Changing Your Rebirth

April 5, 2009

Samuel: Hello, dears.

Hello, Samuel.

S: What did you do to make somebody’s life better and brighter today?

Not today, but last night. I invited my sister’s four children and their spouses to my house for a potluck with my children and myself. They came at 5:30, except one couple came at 4:30, and the chatter just went on constantly, it was noisy, they had such a good time. They laughed. We had such a wonderful laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh. They didn’t leave until a quarter to ten. And then they even were out on the driveway visiting. It was a wonderful gift for each of us that I gave.

S: It sure was. That’s lovely. More?

Greg and I took our godmother, Rose Jewell, to Palm Sunday mass.

S: Was it good for you?

Nah. But it was great for her and that’s what the question’s about. She loved it and she knows we’re . . . she’s just glad to go.

S: [dog bark] And was that a request to tell what he did to make things better and brighter?

I think it was.

S: Somebody’s back there saying, “Frank, that’s you!” One more. Jim.

I have another yesterday one. Marilyn took me on a belated birthday present. It was a ride on the Kentucky Dinner Train. It was great to be on a train because I love trains, I love trains, it was a good meal, and just perfect weather to be outside.

S: How did somebody make your day better and brighter?

Joni and I were going to come up and pack up the product table. And Joni’s sick today, sadly, with asthma, and so I left Laura a message letting her know if she wanted to ride with me. And she called me, and she was already on the road, and she was, “Oh, just meet Jeanean and I, and I can drive, and we can pack up my car.” And it was a huge gift.

Heidi bought me a Pepsi.

S: Mary Claire, then Catherine.

Cam went outside—and this was without me even saying a word—went outside today and picked up all the debris from the ice storm, remnants of that. And did that, and worked really hard on our grounds. And it was such a sweet and wonderful gift.

S: Lovely.

Well, Miss Paula Thomson insisted I go to dinner with her on Friday night. And we had absolutely the most delightful dinner I have had in this area in ages and ages. It was just enchanting. I’m so glad she dragged me to Holly Hill because I’d never would have gone otherwise. And it was totally delightful. It was a very, very dear gift.

S: Angela.

This is from Friday night. David and I had driven to Pittsburgh to see, as you heard, his daughter perform in a play. We stayed with Katie and Bruce in Pittsburgh. They did the nicest thing for us. They called a number of the people in the Pittsburgh group to ask them to come over and have a potluck so that we could visit with them. And it was really nice because we see them fairly frequently but we don’t always get a chance to catch up, and we did. It was one of the nicest times I’ve ever had. It was really, really sweet of them to do that for us.

S: You’re really easy, aren’t you? Yes, Jess!

Don and Marion took us out for dinner tonight, which was very generous, and we had a lovely time visiting with them.

S: So who is the walking giant with you?

That would be Owen.

S: So, can you bring him up here for a moment? Hold tight to the microphone, eh? The form said he has grown very tall.

He turned into a little boy from a baby.

Hi.

S: Hi. Do you feel very tall? Do you feel tall? Look, you’re almost up to your mom’s neck. That’s pretty huge, don’t you think? I’m not looking at you . . .  Maybe he’ll go away. Help me, daddy. Help me! Almost . . . [Owen giggles]

He’s hiding but he’s laughing.

S: What does he do . . . how is he sleeping, that’s what I should ask.

Very well.

S: Good, good. And dreaming?

Are you dreaming, Owen?

No.

S: We need to work on that, don’t we?

No!

S: So you’re happy without dreaming, are you? He says, “All of this is a dream, isn’t it? Isn’t it all a dream?” And indeed it is. I’ll tell you what I think is the most pleasurable thing to see with him. All right, how fast he runs, and how quick he is to laugh, and what a joyous soul he is, indeed. But I like that his energy is still as strong as what he started out with. And most babies lose that pretty fast. Not two yet, right?

Two more weeks.

S: For those of you who do see energy, look particularly around the heart of him. It’s very lovely. A very amazing child. I’ve got be careful how I say things like that. It sort of makes the parents nervous, you know.

