EnlightenInk Blog

    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

I’ve been following with interest the current tale of Tiger Woods. Women are coming forward exposing intimate details of secret affairs with this super private man. The cat is out of the bag — Tiger has been a horn dog, and now his chicks are coming home to roost, and he is in the doghouse, big time! This swinger of golf clubs has been revealed to be a swinger with women and he has now swung with great velocity from fame to disgrace, praise to blame, and pleasure to pain. He’s demonstrating what happens when we try to hide our secret shadows — pressure mounts until the shadow finds a way to seep out, leak out, or leap out like a caged tiger.

Robert Bly talks about the shadow as the bag we carry on our back, containing all that we repress and deny about ourselves. The more we repress, the more the bag fills until pressure builds to a bursting point. I believe that there is inherent within each of us an impetus towards wholeness and those repressed parts of us seek a way to release and relieve the pressure and restore that wholeness. Tiger Woods was fairly blatant in his infidelity and promiscuity – he left hundreds of text messages. It seems that his persona of perfection created a deficit with ‘balance due’ – in other words, some part of him set himself up to blow his cover in order to ultimately create balance and wholeness.

I attended a workshop recently with tai chi master, Al Huang, who taught us a move called, ironically, “Embrace tiger, return to mountain” (he wrote a book by that title years ago). He told us to embrace our tigers, our challenges, our shadows — look them in the eyes, face them head on. Once we have done that we can return to the mountain, return to balance, centered on solid ground, resting in wholeness, with nothing to run from, nothing to hide from, no secret shame dogging our heels, no crouching tigers hiding in the shadows waiting to pounce.

This is a lesson for all of us, reminding us to be inclusive of our whole self, to invite all our shadows to the party…or else…they will crash the party. Tiger’s shadows have come crashing down on him. But like all the calamities in our lives, it is an opportunity to be honest, reveal all, and come into the wholeness of our authentic self. It is a great relief to be open and honest and real. As Mark Twain said, “Always tell the truth, that way you don’t have to remember anything.”  And that way we don’t have to lug around that heavy bag anymore!

Do you hear a growling sound behind you? Have you faced and embraced your inner tiger? It may be time to let the tiger out of the bag and face it head on.  Once you do that you’ll soon be feeling grrrrrrrrrrrreat! Like a whole in One!

Tags: Al Chuang, balance, honesty, Mark Twain, Robert Bly, shadows, tell the truth, Tiger Woods

Are you in your ‘right’ mind, in a spacious place, tasting life anew in the Now? Or are you in your left mind, stuck out in left field, munching on rehashed leftovers? That’s what our left brain does — it recycles mind chatter and generates a wall of words that separates us from the peace and stillness of our right brain. We can’t function in the world without our left brain, we need it for language, numbers, structure, and boundaries; but sometimes we get trapped within those boundaries. In the book ‘My Stroke of Insight’, brain scientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor writes about her massive stroke that blew out the left hemisphere of her brain. With the din of her left brain quieted, she was immersed in the expansive, present-moment, right brain hemisphere — the portal to a peaceful paradise.  She paints a vivid and fascinating picture of her experience.

I have found that my left brain can be like a manic hamster on a wheel, going round and round, spinning yarns, worries, and what ifs, ad nauseum. It is so dizzying that I need a drama-mine pill — a reality pill to remind me that this drama is mine and what traps me in the drama is the spin I am putting on things, the stories I am constantly recycling. The left brain loves drama. Stinking thinking, judgments, catastrophizing, shoulding on ourselves and others, these are all left brain past times, and future times — anywhere but here and now times.

On the other side, the right brain is right here, right now, feeling peaceful and calm, experiencing oneness and union and a sense that all’s right with the world. Being in the right brain is like taking a chill pill, “I’m cool. Life is good. Everything is One-derful.”

I think that there is a certain beauty to the design. The hell of left brain feelings of discord, worry and separation instills in us an impetus to seek the heaven of right brain feelings of peace and union. It could be all part of the divine plan to motivate us to find our way back Home. When I’m out in ‘left’ field, judging, worrying, and criticizing, I am compelled by the discomfort of that place to take a field trip to find the wordless, wondrous, spacious place of my right mind where I think not, therefore I AM. As Rumi so eloquently put it:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field, I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn’t make any sense.”

