Author Archives: kathleennewmanspero

consciousness, spirituality

“Divine Compensation”

I hope you enjoy this video in which Marianne Williamson talks about how to forgive and living your destiny.  One of the lessons that really changed me was the idea of “divine compensation.” Marianne gives a great description of it but here was the insight I gained from it:

One way of looking at a miracle is when the highest potential of a moment is manifested.  When you block a miracle, perhaps by choices you’ve made, that miracle still exists.  It will merely manifest itself in a different form.  So if it happens that you do something and a miracle doesn’t occur, and you don’t experience the highest potential of that moment, that miracle will appear in your life in a new form when your heart and mind are open.  Which is to say, the highest potential for any moment is becoming realized when you accept life as it is, and allow life to live you.  When you are open to life in all of its possibilities, you give the highest potential the opportunity to manifest in your life.  

When I first wrote this post I was about to publish it, but through some technical difficulties found it was lost and unrecoverable.  I was frustrated at first.  I felt a lot of negative energy taking over me.  My boyfriend suggested we go on a walk, and although I was frustrated I knew that the universe was giving me an opportunity to trust that the potential for the words I had written would be restored to me in a different form.  I always find life gives me the chance to practice any lesson that I feel I understand.  I was definitely frustrated earlier.  Eventually I chose to receive the blessing with gratitude.  Though I lost something, that potential still exsisted for me and was able to manifest differently with these new words.  

When a moment doesn’t go “well” or as planned, instead of suffering, it would be much more enjoyable to be excited about what the new manifestation for its highest potential will look like!  Another way of putting it, you’re always on the right path, your highest potential is always in the midst of you ready to be realized.

Marianne Williamson is a brilliant author and spiritual teacher, and is one of the contributors to A Course In Miracles, another life changing book that I absolutely love.  May this video open your heart and give you a greater experience of love and joy today!  Thanks to Oprah for who you are, and for Super Soul Sunday! Stay tuned for a lesson I was given in self-forgiveness.




“Author Marianne Williamson has been a spiritual friend and counselor to Oprah for many years, and her advice has sometimes taken Oprah by surprise. Watch as Oprah remembers a time where Marianne counseled her to pray for someone who harmed her—and experiences an emotional aha! moment onstage. Then, watch as Marianne explains the principle of divine compensation and how the universe will always return what someone wrongfully took from you.”

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consciousness, spirituality, Uncategorized

The Bed Bug Incident Part 3 – Conclusions

As the days passed before the extermination I experienced great fluctuations in my state of consciousness.  There would be brief moments of clarity where I felt fine, peaceful, above my circumstance.  Then I would soon despair again.  I had to pack up my apartment as if I was moving, treat all my clothes.  I had to live apart from my boyfriend who graciously stayed at the apartment, per instructions from the exterminator, while I fled to my parents’ house in the suburbs.  We’ve lived together for years and now we were in separate places, both without any of our “stuff.”

My mind constantly tormented me with the fear that I was going to bring the bugs to my parents’ house.  But as the days went by, my moments of clarity were able to shine through more and more.  I was learning to bring acceptance to my outer circumstance.  The negative thoughts were so obviously unwanted and unhelpful at this point that I made the choice to start letting them go, one by one, as they came up in my mind.  And they came up all the time.  So this was a lot of great practice at letting go of negative thoughts.

I then had to go back to the apartment to “test” the results of the extermination.  Everything was fine.  On my fifth day back I woke up and went to work.  As I was typing on my computer I noticed one of my fingers was swollen.  Then I felt something on my thigh, went to the bathroom, and saw it had swollen up the size of a large tomato.  I had been bitten.  I left that morning assuming I would see my boyfriend after work.  But now I’d be driving back to the suburbs, living apart for another two weeks while the second round of treatment took effect.  I emailed the exterminator.  I called my boyfriend to tell him what had happened.  I called my mom to tell her I was coming home.  And I was okay.  I had been through this once before, I was learning how to let go of the circumstance.  I was learning to be okay with uncertainty.  I was learning how to accept what happens, because to not accept what happens is to cause yourself unnecessary suffering.

