Our Goldendoodle Aidan found a tortoise on our hike. Bill and I would have walked right by him. His shell is the exact color of desert dirt and he is the size of large rocks spilling onto the trail.

As Bill carried him home, I told him, “Be happy. Be happy, as carry him. Your pleasure will calm him.”

Sweet-talking the tortoise Bill stilled his racing feet spinning in the air. At home, in the quarter minus decomposed granite, Bill set our tortoise behind the outdoor fireplace. He scuttled under the shade of the bougainvillea lining the cement block fence.

Research tells us he likes Hibiscus plants, spinach leaves, cactus flowers, and lettuce. He can’t eat too many flowers. The sweetness of overpowers his metabolism. Finding the tortoise was our real world excitement while walking the desert. Flowers dotting the ends of prickly Cholla and sweet elusive scents caught the edges of our awareness.

Earlier, before our hike, at the peak heat of the first one-hundred degree day of the New Year, in my mediations I dreamed of created seminars: The Way of The Fairy Godmother ceremonies. Retreats here in the desert, where the spring nights whisper across our skin with warmth while we hunt what the Fairy Godmother teaches each of us. How do we begin to dream the dream awake? Where do our real and dream worlds meet? Today my worlds gather together with the tortoise and the Fairy Godmother.

Each day we wait for the manuscript, The Way of The fairy Godmother to be returned from the formatters, I’ve felt the power, intimacy and vulnerability growing. Will The Way of The Fairy Godmother construct a readership? A movement? Will Fairy Godmother meditative journeys have an audience? Imagine the infinite variety of messages generated by each Fairy Godmother. Messages designed to meld into a practical application transforming dreams into reality. Think Lady Gaga whispering mind-altering information personal to you in your ear. These are my dreams, the mediations sketched out ready to be developed. It’s okay. You can laugh. I laugh at my wild ideas too.

Native teachings tell us every moment life communicates with us. All that crosses our paths is meaningful. What then is the message of the tortoise in conjunction with the Fairy Godmother?

The tortoise is known across cultures as a symbol of stability and longevity. A creature carrying home and protection, the architecture embedded in its shell in patterns of swirls, geometric squares more beautiful than a stone palace. The tortoise and the Fairy Godmother meet in the mythic realm each teaching us their special brand of beauty and its application in ordinary life.

The tortoise embodies practicality, its shell a shield warding off danger. The Fairy Godmother is the symphony conductor translating dreams into life. Dreams and practicality: A potent combination.

First a big THANK YOU to all of our blog visitors. Today we are seeing about 50 visits per hour. We have been receiving rave reviews from friends about the cover for The Way of The Fairy Godmother. But alas they are friends. We would love some feed back from you, the reader, on the cover. Respond if you wish on the bottom of this page.

Jennifer is working on new informative and fun blogs....and a 3rd book.  I am gently leaning on our formatter to hurry up and give me something to put The Way of The Fairy Godmother on sale at Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble/NOOK and Smashwords.  Around the first of April.

Meanwhile we love the new sales (FREE) for Redemption's Warrior. Keep spreading the word.


Thank you,

William

Just a blogging note.... Lady Gaga is the current blogging and Tweeting queen. 45 Million visitors on Twitter alone.

 

 

When was the last time you experienced Serendipity? Once upon a time Serendipity existed in a mythical land filled with treasure, where happiness reigned. Most of us are hungry for the treasures hidden in Serendipity. We long for good fortune to gift us with… good fortune. Especially when we are climbing the Golden Ladder, each rung a task tied to our Deepest Desires.

Translating Deepest Desires into reality is grunt work. Hopefully grunt work we love. But lonely. In the period of the Great Silence when all our efforts seem destined for failure; it’s stressful and frightening. We need tools to navigate this terrain. Focal Points of Beauty can help connect us with Serendipity.

What are Focal Points of Beauty? A spot of beauty in our environment; a sparkly crystal as a paperweight, a vase of flowers their fragrance floating on the air, our favorite painting, anything that pulls our attention toward beauty and away from stress. We savor the way our dog levitates with happiness when we come home. The splash of fiery pink across the sky at sunset or the crowns of flowers Saguaro cactus wear each May. A special conversation when our adult child says he loves talking to us or our husband confessing his love even when we’ve quarreled. We collect these moments. They are the corrective experience of love and Serendipity.

When we create Focal Points of Beauty in our home, office and garden we are inviting Serendipity, a pleasant surprise, to visit us. Whether we pause for a moment of reverie, or to appreciate a good memory, beauty will lift our spirits.

