How Much JOY Can You Hold?

Posted: April 2, 2009

 

Every morning when I wake up, I want to be full of love, joy, and excitement.  I believe that the Universe gives people what they ask for, and this is exactly what I want–total joy, passion, and love for being alive every single day of my life. 

I realize that not every one feels this way.  I shared this thought with someone once and they responded that they thought it was impossible.   But is it really?  Or does it seem impossible because we are making it so? 

One thing I know is that I am a spirit being created from a Creator that is full of joy and therefore, SO AM I!  THe earth is lower than our spirit home in every way, especially vibrationally.  Our spirits have slowed down their vibration in ordedr to enter physical bodies.  This was ne cessary so that we could have a physical expedrience, however, in doing so, we have forgotten many of our inherent spirit qualities, like JOY, that are ready to be be awakened within us if we are to return to our God-selves.

There are many ways that we can learn and grow.  ‘Struggle’ is the way of our conditioning, but it does not have to be.  I believe that learning occurs continually in the spiritual realm and I have to believe that as angels and other evolved spirits learn, it does not require create pain and struggle for them to do so.  Then why not me?  I have wondered.  Why can’t my greatest learning come through being tutoring by God and Spirit and through joyful experiences instead of painful experiences?  

“There will always be the contrast of pain and hardship available to us. The old belief has been, I am learning and growing through adversity. The new belief can be, I am learning and growing through joy. The question to ask yourself now is, How much joy can you hold, and how long can you hold it?“(Remembering Wholeness, 116)

How much JOY can I hold is a question I have asked myself.  As I have meditated on joy, I have found that I possess physical and mental blocks to it.  When I spent time focusing on the blocks and dismissing them, I felt my spirit opening up and having more room inside for joy, enthusiasm and passion for life than ever before.

This week I took my spinning class on a “JOY RIDE.”  We listened to Natasha Bedingfield’s song, Happy, and visualized that we were biking along the coast.  We left every thing that had bothered or stressed us out at home and were there to experience one thing: JOY.  Every time our feet turned we were calling more and more joy, passion, and love for life to us.   We literally felt a change in our environment and some class members even commented on it.  It occurred to me that just like love, there is no shortage of joy, happiness and enthusiasm in being alive.  There is just a lack of ability to perceive it and connect because of our past conditioning.  I believe it is possible that even in times of grief or transition, we can still be connected to a thread of peace and appreciation for all aspects of our life experience.

We can each wake up from the slumber of struggle and choose to higher, spirit-driven, ways of learning and evolving.  The question is no longer, Can life be joyful?  The question is, How much JOY can you hold?   You cannot receive what you do not have room for.   The wider you open your arms, the more you will have.

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Laughing at Life

Posted: March 31, 2009

My friend, Jenny Byers, and I wrote for the same magazine last year and her article, The Naked Truth, had me laughing throughout October.  She graciously gave me permission to post here so you could also experience the same joy…and entertainment.  Visit her blog at jenslifeisasitcom.blogspot.com!

“I often find myself in situations that I think are hilarious. (Okay, I usually put myself in them before I have a chance to think things through.) But I’m always surprised to hear that others just find them outrageous! For example, I had a surreal wacky experience the other day and when I called my sister to tell her about it, after laughing hysterically she said, “You can’t write about that for your magazine!” Now I’m thinking, “Why can’t I? It happened to me. It made me laugh!” Then I talked to my mom and her hesitation, in the place of her usual motherly support, told me that she was on my sister’s side of the argument. So, because I’m me, I’m going to write about it. (I just won’t say neener, neener, neener – that would be immature.)

