briester's Blog

I was taught to pray at bedtime at age 5. By age 6 that dropped out from our routine of going to bed. Many things changed so 'just go to bed' became the new standard practice.

I knew it was a good idea, to say my prayers at bed time, but didn't always remember to do it, and there was very little support around me to keep the practice.

I have no excuse now. I'm old enough to teach myself new daily practices.

So, why is it I don't consistently do the things that will support my emotional and spiritual growth? Where is the struggle?

I suspect it comes from the too many times I had people say: Who do you think you are? You think you are better than me?

I got that often as a kid and a young woman trying to focus and develop myself. My problem was I listened. I wanted to conform, be nice, be respectful.

l have heard I have the power within to do great things, to serve humanity's' deepest causes and be richly rewarded for that service.

It's choosing to practice daily tasks that allow the power within to cause miracles now. Not later, or someday, but now.

So, I've developed my daily prayers for todays fast lifestyle. Each time I pet my dogs I ask to be of service, each time I touch a door nob I say "I have the ability to do great things", and each time I'm walking the dogs I take a moment to breathe in the beauty of stillness.

These are my daily prayers.

I have struggled with meditation for most of my life. I had a lot of complaints about it. Things like: I couldn't stop the constant voice in my head complaining, it was boring, why should I do this, I have other things tot do with my time than this. And on and on.

Things changed when I started to experience insomnia. I would wake up at 3:18 AM, and be awake! Just lay there and worry about the world falling apart. Nice huh?

Then I thought, well, I have all those meditation tapes, why not put them on my ipod and listen to that, maybe that will calm my worry voice long enough so I can go back to sleep.

It worked. I now practice meditation each day. Sometimes for just 5 minutes, but I practice.

Here is what I noticed, I'm seeing the world in it's entirety not just as me, my world, my ego. My ego is still there, but I have more moments of wholeness, of one with the world.

One of my mentors used to say: Be in the world not of the world.

More tomorrow on how meditation has helped my intuition.

When I told the truth about my relationship with money, I saw that it was one I inherited from my mother.

My mother was a confused and confusing woman. She was a product of dramatically changing times, looking for someone else to guide her. I bare no grudge towards her. I have embraced she did the best she could with what she had.

But I had never sorted out that her emotional responses to money were imprinted in me. And now that I am a grown woman I have the desire to change my programming.

Sounds simple, but it takes more persistence and courage than I realized when I first chose to do so. The old thoughts and emotional habits are strong, and determined to survive.

Choosing the compassionate road is the best way to change. Generating compassion for all. Not just yourself, but all the newspapers, radio broadcasts, TV news, history, and family.

How do we practice compassion in a world that seems tipped towards suppression, ego arguments, and plain old mood swings?

I practice being present to the moment. I listen to sounds around me, the birds, wind, traffic, and footfalls. Each time I stop and listen to the moment, I allow a space for creative energies to work through me.

I hope my blogs on generating a new relationship to money creates a moment for you to allow new energies of sustainability with your resources. Please accept this gift.

If you want to get more of the conversation, this will be a part of my Money: Your Most Intimate Relationship" Teleseminar starting April 21 7:30 -9:00 PM PDT.

Send an email if you are interested: briester510@yahoo.com

Why would I call money an intimate relationship?

As I listen to what people say about money I hear how it causes the most stress, broken marriages, resigned dreams, fear, worry, doubt, elation, joy and confusion.

Coco Chanel said: There are people who have money, and people who are rich.

Maybe it doesn't have to be that way. Maybe, just maybe, we can design a relationship to money and resources that is one of fulfillment, sustainability, and abundance.

We work so hard to force nature to follow our rules. Nature has so much more imagination and creativity than we can realize. If we could learn to be present, we could explode our experience of money

We live in a world designed by imagination and fueled by thought.

I will be teaching a Tele-seminar on this topic starting April 21st. 7:30-9:00 PM PDT If you are interested, send me an email: briester510@yahoo.com

Today, in Western cultures, is Easter Sunday. This day represents our transformation.

We have, perhaps, struggled through difficult times, and this day signals us to reveal the transformation of ourselves.

What does transformation really mean? It means the alteration from a caterpillar to a butterfly. We transform into something unrecognizable from what we were before.

That's how nature and the world works. We transform into something at a greater level of awareness. Like when the first fish took to flight and birds were born, or when the first flower blossomed in a sea of plants.

Today celebrate your transformation.

Anybody feeling a little pinched or squeezed these days? I know I am.

Could be you are growing and developing new capacities. Growth, or expansion is never easy, and does not happen in a comfort zone. Growth requires examining habits of thought and being willing to release limiting beliefs.

How do you do that?