Let’s summarize: We live our Deepest Desires tied to congruent actions initiating our own brand of personal alchemy. Walking through the Great Silence we collect moments of beauty buffering stress. We are consciously cultivating Serendipity, attracted like bees to flowers, as we gather beauty.

Good Luck! Read The Way of the Fairy Godmother! Coming April!

Making a place in our goals for the sacred invites Serendipity flowing along the edges of our efforts to enter - bringing us a piece of unanticipated good fortune. Serendipity might show up as an accident or fluke. It could be a happy coincidence. Look for Serendipity hiding in Beauty. And Serendipity has a history of dwelling in scientific research.

Think: the discovery of penicillin. (The Way of the Fairy Godmother April 2015)

PS Have you seen the new Cinderella movie?

                             The Way of the Fairy Godmother

Today I completed the manuscript! The Way of the Fairy Godmother is at the formatters. I feel at once fulfilled and I’m falling into a million pieces. Our essential self does not care how much time or work it takes to bring our dreams into reality. Time and timelessness are identical to the essential self.

Engaging life with positive purpose is at the heart of the teachings of the Fairy Godmother. Yet our mastery and self-esteem is born out of an exchange of value that has currency in the material world. Our Deepest Desires must have worth in the day to day life. Achieving this result is the science of alchemy.

To create successful realities we take our invisible dreams and bring them into physical form with action. It’s the synthesis of our intention and action that creates the power to drive our goals into form.

Our dreams grounded in Deepest Desires and greater purpose, harmonized with congruent actions; their synergistic combination creates traction in the material world.

We are no longer vibrating with the traumas of the past. Congruent and focused we are vibrating at the rate of Positive Possibilities. Over time, layer upon layer of Positive Possibilities, tips us into flourishing. When we are vibrating at the rate of flourishing; we have undergone a personal revolution.

Look for The way of the Fairy Godmother next week on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble NOOK, and smashwords

I’m just finishing our next book, The Way of the Fairy Godmother.

Writing it has been the most fun I’ve had in a long time. Imagine apprenticing to the Fairy Godmother. What would she teach us?

This is a blog so I’ll cut to the chase. In their first meeting they talk about Cinderella’s Deepest Desires. The Fairy Godmother explains Deepest Desires hold the seeds of our happiness. That’s right; what we long for, our passion holds our potential future. Think positive psychology and Katy Perry dancing in her rainbows.

Next? We identify personal strengths. Strengths we apply to our Deepest Desires. And where do our strengths live? We find our strengths located where we are absorbed, engaged, in a project.

Let’s look at Cinderella. Her strength is her ability to give and receive love. Even in the midst of each grueling day she didn’t lose touch with love. She scrubbed the kitchen floor with the intention to create beauty. Her house shone with her love and attention. Her garden too reflected love. Chicken eggs were rich with nutrition. Gentle tugging with care and respect and the cow produced thick creamy milk.

Locked out of the house by her stepmother Cinderella was in the garden when she met the Fairy Godmother. It was twilight. The time of day balanced between light and dark; long shadows deepened the blues and greens of the garden. The sky was streaked with pink as the sun dipped below the horizon. The surrounding trees sighed. Their one breath of the day shared with Cinderella. Inhaling she looked up and standing in the corn was a tiny woman radiant with her incontrovertible- positivity. Think Jimmy Fallon  and his nice guy humor. In fact Jimmy Fallon could be a Fairy Godmother in disguise. Fairy Godmothers sometimes show up as a friend, a grandparent, or even an illness.

The human world is difficult for the Fairy Godmother. Negativity gloms onto her skin dulling her luminosity. But there are times when the human and Fairy worlds overlap. Twilight is one of those times.

The Fairy Godmother does not talk with Cinderella about her problems. She doesn’t console her for the loss of her mother and father. Nor does she comment on her wicked stepmother and stepsisters. So what does the fairy Godmother talk about? And why is she so successful?

The Fairy Godmother teaches Cinderella congruency is at the heart of successful change. The Fairy Godmother’s world is not at cross-purpose. She is aligned mind, body, spirit and most importantly of all for manifesting success, actions.

Today’s blog is a peak into the world of the Fairy Godmother, Cinderella and their work together. Happily the book is much better then my blog which is cramped trying to squeeze in the details of their first meeting and Cinderella’s apprenticeship.

Next month the book will available and I hope you’ll find joy in the reading.

