My Heart Leapt at This

Not the picture, Caz's comments:

“I would have liked to have heard a few more stories with joy as a focus. I feel like joy gets overshadowed too much by struggle and pain. The stories of pain are important so we never feel alone and it’s where we gain strength, BUT, it’s equally important to put joy on the centre stage too. Feeling joy is not something to hide away and I think society has a habit of doing this. Not surprising given how much the news dominates our space. I want to hear about joy more. I want to feel joy more. There was a lovely bracelet making service at BlogHer where you could give them a word and they’d etch it on a bracelet for you. My word was JOY. It’s why we’re here. Give JOY a chance.”

The above quote is from Caz who flew from Australia to L.A. to attend the #BlogHer conference. Caz is a world renowned blogger who writes YTravelBlog. Her photo won a BlogHer award and she was thus invited.

Caz: “A consistent message from all the speakers was the valuable role bloggers have to help make a positive difference in the world.”

Me: Here I am a little blogger sitting in my own little corner of the world wondering if I have anything of importance to say… can I make a difference, and why am I drawn to this avenue of expression in the first place?

Someone asked me the other day what I blog about. “Life, and whatever I choose to talk about,” I said, "and I want to be inspirational."

To whom? You? Me?

Both of us.

I trust that my audience will find me. You know if you aim your boat upstream, it takes a lot of paddling, but if you turn your boat to the current it will carry you...

Caz: “Instead of looking sideways, I’m going to throw out. It’s a term I just made up as I wrote that last sentence. Each time I go to cut myself down and underplay my value, I’m going to look up and throw something valuable out to the world – either a kind and supportive word or way that I can serve someone else to help them grow.”

Me: Yesterday I listened to a YouTube interview with #Terry Cole Whittiker. My long time readers know I love that woman. I had never felt such love as I did the weekend I spent with her. On YouTube, she was talking about her early days in the Science of the Mind ministry. When she was first asked to speak she didn’t know how to do it. So she cut inspirational passages from various books, pasted them on a yellow legal pad, and read them verbatim.

She was met with silence.

And then after the stunned audience recovered they applauded.

Her friend said to her, “Terry, you’re a speaker.”

And thus the speaker was born.

Her church grew to something like 7,000 attendees, and she had a national TV show. Now she lives in nature where she says she’s the happiest. And she seems to be following her own inner guidance, which is something I am trying to do. (Don’t try. Do.)

Caz: "Sheryl Crow spoke at the BlogHer conference about her breast cancer journey and how it returned her to whole foods and the nourishment of herself. “A lot of the stress we live with now is a result of what we let in – the constant barrage of people’s opinion”  

Sheryl says:

“Being empowered means seeking what our soul wants. Life is made up of circumstances reminding you of who you are.”

Caz: “I absolutely loved this. It was the quote of the conference for me alongside Jessie Weiner, who said in the panel discussion about feminism:

“When do the grown ups step in to fix this. Hang on we are the grown ups”

Me: The reason I began my new blog http://www.traveling-through-life.com is that I watched Marie Forleo's UTube interview with Tony Robbins regarding his documentary created by Joe Berlinger titled "I Am Not Your Guru." 

(How did that come to me? A stumble? Divine guidance?)

That interview prompted me to watch the documentary.  What an event! Awesome. Touching. Inspiring. (It’s available free on Netflix.) If strong language offends you, don’t watch, but it would be a shame to miss it.

Now, I wonder, do I have the courage to go to a #Tony Robbins live event?

I once saw him in Portland at a millennium 

Celebration. That would be 16 years ago!

My friend and I felt we were walking on air when we left the auditorium. But now, the closest Robbins' event to me features a fire walk. Yipes! 

The next Robbins even is coming up in November. I'm considering it.

What to hear about it? Oh my, what am I setting myself up for?

Thanks for reading.

Keep checking in with www.wishonwhitehorses.com you know I Love you guys,

Joyce

Brain Cake & News

No Brains were harmed in the making of this cake.

While I was playing with a new website my 10-year-old grandson was in the kitchen whipping up a brain cake. All eatable. The pink was made with food coloring. The red is strawberry jelly. The brain's cerebral cortex was his concoction of a fondant--a ton of sugar, water and marshmallows.

