Last week I wrote a post about singing your little soul out to the Universe to foster that beneficent, yummy super abundant, secure connection to, ya know, Everything.

Just click right here if you need to catch up on that.

I wanted to build on that post because sometimes in the depths of the ick, it’s tough to get there.  When momma’s having a sh**y day, she’s not thinkin’ of singing to sunshine.  Also, when we’re in different stages of healing or different levels of consciousness, our communication desires and needs are different.  No one way is wrong because what works for one person or one moment at one time is exactly the perfect action for him or her.

So, I wanted to add here.  If you’re feeling a bit of disconnection, restlessness or unease, go get on with your bad Self + Beyonce and shake your sweet thang.

If that seems too “out there.”  You can go ahead and find that love song to sing to yourself.  Right straight as: a shot to the heart.  You won’t be to blame.  You won’t be giving love a bad name.  (Apologies, I just couldn’t resist.)

In deeper states of trauma, we are usually on an unconscious level holding on to hurts that are long gone.  In fact, almost all of the ways in which we are less than what we want to be is because there is something that is hurting us from when we were little kids.  An event happened, the reaction never processed or healed and we may or may not even know it’s affecting our current situation.  We are unconsciously carrying around the hurts and life keeps presenting us with opportunities to heal them.

Good grief, you mean to tell me I’ve been carrying around this sh** for 20 years?
Yes my darling, I’m sorry to tell you, but you have.  Don’t worry though.  The healing’s already underway.

If we’re not ready to sing to the Universe, or in a particularly trying time, sing to the little kid version of yourself.  Sometimes, particularly with more profound abuse or trauma, we just need to know that we are safe, it’s ok to feel the way we do and that someone bigger than us (in this case, literally the bigger, older version of ourselves) loves us.

Years ago, I regularly attended a new thought church that no longer exists in the city but was amazing.  Here is one of the things I was told and moved to do at the time.  That’s me, all baby-like.  Yes, that’s me loving myself in paint pen around the frame.  Yes, I hid that anytime someone came over… but you know what?  It truly had a profound healing on some childhood stuff during a time when that was what I needed to heal.  That little girl needed to know she was safe.  Sing a song to that little boy or girl; just see what comes up.  It sounds, and will probably feel a little dumb.  That’s why I posted a naked baby picture of myself here, if I can do that, you can do this in private.

I promise you, if you really shut your doors, go lock yourself in the bathroom or hide under the covers so the neighbors can’t hear you and let yourself do it, it might cause an explosion of release.  When you’re shockingly sobbing your face off over that thing that happened “x” number of years ago?  Yep, that’s it.  That’s the spot.  You found it.  If it just feels a little silly but you start to soften and there’s a warmth and love for that lil kid?  Yup, that’s it too.  It’s working.  :)

I work with a lot of people who can fly high yet are still carrying decades-old hurts and patterns.  If there is something stuck within, this is a simple way to access that unconscious pattern and shift it up.

It’s really really super duper muy importante to never try to “change” your internal world.  What we’re doing here is fostering a connection to something bigger.  So, in the instance of something more traumatic, it’s not that we are trying to shift your mood, but rather bring love and acceptance to exactly where you are. 

It may seem a subtle difference, and I find it’s the most often wrongly perceived understanding of spirituality:  that we can “choose to be happy.”

So rock it out, lullaby it out, lean in to the delicious rawness of the weepy ballad, if need be.  Whether that’s to the World, your Self or the little kid inside ya.

A good musical always ends with a happy ending.

It got up to 50 in New York yesterday, plus I have a pic of a totally cute little baby chick in this post, which means spring is just about upon us!  Between 6 weeks in Salt Lake City this winter + a long stretch of gray days, I know I am BEYOND looking forward to being outside more + getting a fresh start to the year.   When we’re clearer, our lives flow easier.  “Spring Cleaning” isn’t a cliché, it’s a rite of passage, a change of seasons, a time to freshen up and clear way for the new.

