Keep on keeping on.

My meditation teacher used to say that when we experience struggles in our lives and have strong ups and downs, we learn to be resilient so that when we have an enormous test of inner strength we will be able to get through them.  This at least has been so for me in my own life because it hasn't been easy since my father was diagnosed with cancer when I was just six years old and died when I was nine and a half years old.

There is so much that goes into character building.  It isn't always the clean slate, straight A students that are able to succeed in life because they can't fight for their lives.  They may get into positions of power and act as bullies I guess.  I think that President Barack Obama as an example of someone who really isn't cut out to do well in the competitive business world but can throw his weight around as a politician.  Now we have Jerry Brown who has been described as being "one the government teat all his life," as the new Governor of California.  Not a good scenario for our country to have leadership such as this guiding the greatest country in the world in the most troubled time.  Get the feeling that we could nickname the golden state the "Titanic!"  Well one thing I feel fortunate about for sure is having Kris Kobach for Sec of State, Kansas and Gov. Sam Brownback and Sen. Moran.  At least Kansas can be put back on track and people who don't belong here legally probably won't want to challenge the system.

Politics affects our capacity to work and without jobs even those preparing for their professions are sunk because it is going to take years now to rebuild the economy.  I hope more people will go into some kind of small business for themselves as a way of trying out new ways of making a living.  One of the companies I have recently connected with is http://www.rainnutrition.com/ and I hope you will check it out for the antioxidant natural products.  Please contact me via email with your thoughts or let me know if you would like me to put you in touch with the top sales man Jimmy Ezell.  It is a fairly new company out of Utah and is expanding its markets globally.  Now is the time to get on board.

I have found that when I'm going through a particular challenge that messages pop up and speak directly to what I have to do to accomplish my objective.  I am a strong person because of my life experience and when a priest posted a note about having to fight in life I knew I was on the right path today.  My approach is always to fight back.  I have a soft English accent but behind it is an iron fist inside a velvet glove!  Once someone tries to bully or intimidate me I will do all in my power to fight back and have a zero tolerance for anyone who has stopped me from working.  I have essentially not been able to work for the past two years and now have sent documentation to the LA Times.  I have had lots of support with contacting a Senator and having my case sent to the Kansas Governor's office.  I am no wuss!!  More to come as I get things lined up and talk with an attorney.  More of a bulldog than a negotiator.  How do you like it when you hear how your tax money has been used in two states CA and KS to "go after" a nurse.

Meditation is the key to all problems.  Whenever there is a problem there is always a solution.  I meditate in the morning and evening regularly and it is during that time that solutions come to me or sometimes as I take a walk in the autumn sunshine.  For instance after I sent my request to a senator I was uncertain whether he would respond.  Then I got the idea to contact all the politically active people I knew and have them call his office.  It worked!!  Also I have had legal fees to pay and no income.  I did work for a few weeks this past summer and after they didn't pay me for my last week I gave it over to a lawyer I owed money to and hey presto!  Sometimes you have to look at a problem from different angles.  Develop a flexible mind through meditation.

I hope that you are happy with the election results.  Work in the political arena and make politicians accountable for what they do or don't do.  They are working for you after all aren't they?

I work as a Professional Life Coach and welcome you to contact me at lawrencerita511@gmail.com
I am also a wellness consultant and recommend a regular practice of meditation and vegetarian diet.  Check out the antioxidants at http://www.rainnutrition.com/

Loss of a child's life.

Perhaps the greatest loss anyone has to face in life is the loss of a child.  Whether it is because of having an abortion at a time in life when you didn't have the conscious awareness about the sacredness of life that begins at conception; the loss of a baby during pregnancy from other causes or as an parent of an adult. The mother and father will always remember their baby or child who was never able to share in the times of family gatherings, instead always leaving a vacant spot in their hearts.  Pain is something that has to be endured and hopefully it will diminish over time. 

I have found the best method of lessening the power of any situation over me is to share the experience with others, some of whom may benefit by your outreach.  Some sit in silent suffering and there is no way of knowing what is going on in someone else's heart and mind.  Support groups can be a good place to start the healing process.  Margie Basarba wrote a sensitive comment on her face book page recently that touched my heart and I wanted to share her link with others because in God's design you never know who needs the information at that particular time. 

