A Roll in the Universe

Prologue : I am no longer on partial sick leave. I am considered well and am back to work 100%! I have new tasks but am the master of my day, even though my work calendar has never been as full as it is now! Now: I was tasked with teaching some part-time workers about what a beta tester does at work, the temporary position I was in for over 18 months while on partial sick leave. And having not ever done this before, I was easily driving myself crazy. Eventually, after trying to plan the lesson and more or less succeeding, I got to a point where I started to settle down. Where I realized that it was hard to know if I was doing this right because it had never been done before. There is no measure for success for this yet. It started with a couple of things: A visit to my doctor's where I realized that "Trust, not doubt" (in Norwegian: "Tillit, ikke tvil") was my new mantra or motto. That was followed by an instruction from an online course that read, ...

I think I’ve mentioned Daily Om before, a website that offers life affirming essays and online courses. I’m currently taking a course on clearing. On any other website, it would be called decluttering, but it’s not just getting rid of stuff. It’s the why we hang on to things and how it feels to have them or let go of them. Not quite Marie Kondo, either, this. But rather a supplement to firm tossing and saying thank you to stuff. The course starts with exploring one’s attitude to things and to clearing them. It’s slow going, which I like. I really do not understand “housework”. I’m not good with routines. I’ve followed other flaky people and their systems and have learned something from each of them. Still, I hunt for The One Method that will get me decluttering and cleaning and all that. So why is this different? Maybe because it starts from the inside and you make the outside happen according to that. For example, one lesson was about movement. About how we get stuck in an attitude...

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others their trespasses.” Matthew 6:12 I remember when I first started to seriously forgive people with whom I had a difficult relationship. I thought forgiving them would end something. It didn’t. It started something (I wish I’d been warned). I thought forgiveness was a way to pull a bandaid off, revealing the healing wound underneath (warning: if you’re squeamish, this next part may be icky but it’s what I’ve got). But it was more like draining a cyst (I’ve done that a couple of times) and then the doctor packs the emptied hole and you have to keep getting that changed for up to a month while the wound heals from the bottom up, from the inside out. That’s what forgiveness starts: A process of healing you from within yourself. Surprisingly little to do with the other person, actually. It’s not about justice or lack of; it’s about masochism. By forgiving the other person (or even yourself), you’re basically no longer hurting yourself. The ot...

Obviously, something deep in my subconscious wants to imitate Nedry’s lock screen in “Jurassic Park”, doing his finger-wagging “Ah-ah-ah”. I had bronchitis in February. Was out sick for two weeks. Bronchitis was something I had a lot as a kid. Usually when the bullying over time finally got to me, my body would react with bronchitis. When I finally recovered, I blogged, intending to keep blogging. But I lost my routines, my momentum while sick and it took me until the end of March to get it back. That’s when I hurt a knee, just standing with a very straight leg on my living room floor. Sheesh. Got my PC from work delivered home because brain works, but dang, if this knee stuff isn’t darned distracting! After a week at home, a friend shopped for me and showed me a good exercise for knees. Can’t overdo it, though. Can’t do the steepest hill between my place and the office so have been taking the bus to work. It’s like everything just says “Ah-ah-ah” and I realize there’s somethi...

(Part 1 here) Sometimes, I think that I have undiagnosed ADHD. I relate too well to descriptions of people with ADD etc. Apparently, December children are overrepresented on the ADD spectrum. I am a December child. My therapist did point out that it doesn’t really matter if I have ADD or not; I hold down a job, own my own condo, have no bill collectors chasing me, etc. I adult just fine. The thing about being scatterbrained (besides needing to write everything down) is that things requiring a lot of discipline remain out of reach. I have, for years, disappointed myself in not being driven to try a 90 minute daily practice of yoga and meditation because enlightenment sounds so cool! Instead, I’ve done the spiritual equivalent of the buffet: A little of this, a little of that. Restless, curious, easily wowed, easily bored. Some things seep in and stick, though. A few of my spiritual books. The wide unnamed one is a worn copy of “A Course in Miracles”. I had to give it a new cover. ...

