"Some People Truly Are Living on Another Planet"

Watching an interviewer on YouTube my husband and I could not get over the sycophant admirations to the celebrity.  We both began laughing out loud and said, "What?" There are many, many, many, great actors and yet these interviewers tell each celebrity, "there will never be another one like you" is really over stating what can never be known now.  Then my husband and I both said,"They must be living on another planet, it sure isn't earth. Their "Ego" can take them there, we see."

Has anyone else ever noticed in TV the interviewers have to really hop up the accomplishments of the interviewee?  All the talk show hosts do this if you watch enough of them, and the best ones make you believe that this one person "is their favorite." But they cannot all be the favorite, favorite is ONE.  Even Oprah does it, listen to her.  I am much more interested in listening to Oprah give commencement speeches at colleges now.

It must be a way to get the celebrity to let their walls down, make the guest think the interviewer is among their best fans, and possibly make the guest let out a secret not revealed yet to the public.  That seems to be a feather in a hosts' hat, to be the first to report the unknown secret to their public. Some of these introductions are so over the top, I throw up  a little in my mouth and then listen for a while, if the interview is somewhat interesting I may stay tuned, if not, I change the channel, yes, I have a life too.

Most of America lives on planet earth. We try to live a life with respect for others. Respect for their marriages, respect for others' property, respect for children, respect for religious beliefs that are not violent.  Most of America does not grow up in a movie theater or hang on every word of an entertainer.  Most of us know no ONE person is above or below another. The majority of humans, without celebrity status are the backbone of every society on earth.

The celebrity road to stardom is frequently full of affairs, leaving husbands, wives and children behind to pursue personal pleasure, fame, position in Hollywood, fortune, or the next big break, with no responsibility to anyone but self. 

Planet Earth as a peaceful society cannot survive without respect for family units and others. Thankfully these ego-centric individuals are a minority. (Unfortunately many politicians are joining this ungrateful group. Politicians are scary because they claim to be "public servants" yet sacrifice their marriages and children for affairs, fame, personal pleasure, position, and fortune.)

The compass of happiness is not found in selfish pursuits for your entire life, in time the compass of happiness will lead to helping others, respecting yourself, respecting others' beliefs, their commitments to a significant other, respecting and valuing your own children.

Children are the future inhabitants of this planet and cannot be shipped off to another to raise or to get out of the way so I can do what I want to do.  That thinking needs to be eradicated before fathering a child. Children are gifts from the universe, a chance to make the world better. Innocence that we parent and guide if we see their value.

Our children taught me what "Love" really is, and to that end I will always be grateful for them and the man that helped me raise them. This experience was part of my journey to inner peace.

To each its own, we are one and this road to unification of us all is a road we create as we go. In the end, we must all evaluate if the win was worth the sacrifice.  No one gets a free ride here, we must make peace within or we will never have the happiness we seek. Bright lights and big city was never my path, I prefer the serenity of nature and a good book, helping people I meet everyday and appreciating the help each gives me. Namaste.

"Peaceful Attention at Home Brings Peace, Not More Laws"

**Important to realize I write from the perspective of a USA citizen, not other countries.

When something bad happens here in the USA, many want another law but laws do not make anyone obey them. So many times we read in the news the "want" for a quick remedy to deep rooted problems: "More laws needed!" Laws don't work when people will not obey them. No one would harm another person if they were not confused about the peaceful ways to resolve every conflict. Peaceful ways are taught at home not laws of society.  Laws are misconstrued, misinterpreted, for personal gain. Look at court cases that are won or loss. 

Who takes the time to teach peace to children? There are rules and laws in every society and home but who takes the time to teach actual conflict resolution in the actual moment it happens so the child can see in action the peaceful ways to resolve a disagreement first hand?

Neglect or the denial of the need to train a child in a home is perpetuated by ignoring the bad behaviors or letting technology babysit your child with full-time daycare centers, TV or any handheld device. This is very dangerous for the psyche of your child.  If you do not take the role of having the greatest influence on your child, someone in the world will, media does this every time you leave them in front of any electronic device. If the outside world can control your child's thinking, the child will lose the ability to make rational, reasonable, decisions himself/herself. This is the way of the world...

There is no better influence on a child than the teachings of the child's actual parents at home.  

The quick remedy never addresses the deep rooted problem, because to fully address the deep rooted problem can take daily teaching for years and years, it takes too much time for most parents more focused on being tired or paying the bills.

