Dead Men (and Women) Talking

What better time than Halloween—and Samhain—to wonder about the dear and departed? A very special, spiritually aware friend of mine surprised me recently by commenting that she has a very difficult time dealing with death and loss. I doubt many of us covet the experience or rank it among our faves—even if it does have a fixed spot on all our Must Do lists. But are our only choices to fear or worry or otherwise resist the idea—and those who’ve already experienced it?

Not too long ago I was browsing at a local Barnes and Noble and I happened to notice a book on the shelf by real-life psychic and medium Alison Dubois, whose life is the basis for the hit TV series “Medium.” I wasn’t really looking for a book on mediumship so I passed it over. When I did, one of the books fell off the shelf at my feet. When I knelt down to pick it up, another (same book) fell off the shelf, hitting me on the head. Before I could pick up the second book, another fell off at my feet, and then another . . . and then another . . until there were five or six of them in a pile on the floor at my feet. People were sitting around watching this spectacle with their mouths hanging open.

Well I don’t need six books to fly off a shelf and hit me in the head to know when I’m being given a message. I bought the book, “We Are Their Heaven: Why The Dead Never Leave Us.” And as I read it I began to wonder more and more about what the dead really mean to us. Eventually I asked The Team, what might the dead have to say to us if we were willing to ask—and able to hear?

The first thing the “Dead” would likely tell you if you asked is that the word “dead” that you use to describe those who have transitioned back to nonphysical has very little to do with those who have made their transition or with the connections with them that are still available to you.

There is a finality, a black-or-white, either-or connotation to that word you use that is pretty far from what is actually going on when you withdraw your attention from your physical experience. The “Dead” are as alive in some respects as anyone physically walking on your planet—and in ways, more alive than most. The “Dead” are as much a part of the eternally flowing stream of consciousness as any you would call “Living” even if they are not present or apparent to you in ways you can perceive with your physical senses.

You are eternal beings and the “Dead” know this better than most of you still having a physical experience. They are part of the stream of well being that always flows—in fact they are so immersed in that stream of pure positive energy that they experience none of the separation or disconnection from it that is so often true for those of you still hanging around in physical bodies.

With regard to what they might tell you or what they have to say to you . . . the Dead would—and do—say to you all the time that they are with you . . . that they are available to you . . that connection with them is not only possible but desired and desirable to the extent that you recognize that their existence is now integrally part of that stream, that joyful current that is always flowing. They are as accessible to you as you are able to plug in to that current and to tune in to the frequency of joy that they are always a part of.

Your legends and fairy tales and folklore often portray the dead as forbidding in some way, as frightening or dangerous . . . Your stories about them often present them as haunting you when in fact, no one ever haunts you but yourself. Believe us when we say that the “Dead” all have much better things to do than waste time bugging any of you . . . and in fact they (We) find that whole idea rather entertaining—as will all of you when you make the same transition.

We get that it makes for stimulating and spooky tales to offer these ideas of the forbidding or ghoulish or restless dead . . . But we assure you no such Dead man or woman exists. What you call death is the purest and easiest and most delicious re-entry into pure positive energy that anyone could imagine. It has been said—because it’s true—that if you had any idea how sweet “Death” really is, you’d all be jumping off bridges.

If you wonder what the “Dead” can tell you . . . if you wonder what message they might have for you, then we encourage you to ask. It’s far simpler than most of you think and requires no special skill or training—only the desire and the willingness to receive in response to your asking.

If someone you love has transitioned back to nonphysical, he or she is still as ‘with you’ in ways as they ever were—in fact more with you in the sense that he or she now has no resistance holding them apart from a pure positive connection with you. Indeed, you can have much better, much more loving, more fulfilling relationships with loved ones (or hated ones) after their transition than you frequently were able to have when they walked with you on the planet.

If you want to feel that connection with someone, reach for the happiest, most pleasing, most satisfying memory or thought of that person that you can find. Remember or imagine something about them that you loved or cherished or were amused by. Revisit an experience with them that made you smile or laugh or feel content. Move yourself into a feeling space where that one you loved is on your mind and in your heart in a way that warms and satisfies.

We promise you, they will meet you there, at your request. To whatever extent you can believe and expect them to join you . . . they will respond to your invitation. They will hear and answer your questions. And most important . . . they will fill you with the very best, the most perfect expression of loving—and recognizable—connection that you could want.

Those you love remain those you love, even when they’ve left behind the body that they occupied. Recover and reclaim—or reinvent—your connection with them and the one you knew and loved will be as present, as available, as eager to be with you as you want them to be.

From that standpoint, any day—or night—can be Halloween. The veil is only as thick, as opaque or as impenetrable as you believe it to be. Let those you love who are no longer physically present, show you just how present they still are and always will be. You don’t have to wait until the end of October—or for a book to hit you in the head—to enjoy a relationship with the very living Dead.

Leave it to The Team to make ghosts seem cuddly as kittens. Oh--and the pumpkin-colored Halloween font was Their idea.

I still don’t know exactly what that whole Barnes and Noble book fiasco was about, but lately I have had some pretty interesting and even enjoyable ‘visits’ with some ‘gone but not gone’ friends. My own reflection scares me more than any of them.

Clearly we get what we believe, on some level. If Halloween and the dead who are often celebrated on that occasion are scary to you, then a séance may not be the best idea you’ve ever had. On the other hand, if reconnecting with someone you love and want to feel close to again sounds like just what the witch doctor ordered . . . . then I highly recommend it as an experience that can leave you feeling not creeped out, but comforted . . . not spooked but inspired . . . and for those lovely moments when you’re willing to see the veil for the transparent and permeable piece of fabric that it is . . . sweetly complete.