I’m thinking about the last five years, because the blog I started in 2014 went poof as I switched providers. (Always read the instructions thoroughly before switching website hosts, kids.) Then a bit of magic happened and I could save my texts and restore posts; the photos were already saved. As I went through and relinked photos, I saw that I’d been talking about stress and things bothering me on and off. It isn’t just a process to heal; it can also be a process getting sick. (These posts now have the tag “personal” for my own purposes, but they may serve you, too.) The communists of the Cold War era would make five year plans. Life coaches and career advisers often ask you where you see yourself in five years’ time. That’s a question I’ve never been able to answer. In 2014, I was on a healing path, having explored A Course in Miracles and finding ho’oponopono since 2009. A big rift in my family relations had been healed at this point. I was feeling pretty darned good in 20...

A friend commented on another blog post of mine about how we're told that loneliness shortens a life span like a smoking habit does. Her married parents are now within waving distance of 90; she doubts she'll get to that age. I have a theory, or maybe it's just a good ol' opinion about longevity and it's this: People live a long life because they want to. I know where my friend's coming from. I have thought the same: That making it to 90 (or even 80) just might not be in the cards for a single, childless woman who has nothing but seated hobbies like knitting, watching TV, surfing the 'net, blogging… I grew up with "The Greatest Generation", the people who practically starved to death during the Great Depression, then went through a world war (and maybe starved then, too) and still made it into their 90's before giving up this earthbound life. So the researchers think they lived long because they ate little. Underfeeding yourself makes your ...

In my ongoing journey to figure myself and life and all that stuff out, I’m now trying to learn about non-attachment. Attachment = expectation. In “The Shack”, they suggest you ditch the noun and go for the verb: Expecting. That is making more and more sense to me. Expectation sets you up for failure; expecting opens you up. I have noticed lately that unopened messages produce their own kind of stress in me. I have been feeling overwhelmed so am back on 50% sick leave (had tried to reduce to 30%). It just doesn't take much to get me worked up, and it doesn't feel like excitement or anticipation. It feels like dread. So not good. The thing is, it's just the mind playing tricks. Because every single message or email I opened was harmless. Utterly harmless. Nothing overwhelming or negative or difficult. Just a message. There are a variety of techniques for dealing with stuff, some physical (like taking deep breaths), some more mental (like saying you're safe as long ...

Once physical disease is ruled out, it is time to consider the root cause of most mental depression: a lack of love and connection in life (not a lack of serotonin). Source: Wikipedia Commons Via Paula's blog comes the idea of grabbing some book, going to page 62 and line 6 on that page to use for a blog post. I opened Kindle to the last book I'd been reading (Graves MD, Harrison. Mantra Meditation: An Alternative Treatment For Anxiety And Depression (pp. 62-63). Novus Energia. Kindle Edition) and Kindle being what it is, I chose what it claimed was page 62 and what was the sixth paragraph (or line shift, if you will) because the sixth line was a header. My sixth paragraph is the quote above. The quote also echos another book I'm reading: The Shack . I saw a quote paraphrased from it on Facebook: "Why am I here?" "Because this is where you got stuck." That resonated with me, so I decided to reread the book. I'm stuck, you see. Stuck somewh...

I tripped over a book on using yogic mantras to help with anxiety and depression. So I said OM a lot this morning, and maybe that's exactly what I needed to get going again (as well as three days of rest and downtime). I once upon a time, back in California, meditated and chanted OM, so I dove in and played with harmonies, with going silent, with going up an octave or two, and even whispering. You can do it all. Or just repeat internally, soundlessly. The OM on YouTube (you don't need to read the book): The Cosmic AUM The book that led me there: Mantra Meditation: An Alternative Treatment For Anxiety And Depression

The final day of being lyrically challenged (in more ways than one), thanks to one of my inspirations for blogging, Paula at Light Motifs . If you're feeling inspired, please do your own challenge and let me know about it! And now for the third song with lyrics I not only paid attention to, but also bothered to learn by heart. But that came later, because when this song first played on the radio back in 1979, it made me cry. Every. Single. Time. This is one song that is on the short list as a song you may play at my funeral (the other songs are mostly happy disco tunes so bring dancing shoes). It is "The Rose" by Bette Midler. Teen years are intense years, and the evening I saw the movie "The Rose" has moments that I will never forget. I had two friends at the time (I always end up in a trio of two girls and a guy; I'm on my third such grouping), Ann and Grant (hi, Ann!), and we went to see "The Rose". I drove us to the movie theater in my littl...

