Good Advice For Children
I heard something beautiful yesterday from Produced by Faith author, DeVon Franklin, and I thought it was the perfect advice to pass onto our children. We can say to them, “You are in control of two things in life: 1 – How you prepare for what might happen, and 2 – how you respond to what just happened.” The moment things actually happen, DeVon says, belongs to God.
Living in The Eye of the Vortex
I was reading a forecast from Emmanuel Dagher that was so in alignment with my own feelings, that I felt moved to share it with you all. He says, “There is a palpable anticipation in the air that something BIG is about to manifest in our collective experience” and he goes on to compare this anticipation to a tornado. How right before a powerful storm is about to occur, there’s usually an inexplicable stillness that precedes it. This is a similar type of stillness that many of us are noticing right now.
The ‘tornado’ in this case is not something to fear, but rather something to embrace. Emmanuel says it’s about how we choose to react to this energy vortex; our reaction decides what our experience of it will be. When we react from a place of fear, worry, or mindlessness, we place ourselves on the outer edge of this vortex where the most discomfort and struggle happens. However, when we react from a place of calm, love and mindfulness, we place ourselves at the center – also known as the ‘eye’ of the vortex – where the most ease, grace and stillness happens.
I’d like to reprint the remainder of his forecast here because it presents some extremely useful information, especially if this conversation is new to you. He lays out the transformation of moving from ego-based living into heart-centered life so beautifully, that I couldn’t resist reprinting. He gives examples of what we can expect to see during the shift, and how it is safe to connect with the I AM/Source energy again. His forecast is long, but worth the read.
Passing the Baton
On an energetic level, there is a ‘passing of the baton’ occurring from the collective ego to the collective heart. The collective ego is exhausted. We can clearly see it all over the world.
The ego is realizing that it simply cannot survive in the old destructive patterns of control, domination and separation that it partook of and found great comfort in for so long. It’s important to remember that we learned great lessons from these old patterns, but we no longer need to keep recreating them in order to receive the lessons. We are ready to move on. During this time of ‘passing of the baton,’ things appear to be quite chaotic because the collective ego is having to graduate from a rigid state of existence into a flexible and open state of existence. So as a result of this transition, the ego has a tendency to go into freak-out mode.
This turnover can feel scary to the ego because it’s not used to change and it fears losing its identity in the process. So the ego is trying to firmly grip onto what little it still can of its old ways. This is showing up through fear tactics that the governments, big businesses, media and religious sects are making use of to try to keep humanity separated from its true nature. Now more than ever, we must not be distracted by the outside noise.
The actions of these governments, businesses, media outlets and religious sects are simply a mirror of how we have been treating ourselves. It’s not about a ‘them vs. us’ mentality. It’s about empowering ourselves with the knowing that we allowed ourselves to create these structures, and as quickly as we created them, we also have the power to change them. How do we do that? We do it by focusing on shifting the way we treat ourselves and the world around us.
We do it by recognizing that we are a global family. When the ego realizes how much it will gain, grow and experience as a result of letting go of the control, domination and separation that it was used to, it will instantly shift into a more conscious and open state of being. Then, the global structures we have put into place can begin to mirror our higher states of consciousness.
The Celestial Conversion
So, how is this passing of the baton manifesting itself? In the next several months, this conversion is manifesting itself as humanity moving away from ego driven intentions (control/structure/over-analysis) and more into the heart driven intentions (feeling/intuitive development.)
This shift is what I like to call a celestial conversion. Here are just a few things to look for as the celestial conversion continues to make its way up on the global stage:
• Emerging global consciousness
• Self-sustaining communities
• Higher transparency and accountability expected from governments/big businesses/pharmaceuticals/religious sects/media structures
• Innovative breakthroughs in technology and science
• Global gatherings that shift the power back to the people
• Collective fearlessness
• Thirst for more holistic and alternative therapies
• Healthy food initiatives
• Equality of all global citizens
• Monetary shiftsHere are just a few things to look for as the celestial conversion continues to make its way into our personal lives:
• Time speeding up
• Shifts in personal and professional relationships
• Changing of environment/relocation
• Fruition of projects/creative endeavors
• Feelings of anticipation/waves of heightened energy (may be mistaken as anxiety or moodiness)
• Higher insights, wisdom and awareness
• Physical, mental, emotional and financial healing
• Instant manifestations/synchronicities
• Reconnections/reunions
• More clarity
• Understanding what really matters/not sweating the small stuff
• Development of intuition and personal gifts/contributions
• Spiritual developmentTrusting the Divine I AM
What would life look like if we allowed ourselves to fully trust our process, our journey and ultimately our Divine I AM presence? Can we trust that we are the same exact I AM presence that is Source Energy which flows through everything and that IS everything? What would happen if we unburdened ourselves of all the fear-based qualities our mind identified with for so long, and opened ourselves to the vastness of who we really are? Would life still look the same, and would we have anything to lose along the way?
