Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

When leaving for a trip, I find myself to be rather nervous. I am a bundle of stress actually, no amount of meditation or pharmaceuticals seem to alleviate me completely.

I have always been the sort that gets so excited and focused that nothing but what I have my mind on at that particular moment matters. This means that many things get left undone. Whether this is laundry, eating, sleeping, or even heaven forbid… going to the bathroom.
Making the trip to Austin was no exception. Frankly put, I was constipated.

It started about2 days before I took the train ride down from Fort Worth to Austin, I just couldn’t go. No matter how hard I tried… and believe you me I gave it my all, but nothing came out of all of my hard and strenuous labor.

As the excitement of this leap of faith journey grew about me, so the excitement built up within me and raged against my insides as I began to feel rather impacted both figuratively and literally as everything fell into place about me.

As my bowels rebelled against me, and refused to release and let go of the things I no longer needed, my eyes were opened to the many things in my life that have impacted me as I journeyed from there to here.

Far too often we think in terms of here to there. Thinking about where we are going instead of remembering where we have been in order to find our direction. However if we were instead to remember where we have been and the successes that have led us to this moment in time we would begin to recognize our greatness in this amazing journey that is the tapestry of our lives.

As I thought about the people who have impacted me, I began to open my eyes and see how my environment was impacting me… even my own impacted bowels were definitely impacting me and as funny and uncomfortable as it may be it was through being impacted that I could impact others with my urgency.

In Dead Poets Society, there is a remarkable scene where the young men are lined up in the hallway in front of the trophy case of the school. Mr. Keating has the boys standing very still in front of the pictures behind glass and the boys are quietly staring at the photo’s as Mr. Keating is acting as if he were a ghost repeating that infamous line ‘Carpe Diem… Seize the day, boys….Seize the day!”

As my stomach ached with trepidation, I walked and hiked across Austin. A constant pain in my stomach that pushed me and tormented me as I wandered about the town, and even as I spoke to new people every single day. It pushed me forward; it drove me onward… a reminder that I too had to seize the day.
As I made my way into various kinds of shops, and interacted with folks who were wandering the streets I was able to spread the word about Open Heart Publishing, My Workshops, Centers for Spiritual Living and New Thought in general, and also able to pick up pieces of each individual’s vision and carry a bit of their flame combined with their own.

There have been amazing people along this journey, like Lynelle Keil who runs Hog Wild, a vintage store in Austin. An amazing lady who has followed her own vision for her life, and now she is an apprentice necromancer that I enjoyed whiling away a bit of time with.

Or Joe Hamilton, whose cowboy crooning style gave new life to the classic “House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals (I hear my pal Petra does an awesome version of it, but until I hear otherwise I have to say “Way to go Joe”).

As I wandered this way and that, I found an amazing taqueria that impacted me as well with an awesome tomatillo based guacamole that impacted me in a very specific and needed way, and before too long my sense of intense pressure was released in a way of relief and joy.

What was so amazing though was how though my personally impacted bowels had decided to give me relief; my heart, mind and body were still impacted by the magnitude of this trip and further impacted by all of those I met along the way.

I found a renewal of my personal purpose as I met with Richard Imprescia, the senior minister of Austin Center for Spiritual Living.

This gentleman is a scholar and as he puts it, a fellow nut and it reminded me why I love my new thought community so much. Richard truly is a shepherd, and an instigator of creative and thought provoking ideas. I am truly blessed for having this man touch my journey. If you get a chance to visit him and his wonderful CSL Austin community, do so… and if you haven’t done so yet, what the hell are you waiting for?

Richard is an amazing man who opened his doors to me and invited me to share my message and my vision with his congregation and allowed me to also hold the workshop of Starting at Rock bottom with his amazing congregation.

My journey continues onward as I will be staying in Austin for another week, and then it’s onward to New Orleans.

If you couldn’t make it to the Austin Center for Spiritual living on April 17th 2011, click here to listen to my message to the congregation or you can even download it and listen to it later. Click Here and look for 4/17/2001 “Getting from There to Here” .

Moral for the day: Sometimes those uncomfortable feeling you face are you own fear holding you back from your greatness, if you choose to reinterpret them and use the momentum they give you the impact you feel within can be made to be felt in the world around you.