JOY TO THE FISHES & THE DEEP BLUE SEA

"Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves

 to recognize how good things really are."

Marianne Williamson

I have a gift  - a talent - something I took for granted for so long because I thought it came easy peasy to every body.

I know how to access my JOY.  I know what it feels like in my bones - I know how it feels to open my heart.   I know how to shahahare it and spread it so others feel it too.  

It's something I practice daily.  I jump for joy.  I dance.  I sing.   I laugh in the sea.  I lay back in the water and let her hold me gently.  I open my mouth and make a sound - hahaha.   I hear it with my ears submerged under the water.  Feeling vibrations in the waves as I flow.

I didn't realize that peeps have become disconnected with their joy.  Misery does love company and peeps love to complain and focus on the one gray cloud in the sky rather than the vastness of  blue and the occasional white cloud ballet.

Most people think that JOY is something outside of us - to be found or acquired.  Actually, it's an energy we knew how to access as children and over the years, we forgot.

JOY is a fire from within. An energy of HAhaHAppy that gets ignited by touch, smell, sound and memory. It's a feeling - a birthright - that we get from the simplest of things.

JOY is about finding the pleasure right NOW. Accepting ALL that is in our lives with grace. Surrendering to the circumstances with gratitude.   For me, this means focusing with an attitude of gratitude on everything that is within and surrounds me. Enthusiasm for my time RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW on this heaven on Earth. Joy at the simple pleasure of being alive and breathing.  Joy at the freedom I have to rise and stretch.  Joy at putting my fingers in paint and plastering a piece of paper with color.  Joy at the opportunity to sing with the birds in the early hours of dawn.  Joy to move and shake and dance - woohoo.

I've spent the last ten years of my life remembering how to shift my focus from outside of me to within. Learning to redirect my energy and attention to a vibration of gratefulness for all the abundance I am blessed with.  Doing this with kindness and compassion for me as I delve deeper into the OMazing miracle of life.

This last week, on Day 12 of Oprah & Deepak's 21 Day Meditation - the theme was Living Laughter.  Deepak shared that: "pure, innocent laughter is the most obvious sign of the joy we feel in our hearts. It is also a powerful and instant way of spreading that joy all around you."  

This gift is so easy and yet so difficult to achieve.   It is so much easier to complain and stay in the negativity. It takes work to shift this mindset and raise our altitude.  It takes just a MOMent to open the heart and share our true nature.   There is no other way to the LOVE that we are.

This spiritual discipline of HAhaHAppy - LAUGHTER - keeps me in the flow of bliss.  I connected to this truth years ago.  I saw people's eyes light up with laughter and I wanted this magic in my life.  I wanted the lightheartedness of spirit that I felt and the energy of ecstasy that I witnessed.   As I let go of things that no longer served me and became a Master at the Art of Doing Nothing, I built my laughter muscle.  I remember recapturing the feeling of childhood and expressing my joy through laughter. It felt so good to relax muscles and organs and just be free to express my heart's haHAhappiness.  Today, the joy i feel in my heart shows up as laughter on my lips - a deep appreciation for all that I have and am in this moment.

"Joy to the World, all the boys and GIRLs.

Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea,

Joy to you and me."

- thahahank you Three Dog Night (see video below)

Sustainability is Key

On Friday, flying home from Germany, I had the opportunity to watch Happy Feet.  Again.  I forgot what a great little movie this was.  A penguin using his dancing feet to create movement that causes chahahange. Mumbles the penguin remained true to himself and found that people responded to his passion.  Here was a penguin who believed he would find answers and help his tribe thrive by being himself.

Germany was a culmination of seeds planted long ago by who I was then and am still becoming.   After hearing the Dalai Lama live in Fort Lauderdale in 2004, I walked out of there with his words on my mind.  He asked the audience how can we have peace in the world when we do not have peace within our families?

At the time, neither of my parents were talking to their siblings and I had peeps in my family that I knew by title but not by person.  For example, my aunt.  She and my Mom, her sister, were barely talking - thinking they had nothing in common.  I found that what they had in common was me.  I called my aunt - told her I wanted to get to know her better, and flew out to Germany to do just that.

I ended up working in her new restaurant and sharing the couch with my new cousin, Blitz, a black Doberman.  I got to know my aunt as an adult and peer - as a friend and a niece.  I worked hard - listened to stories - shared moments.  The past came to meet us in the present where we could shine the light of love and make a change.   After 11 days, we definitely respected one another and found out that we truly liked each other as well.

