I’m tired tonight and amazed at how my life has totally shifted direction in the last few weeks. It has been a wild, but strangely coherent, ride as I’ve developed a new relationship with an independent internet marketer who seemed to come out of nowhere and who has turned into my partner. We keep being surprised at how many uncanny ways our paths and styles coincide, and at how we have both been otherwise stuck trying to make things happen on our own, and at how we both need one another to make our projects work.

My new partner is the technical guru, and I have been benefiting so much from his methodical mind that I’ve depended upon his lead in how our work should progress. (I’ve been almost breathless at how much I’ve learned from him and how I’m seeing how technology is not just a cold monster, but how it can be tweaked and controlled to adjust the flow of things—just as in the lessons of the water chakra.)

So in the midst of our steady progress, I was a little thrown when he suddenly expressed in a long and pivotal phone conversation, my same desire to move our work forward with more urgency due to need for income. Only after hanging up from the call did I realize that this emphatic conversation took place during the precise time of the Mastering My Present Moment repatterning on Career and Finance. Yet, it had been him, not me, who instigated the new strategy of fast-forwarding. And the day before that, he had surprised me again in suddenly bringing up an interest in possibly writing a blog as a form of marketing, but writing it honestly about the frustrations of his marketing journey. It was an ironic moment for me because my intention in Mastering My Present Moment is to be able to make money by using my true, authentic voice.

What he did is remind me of how valuable it is to write or speak in the moment, where the most surprising human nuggets are found that make communication most meaningful. I felt liberated to know that he also viewed marketing as something that should be honest and human.  I’m tired from the fast escalating momentum of this flow, but it is satistfying to see a unity in the course I’m on. My experience these past weeks has felt wild at times, yet exciting and transforming.

Does anyone else experience at this point in our repatternings a sense of new momentum that might be positive, but at the same time a bit overwhelming?

Today I’m realizing how important the water chakra is. My flow with relationships has been abyssmal for the last many years. But then how could I have been in a good flow when I was feeling no stability, no foundation beneath me  for so long?

Since Mastering My Present Moment began, I have been experiencing an almost overwhelming surge of growing possibilities toward material security and the promise of more stability. But I see how I need to be able to manage the new flow. I am swimming in the currents of new projects—both my own ideas that I’ve been finally able to gather together for developing, and also a collaboration for internet marketing that seemed to come from out of nowhere with a man (who happens to have a love for sharing his computer engineering expertise, who has become my  mentor, already transforming my old fears of the technical into new found empowerment). Meanwhile, we share a clear and supportive communication I’m not sure I’ve ever  encountered. It is like I have fallen upon a wellspring.

Trying to abosorb, let alone contain, the new momentum, while negotiating only a certain number of hours and dollars in the bank, is a bit surreal. I have been conditioned to either fighting every current or going too much with the immediate flow, without considering my own power over the form. But today I took initiative to tell my generous collaborator that I needed to schedule my time differently to allow for some other necessary work. Then, instead of being chained to my computer, I went outside in the October sunshine to study on my small deck, where I go too little. I realized I could get my other work done away from my computer, which was appropriate for my situation on such a beautiful day. I saw how creating boundaries is actually a creative move. I created a whole new day for myself.

Also, yesterday, the day of the relationship repatterning, an important friend called me who I haven’t heard from in a very long time. Of all people I would like to hear from, she is my preference. To hear from her felt significant and gratifying. For many years now I have been feeling foreign and removed from friends and family. It has been like some strange phenomenon beyond my will that has forced me to examine my own true heart path—but it is good to be reminded that someone dear who has seemed so removed, still cares about you.   

I’m trying to hold on and find balance in this dynamic flow–rush, that  I’m experiencing. This chakra feels very important. It’s really where we begin to direct the crucial themes of our life. I wonder if others are feeling the power of awareness in how the flow of the water chakra follows the stable foundational earth–or if others also feel a bit overwhelmed with the tides around them.  I’m just happy that I recognize the tides as being integral to my life.

