Julia: July 2007 Archives
Tuesday afternoon, Rick and I drove to Boulder and met Laraaji, the wonderful cosmic musician and laughter guru I connected with so powerfully at the 2006 Southeastern Spiritual Conference where I taught. He was in Colorado to be one of the presenters at Jonathan Goldman's 12th Annual Healing Sounds Intensive, and was kind enough to fit us into his after-conference leisure time (he has lots of friends in the area, so he stays a few days after the conference at the Goldman's in Boulder to visit and hang out).
We met at the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse, which is a really beautiful and amazing place. (Stepdaughter #2 works there and was unexpectedly on duty that day--a nice synchronicity!) The ladies Laraaji had spent the day with up till that point stayed and had a late lunch with us, and while I was kind of wishing to have Laraaji to ourselves, we did enjoy our time with Alice and Mary, who were delightful, open-hearted beings. They are Emissaries of Divine Light, a group I was involved with back in the mid-to-late 1980s, so it was interesting for me to be with them. The Healing Sounds Intensive was held at Sunrise Ranch, which is the Emissary world headquarters, and a also retreat center for non-Emissary events like the HSI. Alice lives at the ranch and Mary was there for the summer to help out with the retreats.
So many of my spiritual understandings were triggered by my time with EDL, but ultimately, their teachings were missing the crucial "honor no voice above your own Spirit's voice," and so I had to leave the fold. In a way, they assisted me with that part of my understanding, too, as I learned what it felt like when I was asked to honor another's voice over that of God-In-Me! Anyway, I felt guided to give Alice and Mary each a copy of Recreating Eden--not as a way to somehow try to enlighten them, but simply as a love offering from the heart.
That I felt guided to share the book with them is significant because I always wondered how it might be received in the Emissary world, and had been "told" by my inner voice not to engineer it, but that someday, the perfect opportunity would present itself and I'd be very clear when it did. And that opportunity came Tuesday! I didn't even realize what had occurred until after I had given them the books and then I knew that my inner prophecy had been fulfilled.
After our lunch, the ladies took off and we took Laraaji to Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison because it only seemed fitting that a muscian like Laraaji would connect with Red Rocks! We got almost all the way to the amphitheater but weren't able to actually go in because there was a concert (Former Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir and his band, RatDog) and at the time we arrived (about 5:30) they were about to let concert-goers in so they refused our request to check out the amphitheater. But that was okay as we were already making Laraaji late for his dinner appointment with Ed and Deb Shapiro, so we just headed back to Boulder. Meantime, Laraaji, who had a new fancy digital SLR camera, got lots of photos of the red rocks at Red Rocks and of the open space all along the way back. For a NYC dweller like he is, seeing the open meadows and bluffs, with few manmade structures, was a treat! "There's a lot of information in the open space," he declared.
After we dropped him off at the Shapiros, Rick and I headed to "the Med," a Boulder institution, for tapas, had a delightful time and delicious food, and then headed home. It was quite a full afternoon and evening. I loved our time with Laraaji, and I really enjoyed having extra time with Rick. And I loved coming home, too!
I happened upon the Larry King show tonight without knowing who his guests were, and discovered that he had an extremely skeletal Tammy Faye (Bakker) Messner on. She is in the throes of what most would call end-stage (though she might not!) inoperable cancer, and wanted to come on the show to tell her fans how much she loves and cares for them. I have never particularly been a fan of hers--till now.
She was AMAZING. At first, I was horrified to see her as she only weighs 65 lbs. (Probably only 63, but she had on her standard couple of pounds of makeup, which exacerbated things.) She said she was up five lbs. and was very proud of it. She and her husband had just moved from North Carolina to the Kansas City area to be near his children and grandchildren--what kind of person survives a move like that when they are as sick as she is? And how many would be willing to do it? That's love.
She really looked quite scary--you can see an excerpt from the interview on YouTube if you put "Tammy Faye Larry King" (without the quotes) in the search window, and I'm pretty sure the media will do what it can to spread the sensational-looking images far and wide. But the amazing part wasn't the frightening way she looked; the amazing part was her faith and her inner light. It has not even dimmed an iota, even though she reports being in constant pain, primarily in her spine and stomach (thus, the weight loss).
That she was able to sit through a half hour of an interview and answer questions the way she did--even cracking a joke or two--was really a feat. (One caller asked what she'd like to be remembered for and before she gave her straight answer, she quipped, "My eyelashes!") She was obviously very determined to do it. Say what you like about Tammy Faye--she is truly a remarkable and inspiring being who is demonstrating to the world that with faith, you can do superhuman things. AND, that you can create your own reality if you refuse to buy into everyone else's ideas of what is supposed to happen. She refuses to listen to the doctors' prognoses because she says she doesn't want them to influence her. And despite the condition she is in, her husband--who clearly adores her and is her constant support--and son report she is continuously optimistic. Her husband says she even wakes up with a smile.
Clearly, she has found the peace that passes understanding and is living in Grace.What an inspiration! She is proving that denial is not some sort of sad delusion, but a strategy that you use when you have a vision for what you want to create that defies the status quo. Of course, I would never advise that someone deny their fears--and she says she has embraced her fears--but it would seem she has largely transcended it at this point. She is clearly operating at a higher vibrational frequency, which is absolutely predictable for someone who has put their faith completely in God as they understand God to be.
Oddly, after the interview with Tammy Faye and her husband, Roe Messner, and then her son, Jay Bakker (who is now quite a charismatic rebel preacher with a church called Revolution Church out of New York City), they had, of all people, Deepak Chopra on to comment! He was on concurrently with part of the segment with Jay and it was interesting to see the young man's face as Deepak gave his interpretation of his mother's interview and of her spiritual condition. Deepak, like I--and probably millions of others--was hugely affected and inspired by this woman's absolute commitment to living right up to the very end and by her total faith in what he called "the mystery we call God." It was clear that he could have spoken about it more esoterically but he was aware of his audience and, to his credit, kept it simple.
So, as you have by now deduced, the whole thing was very moving. I had almost decided to go to bed without blogging tonight, but you have Tammy Faye to thank for me staying up to write this because I was so affected and compelled to share . Such is the power of one inspirational person to create ripples. I affirm for her a continued beautiful passage and transition, however long she decides to make it last!
Here is a freebie for you to download if you like. I was inspired to create a new decree/meditation and to turn it into a mini-poster (8.5x11").
Doing that is so much fun for me! First, I love focusing the energy and playing around with the words until they seem to catalyze optimal focus and energy when I read them. Then, I love playing with color and images and graphics to create a "delivery vehicle" for the words. Then, I love offering it to you as a gift!
Here's what it looks like:
And here's a link to the PDF for you to download and print it out:
Enjoy!
Oh--and be on the lookout for my Summer newsletter--if you're on my list, you'll be getting it in your email box tomorrow!
Rick took from Wednesday through Friday this week for vacation, plus the weekend, so we have been having a good time just hanging out. I am often clueless about holidays coming up, such is the flavor of working for yourself at home, and I was surprised by the vacation suddenly offered me when I realized Rick would be home. So I decided to just go with The Flow and be on vacation, too! I can't really account for much of the time (don't know if that's because I was so in the moment or because my memory is not functioning at a high level), but I can tell you what we did Friday.
We had talked about taking a day trip to Rocky Mountain National Park and driving Trail Ridge Road, which is the highest continuous highway in the country, and surely one of the most beautiful and dramatic drives on Earth, with much of it above tree line and offering 360 vistas. The first (and only) time I was there, I got all patriotic--not in a jingoistic way, but in that "how amazingly beautiful our country is" way. And while "America the Beautiful" was inspired by the view from Pike's Peak, I was even more inspired to sing it on Trail Ridge Rd. than from Pike's Peak! I know I can't run your program, but please put a drive on Trail Ridge Road on your "must do before I ascend" list!
Anyway, we decided, for various reasons, that anywhere in R.M.N.P. on the Friday after Fourth of July would be just too, too traffic-y. So--where to go? (Some place in Easy World, of course!) Rick thought just going to Evergreen to the winery sounded good, but since I had just been there with Donna, I was really wanting to do something different and less predictable--and it just didn't feel right when I thought about it--I didn't get that "click!" that the right plan gives me. So I got out my dowsing rods and started dowsing on the various options. Rocky Mountain National Park? Confirmation of our decision not to get into the crowds. Evergreen? No. Indian Hills? No. Breckenridge/Dillon/Silverthorne? No. Boulder? No. Hmmm....I was running out of easy day trip ideas. Then, I dowsed for "Golden," and got a spongy no and I could tell that was a clue.
Suddenly, I remembered the drive that we took my parents on when they were here visiting several years back. You turn off onto the road through Coal Creek Canyon just outside Golden. Click! I knew immediately that this was the trip, and the rods confirmed it emphatically! Rick contributed the idea to drive from there to the Peak to Peak Highway and to Black Hawk and Central City, which I had never been to and had said I wanted to see. They are historic mining towns turned little gambling meccas.
So around lunchtime on Friday, we set off, with a quick stop on the way to visit Stepdaughter #1 at the Starbucks where she was subbing. As you can see from the photo Rick took from where we stopped on the Peak to Peak Highway, it could hardly have been a more beautiful day for it, and escaping to the high country was the perfect plan on a day when Denver was to be in the 90s.