The Bad News Is The Good News

One of the cherished friends of The Shower Channel and a valued reader of The Shower Team’s messages, contacted me recently to ask for some clarity about some rather significant events in her life and the questions that have emerged as a result.

The Team responded to her questions in a way that she seemed to appreciate and as I looked at the response she received, it occurred to me that there might be others who would benefit from the message as well.

She graciously consented to allow me to post her question and the response to it here in the hope that someone asking similar questions might benefit from the answers she received.

In the past two and a half years everything that I have ever earned, married, or been employed by has disappeared in less than one week. My life is in a huge upheaval and I'm currently very fortunate to be on "stress leave" through the insurance from my employer. I have always wanted to "work" (earn a good income/work) in the field of spiritual transformation. Could the Shower Team give me some feedback on the best/most uplifting/most universally beneficial career direction I can take to fulfill my life's purpose.

My second question is: I have been married more than once...... these relationships have taught me so much.... but now I truly want to "marry" or partner with someone who loves me unconditionally and is my "match" on the emotional, physical, spiritual, intellectual level. Does the Shower Team see any possibility of that? I think that I still have so much to offer this perfect partner.....or am I meant to be alone and live a life more like a nun?

Your questions are questions that we understand are being born out of what you might consider to be the ruins of your current circumstances . . . or at least, what feels to you like the tumbling down of most of what you have constructed for yourself prior to this. The questions speak to your uncertainty and your current lack of clarity, and to the disappointment you are feeling about the way that things have gone for you lately.

Nevertheless, we see and hear the current conditions of your experience, the breakdown of much if not all that you have built . . and with all due love and respect, we say “Good for you!” “Bravo!” And while it may sound strange or even cold to respond in such a way to your obvious discomfort with current conditions . . . we want you to understand that the reason we applaud where you are is, in part, because of the powerful desire that is being launched from you under these current conditions. Powerful desire is being born here and where there is powerful desire there is powerful life force being summoned forth. The current of your life is flowing swiftly—more swiftly all the time, even if you cannot necessarily see that right this minute.

That current is carrying you in the direction of new or newly clarified dreams and desires. In the midst of this rubble or this ruin or this loss that you are experiencing, there are new ideas coming forth, a new light dawning that is pointing you more than ever in the direction of what your heart desires most.

When you find yourself in such a place of loss or letdown, looking around and noticing all that has fallen away . . . there is such freedom available to you if only you can see it. There is such possibility swirling all around you, such a delicious flow of energy and such a powerful calling to you if only you will hear it.

You can go anywhere from here. You can do whatever it is that you decide your heart is calling you to do. Anything is possible and very little is now in your way. There is truly an open horizon before you and all that you are ‘meant’ to do is to pick the point on that horizon that shines brightest to you and begin to move toward it.

You ask—as many do—questions about your life purpose or questions about what kind of connection, what kind of love or partnership, has been determined or ordained for you. And we say, please reframe the question, because asking it the way that you are asking implies that someone other than you has the final say about any of that.

What we want you to understand and to embrace and to celebrate is YOUR power to decide those answers for yourself. We want you to really feel how much power you have right here and now to determine the course of your own life—simply by becoming as clear as possible about what it is that you really really want.

Instead of asking, “What career will most fulfill my life purpose?” Ask instead, “what kind of work would truly set me on fire? What kind of work would I so love to do that I would long for every sunrise so that I could get started again?” Instead of asking, “Will love ever find me or am I ‘meant’ to be alone,” ask yourself what it is and why it is that you want to share your joyous life experience with another. What is it you want to offer someone? Why does it matter to you that someone be there sharing your journey and participating in your expansion and unfolding with you?

We want you so much to understand what a powerful creator of your own experience you really are, even though you may feel right now as though you are at the mercy of forces that are beyond your control. The fact is, nothing that has come to you, nothing that has ‘happened to’ you has or could come about unless it were somehow a response to what you have been offering in terms of what you think and how you feel.

So begin to focus now, during this blessed and richly fertile time in your life, on your desires. Feel them as clearly and purely as possible. Be as sure as you can be what it is that you REALLY want and begin to give your attention to it. Live it. Breathe it. Sing it. Dance it. Dream it. Write it. Paint it. Expect it!

You are, in fact, at one of the most pivotal and powerful places you can be right now . . . standing in your here and now, with almost nothing to lose and with everything to gain. All you have to do is decide what your gains will look like—and the only criteria for that are whatever pleases you.

Trust your own connection to Source, trust the You that you really are to continue to offer guidance to you—as You have been doing already all through these recent times—toward all that your heart is calling you to. See and celebrate the fact that you have turned toward You, and that nothing and no one can stand in your way now but you.

Follow Your own lead, day by day, dream by dream, thought by thought . . . and just watch how beautifully and perfectly you rise from these apparent ashes, ready to receive the life that YOU meant for you to live.

I don’t know about my friend, but that message made me want to go out and buy a bumper sticker or something. “Eat My Ruins!” Okay, maybe that’s taking things a little too far. I know that my track record is filled with a lot more boo-hooing that bravado. And maybe the message isn’t so much that boo-hooing is bad, but that it’s the wet tip of a mighty iceberg.

Looking at the debris and envisioning the new and improved structure that could rise shining from the rubble is often a challenge for even the most imaginative among us. But sometimes the sky can look pretty damned spectacular when you’re looking up from the curb . . . and when there’s not much left to lose, it’s amazing how wide the field of possibilities can become.

It’s enough to get me to think about slapping a different headline on my bad news, and that leaves me feeling much freer to write—and edit--my own copy . . . and for the moment, complete.