I hear Americans go on about a war on Christmas because someone says "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". Bizarrely, Norway seems to be showing up the Americans on how to actually wage a war on Christmas. There are some true and some fake stories about a war on Christmas here in Norway. From a serving tray painted by my grandma, Marion Beale Mundal So let's start with the Muslims: Muslims in Norway are not upset that we have marzipan pigs for Christmas (that was a humor site's joke). Nor that we sing songs with words like "Jesus" and "Yule" in them. One Muslim blogs [in Norwegian] about why she loves this time of year . I'm tickled by the idea of a gingerbread mosque. The Muslim I eat lunch with at work loves this time of year, too. All the lights! All the "pinnekjøtt" (steamed ribs of mutton, a traditional West Norway Christmas dinner)! However, the cancellation of the school Christmas mass in nearby Voss ...

A struggling friend reminded me of a situation I was in the autumn after my dear grandma died. Re-reading that gave me a surprise: I'd forgotten how down I was then. I remember crying during the meeting with my bosses, but I don't remember taking sick days and waking up angry every day. But yes, it all ended up well, better than expected, and yesterday, as I told a potential boss about my strengths and weaknesses during a job interview, I could honestly say I didn't lose my cool with customers or co-workers any more. "I have no reason to be angry at work," I said. Sweet. Today, I woke up feeling pretty good, and I mused on the messages in the book I am currently re-reading (here is a description of my first read ), and my praying to the Holy Spirit yesterday, and that the interview went swimmingly—personality test and all—and it hit me: I didn't second-guess myself after it was over. I usually find some fault with how I interact with people after the fa...

Ever since I discovered the ho'oponopono practice of forgiveness and healing about 3 years ago , I have used it, pursued it, and experienced healings big and small. I have taught it to a few friends. To my delight, they have embraced it and discovered for themselves the instant peace that comes with cleaning (as using ho'oponopono is called; you are cleaning your subconscious of unhelpful beliefs). My friend Alice showed me this picture she took from her hotel window in London: Every morning, I started my day by looking out that window. ILY, ILY, ILY. It was a beautiful way to start the morning. Every day, I felt the embrace of the city and I'd like to think that the city felt my ILYs. We certainly had nothing but pleasant interactions with people (and in fact, a few times, we had people offer unsolicited help!). I responded to her with this: The ho'oponopono "trick" of repeating to yourself "I love you" when in a negative situation really...

There are two things I need to do, simply because they are important to overall health and sanity. Sit less at computer. Daily spiritual practice of some kind. This computer—and the internet—are way too distracting. WAY too distracting. Hours can pass by and all I've done is look at stranger's pictures, and stranger's comments, and stranger's anecdotes, some news and a few Facebook updates. Sitting for hours isn't healthy and I already do that at work. But I don't have something just as enticing to replace this addiction with, so I find myself actually a bit afraid to let go of it. But that's what New Year's and resolutions are for, right? Get cracking on January 1 (better make that January 2 'cause I've got to sleep in) on new habits. It takes 21-30 days for a new habit to stick (if you've been practicing daily for those 21-30 days, that is) so just get in there and try to do a new habit every day. Right. Sitting less at computer: ...

Creature comforts. Usually I find mine in warm, fuzzy blankets, or clean, soft bath towels, or a well-made meal, or the corner of my sofa, or a warm muffler on a drafty day. This time I found it in a pair of shoes I never meant to pack, let alone wear. I have a friend in California who is basically my exact opposite: The yang to my yin. She has all the get-up-and-go I don't have, the creativity, the fearlessness, the curiosity, the desire to constantly be doing . Always taking an extra step and seeing a different view than the rest of us, always making sure she uses all five of her senses. And I, I am no match for her. I am a whole head shorter, and a whole heart wussier. I'm happy walking pavements. And yet, we get along. We talk, we share, we love each other. Now she was less than 400 miles away, in the Norwegian town her mother was from, just a plane ride away. We sat in the sun talking and got hot, so we decided to hike to a nearby lake. I got into my hiking pants, stu...