 

I’d been swimming out back with my two youngest children, the “Littles”. It was close to lunchtime, but I was trying to quickly get a shower in so I could face the rest of the day with makeup and a hairdo. (I know, my expectations were already way too high!) Well, I had successfully showered at supersonic speed and was working on the “after shower routine” (rubbing in hair gel like a mad woman) when Gideon, my one-and-a-half year-old came into the bathroom carrying a bag of eight large hamburger buns and crying hysterically because he couldn’t open them up. He had hit critical hunger mass while I was in the shower and he needed food IMMEDIATELY. I think we all know that a one year-old with low blood sugar is a creature not to be ignored.  I reached for my robe, but I couldn’t find it. He was screaming and I was flustered so I figured I’d just quickly run out to the kitchen, make him a PB&J, and then pop back into my bathroom to finish what I was doing. Sure I’d be naked, but all I could think was, “Must make food. Must stop screaming.” That’s what a hysterical child does to your brain; it pretty much ends up functioning on a primitive level. That’s why the thought didn’t occur to me to throw a towel around myself. Praying that no one came to the door (or peeked in my windows) I was breaking the world sandwich making record when I heard Eli, my three year-old saying, “Mom! I wanna take your picher. Say Cheese!” I turned around to see him with his sister’s camera in hand. Yikes! “No, no, NO Eli!” I yelled, panic-stricken, as I rushed around to get the camera; but then Gideon started freaking because the sandwich making had stopped. Chaos ensued. I somehow managed to distract the pint-sized photographer and get food into Gid without becoming the subject of secret nude photos. Then I sprinted back to my bathroom thinking, “My life is NOT normal!”

 

I’m still laughing about it as I write, thinking, “How does a nice girl like me find herself in a mess like that? And why would my family be so stressed about me sharing the experience?” A short time later, I get a call from someone with a New Jersey cell phone number. A man with a deep voice, claiming to be from Child Protective Services tells me that he has found a picture of me on an internet site! “What?” I think. “Did someone take a picture off my blog? Were my friends right when they warned me to make my blog private?” “Ma’am,” he continues, “It shows you naked in your kitchen.” Huh?!! “Wait a minute,” I puzzle, “something’s wrong here.” It takes me a second to realize that THERE WERE NO NUDE PHOTOS TAKEN!  “No you didn’t!” I fire back, and my dear brother-in-law starts laughing uproariously into the phone, thinking he is SO hilarious! And who told him, anyway?! Then he says, “Jen, you can tell your story, just say that you threw on a towel before you went in the kitchen.” Well, that was the nail in the coffin! The “naked chef” story just isn’t funny unless I’m …well…naked! (Plus, it’s how it really happened.) So, I’m thinking, “Would Erma Bombeck sugarcoat the naked truth of the story?” (Pun intended) Of course she wouldn’t! She’s the woman who wrote about losing her mastectomy prosthesis while running through an airport, only to find it moonlighting as a shoulder pad! I’m no Erma Bombeck, but she is my idol. Her ability to laugh at herself has shaped who I am and how I deal with the craziness of my life. So I embrace my brainless nudity. I share my stupidity with the world so you can all laugh with me! Then I’ll make sure to keep my bathrobe out of the laundry black hole to avoid any more naked culinary catastrophes! I don’t want my children to have to pay for more therapy than is absolutely necessary.”

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Learning from LIFE!

Posted: March 31, 2009

Alive Again!  

I just came home from an outside morning run and everywhere I look, life is blossoming!  My citrus trees are bursting with new fruit, and white flowers are poking their heads from our gardenia bushes preparing for an April visit.   Even the Impatiens around the lake seem to be waving giant flags of red and pink colors.  As I took in my surroundings and noticed everything coming back to life, I thought to myself, “This is exactly how I feel!” 

You may have noticed that I posted very little the last two months and this is the reason: I was having surgery.   Character surgery, that is.  It was as though God was making a lenghtly slice down the center of my chest and leading me through the stages of comrehensive reconstruction.   At first I was confused.  I thought I already transformed my life a few years ago.  Not to mention that I spend a portion of every day exploring how to assist others to transform their lives?  Why am I the one on the operating table? 

Because I love you and you’re not finished, came the loving reply.

