EnlightenInk Blog

   I just came face to face with a massive issue I’ve been avoiding, and I have my butt to thank for it.

   Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time messing around on the computer, watching TV, and eating. I recently did something I haven’t done since my diagnosis and removal of cancer a year ago. I have been faithfully avoiding sugar (it feeds cancer) and dairy, but the other day I walked to the Fresco bakery (voted best desserts in Santa Barbara) and I got a big slice of berry pie with homemade whipped cream. I was proud of myself for bringing it home and sharing half of it with my husband Tom. Two days later I went back and got another yummy dessert (a caramelized banana marzipan flakey pastry), but this time I didn’t share it with Tom. I didn’t even tell him about it. It was a sweet, secret treat that I hoarded and hid and ate all by myself.

   Big fat red flag! There have been other red flags that something was up, or held down, something I didn’t want to face. A few weeks ago I had a severe ear infection and blockage in my left ear with pain radiating into my neck and face. I couldn’t hear out of that ear and I felt unbalanced. In addition, for several weeks my butt has been unrelentingly aching with painful hemorrhoids (the grapes of wrath!)  So I asked myself, “Your ear aches and your rear aches, what’s up with that?”

   I’m taking antibiotics for my ear and it’s better. But the pain in my butt is not going away. My rear aches everyday, like a tiger’s got ME by the tail. The persistent pain scares me, with the thought that cancer is always a possibility. I tried to reassure myself that everyone gets hemorrhoids (it’s said that’s why Napoleon rode side saddle!) But then a lady from the community garden told me she had hemorrhoids and it turned out to be anal cancer. Oh My God, my worst fear! I googled anal cancer and hemorrhoids and my fear mushroomed.

   Fear has taken over. I am out of balance — I’ve lost touch with my spirit. In trying to avoid this fear by distracting myself with TV, food, and the computer, I have also separated myself from my spirit. I have been spirited away by the addictive distractions that fill my day.

   My ear aches and rear aches are fear aches. I’ve been tightly clenched, trying to push fear away, avoid it, sit on it. But once again I am reminded that when I try to sit on my feelings, they bite me in the butt! And it’s very painful! I am now willing to come face to face with my ear, rear, and fear aches.

   Laying in the spaciousness of Tom’s arms, I let go and I let myself go into the depths of my fear and sadness about cancer. Even though it was removed, I have a creeping fear that it will return. I face into the surprising awareness that a part of me would rather die than to go through more cancer, pain, hospitals, expense, needles, knives, blood, and fear!

   I cried and released and unwound my pain, and then…I became aware of Tom holding me, and I felt the sweet space he was providing me, and I suddenly remembered how I used to cry and feel this deep despair years ago when I felt so alone in the world. Now here I was with Tom. My eyes opened wide, taking in this present moment where I was held and loved. I awakened to this wonderful moment and I smiled, happy to be alive, feeling my feelings fully, in the spaciousness of the here and now with this beautiful man.

   I can see that my butt has been aching to communicate with me, trying to tell me, “Get off your butt. Take walks in nature. Reconnect with your spirit.” My hemorrhoids feel better when I’m moving, walking and breathing fully, and they hurt when I’m sitting around distracting myself with mindless, breathless activities.

   I am hereby committing to reconnect with my spirit, to meditate, to walk in nature, to call my doctor, to face my fear, to breathe fully and recommit to life.

   Later today Tom and I are going for a walk in nature. We’re going back to the Botanic Garden where I haven’t been since the Jesusita Fire ravaged it several months ago. I haven’t wanted to see it’s marred beauty — I didn’t want to face it. Today I am willing to face everything.

