Riding The Big Kahuna

Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. - J. S. MILL

Go with the flow. Catch the wave. Ride the big Kahuna. Wouldn't I just love to! How about you?

But real life these days rarely includes a stop at Surf City unless you live in Malibu.

Whenever we experience the Flow, we experience a luminous liftoff: we're alert, soaring, unselfconscious, authentic, moving at the peak of our abilities.

We forget food, drink, sex, sleep. Why?

We're fueled by high-octane Love. Calling forth our gifts at the top of our lungs to a celestial "Bravo!" Reveling in our passion.

We don't need positive-thinking  mantras to moti­vate us; happiness propels us at Warp 9 toward our aspirations. Obstacles dissolve in the Flow. Toxic emotions, anxieties, and depression disappear. We're in this world, but certainly not of it. Here we experience a profound pleasure not found in the erogenous or erroneous zones, a peace that surpasses our puny understanding.

Exhilaration. Joy. Transformative transcen­dence.

What you're really looking for when you ask the doctor for Prozac.

What you thought sex was when you were sixteen.

The  bad news is that we don't ride the big Kahuna often enough. The good news is that the Flow can be invoked and induced; it's even expected to become one of the most productive specialties of psychological research in the next decade.

For the last twenty years Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has been pioneering the scientific study of joy, scrutinizing altered states of "optimal experience," those moments when we feel deeply connected with Real Life, which he labels "flow."

He believes that exhilaration can be part of everyday life, and I'm a believer. Reading his incredible book Flow: The Psychologyoif Optimal Experience might make a believer out of you.

What’s  more, going with the Flow is most often attained with simple pleasures, even work, when we bring the right attitude and attention to our tasks.

Complete consciousness-focusing our psychic energy on what we're doing-induces the Flow. As we learn to shut out chaos, concentrat­ing our creative energies within, our attention fuels our ability to acceler­ate beyond our normal capacities.

When working, playing, or creating, ritual plays an important role in preparing our minds, bodies, and souls to tap into the mother lode. The par­ticular way you arrange your desk at the beginning of the day, the soft pen­cil you prefer, the music you listen to when you write in your discovery journal is an invocation to the Flow.

Small moments-reading, gardening, cooking, arts, and, crafts-take on new meaning when we honor them as waves on which to catch the Flow.

Exploring your family's heritage, com­memorating special moments or  people in your life by collecting and dis­playing talismans, can invite the Flow by linking the past with the present.

Varying the routines of your daily round can induce the Flow because novelty increases the frequency of the waves; thinking of lovemaking in new ways can fan waves of desire previously doused with familiarity.

Memorizing favorite quotes, poetry, songs, and facts and enlivening our conversation with them, evokes the Flow.

Mastering a game, sport, or new skill activates the Flow process. But so does solitude and daydreaming.

Indulging your imagination brings the big Kahuna within reach, because your imagination is your soul's way of communicating with your conscious mind.

"How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depends directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experi­ences," Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi reminds us. "Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe."

Heaven Watching Over You

We all have angels guiding us. . . . They look after us. They heal us, touch us, comfort us with invisible warm hands. . . . What will bring their help? Asking. Giving thanks.

-SOPHY BURNHAM

Do you remember the comfort and joy of an imaginary playmate when you were a child? Just because the rest of the world couldn't see your con­stant companion, didn't mean he or she wasn't Real. 

What's more, your reassuring companion spirit is still an immediate presence in your daily round-guarding, protecting, guiding, inspiring, and loving you-even if it's been a long time since you made mud pies together in the backyard.

Angels are our proof of God's love for us, continuous reminders that we're not alone. Almost everyone has had an experience of being pulled back from danger by an invisible force. 

At that moment we felt that Heaven was truly watching over us. And we were right. While over two-thirds of us believe in the existence of angels, not everyone is ready for an intimate earthly relationship with a Heavenly superior being.

For the last three years, I've enjoyed an intimate relationship with my guardian angel, whom I call Annie. As I committed to my spiritual growth, I consciously sought a mystical friendship, and it has brought me great joy, comfort, security, and peace.

Annie's greatest gift has been helping me relax. She frequently reminds me that Real Life isn't a one-woman melodrama although I have a tendency to keep rewriting the script.

However much I'd like to, I've never seen her. Angels cannot be conjured up on demand; they're not genies in magic lamps. However, we can call on these constant companions to guide, help, and inspire us.

"Our angels know us more intimately than our parents or our spouses. They care passionately about our well-being, and about our physical health, too.

Eileen Elias Freeman tells us. "They know what we do, what we pray; what we see and say. They watch over the life and death of every single cell, and they love us, because they are beings who come from God, and God is love."

Although there are more books on angels today than ever danced on the head of a pin, Freeman's books, Touched By Angels and Angelic Healing, are my favorites.

She argues convincingly that deep and abiding angelic "coun­ters are only possible when we become aware that the special relationship we really seek is with Spirit. We may love the message and the messenger, but we should never forget the One who sent it.

As with every spiritual gift, we must ask our angels to help us.