I would love to switch up couches, paint my walls, throw out half my stuff + start anew… but it’s going to be a busy month, so I’ll do what I can, and you should too.  Change doesn’t have to be massive to notice effects.

Here are a couple of quick tips to cleanse on the quick + cheap.

1.   Purge.  Throw out or donate 3 books, one outfit from your closet and a tchotchke from your shelf.  Any new thing you buy going forward?  Throw out two in its place.  Make that a rule.  Ongoing Feng Shui builds badass, streamlined karma.

2.  Liquefy.  Ok, you don’t have the time or funds for a fancy 3-day cleanse?  Ayurveda says to take one day a week (every week!) + only drink liquids to give your digestive system a break + a reset.  Soup, smoothies, juices, protein shakes.  For extra points, make sure it’s au naturale.  This is an *ideal* time to give that system a break to reboot.

3. Sage!  Buy a stick, it will last forever.  I sage after every move, break up, fight, tough business negotiation, guest to the apartment, depresso monteblan mood.  The last time I bought sage was a year ago, and my stick is only just now a nub. (I don’t really know how to rewrite that so it doesn’t sound dirty, so please just keep it above board with me here loves.)  There’s no way you could sage as much as I do: $4.99 from Whole Foods or your local health food store, + go get jiggy wid it.  You light the sage like incense, let it burn + blow out.  Negative energy binds to the smoke, and poof—wafts from your apartment + life!  Caution:  potent.  I usually sage + then open up my windows just before I leave my apartment.

4. Promote someone up in your love.  Have a look around your house or apartment and look at the pictures present.  My guess is, unless you’re fastidious about art, there’s some old, random photo of college friends you haven’t seen in ten years that you fell out from or with whom lost touch.  If that picture brings you a surge of nostalgic joy, great, if it’s bittersweet or makes you a little sad?  Toss it, hit up a color printer + print up that Facebook picture of you + your bestie at her bday.  Reframe.  Her love deserves an upgrade to presence in your life.

5. Juice.  Oh, you already have a Breville + want a DIY cleanse on the cheap?  Here are a couple of super cheap juice-able nutritionals you may not have considered:  anything + everything from farmer’s market (hello giant bags of apples for $1 a pound!), broccoli stems, sweet potatoes, go find some jicama (it’s amazing in juice) + plain, big ol’ giant heads of cabbage juice surprisingly sweet!  My secret?  I buy everything as nitty + gritty as it comes + then sweeten up any bitterness with a little stevia (NuNaturals is the BEST + only brand I use) or Agave.

6. MOVE.  It’s obvious that moving + moving in a different direction is going to switch up your energy + shift things around in a different way.  Try a different yoga or group fitness class at the gym.  It goes without saying I hope, that being in nature is paramount to clearing out mind stuffs.  If you are in NYC, like me, hit up a new yoga studio, or Soul Cycle.  Most offer discounts for newbies.  And for something totally free, freeing + fun, the awesome Michele Joni has a free weekly, skipping club, that’s sure to get you outside of your box.

7. Meditate.  Ya, so, according to Facebook, pretty much everyone I know is doing this Deepak/Oprah 21 day meditation challenge.  It started a couple days ago, but permission granted to jump on board.  You haven’t missed anything; you’re just fashionably late, dahling.  Want something more guided?  Email me at magsnyc@mac.com + I’ll dropbox you a raw version of a 12 minute mediation MP3.  Meditation trains your mind to clear space + let the wisdom of the natural flow abide.  Is that too woo?  It also makes you more efficient, happier + younger looking.  Get on that train.

