February 6, 2011

Samuel: Hello, dears.

Hello, Samuel.

S: [Looks around the room] All right, perk it up a little. You’re all sitting there like you’re serious. Now, that’s the way, perk it up—good! I think he’s channeling a rabid dog. That’s because I do not have my rabid dogs up here.

This is the shortest month of your calendar, isn’t it? And yet there is so much stuffed into this month. What is this month about? Love . . . Imbolc.

Birthdays.

S: Yes, many birthdays. It has to do with all right, Black History, yes, this month?

Heart health month.

S: Heart health month? Heart health month?

[…]

S: Good. Chinese New Year. Mardi Gras, and what does Mardi Gras represent?

The beginning of Lent.

S: I think it’s the beginning of Lent for the Catholic Church.

S: It’s the last play day.

. . .  or week, depending on where you live.

S: And the perfect Mardi Gras patrons are here, yes [referring to pooka display]? You’ve had more fun in these last couple of years than you have in the last ten, haven’t you? [Looks at display] He’s got jewels on. Jewels. Wasn’t sure. Might just topple over. You have to be careful with that one. You have her kind of stuck up on something. And what does it say? Ah . . .  And of course, this is a clock! You can just come up, and look at this, and get your own message from it.

It’s also a month in which you celebrate presidents, right? What is that about? You had a couple of good ones and you’re wanting to remember that?

Sales. That’s really the way most people think of that holiday. They don’t think of the holiday; they think of President’s Day Sale.

S: What is it about American holidays? They’re food or shopping or both, aren’t they? Eat together, shop together. The family that eats together and shops together . . .

Stays together.

S: Pays off their bills together.

We meet our security needs by going bankrupt.

S: So it is a month that involves remembering, and it involves hope, and it involves new beginnings . . . and food and shopping. It involves everything that has to do with what makes your culture tick. What makes you tick? Because every day in your life you are in one way or another remembering your past—hopefully you’re not living in it. Hopefully you are appreciating the good that has come; hopefully you are recognizing what is not good and vowing to change that. You are experiencing new beginnings with every breath you take every day that you wake up, and ideally you are loving and being loved.

And the ewes are lactating as well. There wasn’t going to be a way I could slide that one in very easily, so . . .  Are you partial pagans out there. “The ewes are lactating? What’s he talking about? What’s that?” And there were a couple who were right there with it, “That’s Imbolc! That’s Imbolc!” The beginning of spring, the feeding of new life.

Well, this is February and it is the second month of a very important year. It’s the second month of a year that is going to be new beginnings all the time. You’ve been practicing seeing miracles. How are you doing with it? The more you look for them, more you see them. The more you see them, the more you realize how blessed you are. How cared for you are. How watched you are. It’s a very healthy thing to do.

I know that I usually take the opportunity in February to talk about love. And probably in a very real sense, I am, because in your life every good thing is love or—symptom of it. But really what I’m wanting to talk to you about tonight is just a little bit different than that. I want you to remember what this month is about and to translate all of those different kinds of holidays and awarenesses into something meaningful for you. Not hard to do. For instance, it is the month to remember heart health. What can that translate to?

It can translate not only from the physical but from your attitude. How you look at the world and how you interact with it.

S: Sure! Very good. Very good.

Embracing a plant-based diet and eliminating those artery clogging ingredients.

S: Sure! Sure.

By projecting love and by speaking lovingly to people, you are nurturing your heart.

S: Very good, very good. Let’s get harder here now. How about Presidents Day?

Leadership.

S: Leadership. Good. Very good!

You can send loving energy to our president, whether you agreed or voted for him or not. They really need that.

S: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Willingness to put yourself out there and be a target.

Service.

S: Nice, nice. So, through this month, translate it and use all the things mass consciousness is sending energy to, but tweak it to become something that adds to the blessings in your life, the love in your life. Your skills as a Guardian, your skills as a human. Remember what the wise one said, “Become what you want to see in this world.” You be it, it happens. And you’re going to see more of that this year than you can ever remember seeing.