Mental illness in a child is not addressed even when detected at an early age because families do not want to admit that something is physically/mentally wrong with "their" offspring.  The time to live with and care for a mentally ill child, the costs of medications, visits to support groups, a psychiatrist is emotionally draining.  It takes persistent attention and  training to raise a civilized non-violent mentally ill child. When mental illness is present, there is no guarantee of the outcome but with constant attention and kind care the outcome proves to be better.

Only a person that has taken the time to raise a loving, kind, child, can know the time and focus on that one child's health and well being and this is "without apparent mental illness." Time and patience, helping parents teach their own individual child, is the one thing the workforce and schools in the USA are NOT facilitating. Then, when violence is the evident outcome, everyone wants a quick remedy.  It takes a village to raise a child?  Where are the teachers? There are lots of lawmakers, but where are the daily teachers? How is society helping that parent stay with each child?

You cannot teach what you do not know. My husband and I spent daily time with our children but we did not know how to resolve conflicts peacefully. If we were to continue this marriage we had to first learn how to converse and resolve disagreements without compromising the other person's integrity. 

It was daily work but in time with a focus to keep our family together and heal generational negative abuse, we got a handle on it.  Here's a clue: You do not find peace by trying to control everyone and everything around you. You find peace through acceptance of ideas that don't agree with your own, letting go of the ego to be right all the time, and a heart of "how can I be a part of a peaceful solution now?"

If you teach this at home to your children, they will not have to go far away from home to find these answers for themselves. We cannot teach what we do not know. 

Daily meditation/prayer/visualization and thankfulness, is absolutely necessary to bring your mind into alignment with goodness and to facilitate a peaceful world. Daily time with your children to teach them these peaceful ways is absolutely necessary too. Teach children to take time to meditate daily, eat right daily and exercise daily by doing this with them daily. This is the beginning of world peace.

Love this book, studied it and we both applied principles learned from it in our own family. We took an actual course offered in the school system with other parents to learn how to carry out methods set forth in the book. Definitely made our family life better.

Thankful to have found a path to our family peace. If only it was as simple as making another law...

Boo Boo or Ash?

I was in line at a store yesterday watching a precious 3 year old Angelbunny with her mother touch this or that while waiting for the cashier. She picked up a lipstick on her 2 1/2 foot eye level. Her mom said."No no sweetie we you don't need makeup, put that back." The little girl put it back. Then she picked up a 5 Hour Energy Shot bottle and her mother said, "No no, you definitely don't need that!"

I smiled and said to the mother,"She was getting that for you mom." Her mother said,"Yes I do need that."  We laughed and I said, "Is this your first?"  She said, "Yes."  I said, "It is so much fun isn't it?"
"Yes, it changes your life more than anyone can ever explain to you."  "Planning to have more some day?"  "Yes after this one is potty trained..."

They stepped up in line and the baby was picked up by her mother. As the baby looked over her mother's shoulder, she pointed at me and said,"Boo boo" to her mother. Her mother looked at me and said, "No sweetie this is Ash Wednesday and we will go to church later to get ash put on our forehead."  I glanced briefly over my left shoulder and see no one in line.

I franticly began to freak out embarrassed, thinking, "Sh*t my eyebrows are smeared!" I begin to discreetly rub my forefinger up the middle of my brow trying to erase the smear of my drawn on eyebrows.  Then I thought, "Crap! I wish I had a mirror!  Which eyebrow is missing?"

Then I remembered, the stoics..."Things I can control and things I cannot control." As I am calming my mind down saying to myself..."If this is your biggest problem today, I have no problems." Get a grip, you know you love make up and how it gives this 60+ woman some much needed color. Oh well.

Just then the woman behind me stands up, she was squatted down looking at something on the lower shelf behind me. She had a black ash on her forehead between her eyes.

Shaun White Won the GOLD!

That's my favorite Olympic Event! The Halfpipe! Shaun White is my favorite athlete!
Over and Out...I'll sleep well tonight!

What? Universe Has my Back Again! Thank you Universe!

We went down to the city to see "Tanith Band" at St.Vitas Bar on Manhattan Ave, Brooklyn. Crazy Bull Band from Philadelphia opened.  The music was outstanding.  

We parked outside in what we thought was a secure, legal location.  My Sweetheart went inside the bar to set up his video cam to record the "Tanith" concert.  It was hot inside. So hot I had to go to the car to wait for "Tanith" to perform at 10 pm.  I go to the car about 9:05 and once in our car began to take off layers of clothes, I was hot!