The cake tasted really good.

I should have photographed the kitchen.

You guys who know me understand what Wish on White Horses is about, but others probably think it is a site about horses...so I decided I needed a new focus--to be clear in what I want and to help others who are on the same journey as I am. 

I would love it if you would check out 

www.traveling-through-life.com

Thanks ever so much--you guys are awesome!

To the Universe and Beyond!
Joyce

Critiques are welcome.

You Are One

“Believe it or not, you are parading yourself naked, drunk and writing every time you press “Publish.” -- Adour Lara

Holy Cow.

The other day while having lunch with new friends, I said ,”Tell me about your past.”

The man said, “I know yours.”

“What do you mean?”

“I read your book.”

“What book?”

He found me on Amazon and read “Mother’s Letters,” It isn’t about me so much as about my mother, but I felt exposed, embarrassed—well I did reveal things about myself. Of late I had been thinking of taking that book off Amazon and replacing it with Mother’s Letters only, plus a brief intro and epilog by me. No more expose’. I'm done.

And I thought I was talking to you personally.

I’m sitting here with all my clothes on, I drank a smoothie for breakfast—no alcohol in it,  and well, I’m just thinking through my fingers…So what shall we talk about?

Last week I saw the movie Free State of Jones (ruined my state of mind for days), but I believe as the teacher #Abraham said that as the old ones croak and new ones come into being, the old ways are diluted. We have evolved. We aren’t the people of yesterday.  And the new ones now being born  are cable ready—and with that a higher consciousness.

The other day my little seven-year-old grandson was contemplating the Big Bang Theory, and who made God.

I said, “Well, the man named Einstein with his equation E=MC2 said that matter is neither made nor destroyed. Perhaps it always was.

“Good idea that man Einstein had,” he said.

Things are changing.

I’m not the only one championing the cause for living a life of freedom. Caz of Y-Travel says, “It’s about our journey of unplugging from the chaos. Saying no to the fears and the things that don’t serve us, and saying yes to our dreams, and to the life connection we crave.”

When I say freedom that is what I mean, the internal freedom we give ourselves.

Each night as we lay our heads on our pillow we are given another opportunity to awaken into a new day.

Do we pick up the thoughts, worries, concerns of the night before? Do we  get up, make coffee, check the computer, shower, go to a job we don’t like, grumble through the day, come home, collapse, watch the news (horror), fall into bed and do it all over again.

No wonder we have gotten into the “robotization, that James Clerk Maxwell spoke about.

Maxwell was a physicist and mathematician who lived from 1831 to 1879. Maxwell proposed that a fourth-dimensional universe exists. There are the three dimensions, of course, that we can see-- height, width, and depth. Maxwell proposed of a fourth one exists that we can’t see. (You explain that one to me, perhaps that is where intuition, psychic abilities, and hunches lie, and  that feeling that we want more…

”Little sister, little brother, don’t believe a word about things you’ve heard about askin’ too much too soon. You can hold back the tide, but you can never hold the woman, I say the woman in the moon…” Barbra Streisand

Maxwell often spoke of “authenticity.” He wrote that in a society that is becoming increasingly insane, only a concern for ethics can restore sanity. To arrest the process of robotization, he said, each person needs to develop high ethical standards to rejuvenate the society.

Think about it. We all have our little corner of the world. If each of us reached for that authenticity Maxwell wrote about, there would be no need to “save” anyone.

I see this new thought enlightening the globe like a special effects wave.

I once met a biologist who worked for Nikon Industries. She had seen the fertilization of a human embryo in a petre dish. She said the moment the sperm enter the ova a flash occurred.

There was the moment of life.

There is an often old story—you wonder about these stories sometimes, but this story is about the 100^th monkey.

So the story goes, there was an island with a tribe of monkeys. Sweet potatoes were their primary source of food. One day one little monkey took her sweet potato to the water’s edge and washed it. Soon other monkeys, having not seen the first one wash her potato, began to wash theirs. Soon all the monkeys on the island were washing their potatoes.

This story is used to emphasize that once an idea is introduced into a culture, it spreads whether taught or not. Makes you wonder about that 4^th dimension Maxwell spoke of doesn’t it?