When I accepted this, learning became easier.  I stopped blaming other people and my life circumstances for the difficult things I was experiencing.  I became inquisitive & open.  I went inside my Spirit and above me to the Source and asked to be taught.  That’s when the most powerful things occurred and essential principles were incorporated more deeply into my character.  I learned the importance of being daily connected to God and the Spirit of Truth in the universe so that my path would always be clear.  I learned to keep my word to those I love.  I learned to let go of what doesn’t serve me or others and to fortify and grow what does.  After a month of lessons and reconstruction, I was tired.  Very tired.  But healthier and happier than I had been in a very long time and offering gratitude to the Creator for loving me so much that He wouldn’t let me get away without  being the healthiest, happiest, highest version of myself.  And now, just like Spring, my life is blossoming again. 

I want to invite you to be present for every aspect of your own life and choose not to blame other people or ‘life’ for what you are experiencing.  All of these things are gifts to teach and transform you.  Instead ask, “How am I creating this?” or “Why is this particular learning experience showing up in my life?”  Close your mouth (i.e. stop telling your story), open your heart, ask God, and see what magical life changes are in store for you when you become an avid, eager student of life.  Know that you are loved every moment and no matter what–your self worth and love is never on the line.  These are existential gift given to you from the Creator and there is nothing you can do to lose them.  That means you can let yourself be ‘wrong,’ teachable, and open without anything to lose. 

And love, joy, wholeness, and LIFE to gain!

I love you! Send us your stories of how you learned from life and what changes took place for you! Post them here or email them to admin@heathermadder.com!

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Peace & Presence…with Children and Life.

Posted: January 26, 2009

Here is an article I drafted for a parenting magazine about an experience I had with my daughter… I revised some and shared it here because it captures a shift to gratitude and abundance I found in what I once would have labeled as a ‘difficult’ moment.   Please feel free to share your own experiences, parenting or otherwise…times when you changed internally (instead of waiting for another to change) and consequently found joy, peace, or freedom. 

Love and LIFE,  Heather

—–

It was 4:30 in the morning and I was awakened by the screaming of my three-year-old daughter.  She is the only girl out of four children, which makes her female jewel in the family crown.  (And likely the most expensive, so I am told.)  I closed my eyes for a moment and reminisced about how quiet she was when she first appeared in our lives.  Sweet…petite …polite almost, if such a thing can be said about a baby.  This uncommon serenity lasted through the notorious “terrible two’s” and spilled generously past her third birthday, while I enjoyed the rare and precious tranquility of a toddler’s mother.

In the last three months, however, something had changed and our quiet girl had traded in her original suiting and morphed into the small female version of a screeching siren.  If she was placed anywhere on the couch except the far right cushion, she would shriek. If you put the orange lid on her cup, instead of the pink lid, she would scream.  If you fastened the top buckle of her car seat when she planned on doing it herself, may heaven and all its angels help you handle the flailing fit that will ensue as you drove to your destination.  I recently called my husband during one of these fits for moral support.  Directing the speaker towards the backseat I said, “Sweetheart, our daughter would like to say hello.”

This particular morning was no exception to her recent modus operandi.  Groggily, I walked to her room and then carried her downstairs so her older male compatriots could remain tucked in their slumbering.  I laid her on the couch and she screamed.  I gave her a cup of milk and she pushed it aside.  I offered to hold her and rock her back to sleep, but she refused and screamed even louder.  I asked if her stomach or her teeth hurt and she belted out, “Noooooo.”

What do you want? I whispered in exasperation. 

The answer seemed obvious. She wanted to scream while I watched her. 

Finally, a random idea popped into my head and I asked, “Would you like to go for a ride in the bike trailer?”

Still crying, she nodded her head in affirmation.  A nod.  “Houston, we have contact.”

I placed her in the carrier and buckled her seatbelt and all crying suddenly muted.  Maybe she was tired from the screaming; maybe she was genuinely interested in a bike ride or maybe, just maybe, she was amazed at what she could create with a little determination. 

