My adult foster cat went MIA while I was out of town last week, so I’ve been training myself to hold pictures of him being delightfully held captive by some sweet well-meaning 8 year old girl.

I’m proud for feelingly only slightly hurt that he might enjoy someone else’s company more than mine.  I’m okay with that.  More power to him!

I’m also okay with the fact that when my two year old chow puppy sees his groomer he goes berzerk with joy.  You’d think he was reuniting with his long lost love each time he sees her!  This is his groomer, mind you.  It’s not like she’s feeding steaks and taking him on pleasant walks.  But even though it’s not the most pleasant thing they do together, he adores her. 

So much so that I follow her to whatever location she moves to, just so he can continue being with someone he loves so much.

The question is, would I do the same for Russ?  lol

I mean, if my sweetie was having an incredibly good time with someone, would I encourage him to continue?  Would I easily release him so he could maintain his good time?  Even drive him there myself if he couldn’t get there on his own?

I’d surely release him, ha!  But I’m not sure I’d have as good feelings about it.

When he has a good time with his golf buddies, I strongly support that.  (Even if it means I’m home alone.)  Or when he wants to go bowling in Albuquerque with his son, absolutely. I’m all for it!

Why is it different if it were a new romantic love interest that captured his heart? 

To be honest, I’m not sure it is.  He hasn’t put me to the test on this, but I really like the thought that I’d be happy for him even if he fell in love with another woman.  That’s what love is, right?  Unconditional.  It doesn’t exist only when circumstances are lined up “right.”  It either is or it isn’t (love).

And if I say I love him (as I do my foster cat and my chow puppy), then I would be as enthusiastic and encouraging of my sweetheart indulging in something (or someone) he loves as much as I am everyone else.

Sounds good, anyway.

I do know this much: if I draw the line on love, then it isn’t really love.  Or if it is, it’s so clouded by egoic fears that I just can’t feel it any more.

As always, I’d like to hear your take when you feel inspired to share …

(Update: per John’s comment #67, here’s the Love Tabby himself):

Just back from the beautiful woods of Wisconsin, where I was invited to present the principles of attraction to a corporate executive team and a handful of their best managers.

Wait a minute. 

Did you catch that?  Maybe you better re-read it …

A corporate team .. retained me .. on PURPOSE, not accident .. to learn more about how to deliberately manage their energy .. in order to create what they want!

Come again?

How did these words even get in the same sentence?!  Corporate America and deliberate energy management?  Who’da thought!

Well, maurices thought.  (A women’s fashion retailer with 600 stores across 42 states.) And either they are doing things dramatically different than other companies, or I have been holding extremely limiting beliefs about what’s possible in the corporate world.

Actually both of those statements are probably true.

When guidance gave me a clear yes to hang with this group, I expected I’d need to prepave the you-know-what out of it in order to enjoy it.  (Kind of like when I moved in with my boyfriend.)  Cuz - you know corporate folks - they’re stuck in a way of working that doesn’t.  Close-minded conformists who do NOT have the best interests of their most valuable asset - their people - at heart. 

I could not have been proven more wrong by maurices management. 

These folks are everything that I love about people, and they pull it off in a corporate setting.  This is happening not DESPITE the corporate structure, but because of it.  They’ve got leadership in place that honest to God for real holds the employee’s best interests at heart.  I mean, yes, they’re making plenty of moolah, too, but not at the expense of people. 

In fact, I suspect if I’d worked with a Meg or for a John, I’d never have left to become a solopreneur. 

Now that might not sound like a radical statement to you, but coming from me - it’s practically a miracle.  It sure felt like one while I was hanging out with these guys.  They are fun, inspiring, alive, invested, engaged, and truly interested in their work.  In all my years of working with companies (both as an employee and service provider to other companies), I sure didn’t see that very often.  I’m having trouble thinking of one example even.

Which is when I realized miracles don’t exist.

It’s not a miracle that “I would SO do that again.”  That was actually my intention for the project as well as my mantra - and thus it had to become my experience.   

That intention is what allowed me to transform old expectations.  That’s not miraculous - that’s just me using my power to manifest.  Using the technology we were born with: vibrational management.

Although using that power sure brings about things that FEEL like miracles - but technically it makes total sense.

Here are dictionary.com’s first two entries on “miracle”:

1. an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.

2. such an effect or event manifesting or considered as a work of God.

So if I didn’t know how it worked, it would qualify as a miracle.  But the thing is, we know how to create these things and it is fully within our power to do so.  Which means they’re not miracles, right? 