I wanted to talk to you about what happens when a relationship starts going downhill. “Samuel, this does not sound very pretty or happy or Valentine-y.” However, if you knew Valentine-y . . .  And the reason I’m bringing this out is it’s not just a relationship of intimate love that I’m talking about here. It’s also friendship; it’s also people you work with; it’s any relationship you have going. And the reason that I’m talking about what happens when it starts going downhill is so that your awareness can change things. I want you to start by thinking when a new relationship begins. And it might be somebody you met in the produce department, it might be somebody you met on-line, it might be somebody you met from work, or it could be somebody you got a chemical reaction to and you’re hoping more than that will come about. What are some of things that go on?

Well, you tend to see the best in them.

S: Sure, sure. You see the best in them.

You see, off the bat, commonalities, things you have in common, the same things you like.

S: Look how much we have in common; look how much we are alike; look at all the things we could do together. Sure, sure.

You love all the little quirks, the oddities the person does—at least at the beginning.

S: All the quirks that sometimes later on become real irritations are at first just cute.

Endearing.

S: Endearing. Yes!

You are on your best behavior.

S: Yes! You are on your best behavior. That’s right. You are presenting your best self. You are keeping all of your quirks under wraps.

There’s excitement about the possibilities and potentialities.

S: Yes! Excitement for the potentials.

Trust.

S: Yes, very nice. And a willingness to trust—pretty quickly most of the time. Because you’re thinking the best first. You’re not thinking the worst first. You’re thinking the best, first. Thinking the worst sounds like it should be a hotdog commercial. Is that right? Bratwurst . . . All right.

You can’t get your mind off the person.

S: Very nice. Your friends wonder if you’ve become obsessed. Or, if it’s just a friendship, you’re just finding your mind going back to them quite a bit as you are remembering those things that made you feel good or happy or hopeful. In the beginning of a relationship, there is wonder. Not, “I wonder if this is going to work.” I mean wonder as in “Wow.” Wonderful. Wonder. Another way to think wonder is passion. And when a relationship is starting to slide, I guarantee you the wonder started the slide. The passion is moving away. And that does not have to mean sexual passion.

Wonder. Tell me what wonder is. It’s seeing the beauty. When you see a sunrise and it hits you in the heart with its beauty. The wonder of it. It’s a touch into that which is greater. The wonder, the magic, the thrill, the possibilities, the power.

Time seems to stop. You go into an eternal place.

S: I like that. An eternal place where time stops. Wonder is a very vital part of every relationship. I want you to take a moment and think about what is probably the most important relationship you have in your day-to-day life, and that is the one with yourself. I have noticed for many of you the wonder is gone. You are forgetting what a miracle you are, forgetting how special, and beautiful, and amazing you are. You’re not thinking about you in a positive way, seeing the best. You’re not trusting you, and absolutely time doesn’t stop. In fact, you’re so caught up in stuff that it seems time goes way too fast.

What is the wonder of you? For yourself, as you’re thinking of you, what is wonderful about you? What does your relationship with you need to remember about you? Well, one thing is, I’d really like you to remember you are an absolutely magnificent being of great love and pure light, and that all of this human stuff has just been taken on for a tiny blip. That you’re so much more than what you seen when you look in the mirror and grimace.

Where’s the passion? What do you get excited about anymore? What touches your heart and thrills you down to your toes? What makes you smile? What makes you laugh? What do you look forward to? What feeds you? And what are you doing to make sure the wonder stays in your life? Wonder slides away if it is not constantly worked on. It’s not a part of a relationship that has its own fire. It has to be constantly kindled.

To return to that place where you see the wonder of you, you can’t wait for it to just drop in your lap or the veil get thrown off—“Of course, I knew that!” You have to go hunting for it, and you have to claim it and make it so. That’s why looking for miracles every day is such a helpful exercise. Because when you’re looking for miracles you are looking for the best, the magical, the special, that sure enough is being paraded right in front of you. And you’re seeing it—the beauty, the power, the bliss of it—the wonder. When you’re in a relationship and the wonder isn’t there for you, I guarantee it’s not there for the other as well.

This next one might seem a bit odd. Health. Physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health is a vital part of every relationship. If I was talking to the you you have a relationship with and I said, “ Is she taking care of you? Is he taking care of you?” how would you answer that? Some of you are not doing such a scary job of taking care of your physical self, but you seem to be forgetting the importance of your mental-emotional self. Some of you seem to pay a whole lot of attention to your mental-emotional self and hardly any to your physical health. It’s very rare you have all of that put together.