We as a global family are coming back to the fullness of who we are, and the biggest hurdle to embracing ourselves (including our process, journey, gifts, talents and desires) completely up until now has been that our mind has not been able to trust the I AM/Source that created it in the first place. So why the lack of trust?
The answer is simple. It’s because throughout the ages, we have tried to humanize the I AM/Source Energy by projecting different faces of men onto it to make it a bit easier for our mind to digest and understand. When we are born into this existence, we as children look at our parents or caretakers as the ‘God/I AM’ figure in our life. We trust that these figures will provide for our every need. But then as we grow, we start to notice that these role-models in our lives have personalities that can sometimes show up as being angry, judgmental, mean, hurtful, imperfect, or someone who makes decisions that may cause us distress, disappointment and trauma.
So, in the moments when we realize that these role-models we placed our trust in can no longer show up as the perfect idea we expected them to be, something within us changes. There’s usually a nonverbal agreement or vow that we make with ourselves to never trust anyone or anything except for ourselves again. And because these caretakers were supposed to be the God/I AM figures in our lives, we began to see the actual I AM/Source Energy itself as something we can no longer trust completely either. We put a face on Source, and this has been the cause of great fears and disappointments through the ages.
The truth is that our caretakers, their caretakers and so forth on down through the ages were not taught to remember and operate from their truest Divine nature as they took care of us. They were not self-actualized fully to operate from their truest selves. They were in their humanity, the part of them that forgot its true omnipotent nature, and they did the best that they could with what they had at the time. So knowing this now, we can begin placing our trust in I AM/Source Energy again. The I AM/Source Energy has never wavered in its love for us and never will. It is Unconditional Love in its highest and most pristine form.
This energy always has supported, loved and offered guidance to us every step of the way, even when we weren’t paying attention. To receive all the blessings that Source Energy creates for us in every second of our lives, all that is asked of us is to move out of our own way, trust and be willing to receive. This powerful combination will also serve us well as we move through the major personal and global revelations as they continue to unfold over the next several months. Get ready, it’s going to be an exciting ride!
Fracking Is Everyone’s Issue
Our friends at MoveOn.org have been busy lately encouraging us to stop Fracking in California. As a working parent of two young girls, there are things I haven’t had time to look into, this is one of them. However, after watching Sandra Steingraber’s interview with Bill Moyers, I realize now that this issue impacts my role as a parent, and it’s time to make time.
Fracking – which involves pumping pressurized water, sand and chemicals underground to crack rocks – has revolutionized oil and natural gas production in the United States. But it has not yet taken off in California, even though the state holds what could be the nation’s largest oil-bearing shale formation. Many California environmentalists want to make sure the state never experiences the kind of fracking boom that has transformed swaths of North Dakota and Pennsylvania, turning farmland into oil fields. Fracking has been blamed for tainting water supplies and worsening air pollution, although the industry insists that those fears are overblown.
It appears our politicians, including our President, are deaf to the numerous petitions from the scientific and health communities, and to it’s own citizens. This is alarming. However, I am so moved by Sandra’s commitment to providing good science, to taking a non-violent stand, and to making our water, air, and food safe for future generations, that I am encouraging each of us to:
(1) Watch this episode of Bill Moyers http://billmoyers.com/episode/the-toxic-assault-on-our-children/
Get educated and inspired by Sandra Steingraber — biologist, mother, cancer survior, and activist.
(2) Sign and share this petition with friends.
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/ban-fracking-in-califoria
(3) Call Fran Pavley’s office at (916) 651-4027.
Fran is a Democratic politician who currently represents California’s 27th State Senate district, including portions of Los Angeles and Ventura counties in the California State Senate. She has drafted legislation for fracking. “There is an emerging national consensus on the basic assurances the public needs around fracking operations,” said Senator Pavley. “From chemical disclosure, to notification, to water quality monitoring and an independent health study, this legislation brings the transparency and accountability needed in order to protect our air and water supply.” – See more at: http://sd27.senate.ca.gov/news/2013-03-11-senator-pavley-amends-fracking-legislation-better-protect-health-and-safety-californ#sthash.dW4mW0ZX.dpuf)
(4) Call Jerry Brown’s office to ask him to issue a moratorium at (916) 445-2841.
Governor Brown is currently on the fence about this issue, since according to a federal government estimate, the Monterey Shale, which stretches beneath the southern San Joaquin Valley and parts of the Central Coast, holds 15.4 billion barrels of oil.
