Ice Ice Baby

The lower midwest has been taking it on it's figurative chin in the last couple of days. Our location served as the terminus between rain and snow. We ended up with was 4 inches of snow, then 2 inches of ice followed by another 2 inches of snow. It's not necessarily the parfait I would have ordered.

The worst part of the storm event itself is the ice. The accumulation of ice on trees continues to weigh them down, bending dangerously close to cars, roofs and power lines. The ice on those power lines brought them dangerously close to the ground, a great deal of them snapping under the weight. And there is also a large number that are up, but the transformers they're connected to have died in a shower of sparks. There are more lines down now than when the remains of Hurricane Ike blasted its way across our area. Another gigantic number of homes are without power, as with Ike The difference is the temperature. During Ike, we were in the 70's. This time around, we're in the 20's.

What's going to happen? The public has questions for officials. The officials have questions for the experts. Who do the experts ask? The utility companies have said that some homes may be without power for up to 7 days. Schools are closed for the rest of the week. Businesses have been deserted, but that won't last. With so many cutbacks in recent months, who can afford to not do business at all. I'm sure there's more, but you get the idea. Now what?

I bring up the circumstances of my area's situation to point up all the things to be grateful for. When you can find the things that fill you with gratitude, you can vibe the outcome you are trying to attract. I've preached positivity for a long time and you'll see it again, of course, but expect it here now.

For example, city officials urged people to stay home so that traffic would be lighter. Lighter traffic means less sliding around in 1 ton hunks of metal, crashing into each other and doing far more damage than a snow storm could. Meanwhile, the kids got a chance to use 40 ounce hunks of plastic, sliding down hills and sharing laughter with family and friends. The area we're in can get a lot or a little snow. Our 6 to 8 inches collectively would be considered a lot for us.

On a personal level, my family is warm and dry and the positivity vibes have helped us, even though we live in an area that has been hard hit by power outages. I've been going back and forth to work in a heavy four wheel drive fleet vehicle so I've been safe. My job is considered critical, which means I don't stay home. The zone of positivity I've attracted to me surrounds me so I've been protected.

The recovery will be slow (and by Monday, we may be looking at fresh snow according to long range forecasts) but strive to keep it positive. Attract the outcome you deserve. Anytime and all the time.

Again

Reality.

That was the word upper management at my day job kept saying through different turns of phrase. "The New Reality," "the reality of the situation," "reality dictates," and other colorful idioms peppered the last couple of days as one by one, employees were called into the bosses office and told that, though they did nothing wrong, they were being let go.

We went through this a few months ago and I survived, giving my most grateful vibes to the Universe for allowing me to continue to do what I do. Through my knowledge and use of the Law of Attraction, I attracted that outcome and it continues even now as friends I have known for a long time, were having their keys taken from them and their e-mail access eliminated. I thought about what was happening. I was working directly with a woman I respected long before we were ever employed together. In another case, a friend I have known all my adult life was shown the way out.

Both of them will survive and prosper wherever they end up, but it got me to thinking. How do we judge people? Do we define them by what jobs they do and how well they do them? In the case of the friend I've known all my adult life, we met in college when we were both egocentric. The world was going to change because we were the adults now and we would be the first the change everything. That mantra is still part of me as I do my part to activate the New Earth. But instead of changing for my personal betterment, I do my part to make a better world.

So the friend that I met in college ended up working at the same company some time later. We even dated two women that were roommates and best friends, unbeknown to us. Imagine his surprise when he came to see his girlfriend and I was sitting on the couch with mine. The nonverbal communication between us struck us as hilarious while our girlfriends didn't know what to make of us. We talk about that to this day as a time of great joy, even though in the end, we married other women.

On the other hand, the woman I grew to respect even before we worked at the same company, is a friend and fellow spiritual seeker. She's going on a different path, but aren't we all trying to get to the same place anyway. Her road is for her and mine is for me.

But who are they? That's difficult to say. They are not their jobs, not their relationship roles, not their emotions at losing their jobs. It's worth remembering Eckhart Tolle's exercise by not assigning labels to them. They just are.

Those who haven't awakened to their potential will describe them as manager, employee, husband, wife or other things in an attempt to categorize them and place them in neat little boxes. I prefer to let them be who they are and I will be grateful for knowing them and sharing positive energy with them. And at this this time, I will vibe a positive outcome for whatever awaits.

Consider This Your Last Warning

Back to the Mother-In-Law stuff in just a bit because there's one more turn in the story.

Consider this your last warning.