First reunion in Germany - Mom, Auntie K and me

One seed planted and sustained with love and phone calls and emails.  Soon, another seed was planted.  I called my Mom on my birthday and thanked her for giving birth to me.  I invited her to Romania so we could visit my grandmother, my mama's mama.  Before leaving Europe, we stopped in Germany so the sisters could meet again.  And talk about the mother that they were estranged from.  Another seed was planted.

My aunt made the trek to Florida.  She came to enjoy the beach and the fabulous biking weather.  She came to know me and LoverBoy a little better.  She was even blessed to be here to witness and experience Hurricane Katrina.  More love, phone calls, time together and faith.  More seeds planted.

Me in Romania with my Grandma and her girlfriends

Two years later, Mom and I rented an apartment in Romania.  My grandmother joins us as does my Aunt.  It is a trip down memory lane - seeing places of their childhood and listening to their mother tongue.  We took a little excursion into the mountains to get a new sense of this place, these women and their experiences.  We spent two days in a old chalet - talking and eating - sharing stories and secrets - listening to details that had been missed and filling in the blanks that our bodies created to protect us.  A huge healing occurs - a shift - a peaceful surrendering to a new way of life.  

Two years later, the women agreed to meet in Vienna, Austria.  The matriarch of our family, my Mamama and her two daughters (my Mom and Aunt) and I rented an apartment for a week of family fun in Vienna. Again, we shared stories, we laughed, we cooked together and we mended part of the past.

The Sisters and Doggess Goddess Debby

Going to Germany this week was the blossoming of all the seeds of love planted in this family and getting to know the newest member of our family, Miss Debby.  Again, pieces of the puzzle were discovered as we weaved the fabric of our family lives and saw how each generation had left its mark on the next.  For me, I deeply desired this feminine healing of the family - this ability to connect and know we lived common history and are creating herstory.

What I've learned to be true is that seeds sprout in their own time. For me, sustainability of these seeds required discipline and focus. I found patience - a knowing or grace that things hahahappen in their own time instead of mine.  I found love - an open heart to however things appear on the surface.  I found faith - all the juicy stuff hangs out just below the surface enticing me to be in it for the long haul.

This week I felt a shift in the feminine in my family.  A beautiful chahahange of vibration as we let go of the past with compassion and accepted the present for what it is and opened ourselves up to the possibilities of the future.  We did this by laughing and crying and sharing and listening and eating, of course.  Yummy eating at my Aunt and Uncle's Restaurant, Wildhof, in the middle of a forest, about 15 minutes from Frankfurt.

Our Truth - The Genius Within

For those who already know me, I have a different way of looking at things.  I decided Society's ways of living my life were not going to work for me.  I did have employment where I went to a corporate office and tried to do the daily grind.  That did not work for me.

I got married and thought of starting a Family immediately.  That did not work for me.

I tried to go to law School.  The Universe had another plan for me.

I stopped fighting and trying to mold my life in the direction my Family wanted.  I stopped trying to be like the People I knew.  In fact, I accepted that I did not fit the blueprint of what my parents, school, friends, religion and culture expected of me.

I surrendered to being an outcast and doing things differently.  I realized that I was a genius of my own making.  I understood that my point of view was no different than any of those people who knew the world could not be flat even when that was the prevailing perspective.

Looking at the etymology of the word GENIUS, my Research finds it Comes from ancient Rome.  GENIUS was the guiding Spirit of a Person or Family (gens).  This noun is related to the Latin verb genui, "to bring into being, create, produce."  

That would make all women who give birth geniuses; all artists who create geniuses; all People who produce thoughts, ideas, books, buildings, etc., etc. ,etc. geniuses.  Anyone who touches the world or any of its inhabitants, plants and animals could be defined as a Genius.

What I know to be true for me is that Genius does not come from following the crowd or being in the pack.  Genius comes from branching out or taking the path less traveled.    Genius hahahappens when taking a leap of faith.  Genius hahahappens when I go within and I get a download - a Connection to my Spirit with Information that I couldn´t possibly know and yet, there it is.  A knowing beyond my experience in this lifetime.

Abraham Hicks through Esther describes GENIUS as alignment with deliberate choice.  Watch the Video below to hear her speak of it so so succintly.

 

 

For me, my GENIUS is wanting to come out - share my views of the world and become the writer that I was always meant to be.  So I pray this week for "accomplishment of a vibrational frequency with deliberate intent and  understanding the full ramifications of it" - this message that I feel compelled to shahahare with the world. 

And so I tune in, I trust myself and I Focus on shahaharing These thoughts that Play in my head and see if they bring peace to others as they have for me.