that category. But, it is also something I want to discuss publicly. I have never known what needed to be said when I talked to people about my visual limitation so I have not communicated it consistently. I notice the world consistent is showing up in this blog.

What do I mean by consistent?

Well, is there one persona that is presented to the world or are there many? In my case there are many because I have segmented my life. There is a part of me that wants to be a writer, a part that is web designer, the part that is spiritual seeker. And, there is Vera doing her process.

I do not want to give the impression that I consciously chop my life up into little bits. A realization may come after the fact that gives me a description of an important theme in my life. Such was the idea of tribes which I had begun writing about a month or so ago but revived for my most recent blog entry.

I have had many connections to the visually impaired community. One, that I am going to write about tonight was with my friend Malinda. Malinda was a couple of years older than I and totally blind. I had had connection with her because my Aunt Buelah was her teacher when she was in elementary school. They had never lost touch with each other. I met Malinda about 27 years ago; she died of leukemia two years ago.

Malinda and I would talk on the phone for hours. We both had an interest in spirituality and “new age” concepts. I was reminded about some of these conversations today because I was working on a visioning project for the New Year. Malinda did not think that some of the positive visualizations would work for a blind person. Basically, I think, she felt that circumstances were so stacked against her that she was the exception to the law of attraction. The words “you create your own reality”, in her opinion, did not apply to the visually impaired. There were times when I may have felt that she was on to something. Ultimately, I would get enough practice with these concepts to know that they work if applied diligently. I wish I could have persuaded Malinda of this but to my knowledge did not.

At any rate, there is a concept within the “You create your own reality” community to pretend until a thing becomes real. This is a technique taught in prosperity classes, “Act as though.” I have come into this concept several years ago but had really not spent much time on it because I had been doing this all of my life. I called it pretending. Today I wondered if these two were really the same thing. Is there a positive and a negative pretending?

Dear reader, I encourage you on your journey whatever that journey is. I do not want to put you off by my processes. I am simply writing about that process I have been experiencing.

What do I mean by process. I am analytical about my own experience. I like to look for themes, synchronicities, and lessons learned, as well as questions? Some questions could be for myself; some for my higher self.

Maybe he’s a mentor, John Assaraf, http://www.johnassaraf.com/ whose video I watched today and whose process (vision boarding) I explored today.

Did you ever think that the different groups of people in your life were like tribes?

Tribes support various aspects of us. When I go away to retreats an instant tribe forms. We are together for an allotted amount of time then we go back to our lives among other tribes.

At work, I have a tribe of co-workers, some of whom I have been with for 20+ years.

Extended families are tribes. We become more aware of this around the holidays.

We have roles within our tribes that are specific to that tribe. This can account for why I feel that I am a totally different person among one group of people as opposed to with another.

I began to think about another tribe in my life recently when I got in email contact with a person that I had not heard from for thirty years. I will call this the visually impaired tribe. When you are talking to someone within this tribe there is a lot of shared experience and understanding.

I wrote a blog entry about my mother’s book “A Time to Speak”. This entry spoke very negatively about my experience growing up. This surprises some of my closest friends.

Among the visually impaired I think it may be common to reject the traits that we have in common with other visually impaired people in favor of trying to prove ourselves to the world.

My parents gave me great gifts; however, at a fairly young age, age 14 at the latest, I had begun to reject my family and the visually impaired tribe. I needed to prove myself to the world. I needed to develop my own identity away from that particular tribe. I ignored the need to develop my identity within it. Who is Vera Holly who is visually impaired?

What do I mean by visually impaired?

Well, for starters, I don’t drive. That puts me in a distinct group in the place where I live. I use computer all day and the first question I am always asked is, how do you do all of the computer stuff you do and not see so well? My answer is that if I can get it close enough I can see it. I manage and the rest of the time I fake it. Part of the reason I did not identify with my visually impaired tribe was that I was spending so much time and energy faking it.

I remember when I was a child laughing and eating and playing games with my parents and sisters and maybe aunts and uncles and none of us really related to the fact that we didn’t see well because we were together in a different way. But, I turned against this sharing because I was pretending that I did not have a visual problem. I read a lot. I took my schoolwork seriously.

When I was reading my mother’s book I was reminded that one of the reasons that I took my schoolwork so seriously was that I had learned to do so from her. I am thankful for this gift.

