Painting Over the Walls of My Limitations!


Astrologically I am born under the sign of Cancer which is all about home and family. So having that special place for me to call home is a very important for me to feel safe and nurtured. Being so emotionally sensitive it vital for me to have a safe refuge to retreat into just like the crab has its shell. Growing up as a military brat produced a great amount of turmoil in my life with the feeling of always being uprooted every four years or so, made growing up even more traumatic. Now I see it as a true blessing in disguise because no matter where I go I always make where ever I am home for the moment. This allowed me to trade in that core basic need for stability and a warm cozy nurturing space and find within the freedom of the wide open road.

So all of that suffering, turmoil and trauma of my childhood paid for my tuition for developing the ability to love adventure, and be happy as a wandering gypsy going where the wind took me. To a point anyway, I always had a place to return home to, and a life waiting no matter how many months I had been gone.





Finding a dream...

I have lived in Austin, TX since 1974 which marked my escape from my parents and working in the Hotel they owned at the time. The University Of Texas at Austin granted my emancipation and entry a big new bright and exotic world full of wondrous wisdom and potential. I lived here in Austin for the longest ever in one place and it truly is my home where I replenish my energies for the next adventure, what ever that might be, or when I might hear the wind call me back to the road again.

The funny thing is that for years I had this reoccurring dream of being in this particular house. I was quite familiar with it and the day I drove up in the drive way I knew it was the one of my dreams. At the time "Rex" now my late husband and I were looking to rent a place together and test the waters for a relationship. That's a whole other story. The house is actually a duplex which we live in one side and rent the other. It is set back at the end of a cul-de-sac, nestled in trees, with a creek that flows around and behind the duplex. It is secluded and hidden, often UPS claims I don't exist. Having no neighbors and looking out the windows on the back forty (a lonely quarter acre) you can imagine being in the country, but the reality is you are in the heart of South Austin. It is a special piece of property surround by a pecan grove and an ancient oak tree rises up and over the creek, watching and nursing the wild and abundant population of birds, squirrels, raccoons, possums, and other Nature Spirits. I have spent many happy hours in communion with that elder Oak.

I always thought the best way to satisfying my love for travel and my love of a home at the same time would be a nice quaint Bed and Breakfast Inn, out in the country on some land by the river. For years my new partner, Louie and I have talked about buying some land or a place to turn into a Bed n Breakfast Inn. The part about being a host was quite appealing and a very romantic notion. We enjoy having company and people are just naturally drawn to us. At our house we have an open door policy for friends to stop by if near, to visit, get out of traffic, stay for dinner, play a few tunes, but most of all for insightful advice and healing.

We also have many out of town friends who love to stay with us while doing there business in town. We started to notice what a corruptive influence we were having on our friends. When people stayed with us they would inevitably get caught up in our flow and time schedule. I recognized that this wasn't really a good thing or in their best interest. I am quite aware of how hard it is to have control in a chocolate shop. People have there own cycles for time, and ours is vastly different than most, especially those having to work out in the world. So the breakfast thing was a monkey wrench in our dream.

In order to follow our dream and for it to be realistically successful we were quite certain that it would require us to make a lifestyle change, and we just were not ready to do that. We never could figure out a viable solution around the breakfast part. So the Bed and Breakfast idea was placed on the shelf and labeled as a future possibility, but maybe just a pipe dream.





Rocky Roads

Let me fast forward or I should say rewind back to when the rental side of the duplex suddenly became available. This was due to some very unfavorable circumstances. Not wanting to repeat that possibility again I began brainstorming with a neighbor about how I could generate income from the place and not have long term renters, but have it available for art shows exhibits, classes and workshops. At this time a very old friend of mine who worked in the film industry heard that my place was vacant and called looking for a short term rental. She gave me the idea making the place available for short term renters because of the film industry demand for furnished housing.

That was the intention we started with on the project. We spent the hot summer of '06 renovating the place from top to bottom. That in itself was an adventure. I have designed and overseen many building and renovations in the past but I never actually did any of the physical work myself. It was so hot and we didn't have electricity on, we could only work at night because during the day the heat and humidity would make us sick. So I began researching corporate housing availability and demand. As the project progressed the idea came to go full out and do more than just paint and fixing it up but to do a total renovation to reflect the sacred nature that the property has about it.

At the beginning of the project I was rather upset about the situation that came down. The funny thing was I tried to hire people but that just never happened for one reason or another. Since I felt this anger, resentment, and bitterness needless my frame of mind caused immense problems and disruptions until it became beyond apparent that I could possibly be seriously injured and the project would never get finished without me going bankrupt. What they say about houses and renovations being a money pit was becoming true. I was stuck doing the exhausting and strenuous physical work because at that point I had run out of money for hiring someone, and it wouldn't get finished if I didn't do it.

