by Karen Cumming | Aug 28, 2018 | Earth Rocks Blog
One of my favourite movies is “Under the Tuscan Sun”. Diane Lane plays Frances, a writer whose husband leaves her for a younger woman. Frances’ best friends send her on vacation to Italy in a bid to take her mind off things. Unexpectedly, she falls in love with a rundown old villa there and buys it on the spot.
Sounds romantic, right? Let’s just say… things don’t exactly go according to plan.
Luckily, our heroine gets help from a spiritual guide: her realtor, Signor Martini.
Frances tells him she’s worried she’ll never find love again. So Martini tells her a story about the Alps that divide Italy and Austria. The terrain in that part of Europe is some of the most difficult to navigate in all the world. Yet hundreds of years ago, the two countries built a railroad track. So far so good, right? Here’s the catch. The train capable of traversing the Alps didn’t exist yet . They built the tracks anyway. They believed the train would come.
Signor Martini tells Frances she must believe.
Spiritual teacher Wayne Dyer would have liked that story. He was famous for saying “You’ll see it when you believe it!”. For some reason, lots of us humans seem to have it the other way around: we believe it when we see it, and not before.
I hate to break it to you. We have it all wrong.
Dyer taught us that the thoughts we put out into the universe are pre-paving the way for our reality in the physical world to manifest. Believe that it’s going to happen? Then you’ll see it in your life… maybe not five minutes from now, or tomorrow or next week. But the universe is conspiring to give you exactly what you’re thinking about.
It’s the Law of Attraction, pure and simple. Believe it and it will happen.
How’s that for a train of thought?
by Karen Cumming | Aug 24, 2018 | Earth Rocks Blog
Have you ever visited Niagara Falls? It’s a gas. You put on a plastic raincoat and climb aboard a boat called “The Hornblower” that takes you on an epic ride through the white mist right up to the Falls themselves… close to 700,000 gallons of water per second cascading down to the river below.
It has to be one of the greatest natural wonders on Earth. The force and power of the water is thrilling to me. I love it.
What I love most about it is this: you can FEEL it with all your senses.
Close your eyes and feel the sensations that come at you from every direction: the damp mist in the air… the cool spray that pelts your face and soaks your hair… the sun on your face… the rocking of the boat…the vibrations of the churning water down below.
It’s almost like you can lock it in your memory bank – lock it in the cells of your body. Days later, I find I can close my eyes and feel the mist in my nostrils and the spray on my face all over again.
Yogi, teacher and author Ram Dass would love it. He’s a famous dude in the world of spirituality, thanks to his ground breaking book, “Be Here Now”. In the book, he talks about the “joy and liberation” of living in the present moment. Being fully in “now”, he says, is the greatest gift we can give to each situation.
In a world where joy often seems in short supply, isn’t it a kick to think we can actually connect with it whenever we want, just by fully living in each moment and feeling it?
I’ll bet that plastic raincoat would look good on you. 😀
by Karen Cumming | Aug 21, 2018 | Earth Rocks Blog
How many times a day do we make lists? The grocery list, the “to do” list… and on it goes. One of the best lists you can make for yourself – in order to take care of you – is the “Take it in!” List.
What is it? That’s simple. It’s a list of all the things you’ve done in life that have gone really well.
There are so many of them. Honest.
The “Take it in!” list is a chance for you to look those things square in the face every day and…well… take them in. In other words, intentionally bring them up into your consciousness so that you can gain strength from them.
Why? Because our silly human brains like to focus on the things that haven’t gone so well. It’s a phenomenon called “negativity bias”. Like a sticky piece of velcro, our brains attach themselves to experiences that were bad. Often, that negative event is what we remember far more than any positive one that may have occurred at the same time. Crazy, right?
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Psychologist Dr. Rick Hanson has a life hack that can help us. He says that negative experiences are registered in the brain immediately, while positive ones need to be held in awareness anywhere from 5 to 20 seconds in order for them to register in our emotional memory. Hanson calls it “solidifying positive experiences”. In other words, we really need to be conscious of the good things that happen so that our brains will retain the memory of them.
