Sweetpeas. Image: Liz West.

Right now, it is time to KISS (Keep It Simple, Sweetpea). We are at the high point of Spring. There is plenty of energy, and almost too much abundance. Balance yourself with a focus on simplicity.

Simplicity = focus on what is already strong and structural within you. What are your most basic building-blocks? There’s your simplicity and your core strengths. 

There’s no shame or regret needed in letting go of what is in a weakened state. (Think of it as pruning or thinning if you like. I like to call it “fatting” as a fat-positive metaphor for plumping up the space around what is strong.)  There may be grief, yes–but staying focused on what is weakened occasions greater grief.

Simplicity = structure + strength.

Structure: Take the game Apples to Apples. Its structure: compare a noun to an adjective. All the cards are either nouns (red apples) or adjectives (green apples).  Almost no structure, just bare-bones. Nothing fancy.

But there are a near-infinite number of ways to win and lose because of the cards’ near-infinite combinations, providing humor, spontaneity, the unexpected.  Winning is all in the judging, which is allowed to be completely subjective. Simple. Structural. Strong.

Strength: Let me prime your awareness with mine. My strengths are so obvious I seldom think about them. They are the simple structural building-blocks I depend on for my game:

• physical–my peasant resilience joined to The Empress’ deep elegance
• verbal–my passion for language(s), translation, and meaning; my ease with writing and detailed conversation
• intuitive–knowing what I need to know when I need to know it; visualizing, and guiding visualization for others, and finally,
• a funny internal balance I crave and always bounce back to between comfort and courage, the sweet and easy’s combination with the very, very hard.

It is vital to acknowledge what we have. Acknowledging it means we have truly received it.

Look in the mirror of these beautiful sweetpeas: who are you? what structural, simple strengths of yours are so obvious to you you may forget all about them?  Tell them here, in a Comment to this post.

Consider the lilies of the field: maybe they were assured of care because they were, first of all, assured.

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The Camino in Logroño. Image: Juanje 2712, who has a generous heart and many beautiful photographs here.

Not everyone has a friend walking the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James, mostly in Spain).  Read my friend Nicole’s blog within the next few days, however, and you will.

Let her struggle and achievements help you see your own. Nourish yourself from her journey inner and outer, and her moving photographs. Then think:

• Have you ever been a pilgrim?
• When did you stop?
• Why?
• What would it take for you to make your life your walking?

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When one man could cause so much evil – think about how much love we can create together.
Screenshot of Helle Gannestad’s famous Tweet after Norway’s 2011 terrorist attacks. Source: Twitter.

Too many opinions are created “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” as Hobbes’s famous phrase (about something else) put it.

How to have an opinion we can all enjoy? RAISING CLARITY proposes opinions be

• clear
• provocative
• rare
  

and meet Rotary’s four-way test:

1. Is it the truth?
2. Is it fair to all concerned?
3. Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
4. Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

 What do you think?  Tell us in the Comments to this post.

PS: If you don’t like your opinion, change it. (As the bumpersticker goes, “If you can’t change your mind, are you sure you still have one?”) Between writing and publishing this post, we had an opinion about a loved one conspicuously disrespecting our own criteria.  And it was wrong. So we changed it. And wrote this PS.

RAISING CLARITY is an acquired taste.  To acquire a taste for RAISING CLARITY, email or call us using the contact information at the top of every page of our website.

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This post only asks you one question instead of two. 

Because really, if you answer “yes, we can crowdsource the Beloved Community,” there is only one question left:

HOW?*

Thanks for your contributions.

–Beth

*Although the next question is surely, for a person who has patience issues like me, “When?”

PS: This is our third and last crowdsourced post for a while. Here‘s the first; you definitely still time to contribute to it.  THANK YOU for your contributions to the second post in the series. You can find it here.

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Patience. Image: Giorgio Vasari. At the Accademia, Venice.

I have learned, at 52, that building the Beloved Community requires patience.

I am willing to believe “patience is its own reward.”

Two questions:

• Is this all we can expect from patience? (Does asking this, especially without counting it, make me impatient?)
• Is patience truly respected when patients so seldom are?

NOTE: This is the second post in a series I hope will be crowdsourced. Here’s the first. And here’s the third. These posts are deliberately short on my end to encourage reflection on your end, sent as a Comment to the post.

The post Crowdsourced Post #2: Is Patience Truly its Own Reward? Can We Expect Others? appeared first on RAISING CLARITY.

“These boys were overworked. They guarded the gates from the anyplace to the everyplace all the time.”  Image: Peretz Partensky.

 Introduction to these posts

This is the first post in a series I hope will be crowdsourced.  (Here is the second post in the series. Here is the third.) They are deliberately short on my end to encourage reflection on your end, sent as a Comment to the post.

I have got to a place now where virtually all my work feels like play.

I am a recovering workaholic. 

Two questions:

• How do I tell if I am overworking?
• Is this the right question anymore?

The post Crowdsourced Post #1: Is It Workaholism if All Your Work Feels Like Play? appeared first on RAISING CLARITY.

Poster design for pioneering modern dancer Loie Fuller. Pencil and watercolor on paper, held at the Albertina museum in Vienna. Image: Koloman Moser (1868-1918), uploaded by Mefusbren69.