Is The Future Our Business?

I’ve noticed that one of the things that happens when you start describing yourself as a channel or an intuitive or a psychic, is that people want you to predict their future. Lately I can’t seem to get away from questions like the ones in that old Doris Day song, “Que Sera Sera.” “What will I be? Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?”

We all want to know on some level what’s ahead for us. What’s going to happen? What can we expect? Will things get better? We think there’s some power in that ‘knowledge’ and many of us (myself included) will often seek out those who we think might have the answers.

Something about being on the receiving end of those questions, though, always makes me a little uneasy. Fortune telling is fascinating and even fun sometimes. But how much does it help us?
I asked The Shower Team, “Is the future really ours to know? Is it even any of our business?”

It is understandable that you wonder about the future, particularly when you are holding a view of yourself or your experience where you see your life as something that happens to you rather than something that you are creating moment by moment. If you feel that the events of your life are more or less random events or are controlled by some higher power who is pulling the strings because you’re just not smart enough to manage the whole business . . . . then it stands to reason that you would have great curiosity about what’s ‘out there’ for you or what will come your way next . . . or when the things you want might appear.

The problem with that sort of speculation is that it is often attached to a sense of powerlessness. In fact those very questions: When will I meet the lover of my dreams . . . what will I be doing a year from now . . . . where will I be living when all the things I’ve asked for finally come . . . and so on and so on . . . are questions that suggest some sense of your having little to no say in the direction that your life takes from wherever you stand.

There is nothing wrong with imagining your future, of course. We urge you to do it as often as you can, provided what you imagine feels joyful and eager and compelling to you. What we also urge, however, is for you to recognize that you are the author, the creator, of whatever future comes your way.

You shape your future with every choice you make. Every single thing that you give your attention to over time helps to chart the course of your life. Everything you focus on . . . everything you look at with consistent joy or hope or pleasure or anticipation—or with consistent worry or fear or doubt or anxiety . . . becomes part of the fabric of your future.

But more often than not, you don’t approach your future with that sort of perspective. Instead, you wait for your life to happen in many respects . . . and you think about what’s coming as though it’s part of a script somebody else is writing that you haven’t been allowed to read beyond today’s episode. What this does is keep you in the dark about your own life and about the possibilities that are before you, waiting for your creative input.

When you ask, “Will I meet the man or woman of my dreams?” or whatever it is in your future that you can’t quite trust, you are in a sense saying, “I have serious doubts that I’m going to find anybody.” Why else would you ask? If you were confident and eager and joyfully anticipating the rendezvous with that one who ill be the perfect match for you, then the question would be irrelevant or at least, unnecessary. Your belief in your ability to manifest this desire would be evident in how you feel and what you think . . . and the future would simply be that vividly drawn, lushly felt image that you have created in your mind and that you are moving toward as a result of continually choosing the thoughts that line up with it.

What we would encourage you to do is to reframe your picture of the future. Instead of seeing it as some inevitable chain of events that you must simply wait for and accept . . . see it for the powerfully dynamic production that it is . . . see it as a play or film or novel that you are writing one chapter, one day, one line at a time . . . shaping it with each thought you keep thinking, each desire you keep launching. See your future as the fluid and responsive canvas and palette that it is, being ever colored and fashioned and modified and perfected by the choices you make.

You don’t have to do this, of course. You can continue to hold whatever belief you choose, continue to practice whatever thoughts are most comfortable or familiar to you. You can consult whomever you like and believe whatever answers you are given. But whether you see it or not, the future that unfolds for you will always—always—be the result of what you give your attention to where you stand here and now . . . and in the moment after that . . . and in the moment after that . . .

So when you ask about the future, instead of asking about what’s coming when or who’s going to show up where or how things will be for you there or then . . . ask instead, “What will I focus on next that will take me forward in the direction of my heart’s desire?”

You’ll never go wrong with that approach—and never need anyone to ever tell you again what your future holds—unless you just like hearing somebody tell you what you already know.

I’m pretty sure they’re not really trying to put psychics out of business. I remember hearing a very wise (from my perspective) intuitive say that the best question to ask in a reading isn’t “What does the future hold?” but rather, “What can I understand about the present that will help make the future brighter?” Clearly she wasn’t as longwinded as The Team but the same point seemed to be made.

If I pay attention and focus more consciously on the future I’m creating in the here and now, then it probably stands to reason that some if not most of the answers to my questions about the future will become largely self-evident. That doesn’t mean I’ll never get a second (or third) opinion, but it does offer me a more self-reliant approach to the whole business of what will be.

That leaves me feeling a little bit surer not only of my ability to shape my tomorrows but to tell how they’re likely to shape up. And that leaves me feeling like a much more self-reliant psychic—and for the present moment, complete.

Our Happy Place—Are We There Yet?

Has anyone asked you lately if you were happy? Really happy? How did you respond?

When you talk—or think—about being happy, is it in present or future tense? Maybe when your dream lover shows up? Or when you get that big career break? Or when your house sells . . . or you leave for vacation or your complexion clears up . . .

Does happiness always feel like an event that hasn’t happened yet? A place you haven’t been yet? A person you haven’t met yet?

I wondered to The Shower Team about the nature of true happiness and more specifically, the timing of it . . . why does it so often feel like something somewhere up ahead rather than something right in front of me? Is it possible to reach out and touch it now---and to hang on?

The reason that happiness so often feels remote or removed from you, the reason that it often feels like something‘out there rather than something right here is because of the way you tend to think about it and to describe it to yourself and others.