   How about you — is there something you haven’t wanted to face? Have you been distracting yourself? Is the universe probing you with aches and pains and discomforts to wake you up? Nestle into the spacious embrace of the present moment and let it all hang out. You will feel so much better afterward.a

   In Love,

Jan Jacobsen 

Tags: cancer, connect with spirit, earache, fear, hemorrhoids, present moment, walks in nature

   How do you deal with disappointment? While watching the Olympics I have been fascinated with the various reactions to winning and losing. Some lucky ones say, “I’m just happy to have been here and had the Olympic experience.” Others, who expected to win gold and won silver instead, experience a bitter disappointment that will forever affect them. Yet other athletes who won the same medal are overjoyed and will carry that joy the rest of their lives. It is our thoughts about what happens that affects us more than anything else.

   We don’t have much control over mistakes, slip ups, going off track — life happens; but we do have control over how we choose to perceive it. How we look at things has a huge impact on the quality of our lives. Scientists have found that our perceptions affect us on a cellular level. Our brain cells, our bodies, and our lives literally rearrange themselves according to our beliefs. If we think we’re a failure, our brain cells and body will reshape themselves around that belief, and our lives will draw in experiences that confirm it. It is the beliefs we hold, the stories we tell ourselves that shape our lives.

   That is the true Olympian challenge we all face.  Life’s disappointments offer us the opportunity to go for the real gold – the ability to direct our thoughts to positive, life-enhancing perceptions.

   As a child I adopted an attitude of thinking negatively; I figured that way I wouldn’t be disappointed. It didn’t work. I was often disappointed. My negative attitude arranged my cells and myself into one big disappointment magnet! I finally wised up to how my thoughts were creating my reality. 

   It has been my Olympian challenge in life to transform my attitude from negative to positive. My recent experience with cancer has been a test for me – do I get caught up in the draining, complaining energy of  “poor me” down the drain? That’s no fun! Though I did dip my toe in that energy a bit, wondering what I did wrong. But then I chose to shift to a higher perspective, to look for the gold in my experience, focusing on positive perceptions, which generate healing and good feeling.

   I’d like to share with you some of the ways that help me shift to a higher perspective. When you find yourself dwelling in disappointment you can do the following:

1.    Remind yourself that it is your thoughts that are making you feel bad. It is not another person or event that is causing you to suffer, it is how you are perceiving it. I recite to myself Shakespeare’s quote: “It is neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so.” 

2.    Choose encouraging thoughts instead of blaming thoughts. For instance, tell yourself that you did the best you could at the time, and when you knew better, you did better. Appreciate yourself for trying.

3.    Question your negative thoughts. Byron Katie has devised four questions that help jog our thoughts loose from their rigid position. Ask yourself: “Is it true? Can you absolutely know that it’s true? How do you react when you think that thought? Who would you be without this thought?” These questions open us to a whole new way of seeing the situation.

4.    Become thoughtless — shift to your right brain. Negative thinking happens in our habitual left-brain chatter. Singing and other acts of creativity, like dancing and play, shift us to our right brain where we are in the present moment and see the bigger picture. When you find yourself sinking in stinking thinking, come into your ‘right mind’, into the Now — sing a song of self-love and encouragement. I like the song, “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again.”

5.    Ask yourself, “What can I learn from this?” Search for the learning in your experience the way you would search for a treasure. The real gold medal in life is the learning we acquire. Focusing on what we have learned makes us a better person, instead of a bitter person.

6.    Cultivate an attitude of loving kindness towards yourself. How would you talk to a child who is suffering in disappointment? Address your own self the same friendly, loving way. A much better goal than being perfect is to learn to truly love ourselves AS IS. That is a major life accomplishment worthy of a gold medal!

7.    Go for the gold! Find the gold in the experience — how has it made you a better person, a stronger person, a more empowered person? For instance, many people who have had challenges such as cancer, including myself, have been awakened to the preciousness of life, and galvanized to live our highest purpose. What a gift! You can multiply the gold by sharing it with others, so that they too can benefit from your experience.

   Life, like the Olympics, tests our metal. I remember a past Olympics when Russian Bela Karoli, the American gymnastics coach, was encouraging Keri Strug, who had sprained her ankle, to do her last vault to help the team win the gold. “You can do eet Keri! You can do eet!” And that diminutive, determined dynamo did it!