So, what or who is sucking your energy?

From Caz’s website, More energy sucks:

·                     society’s expectations

·                     schedules and demands

·                     over commitment to tasks and people that don’t matter

·                     overconsumption and materialism

·                     the habit of competing, comparing, criticizing

·                     a life of shoulds

·                     a traditional path that does not make you feel alive (traditional is okay IF it is your mojo).

·                     relationships that don’t serve you.

·                     devices that steal your time with meaningless crap, memes, bullshit, and other people’s drama.

A 1995 recorded conversation at sea. (Released rather mischievously.)

Navy voice: “Please divert your course 15 to the North to avoid a collision.

Civilian voice: “Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

Navy Voice: “This is the captain of a US Navy Ship. I say again, divert your course.”

Civilian Voice: “I say again divert your course.”

Navy Voice: “This is the airship Enterprise, we are a large warship of the US Navy. Divert your course now.”

Civilian Voice: “This is the lighthouse. Your call.”

From Two X's (Not a Beer)

Yesterday I managed a can opener—that was to open a can of chicken noodle soup for dinner. Breakfast, fixing coffee and toast was too much work.

Today I popped up, fixed my husband’s lunch, did the dishes, threw some laundry into the washer, folded clothes, emptied the garbage, swept the floor, and hey, I’m ready to go.

Two days of either stomach flu or food poisoning made me think I was dying.

NOT!

I believe I can hang in there a while longer.

So what are we going to talk about?

I am fed up with nitpickers, naysayers, and mongers of atrocities, I got into it too, it’s so easy to see what’s wrong with schools, the health system, the government, people who are trying to “help” you  write, sell, blog, get published, start your business, sell to millions, that I am saying screw it. And this morning—you probably saw it, the woman Nellie Stevens who discovered the XY chromosome that determines how we get to be male or female, didn’t get credit because she had two XX’s.  She was a female! Oh, the horror of it. Well now she is honored on Google and her old professor who took credit ought to be red-faced.

But, while being sick I spent a day reading a book, Jason’s Gold by Will Hobbs. YA fiction—good for a sick day, and I wanted to study how he wrote, but I got so wrapped up in the story I forgot to notice.

That’s the way it ought to be.

Monday Fourth of July (before sickness) I saw this on a tee-shirt at Art in the Vineyard in Eugene, Oregon:

“I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.

—E.B. White (Charlottes Web)

That pretty much sums it up.

It Isn’t a Conspiracy, It's an Avalanche

Innocence

Not Everything is a Conspiracy, but there are enough to make us cynical.

Not a good way to live.

Pharmaceutical companies want to make money. Stockholders want to make money. Sales people want to make money. Doctors want to make money. Insurance companies want to make money.

It isn’t a #conspiracy, it's an avalanche.

Let’s use doctors for example.

Most doctors are well meaning.

And then we add prescribed drugs into the mix. Doctors get their information regarding medicines from sales people.

Most sales people are well meaning.

Sales people want their commission. Their job is to sell. They want to please the company and the stockholders. They want to make a living.

They tell the doctors the benefits of a particular drug, the doctor sees the benefit, thus he prescribes it.

“My doctor has me on it,” I hear someone say and I want to scream. “No, you have yourself on it. Your doctor offered it. You took it.”

 Notice what you are putting in your mouth.

It’s the problem with the big industrial age. Things get out of hand.

Be diligent. 

Take care of yourself.

I think back to some of the spiritual practices of old. Many disciplines have said that thoughts create. Many have said that our attitude influences our behavior and the outcome. Meditation clears the brain, lowers blood pressure, centers people. Prayer is talking to a higher power. All these things have been in our culture, but they, like the potions we call medicines, became ritualized. Beliefs about them became so strongly held they became a religion or a superstition. 
Some became suspect, some went underground, or were fought over because they were controversial, and thus many lost their power.

I had a colonoscopy once. I had to sign a form and the bottom line stated that death could be a result.

I said to the doctor, “I normally don’t sign forms that have death as a possibility.”

He said, “You could get run over by a bus too.”

I wanted to say, “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard of,” but I didn’t. To antagonize someone about to perform a procedure on me didn’t seem like a good idea.