We must ask Spirit to deepen our relationship with our Heavenly guardians, offering thanks that the lines of celestial communication are continuously open.

Accepting Yourself as You Are Today

Seek not outside yourself, heaven is within.

-MARY Lou COOK


Today, we make peace with the past: with the bodies and faces we were born with and those that have evolved.

Today, we embrace the lines that stare back at us, the parts that sag in the middle or stick out where they shouldn't, the hair that never keeps a curl or never loses it.

We begin when we invoke the Tibetan poet and teacher Saraha's song of praise. "Here in this body are the sacred rivers: here are the sun and moon as well as all the pilgrimage places. . . I have not encountered another temple as blissful as my own body."

It will take a bit of doing, learning to love all our personal pilgrimage places. However, before genuine love can flourish, we must finally accept ourselves exactly as we are today.

Not tomorrow or next week or when we lose twenty-five pounds. Remember, acceptance is acknowledging the reality of a situation: that we're heavier than we'd like to be,-for example, or that our complexion is ruddy or sallow, or that we've got gray streaks, or that leggings just don't work for us.

Most of us think of other women as beauties, never ourselves. But every woman was created by Spirit to be a genuine beauty. We learn how to reveal to the world our unique radiance only after we acknowledge it ourselves.

Today, take as your personal mantra: "I am what l am and what I am is wonderful."

Loving Yourself Into Wholeness

By Sarah Ban Breathnach


"I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvin8s on stone are worn down by water."

-AMY TAN

Life batters us whether we are rich or poor, public or private. The wound we suffer may be an open cut or a slow, silent hemorrhage of the soul.

On the outside we may look as if we've got our act together, but each of us encounters those dark stormy days when we feel very small, very fragile, and very frightened, as if we might shatter into a thousand pieces and break into heartrending sobs at something as simple as "How are you?".

When this happens we have to be kind to ourselves, not beat ourselves up. Leave that to the rest of the world.

Our feelings are valid, our fears very real, even though they are probably not based on reality. Always remember that the best description of fear is "false evidence appearing real."

When these occasions occur in your life, recall that your first duty is to love yourself into Wholeness. How to do this? By pampering yourself with simple pleasures and small indulgences. By treating yourself like the baby you are right now.

Could you bring home something wonderful for dinner tonight from a Chinese or Indian carryout?

Could you treat yourself to some of the potted daffodils or tulips that are appearing in the shops about now?

Could you take the afternoon off and sneak into a matinee? If not, how about bringing home two or three classics from the video store and enjoying a movie marathon with a big bowl of popcorn?

Why not delight in an ice-cream cone Jor lunch, taking it to a park to bask in the sunshine and hear the birds singing? What about saying "no" to the next request for you to do something?

Yes, you can. You don't have to do everything and be everything for everyone else all the time.

If you think you can't possibly do one more thing without screaming or crying, you're probably right. Start by saying, "No, I'm sorry, I've got a prior commitment."

For, of course, you do.

Today you need to be there for yourself.

Remember, we did not lose ourselves all at once. But we recover our authentic selves one kind gesture at a time.

Discovering Your Authentic Self

To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
-OSCAR WILDE


One of the surprises that comes when you catch glimpses of your authentic self is the discovery that she's such a positive, upbeat woman. She's always smiling. She's always calm. She's always reassuring. She exudes confidence. Who is this woman, you might ask, and does she bear any resemblance to you?

Yes and no. This is who you are on the inside. The real you. If you don't act this way all the time, it's simply because you haven't evolved to a higher plane of existence yet. Neither have I. Marianne Williamson believes this will come when we "embrace the Goddess" who resides within. "When a woman falls in love with the magnificent possibilities within herself, the forces that would limit those possibilities hold less and less sway over her," she writes in A Woman's Worth.

But occasionally, we get glimmers of what it's like on this higher plane: on a good-hair day; when we've had twelve hours of sleep; when we soar through a business meeting, thoroughly prepared; when we fit into last year's clothes; when we throw a great party and everyone enjoys themselves immensely. When moments like these occur, we tend to think that all's right with the world. Everything just fell into place. What we don't realize is that all's right with ourselves. We're in the flow of life and loving it. We're in place: that special alignment when authenticity and reality merge into Wholeness.

But how do we tap into this spiritual energy source more often? How do we access the flow of life more frequently? How do we learn to live at full throttle?

Meditation helps. So do long walks, soaks in scented bubble baths, washing our hair a day before it needs it, smiling at everyone we meet, being more gentle with ourselves, watching a sunrise or a sunset, petting an animal, playing with a child, having some small pleasure to look forward to every day, being grateful.

But above all, being open to change. Welcoming it. "Watch. Wait. Time will unfold and fulfill its purpose," Marianne Williamson advises. "While we wait, we must not go unconscious. We must think and grow. Rejoice and dream, but kneel and pray. There is holiness in the air today; we are giving birth to goddesses. They are who we are, for they are us: friends, therapists, artists; businesswomen, teachers, healers, mothers. Start laughing, girls. We have a new calling."

Source: Simple Abundance