   We can do it! We can be winners in the Olympics of our life! All it takes is to choose how we think about things. With Olympian determination we can keep coming back to choosing self-loving thoughts over self-castigating thoughts, focusing on what we have learned rather than what we have lost, creatively shifting into new perspectives instead of staying stuck in old thought patterns, dwelling in the present moment rather than wallowing in disappointment, and finding the gold in every situation and sharing it with others.

   Are you facing a challenge right now? Flex your muscles, activate your determination, call on your Olympian courage, and with all the power that is within you commit to focusing on life-enhancing thoughts and perceptions – you can do eet!

   In Love,

Jan Jacobsen

Tags: Byron Katie, cancer, challenges, four questions, gold medal, Keri Strug, life enhancing, life's disappointments, loving kindness, Olympics, perceptions affect brain cells

I am learning to live in the magical, miraculous, continually growing garden of appreciation. The more I appreciate myself, my life, and the people in my life, the more bloomin’ happy I am! The ability to focus on appreciation is something that most of us are not born with, we have to cultivate it ourselves, like cultivating a flower garden. As human beings we are hardwired for fight or flight, for problems and things going wrong — we look for it, we expect it, we focus on it. That focus is there to help us survive. However, what we focus on grows, and when we focus on what’s wrong we grow more of that. By choosing to focus on what we appreciate, we attract more of the same. It is a law: like attracts like, and appreciation attracts more things to appreciate.

I was first introduced to the amazing power of appreciation while apprenticing with Gay and Katie Hendricks (authors of Conscious Loving). I’ve seen them literally glow as they bestow upon each other beaucoup bouquets of appreciation. Recently they wrote, “We give each other 10-Second Verbal Valentines all year long. We believe it’s one of the main reasons we’re more in love now than when we met 25 years ago.”

I find that a wonderful residual benefit is that as you give the gift of appreciation you receive that energy. “A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives flowers.” (Chinese proverb). When you look for things to appreciate about others, that is the world you are living in. In focusing on appreciations, you are cooking in that expansive, vibrant, joyful energy, which is so much more fun than stewing in the negative energy of carping and faultfinding.

Cultivating the energy of appreciation takes focus and commitment, like tending a rose garden. It requires remembering and choosing to do it everyday and telling ourselves, “Today I’m going to look for things to appreciate.” Before you know it, it is a habit, it is who you are, and it is the garden you are living in. Give the people in your life verbal bouquets and you will find your relationships blossoming. Focus on what you appreciate about your life and soon you will experience that everything’s coming up roses!

How many heartfelt flowers of appreciation can you generate today? Gather them together and give them away in a beautiful verbal bouquet.

In Love,

Jan Jacobsen

Tags: a bit of frangrance, appreciation, garden of appreciation, Gay Hendricks, Katie Hendricks, verbal valentines

Here is my new e-book, Miracle Marriage — A Transformational Journey to Love, Joy & Intimacy.

It is a not so minor miracle that I am married! My husband Tom and I have been thriving in our relationship for over ten years. I still pinch myself and wonder, “Is this really my life?” It is so different now from what it once was. For years I was trapped in a hard-wired cage of beliefs that I was unloved and unlovable. It has been quite a journey out of that hard-wired, lonely cage into a big, open, joyous playing field with the man of my dreams. This book shows how I purposefully set out to free myself from that cage and open myself to love. It also reveals how Tom and I maintain a joyful relationship that just keeps getting better and more fun all the time. Yes, relationships really can be fun!

Get Jan’s Miracle Marriage Ebook  right now for only $5.95        Funny and Inspirational!

Tags: awareness, cancer, Katie Hendricks, love, marriage, newsletter, present, relationship, spirit, The Power of Now

    My husband Tom and I have been getting high on some really potent stuff and I want to share some with you. The great thing about it is it’s free, readily available and has no bad side effects. What is this great stuff? It’s laughter. We laugh on purpose like crazy and before we know it we’re loaded…with endorphins. Endorphins are natural pain and stress relievers that create a feeling of well-being and even euphoria. It works whether the laugh is real or simulated. Want to get high together right now? Let’s cook up some endorphins in our body lab and laugh together for a few seconds and fake it til we make it.