The water chakra energy center is located in the abdomen area of the body, and governs life themes such as relationships especially intimate ones, marriage, career, making money (as opposed to earth chakra financial stability issues), our feelings and states of being in control or being controlled, and creativity. It is a powerhouse chakra that ties up a lot of our physical experiences and determines our happiness and fulfillment.

Each chakra has unique associations such as color, sound, body ailments, etc. resulting from the match in frequency.

Here are some simple ways to boost the water chakra:

1. Use the color orange in the way that you are most drawn to use.  Use an orange towel (one left over from the orange 70’s will do!) wrapped around your waist after a bath/shower. Sit for a minute or two and imagine your body absorbing the frequency of the color orange.  

Alternatively, wear the color orange – I once saw a guy likely a rock star, wearing orange leather trousers and was struck at the water chakra nature of his fashion choice. 

Stare at the color orange found in some object you have handy – perhaps a real orange, an orange folder, or piece of paper. Again, just imagine that as you stare at the color orange you are absorbing its frequency. Your water chakra will thank you.

2. Use aroma oils to balance or enhance your water chakra. Ylang Ylang is long been a popular one associated with intimacy in relationships. I personally find it too strong and nauseating. Try sandalwood which is very pleasant and found in many men’s colognes or gardenia oils to boost your water chakra.  I have also had the happy association of using ginger-root aroma oil to boost water chakra career intentions or clear related issues but I warn you in advance it smells like old potatoes.

3. Use sound particularly the note of “D” and/or chanting the word VAM.  If you have a piano or musical instrument, just pluck the sound of D and let it linger.  Spend a minute or two just absorbing the sound.  Chant vam, vam, vam in the shower to any other favorite tune you may have or just play with your voice and the chant.

4. Do a movement exercise like working a hoola hoop with or without the hoop.  Put on some latin music and dance focusing on moving your hips to the music or do salsa dancing.  In fact the lack of movement in the abdomen area, creates a stagnant pond of energy affecting guess what? Relationships, intimacy, career, money etc.   Get rid of the stagnation with regular movement exercises for the water chakra.

5. Watch a movie with water chakra energy elements something that wakens your feeling state – “Like Water for Chocolate” is an oldie but suitable, or something that will get you laughing – my old standby is “City Slickers” with Billy Crystal.

Use any of the modalities above to improve your water chakra energy and energize any intentions you may have for the related life themes.  Do these actions with conscious awareness, and you will be doing your own resonance repatterning of sorts.

Share your experiences!

Almost from the moment Mastering My Present Moment began, I began a working relationship unlike anything I’ve known before with a man who came out of nowhere to partner with me in Internet marketing. I have been wishing to connect with people of the highest quality, but in the short time I have worked with him, already countless hours online, I am astounded at what I can only describe as his total presence in the moment—with talent, character, eloquence, sheer quality of work, and support.

How is it that in this short time he has cleared away years of mystery and stress I’ve had around computer technology? And instead of that sneaking expectation of being invalidated or feeling abandoned, I am relieved by feelings of security and support in all levels of our communication.

My goal for Mastering My Present Moment was to be able to make money in the process of speaking my authentic voice. My voice has felt stifled for years, yet here I am feeling heard and valued every step of the way working with this person. I cannot overstate this enough, (ironically). But what is most amazing is how both of us cannot stop marveling sincerely at our mutual good fortune of running into one another. In the past, we have each felt stuck and alone, in need of collaboration with the right kind of person.

In my mission to overcome lack of money, I was not expecting to find what I was really lacking—a sense of security and belonging that I’m getting as I work toward being able to make money. The lesson I’m realizing is how we need others at our most basic level.

Even as my body hurts still too much from an accident and my finances look grim, I feel so grateful. And I’m struck that as I experience the feeling of support at such basic levels, I am experiencing the divine. The other night restless in bed, I felt a rare need to rest my head in my hands in a kind of prayer—like for a moment I could sense the truth of my life—like I was consulting with my true  Source, beyond my own head.

