Post by Lorraine Rytz on 'Gratitude'

Lorraine sent this to me just after the October newsletter went out and asked me to post this so that you all could read it...

"Having gone through my 50+ years without having had any major illness nor accidents, never having taken strong medications, and no hospital stays (nope, was  home-birthed), my emergency entry into hospital this July was a total shock. My difficult situation only seemed to get worse as complications set in and my attempts to hurry-up the healing process only resulted in relapses. My mind definitely judged everything about the situation as a negative problem with high anxiety and terror driving me to look for an escape hatch.

Your wise and loving advice to me was that acceptance rather than avoidance might be key in  mastering my situation. Easy for you to say, I thought at the time. You're not the one lying almost immobile in a hospital bed with male! nurses tending to your most intimate personal needs. With doctors being unable to determine the cause of the excruciating back pain, nor the source of the blood infection, and surgeons trying to take away organs that I insisted on keeping intact. Yes, it was easy for you to say because your love truly comes from a pure source. So I accepted your hints, your hugs, and your reminder that even if everyone might like to help by doing this for me, it was afterall really up to me.

As much as the medication did its part, my conviction is that meditation played a higher role. Meditation has been a part of my life, to varying degrees, during the past 20 years. The beautiful form that I practice today, The Art of Ascension as taught by the Ishayas gives me sustenance. My 10 week hospital stay was endured because I was able, sometimes only one breath at a time, to reduce the physical pain and emotional fear by quieting my mind.  Meditation became my one constant in a scary situation where things were unpredictable and changes seemed inevitable.

October's DCN guest speaker, Khandro sounds wonderful, meditation the perfect topic. Especially since my recent experience, I find myself resonating very much with the written intro...

" When things go wrong in our life and we encounter difficult situations, we tend to regard the situation itself as the problem, but in reality whatever problems we experience come from the side of the mind. If we were to respond to difficult situations with a positive or peaceful mind they would not be problems for us; indeed, we might even come to regard them as challenges or opportunities for growth and development. "

My small moment of gratitude has a domino effect.

I appreciate my friend and spiritual sister Dawn, who makes the DCN community possible, with whom I can explore the opportunities for growth and share the insights and gifts received on this journey.  

with love, Lorraine"

A Small moment of Gratitude

Generally I try to read a few pages every night of a spiritual book before going to sleep.  This week I started Neale Donald Walsch's book ' Happier than God'.  It was a book I had previously over looked, mainly because of the title and then I read a review somewhere and decided it sounded like something that would interest me.
I got to the chapter about 'The miracle that will change your life'.  And Neale was writing about having gratitude, nope... nothing new there.  But what really struck me was when he went onto to say

"The next time you are confronted with any undesired outcome, result or experience, just stop.  Stop right in the middle of whatever's going on. Just ..... Stop.

Close your eyes for the smallest moment and say inside your head. "Thank you God."

Take one good, deep breath and say it again.

"Thank you for this gift, and the treasure that it holds for me." "

This really hit home and sunk in.  It really changed how I saw those disastrous moments we are faced with in our lives..  I have always wondered how do you deal with those things that bug you, upset you or make you angry.  How do you really think positive thoughts in times like these.  I think the Universe just provided me with an answer.  Thank you God. :-)

Change is in the Air

Don't know whether you have noticed it, but things are changing and happening quicker.  I feel that there is all of these things happening around me, and I am standing in the centre of it all with my mouth hanging open, gaping, watching it all happen.  In the last month I have lost a Sydney friend to Caner, another friend (Swiss living in Sydney) gave birth to twins and had to let one of the girls go back to spirit.  There are unplanned pregnancies, people changing jobs, moving country and so much more.  Its all a bit surreal and I get the feeling this is only the beginning of my awareness of this.  And I don't think this is a normal amount of change.  On the surface you could probably explain it away, rationalise it.  But I get the feeling it is much more than that.

Maybe there is something in this thing about the Mayan calendar ending next year and the energy is shifting to align with the new energies coming in.  All I know is I am standing amongst it, going with the flow for now.  I hope you are too.