   How do you feel? You have just produced some powerful juju in your body. Besides decreasing stress and increasing bliss, you have lowered your blood pressure, activated your immune system, oxygenated yourself, and, if you’re laughing with others, created social bonding. Laughter is a strong stimulant for social bonding. Infants laugh at an early age as a way to bond and connect with their caregivers. For the same reason, most of our laughter occurs when we are with other people.

   I want to share some ways you can use the power of laughter to create joyful relationships. People in happy relationships laugh often. But relationships, as you know, are not always a laughing matter. We can get stuck in our position and our playmate becomes our stale mate. Our bodies literally become frozen in the position of our position, such as, arms folded, shoulders hunched, scowl on our face – we are in lock and load mode, ready to fire, or we are locked down and glued shut. Play and laughter are powerful solvents that dissolve the glue and shift us back into closeness and feeling good. 

   One of the best ways I’ve found to shift quickly is to go playfully non-verbal. As adults we have well-developed minds that, like supercharged attorneys, can build strong cases for our position and keep us stuck in it – we become encased in the cases we build. Going non-verbal quiets our well-meaning but troublemaking mind and helps turn a battleground into a playground. Let me give you some examples.

   Tom and I first met ten years ago at Gay and Katie Hendricks’ relationship workshop where they emphasized play as a way to shift. During the breaks Tom and I danced together and made faces at each other for the fun of it. Tom is a master of making faces. I thought, here is someone I can really play with. As our relationship progressed we added growling to the mix. Whenever we felt anger coming up we would growl. Grrrrrrr. It expressed our feelings, and it kept the anger from taking hold, and laughter would always follow. To this day we still make faces and growl to lighten the mood.

   Here’s another example: Recently we were driving on the highway and Tom accelerated as the car ahead of us was braking. I was scared and yelled, “Slow down, you’re too close to that car!” I could feel my adrenaline pumping and I felt angry. Right then I knew I had a choice to either get swept away in the surge of adrenaline or to shift. I chose to shift by going non-verbal and doing some fake laughing and Tom joined me. Our fake laughter soon turned into real laughter, and my adrenaline turned into endorphins.

   Another example: when Tom and I are aware of a power struggle happening between us, we shift into play mode by ‘assuming the position’ – we stand facing each other, and put our chests together and then…we push as hard as we can trying to push the other across the room. We break up laughing and we break the power struggle.

   Play and laughter loosen and free us from our rigid positions, which helps us see things more clearly and allows us to find creative solutions. If you want to decrease stress, increase pleasure, and promote bonding with others, lace your day with laughter. It’s a fun, natural high and a healing medicine. As the saying goes, “He who laughs lasts.”

   In Love,

Jan Jacobsen

Tags: endorphins, enlighten, Gay Hendricks, healing medicine, Kathlyn Hendricks, laughter, lower blood pressure, natural high, play, relationships

   Every week at my Toastmasters club we choose a theme for the meeting. This week the theme was “Mistakes”. With that as our focus, people inadvertently made blunders and one glitch followed another. Fortunately, our overall theme is to always have fun, so the meeting became a comedy of errors with lots of laughter and the enlightening awareness that our focus on mistakes was creating mistakes. One man said, “Imagine if the theme for today had been “Accomplishments.”

   We all have themes in our lives, either consciously, unconsciously or both. Fear of making a mistake was an unconscious theme of mine from an early age. In grade school one of my teachers wrote on my report card: “Janet will one day find that it’s a waste of time to worry so much about making a mistake.” It’s not only a waste of time but it causes a whole lot of suffering. That suffering motivated me to consciously cultivate and grow over the years a new theme: “This moment is perfect just as it is.”