It’s a very good day when I learn so well I am in the wrong. This post is dedicated to D, with whom I opened this earlier post. D is a dancer.  I honor her in this post with this stunning simple illustration of Loie Fuller doing her “Serpentine Dance.”

I know it’s late and you’ve probably left work already (even if you work from home, let’s hope you leave work sometimes).  Still, it’s the right time for this post.

D is oh, about 30 years younger than I am.  Yet today she is my venerable teacher.  Never underestimate the wisdom of the young. Or the young-in-this-lifetime.

I called D with a complaint. It was couched as a fear, but it was really a certainty in my mind, and I was unhappy about it. I had collected a few bits of information and, relying on my normally stupendous intuition, assembled those bits into a pattern I needed D to examine. It was bugging me. I was in fear. So I took this big leap and spoke up, bravely.

It was an old pattern.  She was not in that pattern. Maybe she had never been. One of us was–but it wasn’t she.

But did she meanly point this out to me? when I was phoning her for a second time–at work, it turns out?  No.

She simply responded by pointing out to me that she was already doing what I was asking her to do. Kindly. Almost apologetically, because she holds me in such high esteem.

As soon as she began to explain what she was actually doing, I saw it all differently, the bits  that were wrong, that didn’t fit, and the facts that I had skewed to fit. My “case” fell apart. I was momentarily embarrassed but enduringly grateful for my teacher’s wisdom delivered with such kindness and clarity.

Wow. Thank you, for soul-colleagues like these. Bless my foolhardy bravery for its ability to be corrected quickly. Bless my passion for correction toward perfection. Bless D, for her perfection. Thank you, D. Thank you for my several young teachers and the witness they give me of what a world this actually is now. Bless my eyes to see Them, and Me.  Free of blame, again.

Happy weekend to you,

–Beth

PS:  And thank you to the blog reader who wrote me these lovely words, almost as an afterthought, in the last line of a recent email,

The post Forgiveness, Freedom, and Fun Learning I Am in the Wrong appeared first on RAISING CLARITY.

Joan has just beautifully edited the teleconference and created a blog post presenting it for all of us who like it in print as well as in our ears. Here you go!

The post Illness and Earning Power: Birth = Worth Interview now Published! appeared first on RAISING CLARITY.

Well, ok, I’m still alive after witnessing to you about this ascension experience, I guess you could call it. It feels so arrogant and wonderfully freeing to align myself with the Christ: THIS IS THE LOVE I CLAIM. AND OFFER.

One reader has asked me why I felt the need to witness:

• Wanting to embody a new pattern that old fear has to accommodate. Ultimately the old fear is unsupported by the new pattern and releases.
• The desire to act.  Acting is the responsibility that comes with telling and after knowing.
• Wanting to be held accountable by acting publicly. This is part of healing into a new pattern: going public, not being able to slide or hide.

I keep noticing the Christ within calling me to a choice every time I act (privately or publicly) outside its energy. The choices today have been how I know myself and the other person. Once I return to knowing, what action to take becomes clear. I have stated here what I know. Thank you: the strength of your safe, embracing, demanding witness to my telling  enables me to act within what I have told you I know.

PS: I just did something really cool: I completed a live, recorded teleconference as an interviewee on time, value, and money, hosted by my former coach Joan Friedlander. Click here to scroll down and find the interview description.  Note the interview recording itself will be published soon on this same page.

Image Description and Attribution: Central panel of an Ethiopian triptych (three-paneled painting) of Jesus teaching the apostles. Image: Walters Art Museum.

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Thank-you cards from Boy and Girl Scouts to Marines displayed in the hallway of an office building aboard Al Asad Air Base, Iraq.

We received this handwritten thank-you card recently*:

Dear Beth,

Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your wisdom about fundraising and how it relates to spiritual practice. Everything you said makes a lot of sense and validates what I have been thinking. Thank you also for the validation you offered for my idea and what I want to do. Every “yes” inches me forward. Bringing these ideas into fruition truly is my spiritual practice now.

Thank you! For your time, wisdom and generosity.  May you be blessed with as much as you give.

What do I love about this thank-you?

1. It’s prompt. And handwritten.  On a pretty card.  And sent through the mail.  To my non-obvious (but public) postal address.
2. It’s kind. It’s sincere in its tone. And even beautifully written, which isn’t given to everyone.  The writer is a writer.
3. It’s wise. The writer shares her own wisdom not just in adoring me and my help but in affirming her own  wisdom and guidance. She used RAISING CLARITY to affirm her best self and smarts.
4. She articulates (better than I know how to sometimes, which is why I’m quoting her) that bringing forth what is within her is her spiritual practice. What is within her is her work, which is where we come in–manifesting that work with abundance.
5. She blesses me: I love her last line and I accept it gratefully and publicly, before you.

I am so grateful for all the thank-yous I receive. In the past, I have not received them. I don’t mean you didn’t send them. I mean I did not receive them. NOW HEAR THIS, UNIVERSE (and my guides): I AM LISTENING!  THANK YOU!

*Reprinted with permission.

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