Lorraine E. Castro, LMFT

This is the time to realize you can have happiness right now. We live in an affluent society, even with our current problems. Our poorest citizens have more options than most other countries. We have so much and yet we feel like we don’t have enough. Most of us has way more than we need and even use. How many of us have to rent a storage compartment or POD to hold our stuff that has outgrown our living space? Do we really need all that stuff? My mother’s garage is packed full of stuff, most of which has not been seen in over 35 years. Sure, the stuff has sentimental value to her, but really! If she never uses or even looks at these things, what purpose do they hold?

What are you holding onto that someone else could use? If we all shared, everyone would have enough. If we were grateful for everything we had and keep a mindset of gratitude for everything, we wouldn’t need to keep acquiring the newest gizmo in order to feel good about ourselves.

This is the time for change. How can you make your life easier? Imagine not caring whether you have the latest smart phone. Does that sound counter-intuitive? Everyone wants the newest thing, don’t they? The problem is that there will always be a newer version and chasing the new keeps us constantly wanting. Being in a state of wanting keeps us from being content with what we have now. Maybe the new toy makes us happy for a short time because we can show it off and feel like we’re part of the in-crowd, but the feeling will be transitory. There’s always a newer toy to replace the one we have. Imagine never getting to be happy with what we have. How hard is that!

This is the time to develop an attitude of gratitude. Get in the habit of thanking everything you have. Start the day with gratitude for your bed, your breakfast, your car or other means of transportation. Thank your computer and printer. You don’t have to do this so people around you will question your sanity. Gratitude can be an entirely private internal process.

Try this gratitude action for awhile and find yourself feeling better about so many aspects of your life. The wonderful changes that come from an attitude of appreciation will surprise you. When you are grateful, opportunities arise you might not have noticed or been included in before. I’ve been trying this for a few months. The results are amazing!!!

Going outside of our normal comfort zones can be transformative. It’s scary to act and think differently. We know what we can expect now; the unknown is terrifying. Try saying “thank you” all day long for everything. Your day will be smoother and your heart will lighten if you do.

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Most of us have noticed that our worlds are spinning faster than ever before. Relationships we thought were forever have fallen aside as we watch in wonder and confusion. Remember all the hoopla about the world ending in 2012 based on the ending of the Mayan calendar? The world isn’t ending, just the way we have played out living in our world. If we don’t change to a more compassionate, honest and conscious people of the world, we will undoubtedly do ourselves in.

Relationships are either falling aside or strengthening. We are moving toward a time of transparency. We will all be able to tell what is true and who is false, simply by reconnecting to our hearts and gut feelings (intuition). Imagine being able to “read” other people using God-given skills we have always held, but are just now remembering how to use. We may look to be in chaos but we are evolving as a people.

Fortunately, I see evidence of this every day. Even American Idol has been an example for all of us to see. The candidates are showing an amazing array of humility, gratitude and team spirit. They are all great role models of the new era of unity. In fact, I am heartened all the time with examples of people of all ages being good role models.

We are about to redo many of our Archetypes. If this is a new term to you, check out Carolyn Myss at www.myss.com for information. We all operate out of Archetypes that overlight our behavior, reactions and relationships. Understanding the Archetypes you are playing out helps you understand yourself and the reasons for your choices.

Anyway, our old Archetypes need updating. It’s like the government; it hasn’t been reorganized since the days of black and white television. Everything needs revamping. The old stereotype of The Lovers Archetype lacks the modern sensibilities of people today. We need to see couples of all ages who are mutually respectful, loving and inclusive. We need to heal The Wounded Child Archetype so that we can all operate out of The Gifted Child Archetype instead.

Everyone can be respected and appreciated for the skills they bring. We need everyone.

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Have you noticed how time is speeding up? Every year goes by more quickly. Remember how long summer vacations used to be when you were in grade school? Now, the months fly by.  We feel the change because time in the linear sense really is quickening. I am noticing what I call “quick karma” in many situations where someone has done something ill intended to another and soon after, there appears a negative consequence of some sort. I remember thinking as a younger person that karma reaches someone when they are old, as every case of comeupance I saw seemed to take forever to boomerang back. Now I am seeing amazingly quick consequences visited upon evil doers.