We know. We just don’t want to screw him up.

S: How many of you were . . . tell me again what you said?

Sorry?

S: You just don’t want to . . .

Screw him up.

S: How many of you were screwed up once or twice when you were a child? And that has nothing to do with mechanical work or anything like that, right? That means messed up somehow, right?

That’s the whole purpose to being here, right?

S: Is to see how often you call fall down, and smack you nose, and get up and keep going better for it. And you know that’s very much what this time of year is about.

And when you are in a year that is as important as this one is, with so many open doors, with so many opportunities, with so many choices to make—the ability to know what you want, and bring it into your life without throwing off everything else in your life, is pretty important. Everybody, everybody had a bad childhood, and a good childhood, and an average childhood, and a non-average childhood. The only thing that’s normal is constant change. And what keeps you functioning well through it is your ability to adapt. Change is chaos if you are resistant, or it’s elevating you to the next step if you are adaptable. And your choice is adapt or resist, as is the case with everyone in this world. It is what Owen is learning. It is what the dogs are learning, it is what—where is Cindy? There. It is what your dog is learning as well. It is what you are constantly learning: bringing balance between resistance and adaptability. Talk to me for a moment about resistance.

I’m not sure this is what you want to know, but last Saturday night, a dog, a foreign dog arrived at our house and—long story short—we discovered that he was a very valuable dog. The guy lived down in Barbourville, Kentucky, couldn’t come and pick up the dog, but had paid a lot of money just to try the dog out. But our dogs were going to tear this little girl apart if we didn’t keep her separated. So Ken and I—

S: I think there’s a whole lot of story going on here that isn’t being said.

Yes, but Ken and I spent Sunday and Monday and Tuesday juggling dogs and keeping them out. It was just fearsome awful stuff. “The dog got out! What are we going to do?!” Yada yada yada. And we were resisting this thing, and would think, “Yikes! We’ve got to wait until Saturday; they’re not going to come until Saturday to pick this dog up. Yikes! Yikes!” And finally Wednesday morning, I thought, “You know, I can change my attitude about this, and I can realize that if it were my dog, this is what I’d like somebody to do for me.” So I accepted the situation and said, “Okay, I’m doing a really wonderful thing for this poor guy down in Podunk Kentucky, who can’t come and get his dog and doesn’t have a vehicle, so I’m just going to do the very best I can.” So I told Ken about it and he said, “Okay, I’ll do that, too.” And by Jove, when we let go of our resistance and accepted the situation with open arms, I got a call that night, Wednesday night, from some friends who said, “We’re going to come pick up that dog if we just know how to get to your house.” And they came and they took her Wednesday night and we didn’t have to wait till Saturday. So there’s something about accepting a situation that just made it all go away. It was actually really, really beautiful.

S: Actually love, that’s a pretty perfect story. Perfectly fitting.

I told Cathy we’d have the dog till Saturday if she didn’t do that.

S: Well, I would say somebody’s got to be in charge of keeping the cosmic balance going. Thank goodness you’re doing it.

I have a different twist on the same principle.

S: Adaptable/resistant.

Yes, yes. Well, I’m working with—you’re going to hear a lot of the stories from this orchestra I’m working with for my student’s dance performance.

S: But usually I hear it this way [makes a face]

It’s a huge learning experience for me. Anyways, so there is this one person in this orchestra, who is really challenging to work with. Serious communication issues, pretty self-absorbed, doesn’t know what it is to work in a team.

S: Musician . . . performer . . .

Yes. Yeah. So I’ve had to try all sort of things with this person. Communicating, very, like with kid gloves, compassionate confrontation, trying to manipulate some, trying to dangle the carrot in front. Nothing works. And so last week, I said, “Okay, I’m going to ‘hoo’ the situation,” so I did a “hoo“ on the situation and everybody’s issues comes up, because I realized that’s how wholeness comes into being . . .

S: Good.