How do we get to that field? First notice and identify where you are; when you hear yourself judging and spinning yarns, when you’re aware that scurrying, worrying thoughts are spinning on the wheel in your mind, know that you are in your left hemisFEAR. Take the wheel and turn to the right, telling yourself, “Right here, right now is all there is, and right now all is well — breathe, relax, trust.” The left-brain chatter quiets, the body relaxes and you become peacefully encircled in the serene embrace of the right-brain hemiSHERE.

There are many other ways to quiet left brain chatter and turn on right brain peace, such as prayer, meditation, tai chi, yoga, walks in nature, breath work, and calling on your faith in a higher power. However, the most fun and joyous way for me is to sing and dance and play. Reverend Michael Beckwith says that praying and playing are the same energetic. That makes sense, since they are both in the realm of the right brain. Playfulness is next to godliness.

Every morning I sing and dance and play to the Beatles song, “Twist and Shout”. “Well shake it up baby now. Twist and Shout!” I shake my body like a dog shakes water off its’ fur; this shakes free left hemisFEARs and tensions, and wakes my spirit right up — it is shake and wake time!

Sometimes when I find myself lost in “poor little me” thoughts, feeling unloved, unlovable, and ‘left’ out, I tickle myself awake by singing The Worm Song:

“Nobody likes me.  Everybody hates me.

I’m gonna go eat worms.

Long thin, slimey ones; short, fat, juicy ones.

Itsy, bitsy, squirmy little worms.”

Humor is a great waker upper and before I know it I have lightened up and transformed a can of worms into butterflies!

When I notice that I am worrying, fretting, and forgetting the big picture, I shift myself by singing this song I wrote (along with my friend Nicola Gordon) to the tune of The Ants go Marching One by One. It’s called The Now Song. Sing along with me!

“There’s nothing I have to do today, hurrah, hurrah.

There’s nothing I have to do or say, hurrah, hurrah.

Just be in the NOW all the way.

That’s all I have to do today.

Breathe in, Breathe out,

Sing and dance and play.”

That always brings me right here, right now. What are ways you bring yourself into the spacious field of right-brained peace, unity and well-being?  I’ll meet you there!

In Love,

Jan Jacobsen

Tags: Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, left-brain, music, My Stroke of Insight, play, right-brain, Rumi, worry

My husband Tom and I just spent last weekend in a workshop with Al Huang, a world-renowned philosopher and Tai Chi master who has toured with Sammy Davis Jr. and hung with the Dalai Lama. We have attended his yearly workshop in Santa Barbara for nine years. He is a ‘chi’leader extraordinaire, encouraging and exciting us to come alive and open to our Big ME, Big CHI, Big WOW selves. He teaches Tai Chi in a way that invites, ignites, and unites the realms of Heaven, Earth, and Human, helping us to boldly embody our vast life force, and inspiring the question, “Just how big and how vibrantly alive can we let ourselves be?”

He talked about his friend, Ram Dass, who wrote the book Be Here Now — a very important book for me that helped jump-start my stalled life force in my early twenties. Al told us he was going to talk with Ram Dass the next day. I thought, I’d love to give Al the book I wrote called Be Here Meow – Enlightening Lessons Learned from my Feline Friends. It contains some of the juicy philosophy and humor that Al was sharing with us and I thought he might get a kick out of it. Maybe he’d even tell Ram Dass about it — how cool would that be! Dare I do that? The ‘little me’ was quaking in my Crocks…who do I think I am? But Al had done his job well, and during the last break of the weekend workshop, filled with the Big Chi of the Big Me, I walked up to him and gave him my book. He laughed at the title, and shared with me his appreciation for the cats in his life, and thanked me for the book. As I walked away my energy field fluffed out like an excited feline and you could almost hear me purring!

“Who do you think you are?” is a common question of the ‘little me’, the pygmy. I am aware of times I have pulled my energy in, minimizing myself, virtually disappearing myself. People have actually bumped into me as if I weren’t there! I have super powers of invisibility! What do I get out of that? I get to be safe, to fly below the radar, to be a fly on the wall. But it creates a backlash — the fly becomes a hornet as my repressed aliveness shouts, “Hey, I’m here!” Like Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) in Midnight Cowboy, when he pounded on the hood of the car that almost ran him down, saying, “I’m walking here! I’m walking here!” It’s that feeling of being disrespected, disappeared, discounted, just generally dissed. My great dis-covery over the years has been that I was doing that to myself — I was dissing myself, I was belittling myself.