And why did I not separate out the spiritual health from those two? Because when your physical self is at its best, you’re functioning spiritually. When your mental self and your emotional self are functioning at their best, it’s a function of your spiritual self.

How are you treating you mentally? Do you remember that your brain benefits from learning all the time? Do you remember that talking nicely about yourself to yourself can help turn around years of hearing otherwise outside of you? You can change old patterns. You can change old beliefs. You’ve got to replace it.

Some people mistake emotional health with not feeling anything. “Well, I must be doing fine because I’m not falling apart.” The fact if it is, you’ve gotten so good at just stuffing everything into the back—“Can’t see it; must be okay.”—stuffing everything into the back it comes out in other ways.

In Atlanta, I was talking about some of the symptoms that are showing up right now when you are not taking care of your energy, you’re not working at your best. One of them, somebody says, “Is irritability one of those things?” Oh, yeah. Irritability is one of the first ways that not taking care of your emotional self shows up. You become impatient. Do you know what is the step after impatience? Giving up. It’s dangerous. It’s dangerous.

How do you support yourself emotionally? How do you have good mental-emotional health? What are things you can do for yourself?

Listen to your favorite music.

S: Sure, absolutely.

Be selective of the type of people you hang around with.

S: Why?

A lot of times we get into relationships or in with crowds that don’t really serve or help us to be our best, be at our best.

S: That’s right.

Contemplating—either through journaling or through just quiet time and reviewing . . . and contemplating.

S: Meditating, looking within, not throwing up [your hands].

This last week I was thinking about how much time I spend with my friends—either them calling me or me calling them—talking about things that are happening in our lives, which offers so much wisdom to all of us, collective wisdom, different perspectives. And healing and bonds. And it makes things like, “Okay, this is manageable,” or “This is working.” And whether I am seeking help or giving help, it always helps me, because I’m constantly looking at things freshly.

S: Being around those you care about, and particularly if you have a wide variety in your friendships so that you’re not always talking about the exact same thing. “Well, everyone I know is those I work with.” Particularly make sure that your friends are positive, that they encourage you and your dreams, that they offer their perspective, that you listen to it. Don’t make them beg.

Find ways to play.

S: Yes! Yes, yes! Play! Children play. They don’t have to have a whole bunch of other people around. They know how—what’s the official way to say it—entertain themselves; that’s it. They know how to entertain themselves. Do you? Or do you start getting cranky and bored and hard to deal with? Do you have to have something going on all the time? One of the things Frank said earlier was having some quiet time? Do you manage quiet time? And then the other side of that is, What do you do to play? What do you do to just laugh and enjoy?

Play Chicken Foot dominoes with Paula.

S: I have started, most Wednesday nights through the equinox here at Phoenix, a play night. It’s not every Wednesday night—if there’s a leadership meeting or—but most Wednesday nights, and it’s playing games and cards and say that again.

Chicken Foot dominoes.

S: Chicken Foot dominoes.

Chicken Feet dominoes. It’s a variation on the game dominoes.

S: And there’s always . . .

Balderdash and Corn Hole. Bean bag toss.

S: That one just perks me up right off. All you have to do so is say that one. And you know the reason I started that was twofold. One of them is because what’s happening with too many Guardians is that you’re just staying in your own little hermit cave and you’re not doing things that feed you, that you enjoy. You’re not being around people you love and who love you. It’s cold and it’s dark, and you don’t have enough sunlight, so you’re getting all withdrawn, and you’re hibernating. And the other reason is because this is the time of year when you have tendency to get a lot more serious and forget how much you like to laugh. And forget how little it takes to enjoy yourself with others. It’s not hard. A Chicken Foot domino and you’re good.

Your mental health is a vital part of every relationship. Your physical health is, too. And if you’ve ever been in a relationship with somebody who did not have good physical health, then you know, it’s very easy for your whole world get tied up around that. And you’re not going to have a healthy relationship if that’s the case. Good health is vital. When that starts sliding away, so does the relationship.