One of the contributing factors that got me into this predicament to begin with and the cause of so much extra work were the agreements made with tenants for a bartering exchange. I had allowed tenants to paint any color they felt comfortable with; well some of those colors took 2 to 3 coats of Kilz to cover up and 5 coats in one room. What was I thinking at the time, oh I wasn't! Lesson learned! So I had to do the physical work and it was so hot and so exhausting that I was unable to doing any readings or healing work on clients.





Swimming with the current!

In the past whenever I went out of town for any length of time or needed time for myself to assimilate and rejuvenate the phone always stopped ringing. Well true to form the phone stopped ringing. For most people who are self-employed this can be terrifying. Luckily I knew the drill for such an event.

I have learned through the years to fallow the flow of things. Trust me I learned it the hard way that pushing something that was not in timing would blow up in my face. It is easier to pull a chain than push it. So I learned if things weren't happening the way I felt they ought to be than I needed to do something else in the mean time. This is how I learned to stay in the flow. If a certain avenue in my life wasn't happening then I would focus my attention on taking care of other things, while waiting for that area to start flowing again.

That is why my book got put on the shelf for years till I found or they found me, the person that would open the door to the publisher. I never had the idea that it wouldn't be published, that didn't enter my mind till I had to submit it to a publisher that wanted it. It never dawned on me to think it wouldn't be published until then and I realized how scary those type of thoughts are if you focus on them and how debilitating they can be to someone's dreams. It was never a matter of not being published, it was always the when it would be. I always talked about it as if it was published and those around me believed it would be too.

I had come to a point writing the book that the energy stopped flowing in that direction to keep working on it. How I knew it wasn't flowing was before I could spend hours writing or pondering upon the oils and feel an immense contentment and inner satisfaction, but when the energy flow shifted I found it hard to stay focused and do any writing, also internal restlessness began to well up in me, as well as other opportunities opening for me to pursue, these being other dreams that has been on the back burner. During its shelf time I was so busy with other projects I didn't have time to pursue dead ends.

Most people stop pursuing and cast away their dreams because of the dead ends they come upon. They have not learned how to flow with energy because they are doing what I call "being a salmon by swimming upstream". The upstream swim can be so exhausting that the passion for their dreams gets dashed upon the rocks. Often they are so frighten of drowning that when any opportunity comes along allowing them to get back on land that they will quickly abandon their whole project. So very often they get triggered into the fear and the survival mode clicks on and they become distracted from their dream. Trust me if you indulge in making road blocks before you get to that place on the road well you never will.




Something new around every corner!

The amazing thing that I have learned about in life is that it takes care of itself and there is always a way around the boulders once we arrive at that place. We don't see the way around when we are at a distance because of the angle of perspective. For example a draftsman making blueprints /architectural drawings of elevations in perspective to convey what something will look like. What is in front is larger covering things behind so they use a series of dashed lines to represent what is hidden. We haven't learned to see the dashed lines in life when we keep our perspective fixed and ridged.

One of the hardest subjects I have ever encountered in college was learning mechanical drawing. This is a class in which students are taught how to perceive and draw 3d objects in a 2d medium. Kinda like life, spirit being 3d and this reality 2d. The thing is that looking at an object from it side is so totally different than from the top, front or bottom. It was so confusing until one day it just clicked and I groked it (which means I knew it and owned it)! My point is that just looking at a situation from one angle will not show the whole picture and if you don't know what those dotted lines mean, you don't know that there can be something behind it.

So let me repeat this again: If we indulge in making boulders out of molehills we set up the opportunity to exhaust and fizzle out our passion and the drive needed to keep moving towards the object, sometimes we think that an alternate route will get us where we need to be faster, but in reality it might just by pass where we need to be, leading us on a wild goose chase that gets us lost. Making a mountain before its time is a diversionary tactic to sabotage change. She it for what it is, and stop giving it power by believing it as a truth. You don't know it is till you get there!!!! I can almost with certainty assure you that there is a way around. Then again that process of making mountains is an addictive behavior of thought and requires tremendous will and focus to break from its web of deception. I love the way John Lennon said it "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans". (John Lennon, "Beautiful Boy") Distraction is just a way to maintain separation that keeps self in a fractured state.




Surfs Up!