I don’t think I could have sensed that divine connection without feeling this earthier awareness of support that I’ve been sorely missing. I’ve always thought the order of connection should be the reverse. But I think we really do mimic nature, like flowers that open up from the earth. I have been like a broken stem with its roots in shambles, full of guilt over money and sex and being. But I am believing we really can mend no matter how strange the trip has been.

I’m surprised  at feeling my roots in the world, and surprised at how that seems to have opened me up  to a higher connection. Is that really the order of how we thrive?

I sometimes wonder in the series for Mastering My Present Moment at what point I should focus on each week’s issues, even though I know time is supposed to be “holographic” and does not always play out in a linear way. Our repatterning around family is next Tuesday, but significant things are happening this week already, which is interesting because I have purposely been keeping myself removed from my family.  I was thinking about options for how I could get myself through this transitional time of no money, so I called my brother to ask for a small portion of a very small amount that has been coming to me since my mother died many years ago. He got an angry, accusing tone while I stammered. Old patterns. I knew beforehand it might be a bad time to ask him for it, but it has been many years since my mother died. But I hung up feeling clear that regardless of his response, it is not a problem when a sister asks her older brother for money that is owed to her after many years, especially when she is clearly struggling to get by. For the first time, I stood my ground without regard to his reaction or the outcome. 

Also, this week I was upset about my cousin being hospitalized for extensive heart complications, like her mother had been. I had a dream that was intimate and revealed to me how her health was directly related to patterns of grief with her mother and relationships with men—a family pattern that I mirror in my own way with my attachment to my mother who has been gone so long, while I remain single. Realizing the extent of the family pattern, I decided I must commit to moving out of the haunting need for my mother at the cost of living in other relationships—and with that, after my dream I knew my cousin would come through the serious complications—and she did thankfully. But I knew that by my making the choice to change my pattern I was supporting her to change her old grief.

I wonder if others also recognize these patterns of enmeshed family  emotions underlying physical health.

I knew nothing about earth chakras years ago. All I knew was that I felt naked and distorted in my own body trying to survive without money or belonging, after too many losses. You can’t explain these things at the office—or the string of offices I used to work at. But I’m starting to sense again those roots of safety and groundedness that were missing from me a year ago in the first Mastering My Present Moment series was. 

This repatterning comes as I transition from school and recovering from an auto accident and into making a living. My debts are obscene, yet I am feeling hopeful and even peaceful. I’m getting a sense of momentum building in my life. I am almost stunned at how  intentions and tiny shifts over the past year or two—during the time when I’ve felt like I was floating so slowly forward inside a funnel from pain and struggle-—are finally beginning to manifest toward health and abundance. I am still a mess, but a more coherent mess—-there is a picture finally forming. 

The last few days I have seen order happening that has seemed impossible. In the second week of the earth repatterning regarding finances, I suddenly realized I had been missing the one good way to place my desk in the small space where I work. The improvement of flow is radical. I see order before me and a real workspace. Days ago I was finally able to gather all my ideas about making money through writing, into a small pile of files that makes sense. I have acquired a datebook/notebook that I actually use and that I love to look at. It’s turquoise. I’ve been accomplishing tasks the last couple of days around small transactions that just days ago were causing me to go into a stubborn blankness. 

But most uncanny is that just in the last two weeks I’ve made a connection with a man of exceptional caliber who has become my trusted mentor and associate. In this short time I have learned from him more practical and cutting edge information about the internet and making money online than I could have imagined. He has overwhelmed me with in-depth emails and educational information that has transformed my financial possibilities and lifted long-held fears about the mysteries of the internet. He is an ex-engineer who takes learning and making money seriously, but who thrives on collaboration. I had met him briefly online this summer, indirectly through a local internet “meetup” group, but then re-contacted him a couple of weeks ago to ask a couple of questions about internet marketing. 

What I got was a storm of daily information and collaboration that keeps building. In past repatternings I made intentions to attract the best professional associations to help me make money when I was finished with school. Be careful what you ask for. This man has me busy working the ground. But it is good. Now, I just have to watch what I cultivate so I don’t bury myself.  Isn’t so much of it in finding balance in what we grow? 