. . . and I resisted it so long, and then I realized I shouldn’t resist this anymore, I shouldn’t look at this as a challenging situation. I should be grateful for all that these people have to offer, and such a wonderful […] for us all to get out our issues and work as one. So I changed my mind and started putting that positive creation energy into it. So I sent out an e-mail filled with that energy but that again pushes a lot of buttons for that person because they have those buttons. It’s not about anything else; it’s their issue. And so I realized the biggest change was that they shouldn’t go away after I resisted. Once I adapted, I’m better able to communicate. It’s not like everything has vanished; it’s just that I can look at it from a different perspective, a higher perspective and say, “Oh, Okay, you’re dealing with this, but we need to get this done. Let me find the best way to get this done.” And I am no longer scared about it. I know that the Universe is infinite, and even if this person says, “I’m not going to play,” I’m going to get somebody else to play. I will make it work. So it’s just making me realize it’s not about having anything happen one particular way. It’s never either/or situation, it’s always “and” situation.

S: That’s beautiful. Beautiful. Sometimes in life things start getting out of hand, and the automatic human desire is to create a good little box, and in this box is everything that’s needed in this situation to make this situation work out okay. What’s wrong with that?

It’s a limitation.

S: It’s a limitation. That’s true. It’s a limitation. What else is it?

Control.

S: Good, yes.

Giving your power away.

S: Giving your power away to what?

To whatever is keeping you in the box.

S: Giving your power away to the belief that says, “If I put everything in this little box, if it comes out this way, if it looks like this, if it follows this progression, everything’s going to be okay.” It’s all about keeping it in that box.

It becomes your prison.

S: Good. Yes. Absolutely.

You’re giving away your creative potential to change and adapt.

S: Absolutely.

For me it would be, I’m not the same person I was that day, back then, and so I limit myself by thinking that the same thing is going to work again.

S: When something in your life does not go the way that you hoped it would, the first thing that’s going to happen is your instinctual survival mechanism is going to kick in. And what is it going to say?

[audience member makes growling noise]

S: “This isn’t a good thing, I can be bigger and badder than it,” because there’s always the “control it by force,” which means of course, what are you going to bring back to you? Somebody working to “control it by force.” Sure. The instinctual mechanism of “This is a serious problem. I can only put all of my focus on it. It’s really, really horrible! Nothing like this has ever happened! It’s never been this bad!” What is it?

Drama.

S: Real drama. And drama is there, why?

Because you don’t have passion.

S: Because you don’t have passion. And can that be spread out a little and clarified a bit more, because passion right now is absolutely right but it’s sort of a work of that passion. Drama is the result of you not having a life and your ego striving to have one. Drama is because you don’t have anything in your life.

I’m going to say something harsh here, all right? You don’t have anything in your life that matters to you, and as a result, you have no anchor. You have no anchor so any little thing shifts you off where you need to be. Any of you felt any of that?

Is there a difference between a crisis and drama?

S: Drama is how you respond. Crisis is, well, of course you can look at it and say, “This is a crisis,” and as result of that it’s a definition you put onto a thing, but generally speaking, crisis is a situation. It’s something outside of you that looks back at you and tells you how prepared you are for that moment. Not prepared? Big crisis. Prepared? Small snafu; dealing with it. Drama is a fear response but the fear that creates all that drama, the fear isn’t, “I’m not going to be able to handle this well.” What do you think the fear is? I thought I heard somebody beginning to come out with it. It’s that you don’t have a future. You’re not going to be able to have what you want, deal with what you want. Everything becomes a means of—what word do I want to use here?—everything becomes a means of letting yourself know that you matter. And as a result, your feelings get hurt a lot, there’s a lot of communication problems in your life—not yours, of course; somebody else’s. You find yourself frustrated, unhappy, maybe depressed. It’s because you’re wandering aimlessly because you do not trust. It’s just additional […] drama. It’s because you do not have—well, big picture: trust. Smaller picture: you do not have anything you’re working toward; you are without a vision. And when you have no vision, drama replaces the passion that vision gives you.