You usually describe happiness as a noun when in fact it is a verb. You think of happiness as a person, place, or thing . . . as yet unattained, and you hold yourself back from the fullest possible joy available to you, believing that your happiness must be earned or achieved or perhaps, granted as a favor by some benevolent bestower of random reasons to be happy.

You think of happiness not as the constantly flowing stream of well being that it is, the ever-present joyful current of life that you are living . . . . but rather as this stop or that stop along the way, as this piece of treasure or that interesting character that you might find . . .. It is as if you were deciding to take an exhilarating ride down a scenic river . . . but then concluding that the real joy is getting to the end and pulling your boat out of the water rather than savoring the wild time that you’re having . . . . or purchasing a ticket to an amusement park full of stimulating experiences and deciding that happiness is being done with it all and calling it a night and heading home rather than throwing your hands up in the air and screaming at the top of your lungs as you experience each available ecstatic moment on each available attraction.

The point is that you get your ideas about happiness rather twisted up to the point where you really believe that your joy comes when what you want is in your hands rather than in the journey toward it. You make happiness—not unlike love—conditional and contingent. You essentially say, “Happy means having this” . . . or “Happy means having that” . . . . and then because deep down you know that’s not it . . . you are constantly coming up with something else to have that you think happiness will result from.

It is not the wanting of more that is screwy here. Rather, it is your mistaking the having of wherever ‘it’ is for happiness when happiness is so not the ‘thing’ you want . . . but rather the joy that is always calling to you and always taking you in the direction of whatever you want, when you let it. Happiness is the choice to see what is perfect right where you are. Happiness is the choice to appreciate what’s in front of you . . . AND what is ahead of you . . . AND what’s behind you . . . Happiness is the decision to ‘be’ happy no matter where you are or what you want that you don’t have yet . . . simply because it feels so much better to feel good than it does to feel sad or lost of afraid or angry . . . .

Happiness is you choosing to see that well being is the natural state of things. Happiness is you recognizing that nothing you want that hasn’t come yet is an excuse for you to feel bad. Happiness is you coming to the conclusion that you get to decide how you feel in any and every moment of your experience . . . and that no as yet unfulfilled desire . . . no as yet unobtained goal . . . no as yet unmet lover . . no as yet unexperienced level of satisfaction or wellness or abundance . . . is a good enough reason for you to stand there in you’re here and now, choosing to feel unhappy.

Happy is the act of choosing to see who You really are. Happy is the act of deciding that you will not use any of the excuses available to you to hold yourself back from the stream of well being that is always flowing all around you.

Happy is the act of choosing to see that there is no destination still in front of you that is sufficient cause for you to be miserable where you are . . . it is the process of allowing yourself to feel good along the way . . . . to truly, genuinely, savor the ride you’re having . . . to understand that where you’re going or what you’re hoping for or who you’re waiting for is never really the point . . . . but rather it is the exhilaration, the stimulation, the satisfaction, the sheer pleasure of being on your way that is your happiness.

And that, dear ones, is never more than a choice away. Never remote or unavailable. Never off limits to you. You can decide that happiness is in the hands of some prince who hasn’t come yet or some ship that hasn’t come in yet or that it is some trophy you haven’t worked hard enough to earn yet. But why? Why decide to postpone what is so there for you now? Why wait to enjoy the ride? Why keep putting off the truly limitless joys that are right in front of you?

Your happy place is not a place. It’s a simple choice to be made over and over . . . anytime, anywhere, with anyone, one happier or more pleasing thought at a time . . . When you really let yourself realize—and believe—that . . . what a truly happy traveler you will be.

Actually, I tend to like roller coaster rides better when they’re over, but that’s just me—and not the point. What a compelling idea it is, to think about happiness being something I can do, not something I have to hope or pray or strive or slave away for.

Old habits often die hard, and I know my habit is to believe that things have to be different if I’m going to feel better. But what if happiness really has nothing to do with ‘things’ being different? What if it really is just a choice I make. How powerful a magician would that make me—able to transform any moment into at least a slightly happier one?

It leaves me feeling . . . well, happier, able to go a bit more merrily on my way, and for the moment, complete.

Love Hurts, Right?

Lately I can’t seem to get away from the subject of relationships . . . what to do about them . . . how to find them . . . how to live with them . . . how to live without them . . .

Whether in one or not, the questions remain. Most recently, a friend voiced her conviction to me about the necessity of ‘working’ on a relationship in order to preserve and keep it healthy. She was only stating what we probably all have heard and hold true: that relationships are hard work, that they must be given our diligent and determined effort in order to succeed.

So it felt like time, again, to ask The Team to talk about relationships. Specifically, what makes them seem so complicated and so hard? Why does it take so much effort to make them fly?

There is considerable accumulated consensus among you that relationships are hard work and that they take great effort and care and sacrifice and compromise in order to succeed. It is really just a part of your larger flawed premise about the necessity of hard labor for the obtaining of anything that you want.

With relationships as with most things that you deeply desire, you have agreed together that it surely cannot come easily or without struggle and so you perpetuate this myth and treat it like law and so, not surprisingly, your relationships are often trying and tedious and demanding—because you have decided, in effect, that they must be that way because, after all—isn’t anything worth having the result of blood, sweat and tears?

And we say . . . no.

We also assume that you would prefer that we not leave it at that, and so we’ll also say this: Get over it. With relationships as with any other powerful desire that you give birth to, what matters is your alignment with that desire. What matters is you allowing yourself to so line up with the joyous wanting of that desired thing . . . allowing yourself to ‘be’ the person who can give and receive the love that you desire . . . allowing yourself to believe yourself worthy of that love and able to both give and receive it . . . And here’s the real kicker: you have to decide that your happiness matters more than that relationship that you long for.