Let me define “evil doers”. I’m not just speaking of the obvious evil despots and rulers of the world. I am speaking about anyone who is ill-intended, who participates in negative behavior causing harm to others.

We are moving toward the age of transparency. In the not too distant future, we will be able to use our intuitive powers to a greater degree. We will be able to discern instantly if someone has nefarious intentions and to avoid them altogether. I am already noticing how often I read the minds of those I love. Can you imagine a world where we all have to have good intentions or we will become instantly transparent as to our true motivation?

Look what’s happening around the globe as disenfranchised citizens living in repressive countries are deciding to protest and fight for individual freedom. Parts of our world are still operating as if this were The Dark Ages. In our new and ever-growing global consciousness, we are beginning to understand that disparity in human rights and treatment affects us all. The collective unconscious  affects us all. Where there is pain and suffering anywhere, our own pain will continue to be reinforced and will flourish.

If you are someone who prays, know anything you wish for yourself and loved ones must be wished for the entire world. We are our brother’s keepers because we are all connected. If we could hear the collective unconscious scream, we would understand that most people are unhappy, feel isolated and unloved. These are people who have material goods, who live in comfort and who look like they are “making it”. In fact, the internal landscape of most people is littered with pain and feelings of betrayal. If we are to heal as people, we must see everyone else as an extension of ourselves. We must wish the best for everyone and try our best to be instruments of grace and healing.

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I really intended to blog on a weekly basis and already I’m off my plan. Life seems to happen in all the inconvenient times and places. So much for good intentions.

My computer at work was giving me grief, refusing to open up Excel files plus a list of other non-operations. Then it rained for six days, the main water pipe broke, drowning the ancient wiring in the basement at work. I thought it would be great to work from home but somehow the supervision of staff can’t be done remotely.

After three weeks, I’m back online at work, which is very helpful because now I can actually work.

After reading how to query agents from numerous sources, I really get the idea and have no doubt my querying attempts years ago were all met with non- response because I had a boring query letter. Thank goodness email querying is becoming more popular in the agencies. I can’t remember how many manilla folders and stamps I bought to mail out to the agents I researched as interested in my genre. Way too many envelopes, stamps and effort.

Yet, I am writing still. Writing is a critical part of my personality; writing and reading. So, I will write when I can because I know that everything works out in the proper time, not always my sense of soon enough but patience is a great behavior to practice learning.

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I don’t make resolutions as each New Year approaches. Putting words to a goal makes any hope of that goal materializing for me fatal. Instead, I leave things behind in the year that’s about to expire. Starting the last two weeks of the year, I seriously consider what behaviors I’ve been playing out since practically third grade that no longer serve me, and decide to drag them forward again or dump them. For instance, I used to look at people who had bigger/better things and felt less than them. What a retarded attitude to carry around! When I finally realized about five years ago how self-limiting jealousy was, I dropped that behavior immediately. After all, jealousy put me in a state of  always wanting more, when I realized I was happier when I was being grateful for what I had. My life is full and rich and I failed to realize this because I lacked perspective. Sure, I’ve seen all the photos of starving children, yet it took working with people right here who have been devastated by life and really have so little, especially dreams, that slapped me in the face.

The funniest thing about that was as soon as the new year rolled around after I left jealously behind, I continually found more to be grateful for. Now, each New Year I can’t wait to dump the old reductive behaviors because in their place, I gain more peace of mind and appreciation for what is really the great stuff—- like a truly amazing relationship with a man with whom I share values, love and respect, and children and family I adore.

I am surprised at how effective deciding to leave behind a behavior or attitude, even a relationship that no longer works for me, turns out to be.  Maybe the idea of having to work toward a goal all year sounds like too much, well, work. Maybe one brave dumping and a leap into a new year free of the baggage is the lazy way to do it but it works for me!

Anyway, I want to post more often. I am transitioning into my writer persona now and reading all the writer’s blogs. I’m learning a great deal. Hurray for social media!! Besides that, I’m on my own team now. I highly recommend this action. Being your own best friend, cheerleader and confidence builder is highly effective. You know yourself better than anyone else. Applaud your triumphs, even the small daily struggles you conquer. Let’s all have compassion first for ourselves and then for everyone else in the world.

Peace and love!

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Have you ever really put the effort and energy it takes to write a full length (80,000 plus words) novel? The idea for a book is a gift if it comes to you, begging to be fleshed out. I was thrilled to have a novel pop up out of seemingly nowhere and allow me to commit it to paper. Certainly I added my own experiences but the original idea just popped up and started writing itself. Now that I have finished that novel plus three-quarters of a sequence, and  having edited and re-edited at least six times (although I agree with others who say a writer could edit indefinitely), finding an agent is the trick. I don’t think I’m delusional in believing my work is marketable, although based on some of the reading I’ve done, not everyone is objective about their work.

Finding a story that takes the reader on a journey that forever changes them is a privilege I have experienced thousands of times. I want to be able to affect others as I have been moved by such books. I believe in my ability to create meaningful work!

I know there are gazillions of us wanna be authors out in the ether, and admittedly, we aren’t all great at what we do, yet writing is a gift in itself, published or not. Just having created a story from start to finish was an experience in itself. The process of writing helps define and hone our inner beliefs and attitudes, not to mention our imaginations. How will this mystery solve when even you, the writer, has no idea? Writing is both a challenge and a wonderful blessing. If I’m passionate enough and willing to hone my skills, I know it’s just a matter of serendipity and I will be published. Did that sound like bravado?

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A new moon teaches gradualness and deliberation and how one gives birth to oneself slowly. Patience with small details makes perfect a large work, like the universe. –Rumi

 Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity. –Thomas Merton

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner. Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity. –Lao-Tze (Translated by Stephen Mitchell)It is time to slow down, open the door and meet your destiny. Immerse yourself in nature. Look into the mystery of life with new eyes. Something magical is afoot. The time is now to find right relationship between body, soul and spirit.~Isha Lerner

  

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. – Carl Jung

 

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. ~Mary Oliver


I who am the beauty of the green earth and the white moon among the stars and the mysteries of the waters, I call upon your soul to arise and come unto me. For I am the soul of nature that gives life to the universe. From Me all things proceed and unto Me they must return. Let my worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold—all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals. Let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you. And you who seek to know Me, know that your seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the Mystery: for if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without. For behold, I have been with you from the beginning, and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.~Isha Lerner

The key to your happiness and contentment lies within you, within your own heart and mind. The way you start each day is very important; you can start off on the right foot or on the wrong one. You can wake up with a song of joy and gratitude in your heart for the new day, for being alive, for the very wonder of living, and for being in tune and harmony with the rhythm of all life. You can expect the very best from the coming day and therefore draw it to you. Or you can start the day with a chip on your shoulder, disgruntled and out of rhythm. You are responsible for what today will bring, and knowing it gives you an even greater responsibility than those souls who are not aware of it and therefore know no better. You cannot blame your state of mind on anyone else. It all rests with you. –Eileen Caddy (from The Spirit of Findhorn)

We are the mirror, as well as the face in it. We are tasting the taste of eternity this minute. We are pain and what cures pain. We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours. Soul of the world, no life, nor world remain, no beautiful women and men longing. Only this ancient love circling the holy black stone of nothing. Where the lover is the loved, the horizon and everything within it. –Rumi

You darkness, that I come from, I love you more than all the fires that fence in the world – for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone, and then no one outside learns of you. But the darkness pulls in everything: shapes, and fires, animals, and myself, how easily it gathers them! –powers and people. And it is possible a great energy is moving near me. I have faith in nights. –Rainer Maria Rilke

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can. –John Wesley

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world…As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. –Marianne Williamson

Ironically, to the extent we resist the invitation to journey within—when that is clearly what is called for—we may experience depression or melancholy. We end up withdrawing from the world into a kind of tortured isolation, never realizing that the Bogey Man is only a Bogey Man until we turn and face him. Find a quiet place that opens your heart and soul to the beauty within. This all-encompassing luminosity is the creative matrix for your new and renewed self. ~Isha Lerner

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I was amazed to realize that I had not followed through on my blog for three years from the time I started it. So much has happened during this short time in my life, the country and the world.