 Jane Ashton

 

Well, I love Carolyn’s metaphor of “Julie and Julia” for this process of working with her to blog the moments of Mastering My Present Moment, because I feel quite a bit like the bumbling protégé trying to make the most of her mentor’s long distance weekly recipes. When I first did Mastering My Present Moment last year for the first time, I was too much of a mess  to realize just how “coherent” this program’s  online format is. For someone like me who can overcomplicate and overthink herself right out of her body, each week’s focus of questions and intentions makes it real how my mind gets directly played out in the themes of my body’s chakras.  

But the actual repatternings that Carolyn does have made the whole thing seem to me more like a magic carpet ride with radical shifts and uncanny serendipities —but the stakes are serious. I’ve been working hard for years to heal my body, soul, heart, and mind after an accident and too many years of tripping down the wrong paths. I fell upon long distance energy healing a couple of years ago and this is my second Mastering My Present Moment series with Carolyn, among some other work with her. A year ago I couldn’t have blogged. It would have come out as tangled up as I felt. One might think from her introduction that I am a young woman in her twenties getting ready to conquer the world. But I’m a young woman in my forties still trying to bloom after rough storm patterns. I’ve come far enough to know this journey remains mysterious and yet surprisingly ordered by some universal intelligence. I’m in a transition right now as I try to direct my unruly passions and interests from school to making a living in the world writing. But something tells me my real project is to get into the integrity of my heart, beyond my mind. That means facing risk.

I’m ready for more relief from a  journey with Carolyn. She makes all the ingredients for change seem less daunting and even fun. Also, I have come to prefer the synergy of group repatterning. There is something potent in it. I’ve experienced some shifts and uncanny synchronicities. It is always surprising.

Jane Ashton

Collected Stories is a feature I am starting at this blog to provide a way of sharing the experiences of a few things, – coming into present moment awareness,  body awareness of how our issues are held in the energy centers of our body – the chakras and of course the synchronicities and seeming miracles along the way.   I have many stories participants have shared over the past 10 years and would love to have them somewhere so that they are not forgotten and can inspire others.  These will be posted over the next few weeks beginning with one of my oldest stories about Mary.   

But the past is the past, and in the present, I often find it  difficult to share our own breaking news story of coming into the present moment when we’ve just left some painful baggage behind.   I respect that this is mostly a private experience for each person … but it does get difficult to tell the story as it is happening.  So I came up with an idea,  of an invited participant to the Mastering MY Present Moment Project program, who will go by the pen name of Jane Ashton (to protect the identities of those involved in her story) and will blog about her experience, ask questions about the process and invite comments from others whether in the program or not.   In doing so she’ll help me evaluate key elements of doing this work on line via her own experience of it – so everything from the web navigation to ‘could we have more explanations over here’ will be included.  Your feedback to her  comments will be most welcomed.   I have asked Jane to be her own counsel and be a free agent in what she writes and not hold back.  I  promised I won’t change a word! 

So – “Julie and Julia” style we’ll be sharing, synthesizing and evaluating our experiences in the present moment.  Everyone is welcomed to reply to her posts or any posts with comments.  If you have a post you would like to make as a contributor be sure to get a WORDPRESS blog username and password  then email me with your request and I will make you a contributor to the site. 

It is with great pleasure that I introduce Jane Ashton as an author at the Mastering Now blog.   Her pen name gives away the fact that she loves Jane Austen as much as I do.   Jane has participated in several online group proxy style programs of Resonance Repatterning, and is familiar with a number of alternative healing systems.  A recent graduate of English literature, single and looking for her unique career path aligned with her values and vision she has many questions and inner conflicts involved in taking the next step.  Jane is a heart felt person,  who like many of us doing alternative healing work, strives to live a life aligned with her true self while making places for the ties of family, culture and her community. 

Welcome Jane!