As I have grown older I have sought authenticity.

I am not happy with the habit of faking it.

Faking it amounts to not speaking up for what I need. For example, not insisting that someone tell me what is in the menu that is posted on the wall behind the counter in a fast food style restaurant or not admitting that I cannot see or identify the person behind the wheel in the car beside me.

Faking it means that I am pretending to be a member of a tribe that I am not part of.

The visually impaired tribe has taught me the ability to persevere and to be my own person. In times of real need this has seemed to be my authentic self.

It is an aspect of my authentic self. Each tribe in my life has given me a different aspect of that self.

Happy New Year!

I am processing many new ideas that came up while visiting Kripalu. I learned a new writing technique http://www.pwriting.org/ Propriaceptive writing, a technique similar to journaling but with a specific protocol. The technique involves asking the question “what do I mean by …” and writing the answer to that question while listening to baroque music. I don’t own any baroque music ; I will probably abandon the general technique and resort to my usual journaling integrating the pq (propriaceptive question: “what do I mean by …” ). One of the questions I have been pondering is the difference between personal process writing and blogging; my blogging often becomes a journal.

I feel good about the progress I made physically at Kripalu. I also found out how out of shape I am.

For the New Year the community chanted “Om Namah Shivaiya” for two days. This was called Saptah, meaning seven, and is a Kripalu tradition. I had wanted to go to Kripalu during New Year timeframe to experience this chanting. We wandered in and out of the room where the chanting was taking place based on our own schedules. I would sit for a few minutes and chant in the call-and-response chanting, then I would go to my next activity.

I did a youtube search for “Om Namah Shivaiya” and found several different versions of the chant. I liked each one; none were quite like what we had experienced at Kripalu. I settled on a favorite. Then it occurred to me that I have been listening to this voice for the past several days because I recently bought one of his CD’s. So, it is appropriate to name my second mentor, Krishna Das

January 13, 2009

Since returning home I have become caught up in the day to day of my life. At the beginning of the year I had many aspirations for becoming more contemplative. So far that has not worked out for me. It seems that I am more frenzied than ever. At any rate, I thought I would post the above tonight and write more about my Kripalu experience later. I had hoped to post much more but that will have to evolve….

I would like to thank the Rev. Jim Rosemergy for the ideas in this entry. He is truly a mentor for me. I am going to start a mentor’s list for this year. I had Jim for a prosperity class at Unity Village in 2002 and have been on his email list for a long time; he is the first person to go on my mentor’s list. This is the email I received from his email list on Friday night:

From mentor #1 (email list from innerjourney.com)

Empodocles said, “The nature of God is a circle of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.” In other words, the fullness of God is here and now. It is with us, and with you, dear friend.

The question is how will we live our lives if we truly know this is true. This is the essence of knowing…knowing causes us to live in a certain way. It is not stored in the mind, but brought to bear in the world.

God is centered in you. How will I “know” this is so?

In Love We Journey With You.

Jim and Nancy Rosemergy

God bless you!!!

Blessings from Nancy and Jim

Inner Journey

http://www.innerjourney.org

A circle is a symbol of completeness. I see all of the parts of myself, which sometimes seem to be at war with each other, gathered together in a circle. Together they are complete but it is the totality, all of the parts of the circle, that make the completeness.

According to Empodocles God is in every part of that circle. Not only that, but God is the circle and the circle is God. Since God is everywhere the part of God that is most accessible to us is the part that we can sense within our own being. This is the still, small voice that the Bible talks about.

Jim asks a very important question. “How will I “know” this is so?” This is not a question to answer with one’s mind. It is a question to contemplate and make a challenge for daily living. It is a question to ask frequently, “How will I know this truth today?”

If I am just aware of the reality of this quote will I notice a subtle shift in my consciousness. If I simply take the time to meditate or pray or read inspirational material will I become more aware of this presence of God?

This was the nature of my intention for the new year. Within a week I have been drawn in other directions. I think, today, I want to return to the intention to practice awareness of the presence of God in my life.

My practice, such as it is, is a private practice. I do not practice a particular religion. I take from each of them what helps me. In some way, I think all religions are focused on this God which is a circle. And, I think it takes all of them and all people to complete that circle.