The universe gave me a round two, another opportunity to try again.  And this time it was easier not to freak out.  It didn’t feel like a horrible struggle prepping my apartment for extermination, or commuting to work from the suburbs, or not knowing when I would live at my apartment again.  I’m still learning to accept that bugs exist.  But now, in comparison, the other ones don’t seem so bad.  I’m now back at my apartment and haven’t had any bites again.  Although that doesn’t mean they won’t come back.  And I am okay with that now, I have learned to be comfortable with the not knowing.  I really don’t know what is going to happen, where I’ll be living day to day, if the next apartment I get will be bed bug free.  From experiencing the suffering I caused after having bed-bugs I have learned that it is much more helpful, peaceful, and joyful to let go of those fears and be in the moment I am in.  After all, it is the only moment I will ever be in.  So if I’m afraid and worried now, it is likely I’ll continue to be afraid and worried.  But if I’m peaceful and accepting now, it is quite likely that my future moments will also be peaceful.  After all, the future never happens, when it does it is called the “now.”

So what can you let go of now?  What uncontrollable circumstances in your life can you bring acceptance to?  What negative thoughts repeat in your head that you are ready to let go of?  The bed bugs taught me many things; the universe always gives you the lesson that is most helpful for your state of consciousness at that moment (as Tolle puts it).  And while I perceived the situation as suffering while in the midst of it, it was for my learning, for fostering greater peace, joy, love, and awareness in my life.  What a gift.

PS- I also have a different relationship with things now.  Although I don’t perceive “stuff” as a burden as I did after getting bed bugs, I am not as interested in having more “stuff.”  I would rather have just a few things to tend to.  It has actually stopped me from wanting to buy clothes and other things.  All I wanted after having bed bugs was to be just me, to feel clean and untainted.  While that is an extreme that would be detrimental to stay at, it pushed me more to the middle in terms of my desire for objects, another blessing in disguise!

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consciousness, spirituality

“How to Not Take Things Personally”

Life is much more enjoyable the moment you realize that it is not about you.  We are all the “main characters” in our own stories, so when someone is mean or unhelpful to you, that is all a part of their story, not yours.  As a very sensitive child I longed to know how to not be so hurt by a world that can sometimes be inconsiderate and unforgiving.  That sensitivity has given me many lessons in how to let go, and allow other people to live their own lives.  Here Don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements, helps explain how to not take things personally.

“The second of don Miguel Ruiz’s four agreements is about not taking everything personally. Watch as Oprah says she thinks it’s one of the hardest to follow, and get the advice don Miguel gives a customer service representative about dealing with challenging customers.”

PS- Stay tuned for the conclusion of “The Bed Bug Incident” tomorrow!

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consciousness, spirituality

The Bed Bug Incident Part 2

I never found out what had been causing those bites for so many months. But the situation developed when I learned a couple apartments in my building had bed bugs and were having exterminations. I freaked out. Freaking out is a good sign that you are totally taken in by a circumstance and cannot view it at the higher vantage point of the true self, the watcher which is unaffected by what “happens” and is always whole. I wasn’t being the watcher, I was being a body threatened by outside forces. I took many precautions after learning my neighbors had bed bugs, putting things in trash bags, keeping the lights on at night, spraying poison around my door. But to the universe all of those precautions were really just me saying, “I’m afraid of something, this bothers me, I’m totally attached and identified with this situation.” That was the truth of the matter. I hadn’t let go. I was clinging to circumstance.

I was living in fear of bugs. For you this experience might have manifested in another form in your own life. About a month after the bed bug incident I thought I was in the clear. Everything was going to be fine. And when the thought that everything will be fine occupies your mind, that can be saying that you don’t feel fine in this moment, the only moment you will ever actually be experiencing. That very week I woke up with bug bites. These were very different from the ones I had been having all year. There were multiple bites and they were on my upper body not my legs. I even had bites on my fingers. The only thing familiar about them was the terrible allergic reaction. But the itching was even worse. I called the exterminator to inspect, and sure enough I had bed bugs.

The morning I found out I fell to pieces. You would have thought a real tragedy had struck. I was distraught, beside myself. I felt completely contaminated, as if everywhere I went would become infected by bed bugs. I didn’t want to tell anyone, I didn’t want to hang out at other apartments. Mostly, I never wanted to return to my apartment ever again. I no longer cared about my stuff, I did not want any of it anymore. In my eyes, the place would be forever contaminated.