   Byron Katie writes that when people would say “Namaste” to her, she always thought they were saying “No mistake.” She loved that, because that is the theme of her life — there are no mistakes — there simply is what IS. She says, “Arguing with reality is like trying to teach a cat to bark – hopeless.” And it just creates more suffering. During my anxious time last year with my ruptured appendix and uterine cancer, I read and reread Byron Katie’s book, “A Thousand Names for Joy” — I wanted to saturate myself in that attitude, in the peaceful state of surrender to what is. As a result, that expansive state of acceptance aligned me to the flow where everything unfolded easefully and things worked out better than I could have imagined.

   Once we become aware of our unconscious themes, we can then choose a conscious theme — when the unconscious theme recurs, as it will, we can use it as a reminder to reinforce our new, desired theme. When cancer came a calling it at first evoked my old theme, the fear that I’d somehow made a terrible mistake that caused my cancer. But then I focused on my desired theme, “This moment is perfect just as it is.” That being my focus, that became my experience. Having had cancer made my life better, richer, and more on purpose, because that’s the way I choose to think of it. Shakespeare said, “It’s neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so.” Our focus and how we interpret what is happening is like magnetic paint that colors our experience and draws to us more of that experience. Like energy attracts like energy and our themes perpetuate themselves.

   I believe countries have themes. I was feeling disheartened by the terrible tragedy in Haiti, feeling the heaviness of that country’s theme of ongoing poverty and despair. But I am heartened by what I see as their underlying theme of resilience, faith and courage. As slaves they fought for their freedom and won it. A young girl named Bea was trapped under the rubble for days, buried alive. When they finally got her out, she said, “I believed I would live. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t scared at all.” Their spirit and faith prevails as many of them sing, chant and pray in the midst of this devastating tragedy. Here is a line from one of the songs sung by Haitian native, Wyclef Jean: “Earthquake we see the earth shake but the soul of the Haitian people it will never break.” Now that’s an uplifting theme!

   The Earth opened up like Pandora’s box and out came death, destruction and despair – but also faith, hope and charity in an outpouring of compassion and support from all over the world. In the movie Avatar, the natives of Pandora greet each other by saying, “I see you.” The world is now seeing the Haitian people and many are waking up to the theme that Avatar puts forth, that we are connected to the Earth and to each other, we are all one, and we must care for one another and help each other. In that sense, this moment is perfect just as it is.

   What are some of the unconscious themes in your life? What are conscious themes you are cultivating? What you focus on grows — may you use life’s manure to fertilize and grow a theme that uplifts and inspires you and others.

   In Love,

Jan Jacobsen

Tags: Avatar, Byron Katie, charity, earthquake, faith, Haiti, hope, mistakes, Pandora's box, toastmasters, we are all One, Wyclef Jean

    This is the beginning of a new year, a perfect time to turn up our light and let it shine more brightly in the world. It is an ideal time to commit to our dreams, our highest potential, our most actualized self, otherwise known as our entelechy.

    I first heard the word entelechy (en.tell.a.key) in a workshop with Jean Houston who told us that our “entelechy is all about the possibilities encoded in each of us.” She said that the entelechy of an acorn is to be an oak tree, a caterpillar to be a butterfly, and a popcorn kernel to be fully popped. We are all loaded and encoded with a dynamic purpose, a special gift and ability that comes naturally to us - so naturally that we may even take it for granted and not recognize it as our innate, great purpose.

   Sometimes, if we are not fulfilling our purpose, our entelechy lights a fire under us in order to help our potential fully pop. Adversity can rattle our cage, shaking and waking us up to the big, bright, luminous light of our soul, our strength, and our special abilities, illuminating the dynamic purpose inherent in us. That’s when it all starts to make sense and we say, “Oh yeah, now I remember who I am and why I’m here!”

   This new year, this new decade is a prime time to shift into a higher gear, committing to full aliveness and being our highest self. To SHIFT is to Simply Hold the Intention For Transformation - holding the intention is turning on the hot, bright spotlight of our entelechy until we are powerfully popping into our full potential and purpose!