What tells me the direction to swim is synchronicity, it is my gauge or compass in life. How to read this gauge is really rather simple and the truth be told maybe too simple. I do miss the obvious at times, always looking for something else than what is under my nose. Reading the gauge goes like this: if you are trying to do something or make something happen and all doors keep closing in your face well that is an indication that it ain't happening right now! The more you try the more it dries up. With this happening a natural reaction would be to start doubting yourself, maybe engage you to try harder and struggle more, or possibly give up all together. When simply it is a signal to lay it down and do something else for a while. Wait for that cycle of energy conducive to what it is you want to open up or come back around. Life goes in cycles. Trust me it can open up again and be supportive to what you want.




Sitting in an alley of fallen dreams...
…
Developing True Patience is a divine asset and worth cultivating for many reasons. I have felt over the years that my patience has increased through my learning to surrender ego to follow soul directives. Believe me it took many years of pleading, wrestling, arguing and begging with my ego to give up the resistance and learn to trust and love the Soul. Now it feels safe and realizes that it is easier to relinquish control to Soul. To get the ego to on board was a deprogramming of the mental reasoning mind.

This was a very tedious process of constant and vigilant listening to my mind chatter and questioning where the thoughts were originating and learning to discern the validity of what it was saying. When the thoughts were imprints of what was told to me or other people's ideas about me or their perspective of a situation, feelings and beliefs then I would command them to be erased and I would then replace those beliefs with a new vision or thought that was empowering and more heart based about how I thought about myself, and the situations involved in and dreams or vision of what I wanted in my life.

When I first began listening to that chatter it was so self-defeating but very illuminating to why I had such low self-esteem. My mind would obsess on the "what ifs" sucking all the joy from life. I was amazed about the horrible things I would say to myself but even more so that I accepted and believed those things. The more I erased and ejected those tapes the faster a back up would begin to play. It was such a battle and if I let my vigilance down for a moment I would find my self obsessing about something I didn't want and arguing with myself to stop thinking or believing that was going to happen. Something inside of me was stronger and determined to stop the chatter. That was a point in my life that I had gone down so far that I finally broke on through to the other side.

I will never forget that spring day. I was sitting under a red bud tree, and I was so engrossed in the beauty of one blossom that had fallen to the ground. I probably sat there for an hour in a trance state just in captivate with the bud's simple beauty when I noticed that it was quiet inside. It was such a shock that I immediately tried to engage negative thoughts denying its beauty, but my heart wasn't into it and the stillness was much more enticing. I was truly at a loss for words. I didn't know how to react, so I just sat dumbfounded soaking it all in. The colors seemed more intense and vibrant than usual, the air was brisk and sweet, and birds seemed to be singing only to me.

That was the breaking point and afterwards it became easier and easier to eliminate and sweep the chatter from the recess of my mind, allowing me to sit for hours in a state of bliss. Okay I'll admit that I did my time as a bliss-ninny, often appearing spaced out, but it is different. I don't let my mind think for me, assuming through the logic without the emotional input to clarify, So now I tell it what to do. I have to say to myself: "I am taking this to the kitchen", "I want to do this____ and then go do_____." "Take this to the office and pick up ___ the towels before going into the office." You can see that this can be rather annoying but if I let the mind have free reign it is all over the place supposing this or that. Basically making mountains out of molehills. It feels so good not having to space out and be emotionally unavailable to avoid the internal war that had raged within me for so long, I had finally discovered a way for it to end, so peace could reign in my empire. Now if we all could do that on a personal level it would affect the external mundane world to globally reflect that.





Waiting to board the train!

Eliminating the mind chatter cleared the static so that I could more clearly hear and recognize soul directives. I feel the soul is immortal and the ego is mortal. So a gauge that I use for a reality check is when ever I cross over the line and fall into the impatience of ego it becomes a loud and clear signal to get a grip and get back in balance. It is also important to be aware that when using patience as a disguise to hide your true feelings sets a trap to lull you into inactivity, which can turn down the fires of passion and desire so low they go out.

Where as "True Patience" is able to maintain a diligent effort using just the proper amount of force to create an energetic alignment that sets it in e-motion that dances in the timing of the flow. Meaning not to push when its time to pull, or pull when you need to be pushing, and be aware not to run over everything in your way. I have been guilty of that in the past; my motto has been "if you're not going to help than get out of the way." This is one of the reasons I need to have many things cooking on the back burner so that I don't get so fixated on something that it gets me out of timing and into ego's whims of desire. Like they say a watched pot never boils.