And immediately the protests begin. “But aren’t relationships about selflessness?” ‘Isn’t love all about putting the other first?” “Isn’t love defined in the great user manuals for our species that have been handed down through the ages as care and attention to the ‘other’s’ happiness more than my own?”

Even those of you who don’t buy tickets and board that train of thought still object to the notion that a relationship can flourish without your toil and trouble. You have learned just as diligently from your own brand of experts that two people can only maintain a happy and healthy connection with each other if both people are putting the other first . . . or at least, putting the relationship first.

We get how hard it is for most of you to hear this, but you’ve been sold a bill of goods. You are barking up the wrong tree. You can’t get where you want to be from there. What you must do—every man and woman jack of you—is decide that you are going to be the happiest, most fulfilled, most satisfied, most stimulated and stimulating you that you can possibly be . . . that you are going to create the most exhilarating life for yourself that you can possibly create . . . that you are going to fill your life with appreciation and eagerness and enjoyment . . . And then, dear ones, we promise you, the relationship that you truly want . . . the relationship that IS about joy and fulfillment and appreciation will emerge from the confluence of your alignment with your desire and the alignment of an other with theirs.

Here’s the rub. You confuse what you want—with what you think you need. You think about relationships often from a place of not believing in your own worthiness . . . You start your approach to connection with another from a position of weakness or discouragement or self-doubt or insecurity. You look to another to fill some void you think you have. You look to another to reflect something back to you that you have trouble seeing on your own.

And so your connections become more about fixing some aspect of you that you feel is broken than about the mutual discovery and exploration and sharing of life’s greatest joys and pleasures. You decide you need work . . . and so it is not surprising that any relationship that you’re lucky enough to stumble into will probably need work as well. You even jokingly refer to yourselves as “works in progress”.

You can continue to tell yourself that story. You can continue to believe that the best and the most blessed of your shared moments with others come from your determined labor. . . but if you stop and really look at the best, most blessed moments of connection that you have shared with any other . . . . we are relatively certain that you will see that they came to you effortlessly . . . that they just ‘happened’ . . . that they felt like ‘a gift’ . . . that you weren’t even sure how or why you received them . . .

You practically kill yourself—and each other—trying to prove that you can “work on’ whatever you want hard enough to make it happen the way you want . . . and oh the frustration that always follows this approach. When all the while, the real work—the real challenge—of choosing YOUR happiness above all else and then allowing the Universe to deliver to you one who can truly share that happiness—is effort that you often refuse to put forth.

You offer too many excuses or reasons to list, but they all boil down to the same refusal to believe that putting your joy first . . . that letting your joy lead you . . . that giving your attention and effort to being the happiest and most fulfilled you that you can be . . . will always yield to you the most joyful results . . . the most joy-filled relationship.

Start telling yourself a different story. Imagine a happy ending that results not from determined work on the relationship but from devoting yourself to being the you that a devoted other can’t help but love. Offer a truly joyful, loving, engaged, stimulated, eager, expanding you in your connection to another . . . and see how very little effort your dream takes to come true.

I’d love to hear the wedding vows The Team would write. Or the romance novel. Every single time I ask a question about this I try my hardest to argue and always end up feeling like I’m more or less sticking my tongue out at them. Very mature.

Whatever will I do if I discover that in fact, a happy relationship is really all about a happy me? What if I’m not meant to suffer? What if love isn’t supposed to hurt? What will I write poems about then?

It blows my mind just a bit. It also leaves me wondering how much joy I could have with someone else by just enjoying me, who might like to play that game with me instead of the one where we’re both busy working at it. It leaves me holding my hand over my heart, scratching my head . . . and feeling, for the moment, inexplicably complete.

Remembering Where I Parked

A few days ago I had lunch with a friend of mine. I parked my car a block or so away from his house, and a couple of hours later I was heading back to my car to drive home. I went to the spot where I was sure I’d parked, but my car was nowhere to be found. My heart stopped. I walked up and down that section of street where I’d parked. I felt the panic start to well up as it hit me that, obviously, my car had been stolen. What was I going to do? I started thinking about whether I’d left anything valuable in the car. How would I get home? I couldn’t believe this was happening.

After walking up and down the same carless stretch of street for several minutes, all I knew to do was to go back to my friend’s house, so I turned and started walking in that direction. Just as I rounded the corner where I thought I’d parked, and headed back to his house, I saw my car. It was right there on the part of the street where I’d obviously left it. I had walked right past it, either not paying attention or convinced for some reason that I’d parked somewhere else.

It was as if the car had been invisible and then somehow, it had materialized right in front of me. I’m sure passersby were wondering why this guy was out on the street hugging a Pontiac.

Later I was wondering to The Team about the incident and my wildly fluctuating responses . . .

This is a perfect example of something that you do so often in so many less obvious or dramatic ways. You go looking for something--in some cases it may be something that feels lost to you, or maybe just something you want but either can’t remember where it is or can’t figure out how to obtain it . . . You search and search . . . you feel yourself getting more and more worried or afraid or stressed about where it is . . . . how to find it . . .

You mind races, your heart races . . . your body responds to this surge of negative emotion that is always—always—telling you that you’re looking in the wrong place or that you’re trying too hard or that what you want is not in the direction that you’re facing.

Then—when you’re ‘lucky’—you somehow manage to turn around. Something else distracts you or catches your eye. Your attention shifts for some reason to something else that feels better, that feels like relief to you . . . For whatever reason, you surrender. You give up your striving to force the thing you want to appear. You cancel the search. You may throw up your hands in what you call defeat. You release the last bit of resistance you have to insisting, demanding, NEEDING what you think you need to be there in that moment.