   Some people have the special ability to see and hold us in our highest potential, shining their light on our magnificence, helping to bring that out in us. Masters of that in my life are Katie Hendricks, Diana Chapman, Tom Biesanz (my husband), and Zeena, my cat, who inspires this prayer: “May I be half the person that my cat thinks I am.” I am encouraged to know that if this is in my life — people who see themselves and others in their full magnificence — then that same potential ability is in me.

   Recently I was talking with Tom about some people we were meeting for dinner later in the day, and I was hearing myself be critical, imagining that it would be a superficial encounter with them. Tom wasn’t thinking that way, he doesn’t have that filter, he sees the best in people. I, however, am sometimes stuck in a filter where the ego in me sees and judges the ego in others - I call that my “Me Nasty” filter, as opposed to my “Namaste” filter. This year I am holding the intention to develop my Namaste filter. I’m imagining myself a year from now having fully integrated a focus that says, “I am a beautiful soul, and I see and honor the beautiful soul in others.” I’m imagining myself feeling the joy and peace that comes with that perception, feeling it as if it were already so…because it IS already so in my entelechy.

    I’d like to share with you a powerful exercise that Jean Houston did with us (I’ve paraphrased and abbreviated it): Stand with your eyes closed and imagine facing your entelechy, your highest self, your deep essence. Imagine your entelechy looking at you with profound love and appreciation for your journey, cherishing you, and imparting to you wisdom, encouragement and inspiration. Breathe it in. Then imagine switching places with your entelechy and BEING that higher self, feeling what that would feel like to embody your highest potential. From that place feel great love and respect for your journeying self, sending that self empowerment, courage, and strength. When you are ready, step back into your journeying self and fully receive those messages of love and encouragement, let it in, feel it, become filled with the love and vitality of your highest self, knowing that is who you truly are.

    Just as the acorn holds within it the mighty oak tree, we hold within us our mighty, magnificent, actualized self. The most majestic oak tree is just a little nut that held it’s ground! Our challenge is to hold our ground, committing to remember who we really are, and holding ourselves in the dynamic light of that knowing.

   This is a new year, a perfect time to turn up the spotlight on our entelechy. Mike Dooley in Notes from the Universe wrote, “I’ve got a feeling that 2010 is going to be your kind of year. That you’ll be happier than you’ve ever been, laughing harder, smiling wider, standing taller, walking lighter, dancing crazier, hugging longer, living grander, loving louder.” I imagine that is true, and so it is.

    How about you? Do you know what your entelechy is, your special purpose, your most actualized self? Is this the year to turn up the heat and pop into your full potential? I’m imagining us all jubilantly singing, “This bright entelechy of mine, I’m gonna let it shine! Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!”

   In Love,

Jan Jacobsen

Tags: entelechy, Jean Houston, namaste, new year, self-actualized

This is it — the end of a decade! This is it – the beginning of a new year! Most importantly, This is it – the eternal now! In the book “Wherever You Go There You Are” Jon Kabat-Zinn suggests that we say the words “This is it” throughout the day, reminding ourselves that right now is IT!

“This Is It” is also the name of Michael Jackson’s farewell tour (and movie), a name which proved to be prophetic for him. I sometimes think that when world-famous figures such as Michael die at a young age, it is a parting gift to us all on a soul level, a wake up call that reminds us that This Is It! Be fully here and alive while you are here and alive! Because you are not going to be here and alive forever!

My experience with cancer this year was a dynamic This Is It reminder — it catapulted me into the here and now, helping me to appreciate and value this moment, cherish this life, and transform my “someday” dreams into “today is the day, now is the time.” I always said that someday I would write — cancer kicked my “someday” into the “now” and I am doing the writing I’ve always wanted to do. Santa Barbara acupuncturist Bernard Unterman told me about a woman with stage 4 lung cancer whose doctors had told her there was no treatment that would help her and that she should check into hospice. She went to him instead. He asked her what brought her joy and she said “Nothing.” Until she remembered that she once enjoyed doing art, but then her life got too busy. In addition to acupuncture, he prescribed that she begin doing art again, which she did. Within 5 weeks she burgeoned into a vibrant, vital woman and her cancer was gone! Growth happens one way or another.