That doesn’t mean I won’t still use the word in relation to whatever I’m up to, but giving myself some of the credit is probably appropriate.

Which brings me to you.

What “miracles” are you up to these days?  What limiting beliefs are you intending to move beyond?  Where have you kept yourself “stuck” that you’re willing to liberate yourself?

It’s all in your hands.

And if I can have the time of my life in a corporate setting, then it’s official: anything is truly possible! 

Update: I just realized there indeed is at least one major exception in the picture I paint of my personal corporate history.  Kim Stephens was a dream come true manager.  He treated clients and employees fairly and had a sense of humor that relieved pressure from other aspects of the work.  Those were my favorite years as an employee.  Thanks for that, Kim!

While I’m out most of this week, I asked Love Coach Extraordinaire, Judy Kinney, if she’d be kind enough to offer a guest post. She delivered! Read on to learn more about what Judy’s up to these days:

Surfing in the Desert

One of my goals for this year is to learn to surf.  OHHHHH, I can feel myself in that zone where I am simultaneously connected AND free.  I imagine myself being centered in my body, like when I do yoga, and carried along with something powerful, as if in the front row in a roller coaster. Whew!  This is my kind of heaven!

I’ve surrounded myself with women surfers since making this goal in January.   I have a 2008 women’s surfing calendar, a woman surfing as my computer desktop background, and a picture of a woman surfing on my dream board with the words ‘hot damn’ in a bubble coming out of her mouth.  Yes!  2008 is the year Judy Kinney learns to surf.

It’s June and I’m well aware that I’ve yet to put any surfing plans in place. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had several messages about surfing cross my path. In my June monthly CD, Abraham uses a surfing metaphor to encourage all of us to enjoy the process.  Abe notes that the thrill of catching that one great wave is worth all the paddling, waiting, and falling that inevitably comes with surfing. 

It was about this time that I realized that I have been surfing this year.  Yes, even from my home in the Arizona desert, I’ve caught some sweet, fine waves.  Who needs a board and water?  I’m still riding a great curl as I welcome a sweet, hot, and fun love into my life. I’ve caught wave after wave of inspiration, support, and fun this past six months with my coaching business start up.  I’ve also jumped aboard many a wave with my family as my  90 year old mom ages on her terms.  

I’m not saying that the ride has been smooth sailing-that isn’t what I ordered. I want the thrill of feeling ME IN THE ZONE-connected AND free.  Since adopting this “life is surfing” metaphor, I am much more relaxed about those aspects of my life that feel like paddling, floating, waiting and falling.  These are integral facets to inevitably catching great waves, yes?

So, I wonder . . . who else is making a similar connection between a physical passion and your alignment.  Does your passion for riding your bike fast downhill, doing yoga, rock climbing, rafting, dancing, or walking help you understand and tap into your natural alignment?

Meanwhile, surf’s up in Tucson!

As the Chief Inspiration Officer for Dream and Flourish LLC, Judy Kinney is a Life Coach, Event Planner, and Inspirational Speaker supporting lesbian, bi and queer women to have the lives they dream of.  She is known for her relentless commitment to inspiring and supporting LBQ women to truly enjoy dating, love and romance exactly as they desire.

One of my clients generously gave me permission to share an important question she recently asked:

“I know it is good to honor my emotions and release them without holding them in, however I also know the value of being in positive emotion so we can attract positive experience. When I feel sad, or angry, or any number of negative emotions and I am tempted to try to change the thought in order to stay in the positive (doesn’t always work).  I was just wondering what your thoughts are on this.”

She’s not alone in wondering what to do with challenging emotions.  LOA savvy folks know the power of those emotions, and thus sometimes tend to avoid them in fear of what they might manifest.  So when feelings like grief, anger, resentment, etc. comes up - it’s not unusual for the deliberate creator to get nervous and generate resistance.

Since it’s natural - and inevitable - that as humans we feel a wide variety of emotions, it’s helpful to get a handle on what to do when they arise.  I believe those sad, angry and other less fun emotions - until they’re processed - will remain in the background, left to our physical body to deal with and still contributing to our vibration. 

So even when we try to upgrade to a better feeling, it’s not as easy or effective if we haven’t yet let ourselves feel the negative or unwanted emotion.

Even though it may seem contrary to manifesting efforts, letting ourselves feel unwanted emotions is what frees us from them.  Otherwise we just have anger, grief, resentment, etc. simmering beneath the surface - and making up part of our vibration anyway - no matter how much we don’t want it.

What we resist, persists - which is another good argument for not resisting negative feelings. 