And in that moment of surrender, of letting go, of even forgetting what you think you needed to be . . . what you wanted suddenly appears. There it is. Right where it was all the time . . . . waiting for you to see . . . really see . . . waiting for you to really open your eyes and recognize that what you wanted was never lost . . . that what you want is always there, waiting for you to receive it . . . waiting for you to stop fighting and stressing and striving so hard to make it be.

We understand what a paradox . . . a conundrum this seems to be to you. You always scratch your head in bewilderment when that desired object appears. . . when your nearly forgotten dream manifests . . . when your lost keys materialize in the bowl on the table in the hallway where you are certain you did not leave them.

What we would most like you to understand about all this, is that there is so much, so much of the time, that you are not seeing . . . so much of what you are asking for is already there, right in front of you . . . but you are so busy looking elsewhere . . . or so convinced that you know better where it’s hiding when it’s not hidden at all . . . . it is simply not showing up on your screen because the movie you’re showing on that screen is one that doesn’t allow you to see it.

We harp on you so much about staying in a place of appreciation for what is . . . of giving your attention to the joy or satisfaction or fulfillment—the well being—that is always abounding all around you . . . because it is only in your recognition of that well being that your eyes are opened and you are able to truly see what you want . . . recover what you think you lost . . . receive what you’ve been looking and asking for.

Your car was waiting there for you, waiting for you to give up your determined search to find it where you were convinced it should be . . . The relief you felt—the joy you felt—when you saw it is the same relief, the same joy available to you every single time you remember—really remember—where you parked your true, blessed, bright, shining, view of you and all that is flowing around you.

It’s true. After I finished hugging my car, I had the sweetest drive home. The sun was shining. My car was purring like a kitten, obviously pleased that I finally stopped walking around in a frenzy and found her.

What was most striking to me was how quickly my mood changed, from panic-sricken and lost to thrilled and overcome with relief . . . . how the simplest act of recovering what I only thought was missing had taken me from lost to found in just seconds.

Something about that was so powerful . . . I’m still pondering it and wondering what else I might be missing . . . and what as yet unexperienced rushes of relief and discovery might be waiting for me, just around the corner where I thought I parked.

It leaves me wanting to keep my eyes—and my options—wider open, happy to be rolling merrily along on my much appreciated wheels, and feeling, for the moment, complete.

How to Change the People Around You

“I try my very best to stay positive,” a friend complained recently. “But it’s tough to do when everyone around me is so negative.” Another friend emailed, asking “What of the pessimistic mate? We are only so strong, and truth is, when it hits home, it is everyone's issue. How can one person stand up against it?”

A tree doesn’t have to fall on me (as a rule) to recognize when there’s a good question afoot. So I asked The Shower Team, “What do we do about the naysayers we’re more or less stuck with? What’s a positive thinking, deliberate creation witch or wizard supposed to do when surrounded by mud-slinging, sourpussed muggles?

Our hearts do go out to those among you who are struggling so valiantly to make your way in the face of such adversity. The first thing we would recommend is getting to the root of the issue—which, of course, is you.

It may –or may not—help to recognize that not a single one of these negative thinkers in your midst could have come into your experience if they were not somehow a match to you. In other words, in this as in any other situation you find yourself in that doesn’t thrill you (and we know how much you love hearing this)—you did it and are continuing to do it to yourself.

So you might begin to address the situation at hand by first finding your way to acknowledging that “they” are not the cause of your discomfort because “they” could not be there bugging you if you had not somehow in some way (however unintentionally) invited them.

Be all that as it may, you are where you are—surrounded by the people who are around you. So, what to do or where to go from there is the question. More than likely you have already discerned that the approach of blaming those around you isn’t a winning strategy. No matter how justified you may be in observing and noting their negativity or their pessimism or their depression or despair or anger or frustration . . . the observing of ‘them’ in their negativity is only amplifying it and bringing you more of it. There you are doing your best to feel good, to reach for pleasing thoughts and to approach your life in a more positive manner, and there they are tripping you up every time and boy oh boy wouldn’t it just be so much better for you if they would stop doing what they do that so gets under your skin?

You manage to really squeeze yourself in between the rock and the hard place as you continue to use ‘them’ as your excuse for not feeling good. But the good news is, there’s an easy escape. You can start to take the pressure off right away by remembering the only thing that there is to remember in order to find relief: that nothing—and no one—is more important than that you feel good.

We realize this is still considered heresy in most human circles, but we’ll keep saying it anyway because you can’t really do anything to us—and because it’s true. In this area—in your relationships to one another—you are so prone to getting stuck in your drive to justify your feelings. Being “right” becomes more important than feeling good and you will sometimes stubbornly persist in your demands that someone else alter their behavior in order for you to feel good, that you will forego all manner of well being in the process.

You essentially decide that you can only be happy if or when those around you permit it. You decide that your happiness is contingent upon their actions or their approval or their willingness to go along with you in whatever way you feel that they should.

“But it’s hard,” you say, “when ‘they’re’ all so gloomy or critical or cynical . . . “ “How am I supposed to be happy around that??”

We get that you want some magic to transform this condition according to your will, and so here it is. Decide what’s more important to you: how you feel, or how they act. If your choice is how they act, you’re on your own. But if feeling good is REALLY what is most important to you, then put your money where your mouth is. Be picky about how you feel. Decide that no matter what is going on or being said around you, that you have the power to choose what you focus on. You have the power to attend to or to ignore anything happening in your experience. You have the power to choose your response to any stimulus. You have the ability to observe selectively—to dwell on this while skipping over that . . .