As I wheeled the trailer out of the garage, I noticed that the tires were flat.  It took me ten minutes to locate the third air pump we’ve purchased this year (this would have something to do with a neighborhood lending program that we are funding.)  After pounding air in the tires by porch light, I slapped my shoes into the pedals and we were an officially moving caravan. 

In case you were wondering who is up and around at forty-thirty in the morning, let me enlighten you from the rich pleasure of experience.  No one.  There are no mail carriers, no children playing in their yards, no early morning runners, and save one dazed looking driver of a Saab, I saw no distinguishable signs of life.  Not even the birds were ready to blaze a trail of song to begin this day. 

This is not the first time in motherhood, and undoubtedly it will not be the last, when I have asked myself this question.  “Is this normal?” And a little farther along that tether is the next question, “Am I normal?” Really.  I would like to know.

 Then I glanced back at the small, breathing package wrapped in pink fleece, which created a window for a pair of liquid brown eyes to peer out in wonder.  As the wheels passed over the sidewalk, a loose curl fell across her eyebrow and my heart melted into that bottomless reservoir of motherhood where I know that I will never find an end to things that I can love.  

Together we traveled—a woman with a fumbling concept of normalcy and a three-year-old with a fumbling concept of time.  Both of us still settling into our place in the world, as well as our place in this relationship.  I remember a moment that morning when I saw the emotion of frustration flash onto the screen of my mind.  I recall thinking, “I could choose that.”  Two or three children back (as if they were months of the year) I would have without realizing there was another option, or even a choice.  But I didn’t.  I just chose to be—on that bike, going where it took me, grateful to be in the seat.

After thirty minutes, we went back home and I gave her a bowl of cereal.  She sat in the chair with both legs straight out in front of her creating a table for her feast.  Wisps of hair fell over her eyes as she leaned over to study her food, giving each bite her complete attention.  With a spoon in her right hand, she carefully scooped out one wet bite after another and with her left hand, she intermittently redirected falling pieces back into her mouth.    

I watched her in wonder.  She has my legs, my eyes, and a larger section of my heart with every passing moment.  I recalled how grateful I felt when she was born, like there was something I had been waiting for, but didn’t know it.  When she arrived, I felt complete.   

I could resist her no longer and crouched down beside her, purposely silent.  She wrapped her arms around my neck and began to kiss my face.  “I yuv you, mommy,” she said.  Then she patted my cheeks and ran her long, slender fingers through the curls of my hair, saying, “Pretty hair, mommy.” 

She kissed my lips again and smiled a toothy grin.  I remained still as I absorbed her affection with watery gratitude.  After a few more kisses and strokes of my hair, she gently pushed my face away from hers, signaling she was done.  I stood up and she scooted off the chair and walked over to lie down on the right side of the couch.  I tucked her blanket around her legs, looked into her eyes, and a feeling of total bliss and joy washed over me as I realized, I am the richest woman alive.  I stared at her while she lay on the couch, her lids falling closed, feeling a rush of joy and gratitude of the deepest proportion.  

For several weeks, I had been preparing to give a talk on abundance, and this moment, revelation hit me.  The first step in creating abundance is to receive what you already have.  I glanced at the clock. 5:17am. Fatigue pulled at my eyelids, but I was determined to capture what I had experienced and went directly to my computer to write.   

All my life I had been in search of more—truth, money, relationships, health, beauty, order, to name a few.  With my eyes fixed so intently on the future, I was often missing what was already mine.  What I had experienced that this morning, in an unexpected way, was a reservoir of abundance.  The irony is that this has been right in front of me all along, but I had been missing it.  This morning, I found it in just being with my daughter.  None of my action was a means to an end.  I wasn’t cleaning, making food, or purposely teaching her something.  I was existing next to her in a state of presence.  In those moments, a space opened for me and I received what I already had. 

What else have I been missing?  I couldn’t help but wonder. That morning, I determined to live my life awake. 