With love and light,
Carolyn Winter

Mastering MY Present Moment Project was first piloted in the summer of 1999. It was conducted by surface mail with over 75 participants.   Extraordinary results were reported after just a few weeks,  but none more memorable than that of a woman we’ll call “Mary”.  Against all odds, Mary came to have the house of her dreams through what she felt could only be her participation in Mastering MY Present Moment Project. 

Mary is a single mother with grown children, the youngest at the time, having only recently graduated and securing a high paying job in the world of commerce.  At family gatherings or in contemplative conversations where folks talked about their future plans, she always lamented in the conversation “I will never have the house of my dreams.”

It was hard to argue with Mary, as she was a low wage earner, and had too many family responsibilities for too long to have any significant savings.  She joined Mastering the Present Moment Project prior to its online incarnation and submitted the issue she had repeated so often ” I will never have the house of my dreams.”  

On the pages requiring a new possibility intention, she wrote  “I have the house of my dreams…” and described a small 2 bedroom house where she could have a simple healing practice.   On the back of the form she actually sketched a picture of the house, a cottage with a picket fence.

Near the end of the 15 weeks of Mastering MY Present Moment Project sessions, Mary called to thank me for the program and to joyfully announce she was actually getting the house of her dreams.  On a sunny fall Sunday afternoon, she took a drive out in the country and past by a cottage she had once lived in with a former partner.  The unhappy relationship had long gone, but she had still been holding onto the pain and hurt of that time and unresolved relationship issues in her heart. The cottage image was somehow tied into the grief of a relationship that was never to be.    Having read many of the statements in the earth chakra notes from Mastering MY Present Moment Project, Mary realized that for the first time since the ending  of that relationship, she had finally let go of all the unresolved issues nvolved in that relationship.  As she stared at the cottage she was aware that she no longer held any anger or grief in her heart.

When she returned home that day, she received a call from her son.   “Mom I have saved enough money from my new job to use as a down payment for the house of your dreams.  With what you pay in rent, and a little extra each month from me… you can get a house.”

Mary was needless to say very moved, not only about the house, but the source of the gift. She had never resonated with being helped by anyone, especially by family.  Somehow letting go of  the pain of that past relationship opened the door to receive more positive energy in the present moment and to realize her compass point intentions. 

The earth chakra energy center is located at the base of the spine including the sacrum and coccyx area of the body, and governs life themes such as safety, security, family and belonging, home and hearth as well as  financial stability. The watch word for this chakra is STABILITY and symbolizes the overall state of this energy center to provide grounding. From a stable earth chakra we find the energy to pursue goals related to the other energy centers.

Each chakra has unique associations such as color, sound, body associations, etc. resulting from the match in frequency.

Here are some simple ways to boost the earth chakra:

1. Use the color red in the way that you are most drawn to use.  Drape yourself in a bright red shawl or towel  and sit for a minute or two and imagine your body absorbing the frequency of the color. 

Stare at the color red found in some object you have handy – a red paper folder, wrapping paper, or bouquet of red flowers.  Again, just imagine that as you stare at the color red you are absorbing its frequency. Notice your sense of stabilty.

2. Use aroma oils to balance or enhance your earth chakra. Cedarwood, clove, black pepper or marjoram are associated with this chakra as well as Balsam Fir. 

3. Use sound particularly the note of “C” and/or chanting the word LAM or the vowel sound of U (ooooh).  If you have a piano or musical instrument, just pluck the sound of C and let it linger.  Spend a minute or two just absorbing the sound.  Chant Lam, Lam, Lam in the shower to any other favorite tune you may have or just play with your voice and the chant.  

4. Walking on earth or sitting on rocks nurture the earth chakra. I also like the idea of hugging a tree! 

5. Watch a movie with earth chakra energy elements something that strikes chords of family, belonging, safety, security  – such as “The Sound of Music”

Use any of the modalities above to improve your earth chakra energy and energize any intentions you may have for the related life themes.  Do these actions with conscious awareness, and you will be doing your own resonance repatterning of sorts.

Share your experiences!

Presently yours,

Carolyn