                                For details on CONTEST scroll down to February 27th post.
__________________________________________________________________________________

The original reason I began writing our blog was to develop an authentic relationship with readers. To create a genuine relationship I wanted the blog embedded with tools to change your life.

Ultimately the blog and our books orbit around what happens when you align your dreams and actions with a positive goal? In Redemption’s Warrior the story asks, how does Christopher marshal his resources for freedom, stuck on a prison island fifty miles outside of Mazatlan? Isolation, violence, deceit and betrayal are prison currency. Within this resonating field there is no freedom.

Over the past twenty years there has been a revolution in psychology. It’s aptly named, Positive Psychology. A prominent researcher in the field of positive psychology, Barbara Fredrickson, in her book Positivity suggests: Positivity presents an opportunity to step up to the next level of existence, (page 13 Positivity.) Is positivity strong enough to create freedom? Some experts believe positivity is delicate. What do you think? Is positivity strong enough to change your circumstances?

I think the experts have missed an important piece of the puzzle. When your mind, heart and body are aligned, this congruence empowers positivity. Choose positivity. This is the first step. At the very least it makes life more enjoyable. For positivity to become a catalyst of change requires congruence. Your positive goal aligns your thoughts, your emotions, your soul and your spirit. Continue to tie in positivity to your goals and behaviors. The power of positivity lives in congruence. This multiplicity transforms lives.

I’m tempted to leave off the blog right here. Wrapped up like a beautiful package explaining positivity and congruence. I know it sounds like a fairytale.

What’s the catch? Wait until you initiate the behavior, the actions, corresponding to your goals. Once you are engaged in the sweat of manifesting goals you’ll know this is not a fairytale. The reason wise people tell us to live our dreams and do what we love? Manifesting our dreams into tangible reality is labor intensive. If we didn’t love it, the effort could ruin us.

Occasionally people stumble into living a fairytale. Rarely individuals know what they want from an early age and begin devoting themselves to their goal in childhood. This is the exception rather than the rule. There are no guarantees we will manifest our fairytales into ordinary life. However, if we develop the discipline and engage in the labor the nature of positivity and congruence will take us to a better way, a better life.

                             For details on CONTEST scroll down to February 27th post.
__________________________________________________________________________________

Redemption’s Warrior is the story of one man’s claim on redemption. But what is redemption? Is it as simple as healing? If so, what is healing? Does healing happen on levels independent of each other? For example, I don’t have to think the cut on my hand to heal. My body heals a cut without my mind getting involved. Have you heard of the concept post-traumatic growth?

If you haven’t heard about post-traumatic growth you’ve probably heard about post-traumatic stress. Post-traumatic stress involves re-living memories, stressful, blood pounding, heart hammering, nerves firing, re-enacting the original traumatic injury. Think Wounded Warrior s or Clint Eastwood’s movie, American Sniper. If you’re older maybe you remember the movie, directed by Oliver Stone , Platoon.

I was traumatized not by living through the war but by watching it play out on the silver screen via my mirror neurons which live right next door to our motor neurons. But to get back to the real people, the actual ….Wounded Warriors

Caught up in post-traumatic stress neuro-transmitters jump the identical synaptic gaps of the original trauma and flood the brain. Mirror and motor neurons cascade into feelings impaling the metaphoric heart and spirit and the literal body. That is rough stuff!

So how do you initiate post-traumatic growth? We have some powerful words in psychology associated with healing and growth: resilience, resourcefulness, creativity, recovery.

Where can I purchase some of this resiliency? Is there a map to recovery? Actually yes! There is a map. Transformation occurs when you resolve and release what does not work in your life.

Wait. That is the only the first step to growth and healing. There is more involved in recovery. To consciously invoke healing requires tangible acts, acts associated with love and healing. Post-traumatic growth demands growth-like behavior

Here is what no one tells you. While you are practicing the growth-like behaviors of resilience, reaching out when you really want to curl up in the closet; while you have a foot in post-traumatic stress and a foot in post-traumatic growth you may suffer. Recovery takes place moment to moment, breath to breath with the elephant sitting on your chest.

Behind the hearts and flowers, the unicorns and rainbows, stories of post-traumatic stress transformed into healing and recalled -- told via the retro-specto-scope -- lose the sting, the aches and pains, the agonizing vulnerability associated with traumatic stress.

Is this blog exposing the truth behind healing? Yes, it’s true. While you are searching out post-traumatic healing you could still hurt. Here is the point. You can put your attention on trauma or healing. What you pay attention to is what you get more of. This is the lesson of mirror and motor neurons.

More on them in the next blog…..