Abundance is like a deep river that runs parallel to this moment.  Immersing myself in its flow is not a matter of getting more, but first a matter of opening to what is.  When my mind is still and my eyes are open, I am able to receive the coins of beauty that surround me and my wealth amounts to overflowing abundance.   

Catch your own today.  Every day, everywhere, they are freely falling.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Time to BE Fully Alive

Posted: January 13, 2009

This blog is titled, Fully Alive, because in the past twelve months, I have reclaimed my true identity, as well as my life.  I began this process several years ago, and since then I’ve gathered segments here and there, but now I am all the way home.   

For a good portion of my life before now, most of it really, I have been trying to be “someone.”  The details of that “someone” has changed shape over time, but the theme has always been the same.  I was looking for myself out there…somewhere in the future…in a new pursuit or passion, or achievement.  When my book first came out and I began teaching publicly, I’d dare say that in some ways, I was even creating an identity out of being a “spiritual teacher.” What a bunch of nonsense.

Each stage of this path, however, was essential. There was nothing in the physical dimension that could permanently assuage the desire for identity, no surrogate self that could last long enough to keep me content.  But in experiencing who I am not, who I am, emerged with clarity.  When I finally recovered my true spirit self, I found a home I knew I’d never leave. 

It was more like a self-revival process than anything else. When I was born, I was my authentic self, just in a smaller package.  I came free of a life story or any script that told me who I was or had to be. As I grew, I—along with the rest of humanity—began to accumulate “facts” about myself. I had experiences that turned into stories I could tell other people.  A life’s resume began to form.  It was as though there was a little box with a lid and a tag with my name on the front: “H-E-A-T-H-E-R  M-A-D-D-E-R.”  A small, limited version of me was stuffed inside of it.   

If I were born in a different place, the content would have been different, probably even the name tag, but the process the same.  It is this way for all of us.  We are born into the world as a free spirit.  As we live and grow, we accumulate past data. We have unique experiences, some of them trauma inducing, and we take on certain personality traits as we respond to those experiences.  We learn fear, guilt, shame, insecurity.  Our learned behaviors are not who we really are.  Nor is our story. 

We are spirit beings from a higher dimension.  We always have been.  We always will be.  We are visiting the physical dimension, an earth school so to speak, for the purpose of learning.  When we have finished this course, we will go on to another one.  We will lay down the body, our stories, our resume’s, climb out of our box, and return to the spirit dimension-our original home.

The best news is that awakening to who we really are can occur at any moment.  We do not have to wait until we step through the doorway of death to get home.  We can become conscious right now.  Living from your true identity only happens when you live from the spirit part of who you are.  This opened up to me when I looked inside myself, not outside.  When I stripped away life story, my life resume, my conditioning, and climbed out of that little box, I came to the most stunning conclusion of my lifetime: 

I am a spirit being of light.  I am filled with love for people, and deep compassion for humanity.  I am passionate and excited about what’s around me.  I am forgiving, accepting, and joyful.  I love to create.  And I feel the deepest joy in connecting with others. 

Quite ironically, my history once painted me as a bit of a loner.  I remember when one of my friends told another, “Heather is so hard to get to know.”  My isolation and private nature were my chosen responses to past experiences–not the real me.  I was living in the shut down misery of a false persona and didn’t even know it.  The real me is open-hearted, filled with love, trusting of others, and radically committed at reaching people so they can also awaken to their own truth.  

This domain is about living from spirit–your true identity.  Your only identity.  Another word for spirit is the word freedom. You can live in freedom in every area of your life.  When it comes to relationships, career, physical wellness, parenting, or any other place you find yourself.  We are lifting the veil of illusion on all the things we are not–  Insecure. Fearful. Guilt-ridden. Controlling. Judgmental. Unforgiving. Skeptical. Limited.  Time to lay it down and be free. 

 Time to live.  Take back what you’ve given away.  Get rid of what’s not really you.  Come home to yourself.  And BE.  Fully Alive.

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