Wisdom. What is wisdom? Wisdom is what happens when you fall down a lot. It is, if you’re smart enough to learn what happens when you fall down. That’s wisdom. In your life, every day, you have all manner of experiences. Many of them are wonderful experiences. A few of them you would rather not repeat, but you will if you’ve not learned how you avoid it. That’s wisdom. Life gives you incredible experiences, and experiences make you wise. They make you worth listening to. They give you the good stories. But the ones that change your life, the wisdom that makes the difference, is when you failed. When you fell and got back up and kept going. Do you know that there are people you know who are still living in the failures of their past. They’re still making the same mistakes. Sometimes the biggest mistake that they’re making is steadfastly avoiding mistakes. Your perfect behaviors worry me. They don’t excite me. You’re perfect behaviors worry me. I love working with your obsessive perfectionism. I do. I love that. But only where it fits in this work. But anywhere else, it’s not helping you. It’s only hurting you. You see what happens if you’re so afraid of making a mistake that you stop trying. You won’t do anything new. You don’t change. Lakshmi, love, how many times can you dance the exact same steps and still love it? Not so much.

If I’m going to repeat the whole time just that one step, then it becomes robotic. It takes the joy out of it.

S: Yes, yes it does. And yet some of you do that same thing over and over and over. Not exciting but safe. And what that creates in a relationship is a loss of respect and a lack of trust. And when we are talking about your relationship with yourself, you’re having a lack of trust in yourself and a lack of respect in yourself. Maybe the reason is because you know you are too much of a coward to try and change. That you would rather just stick in the same set boundaries than see what else you can do. If you’re in a relationship with someone—well, their pattern tends to be pretty much obsessive about being right and yet continuing to make the same mistakes over and over and over and over and over, you’re not going to respect them, are you? Respect comes when you see somebody giving it their best, whether it works or not, every time. The trust comes again when you see they’re giving it their best.

Maybe your self doesn’t think you’re giving it your best. Maybe it knows something you’re trying not to know. Wisdom is the result of learning from your experiences and choosing to repeat the ones that work without being afraid of trying some that you don’t know if it’s going to work or not. Wisdom is not just a platform.

All right, you’ve reached it. You’ve got the wisdom. Maybe that makes you smart. But you’re not wise until you can take that lesson to the next level: “All right, what can I do with this?” And you give something else a try. And yes, sometimes that means you fall smack on your face. But it’s all right, because sometimes it means you fly. Remember how wise you used to think your lover was and how over time it just seemed like they weren’t quite as smart as they seemed to be. Maybe because they started falling into ruts. Maybe because you both did.

The most important relationship in your life is the one you have with yourself. “Wait a minute, Samuel. Shouldn’t you have said it’s your spiritual relationship? Wouldn’t you think a relationship with Source is more important?” Like I said, your relationship with yourself. Do you know the Source of you, the Source in you, the Source as you? That was, Do you know the Source of you, in you, as you. And how’s that relationship going? Do you see the wonder of Source in your life? Do you work to keep that relationship healthy and whole? Are you constantly growing in wisdom with regard to how to make that relationship stronger and better? Are you learning more and more all the time, or is it just the same old same-old.

I had a really delightful time recently chatting with a friend. This sounds like something you do up on the nineteenth hole, doesn’t it? And I was talking to her about things that I don’t talk to anybody about because she asked. She did not ask blindly. She was asking from a place of wisdom, from . . . she already knew these things and had figured them out, or I would have given her the typical answers, “Well, you know . . . sort of . . .  whatever.” She had wisdom and wonder and clear mental, emotional, spiritual health, and a really good relationship with the Source she is. And because of that, we had fun.

Does it ever work that way for you? What kind of relationships do you have in this life? This is a good month to work on them. Certainly every commercial you see is going to be reminding you that this is a month that has to do with shopping, eating, and maybe a little love attached to some of that. Chocolate love. Love of chocolate.

Do you have friends? Do you have love in your life? Is Source a loving friend in your life? When you look in the mirror do you love who you see?

Make good, my friends. Change what should be. Make a difference.

Glochanumora.

These are . . .

Leis.

S: Leis. All right. Or have been through the lawn mower. Sort of scared me at first. Happy trails.