This is coming into your Easter time, yes? Now, truth be told—all right, let’s tell it—I think Easter is one of your most odd holidays. You know that so many of the holidays that you celebrate that are church-oriented tend to be an overlay on top of another holiday that has been merged into it as a means of, if you will, getting the locals to accept the new stuff. Aye? So that would explain perhaps how bunny rabbits—sorry—and eggs have remained a part of—bunny rabbits and eggs that are blatant, absolutely blatant fertility symbols, have gotten mixed in with new life! Resurrected new life. Correct? I want you think about that for a moment.

And dressing up and having Easter bonnets. It used to be that you got dressed up on Easter Sunday and you got a dress or an outfit just for that day. That’s where they got the Easter bonnet and the Easter parade.

Patent leather shoes.

S: There is a costume that goes with it. And it took me a moment because I thought it was Easter Bonnie that she was saying and then I realized it was a hat that she was picturing there. Easter bonnet and patent leather shoes.

Mary Janes, real shiny leather.

S: Shiny. […] To eat?

We were real poor and polished ours with butter.

Butter?

To make them shine.

S: Hmm. What I will absolutely agree to is, springtime is a celebration of new life. It is a celebration of beginning again. Think for a moment, particularly those of you who are gardeners, of the roses maybe, the flowers, the trees, that have been waiting, waiting, waiting, until they will be nourished once again by warmth, by rain, allowing some of the minerals within the soil to be brought into the plant. Brining re-awakening. This is what spring time is for the plants, and the animals, and the people. Now I did that very politely, didn’t you think? And what you are looking at in your life right now is how much do you trust you, because that is where your new life is coming from. What keeps you from experiencing the re-birth that this time is about? Well, I mentioned trust. One of the things then would be the lack of trust. What is it you are trusting? This isn’t hard. It’s right on the surface. […] You are trusting that you are enough to handle whatever is coming your way.

Now, I have a question: How many things in your life to date were you unable to handle, and as a result did not make it through any farther? That’s my point.

You have had an amazing life, and one of the things that, particularly in this culture, humans tend to not want to put a lot of focus into, is you have had an amazing life in which you have experienced so many things. You have everything you need, everything you need to do what you’re here to do. But if you do not know what it is you are here to do, you are only going to focus only on the “what I need” and not on the “here to do.” Trust yourself to have what is needed to nourish the new. Just like the roses, it’s underground until the elements come forth that bring it out of the ground into new growth. If you purposefully, you prune that rose back—Charlotte and Gayle, I’m going to need a lot of help with this one—you prune that rose back, then you cover it with mulch maybe—straw, leaves?—and then you go into your kitchen and you get the very largest pot you can and you push it over the top because that’s what’s required, correct?

No.

S: No? Are you sure? Because it sure looks like that’s what a lot of you do. You pile yourself in with things that you cannot grow beyond. You know a plant—bamboo. Yes? It’s a very lovely plant. Why don’t you put some into your garden? What’s the problem? Why can you not do that?

The roots will spread and it will take over your yard unless you’ve got it contained.

S: So what do you do?

Put it in a container in the ground, or trough of some kind that contains the root systems so it can’t move beyond that boundary.

S: Or you decide you want a bamboo forest. And you make sure that all of your neighbors do as well.

In your life, the natural process is, you go within, you grow without; you go within, you grow without. That’s the natural process. You do what is needed at the time so that the best of what you are has gone into what comes out. But when your focus instead is on, “This is really scary! Who knows what’s going to happen? It could be a very dangerous weed that comes out of that rosebush this time!” You’ve got to cover it up, pile on top of it everything that’s needed so that it’s totally controlled, and you kill it off.

