God Helps Those Who Helps Themselves...

Before I get into my story, I am providing a Lulu warning: If the word God is not one you would typically use nor are you comfortable with, please feel free to substitute what is significant to you, e.g. Spirit, I Am, Self, Universal Truth... Although I am known to use nicknames myself, (some which are not included in the previous examples:)) for sake of this article, I'm sticking to the "G" name. And if none of those terms work for you, but believe in the power of love, use love. Actually I may like that more, “Love helps those who love themselves,” but that may be a different article.

I must have been channeling my mother at Sunday's New Moon ceremony, as I typically cringed in my youth when I used to hear her say “God helps those who helps themselves.” It was something my mother used to say to get my lazy ass into action. Yet it came out of my mouth as a complete and utter truth. I also never expected to blog about this either, yet I’ve learned to like to expect the unexpected.

Monday morning, as I was driving through some very beautiful fall foliage, I began to reminisce about the ceremony and what a gift it was to share the ceremony and to be trusted to pray for people's dreams to come true. Then I drove through a 5 mile patch of cloud and the lightening bolt of illumination hit me. Perhaps the clouds led me to think of heaven and that lead me to repeat the title of the blog to myself and I said "Hello! Of course God helps those who helps themselves, because in truth we are just microcosms of the macrocosm that we call God. So us helping ourselves IS UNDOUBTEDLY God doing the work. We are co-creators with the big cheese." Not only did I re-recognize this truth, as this wasn't new to me, but I also clearly saw how ceremony helps embody this statement as well as the three critical components to manifestation.

I've always known this but this time it gave me shivers. The shivers was not only over the truth that we are microcosms of the macrocosm and hence co-creators which is extremely empowering, but it was also that I felt the agreement and nodding heads of all levels of my being. When I say, all levels, I mean my physical, mental, emotional and spiritual bodies. In this case my entire being said yes; however, there have been times when I don't get agreement on an idea or intention. I’m sure you all know how the tug of war feels when the mind says, yes but the heart says no. The same disagreement can show up in our physical body as well, which can really stop us in our tracks.

In cases where I have disagreement, I often find that the manifestation doesn't happen or worse if it does happen, it doesn't stick and then I'm disappointed. Or worst of all, it comes in a little wonky and then I'm befuddled and disappointed, a futile combination. Some of that is the clarity of the intention and a big part of it is that we have to be "all in," to use a poker metaphor. So in ceremony we work with all levels of the being and set our intentions to fulfill our dreams from the place of alignment and not just one of the multiple levels.

I said there are three parts to successful manifestation. So the second critical component (and the part of the discussion in the ceremony in which I channeled Mom), is that a catalyst or action is needed. If you want a job, you need to make some calls or send out some resumes. And the most important action we can ever take is to ask for help. It really does take a brave person to ask for help. In ceremony, we are asking for help from God and the unseen forces.

Oops, there's actual another component that I like to most every ceremony with, which is with some chocolate or sweetness. Not only does chocolate help activate the dopamine in our brains to make us happy, but we are symbolically also showing god and the spirit world that we are willing and able to take in all the sweetness that life has to offer. OK it's yummy too...the chocolate and the ceremony that is. And I have to say, I have had some interesting occurrences since Sunday. Try some ceremony, you may like it.

Let's All Be Goldfish Girls/Guys...Swim and Be Free

Last night, I was gifted with a Waterford crystal fish from a dear friend…she said it reminded her of me.  Hmmm, at first I thought, perhaps because we’re both Pisces. But of course the story doesn’t end there…it was a highly synchronistic event. Earlier in the week, I was listening to my IPod and a song from Ani DiFranco came up. I actually don’t know the name of it since the selection was burned on a cd for me by a friend and all I know is the track number. Well I did know the track number within ½ an hour of listening to it and did jot it down. And good thing I did it then, because know I remember something note worthy happened, but I can’t remember the track or the lyrics for the life of me and hence my deserved nickname of Goldfish Girl.

But before I put the cart before the horse, let me share the lyrics.  They are, “…I read a story and then I forgot it right away. And they say goldfish have no memory, I guess their lives are just like mine and the little plastic castle is a surprise every time and it’s hard to say if they’re happy but they don’t seem much to mind.”

This reason I was drawn to writing this down was not for this blog, but because it made me nostalgic. I was working on a project with a team of people for my day job and I started to forget things that people told me just minutes before, which was quite atypical for me. So an associate told me your like a goldfish, they only have a memory of  seconds. I wonder how they know or test this. So, throughout the rest of the project the team (including myself) mockingly called me Goldfish Girl and it’s always in the back of my mind when I get forgetful.

Now it’s more than three years later and I heard these lyrics while on the subway. I realized the potency of them although didn’t do anything other than put the lyrics to paper. Then as I already told you, spirit knocked on my door again, and has a friend gift me with a crystal goldfish. So of course I ponder my existence as Goldfish Girl even further. After all, pondering is what I do best.