8. Smush.  last week rather than store a box of files, I decided to scan them all.  Box of files?  Shredded.  Files?  Permanently parked in a virtual folder, smaller than a digital inch on my desktop.  I’m going to be doing this with tax returns + 20 years of sheet music I’ve been hoarding.  Obviously it works better if you have a professional scanner, + not a flattop, so head to an office, or a kinko’s + in a couple of hours or less, all those files are shrunk from your life.  It’s a great feeling to look over to where there used to be a box + now there is just: space.  Ah, space.

9. Give something unexpected.  A six-pack of beer to your super.  Mail that book to your sister you love with a handwritten note.  Have a slice of his favorite cheesecake delivered to your guy at work.  Nothing breeds love like giving love when someone least expects it.  It clears your heart + spirit for more.

Happy cleansing!

NBC Universal

If you haven’t seen the 2006-2010 NBC sleeper hit series “Friday Night Lights,” really you should stop reading this and go Netflix it immediately.  The show is structured around a high school team in Southern Texas (stay with me), but truly it’s about head coach Eric Taylor and how his career and family life tango alongside his unbendingly high moral standards.  I avoided it for a long time due to the description above (see: football, Texas), yet two summers ago inhaled the entire series faster than a nine-year-old gripping a Fla-Vor-Ice in August.

Coach Taylor is basically, like, the best guy of all time.  He’s the guy that can have his wife get all feisty and upset, yet fully accepts and allows her passion; he knows how to get angry without taking it out on her.  He’s for the underdog.  You’re given the sense he would never, ever, not in a bajillion years lie, stretch the boundaries of integrity or wade into any grey area for any reason whatsoever.   He takes a beating for truth and he streams honor.

On the show, the football team’s motto was “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose.”  This slogan became so wildly popular across America, that Mitt Romney even stole the phrase to use it in his 2012 presidential campaign, before being admonished by the show’s writer and director.

It resonated so much with Americans because we inherently felt the truth of the phrase.  We understood, at our core, this is who we are.

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose.

Clear eyes mean a mind and vision unconflicted by doubt or fear.  The ability to be in the present moment and deal with each second as it comes.  It’s what separates the men from the boys on any football field.  There are loads of big guys out there, thousands that play high school and college football, but not all of them sign to multi-million dollar contracts with the NFL.  What’s the game changer?  Clear Eyes.

Full hearts are engaged and full of passion.  Authentically streaming from hope and integrity.  What are heart stuffs but an indefinable Love—the magic special sauce of the Universe?  We cannot choose to care, we care or we don’t.  It’s inherent or its not.  We can’t choose to love any more than we can choose what color eyes we have.

But we can be willing to be love.  We can practice being available to love.  We can work to be clear. 

Clear eyes and full hearts means operating from a higher level of consciousness.  When you make a sale, ask a girl out, even sit in a co-op board meeting, it’s not what you say, it’s WHO YOU ARE that resonates.

When our eyes are clear and our hearts full, people know it.  There is nothing more to do.  They can sense it.  They draw to you.  And if they don’t?  You don’t care.  Not in a negative way, it just doesn’t matter.  Next play and the ball on the 38-yard line.  Hut one, hut two + GO.  No time to mourn, clock is ticking and forge forward with those clear eyes.

Having great parents helps in both these departments.  Where you were brought up, where you live can help.  However, each of us can cultivate these clear eyes and full hearts.  Yoga, exercise, eating well and choosing to be around positive people and uplifting environments, all help.  But truly, at the core of this ascension are two simple things:

Clear eyes =  Awareness.
Full hearts =  Letting life make Love to you; surrender.

Awareness is being where you are, SEEING where you are, what comes up and letting it be there, without ever changing it.  Shining a light on it.  I know you know:  that’s not as easy as it sounds.  It means not reaching for the chocolate, the vodka, the blame, the excuse, the Xanax.  Whatever comes up, be with it.

Every single time you do this, not run from the ickiness of a moment you don’t like: the clearer your eyes are from there on out.  The next time you want to run, consider that.  Staying with what is, is a deposit into the bank account of clearer eyes.

