Queen of Dreams Radio
Archive for the ‘Gratitude’ Category
For more than a couple of months now, I’ve had this sparkly, surreal feeling while being in my house. I notice it most when I walk down the stairs. I feel as if I am extremely lucky to be living my life. I get the feeling of being inside of a dream…that I live in my dream home. I find that I look over to my office as I leave the stairs and I like what I see. I see the berry pink walls and the glitter, paints and my guitar on the wall. Then, I walk through to the downstairs living room and feel as if I am so lucky to be here.
A month or so ago, I walked down the stairs (feeling this way) and I walked through the living room to the kitchen. I could see the christmas lights twinkling through the living room window. The holly bushes that surround the back side of our pool are covered with small, white Christmas lights. Last year, after years of desiring that sparkle, I placed each strand on the tall bushes. Yet, on this evening, the lights meant that Chance and Mark were in the pool. I walked to the kitchen, feeling my feet against the tile floor and noticed that everything just seemed brighter, somehow richer. I felt drawn to the back door, so I pushed it open and walked out to the pool to watch them. Chance was screaming and carrying on…something I usually hear from inside. I felt happy inside – extremely happy. He and Mark were playing and I could see their pale bodies illuminated next to the pool light. Again, I noticed how everything seemed brighter somehow. The lights were brighter. The pool light was aglow.
I walked inside and started to go back upstairs. I had the distinct feeling of knowing I had created this experience. In that moment, the memory of how this house came to be came to mind. We were looking for a new house. We had an idea of how much we were willing to spend. This house was nearly $30,000 more than that. We had passed on it after the homeowner said he would not budge on the price. We kept looking. House after house made this one seem that much more appealing. I had felt when the homeowner initially said no it was because he had a date in mind when he would lower the price. We knew it was overpriced for the neighborhood. As we continued to look at other houses, I kept feeling that Mark really liked this house. I wanted him to have what he wanted. The last house was my idea.
Finally, one day, all of this built to a climax. While we were looking at another house, a messenger said to me, “If you want that other house, you must go now. There’s another couple coming and they are willing to pay full price.” I turned to our realtor and told her we wanted to go look at this house once more. As we stood in the kitchen that afternoon, I knew what number had to be on the paper for the owner (the husband) to say yes. We worked the numbers so that they worked for us and also showed him the number he must have said he ‘had’ to have before he could say yes. I asked Mark once again, “You are sure this is the house you like?” I had felt that this could be Mark’s turn to choose. I liked the house, I just didn’t care for the living room/kitchen area downstairs…it was galley style. A lifetime of living in apartments had left me not liking galley style areas. But, like Mark, I loved the yard and I loved the upstairs. Mark agreed. We turned in the paperwork, and the offer was accepted. Three days later, just as the messenger warned, another couple from out of state arrived and fell in love with the house (we were still in the option period). They were willing to pay full price – above market value.
This feeling of being ‘lucky’ – a word I prefer to fortunate, for some reason. It has a magical quality, this feeling and the word, a feeling of safety and security. I feel as if I navigate in this energy and it is here to remind me that creation is always available…just like it was when we created this house – our home.
The surreal feeling continues and the incidences keep coming to match this feeling. Wonderful synchronicities, amazing connections and I do feel as if I have entered a surreal existence – one where anything is effortlessly possible. I am so grateful! This is a whole new level of possibility for me… I’ve always felt anything is possible. This is an effortless feeling – beyond anything I’ve felt before.
And, perhaps, the joy this brings is why I so want others to experience it, too. I can’t wait to share my latest book with you.
Looking for a Dream Life:
Last night I stayed up particularly late reading – 4:30 am late. Rico kept getting up and walking over to me and putting his massive head on my leg and whimpering. I felt for him. I certainly KNEW what he wanted.