Forget the grocery list, kids. This just might be the most important list you will ever make.
On your mark, get set, write!
by Karen Cumming | Aug 17, 2018 | Earth Rocks Blog
Have you ever gone on a vacation to get away from it all, only to realise that once you arrived, all your troubles had come with you?
Robert Holden knows all about it. He writes about happiness and transformation, and does a TED talk on what he calls “Destination Addiction”.
What is it? That’s simple. It’s the idea that happiness is always in the next place, with the next vacation, the next job, the next car, the next partner. It’s never right now.
“Unless you give up the idea that happiness is somewhere else, it will never be where you are.” – Robert Holden
Let that sink in. “It will never be where you are.”
A couple of days ago, I was helping a friend to pack up her house for a move. She was still at work, so I was on my own. As I wrapped and packed the kitchen, I started to feel a bit worn out. That is, until I decided to sing. Broadway show tunes. I was startled by how much I was suddenly enjoying “now”… loving the present moment instead of just tolerating it.
Call it the “whistle while you work” principle. It’s simple. The more we notice now, the more we enjoy being there.
Put that on a t-shirt, why don’t ya?
by Karen Cumming | Aug 14, 2018 | Earth Rocks Blog
Remember Marlo Thomas? Most baby boomers would know her as the star of the 1960’s TV sitcom, “That Girl”. She’s also the daughter of legendary comedian Danny Thomas, and is married to talk show host Phil Donahue.
Here’s my favourite thing about Marlo Thomas. She wrote a book that I love called “The Right Words at the Right Time”. (Check it out here on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2wa0UA3)
It’s a collection of stories about people – some of them famous, some of them just like you and me. Each one of these people talks about a time in their lives when someone gave them exactly the advice they needed to hear. Right words, right time.
Here’s the thing. It wasn’t necessarily fancy advice. Just the good old fashioned kind that flips a light switch in your head and illuminates your path.
Enter my friend John. He’s kind of like Marlo Thomas. Right words, right time.
I had to smile today when he said: “We’re not going to be here forever. When I acknowledge my death, it’s easier for me to make decisions about what I want.”
So simple. So powerful. And such a motivating force.
So here’s to acknowledging death. Really.
Raise a glass to it, drink a toast to it, and accept the gift it has to offer: the push we sometimes need to decide what we want, and start walking towards it.
.
by Karen Cumming | Aug 10, 2018 | Earth Rocks Blog
Are you ever in such a rush with the day-to-day of life that you lose touch with you? Something feels off. You’re just not in alignment. You need to centre yourself.
Sure, it sounds good on paper. But how do you do it in real life?
Three words, my friends. Ring. Them. Bells.
Let me explain.
The nuns and monks at the Buddhist monastery “Plum Village” in France have a very famous boss. His name is Thich Nhat Hanh. He’s a zen master and Vietnamese monk who is one of the fathers of mindfulness. TNH is a very cool dude.
When he’s in residence there – and even when he isn’t – they ring a beautiful “Bell of Mindfulness” at predetermined times throughout the day. When you hear the bell, you stop.
You stop walking. You stop thinking. You notice what IS, what’s around you, what’s beautiful, what’s right in front of your eyes.
You come back to centre.
And here’s the best part. You don’t have to live at Plum Village to ring a bell. You can do it anywhere. The easiest way is to download an app that rings a mindfulness bell on your cell phone; there are lots of them to choose from. But guess what? You can also use the bells of everyday life as your signal to stop and chill: a baby’s cry, the sound of a fire truck or an ambulance, the chime of a church bell, the call of a bird in your back yard or the ringing of your iPhone when somebody calls.
You hear the sound, you stop and centre. It’s that simple.
Ding-a-ling-a-ling never sounded so good. 😀