Full hearts:  what is that?  Full of emotion, of compassion, of desire, of connection.  Let’s continue to use the example of a football team:  knowing that you are a part of the whole.  There is a loyalty, responsibility and pride built-in to that sense of “team.”

You are a part of the Whole.
The Universe is your team.

Let it be, play from and for this space of knowingness, and that Love shows up.

The more we practice, the better we play.  And this is just another friendly urge to practice, ‘cause it’s your life, sweetness.  It’s always gametime.

I’m all about Love.  I have two teensy love tattoos on my wrists to remind me to ask for Love each time I bless something out.  I am all for the underlying Universal Love and the acceptance of this Truth and the inadvertent, unconscious pull we have to rejoin with this Love.

But I’ve also been seeing a lot of blind black and white regarding Love and Its pursuits.

Reaching for love?
Rather than being: the best!  We are now substituting achievement for being guided: to be love!
Slighted?  I choose love!
Forget fear, you can have love!
Americans are ambitious and successful.  As we open and awaken to a new paradigm and consciousness, a brighter way of living, we are using old concepts to uncover our light… We are trying to ‘win’ love

So, I just wanted to say:

You can’t choose love.  Love chooses you. 

Throwing a tent of muscled (perhaps hopeful, yet inauthentic,) ‘love’ over a situation can be just another layer of mind or ego, escaping the suffering in heart, at hand.  Unfortunately we can’t just skip over all the icky stuff and go from zero to love.

Specifically, the concepts of love and forgiveness have been musing inside me and whether they need to go hand in hand, and it might surprise you to hear, I don’t think they do.

Forgiveness is not about getting to a space of love, it is about getting to a space of neutral.  Of awareness and acceptance.  Forgiveness is a spontaneous Universal action.  One cannot draw from it or use it, if it doesn’t naturally show its face.  Love and forgiveness show up on their own time and dime.  We build it; they come.

The problem with suffocating something with love is it doesn’t go away.  It will come back, in the form of another situation, another person, your mom with the same fight, a new boss with remarkably the same douche-tardiness.  The harder you push it away, the fiercer its response.

Of course, forgiveness is a cornerstone of any spiritual practice, but what we need to understand is that it is not ours to offer. 

It is easy enough to say ‘I choose to forgive’ when we are slighted about someone or something we don’t know or care about.  In the belief system that ‘everything that happens to us, happens for us’ it is much more difficult to wrap our minds around forgiveness when you bring atrocities into the mix:  senseless murder, abuse, holocausts, accidental deaths… On a level we can’t comprehend, these did happen for us, and here is where we need to redefine forgiveness.

I feel like there is a general pull and overlying assumption that we need to love everything in order to heal.  We don’t have to love it, or love someone, we just need to take the charge (our charge, our reaction) out of the situation and deal with it.  In order to do that, we have to truly feel those ugly things that we’d rather throw under a blanket of ‘love and forgiveness.’

We need to accept that it happened and sometimes, in the case of very deep trauma, know that we may never understand a reason why.  The ‘why’ is unnecessary.

As inquisitive, bright, delvers of our own psyche, we can drive ourselves bananas with ‘why.’  What if the ‘why’ no longer mattered?  What if all you ever needed to do or know was that it was there for you, to grow you stronger, to stretch you to your most remarkable Self, and forgiveness is not for the other person, it’s only ever for you.

We need to own that any emotion present is for us, and only us… forgiveness happens only when we have the courage to face how we truly feel.

We can only be responsible for ourselves.  In the most difficult and traumatic states I have seen, ironically enough, the forgiveness that most needs to happen is forgiveness of the self.  We are much harder on ourselves for having allowed whatever happened, than even on the supposed perpetrator of said abuse, slight or attack.