The world is a testy place these days and everyone thinks they have a good reason for their irritation. With the economy, jobless rate, the war and other issues, you can see how the ego can lead people into that mindset.

Take a service like Flickr, the photo sharing site I started using for it's ability to interface with my main portal site, TimGirton.com. I recently upgraded to a pro account for the flexibility it offers and for what I consider a reasonable fee given what they provide. I've been a member since Yahoo migrated their Yahoo Photos service to Flickr, only I didn't remember that. I went to sign up for the site and turned out I was already there. So I upgraded and started uploading all kinds of cool photos from the last month or so.

I went about cleaning up photos that had been sitting there for a couple of years, mostly sent there in holding because this was before I could transport pictures via flash drives as I do now. Then I get a note that my site has been marked as "moderate" not "safe" because it occasionally pops up with unsafe content. Of course I disagreed, so I asked for a review and I got this note back:

You need to delete all content(public and private) from
your photostream that you did not create immediately.

One example:

{link deleted}

Consider this as your last warning.

-Terrence

I was taken aback. My last warning? This was my first. My ego started heating up. In my mind, rolling round in all corners of the ego, I was screaming that "I am a photographer. I create everything I do." My fingers approached the keyboard to let Terrence know exactly what I thought, but the positivity I live in came over me and I took a step back. Perhaps I should go look at my photostream (which is how Flickr classifies your pictures). Sure enough, some photos that I thought I deleted in 2006 were still there. They were photos I was using to create some collages I had worked on at the time. I took those out and e-mailed Terrence to say that he should look at my photostream again.

This was his response:

We appreciate you moderating the content in your
photosteam.
I've classified your account as "public"/"safe".
Please keep the Flickr guidelines in mind when moderating
your content in the future.

Regards,
-Terrence

Now, would that have been the response if I had e-mailed Terrence and gone with my ego's negative reaction? I'm thinking probably not and that's the lesson today. By continuing to live in gratitude and living by the Law of Attraction, which stresses positivity over the opposite, you attract the outcome you want. Those of us who follow the LoA know this, but it's helpful to be reminded.

Mahatma Gandhi said, and I try to live by, "Be The Change You Want To See In The World." If you haven't already, make the change to remember that you are not your ego. Don't let it rule you.

More Mother-In-Law Trouble: the Twist

See the previous post for the background on this issue, then read this one, which is a continuation.

As you might imagine, my Mother-In-Law's suicide attempt landed her in an ambulance for a trip to the hospital where they performed tests and sent her to the psychiatric unit for recovery and observation. Luckily for her, the medications she took were not fatal in the dosage she consumed and the most effective treatment was to let her sleep it off. They watched her to make sure nothing more serious happened, but she slept fitfully for about 24 hours before coming out around.

From there, the hospital ran a battery of evaluations in order to determine her mental state, which I think is standard procedure for a suicide attempt. During that time, I ran an evaluation on myself, trying to figure out if I was the cause of what happened. Was it possible, I asked, that I led her to the suicide attempt because I asked her to leave. In my effort to eliminate negativity in the household, did I trigger a mental issue within my Mother-In-Law that led her to a strong enough feeling of despair that she felt it was time to end it all?

The next day, as I marshaled all the forces of positivity within me so that I could attract a favorable outcome, my wife and I visited the hospital for a family meeting that was called by the counselor assigned to the case. When we got to the floor, we met with the counselor, who was an interesting gentleman with a calm manor which I thought was perfect for his line of work, and we went over what happened. My wife was adamant that her mom get the help she needed, but she could not come back to our home because of the suicide attempt and how it was done in front of her oldest son. We were to meet with her mother after our initial meeting the with counselor, but my Mother-In-Law complained of chest pains and needed and EKG.

What was to be a couple of hours spent on the unit ended up being all day so that the EKG could be done and while we waited for the counselor to see his full slate of patients. Finally, we met with him and my Mother-In-Law. My wife did most of the talking about how we needed to find a personal care or assisted living facility because of the experimentation with the medicine and the effect of that experimentation. Even her mother agreed we couldn't all live under the same roof.

After a few more days of observation, which spanned the holidays between Christmas and the New Year, my Mother-In-Law was assigned a social worker in order to place her in the correct facility. But trouble arose there because the worker was trying to find an independent living space for her, not a place where she can be assisted. That set my wife off on the social worker for not looking out for her mother.

That's when we found the twist to the story. After all the hospital's mental tests on my Mother-In-Law, hospital determined that, other than a few memory deficiencies that are common to adults her age, there was nothing wrong with her mental health.

They explicitly told us that she's been fabricating her psychiatric issues for the last 10 years.