(For any Southerners, you wear layers of clothing up north for this purpose)

So I thought I'll cool off and sit here until about 9:55 and go back in.  Reality had another plan I had to just go with it.  As I was sitting in the car I came across one of my husband's shirts.  I thought excellent! I can leave my turtleneck, my vest, my overcoat and scarf here and just wear his shirt over my spaghetti strap top.  That will keep me cool inside the venue.

So I'm sitting, looking around, enjoying the coolness for about 30 minutes when a NYC cop car pulls up alongside our car and shines light on me, turns on their siren briefly, "yurp, yurp", and waves me to lower my window. I had to jump the hump of the middle console, get in driver's seat, put key in the ignition, start the car to let down the electric window.  

"Yes? Is there something I can do for you officer?"

"You can move your car you are parked in a bus lane."  

"I thought this was a legal space?"

"No."

Seeing the bus stop sign I thought the bus cannot take up the entire block space to pull over to pick up passengers so I asked the cops.

"Can I just back up 50 more ft? I'm from out of town, where do I park?"

"No, you cannot park in the bus lane. Move up to the next block, not here."

"Thank you, I will move."

I pull out and the cops park in my space and get out. He began putting tickets on every car on that side of the street on that block. Then they begin walking the block looking into windows, talking to cafe people, I presume looking to have people move their cars.  No one came out, no one moved a car except me. Guess the cops had no luck finding the owners of the other cars.

So now it is 9:37 pm and I think, "Good luck! No ticket!"now I will ride around the blocks and find a space in plenty of time... no that did not happen.  I rode up and down every street careful not to go up the wrong way of a one way street, of which there are many at this location.  I rode up and down and around, again and again. No luck.  

Watching the clock 9:37 turned into 9:58 and still no parking space. Great! Now I will miss the opening of "Tanith."  Well, at least my husband is recording it so I can see what I miss. I keep riding, circling the blocks until I saw a space so short I was not sure the car would fit but I would try with my expert driving skills to squeeze this Cruz in. Oh yeah I squeezed the car in but it took me another 25 minutes of back and forth, back and forth, get out of car, eye distance, get back in car, back and forth, back and forth, repeat until success!  I parked legally in NYC and possibly avoided towing.  The last thing I wanted to do was go buy my car out of the impound at 3:00 am.  Yes I have had to do this before... 40 years ago.  Long process, not fun and yes expensive.

So now it is 10:27pm I jump out of the car head to St.Vitas, across the street. When I get to the front door, a car pulls away that was parked right in front of the entrance.  Grrrrrr, if it would not take me another 25 minutes to get the Cruz back out of that small space I would have brought my car over to this most convenient one. Hey, "Loving what is" popped into my mind.

Thankful I was sitting in the car to move it and park it legally, after such an exhilarating night of fun and music I would not like to end the night with a NYC ticket. NYC tickets are never cheap to pay or easy to fight in court, you might as well plead guilty because we live too far away to make the trip to court over this and "ignorance" is not a valid box to check on the plea side of the ticket.

"Loving what is" a motto to live life by that eliminates stress. I'm into peace or did you pick up on that from reading my blogs?

"Perfect As You Are"

It's no secret to those who know me well that Pema Chodron is one of our favorite Buddhist teachers. To know more about her you can google her but today what I want to say simply is in her book, Perfect as You Are she teaches something that law of attraction and religions do not. This is simply, "Negative things happen. It is not negative things happening that get us caught up in destructive behaviors, it is being negatively negative about it."

In other words, you can't stop some negative things from happening to you, you are not responsible for all of the negatives that occur in your life.  What gets us in trouble is when our mind obsesses about the negative things that happen instead of taking positive actions to remedy the negative event.

You do this in your mind first and then an action will follow.  If we do not believe we are perfectly made and capable of figuring things out on our own, we are confused, we are indecisive, we flounder, we worry, we fear, we do nothing to remedy the situation, we suffer failure and loss.

When you realize you are not born broken, you are good, you can make it alone in this life if you have to until better situations come, then you learn to live a happy life.

We do not have to go through life wearing rose colored glasses when we are hurt, denying the hurt, excusing the pain, or making excuses for an abuser, not having boundaries because we are afraid we are not enough, or we can't survive on our own.  We were born to be successful in everything we choose to be and do.  We can be successful if we get rid of negative judging thoughts about others and ourselves.