Ego is not on its own a negative thing. Ego is the means by which the spirit you are functions in the world. It is your personality, more or less. Ego itself is not a bad thing. However, when the focus is constantly on yourself and you are giving that self a constant flow of attention and energy, you are going to have within your personality what you have fed that self. What you’re putting in is what is going to come out. So if what you are doing in your world is thinking about all of the reasons why this isn’t good, constantly falling out of balance, having more resistance than adaptability in your life, if what you are experiencing is the constant fear of “What’s the next step going to offer?” and “What’s the next step going to offer?” and “Am I capable of dealing with this?” Read the newspaper and freak out every day and recognize that the world is going to hell in an Easter basket, and constantly focusing on what doesn’t work, what might happen that’s negative and difficult, and not looking at what you are and feeding that, neglecting to look at what is working and feeding that, forgetting to look at the strengths and the many times that sure enough falling on your face before, now get back up once again—because it turns out the world doesn’t stop running because you have. When what you feed your ego is a constant diet of “You’re not good enough to deal with this, you’re not as good as that person. If you were okay, this would not happen,” when you keep telling yourself the pinnacle of spirituality is a life without contrast, in which everything is on this even plane of—what, heavenly bliss?—well, then the world is going to be a shock to you, isn’t it? And what you can do, the easy simple thing that can allow you to rein in that ego, to turn around the many tiny pebbles that you are throwing at yourself all of the time. . .

It’s very obvious that if I were to pick up a very large boulder and throw that at you, that one big hit would be devastating. And you don’t think of the tiny little rocks as being too much of a problem. And you have a tendency to look at your life that way. You only look at the really big bits and how hard that was, how stripped of any ability to move out of the way and how crushed you felt, forgetting that what really cases the damage is the constant little rocks that don’t stop. Chinese water torture with rocks, yes?

When you find that you are in a place where you do not feel that you are growing, changing, a place in which the world is throwing constant rocks at you, or maybe lots of boulders, when you feel that you are in a time in which you are doing everything you can to be the best you can be and it’s not enough, I can guarantee that it’s because you are lacking vision.

Vision. What is your vision? Do you think that your vision is this great overall big picture through which everything must come? Well, all right, that works, that’s true. But the way that you’re going to get from one day to the other is by the day-to-day vision. What is your vision today? How do you see your life functioning today? Vision is accomplished through goals. All right, my vision today is to—give me vision for today.

My vision for today is to work on writing and illustrating, and to do other things in my life that I also need to do on a day-to-day basis.

S: Why? Why do you want to do those things?

Because they are the things that keep my life moving forward in a consistent way, that help me to manage things that I’m responsible for, that I have commitments to.

S: So the vision would be, “Today I choose to continue moving forward, being responsible for those things that are required of me, to accomplish those things that allow me to become more adept at and enjoy the creative process. Today, my vision is to be the best me I can be.” And the way that you do that is by the goals, and the goals are, “Today I’m going to work on illustrating, and I’m going to work on writing, and I’m going to . . . ” and within each one of those goals you can set up smaller goals that work toward them.

I want to tell you a very sad thing: The people in your life that you know who are very dramatic, and they aren’t actors . . .  In your own life, when you are being very dramatic, holding onto the negative, the painful, the what’s-not-worked, the grumpy, the assaults the Universe has dropped in your lap, when your life, or the life of that dramatic friend, is all about you, is all about how something out there is holding you back, someway, somehow, something out there, somebody out there, something, is holding from you whatever it is that’s needed to make things all right—when in your life, you’re finding yourself unhappy and disempowered, I can guarantee you are blaming something or someone else because you do not trust yourself as strong enough to adapt. I can pretty well guarantee that you have created a box and you have entitlement issues.

You see, when I’ve got these three right here in the front like this, I get all kinds of great phrases. “Entitlement issues.” I like that one. “I have done all of this, therefore, I should have this, or I should not have this.” It’s about trust, and where you have failing trust it is one hundred percent of the time, I promise you, because you have lost your way, you’ve lost your vision. You do not have the passion or the strength that comes from constantly working toward the best you can be. You found it easier to just stay in the ground with a pot over your head keeping you from stretching beyond the limitation, keeping you from finding out just what you’re made of.