Love and support

I mentioned in this months newsletter that one of my very close friends and a wonderfully supportive member of the DCN is stuck in hospital in the Italian part of Switzerland, with excruciating pain that the Doctors can find no cause for.  I have been ringing every few days, as has other family and friends to support her and show my love.   Her journey through this has been hard and frustrating, as there seems to be no 'physical' cause.  Well not that our medical world understands anyway.
It is often hard to watch loved ones go through something painful, whether emotional or physical.  It has been a wonderful lesson that i have experienced from time to time in my life that someone else's journey is just that... theirs.  Our job is to love and support in any way we can.  If we buy into sharing their pain in some way, get emotional or retreat then we can no longer be the support they truly need.
Over the last couple of weeks I have laughed with Lorraine and pulled her up with kindness and love when she views this all in a negative light.  And when she finally lands in Basel I can be there for her by helping her process through Journey work, and the like.
Lorraine I send you my love, support and warmest blessings.  Get well my girl.

Playing small

My last month has been busy but I am not exactly sure where it went or what I did.  I have just got back from the USA, where I went to our USA office and then to a conference for Neuro-Semantics.   I did learn a lot from the conference and I got to met some interesting people.  People who really inspire the soul with their drive, motivation and determination.  It reminded me just how small I am playing.  So I guess it is time to challenge my thinking once again and see where the journey takes me to now.

Change is in the air...

All I can say at the moment is that I am looking forward to buying a new computer at the end of this month... it will make this that I do so much more enjoyable and hopefully solve the problem of the formatting for this page.  We can always live in hope...
Namaste :-)

Patience!

I am sooo looking forward to a new computer.  This one is on its last legs.  It takes half an hour to open everything up let alone update the newsletter and blog.  A feat and a half!  My patience has been stretched to the max tonight.  So if you find any mistakes or errors in gramar or spelling, please forgive me.  It is way too much effort to try and fix it.
The only thing is that I won't get my new computer until I get to the US in July.  My patience is truly going to be tested in the meantime.  These things are sent to try us for a reason.  If I develop patience with a computer that has a mind of its own, I wonder what else I can develop patience with.  The joys of lessons :-)

Aaarrrggghhh!

It seems as if this year has been sent to try me.  The more I try to update the blog the more the formatting goes haywire.  The answer is it time to change technology.  And this seems to be reflecting other parts of my life.  Sometimes i wonder what am I supposed to let go of, I know there is something I am not getting but I am not sure what.  And I guess the more I look, the more it hides.

The balance between desiring something and letting it go seems to be evading me at the moment.  So I will keep working at it.  Maybe by the time I get to the next world I might have it sussed out....or not!

Manifesting change

Well for me this year has started with a bang!...

A new house, big big changes at work, travelling to Vietnam to visit friends and NZ for a wedding and who knows what next...

Sometimes it is easy to get frustrated with life, as we have so many expectations and beliefs of what should be.  Yet if we ask the right questions and seek the answers without attachment something always shows up, whether you want it or not.

Maybe I need to learn to be even more patient, and let go even more.  How I do this, I have no idea, but maybe I can become my own experiment.  Creating my own future is both hard and easy and by some stroke of well-intentioned luck and good thoughts, it happens in a chaotic manner.  Maybe I just need to find a way to navigate the chaos.  

New Year and New Beginnings

Well things are storming along at a great pace for the start of the year. So much so I had my first bout of flu in probably 10 years.  There are many things happening in my neck of the woods.  The universe got listening to a couple of conversations that PJ and I had between us and in our minds and we all of a sudden as of the 30th December owned a house.  So now we are scrambling to find tradesman to sand floors, replacing electrics (so that you can turn the jug on without having to turn the lights off otherwise you blow a fuse), knocking out walls, moving kitchen cupboards, painting and getting organised to shift.  So lots happening...
So this year is going to be very different and it will be interesting to see it as it unfolds and reveals its magic and mystery...