How great life would be if every experience in life was like the song says and we could be like the goldfish with the plastic castle or a child pulling the toy surprise out of the box of Cracker Jacks and have a feeling of "wow that's new and cool" to almost everything...and we didn’t let our histories, our mistakes or our wounds define us and stop us from doing something new and exciting. Heck let’s forget the bad stuff, if we get too attached to the good stuff, we can stay in a rut and never venture out and discover another potentially more-wow experience. There is such power in freedom from attachment to our histories and reactions to that history.


So for any of you “realists”, I’m going to beat you to the punch. I know that I’ve also heard that the definition of insanity is when someone keeps banging their head against the wall and expects different results...and ,aybe that’s how they figured out goldfish have short memories, as they saw them crashing into the fish bowl walls over and over again.

However, the message I’m trying to convey is that by being free of our expectation and history we can be present with what works best for us in the moment. When we live in the present, our mistakes become our muse inspiring us with new ways to re-create ourselves.

Let’s be present with what is true in the moment and create from this place. Let’s all be like Goldfish Girls or Guys, depending on your gender preference, and swim through life and Be Free!

Einstein was right….it’s all relative!!!!

Not to fret, I’m not going to go into a discourse on physics, because just about anyone can out knowledge me on that one but this is what I’ve been thinking of, perspective and how mine seems to have shifted.

O.K., I know I keep talking about my clowning trip and the immense joy and freedom that has resulted. I should probably just accept it and move on, yet I want to understand why this felt unique and life changing. The reason I’m so awestruck by the effect of this heart-blowing experience is that historically after a major loving experience, I would inevitably experience a contraction shortly afterwards. I would have a min-freak out. Not a bad freak-out to have huh? Call 911 - Help I just experienced a drive by shooting of intense unconditional love. It sounds silly but it was true. After a major mystical and loving experience, I felt that I didn’t have the ability to chop wood and carry water afterwards. What was I supposed to do with all this love. My solution, out of old patterning, was to make myself and my love small and contracted. This didn’t leave a lot of room for joy.


So what also makes this experience unique is that, not only did I stay expanded around the love, but the interesting thing is that the less than pleasant experiences that have occurred in the last three weeks haven’t made me contract either.

Some may want to call this denial; however, since I’ve been back my life has certainly been less than absolutely perfect. Shit has happened. Without getting into details, certain events of a similar catastrophic size would have put me into moderate despair in the past. It would have been really hard to feel the love no matter what tools I pulled out of my back of tricks. However, this time when the less than pleasant experiences happened, I was able to experience both the container of joy and the sadness/frustration at the same time. Hmmm, this intrigued me.

I wanted to understand why this was so different. So I did some research and inquired with my friends from the clowning trip. In sharing my experiences with my fellow clowns, I came to a personal AHA!

So here goes, Lulu’s Theory of the Pink Elephant. Unlike Einstein I don’t think there is a Nobel Peace Prize in my future, but thought I would share. Whether an experience is bliss or shit, it’s kind of like the pink elephant in the room. No matter what you do, it’s there. Not to state the obvious, but the room is a container. As human beings, our emotional and mental bodies act as a container for all of our life experiences. We experience it and typically we label it as good or bad, insignificant, moderate or intense….you get the picture. So perhaps the judgment and attachment to the labels is also an issue but no matter what the experience our container needs to digest the experience to make room for more. Heck the digestion of our mental and emotional body is our way of processing life.

If the experience is huge and intense, it is like an elephant. How do you digest an elephant, one bite at a time. However, if the container is small – the elephant is cramped, there is no circulation, you get indigestion and all you can think of is this elephant in your gut. However, if the container is large and accepting enough, there is space. Keeps things in perspective. I would even go as far as saying that space is equal to love and acceptance. It gives you perspective and tolerance, which are certainly attributes at the top of my wish list.

Like my diagram ?!?! So I’m not going to win any diagram awards either but you can see that the elephant is the same size, it’s our container, aka mental/emotional body, that changes shape and size. So going back to my big undies metaphor in my previous blog. If you stretch the elasticity of your mental and emotional body, those undies can hold a lot even a pink elephant.

Was it the clowning trip that did this And the answer is yes and no. Yes it did for me but this was also one experience in a series of experiences in a life that has been deeply committed to personal transformation. For those younger than me, don’t despair, perhaps I’m a slow learner (funny comment coming from Lisa Lerner, huh?) Anyway, it took as long as it needed for me – but the magic ticket isn’t in the path or my timing. It’s my experience that the magic ticket is finding was in the expansion of my mental/emotional container. How does that happen. Well there are lots of paths to the same place and let’s just say that the ability to surrender, breathing at all times and an ability to laugh at oneself are quite helpful. Heck I’d say critical. And what gets us to surrender and expand is unique for each of us and I recommend having as much fun as possible in finding it. Nothing can take the wind out of our sails more than being too serious. So play away and may your days be filled with light, love and laughter.