At Earthlight’s house there is an old rosebush. Old rosebush, I think that’s right. It is a new rosebush, but it’s an old rose, yes? An old variety. And it did not sign up for the kind of attention it would be getting there. It thought it was going to have a cushy existence, that some rose lover would find it and pull it out of the crowd and give it the best possible soil, and the exact right pruning and the best food, and they stuck it in the ground next to a concrete driveway. But something happened. In spite of all of those reasons why the rose should not thrive, it is. In spite of what any gardener would tell you is doing everything exactly wrong, it is. Why? […] It’s adapting. Now, I will just toss this in. It’s because it’s an old rose it can do that. […]

What are you producing? I’m shifting over to rabbits and eggs right now. In your life, what do you have the most of? Joy? Pleasure? Are you happy? Or hoppy. If I were to take one of your days and reproduce it, multiple times, would you be all right with that? Or do you have things in your life you don’t ever want repeated? Do you have things about yourself you don’t ever want to have again? Do you have days so bad that you don’t want more of them? New life, new birth, new flowers can make it if what you are feeding yourself is that which is powerful, love-filled, joyful . . . oh, wait! That’s what you want in your life, isn’t it?

I’m reminded—I was working in the yard a lot this week, it was such a gift, and seeing all the things growing, and then one day later in the week I looked up and my lilac trees have jumped into bloom. And they were fragrant and beautiful. And I thought, “What a surprise!” And then I realized that we’re a lot like that. That we do these little things day after day until all of a sudden it’s like “Oh, I’ve made a big change.” And it was such a gift to see that, and then tying it into what you were saying, you don’t always see it right away.

S: And when you’re so busy looking at what isn’t right, you miss what is. One of the difficulties with springtime is that you spend so much time looking at how much there is to do, and working all of your life around making sure that you’re able to, and you have your very long list. And you are the garden I’m referring to here. “I’ve got all of this I must do to become better,” forgetting that you are magnificent, perfect in every way. You get so busy looking at the failures, “Well, I cannot be perfect if I’ve done this,” missing the point altogether.

You are right now in the midst of one of the most important years in your life. What are you hauling around with you so that you can put a pot over the rose that you are and have it be so heavy you can’t grow through it? How many negative issues are you seeing in the world around you so that you do not see the beauty? What are you doing to ensure that you remain exactly as you are? Is there more of that than there is of what you are doing to insure you do not remain exactly as you are but you are constantly adapting? Vision requires goals, goals require trust. Do you trust you? One of the great gifts that Owen provides when he is here is the absolute delight and “un-self-consciousness”—is that a word? At least you know what I was saying in there, eh?—that a child provides.

This year, let yourself be that free. Let yourself laugh and be curious and learn. And let yourself fall down and realize it’s just a part of the path; it’s not a reflection on me. It’s how it works. It’s how it happens. “Oh, but Samuel, I’ve had such horrible, horrible things happen to me. I know the gods are angry with me. I have been naughty, hard to deal with, unpleasant to be around . . . ” Oh, you’ve got a book of it. Excuses, that’s what they are. They are things you bring into your life so that you don’t have to move beyond them. You can focus on the pain, and it will guarantee you get to have more pain. Or you can focus on how you have moved beyond pain in the past, how you have pushed off the pot and bloomed. Maybe you had to work your way under it and come up the side. This is springtime, and you are sewing the rest of this powerful year with what you are hauling around with you these days. Reproduce what works. If you’re not sure what is the right thing to do, do the loving thing, at the very least and of course it’s not least at all. At the very least, doing the loving thing will open the door to have a better view of what’s out there and what is possible.

In about four or five days into this coming week, many of you are going to have your reality changed. Look for it. Big change coming your way. And whether it is positive or not is all about what you’ve been feeding that flower. It’s all about what you’re focused on—to see or not.

You are in the midst of one of the best years of your life. I beg you, do not miss it. Do not let it pass you by because you’re unable to see what is good, what is beautiful, what is loved and loving because you’re so focused in what did not, was not, should not, could not that that box has become so comfortable you call it home.

Four days, maybe five. Look for this. Your heart will open a door. And I should leave to a rousing chorus of “Here Comes Peter Cottontail.” No, I don’t want you to sing. You’ve tried it before; not good. But it is the idea of something silly and magical, reproducing chocolate eggs.

Glochanumora.

You change this world. You change this world into what you see. You have that much power. What is it you see? I hope it’s magic.

Happy trails.