Lao Tzu said it more eloquently in the Tao Te Ching: “Simply notice the natural order of things. Work with it rather than against it. For to try to change what is only sets up resistance.”

The fear that we’ll get stuck in a negative emotion or attract something awful while we’re there is just another feeling to allow, process, and release.  As long as you’re not resisting your feelings they can be in movement. 

It’s when we start pushing against them (whether that’s by denying, ignoring, dismissing or wishing them away) that the real fun begins.  (And by that I don’t really mean fun.  ha!  Although when we release the judgment about which feelings are good and which are bad, that could be an accurate statement.)

Anyway, to bring this point home about how helpful it is to just feel the feelings, I tell clients about my past experience in grieving over lost dogs.  My old routine - before I learned how to feel the feelings - was to involuntarily immerse in black feelings for days on end - not showering, not eating, not talking.  Just holed up at home in a silent tomb of grief. 

In fact, once my co-workers at Dan Jones & Assoc - God bless them - drove over with pasta salads telling me to eat and get dressed, pretty please.  Super sweet folks.  Another time my husband thought he was going to have to take me to the hospital for valium because I was so grief-stricken I couldn’t move.  That was dark.

And then one time I did it different. 

When Sophie died (the girl on my home page), which happened here at home, I said goodbye to her, walked out to the back porch, sat down in the sun, put my arms around my knees, and felt it.  I let myself feel it - the sadness, the grief, the love, all of it.  I felt it.  And I remember thinking, “Man, this is SAD.”  This is REALLY sad!”  Like I’d never experienced before.  I’d never been so sad.  I was in awe of it.

For about five minutes.

And then it was gone.

!!

GONE!

Totally GONE!  The sadness was all mine for a couple minutes - and then it wasn’t any more!  No trace of it left.  Nothing but love and grace and appreciation left in its wake.  Bizarre.

And good, if I may slip into the judgment of it.  It was really good.  The sadness and the passing of it - really really good.

I wasn’t in denial, wasn’t dysfunctioning - just letting myself feel the feelings fully.  Not to get rid of them - but that’s what happened - they moved right along.  They were here, intensely so - and then they weren’t!  Because I felt them.  Fully.

Which taught me not to be afraid of sadness or grief.  Coach Tom Stone’s work along these lines is extremely helpful, as well.  I learned his technique for “feeling fully” later on, and was grateful to have had this prior experience to confirm what he says about the benefit of the process.

Long answer to a good question - hope someone finds it helpful.  And as usual, I’d love to hear your experiences, thoughts & opinions! 

Check out this post from Ellen Whitehurst, esteemed feng shui expert:

“Tomorrow’s date is 08/08/08, a number on the calendar that we will never see again in our lifetimes.

“According to almost every numerological tradition, including Feng Shui, the number 8 has almost exclusively to do with money, abundance, more money, the ability to receive, a lot of money and, well, money.

“In the Orient, businessmen have been known to actually pay millions of dollars in order to have that same digit on their license plates or incorporated in some way into the name of their companies or the address of same, etc.

“For that one reason alone did the Chinese fight so hard to host this year’s Olympic Games on this particular and specific date, starting at 8:08:08 p.m.

“Anytime tomorrow, take a piece of red paper and with any writing instrument that has GOLD INK, draw the infinity symbol (an 8 on it’s side) in the center of the red paper.

“Put a bank of some sort (a piggybank, a jar with coins in it, a small silver box with money in it) in the WEALTH area of your house (far, back left hand corner of the main floor as you stand at your front door looking in) and put this red paper symbol into that bank. Leave this in place for at least 27 days. If you cannot place a bank or some receptacle holding money in the Wealth area for whatever reason, just still be sure to put the paper there anyway.

“This is an Olympic sized opportunity to bring BIG wealth your way. Go for the gold! You’re already a winner!”

To some it might sound superstitious, but in playing with feng shui over the years I’ve come to believe it’s a powerful way to manage and leverage energy.  And we all know the benefits of manging the energy!

Then there’s this latest crop circle reported this morning at Milk Hill.  Steve Alexander had this to say about it:

“There had been much talk in the last few months about the impending triple eight date. Would the crop circles respond to or reflect this date and how? Well this morning, below Milk Hill, a gigantic 800ft formation appeared in the shape of a figure eight! There have, of course, been those who have shouted ‘contrived!’, but it seems the new formation has gone down well with those we have thus far talked to. Time will tell as to how this formation will ultimately be viewed. It is no coincidence that the Chinese chose to open the Olympic games on this special date - the number eight is considered a lucky number in Chinese culture.”

Happy 8/8/08 everyone!