An even greater discovery is that I am so much more than the ‘little me’. We all are so much more. Our life force is vast. That vast self wants to be here, to be seen, to express through us. Even little Dennis the Menace has an inkling of his Big Self. In a cartoon, Dennis is sitting in a corner, being punished, and with a scowl on his face he proclaims, “I’m Dennis! THAT’s who I am. THAT’s what I shoulda said!”

The real question is, “Who do you KNOW you are?” That knowing, that remembrance of my Big Soul Self is the most important thing in my life. Since my recent experience with cancer, it has become even more important. Every day I invite and unite with my vast energy field by doing daily practices. In the morning I dance, moving up and down, backward and forward, side to side, inward and outward, embracing, balancing and flowing with All That Is. Every afternoon I go for a walk and feel and  affirm, “My feet kiss the Earth with every step” and likewise “The Earth kisses my feet with every step.” As I walk, I imagine the top of my head opening like a funnel, receiving love and guidance from above — I am taking my vast energy field for a walk, I am walking my God. Every night while lying in bed I visualize pink light filling my heart, radiating throughout my body, and I fall asleep held in warm, soft love light.

A few years ago there was a man on the Oprah show talking about a plane crash he survived. He said that as the plane was careening towards a violent crash he looked back at the people on the plane and saw a big bright light around some people, and lesser degrees of light around others. He was profoundly struck by that, and in that moment he vowed that if he lived, he would live his life fully, shining the full brightness of his life force.

Our life force energy has a dimmer switch, and we are in control of that switch. Just how big, how bright, how alive can we let ourselves be? It is our choice — brighter or dimmer, pygmy or Big Me. The great challenge is to become more and more comfortable with embodying our vast spirit, our vibrant aliveness, our magnificent soul.

How about you — do you feel like a pygmy or a Big Me? Where is your dimmer switch turned to? I invite us all to dare to turn up our light, to let our Big Soul Self shine through us, to be here fully, be here NOW, and be here WOW!

In Love,

Jan Jacobsen

Tags: Al Huang, Big me, Midnight Cowboy, Pygmy, Ram Dass, Ratso Rizzo, soul, spirit, Tai Chi

Last weekend I was in Palm Springs with my husband Tom. I’d been there one other time, forty years before, when I left my home in Mystic, Connecticut and was traveling with a friend to Hawaii and California. Back then I was searching for something very important…a reason to live. And I wasn’t finding it. As I walked in the dry heat of sunny downtown Palm Springs in present time, I kept thinking of that young girl who was there all those years ago, feeling so unhappy, so out of place in the world, convinced that she would always be alone in life.

I look at pictures of myself from that time — I was tanned from weeks in Hawaii, as trim as I’d ever been, with golden blonde hair down to my waist, a pretty girl. Yet on the inside I felt pretty empty. Now, 40 years and fifteen pounds later, I caught glimpses of myself in store windows — not so hot on the outside anymore, yet people I walked past were smiling at me. Then I realized, I had a smile on my face and people were responding to that. I was happy inside and it showed; I had discovered my inner beauty, I had created a happy life.

Quantum physics tells us that all time exists simultaneously. In downtown Palm Springs I sat on a bench in the shade and closed my eyes, and imagined reaching through time, aligning with my twenty-year-old self, doing a mind and heart meld with her, feeling her within me. I showed her what her life would become, telling her, “Hang in there Jan, your life will be so rich with love and learning, spirit and play, creativity and discovery — like the amazing discovery that you are creating it all! And…you will be married to a wonderful man! You are NOT destined to be alone forever.” All weekend I held her in the love and joy and reality of this present time, and told her something I heard recently, “Everything works out in the end. If it hasn’t worked out, then it’s not the end.” 

Just imagine that it’s true that we can align with our past and future selves in the realm of timelessness that weaves our whole life together, like threads in a magic time-traveling carpet — if you were to talk to yourself in the past during a difficult time, what would you say to that self, knowing what you know now? What encouragement and wisdom would you offer that self? If right now is one of those difficult times, imagine a future self, who has come through it all to a better place, sending you a message of love and encouragement. Open to receive that message — it is ALWAYS there to draw on. Just imagine that!

In Love,

Jan Jacobsen

Tags: depression, magic carpet ride, Palm Springs, quantum physics, simultaneous selves, time-traveling