There are times when it can be empowering (if safe) to contact or confront whomever is the object of your intended forgiveness.  However all forgiveness has different levels of healing, and you do not need someone else’s participation to do your work.  If anyone is in a space of insisting you need to hear them out for “your mutual” healing and understanding, that is more often than just another level of the mind/ego:  look how great I am, that I am able to confront this situation, embrace its ickiness and release you into your freedom.  Um, that’s a lovely suggestion, but everyone, please release people into their freedom on your own time.  That’s a higher spiritual practice than dragging them out to a coffee shop and hearing what you think is wrong with them, just so we’re clear.

Healing and spiritual work don’t happen in a linear manner.  So, go ahead, do your chosen healing voodoo with that person’s picture on your makeshift altar.  We can intend, we can ask for forgiveness, and until we feel neutral, we keep asking.  Healing is rarely a one shot deal.

We cannot muster forgiveness or love any more than we can sprout grapefruits from tomato seeds.  These are gifts of Grace.  They are little packaged miracles of fruited effort:  the effort is the awareness, the fruits are the gift.  You don’t produce the fruit, you only tow the hoe.  Ya?

My interest has never been in “solving” this moment; in lightening it up or making it more palatable.  My interest is and always has been for the overarching, inherent, hidden, muddied bliss that lies within us.  That is not to be caught or achieved or attained—it is only ever to be discovered and released.

“Knowledge cannot be achieved from outside, it is always within you. Happiness cannot be achieved from outside, it is always within you. Purity and piety cannot be achieved from outside, They are always within you.” -Yogi Bhajan

Each place we hold on is putting a stopper on this inherent bliss.
Yes, our reaction is a choice.
Yes, our activities and how we respond and offer ourselves to the world must be conscious decisions that are in our hands as we fumble, stumble through it all.

But Love is not a choice; it is a benediction.
Be with what is.  And then it will come.

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Feb 9th + 10th, I am facilitating a two day course in NYC.  Its sole purpose is to unearth this muck, face and ask for forgiveness so that we can awaken to our inherent bliss.   Bring your pain, and drop it like it’s hot.  Hope to see you.

http://margaretnichols.com/awakening-course/

I sat across from my father, an early Christmas stopover before heading West for work.

“This would never happen in Europe.  What is wrong with this country?”

He was speaking of course, of the atrocious massacre at Sandy Hook last week.  Its horror stunned the nation.  My father, having been born and spent a large portion of his life in Europe, was a man who barely watched television.  Never when we were growing up.  He adored art and culture and would have no idea who the Kardashians are, were someone to mention their name(s.)

He was right: this would never happen in Europe.  What is wrong with us?

To pin this barbarism on the sick mind of one individual, is to deny that we are all connected.  In order to understand what happened here, we have to accept some responsibility that our culture fosters such evil; that said sickness is an expression of who we are, as much as the heroic gestures of the teachers who gave their lives to save students is a part of who we are.

One of our problems, our addictions, is media.  Soulness nonsense of pointless or dramatized violence masked as entertainment, packaged, sold and force fed to us through even airport TV monitors and backseat taxi televisions.  It nearly impossible to escape in America; you have to choose, to effort, to escape it.

We don’t even realize how brainwashed we are.  People leave the TV running all the time, as background noise.  I go out of my way to not eat at a bar or restaurant that has a TV in it.  This is very easy to do in downtown Manhattan; it’s more difficult uptown.  In the rest of the country?  It’s near impossible.  Why?  Because having a huge flatscreen is something we are accustomed to seeing.  We have no idea how to be quiet and sit with ourselves.

Perhaps you are familiar with the most popular Power Rangers, a show aimed at 9 year olds.  Forget Sesame Street or Sponge Bob even for young children; what is considered appropriate is a line smeared by convenience, overlooked by overworked and over tired parents.

“The National Coalition on Television Violence (NCTV), which has analyzed the violence in TV programs since 1980, has stated that “The Power Rangers” is the most violent children’s program it has ever studied, averaging 211 violent acts per hour (Kiesewetter, 1993). The NCTV has also reported that most of the aggression in the show is severe, and the sort that would be classified as hostile rather than instrumental (e.g. Feshbach, 1970), that is, most of the violence in the show is intended to harm or kill another character.