1) Have fun in the process, laugh, sing and play.

2). Align yourself with solution thinking. Let yourself 'see' and 'feel' the solution.

Thomas Edison, inventor of the electric light bulb, used to take cat naps where he would 'go to the land of solution'. He would nap for 10-15 minutes a day, before he would nap he would ask: What is the solution to......(my task, my concern, my question)

He slept with a rock in his lap, when the rock slipped from his lap he would listen to the 'answer' and try it out.

We have this wonderful world of electricity because of him.

What could you accomplish if you allowed yourself to go to the land of solution?

I've got a big week ahead.

Kinda like a big game for an athlete.

I'm excited and calm all at the same time.

Of course it's Monday, and I've only begun, Wednesday will be the big 'test' if you will.

Tuesday will be prep day, reading documents, prepare, meditation, exercise, rest.

So today, I allow to be present to this moment. I breathe. I feel the air fill my lungs, and taste the air.

All day, I will bring myself to 'now' and enjoy.

In our economic based world we live in, money is the foundation of our existence.

It's sometimes hard for us to imagine, but this is a real freedom from the domination of the past where you had to pledge an oath to a person or religion to assure your survival.

We are free to choose our religious practices, opinion of our leaders, and the path of our employment. Remember this is a big change from 100 years ago.

But that does not change the nature of money, and it's spiritual power. Money is our core relationship, because it reveals what we believe about worth, deserving, abundance, sufficiency and scarcity.

So it's a relationship that we need to honor, revere, and appreciate. Like a good marriage, you need to be in communication with money, need to appreciate it, praise the good things it does for you, and when you touch it let it feel your kind love.

Sound crazy huh? Not really. People praise all sorts of things, why not praise the vehicle of our independence: money.

In the Law if Increase it says, what ever you praise grows. Lets praise each dollar that comes into our hands and lovingly moves on the help others.

Intuition is often dismissed by the beginner student or scientist as 'questionable' or 'suspect'. However, Einstein said, "The only real valuable thing is intuition."

Once you get passed the opinions of mediocre minds, you see that the most advanced thinkers, scientists, statesmen, business owners, athletes, performers, and mothers trust intuition more than anything else. The question changes from, "what is intuition?" to, "how do I expand my intuitive powers?".

Quite simple, you expand your imagination. You allow yourself time each day to dream big dreams.

The imagination is the gateway to your intuitive powers. Visualizing each day what you desire, not just want, but desire, tunes up your intuition and allows the creative energies to work through you. You start having flashes of ideas, or thoughts in direct response to your desire.

You'll see things you never saw before, hear conversations that never made sense to you now will have 'ah-ha' qualities.

If you have questions about your intuitive powers please ask me, I've actively studied this since 1982. 28 years of devotion to expanding awareness, intuition, imagination, and perception. And there is more to learn! It's really a great avenue for development.

Intuition has been defined as understanding without apparent effort.

Intuition is at the root of solving problems, heightening relationships, harvesting good health, and developing new sources of wealth.

But how does one go about 'tuning into' intuition?

Joseph Campbell suggested that you have a private space just for you, maybe it's a room, or a corner of a room, where you can listen to the music you like, even if other people say it's corny, or old fashioned. But what you start to experience is a sense of personal space for you to breathe and expand your spirit.

There was a man, Dr Elmer Gates, who had a room that he would go into and shut off all the lights and sit quietly and allow the solutions to the problem he was working on to emerge. Just so you can get a sense of the man: he had over 200 patents. Dr Gates got paid to 'sit for ideas' by individuals and corporations alike.

We don't just sit anymore. We are in a 'get it done' world. It's not practiced on a regular basis. But finding that place for you, that room, or time of day where you can allow your spirit to breathe, will bring to you ideas and knowledge not available through the ordinary rate of thought.

Take time each day to allow your intuition to awaken.

George Bernard Shaw said "A life making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life doing nothing."

We can be such a harsh society. Very judgmental., critical, and negative.

Our newspapers constantly tell us what's wrong with us, celebrities and the world. Our television does the same. We get into the habit of doing the same to ourselves and our neighbors. It's like a game of hot potato, who gets left holding the failure stigma.

And it seems we work very hard to hide out from the critical eyes of society. It takes the focus off our own foibles if we can point the finger at someone else. And it cripples our creativity, self-expression, and motivation.

But what if we viewed the world through eyes dedicated to turning mistakes into stepping stones?

What if we could see any mistake or failure as a chance for greater good to emerge.

Because it's what you do when you get back up that counts.

I got two calls yesterday.

