hawaii - a celebration of judy kay

i posted months ago about my self-declared godmother judy right after she died.  since then, she has been my inspiration with my running.  running makes me feel so alive, so strong.  distance running is oftentimes challenging (duh), and she is my motivation to keep going when i feel like i can't.  throughout my training and races this year, i have felt her lift me up.  when i need some strength, a song comes on my shuffle that makes me think of her.  when i feel like i can't go on, her smile and laugh will flash through my mind and i feel weightless.

i'm running the kona marathon in hawaii this sunday in her name.  i'm traveling to hawaii with her middle daughter abbie, who i've always been close to and share a close bond with.  our moms were best, dear friends for over thirty years and abbie and i are following suit.  we joke that we are judy and anita, 2.0 :)

judy, this trip is for you.  i run for you, and for all the others that can't.  i know you will be with me every step of those 26.2 miles, and that you will be with abbie and i.  i feel you always, but for some reason i feel you stronger when i'm running. 

all happiness is inside of you

i've written a bit about this before, but a conversation with a new friend last night reminded me of the importance for inner happiness and peace.

i have gone through quite a bit of growth over the last couple of years, and have experienced a tremendous change.  over two years ago i was couch hopping while waiting for my apartment to be ready, living paycheck to paycheck, and so broke i was worried that i wouldn't be able to afford living on my own.  i was stressed out, up and down all the time emotionally, confused in other aspects of my life, weak, and i just didn't see the light at the end of the tunnel or that i would ever get out of this funk.  i would complain all the time - bitch and whine, bitch and moan.  i would just sit and stew in a pot of crap.

then one day, when my aunt was tired of me hearing the same record over and over again, she gave me some great advice that i have now given others around me.  she said to write down the same affirmation everyday until i felt a change within me. 

i am grateful for all the universe has provided me in the past,

that which i am receiving now,

and all i will receive in the future.

i have a grateful heart.

when i started this, i thought it was a bunch of crap.  grateful for what i am receiving now?  please - i wasn't receiving shit!  but then i began to feel this gradual shift.  i started thinking of all that i did have, instead of what i did not have.  i kept saying the affirmation over and over again, and eventually i found that i genuinely meant it.  i started to wake up with a grateful heart - i started to feel happy.  and not just happy - the happiest i have ever been.

i had read 'the secret' years before.  amazing book.  it talks about the law of attraction, and what you put out into the universe sling shots right back to you.  if you're angry, depressed, and negative all the time that is what you will attract.  if you are positive and happy, the universe will bring the same to you.  and that is what happened for me.  once i started feeling happy and grateful and started smiling again, the most amazing things started to happen.  i got this amazing job offer from dell - i felt even more grateful for the opportunity.  and you know one of the reasons they hired me?  it was my contagious, bright energy! 

and then everything just seemed to fall into place after that.  i moved into this amazing apartment in this amazing neighborhood that i love so much.  i started being able to cook again (one of my favorite things in the world) after couch hopping for a few months.  i bought all new stuff for my apartment - furniture, dishes, clothes, a bed, everything.  it was like i was starting over, just me, picking up the pieces.  i started to do things i had always wanted to do but didn't for one reason or another.  i bought myself a guitar, and began teaching myself to play.  i went through yoga teacher certification, and delved deeper and deeper into my practice.  i began to travel.  i fell in love with my new nephew over and over again.  our family went through a traumatic experience the last couple years, but our already close family grew even closer.  i even took ballet lessons. 

the last couple years, i discovered that all the happiness i had was inside of me all along - i just wasn't channeling it.  before i would tell myself, 'when i get this i'll be happy, when i have that i'll be happy'.  but once i stopped placing this contingency on my happiness, i started to feel so happy and so whole just being zoe.  i felt so much lighter, as if a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.  me was not only enough, it was more than enough.

and now, i truly wake up with a big morning stretch and a smile on my face.  i wake up grateful that i have another day on earth.  sometimes i feel so sublimely happy that i can't imagine being happier than i am now.  sure, there are life stressors around us everyday - and i, too, am guilty at losing myself in them from time to time.  but you are as stressed out as you choose to be, and as happy as you choose to be.  life's 'stressors' will always be there - kids, relationship woes, work, death, etc. but you choose how you confront them - you either choose to approach them light and without stress or anger, or you choose the latter.

i've been through a lot of crap, i dare say more than most.  but i wouldn't change anything, take back one thing, because all of it brought me to where i am today.  i wouldn't give up how i feel today for anything.  the last couple years i have felt so full of life, so whole just being me.  my confidence has grown.  i look at the world around me so differently. i relish in the little things - the feeling of grass between my toes, the smell of rain, watching my dog dream, the innocence of my nephew, a new pair of flip flops, the lake early in the morning when the water is glass, a glass of wine with my mom, sunrises and sunsets, the taste of a dr pepper after a long run, barton springs, the sound of the trees, the smell of the wind, and the feeling of the sun on my skin.  this may sound very hippie cheeseball, but dude - it's the god's honest truth.

energy is so contagious, whether it be positive or negative.  i feel like that red, hot angry energy is unfortunately more contagious than light, bright warm energy and so much easier to fall into and not get out of.  i continue to make conscious decisions to not surround myself by negative people - if i do, then i start to feel icky and pissed.  but, if i surround myself with beautiful positive people, i feed off their energy and they feed off mine.  these are the people i surround myself with.

i just hope that anyone who begins to experience this happy wholeness with themselves, stays with and holds onto it.  i believe you truly need to have this before you invite someone else into your life to experience it with, and i believe that both people need to have it.  this is how the whole conversation got started last night.  my new little friend has started to feel this again, and that makes me so happy for him.  unless you are truly happy and feel whole just being you, i don't think you have shit to offer anyone, especially in a relationship.  i have seen what happens over and over again when people enter into a relationship when they don't have this - they continue to feel unhappy, then the unhappiness spreads like a disease in the relationship, you stay in broken relationships too long because you're scared of being on your own... i could go on.  to halves don't make a whole, two wholes make a bigger stronger whole.

and i guess that's it for today, at least for right now.  be happy, love each other, smile, feel warm.  and from an old mayan prayer, honey in the heart.

'proof of heaven' by dr. eben alexander

when we were studying meditation last year during yoga training, and the deepness it can bring, my teacher shanon spoke of dr. eben alexander.  he is a neurosurgeon and man of science - he didn't believe in anything that couldn't be proven to him.  he wanted facts, in front of him, black and white - he didn't have faith or believe in anything else.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZFml7LEn68

one morning a horrible headache quickly turned into him being in a coma from bacterial meningitis.  doctors used to define people as 'medically dead' when their heart stopped beating.  but because of modern day technology that can bring your heart back so quickly, the definition has been expanded to being brain dead.  the medical world has expanded 'medically dead' to those that are in a vegetative state - their heart may still be beating, and lungs still breathing (oftentimes by a machine), but their consciousness is gone.

dr. eben alexander came out of his coma right before his wife and family were going to unplug the machines and let him go.  he and his family experienced a miracle.  his medical staff could not explain it.  after he woke up, he could not explain as a man of science what happened to him - his experience went against everything he was taught to believe in the medical fielf.  although he still cannot explain it, he is now left with this faith he had never known before. 

'as a practicing neurosurgeon with decades of research and hands-on work in the operating room behind me, i was in a better-than-average position to judge not only the reality but the implications of what happened to me.

those implications are tremendous beyond description.  my experience showed me that the death of the body and the brain are not the end of consciousness, that human experience continues beyond the grave.  more important, it continues under the gaze of god who loves and cares about each one of us and about where the universe itself and all beings with in it are ultimately going.

the place i went was real.  real in a way that makes the life we're living here and now completely dreamlike by comparison.'

while in deep meditation, i know i feel at one with the universe and my god.  i feel the energy inside of me.  i feel warmth, love, calmness, and a genuinely pure happiness.  not to sound too cheeseball, but the feeling is almost magical.  i feel that we are all interconnected, and a part of something so much greater.  we each are a piece of the universe, and each have this love and energy (whether you call that god, allah, the creator, etc.) inside of us.

The above excerpt from the book made me think of the namaste prayer.  i say this prayer at the end of every yoga practice - i then bring my hands to my head's center to ask for clarity of mind, at my mouth for clarity of word, and at my heart for clarity of action.  i admit that i don't always adhere to this - i can have negative thoughts, words, and actions.  but this prayer always brings me back to my center, and what is truly important.  the meaning of the namaste prayer and what it specifically means to me have been very important to me, especially over the last few years. 

dr. eben alexander spoke of this 'mother' and 'her' constant caring, and the almost maternal feeling he felt throughout his experience in this different realm and world.

'...the 'mother' was god, the creator, the source who is responsible for making the universe and all in it.  this being was so close that there seemed to be no distance at all between god and myself.  yet at the same time, i could sense the infinite vastness of the creator, could see how completely miniscule i was by comparison.  i will occassionally use OM as the pronoun for god because i originally used that name in my writings after my coma.  OM was the sound i remembered hearing associated with that omniscient, omnipotent, and unconditionally loving god, but any descriptive word falls short.'

the overall meaning of OM is 'the universal sound of life'.  when he was in this realm while in his coma, the constant sound he heard was this humming of OM.  the yogi in me, of course, thinks this is just awesome.  i can see why he often now refers to his god and creater as OM - it makes sense to me.  OM is the sound and vibration of the universe that connects us all.  whenever we chant 'OM' in a yoga class, the aim to connect to everyone around us - and when i do chant 'OM', i in fact feel connected to each and everyone not only in the room, but everyone.  whenever i chant 'OM' at home while practicing by myself, i still feel connected to all life around me.  it's pretty cool...

the overall feeling he felt while in this 'place' was love - undying, unconditional love.  it was a love he had yet to experience in the physical world, and one that would never be able to be fully replicated here.  even though he did not hear the words spoken to him, they were communicated to him in a way he cannot articulate.  it was just an understood truth with him and god.  the message he received was:

'you are loved and cherished.  you have nothing to fear.  there is nothing you can do wrong.

'if i had to boil this entire message down to one sentence, it would run this way - you are loved.

and if i had to boil it down further, to just one word, it would (of course) be simply - love.

love is, without a doubt, the basis of everything.  not some abstract, hard-to-fathom kind of love but the day-to-day kind that everyone knows - the kind of love we feel when we look at our spouse and children, or even our animals.  in its purest and most powerful form, this love is not jealous or selfish, but unconditional.  this is the reality of realities, the incomprehensibly glorious truth of truths that lives and breathes at the core of everything that exists or that will ever exist, and no remotely accurate understanding of who and what we are can be achieved by anyone who does not know it, and embody it in all of their actions.

not much of a scientific insight?  well, i beg to differ.  i'm back from that place, and nothing could convince that this is not only the single most important emotional truth in the universe, but also the most important scientific truth as well.'

how beatiful is that message?  the single most important thing in life is love.  how simple is that, yet how often forgotten as well?  unfortunately, hate is all around us and has been throughout history.  maya angelou once said, 'hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.'  can you imagine a world in which love, compassion, and acceptance prevailed?  it would be a world without war, without violence.  we would have a world in which everyone was truly treated as an equal - no racism, no descrimination, only accepting unconditional love for one another.  it would be a world in which the golden rule was lived everyday, by everyone.  one could argue it would be heaven on earth.

i know what this great love is like.  i have yet to experience it with a spouse as dr. eben alexander describes it, but i have witnessed the love, bond, and commitment between my Mimi and Didi, and between my parents.  i will consider myself one of the luckiest people in the world to have even part of what they do.  although i don't have children of my own yet, i have seen how my sister looks at, cares for, protects, and loves her son simon.  i have felt this unconditional love from my parents - they have loved me when i have been the most unloveable.  i know and trust they will always love me and be behind me, no matter what.  it pains me when i have seen that not all children have this with their parents.  and funny that dr. alexander mentioned one can experience this love when even looking at an animal.  i think we all have not but one soulmate, but different ones throughout our life.  i have friends i feel are soulmates.  my family are soulmates of mine, especially my twin sister.  and my dog toby is a soulmate of mine.  he has been with me since rehab, through thick and thin, through all my struggles - he has been there.

'...our truest, deepest self is completely free.  it is not crippled or compromised by past actions or concerned with identity or status.  it comprehends that it has no need to fear the earthly world, and therefore, has no reason to build itself up through fame or wealth or conquest.

this is the true spiritual self that all of us are destined to one day recover.  but until that day comes, i feel, we should do everyone in our power to get in touch with this miraculous aspect of ourselves - to cultivate it and bring it to light.  this is the being living within all of us right now and that is, in fact, the being that god truly intends to be.

how do we get closer to this genuine spiritual self?  by manifesting love and compassion.  why?  because love and compassion are far more than the abstractions many of us believe them to be.  they are real.  they are concrete.'

i'm not saying this is true, and what happens to everyone.  the fact of the matter is, no one knows what happens when you die - only the people that have truly moved to the spiritual world know.  everyone has a different belief that they believe and is true to them.  but, this book is a great read.  even if you do not believe in the afterlife, or if the afterlife you know to be true is different than the one dr. alexander experienced, it's a great book with such a strong message.  the overall message regardless of what you believe in is love.  we are all interconnected, we all are one - and what connects us all is love and life.

grocery store ramblings...

one of the reasons i like working from home is that i can go to the grocery store over my break, and avoid the sunday funday madness.  i actually do this most tuesdays.  the weekdays have a different kind of crowd of the stay-at-home-mom and old people variety.  i kinda prefer it :)

i think central market must love me.  almost everytime i pull into the lot and circle around, almost immediately a car in a baller spot (like, the ones right next to the handicapped) pull out.  it's as if the gates of heaven are opening just for me.  it puts me in an even more awesome mood, and i just know the rest of the day will be stellar :)

it pisses me off when i see carts placed in the lawn or other places that they are not supposed to be.  people, walk the extra ten yards and put your cart where it should go.  this makes the cart-gatherers job more annoying than it probably already is.  be nice, do your part, spread the love.

i'm still waiting on alaska to send it's awesome salmon and halibut down to texas.  tick, tock, tick, tock.  it's not here yet :(.  my cute fish guy wasn't there this week.  that is a reason to gut out the madness of sundays at central market - fish guy is always there.  and this poses a question - how on earth do you pick up someone at the grocery store?  i see the cutest guys there, mostly my fish guy.  and it's not just at the grocery store - how do you pick up people other places that don't include consuming large amounts of alcohol?  central market?  barton springs?  inquiring minds want to know...

central market has stopped carrying the haagen dazs chocolate sorbet, and it makes me want to cry as my tears form a small sad puddle at my feet.  boo.

i buy flowers for myself every week, one for the vase on my kitchen table and the other for the vase on my coffee tables.  they just make me happy :)

i have found out the key to getting into a check out aisle.  at central market, people approach the row of check out aisles on the left side.  i have found that a lot of people don't stop at the few check outs closest to the left and don't walk further down.  i have found that if you do in fact walk all the way down, you can practically walk up and get checked out right away - even on sundays!!  it's a trick i've learned :)

speaking of the check out counter, i find it highly rude when people do not help bag their own groceries if there isn't a bagger present - this is especially rude when there is a line of people behind you and you  have a ton of groceries!  sometimes a person will just stand there, watching the checker ring in their loot, watching the groceries pile up toward the end, fiddling on their phone, or whatever the hell they may be doing.  and then will watch the checker bag their groceries after this jerk is done paying.  my checker praised me on my bagging abilities, and thanked me very much for bagging my own.  people, this little things means a lot to the checkers.  don't be a priss, and bag your own shit unless you're wrangling children or bleeding from the head.

it's true - i will break both of my arms carrying groceries up in one trip.  i don't normally buy a whole lot since it's just me and toby, but on my big grocery store trips i will take home quite a bit.  and i will not take more than one trip - i refuse.  and for some reason, when a neighbor offers help, i will refuse - i wanna do it myself for some reason or another.