Because the Power Rangers are the heroes and “good guys” of the program, their high prestige and status could increase children’s imitation of their behaviors.” -C.J. Boyatzis, G.M. Matillo, & K.M. Nesbitt, California State University

That study was in 1995.  A generation ago.  It has only gotten worse.  That is one children’s show.  Start analyzing video games, adult television and film and it’s only more disheartening.

We have become anesthetized to violence in this country.

This past week, what was also disturbing, as I was wading through scrolls of facebook commentary that day (outrage, sadness in the aftermath of the massacre,) were comments posted by those oblivious to the carnage.  Even if one is against gun control, or feels entirely removed from the tragedy, we are lacking at the core a basic awareness of the appropriate reverence of these occurrences and their dark mark on the face of our nation.  America mourns, and someone is posting with wild positivity on a seminar or drunken holiday party photos—it’s embarrassing that we don’t feel, if at not the very least a connection, at least a diplomatic understanding that others are suffering.

How about this ridiculousness:  A serious of violent tweets berating Obama for cutting into football time with a memorial speech.  I cannot bring myself to quote it:  Click the link: it’s beyond embarrassing, it’s disgusting.

America, as a nation, lacks awareness.  We have been dumbing ourselves down to a true experience of reality.  We don’t even know what that means, it is time to WAKE UP.

When I returned from my first stint in India, which had stretched to 6 months in a pre-facebook age of certainly less technology than these days, I went to my gym at the time: a posh club in the West Village, and promptly cancelled my membership after one workout.  The TVs, constant music blaring, ongoing cacophony of too loud sights and sounds, were too much for my nervous system at the time.  It physically hurt to be there; it was an assault on my senses after a 6 month gentle silence of 3:30am rising.  Half a year earlier, I would not have been able to recognize the effect on my physiology in the course of an average day.

Shortly after this time, I took a spiritual course where we were to go 12 weeks on a media fast.  No TV, no papers, no online anything.  News was garnered from what you heard from other people, or saw on the front page of  the papers, walking down the street.  I have a loud mouth and love to be debate; in a previous chapter of my life: obsessed and vociferous about politics.  To be able to let that go and realize how unnecessary the media was in my life was absolutely freeing.  How I was still able to learn about world events, and when I wanted to go deeper into a subject, I could choose to go find out more information about it.

I am not saying ALL media is evil, but there needs to be a conversation that limits should be drawn. I haven’t had TV for almost a decade, but I am just as addicted to Homeland as the rest of the country.  A friend was shocked that I loved Skyfall, the latest Bond film.  Of course I loved it—Sam Medes directed it, who is brilliant and soulful.  It was exciting and tasteful.  Our innate American problem is we always think more is better and that constant entertainment is as much an inalienable right as the right to bear arms.

This week is, albeit arguably, one of the most, if not the most, important in the history of humanity.  December 21, 2012 is a shift from a thousands year cycle from the Kali (iron) Age to the Satya (golden) age.  What does that mean?

It means we are about to understand that that still small voice is our inherent majesty.  People are going to be able to hear that voice, have a connection to each other and the universe like never before, and we will slowly transition to an age where Sandy Hook could never happen.

It’s possible, but it will take time, and awareness.

You can’t hear the voice if there is something always on in the background.

We will only ever have peace in the world when we have peace in our individual hearts.  The latter begets the former.

We must petition away, rise up, have a voice, and in equal, if not greater measure:

Turn it off, shush up for a minute, and go within.  That’s where the power is to change the world.

Om shanti shanti shanti.

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Oh, and please sign this if you haven’t done so already:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/immediately-address-issue-gun-control-through-introduction-legislation-congress/2tgcXzQC