When adversities happen it can seem like life has turned on us, yet they have the potential to turn us ON!  They are invitations to us to make a decision to take a stand, commit to life and live it fully. Kenny Loggins sings passionately about this in his song This Is It. In an interview in American Songwriter magazine November/December 1987 he talks about his inspiration for the song: “I had a fight with my dad when he was going into the hospital because he gave me the feeling that he was ready to check out.” That inspired the lyrics: “You make the choice of how it goes…For once in your life, here’s your miracle. Stand up and fight. This is it!” We make the choice of how it goes – we can choose to be here fully and to live our dream, or not.

When fear dogs are nipping at my heels, worried about dire possibilities, I take a deep breath and say, “This is it. This moment right now is all there is.” I am taking a stand, making the choice to be here, fully embracing this glorious life one moment at a time. Mike Dooley in his Notes from the Universe wrote recently: “When driving down the road of life, rarely do you know how good you have it, until you see it in the rear-view mirror. Which is not to suggest that you should look back now, but to remind you that where you are today is more awesome and amazing than you probably realize.”

This past year I have learned to treasure my life, recognizing the miracle that it is, realizing that our time here is limited, and recommitting to fully live while I am alive. This is not a dress rehearsal — This is it! I’m wishing for all of you a passionate love affair with this eternal now moment and may you all do what brings you the most joyful growth in life.

In Love,

Jan Jacobsen

Tags: adversities, Bernard Unterman, cancer, growth happens, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Kenny Loggins, Michael Jackson, Mike Dooley, This Is It, Wherever You Go There You Are

   I’m going to a holiday “whole”y tonight and feast my eyes on the beautiful lights. I used to call them parties, which was a very fitting name since just a part of me would show up – usually the part that felt uncomfortable and had worry thoughts like “Nobody’s going to talk to me, and if they do I won’t have anything interesting to say.” My party animal was a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs. But this season I’ve decided to have a new focus, which is: “I am a beautiful soul and I see the beautiful soul that you are.” That is the meaning of “Namaste” — the light within me sees and honors the light within you. It has transformed my experience of parties into “whole”ies, and my party animal into a “whole”y being.

   On Thanksgiving day I walked to the grocery store near my house and I was filled with the spirit of Namaste. A homeless person was in front of me in the checkout line — he was dirty, a bit smelly, and his eyes were red-rimmed from being pickled in alcohol. He turned to me and started talking to me. In the past I would have been uncomfortable, but I looked into his red-rimmed eyes and saw the light of his spirit. I smiled and the light in me honored the light in him and I glowed with that light the rest of the day. What a wonderful feeling to focus on my beautiful light and see the beautiful light in others. It’s calming, expanding, and joyful. There’s nothing else that need be done. I don’t have to make interesting conversation. I can simply BE and SEE the beauty and light in ME and THEE.

   While Namaste essentially means “The God in me sees and honors the God in you”, to round it out I have added to that another practice of loving kindness in which the human in me sees and feels compassion for the human in you. Writer Chade-Meng Tan calls this practice “Just Like Me”. He writes that when we perceive others as similar to us, we are much more likely to have positive feelings towards them. He suggests we focus on the following:

   “This person has a body and a mind, just like me.
This person has feelings, emotions and thoughts, just like me.
This person has at some point been sad, disappointed, angry, hurt or confused, just like me.
This person has in his or her life, experienced physical and emotional pain and suffering, just like me.
This person wishes to be free from pain and suffering, just like me.
This person wishes to be safe, healthy and loved, just like me.
This person wishes to be happy, just like me.”