I recently heard of a family member of someone I know being killed.  It happened in a neighborhood that I knew from my earlier days in Kansas City when I used to go out on the town with my husband.  I had not heard the particular news story she referred to but I sensed that it was an unexpected death and probably a murder.  I have a particular sensitivity toward this particular situation because I also had a close family member who was murdered.  I was working at the time and seven months pregnant when I left for England and felt that I was pulled into the eye of the storm.  Murder is evil and yet there is a tendency by society to take pity on the murderer.  I always think of my brother and wonder what his life would have been like had he lived past his 30th birthday.  For me there has been no way of reconciling the facts about the injustice of it all and I wonder what he knew about his wife having an affair at the time.  It was his wife's boyfriend who shot my brother in the back of his head as he arrived home and was walking toward the entrance of the apartment building where they lived with their two young children.  The milkman found his dead body in the morning and my eldest brother was called by the police to identify his body.  The victim leaves behind a wide circle of people who will feel the loss for the rest of their lives and the only consolation is to focus on the good memories.  Their memory will always be present in the hearts of family members and it is our love for them that never dies and continues to grow.

When tragedies happen they will take us to a deeper place inside our own soul where we seek to find the answers to life's purpose and ask God to help us cope with the pain.  There are no miracle bullets as far as medications are concerned.  Meditation is a method of healing through connecting with God within your own heart that has been taught by the Spiritual Masters from the East for thousands of years.  Take time during your grieving process to go inside in silence and even if you sit through painful emotions know that it is an inner cleansing process that is taking place and that the divine power or energy that you will connect with is also supremely intelligent and knows how to remove the pain and emotional blocks.  I recommend that you work under the guidance of a spiritual master who can initiate you on the spiritual journey.  Under the guidance of a Master you can be sure that the right circumstances and conditions will present themselves in your life to make your pure as gold in the process. 

One of the philosophical frameworks that Eastern Master's teach is karma.  Our thoughts and actions will bear fruit in this life or can lead to the consequence of having to come back in another life to fulfill the right or wrong action that we did.  That's right!  The balance of equipoise is so fine in yoga that we are required to reap the fruits of our good actions also.  That is why detachment is so important to know.  I recently read that on the path of Buddhism followeres are taught to prepare for the afterlife when they are presented with incidents in which they hurt another's feelings.  In the afterlife they feel and expereince the other's anguish for which they are responsible for causing.  In order to avoid the karmic lesson by having to repeat a lifetime to learn how to respond in a more loving way perhaps, followers are instructed to look past the condition of the person or event so thay they are not hooked into or attached by the energy of what they created.  I did not read further to know what other ways might be presented to correct our karma.  This is a tool that you can begin to apply to your life now.

Perhaps I could have benefitted by this method after my brother was murdered and we found that his wife had been involved with not only trying to poison him but in buying the gun that was used to shoot him.  When I think of my ex-sister-in-law and her boyfriend I can feel less impacted by their evil deed by looking past them.  Perhaps I can also image them in a light that radiates from the stars and sun behind them or God's light (however you want to draw light into the picture.)  By looking past them and connecting with the powerful source of the universe and God you won't get entangled emotionally with the issues and energy surrounding the individuals involved. 

For those who have lost a baby through a misguided decision to have an abortion or unintentional loss of a pregnancy perhaps the same technique will help to heal.  Whenever you image the baby or see the child in other stages of normal development picture that child in white light and see if you can look past the child and join the light that is radiating into the scene from behind.  As I write this I can invission a young girl of perhaps 9 or 10 with golden hair and curly locks swinging on a rope tied to a tree limb.  Give yourself permission to grieve and continue to hold onto your faith in the after life where your child is now with God.  Allow yourself to remeber what your child meant to your and your spouse and talk about what he or she would have been like had their life continued.  Always stay in rememberance of God.  When I feel myself experience any negative thought or feeling I immediately remember my own Spiritual Master or God then feel energized and spiritually uplifted.  It is similar to driving a car and learning to listen to the engine and know when to shift gears.  It takes practice but you will inevitably steer in the right direction.

My work in the past has been in the mental health field.  I found that more and more I wanted to help people with deeper healing that takes place through connecting with their own spirituality.  For the past two years I have been writing and working as a Professional Life Coach.  My work is grounded in spirituality and vegetarianism.  The unawakened life is arrid and awakening to the spiritual dimension makes us alive and we can be empowered through our connection with God. 

Science of Spirituality is devoted to uplifting the lives of people who seek to know God in this life and improve their own lives through the guidance of the teachings of Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Marahaj.  I recommend that you check the web site http://www.sos.org/  There is information there about afterlife experiences that have been reported by so many who have had their accounts recorded.

Please feel free to contact me by email: lawrencerita511@gmail.com
I will respons to all inquiries and questions and hope to assist you to take your live from the oridinary to extraordinary.