(5) Watch the movies Gasland and Gasland 2.
Gasland is a documentary written and directed by Josh Fox and nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2011. This film the film focuses on communities in the United States impacted by natural gas drilling and, specifically, a method of horizontal drilling into shale formations known as slickwater fracking.. It’s sequel, Gasland 2, which is currently running on HBO and at house parties across the country, shares more horrible stories. Watch the trailer. From the beginning though, Gasland has been more than just a movement to protect our environment and health. It is a movement about protecting our democracy and right to decide the future of our country. Check out their website for more information and to see how you can get involved. http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/
Let’s all make some time to research this issue and make our voices heard. We need to work together now to prevent destruction to our environment for this and future generations.
Evolving Beyond Ego
Integral Enlightenment founder, Craig Hamilton, is a pioneer in the emerging field of evolutionary spirituality. In his inspired writings, talks, and teachings, he calls us to awaken beyond the confines of the separate ego and dedicate our lives to the further evolution of consciousness itself.
I am passing on to you a recording of his encore webcast of The Key To Evolving Beyond Ego. In this seminar, Craig shares a profound but simple shift in orientation that can enable us to get past the most basic and persistent barrier to our spiritual awakening and transformation.
This primitive part of our nature is left over from our early evolution, and it acts like a ceiling holding down our highest human potential. The ego that he speaks about is not our personality or the healthy functional ego needed to navigate life, it is a specific part of the self that is out-moded and clings to a narrow idea of who we are and what’s possible in the world. This ego hampers our most earnest and heartfelt efforts to evolve our lives and the world. But by engaging the process explored in this seminar, we can leave behind the limitations of ego that have plagued humanity for eons.
I love how Craig explains it. He says, “It’s like getting a software ‘upgrade’ from these ancient instincts of our animal past into an entirely new way of being.”
He offers practical tools and practices we can try right away — to bring our daily life into greater alignment with our deepest aspirations.
You can listen to this recording online or download it here.
Lastly, please feel free to share this audio with anyone you know who might also be looking for the next step on their evolutionary journey!
Here’s to our enlightened future together!
Dads Matter. Men Matter.
Today we celebrate the dads in the world. I love this video because it illustrates just how important a man is in a woman’s life! Happy Father’s Day!!!
Speaking of Elevating the Planet
My inspiration — spiritual teacher, author and lecturer, Marianne Williamson — has said, “Transforming our own hearts is a prerequisite for transforming the world. We will not achieve any higher-minded political goals until we transform the political process, and we cannot transform the political process without transforming ourselves. We need less to get the message out than to get the message in.” In her book Healing the Soul of America, she goes on to say that there is a yearning among us to make right the world.
Do you feel that yearning? I certainly do. When I asked the heavy question, “Spirit, how do I heal the world?” The answer I heard back was “…apply love…” And so began my journey to investigate how love can save the planet.
It has been said that love is our greatest guide. That love heals because it casts out fear and melts away the darkness revealing clarity and light. That it is only through love and compassion that we experience any kind of meaningful growth. Author Resa Steindel Brown says, “Love and compassion should be the lens through which we view all life. Its range of influence should extend past our narrow definition of family and friends to all interactions and experiences everywhere. For the sake of generations to come, we must focus our attention on love…It is our greatest understanding, our finest teacher. Love is what remains when all else fades away.”
Albert Einstein proved that as we break matter down into smaller and smaller components, we move beyond the material realm and into the place where everything is simply energy. This is the Law of Vibration. In the natural Law of Vibration, the lower the vibration, the slower something moves; the higher the vibration, the faster it moves. The same is true for emotions and thoughts. Fear, grief, and despair vibrate at a very low frequency, while love, joy, and gratitude vibrate at a much higher one. Positive thoughts vibrate much more quickly than dark negative thoughts. When the mind is thinking positive thoughts and the heart is producing high level emotions like love and joy, they create an energy together that is transmitted into the universe. Here we reach higher consciousness and the closer to Spirit or Source we become.
New York Times best-selling author, health & wellness expert, and spiritual teacher Deborah King says, “When you are steeped in unconditional love—the highest emotional vibration—all your atoms are singing the song of life at its highest. You are no longer part of the problem; you are part of the solution to the problems of the planet. If you react to what is happening around you with anger or bitterness or fear, you are lowering your own vibration and sending out a low thought/emotion wave.”
When two frequencies meet, the lower one always rises to the higher one. That’s cool! It means that each of us has the power to elevate the planet simply by “applying love” to all situations and donning a more positive outlook on life. In fact, this way of being is so infectious and can do so much good for humanity, that my new hero, Angela Carr Patterson, has started a movement called Take the Vow to Love. Click here to take your vow today and consciously embrace love as a lifestyle.