Wanting something right now, and it not happening because you want it to, often serves to cause great frustration and fuels the resolve for playing it safe in the confounds of the mundane. See that for what it its! Always being in a rush there is a tendency to forget some pertinent ingredient for the soufflé you are to baking instead of rising it sinks. You get what you want all the time but cooking with impatience has a tendency for things to come out half baked. Often what does come out is so unrecognizable to what you thought you were asking for or it is exactly what you didn't want, happens in the rush or half baked attempt you forgot to add the essential ingredient of "feeling" that makes the energetic alignment for setting it in e-motion. You probably felt it very clearly as what you didn't want. Like they say haste makes waste, it just might have a grain of truth to it.




Meanwhile back at the hacienda...

Back to my story, a few weeks into the project when it became glaringly obvious that my attitude was getting in my way and hurting, and I do mean physical pain. Things would fall on me, break on me, I was tripping and dropping things, and having to redo things making it all the more exhausting and frustrating.

It got to a point where I was so beat up that I just wanted to give it all up and run away to the island of my choice. I wasn't in a financial place to do that so all I could do was just give it up. The writing was on the wall and all there was left for me to do was surrender, which is different from giving in. I just embraced all parties involved, which disengaged me from the emotional charge that I held about the situation.

I immediately felt a shift. Instead of the burden it had been I realized what a wonderful labor of love it was. I wasn't as tired like before. Suddenly I stopped in my tracts --- realizing (because I had put the dashes together) ---This was my Bed and Breakfast!!!! Oh my, Oh my! This is the manifestation that Louie and I had put out there to be, and it was! Yes it did look different than I thought it would, and yes it did solve the breakfast issue! I don't know why I didn't realize this before; of course I couldn't with all of that dark fog clouding my vision.

I felt energized and my heart was full of joy and I started to really look at what I had been painting. It seemed the paint changed and radiated softer pearly colors, oh that's just a trick of the light I thought. About that time in the project I began noticing off in the distance, voices singing and at first I thought it was a radio or neighbors partying, but it wasn't. Every night I began hearing faint sounds like singing. I started to call it my Angelic choir and when focusing on it I could feel currents of energy flowing through me and my heart would lift up in joy or bubble out as laughter.






A big challenge for me because I am such a project orientated person that when ever a shiny thing catches my attention I become so fully immersed to the exclusion of everything else for that moment in time. For example the dishes don't get washed or vacuuming done and forget dusting, those things are not important to me as what it is I am creating. I make a total emotional alignment for what I am doing because it is the timing of the flow. In this case as the weeks and months went by, it became apparent that I really didn't want anyone to help, well I would have loved for someone to have cleaned my house because it was moaning and groaning about the neglect and lack of attention it was suffering. I am immune to others whining but my own are loud and clear, because I can whine with the best of them.

I was so immersed in my passion and the vast possibility that the dream was turning into that if anyone else's energy got involved it would only dilute it. I was consciously blessing and infusing our vision of the dream into the space. Desiring it to radiate and anchor an uplifting vibration for all who visit this place. I called upon those Angels signing in the background to come and wrap the space in a soft cocoon of rainbow light and heart love for infusing it with sweet tender energy for feeling safe and secure to open the heart and take a deep breath of beauty and joy. Creating and infusing a Sacred Space to vibrate with an essence for visitors to feel free uninhibited to honestly be them selves. The place has always felt sacred nestled in trees and surrounded in with nature creating a warm, cozy nurturing place to relax, unwind and heal. In this use of the space it will be honored and given the respected it deserves.






In my own personal travels I was lucky enough to find places that had that special warm quality to offer and I want to give that back to fellow travelers. I really wanted to create an environment for those going through some sort of life change so they would be able to draw inspiration, encouragement and support to pause for a moment and maybe to find their humor and enthusiasm for embarking on their own adventure. I wanted it to be a special place that they could stay that felt like a home away form home., so people could collect their thoughts, catch their breath, and be inspired to follow their heart to envision the next dream they wanted to live!

Now having a space to hold workshops, art shows, home concerts, and other soirees' opened up so much possibility. I could feel the like minded or like hearted folks that I would want to share our space with and they would be respectful and grateful for the opportunity.

I began to see this project as a whole new forum for my service work. Now I have a space to share with those that are called to me, and wanting to book a Spiritual mentoring intensive!

Of course Louie wasn't immediately onboard with my intention of using the space as a new healing forum because I wasn't able to articulate how that would look or how it would come about, but now he is dreaming his own version to show case his nurturing essence and entertaining talent. Most of all it is not that I want to teach people my version of truth (beliefs). I want to help them open the box of unlimited possibility!!!

A Sacred Vacation Rental Space

Day/Week/Month