Intrussiveness

We all have things that pluck our nerves!  Culturally as an English person keeping my voice tone low enough to keep my conversations private is something that comes naturally.  It disturbs me when I am in public and hear conversations that I would rather not.  Being made into an unwilling participant by others behaviors that I object to the most.  When challenged with intrusiveness I have to gauge my emotional reaction and try to refocus my thoughts onto something more constructive and positive.  For instance I will read on listen to a tape so that my focus in on what interests me and then the loud voice tones of people who don't seem to mind pouring all of their personal experiences out in a public forum seem to fade into the distance.

Keeping strong boundaries is important for your own good and for the good of those around you.  Etiquette is something that people seem to know less about these days now that cell phones for instance have become a normal way of communicating no matter where the person is when he/she answers.  In fact I have found myself in the rest room and being a reluctant participant in a loud conversation about everything that is important to the person on the phone. 

One of the things that you can do when calling someone is ask if it's a convenient time to call.  They don't have to necessarily tell you "no" because they are on the john, but at least you can know before laying out your agenda that the person would prefer you to call back in 5 minutes.  Keeping your conversations when meeting with someone as brief as possible is always a mark of common courtesy.  Recently I attended a meeting where I was a reluctant participant to a long and exhaustive demonstration  of how to make garbanzo beans into a puree.  The man obviously liked to be the center of attention and put great emphasis on points so small that I almost went to sleep standing up.  Where do people get their idea that they can have all your attention from?  Again I found that the level of voice tone was high and it emphasized his need to lecture everyone about how easy it was for him to show us how to be cool!

I remind myself that I haven't done the spiritual work so far to waste it by slipping on a banana skin so to speak.  What I do in these situations is realize that it's a test for me and I then repeat the mantra's that my Teacher has given.  So in these moments of frustration can be turned in to spiritual tuning and focusing on God's name.  Someone once told me that when people are problematic they are like angles that help us go deeper into our practices. 

There are several things that can be intrusive in life and perhaps the thing I don't like is loud voice tones and bad manners generally.  When people have difficulty expressing their emotions they can turn it into anger and when they are unable to deal with the anger it turn inward as depression.  Anyone who has been around a person who is depressed will note that their mood can be said to be at least cranky.  Recently a friend of mine who is depressed picked me up from the library and when I said that I had emailed a person she dramatically positioned her arm in an outstretched motion to introduce what I had done followed by an emphasis on AAANNNNDDDD!  I was aghast with shock!  Who did she think she was talking to and did she really know me?  I have not allowed people to abuse me and refuse to at this stage in my life.  When I responded by asking why she was angry she got even angrier and has since accused me of confronting her.  I believe the two examples I have used are actually narcissistic people who are so wrapped up in themselves they don't care about how troubling their outrageous intrusion is.

Distancing is a natural response for me when I need to get some space and that is what I have done with my friend whom I am staying with unfortunately.  I spend the day at the library where I can use wifi and then go back to her home after 6 pm.  There is very little time to spend with her before I shower at 8pm and go to bed at 9pm.  I recently responded to a t.v. program she was watching about Obama and his father by telling her that Ganish De Silva had written a book about his father when she said that Obama had seen his father only once in a very defensive manner.  I said that he might have only seen him once but had written a book about him.  With that she shouted about that wasn't all that I have said and that has meant that my conversations have been limited.  Who wants to talk with someone who is a loose cannon?

In all we all have to deal with people in our personal or work lives who intrude and lack manners.  In the work arena it is better to try to find ways of getting along with colleagues and if that doesn't work then you will have to face the problem through a superior.  These are growing experiences for all of us who would naturally rather avoid confrontation.  My first real experience with learning how to confront was when I worked with a nurse named Juanita who was very butch and had a moustache.  She was abrupt and bullying because she thought that way she could be boss.  My supervisor said that I would have to approach her at the beginning of the shift to check in with how she was feeling.  It wasn't long before Juanita slammed the door in my face.  I got through that and have been able to meet other challenges that haven't been quite that bad since.

Meditation is the one spiritual tool that helps me to unload all the negative feelings that can build up because of relationship issues.  By sitting in meditation everyday you allow yourself the natural healing power to dissolve emotions that tie up your own energy or power.  It is uplifting, doesn't cost a penny and will improve your emotional, mental and physical health.

My work is as a Life Coach and I will work with you on areas in your life that you want to manage and improve.  You can achieve your goals no matter how far they seem from reality for you.  You can do it!
Contact me at lawrencerita511@gmail.com

The Three T's to plan around.