Instead, I said, ”But I don’t stand in the middle of the road when I see a bus barreling down on me.

Bold Statement

In my bold statement above I realize I have not addressed some of the points in my description. It sounds like a hodgepodge.

It is.

I know I break all the rules of focus, of having a brand, and of aiming for the big traffic. Not that I wouldn’t like to have people read the words I slave over, (kidding, I do it because I want to). It’s just that I suck at #marketing.

I have not addressed that you ought to believe in this life, but I think it’s foolish not to.

I believe our life has a purpose, and I believe in #Free Will, and that some souls come in with a blueprint, while others make it up as they go along.

I believe that the earth needs souls like you to bring in the light. I believe those with a high consciousness raise the entire consciousness of the planet, and I want to band with those people.

  

I think that many have lost heart. They think the world is screwy, that the government is corrupt,  that #pharmaceutical companies lie to us, and that most ads, including #elections, manipulate us.

That may all be true, but listen, folks, remember what John F. Kennedy said, "The problems were made by man, and therefore can be solved by man."

Soup box for the day, and yep, I think there is life beyond this world too.

Shellfish and Strawberries? Who knew.

Rather makes me hungry.

I was going to wish you a Happy #Solstice today.

But I’m a day late.

It was yesterday.

Rats.

My husband and I were married on the summer Solstice, June 21. So I always thought the solstice hit on June 21.

Not this year.

This year it was June 20. The #Strawberry Moon coincided with the solstice yesterday. And here I was thinking it sounded so romantic, our anniversary, the solstice, the longest day of the year, an astrological event that hadn’t happened since 1967, and won’t again until 2062. We could have dinner on an outside patio and watch a pink moon rise over the horizon.

Not pink, you say?

Maybe it will be gold for it hangs low in the eastern sky—which, when I was growing up, we called a Harvest Moon. The Algonquin Native American tribes named this astrological event the Strawberry Moon because it occurs right at the height of the season when strawberries are harvested. It told them it was time to harvest ripe fruit.

Google tells me that the day after the solstice--that’s today--is great crabbing and shrimp harvesting time.

So today I fantasize about sitting outside on the day after the longest day of the year, watch the harvest moon rise, and eat crab and strawberries.

Sounds good to me.

Happy day after.

On the last blog, I mentioned the Chinese Crested dog…the one my little Sweet Pea is turning into. Notice her hind legs? Not only are they naked, but she is a pinto.

And then someone else took over...

The evolution of animal stacking...

                                    click here

"What?" The Most Repeated Word in Any Household

Do you have a cat that likes to sleep on your computer keyboard?

If I leave a warm computer for one minute, there will be a cat on it. And nine times out of ten I leave the lid open.

Obi has written 45 pages of I”s, and as many“W’s. ” He has turned my chrome off and turned the screen sideways. It takes three keystrokes to turn it back vertical, so I guess it takes three keystrokes to turn it horizontal.  Now that’s one multitasking cat.

He’s cute. He’s adorable. He likes to keep his butt warm.

I’m the one who can’t remember to close the lid.

He likes to sleep on that too.

Oh, and while I’m on the subject of animals, my little Sweet Pea turned one-year- old this week, June 14, 2016. And she has turned into a Chinese Crested dog.

They told me she was Maltese/ Chihuahua.

Not.

Her back legs have become naked and spotted, and her front legs are following close behind. (This is the first time I’ve known front legs to follow the back ones, but that’s the way it is.)

She kind of funny looking from the back, but has a darling face—with fur. Online they say a Chinese Crested can be with fur or without, and sometimes the owners shave them to give their coat some semblance of order.

When my trainer and I were discussing that she looked like a Chinese Crested, she said, “Well, you’ve got one. and put sun screen on her.”

The Chinese Crested is old breed, from Chinese Royalty. When I asked the trainer what they were bred for she said, “To climb under the covers and keep your feet warm.”

Sounds good to me.

Well,  it’s been a quiet week in Junction City except for my animal drama and my psychological ups and downs.

To write? Not to write? What am I doing here? You know, life's persistent questions...

The Dance of the Chinese Crested. This is not Sweet Pea, she still has more hair.