This is a great example of a strong reaction. My reaction was a clear message of the feelings, fears, and beliefs I had been holding onto ever since my first bad bite from October. It was now May, and there was no more fooling myself. I was completely attached to my outer circumstance, and when my outer circumstance did not fit with the picture I had in my head of what I needed to feel safe, comfortable, and at ease, I caused immense suffering for myself. Suffering is often created by the outer circumstance not matching up with your thought’s picture of how things “should” be. This cannot be reconciled by more thoughts. The only way to stop the self created suffering is to recognize the thoughts and how they operate. The thougths don’t really want problems to be solved, even though that is what they claim. They want to keep thinking, that is their whole life up there in your head. They just want to stay alive. So when the outer circumstance doesn’t match with the thoughts’ visions, your mind will take that opportunity and run with it. Literally run, you know how thoughts run on and on in your mind. It loves doing that. But you are the observer of your thoughts, you have the ultimate control once you recognize that they are not helpful and in no way actually improve the uncontrollable circumstance.

When you have thoughts like this that keep running and cause you great emotional suffering, become very alert. Say to yourself, “what is my next thought going to be?” and then watch your mind until one comes in (a great tool from Tolle’s The Power of Now). Don’t judge the thoughts, allow them, give them your fullest attention. In this way the light of your presence will shine through the illusion that your thoughts can help you with their insane ramblings. Another way to quiet down an insane thought pattern is to bring complete inner acceptance to your outer circumstance even though your thoughts don’t want you to. Allow a situation to be. It will be the end of the mind using you, and the beginning of you using the mind.

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consciousness

The Voice In Your Head

One day when I was a little girl both of my parents were going out and left my brothers and I with a babysitter.  I wanted to go with them and since I couldn’t I was completely beside myself, crying and crying.  My brothers were playing with the babysitter and I decided to go to my room so I could cry some more.  When inside my bedroom I looked at the large mirror over my desk and watched myself crying.  I stood there merely watching myself cry away, for how long I can’t remember.  But what does still stand out clear in my mind is a moment of stillness I experienced while watching myself in the mirror.  There came a point where I wasn’t thinking anymore.  I wasn’t even feeling sad anymore.  All I was doing was watching, there were no emotions left.  A few moments later, thoughts started arising once more, but they were no longer sad thoughts.  The thought I first remember coming back into my mind was, “I wonder if I cry long enough if I could be in the Guinness Book of World Records.”  I view this moment in my life as the beginning of my separation of true self from the voice in my head.  After that, the new word I had for that true self was the “watcher.”  I was aware on some level that who I was, was the watcher of the thoughts and circumstances.  Spiritual awakening begins by noticing that you are not the voice in your head.  I mentioned Michael Singer yesterday, and in this video he describes this separation, with Oprah on Super Soul Sunday.  Super Soul Sunday is my favorite show; it’s the only show on TV where these types of conversations are the main focus and point of the program.   I also highly recommend Michael Singer’s book, “The Untethered Soul,” which has become one of my favorites.  May this video spark a new awareness and peace for you!  Stay tuned for tomorrow’s continuation of “The Bed Bug Incident – Part Two.”

“Author Michael Singer says the voice inside your head that expresses doubts and worry is not you; it’s your deeper consciousness. Find out how Michael first realized what that voice was and how to separate what you’re not from what you are.”

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The Bed Bug Incident Part 1– A lesson in letting go of circumstance

It seems that many wise people are prompted to their spiritual awakening by some type of suffering.  This seemed the to be the case for Michael Singer as he wrote his spiritually charged book “The Untethered Soul” while in the midst of a federal indictment.  This was also the case for Eckhart Tolle who was on the verge of suicide before his spiritual awakening.  Suffering’s round about purpose comes back to a forced spiritual awakening.  The world is on its way to “waking up” and more and more people will awaken through joy as opposed to suffering, but suffering has been a normal way for humans to awaken. 

It is easy to feel grateful, joyful, and peaceful when all seems right with the world.  But what happens when everything goes down hill?  When everything goes wrong you are being given the opportunity to experience your own level of consciousness.  It is as if the universe is saying, “This is how enlightened you think you are, but let me show you how enlightened you actually are.”  Because thoughts in the end are merely thoughts.  Recently the universe has been helping me to awaken to my actual state of consciousness from which I have been operating.

Around October I was walking back to my apartment one cool, damp Chicago night and felt my leg start to itch.  After arriving home I sat on my couch, looked down at my calf and found it had swollen up like an orange.  The itching was relentless.  I tried a great many things trying to stop the itching but nothing helped.  The next day the bite looked so bad that I went to the doctor who prescribed antibiotics but couldn’t tell me what had done it.  I was disturbed, bugs freak me out.