You hear these words and immediately you argue that such advice is unrealistic or even impossible. You are willing to suffer all manner of unhappiness in order to prove that this can’t be done rather than deciding to really find out for yourself. But whether you choose to exercise it or not, you always—always—have the freedom to choose what you give your attention to in others as in your own thoughts and experiences.

Oh—and here’s the magic part—as you begin to choose your well being, your happiness, your joy over anything else in every situation . . .. then you begin to establish for yourself a dominant mood or mindset or vibration that is less and less a match to the negativity that you used to attract.

In other words, as you begin to change YOU . . . as you begin to fashion a you who is more aligned with the YOU who appreciates, the You who values others, the You who sees only the best in others, the You who gives attention only to the good in others . . . then you become more and more YOU . . . and in the process, you cannot help but attract what is like YOU. So those around you will either respond by showing you only what is a match to the new and
improved you. Or—they’ll hit the road.

So, once again, it’s the broken record of being all about you. But hey—you asked.

Well someone’s pretty full of Themselves. I would love to put up a fight here but as a former champion (and still a contender) heavyweight blamer of others for my bad mood, I’m afraid I don’t have much of a leg to stand on.

Although I sometimes hate to acknowledge Their bullseyes, I have so often caught myself in that rock and a hard place of convincing myself how right everything would be if those around me would just cooperate or even cheer up. Can’t people see how hard I’m working to be perky?

But this trick about selective focusing as a technique for conjuring up better ambience . . . now that’s intriguing. Brings out the magician in me. Now I see sourpusses—now I don’t! Sounds pretty cool and a helluva better approach than my usual pouting.For now it leaves me feeling like I’ve got the power—or at least, the AC adapter. And that leaves me feeling a little more charged up—and for the moment, complete.

Beggars Can Be Choosers

As one of the world’s greatest introverts (great in the sense of degree of introversion), I might seem an unlikely one to be raising questions about the very human need for interaction and companionship. But even hermity old channels find themselves sometimes wishing or yearning for or trying to find some soul out there who can pump up the old ego or dole out some tender loving care—or just show me a good time.

It’s no big deal. Every now and then we all need a little help from our friends, right? After all, one is the loneliest number, no? It takes two to make a thing go right. Right? A multi-billion dollar recording industry can’t be wrong about what love’s got to do with it, can it?

So I asked The Shower Team about my occasional—okay frequent—need to run to someone when I’m feeling lonely. This celebrated and lamented need of ours to reach out and touch someone—it’s not a bad thing, is it?

You can and often do really chase your tail on this subject. You talk yourselves into quite the idealized and socially reinforced notion that “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world” when in fact you tend to be the most miserable. You so romanticize this idea that you ‘must’ have validation from others, that you ‘must’ feel loved and appreciated and valued and affirmed by others in order to be happy.

You give a great deal of air time to the concept. You write poems and songs and novels and plays and movies about it. You train yourselves into such a belief about it, that you really do have a hard time seriously considering the alternatives.

And yet we continue to say to you, that your flawed premise about ‘needing’ others . . . your seemingly perpetual and so often ill-fated or unrequited search for one or more who will complete you or fill some void or fix some defect or heal some wound or simply give you the reasons you need to feel good . . . is always a slippery slope that tends to lead you in the opposite direction of what you really want.

“But we are social creatures,” you say. “We all need validation.” “We can’t live in a vacuum.” “We can’t help wanting companionship or comfort or connection.” And of course, all those statements are true enough. However, the way you go about trying to get any of those things is frequently at cross purposes with what really brings all those things to you, and in nearly every case, what you really end up doing, over and over, is giving away your freedom, your power to choose your own happiness . . . and even your chances for truly attracting the sort of connection that your heart most desires.

Consider the possibility that every single time that you are feeling lonely . . . or feeling the need for some form of validation, or feeling the absence of some warmth or affection or connection . . . what you are actually feeling is the result of you having pulled away or having turned your attention away from who You really are. You cannot be seeing yourself as Source sees you, and feel lonely or sad or neglected or inadequate or insecure . . . And so when you do feel these things that typically send you off in search of someone who can reflect back to you a more pleasing view of yourself . . . you are, every single time, cutting yourself off from your own knowledge of your own well being . . . and then asking someone else to help restore it.

So what’s so terrible about that, you may ask. And of course, there is nothing “terrible” about that. If you’re fortunate, you have someone around who is willing to offer that affirmation to you, or you can go find someone who is willing to provide a reasonable facsimile. You feel temporarily better and you reinforce your belief that sometimes you just can’t make it without that external pat on the back.

It is not that this is so terrible, it is that it could be so much better for you if you would realize that each time you go in search of that one or more who can help you feel better, all you are really finding is someone willing and able to do for you what you refuse to do for yourself. And how much better would it be if you could skip that middle man and go straight back to the well being that you have turned away from?

How much more attractive would you be if you were inviting others to play with you from a position of strength and satisfaction and well being rather than from a place of need or dissatisfaction or discontent or worse? How much happier with your partners and playmates might you be if you were attracting ones who were a match to your contentment and your fulfillment and your joy and your exhilaration rather than to your sadness or loneliness or sense of lack?

So what‘s a sad sack to do when they really need a friend? Here’s an idea that may really knock you off your assumptions. Try giving what you think you need. Try being what you think you want. Instead of looking near and far for someone else to mirror back to you some worthy aspect of yourself, search yourself for some worthy aspect. Don’t rest until you find something about yourself that you have to give . . . something worth offering to another . . . and then find a lucky recipient for it. It can be you. It can be someone else.