   Seeing and honoring the light in myself and others, and also seeing and feeling compassion for our humanness, creates a “whole”y experience. We are all THAT. We are ALL that. I’m wishing for all of us a very Merry Namaste and a Happy “Just Like Me” that extends throughout the whole year. “Whole”y on!

In Love,

Jan Jacobsen

Tags: just like me, just like me practice, namaste

I imagine that many of you will be going home to spend time with your family during the holidays. For some of you that will be bliss, for others, not so much. My father died when I was 17 and my mother passed away a few years ago, but every year prior to that my sister and I and her children would go back to our childhood home in Mystic, Conn. and stay with my mother and brother for a week. I thought of it as going back to the button factory because that’s where all the buttons were installed.

It was my yearly exam where I’d get to put to use all my latest self-help tools. Ram Dass has said that if you think you’re enlightened, just go spend a week with your parents. Nevertheless, I’d always have high hopes and would be well-armed with my latest personal growth books, my meditation tapes, and an “I can do this” attitude. Things would go really well…for the first hour or two, sometimes even a day or two. But then sure enough my mom would criticize or hover and my buttons would be activated, and I’d be lost in the button factory.

One time during one of these visits I awoke in the middle of the night feeling distressed and I had an epiphany. I imagined my family asleep in their rooms and in the quiet space of the night I saw my mother’s critical nature that I judged, and I realized that I have a critical nature. I thought about my brother and how easily offended he was and thought, oh, I am easily offended. I took a good look at my sister’s people pleaser and realized, I’m a people pleaser at times. Everything I judged in them was in me. I had been judging in them what I hadn’t wanted to face in myself. It wasn’t just an intellectual awareness of it, it was a full body, full spirit experience of our interconnectedness. Instead of seeing me versus them, I was seeing me as them, and them as me. I experienced that we were part of the same whole, that we were one. I had to smile to myself when I really got that they were my mirrors. It was a mirror-cle moment.

I realized that the real test isn’t about seeing how long I can go without my buttons being pushed — the real test is being able to face and embrace all of my disowned, projected selves. It’s not about becoming perfect, it’s about becoming whole by loving and accepting all the many me’s that life is reflecting back to me, the meany me’s, the moody me’s, the messy me’s, and even the mighty me’s.

Sometimes in the early morning I’ll look over at my sleeping husband Tom and I’ll think to myself, “Wow, if everyone in my life is my mirror, then Tom is my mirror and I think Tom is wonderful, I think Tom is a beautiful soul. I see the beautiful soul in my family members as well. Since they are my mirrors, I must be a beautiful soul too. To be able to face and embrace THAT is truly the biggest mirror-cle of all.

Do you have beautiful souls in your life? That’s because you are one! Mirrors mirrors all around, reflections of your Self abound!

In Love,

Jan Jacobsen

MIRROR-CLE AT THE BUTTON FACTORY

I’m visiting my family, the button factory it’s called

because that’s where all of my buttons were installed.

My Mom’s buttin’ in and I feel appalled.

I’m buttoning my lip and try to hide that I’m galled.

My brother is so sensitive, so easily offended.

I tiptoe through the minefield, afraid I’ll be upended.

My sister is obsequious, and smiles through gritted teeth,

Hiding all her real feelings that lie underneath.

I’m trying to avoid my buttons being pushed.

I’m wrestling with my feelings and I am bushed.

I’m barely succeeding in holding my tongue,

when snap! I finally lose it and come all undone!

That shakes me awake and I begin to see

that everything I judge in them is also in me!

The button factory is like a house of mirrors

reflecting back to me all my disowned terrors.

As I face and embrace each rejected part

I experience my family with more love and heart.

I can see that we are parts of the same whole.

I can feel that we’re connected, that we are one soul.

Now the years have passed, and so has my mom

I miss the button factory, my childhood home.

But the buttons are still in me, letting me know

I need to love all parts of me, and let my judgments go.

Tags: family reunion, judgments, mirror-cle