Once we wade through the swamps of survival, get on the other shore in daylight, we can begin to pursue our dreams and live the life we have dreamed about forever.  No more confusion about purpose, no more confusion about how, we just do it.

The dream of wanting unconditional love, from my childhood, getting a person in my life that really accepted, loved "me," and would always be here for me has come true. Now on to the next dream...

I figured out in my teens that imperfect me was "Perfect As I Am." Getting the kinks out was just details!

There is No Dana, Only Zuul!

Zuul is the gatekeeper of Gozer,  a minigod of Gozer "The Destructor" alongside Vinz Clortho "The Keymaster"  are characters in the Ghostbuster movie, one of the funniest movies our family has ever seen, who doesn't love Bill Murray?  The entire cast are fabulous actors with perfect comedic timing.

The story was created from a book. The House is Haunted: The True story of a Poltergeist  this happened in England, the book was written in 1980. Are the characters real? Did the poltergeist happen?  Who knows? The Poltergeist in England claims the word "Gozer" was written on walls throughout the house. This story and movie is made for entertainment. Those that believe in the Evil Devil, Demons, Satan, have to stretch the mind to such fairytale like dimensions, that I cannot go there. For me to believe in this evil is childish.  It's like a child afraid of a boogey man in the closet or under the bed, it is too fantastical to believe.

It is much easier for me to believe there is a good force, call it God, call it "Reality," that when called upon or not, will always steer you in the right direction if you get your fearful negative judging thoughts out of the way.  Why does this force positively help everyone? Because this force loves to help everyone I guess.  I can't say but I have definitely seen the goodness of this force help me many times in my life.

Science alongside reality of what is and reason has proved many theories false. One theory proven false "the earth is flat." Aristotle put forth the notion of the round world but it took years for others to believe it possible.  Another false belief was that cleaning wounds, changing bandages daily will not affect the outcome of healing. Florence Nightingale proved this wrong when she cleaned and dressed wounds of the soldiers, the mortality rate lessened significantly. It seems the mind of fear and laziness can create some pretty scary but false analysis to explain things not readily explainable.

Which brings me to this: I have some very highly educated, morally upright, theologian friends, ordained in various ministries that absolutely "Know" in their conditioned thinking that to believe in God, one must believe in Devil, Satan, and Demonic creatures. Some of these individuals believe they have seen Satan and Devils. What if Satan and Devils are created solely in the minds of humans?  What if there are no such demonic creatures, no demonic possession and these exist only because you believe it does?  What would you do with your belief system? How would you live life without blaming the Devil for everything bad in the world?

I taught the Bible for many years including the Satan theory until one day I discovered, "There is no Satan, Only the Human Mind" that controls all imaginations.  I do not believe in Satan, Devils, Demons or any such horrific fantastical fairy tales.  To attribute our bad decisions or actions to Satan is to give your power away and not take responsibility for your confused mind.  Likewise to attribute to God all good decisions or peaceful actions, you give your power away, and do not allow yourself to be thankful for your unconfused mind with good decision making skills and therefore appreciate your own good self. What is left is nothing for you to claim for your own. In life you will receive the rewards of good decisions and actions or you will suffer the consequences of your bad decisions and actions.

Neither of these is due to God or Satan, these are outcomes of your beliefs.  If these beliefs be in alignment with the universe of peace or out of alignment, you choose.  We are born with a conscious that is aware of good and bad, we feel it. (Unless there is a mental or physical illness along with perpetuated wrong teachings in this world that prevents some of us from feeling.)  I believe this inability to have a feeling of what is wrong or right comes from generations of confused and bad influences taught through the actions of our parents, our culture, traditions, society, religions, and environment.  This teaches us to fear things we do not know, it teaches to divide ourselves from what we do not understand, it teaches war. It may be no one's fault, or so many will claim, but it has to be recognized and stopped in someone.  I choose to recognize the confusion taught to me and continue to practice daily meditation and allow the beauty of the peace that resides in me to come forth again. I take responsibility for my life, my actions, I take the credit for my accomplishments.  I am good, I am not broken, I am human, and so likewise are you.  All of us have a true nature to be good just like the force that helps us when we fall or guides us when we meditate. No one would ever hurt another if the mind was not confused about "how to think."

Thankful to unlearn so many confused thoughts that once caused me pain and to see I can control my own mind and be free, be peaceful, be patient. If I can do it, anyone can. Each life is a gift to the world.