The point is to turn your attention back to what You never really lose sight of, which is that you are worthy, you are valued and valuable. There is so much about you to appreciate and that others would appreciate. Instead of embarking on some quest to find someone who can give you the boost you think you need. . . . try giving a boost instead of searching for one. See how quickly you shift from lost to found, from needy to needed, from helpless to helpful.

When you feel yourself sinking into that place that sends you begging for morsels of affirmation, choose instead to reach into your pockets—always deeper than you remember—and find something to offer. Give it away freely and eagerly and then be prepared to be dazzled by the immediacy with which you begin to feel yourself returning to a sense of your own worthiness. Prepare to be shocked and amazed at how quickly you come back to the empowering knowledge of who You really are and how deliciously you dip back into the stream of well being that always abounds.

And then the really good news: Watch the caliber of your companions and playmates and partners begin to improve as you continue to allow yourself to go with that flow of being—and sharing—the You that you really are. As you turn, each time, from self-pity or self doubt to self-empowering generosity and giving, watch how your view of you changes. And then watch how those viewing you change along with it.

We promise you . . . as you continue to make that choice, your days of feeling the need to beg for affirming handouts will be over.

I know some pop stars and record execs who are not going to be happy to hear this. What’s a co-dependence diva to do if we all start deciding all we need is self love?

Food for thought. It could save me a lot on CD’s for sure. More important, I wonder how much more fun it would be to be the one who has it to give . . . I wonder what I’d find if I really dug deep into my sometimes seemingly empty pockets and handed it over . . . What transformations might await us if all the beggars of the world suddenly realized we don’t need handouts. What difference could that choice make?

As Ms. Alanis Morissette once sang, “I’ve got one hand in my pocket and other one is giving a high five.” Even if it only lasts as long as the song, it feels better than a lot of the other tunes I go around singing. And that leaves me more willing to see what I’ve got to give me—and others . . . and feeling, for the moment, complete.

The Lucky Few

I know I’m probably the only one who ever wonders why it seems to take so long to see dreams come true. Those fairy tales we’ve read or had read to us really mess with our minds. One wave of a magic wand and Cinderella’s on her way to the palace. Aladdin rubs a lamp and gets instant wish fulfillment. Jeannie . . . Samantha . . . Harry Potter and friends . . . all make it look so easy to make it so.

Then to make matters even more perplexing for the diligent mystics among us . . . there are the lottery winners . . . the Publishers Clearinghouse Prize Patrol targets . . . the writer whose first novel hits the bestseller list . . . the homeless guy who comes up with a multi-million dollar idea for insulated cardboard boxes and ends up telling his story to Oprah.

Meanwhile, here I sit . . . practicing my affirmations and doing my daily visualizations and wondering, “Where’s my stuff?” So I asked The Shower Team, what takes so long? What separates us from the ‘lucky few’ who seem to stumble onto the manifestation fast lane?

The thing you so often lose sight of is how you have trained yourself into the ways of thinking that you have about things working the way they do. You practice thoughts over a long period of time—usually based on what you’ve heard--where you limit or restrict what you believe or expect will come to you.

You hold the view that those sudden or dramatic or ‘miraculous’ breakthroughs or turnarounds or windfalls are random and rare occurrences, available only to that “lucky few”. You train yourself into the belief that “that’s not how things work,” that for most people, good fortune comes only through toil and trouble.

So in order for you to receive in those more rapid or remarkable ways, you have to buck a pretty seriously ingrained pattern of thought—or in some cases, to get so down and out that you let go of all your preconceived notions and essentially surrender any or all efforts to try to get things to go your way according to any prescribed view of how things work.

This is the reason why we so often encourage you to turn and go with the flow by reaching, one thought at a time, for what feels better. It is so that you can begin to experience more immediate, if less striking, evidence of your progress. It is not because more powerful manifestations are unavailable to you. It is not because you are not allowed to experience more dramatic turnarounds or to receive what you ask for more quickly, it is only your expectation—and the degree to which you are resisting—that sets any limits around your receiving.

No one else dictates that to you. No one else operates the command center where decisions are made about what gets doled out to whom and when. It only feels that way to you because you are not fully conscious of the ways that you limit what comes to you by virtue of your limited or guarded expectations.

You could decide at any time to open up to unlimited and unrestricted receiving of anything you are asking for, but more often than not, it is easier for you to let it in a bit at a time, easier for you to believe that that is the way it works and therefore, easier for you to expect it in that scaled down way. When there is no reason for you to doubt the immediate or the dramatic—the “miraculous’ manifestations that you sometimes see happening to those ‘lucky few’ . . . then you become one of the lucky few who have nothing standing between their desire and the fulfillment of it. The fewer reasons you have to doubt your good fortune, the better your fortune will be and the faster it will come.

“Easy for us to say,” you say. And we say, “Easy is as easy does. Or more to the point, “Easy is as easy is expected.”

Great. Now I’m channeling Forrest Gump. Next they’ll be telling me life is like a box of chocolates.

I wish it felt a little easier to believe that the things I want are as easy as I expect them to be. Sometimes easy feels hard—and I can see why. I’ve been believing it’s hard for a lot longer than I’ve been wondering if it could get easy.

I used to run around saying, “It’ not easy being me.” Talk about a hard luck story.

So maybe it won’t be easy to believe it’s easy, but believing it’s hard hasn’t been easy either. Who knows---maybe I’ll get lucky. It’s enough to keep me trying not to work quite so hard at believing it’s hard for all but the lucky few. It leaves me thinking that it could be easier being me—and somehow that makes it a little easier to feel, for the moment, complete.