Saturday, January 11, 2014 was our annual Women’s Retreat at my church. I just loved the Women’s Retreat! I think it was the best one yet. Our keynote speaker at the beginning of the retreat spoke about the importance of storytelling, how we use our language, the importance of the stories about ourselves that we hold, the importance of empathy as well as how to empathize with others, and last, but not least, expressive writing–sort of a blueprint for writing for self-discovery. It led into my workshop perfectly.
Then I attended the workshop titled “Stories Untold–Women of the bible we often overlook”. It was excellent and dove into some very difficult texts with great discussion about what these strong, wise women did in the face of unthinkable situations, horrors and violence still in place today. I was familiar with none of the stories, so it was truly fascinating for me.
Then it was time or my workshop, titled “The Law of Attraction, How we create our own lives and realize dreams”. I was expecting 20 people for sure and prepared for 15 extra. The night before, as I was printing off the handouts for everyone, something kept telling me to print 40. I thought, no, 35 will do. I have no idea why, especially after spending extra time going over my Law of Attraction information, I didn’t listen to that voice. Because as I gave out all 35 hand outs I was short approximately 5. Accident? Ha! I don’t think so! In this past week I have come up with another new goal for 2014: to become a better LISTENER– fully listening with an open mind to other people, to myself, and to the voice of God, our Source, who is always communicating with us.
So the workshop was definitely full! That’s very exciting in and of itself! But how was it received? I can’t be sure, but I hope that everyone took something positive away from it. As for me, I am not a trained speaker. I want to be a great speaker, but when I stand up in front of a group of people I have this psychosomatic internal reaction in which my breath gets cut short, making it difficult to speak, I generally break out in a bit of a nervous sweat, and I’m completely irritated by all of it, because I want to be a dynamic speaker! I solved my problem, sort of, by sitting down, which for some reason, alleviated all of those symptoms. How annoying! All I can do is laugh at myself and seek ways to improve my speaking abilities, because I really do want to be able to give successful, dynamic talks on the things I passionately study.
We covered a lot of ground in the workshop. I began with a lot of basic information from Esther and Jerry Hicks’ Ask and it is Given, and the emotional scale, the fact that whatever emotion for vibrating with, that’s your point of attraction–only things that match your vibration can manifest in your life. We also covered some of Bruce Lipton’s information on epigenetics and some of the physics information that ties into the Law of Attraction. For those new to that information, which many people are, I’m sure that was a lot to take in. I didn’t fully finish all of he scientific information, because I wasn’t sure if I was about to lose people to paralysis of analysis at that point and I wanted some room for conversation. And I think we had some great conversation.
Moving forward, the rest of my day was very good. I got to go to a movie with my Jordan before going to work. We had an extremely busy night, which was good. By the time I went home, I was barely functioning. I was exhausted, and came home to another huge dirt mess. Our puppy randomly decided to knock over a whole bunch of plants and play in the dirt. In the nearly four years that I’ve been with Jordan, we had two of the DUMBEST arguments I’ve ever participated in–EVER. And we were so emotionally invested in them! One was over the dirt and my plants, and one was over plates. Yeah. Plates. I think it was residual negative energy from spending half the week in a bad space mentally. That was long enough to attract a handful of negative experiences. I still can’t believe how upset I was about the plates argument. I actually cried. A lot. So stupid.
I woke up the next day thinking, WHAT the…Jordan and I both woke up in perfectly good moods late Sunday morning and we both apologized to each other. Jordan said what he always says after the rare occasion we had an argument, “Let’s never fight again.” And I said, “I agree, and at least if/when we do, let it actually make some sort of sense!” and we both laughed. But this is yet another example of, when negative emotion gets some major momentum going, sometimes the only thing you can do is take a nap or go to bed. The importance of sleep is that your thoughts stop. With the stopping of thought comes renewal, and no matter how bad the day before was, if you intend a better day tomorrow, you’ll wake up in a better frame of mind.
Sunday I was so exhausted from my long day Saturday that I only left the recliner to do some art projects and make dinner. All in all, it was an awesome weekend. I took some time to reflect back on the weekend and the retreat and the fact that I made some great, new connections with members of the church I didn’t really know. One thing that kept coming up over the course of my time at the retreat were little inklings of ideas for using my horses in some kind of service helping people. That’s truly an amazing idea. Especially since one of my goals for this year is to start my two un-started horses under saddle, and to create a blog detailing my adventures with building a language with them and communicating from the ground up. I’m extremely excited to begin and embark on this journey as well!
Something else that’s always in the back of my mind is creating some sort of program to teach the Law of Attraction to the homeless. Empowering those who want to learn how to empower themselves to live a better life. Because everything begins with thought and the energy those thoughts emit. From nothing and no way, a way can be created. Everyone needs to know that!
I think 2014 is going to be a VERY interesting year! I’m excited to see what takes shape in my life and the lives of others!
The ART of Life 