About 3 weeks later the same thing happened on my foot.  Around a month later it happened again.  The itching was tormenting me.  I just couldn’t stop scratching.  I was also being tortured by my thoughts.  I wanted to know why this kept happening, how to stop it, and what bugs were doing this so that I could kill them.  But I never found out.  A month passed, I got another bite.  My mom was reading a book that talked about “shenpa,” the need to itch, that notion inside that you feel compelled to act upon.  It arises in many different forms.  For many the need to itch manifests as addiction.  They get a feeling that they need to do something and then they act.  At this point I had deduced that I kept getting these odd bites because I needed to learn how to be with them, how to have an itch and not scratch.  There are definitely other areas of my life that would benefit from learning how to not act upon compelling but unhelpful thoughts.  I felt sure I was getting the lesson, but of course I still scratched the bites, and still felt uneasy about any bug I encountered not knowing who the culprit was.

Come back tomorrow as the plot thickens; surprisingly the title is not a spoiler.  But today ask yourself, what unhelpful thoughts are you constantly acting on?  When you have one of these thoughts take notice.  Sit down comfortably and close your eyes for a moment.  Feel the inside of your hands, your breathing.  Watch the thoughts playing out in your mind.  Find out what happens when you don’t act on them right away.  Allow the thoughts to be, just be there with them.  Don’t label them as good or bad, or wish you didn’t have them.  Bring acceptance to the moment, and just sit with the desire allowing it to be as it is.  What happens next no one knows.  You might find yourself acting on the thought again, or you might find yourself placing your attention somewhere new.  As opposed to deciding what will happen, allow yourself to not know, and then you’ll get to watch with attention and interest to see what you do afterwards.  This turns the “itch” thoughts into something interesting and helpful.

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“The Isness of Life”

May this video bring you great joy today!  And stayed tuned as the message is quite poignant to tomorrow’s story, “The Bed Bug Incident Part 1– A lesson in letting go of circumstance.”

“Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle says stress is wanting something to be the way it isn’t. So how do you know when to accept a situation and when to try to change it? Find out how to avoid becoming a victim in your own mind and break free from stress.”

Today’s question: What is your mud? What areas of your life have you been resisting that you can bring acceptance to today?

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What is a “problem” anyway?

There is a sign on my bathroom door that reads, “What are you practicing right now?”.  Below the question there are three possible answers, “Acceptance, Enjoyment, Enthusiasm.”  Sometimes the sign, a quote by Eckhart Tolle, is covered up by a towel, sometimes I read it without answering, and sometimes the answer is “none of these.”

When the later is the case I know there is a lesson that I am not learning.  And when there is a lesson I am not learning, I know I will have the opportunity to learn it over and over again.  This is a comfort but can also be a source of fear for me.  Life will make the lesson louder and more visible the longer I delay my own learning.

First I’ll stub my toe on my rush out the door, the first moment in which I could have brought acceptance to myself being a little late.  Then I’ll drop my keys in a puddle.  Next I might get honked at after merging too close to another car. And later I might make 800 copies of a flyer at work that I was rushing to get out, when I only had to make 200.  As I’m throwing the paper mournfully into the recycling bin while apologizing to the ether for my wastefulness it will then dawn on me that I need to slow down.  Take a deep breath.  Close my eyes, stop feeding my thoughts, watch my mind.  After that things flow with ease, I am relaxed because I have learned that stress and rushing actually causes more mishaps, and creates more stress.  It wasn’t until I wasted 600 pages of paper that I let myself learn the lesson.

What would have happened if I had learned the lesson after first stubbing my toe?  What would have happened if I had practiced acceptance of the moment I was in, instead of rushing to get somewhere else? That is what I want to find out.  Life is an entirely different school when you allow yourself to learn the lessons it is teaching you, as opposed to fighting against, ignoring, or denying them.  What happens to “problems” when you allow yourself to learn the lessons they are teaching you?  They are no longer problems, but opportunities for a deeper, more enjoyable, fully conscious life.  I will offer up lessons I learn along the way, moments of joy and clarity, and spiritual solutions for “problems.”  Nothing I say will be new, everything here has been said before by many people, and is in no way a product of my own intellect.  I am exactly the same as every other being and am here to learn the lessons we are all being taught.  Join me on my personal journey, and above all listen to yourself because no one knows you as well as you do.

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