There are three kinds of love: Eros, a romantic love; Philia, a love among friends; and Agape, the capacity to love even those whom we do not like…unconditional love…a love that has the power to restore the world to it’s innocence and grace.
There is a critical shift occurring my friends — a collaborative raising of our energetic vibrations and a unification of our minds and hearts. Loving ourselves and each other is the only way we are going to heal our broken families, stop the cradle to prison pipeline, and end violence among our youth. Embracing love as a lifestyle is the only way we are going to fix political injustices, stamp out poverty and make right the world. We start solving the world’s problems by loving each other and ourselves on a personal level, and on a spiritual level, then we start to align with the natural flow of the divine.
So come on peeps, get happy! Apply love as often as you can, practice agape, and take your vow to love today.
The League of Extraordinary Women
I gathered a group of women founded on spirituality, camaraderie and higher-conscienceness. The purpose of our group? To create a think-tank for today’s evolutionary females. We are called the League of Extraordinary Women. Almost two years later, based on feminine power, and sourced by Spirit, the women of LOEW gather quarterly to share knowledge and insights, and to learn about new technologies together. It is an opportunity to share what a privilege it is to be a woman alive on the planet at this time in history. These shared experiences we then take out into the world as a contribution from our hearts, and an expression our full flourishing of life and highest calling. We gather to raise the vibration of the planet, to love and do good in the world.
In the short video below, I encourage you to do the same. Party with purpose. Celebrate each other. Gather in service. Play in love.
If you’d like curriculum ideas for your League gatherings, let me know. I’m happy to be of service. Mother Teresa once said, ““It is not how much we do, but how much love we put into what we do” and it’s that generous love that will evaluate the planet. So party on people!
Female Film Makers Matter
Amy Pascal is Co-Chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment and Chairman of SonyPictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group. In a recent interview with Forbes Magazine she said,
“The most important thing in the job that we do here is to make movies about women where they are characters that have consequences in the story. They can be villains, they can be protagonists, I don’t care. But their movements, their actions, what they do in the plot has to actually matter. And that’s the most important thing, because young girls coming up are going to see that they matter that your not an appendage to someone else—that you’re not married to the person, not their sister or friend or girlfriend, you actually are the plot.”
To my writers, director’s and producers — tap into your creativity people…we’ve got some role models to create!
Pesticides Linked to Neurological Issues in Kids?
Below is an exert from my friends Ron & Lisa – The Healthy Home Dream Team and their fabulous article about reducing pesticide intake.
“Contrary to popular belief, an apple a day may not necessarily keep the doctor away today. Topping The Dirty Dozen™ list this year were apples! In 99 percent of cases tested, apples contained at least one pesticide residue while the next two top offenders— strawberries and grapes—revealed nearly every sample containing pesticides with one grape alone showing traces of 15 pesticides! For information on genetically modified plants (GMOs), be sure to read the EWG executive summary. P.S. You’ll looove this convenient app for your smart phone HERE as well.
Finally, hold on summer squashes and leafy greens! EWG expanded the Dirty Dozen™ with a Plus category this year to highlight two crops – domestically-grown summer squash and leafy greens; specifically kale and collards. Although these crops didn’t meet the Dirty Dozen™ criteria, they were found to be contaminated with pesticides that are toxic to the nervous system, including organophosphate pesticides (potent neurotoxins that can affect children’s IQ and brain development; even at low doses) and organochlorine pesticides (ie: dieldrin, DDT and heptachlor; neurotoxins which studies link to cancer, neurological damage, Parkinson’s disease, and more). Watch below as Dr. Sanjay Gupta tours a grocery store to show us which foods have the highest levels of pesticide residue and how to reduce 80% of your food pesticide exposure:”
CNN.com – Choosing Fruits & Vegetables at the Grocery Store
Since eating 100% organic food isn’t necessarily cost effective for many of us, and growing our own food may not be feasible either, the amazing team at the Environmental Working Group (EWG) created a list called the Annual Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ which includes The Clean Fifteen™ + The Dirty Dozen™ lists (click HERE for the entire guide).
The good people at at Body Unburdened created a great visual of these two lists that you can print and carry with you or put on the frig as an important reminder. (See above.)
Here is also an excellent DIY recipe to clean conventionally grown produce, the chemical-free way! Check out this fast and affordable tip HERE using just vinegar + water. Now this idea is not for those grab and go moments, as it requires about 10 minutes of soaking time, but it’s awesome when planning ahead.
Let’s keep our families healthy longer with these simple changes. We’re worth it!
queen of connection | Shelby L. Phillips 