Before I get into it his Christmas present, let me just say that dogs REALLY DO live in the PRESENT. I mean, he has been banned from snuggling on the couch since he began to get MASSIVE. I mean 140 lbs. – no problem, 175 – no problem, 180 – no problem. But tipping 200 lbs.? BIG PROBLEM with Italian leather!!! Which is the only reason we allowed him on the couch in the first place – it can be vacuumed easily and also CLEANED each day! But I digress. So, a couple of weeks ago, I was up late with him and I could tell he didn’t feel well. I cupped my hands around the side of his head and began to send some healing energy to him. I could FEEL he wanted to snuggle. And, in a moment of not really *THINKING* about what I was DOING, I patted the spot next to me on the couch and up he jumped. Within minutes, he had his nose shoved up against my thigh and was snoring away.
Of course, I’m not thinking about this as anything out of the ordinary. He’s been banned for more than a year now, so why would I think anything has changed? But, boy, did HE think something had changed! He began to ‘talk’ to us while WE were sitting on the couch! You know, his couch since I let him up ONE time! And, for those of you who don’t know what mastiffs do when they ‘talk’… well, let’s put it this way – they are LOUD and they do this growl, bark, whine thing all at once. They shake their head like they know EXACTLY what they are saying and WHY you should be listening to them. RICO, in particular, will throw in some down dogs and a few twirls to get his message across as he keeps looking at what he wants! In this case – THE COUCH!
I talk back to him like he’s a human. I tell him, “Oh no. You are not getting up here.” Logically, I know he senses the energy of NO more than he understands the words, but I still like to put the words with the energy.
For weeks now he’s been doing this, until LAST NIGHT, he looked SO PATHETIC that I almost – almost – could not resist him. In that moment, I wondered, What could I get for him that would make him more comfortable? I mean, I know it can’t be that comfortable to be over 200 lbs. sitting on the floor – he normally likes to sit on the hardwoods, probably because they are cool, but I have no idea.
Alright, one more story and I’ll get to the CUTEST, MOST ADORABLE , MOST EARTH CONSCIOUS doggie duvets!
Amidst these last couple of weeks, I mentioned Rico to Nana (Mark’s mom who lives with us), and said something to her about how I can tell how DEEPLY he sleeps when he’s on the couch. I wondered if it is because he can put his head on the pillow tops at the end of the couch or if it is because these couches are slightly tilted to the back, which means that they are like a little cockpit and for Rico that would mean his girth would be tilted to the back where he could relax and have no weight on his legs. I had mused about buying another couch and giving him one of our current couches in the den (he is more than 7 feet tall length-wise, so he takes up the entire six-foot couch when he ‘naps’ and isn’t curled into a ball. Then, she told me that one morning she woke to Mark’s computer alarm blaring – WONK*WONK*WONK. When she came in to the den to turn it off she found Rico snoring (yes, they snore and sometimes VERY LOUDLY) away and he didn’t even MOVE or open his eyes as she walked in to the room! That is some GOOD sleep. I knew it!
Okay, back to last night. I’m sitting here reading a book on Kindle and he’s whining. He wants up next to me. No doubt he wants some GOOD sleep, too. I’m wondering… what can I make for him? He outgrew regular doggie beds by the time he was 9 months old, so I had not even considered one in forever. Plus, I was thinking about the mess they end up being. We vacuum every day, but doggie beds… ew! There’s really no way to wash them. You just have to keep throwing them away – what a waste. That’s when the thought hits me – I need a DOGGIE DUVET! I need one the size of about three king-sized pillows next to each other. I can use the king pillows I’m about to throw out because they’ve gotten too flat – we have six of them. I am thinking, WOW, THIS IS A BRILLIANT IDEA, TINA! 
I think about how he likes to prop his head up on the pillow top at the end of the couch, and I think… WOW, IT WOULD BE GREAT IF HE COULD HAVE A PILLOW SOMEHOW. I am so amazed at how BRILLIANT this idea is I email my mother IMMEDIATELY to see if she can make my BRILLIANT creation. LOL But then, wait, what’s this? The idea that maybe… just maybe… someone else may have already done it? I log on to the web, and VOILA (sound the choirs and angels now, please)… someone HAS created what I’ve just envisioned as the PERFECT answer for our little Rico (well, not so little, but he’s still my baby).