We are at a critical time in our evolution as people. We are living in fast times! Everything is changing and being redefined. The old ways and rules suddenly stop working and we must find new meaning for everything in our lives. We must understand we are a global community. Everything we do affects the rest of the world and vice versa.

 In this respect, the collective unconscious is constantly changing depending on the input from each one of us. We must take responsibility for our actions in every situation. The naivety of the past doesn’t fly anymore. If you don’t realize that in every moment you are either helping or harming by your every action, thought and word, you will soon find this to be true. I am seeing what I call “quick karma” occurring all over as people continue to act out of selfish self-interest. The world is speeding up; nothing happens that we don’t experience as a reaction much sooner than ever before in history.

If you are only concerned with yourself and your small universe, you will find yourself in situations that challenge you to grow and evolve. We are all being challenged to understand life is a gift that has at core its purpose and intention of being of service. Having been given this wonderous gift, our purpose is to find our passion and talents and to apply them to service to mankind in whatever way this may be appropriate for us.

My orientation to service has deepened over these last three years and I am grateful for the ability to do what I am here to do. Throughout my life as CEO in several organizations, I have redefined how to be the most efficient and effective leader I can be. It all came down to being a better role model of unconditional caring and respect for whomever I was dealing with. We must recognize the divinity in each one of us so that we can all work together toward harmony and peace.

This is the time to begin right thinking and acting in your life. Make decisions that are for the highest good of all involved. Think positive thoughts of hope and charity. Realize that every thought, word and action has consequences that will ultimately affect you and those you love. If you put out hate and division, so will these be reflected in your own life and the lives of those you love.

Understand that your intentions are your strongest tools. You can be doing “good works” but if the intention behind the action is less than pure or hold any agenda, the results you get will also be less than you hope for. There are so many ways to speak of karma. “What goes around, comes around” or “You reap what you sow” are two of the ways we tell each other we understand and even expect consequences for actions, but then we act as if we don’t really get this principle and are unhappy with our consequences down the road.

This is really what the law of attraction is speaking about. You can cut out pictures of mansions and race cars all day long. Staring at the photos and wishing is not going to bring these items to you. The way this principle works is exactly the way karma works. If you focus on helping others, being of service in whatever possible ways that fit your life and work, positive opportunities show up for you that may lead to the things you dream about. Still the best way to do this is to have the intention of peace, harmony and goodness for all of mankind with no personal agenda. This may sound counter-intuitive yet it works the best for having a good life and being part of the solution for this new world we are entering.

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You won’t find love in a bar. You may have been looking in all the likely places and still can’t find someone to love you. This is because you must love yourself first. This isn’t just a cliche. Unless you are loving, gentle and forgiving of yourself, you can not be this for anyone else, nor can you find someone loving to love you back. Someone who has good self-esteem, who values themself, expects respect and gives it back, someone who is neither self-judgmental or judmental of others is not going to want you unless you are their equal.

If you feel you have a large empty hole inside and are looking for someone to love you in order to fill that emptiness, you won’t find them. You will find someone else with a big hole looking for you to fill theirs up. You can only attract into your life someone who mirrors you. Would you choose yourself as a partner? If you can’t wholeheartedly say “Yes!”, this means you have work to do on yourself first. You must become the “right” person first in order to find the “right” person for you. The work you need to do is self-reflection. Nothing on the outside will make up for what lies beneath. If you are not happy with yourself, your unhappiness will be reflected in any relationships you have. You must decide to look deeply into yourself with truthfulness and be willing to accept responsibility for everything in your life in order to become the kind of person you would like to be in a relationship with.

This does not mean you engage in exercise in self-critism and hate. This does not mean you are to be critical or judgmental of yourself. It means you need to truthfully acknowledge and accept the aspects of yourself you have been hiding from. You would like yourself better if you didn’t think there were awful parts of you that you must keep hidden, even from yourself. If you really looked within, you would find you have strengths and weak areas, just like everybody else. When you accept both the things you are proud of and the things you would prefer not to own, you will begin to accept yourself, which is the first step toward self-love.

Be gentle with yourself. You are more loveable than you realize, but it will take you realizing this before anyone else can see it in you.

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