One from a friend that is working diligently to get me a new job. She has connected me with many people, and set up informal interviews. She called to tell me she has set up an interview with the HR department with the Non-Profit Company so we can take the next steps to get me in the new position. Just so you understand my concern I'm facing with the job she is trying to connect me with is time: I need a job now. Her job might not come through until July.

The next call was from a Temp agency that cancelled my interview for today and told me they would not work with me in finding me a job. That I was unacceptable.

Wow!

What complete opposites. I watched my emotions zig zag. And I finally understood, like in my bones understood: balance comes from the inside, not the outside.

Circumstances will come and go, but my response to them is what counts.

I know we've been told this many times, but I still react, I still get upset when it feels like I'm struggling to get a good paying job, or to get my career going in the direction I want. Or to pay my bills.

Wallace Wattles in The Science of Getting Rich says: "You have the natural and inherent power to think what you want to think, but it requires far more effort to do so than it does to think the thoughts which are suggested by appearances."

"...far more effort" No kidding.

I've been taught to be a people-pleaser, to be the good girl. So to go against that and get my strength from within, not to look without but within. That will take building a new set of muscles. One not found in the gym.

I was talking with my husband Saturday. We were having lunch at some neighborhood joint. I started to consider that perhaps money, or more accurately, my struggles with it, was a bad habit, like nail biting or smoking. And just like any habit, a shift in perception can assist in altering the habit.

I was a smoker way back in High School. And when cigarettes went from 30-50 cents a pack I told myself, "I'm not paying that" and I stopped smoking. Of course I had challenges, but I was determined not to pay $0.50 a pack!

I was also a vicious nail biter, and right before I graduated from college I just told myself to stop, and did.

I also got married by choosing to be finished with this single life of mine.

My question to myself becomes: is there a difference in creating income? Can I use my higher thoughts to create income, just as I used my higher thoughts to stop smoking, stop nail biting, and find the man of my dreams?

There is something very similar in all of these things, and that is this: what I choose to think about and my reactions.

I determine my reactions, no one else; I do. I can get upset or not, I can remain focused and choose the path I want my life to proceed upon, or allow the circumstances to dictate.

It takes persistence. The same way stopping smoking did, persistence to a vision, a dream, a goal.

So, I'm so done with the scarcity level of thinking that has been programed into me from birth. I choose an abundant life.

Everywhere I turn there is yet again another person telling me how to be successful, how to get more bang for my buck, how to be unstoppable.

They have the answer; and they will now tell me. Sometimes I just want them to calm down a bit.

I have begun to take a different path, I have become curious. I'm asking deeper questions of myself.

I realize that the road to fulfillment is lined with challenges, road blocks, stop signs, U turns, and yield signs.

It is never a straight path in life. That's the fun. That is the part where we, as a country and a civilization, need to grow most especially.

The ability to choose fun and playfulness in the tough times, the demands, the times when you think 'I can't do this' any longer.

We have spent energy making sure that the corners of life are rounded, we seem to be trying to eliminate the bumps of life. So that no one gets hurt, I assume. That's like trying to squeeze a balloon; not a good idea.

Instead, consider celebrating challenges. Welcome them, embrace the sharp pointy edges of life. And ask; like a good scientist or inventor, the questions that encourage growth, not stifle it.

Encouragement comes from celebrating each move, regardless of the circumstances. Celebrate the love you have, the money you have, the health you have, then ask; what's next?

I began asking that 'what's next' question joyfully, expectantly, with unexpected enchanting results in mind. And it makes me laugh, lifts my heart, and makes me smile.

If you try this on, tell me your results, I would love to hear from you.

"The truth is simple, if it were complicated then everyone would know it." Unknown

Our world seem to be getting more and more complicated. One path to inner peace is to simplify your life.

I ask myself: how much do I really need? how much is enough? what do I really need?

Sometimes I've found that when I simplify my life, pare down, eliminate the extras, I'm actually happier, freer, and more centered.

So, why all the focus of getting stuff and more stuff? I think it's easier to get stuff than to develop yourself.

It's easier to buy something than to go to the gym, or read a book, or volunteer. It's just the easy path.

The simple path is the more challenging one. But by far the more rewarding one.

I was on my morning inspirational call. My buddy on the call stopped me in my rant about money, and said: 'Repeat after me; Everything I need is already here". She said it over and over.

Maybe that's the best thing that affirmations give us, a chance to stop the pre-programed, preconceived ideas of how our parents and the media have told us how life works.

Where do we get all these notions of scarcity and lack and limitation?

I think because we repeat and hear it so often. Commercials declare we need to 'act now' or forever lose this opportunity. It's how we are manipulated.

Maybe what affirmations do for us, really, is to allow us to open our eyes to how the laws of our world really work. To awaken ourselves we already have and build on a foundation of limitless bounty.