Here I am--Rick took this as he was getting back into the car after taking the fabulous shot of the pond and mountains:
The wildflowers were prolific and we saw lots of Rocky Mountain penstemon (purple), an abundance of yarrow-like yellow flowers, and some pink ones on shrubby greenery that really had me stumped. My best guess was wild roses. We finally saw a good place to pull over where they were by the roadside, but there was a ditch between me and the shrubs, and the sun was really bright, so even the photos I got didn't definitively tell the tale, but see what you think:
When we got to Black Hawk, and then to Central City (they are very close together--a couple of miles, I think), it was enough to just drive through. While they were cute little mountain towns with cute little gingerbread houses and lots of happy flower pots and hanging baskets, overall, I did not like the energy there from the casinos, and both towns were really packed with tourists. So, instead of stopping there for food as we had thought we might, we decided to drive on to Idaho Springs and have a late lunch at Tommyknocker Brewery, one of our favorite mountain day-trip stops.
I wasn't really looking forward to the food, as it has been iffy the last few years, but knew we'd enjoy a Butthead (really great bock lager with an unfortunate name that they brew there) and was pleasantly surprised to find that the food was great this time, as were our Buttheads.
After we finished, we went to my favorite little coffee shop
and as we sat there for me to enjoy my "MochaJavacino," we looked through a guest book from 2005 that people had written in. I wrote a little "ad" for Easy World, and added www.ILiveInEasyWorld.com to the last page. And then we headed home. It was exactly the right trip and we had a really easy, happy day, just as I knew we would when I felt the click!
It is so much fun to see how Easy World is spreading itself!
I was checking my web stats Monday, saw that the visits to the EW website had jumped, and found that some folks had visited ILiveInEasyWorld.com via this link: http://www.lolafayemi.com/index.php/2007/07/02/who-wants-to-live-in-easy-world/
So, of course, I clicked the link to check it out, and found a blog entry by a delightful soul named Lola who had just discovered EW by way of Raymond Salas' blog article, http://zenchillcom.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-to-make-your-life-easier.html, and of course, he had discovered Easy World via Sonora's interview with me at http://sonorajaynecase.blogspot.com/search/label/Julia%20Rogers%20Hamrick!
Three inspired actions: Sonora followed her inspiration to ask me for an interview, Raymond saw it and was intrigued with EW and was inspired to write an article about it, and now Lola found EW, had an uplifting experience and she was moved to blog about it. Someone asked me recently how I had time to do all my "other stuff" AND promote Easy World. The key is that I hardly have to do anything to promote Easy World. As I've said many times: Easy World promotes itself!
I am so, so, so very grateful for the Internet--what a powerful agent of Easy World! Thanks Sonora, Raymond, and Lola, for being agents of Easy World, and to all of you who are living in EW and telling your friends about it! What easier, more effective way to offer humanity a boost upward than to invite them to Easy World!
And here's a little interesting synchronicity: As I was writing this out to post to the Easy World Forum this afternoon (Tuesday), an email came in. It was from Lola, making a connection with me to thank me for making Easy World accessible! Love those synchronicities! I had intended to contact her but didn't feel the motivation to do it yet. In true EW style, I just waited for the inspiration, and while I was waiting for it, she got in touch with me (and I replied to her, of course!)! I hadn't felt energized to connect with her yet because it was her inspired action to contact me first. I love Easy World!
For all you in the US of A, have a wonderful July 4th holiday!!!
This afternoon, Rick and I went to see Michael Moore's latest paradigm-challenging film, Sicko, on its opening day. Once again, we managed to be a vibrational match to having the movie we wanted to see, which was only shown in one Denver theater, be showing in our neighborhood! (Love that!)
It was powerful and masterfully done--it allowed the actual stories of real people to get the message across without the spin that Michael sometimes puts on things. (Rick says he emailed MM about this after seeing Fahrenheit 9/11-about letting the facts speak for themselves alone, which Sicko did--but is not claiming credit for the lack of spin in Sicko...publicly, anyway!).I posted this to one of my onlinr essential oils groups about it:
We have the most potent tools with which to create health--and I'm not only talking about essential oils and supplements, but our own knowing of our power as creative human beings who can direct our bodies to heal through our own choices and alignment with Source.
Regardless of your political leanings, go see this non-partisan look at what is broken in our country and I am sure you, like I, will find more to shake your head at and be grateful for than Michael Moore was even aware he was including."
While the film was expository and quite progressive on one level, I was struck by the sort of victim mentality expressed within it--the "someone's doing something to us" theme. But I do understand the mainstream will find it hard enough to stand up and claim the power to do what it will take to make changes in ways that make sense to them--challenging the system and moving toward universal health care. It may take a few more steps up the vibrational ladder before most are going to be ready to claim responsibility for creating the mess through their own consciousness and through a belief in powers outside themselves. It may even take a few more steps upward to claim their own power to create it differently--and their own health differently--through their thought choices!
I do wish he had focused a little more on the travesty of the unnecessary "healthcare," including pharmaceuticals, that people receive--indeed, I sometimes think those that are either not insured or are denied some treatments are better off in some ways than those that are and can because they are not privy to the medical establishment and Big Pharma's toxic solutions and slash and burn approach to illness. I guess that is really a whole different movie! Anyway, he did a great job on this one, and I am very glad I saw it.
And I am truly thankful to comprehend that no one holds my fate in their hands but me.