Now, get this. She also has made the PILLOW!!! BONUS! So excited! TOOOO CUTE. I may have to get this for him right away and not even wait until Christmas because… really, life is too short to be uncomfortable, wouldn’t you agree? Does your pooch need one of these? Easy to fill… easy to wash?
I love that these are designed with the earth in mind! And, GOD BLESS her for making the size ‘HUGE’ for big boys like Rico!
Looking for a Dream Life:
I have always been fascinated by accounts people have of touching the supernatural. From meetings with angels to other messengers, I love to hear how people connect in the various ways.
In my 20s, I began to wake early in the morning and write for the angels. I wrote letters of hope to those who were facing despair. Mostly these letters went to my brother-in-law at the time, sometimes I had ideas to help people I knew of but didn’t know. Each morning was like a new present to unwrap.
I have seen how creative the angelic kingdom can be… and how earthly angels also can be sent when we need each other.
Since I have watched, researched and seen so many accounts of angels and angelic communication, I was surprised to see a new series that touched me so deeply. Country Music Television’s (CMT) new series, Angels Among Us is one of the best I’ve seen. The storytelling and editing make this series amazing. What I love most, though, is that the series shares the many ways that the angels and other messengers make contact with us. I believe it can help people to listen to their guidance… and those guiding us each and every day.
I can’t imagine a life without connection with Divine… and this series shares how precious each life is. The show also shares that we must always remember to ask for help…as there are messengers just waiting to help.
Looking for a Dream Life:
Yesterday, as the sun went down, Mark and I sat in the back by the pool talking about his business, talking about my next project (at least one book about manifesting and the principles of creation), talking about marketing and what we see clients doing and also moving to a new house. The conversation was like many between long-time married couples who drift easily from subject to subject without transitions – a seeming long list of ‘to-dos’ that we will work together to create.
In the middle of the conversation, the subject of ‘we’ and ‘my’ came up. I tend to say ‘we’ for many things, and ‘my’ for ‘my projects.’ He always gives me a hrrrmph when I do that because he says it is ‘ours.’ This bone of contention ran through my business years, too, as he would say ‘our’ clients when ‘I’ was the one doing the work, ‘I’ was the one dealing with the personalities that came along with the work, ‘I’ was the one that was doing all of the administrivia and on and on. I didn’t feel that his occasional run to FedEx with me in tow at 9:45 PM to mail a client’s project ‘counted’ enough to be ‘partners’ and the business, as I saw it, certainly was not ‘ours’ though the money from it was shared willingly and freely for all those years I had it.
Yesterday, in the lap of our backyard with the blue pool at our feet, surrounded by the roses and holly berries with me maybe eight or so years wiser, I let my guard down around the subject and opened my mind to consider what he may be seeing or feeling.
I feel at ‘one’ in nearly every other area and expression in my life – Why not this one? Why is it that I feel the need to stake claim?
As we peeled back the layers, I finally said, “Well, I’m the author of this creation – that’s why it is mine.”
He replied, to what was already streaming through my mind, “Why is it that you are always fine with being about ‘oneness’ and it takes all of us to get to where we are going, and you TEACH this, but when it comes to your writing you act like it’s all yours?”
I have to admit…I didn’t know why. I just had this feeling in the pit of my stomach – a perceived truth to his words.
Then, he said, “You just don’t get it. Everything is all of ours.”
He began to give me a list of things he does to make my writing life possible. He listens. He responds to me when I ask, “Does this make sense to you?” He cooks my meals (and always has). He brings me coffee in the morning.
I can do all of those things for myself I reasoned. They are nice, but I don’t have to have them. But to write! There’s so much to do… listening and listening and gathering the drops as they come in, and the putting them on paper – actually getting them out of my consciousness and into this world! There’s work to do!
I jumped to something that came to me in my inner defense… “I have no need to claim anything you are working on. Your business is your business. I enjoy helping you and I don’t need to be considered a ‘part’ of it. I give freely.” There it was…separation. This time I couldn’t ignore it.
“Maybe that’s true, but you are. What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine.”
I bristled. “But you aren’t the one doing the work to write and to reflect and to collect all of these little messages that are coming in all day every day!” I exclaimed.
Then he said it. “Writing is easy for you. You write books like some people write articles. It just flows out of you like water.”
I swallowed hard because it was true – at least that part was true. And, somehow coming out of his mouth in actual words I felt like it discounted the process – the writing. That maybe it is too easy.
We drifted to another topic content to agree to somewhat disagree and somewhat to agree.
Later that night, I realized the writing IS easy for me…like breathing. I listen and follow. The structural part is more challenging. Putting myself out there even more so. The facing the business aspect from my true core as a creative soul has been the greatest challenge – even though I know what to do! I know how to run a business. I know how to grow businesses, but when I’m in my creative heart, I tend to be like other creative souls.
Our conversation simmered in the back of my mind. Something Mark said to me, “At the end of the day, Tina, you can’t be like everyone else. You can’t just forget that you have a business mind in there somewhere. That’s what makes you different, and what won’t allow you to just let things go.”
I wondered, Is that true? I remembered the feeling when he said it – solid as a rock. True.
This morning, as I ready myself to write. I see now what is at the core of all of this. Magically, it’s what is at the core of everything else around me right now, too. It’s about work. Who does the work?
Whomever does the work is the one that owns something. The belief that has been the fly in the ointment for far too long.
Wow, what an outdated notion. Puritanical for sure. A rush of thoughts comes to mind in this moment. I used to argue that an executive’s wife deserved as much out of a relationship because the person behind that person contributed as much to the creation as the one who actually goes out in the world and ‘does the work.’ So Mark is right…about me.
Funny how beliefs work. We can consciously think one thing and be running and living another.
I do believe in oneness… this is how I write – in response to what others are asking for. Yes, I’m the messenger, but the message is not mine. Like a baker who bakes a cake with flour and eggs and milk…the farmer, the land and many sun-filled days brought the flour, the chicken sent the eggs and cows lent the milk. Even those who ensured the chickens ate everyday contributed, the delivery people who took these to market… and every step in between… who sent water to the field? Who ensured the water pipes were laid? On and on and on in an infinite circle of creation… and, with me? If there were no questions for others, no desires for what I am writing… well, I would be a messenger without a message to deliver. 
I remembered how when I first started writing – back in elementary – I used to think, Is this writing? I’m just listening and writing down what comes to me. Is this cheating?
This has affected me my entire life, but until today I didn’t know why. It doesn’t ‘seem’ like work, and true to this belief that has been driving this part of me (the one who does the work owns it), how could I lay ‘claim’ to something if it wasn’t ‘work’ if ‘work’ is the only thing valued? I would, based on this belief, create more ‘work’ – ouch!
Time to let this one go.
Wow. I feel free.
Looking for a Dream Life:
A month or so ago, I chatted on the phone with a friend, and mentioned an idea for a blog post – the five books that changed my life! Immediately he was curious, “Which ones?” I rattled them off and why, and we finished out conversation, but I never did the post!
The primary reason I wanted to share this is because I call these ‘game changers’ – these books literally changed how I viewed the world and how it works. Once you have come in contact with a game changer – book, person, or otherwise – you are literally never the same again! There are many other books that have changed my life in other ways…today’s post is about changing the game.
Here they are…Five books that can rock your perspective.
This book rocked my world in my twenties. Back then, I had not yet had the experience of ‘abundance’ financially, but it helped me see my life as valuable. I had eagerly worked 80 hour weeks in the pursuit of nickels and dimes so I could buy my first house, buy my first car, go back to school and buy the ‘good’ things in life.
Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin outlined just how much an hour of my time was really worth. They were talking about life force and then challenging me, as the reader, to ask myself, “Do you really want to spend 6 hours of your life to buy this?” This completely changed how I looked at money, how I looked at my own value (though there was so much more to learn and expand into), how to play the money game to win, and truly…for me to challenge myself about why I wanted to buy things.
My very first spiritual mentor, Hefina Glenys, gave this book to me to borrow. Florence Scovel Shinn was part of the spiritualist movement in America back in the 1920s. This book is written in a similar style to many other spiritualists I’ve discovered since then, such as Catherine Ponder, but Florence was my first. I’ll always be grateful for her energy she poured into that book. I remember immediately feeling a surge of energy unlike anything I have every felt while reading a book. I believed her. I trusted her. I could literally feel her heart and desire to help others to enjoy life and to succeed.
On every page, she introduced spiritual basics – watch your words, focus on what you want and, most importantly (for me), many varied stories about how so many other people had used these techniques to improve their lives. Since then, I feel I have earned a degree in Spirit University, but Florence’s book helped me trust the principles because they truly came alive in this book. Her other books moved me in similar ways.
For nearly five years, I helped people as they came one-by-one for help with various crises going on in their life. I didn’t advertise – these people found me through other people. Each one had major healing crises to experience (as did I at the time), and I would simply listen and follow guidance that took me (and them) into breakthroughs in healing.
I had no idea why the healings worked or how they worked, I just knew that they did. But, the nagging I felt in my mind because I couldn’t say how they worked seemed to never go away. During my post-graduate work, I encountered Vibrational Medicine by Richard Gerber, M.D., which documents and describes in glorious detail the interrelated workings of energy giving my mind – at last – the answer I so wanted. This book contains Stanford Researchers (among others) who have spent their lives documenting the why and many other insights into how energy healing works. It is amazing!
I discovered Dorothea Brande one day on a trip to the local Half Price Books. I followed an invisible stream of energy to a group of books that I had not ever noticed before. These were in the writing section, and I, though I am a writer, have not ever purchased books like these. On that shelf, I found Dorothea Brande’s, Becoming a Writer. I flipped it open amazed to find that Dorothea was writing about things I’ve discovered about the mind nearly a century before! I was intrigued, and so I bought it. As I read it, I could feel how connected this woman was to her inner workings. Of course, I wanted to know more, so I went looking for anything else she might have written. In that search, I found her classic, Wake Up and Live! This is truly not written in conversational language, but had such a profound effect on me I recommend it to others. This book was the beginning of her ‘surrender’ to become the author she always dreamt of being, and in 1934 she ‘gave herself’ to that energy and this very book sold more than 2 MILLION copies! In it is advice that would be helpful to anyone with a dream, and perhaps, more importantly, the energy of YES YOU CAN!
I’ve blogged about my life-changing experience of giving up sugar, and learning that I am a ‘sugar-sensitive’ person – an addict to the substance is an appropriate description. This book changed my life in ways that I could never thank Dr. DesMaisons enough for (she’ll be on Queen of Dreams Radio on October 13, 2011), but the physical healing pales in comparison to the letting go of the shame and guilt I’ve carried around for the way I’ve felt about the way I have ‘acted’ under the influence over the years. In addition, realizing that I am not the person I am ‘under the influence’ has freed me – heart and soul – in a way I can’t even begin to describe other than I now have a huge void where once before a cloud of energy lived. I constantly supervised my every thought, my impulses, my irrational thoughts… I’ve even created tons of tools working with helpers to work ‘around’ my so-called deficiencies. Yes, I still use those tools, but not in the same way. Today, I have more energy to give to others because I am not using so much of it to manage my inner states. This is truly the one book that has changed my life the most. How can I describe what it is like to think you are one way and to discover you aren’t?! And, perhaps this is why this was the FIRST thing I was guided to do more than 5 years ago! Listen, listen, listen and the ACT! 