My background is in mental health and I write for women mainly because I am not sure that what I have to say will necessarily what men will relate to.  High school and college that I attended have been for women mainly because of my field of discipline has attracted more women than men.  I hope that you will find the following framework useful as you organize your thoughts around your goals and set your course to take some empowering and positive steps toward your future career.
The three "T's" that I am going to frame this blog around are Trust, Talent and Togetherness.  Trust is first because it is not only our first developmental stage in life that sets the foundation for future relationships, it is also measure of how secure we feel in our ability to master certain tasks and challenges thus enabling us to demonstrate self-confidence.  Talent is important because we have to be prepared to compete in the programs that prepare us for our career and then continue to grow and develop professionally.  We have to learn to become adaptable; learn when to hold on and when to let go; when to bend and when to stand firm.  When we are in a space inside ourselves that resonates with our authentic self and we are not living lives that have been ascribed to us or taking on roles that we do not have the natural talent or intelligence for, we then bring forth a quality of work that is both creative and useful to others.  When we are able to produce our work from this deep and authentic part of ourselves that is totally not a facade, we enjoy what we do and it creates joy within us that wants to find an outlet to share this knowledge.  Togetherness is another aspect of what we are about - we are part of a pack and the opposite of isolated individuals.  We belong in community and that is where we grow and become strong.  It is important to seek people who are like minded and like spirited because you will find people who will try to diminish your work through jealousy and other behaviors that we shed through inner spiritual work.  Don't let anyone put your flame out or try to dull your light!
This is how it comes together when you want to identify what it is that you want to develop or achieve in your life.  Identify that objective first and be sure that it is indeed what you want with all your heart and soul.  Set a clear intention and see yourself achieving your goal.  Act in a way that tells your inner psyche that you already are what you have in mind. 
1.  Trust your self that you will achieve your aim.  Trust first began in infancy when our mother figure met our needs for warmth, food and love etc.  We always knew that we would get the responses from that person based on our expressed need.  Now you have to know that you can bring together the resources, supportive people, research or whatever it is that you need to proceed and maintain the process toward achieving your goal.  Tell yourself that you already achieved many things before this goal and you have reached your goals.  This too will be a learning process and you will achieve or manifest your hearts desire.  Trust in your ability to care for yourself.  If you have so many obstacles standing in your way that feels overwhelming, my teacher used to say to make the problem the same size as yourself.  Write down the problems as you begin and find out how you can work through them.  Is it coming from your own lack of confidence or fears or an actual deficit in your life such as funds for a business?  Be clear and do the work inside and outside to resolve the barriers.  You can do it and you will move forward at a steady pace.  Keep a journal and record all the things that have been issues for you and how you have managed to problem solve.
2.  Talent.  You know what you are good at or what you are drawn to do because of your experience.  I for instance chose nursing because my father died from cancer of the colon when I was little and the nurses who cared for him and were kind to me left an impression on me that led me to finding a way to become a nurse myself and return what I had been given.  Through journal writing and self enquiry find out what motivates you.  My motivation comes from a desire to help others and ease their pain - physical, emotional and mental.  Your motivation may be to earn money through business.  It could be the performing arts.  You may want to be an engineer.  Whatever you are good at and can build upon is what you should pursue.  I was disappointed when I taught nursing students who did not look upon nursing as a calling but rather looked on it as a way of earning fairly decent money and some planned to invest and then switch to doing something else.  Think about the moral and ethical obligations of your career choice and the love and energy you bring to others who will come to you for your services.  You may benefit from career counseling and going through aptitude testing.
3. Togetherness.  When you find the career that is right for you, build a network of people who are either in the field already or like you are in the process of reaching your goal through a course of study.  In any group find the one's who are positive and uplifting.  Join clubs and societies and go for excellence in your work.  Find out through journal writing and self enquiry if you hold back in any areas of study.  Work through the barriers and identify why you are holding back and not going for it!  Like all things that cause us to not be our best, once identified and openly acknowledged they loose their power and hold on us.  This approach is mature and you will find it liberating.  The more baggage you try to stuff down inside or hide from people, the less you are to produce your talents from a clear and creative space.  You will enjoy your work and want to help others who may need coaching because once you are in a space of creativity you will automatically want to help.  It brings joy and that is a motivating feeling. 
What I want to emphasise is that it is by being authentic within yourself that you then are able to produce an abundance of creative work.  Your talents will manifest with ease and you will enjoy studying, recognizing that you have an ethical duty to do your very best to achieve excellence.  You set the bar because that is the level of understanding that you want to achieve for yourself and show in your work with confidence. 

Whether it is for support, assistance with identifying and developing goals, or learning how to meditate please contact me at: