Live and Learn for Mother Earth

All of the environmental learning I've been doing is birthing yet another new consciousness within me. I'm learning how to cook. I'm learning how to eat healthier food. And importantly, I'm making time for meal planning, meal prep, cooking and even (drum-roll please) ... cleaning up the kitchen. This, from someone who works in her business from sunup to sundown.

Ah, but a new day is dawning, and filling me with eager enthusiasm for the changes ahead. This morning I woke up early. I packed up my cooler, grabbed my cloth grocery bags, and at 7am drove up to Siesta Beach to walk on the crystal sands. Walking is a part of my new healthy lifestyle. I'm pretending I have a dog, so I have to get out of the house and walk the dog at least twice a day. This morning, as I walked on the beach, I feasted my senses on the surf rolling into shore, gazed at the pelicans and shore birds who make their home there, and happily dreamed I lived in one of the villas near by.

Next, I headed up to Morton's Deli for homemade rice, beans, and tofu salads. Satisfied with my finds, I went on to C'est La Vie on Main Street in downtown Sarasota for my favorite bread, an old-fashioned French Baguette. Finally, I walked the aisles at Whole Foods and selected nutritious vegetables and beautiful soups  that will support my new way of being. Three hours later, I was home. I went directly to the kitchen to clean out my freezer, my fridge, and my pantry to make room for the new wholesome, organic natural food I'd purchased.

I put any raw fruits or vegetables that had spoiled in my new compost bin. I'm learning how to buy just the right amount of food as well as the right kind of food, so I can get better and better at eliminating waste. I love that I am a part of the composting consciousness. It makes me feel that I'm doing my part to help the Earth, if even in a very small way.

With joyful determination, next I found and cleaned out all the glass jars from sauces that were years past their expiration date. Throughout this process, I discovered a dozen plastic bags that had various leftover meals or breads or pizza dough in them in the back of my freezer. Here comes the lesson: Did you know that if the plastic bags we all dutifully put into the recycle bin at the grocery store are wet or dirty they will be thrown in the trash instead of recycled? Horrors. I thought the recycle people had some massive washing machine that cleaned it all before breaking it down into some other form to make bags or bottles with.

Since I learned this, I've taken care to rinse out any plastic bag that's outlived it's usefulness and hang it out to dry. Today, however, I had a dozen, and after I'd washed them all I realized my little kitchen could not handle them all. Eureka! I made a clothesline as you see in the photo above. It cracked me up, seeing all those plastic bags hanging out to dry. So I'm sharing it with you. Enjoy! - Raphaella Vaisseau

Tell a New Story

This morning when I was driving around Venice running errands, I listened to an Abraham-Hicks cd from a live workshop (6/28/08 in Boston, MA). I heard an interesting thing about Law of Attraction. If we keep speaking about "reality" instead of our dreams, we'll keep attracting more of that reality instead of attracting that which we are wanting to call forth into existence. When we "tell it like it is" we get more of that - even if it's true. "If you keep expressing how it is, it can't change," says Abraham. "Stop arguing for your limitations. Be more hopeful. Be willing to dream. Be optimistic. It requires focus to look where you want to look. Try to see through the eyes of Source. Allow yourself to be the expanded being that Life has caused you to become."

All day when I talked to people who asked about this or that ("How are you feeling? How did your show go last night?), I noticed myself trying to be really honest about my responses. Each time I stopped myself and reframed my replies in more hopeful language. I refused to say,"It was okay but ..." and instead said, "The show was good (I couldn't get myself to say great yet) ... I met lots of new people and I sold a bunch of art." Throughout the day I noticed how often my thoughts dwelled on "reality" and I reframed some of the conversations in my head as well.

Abraham suggests we ask ourselves, "This may be how it is, but is this the way I want it to be?" If the answer to that is "No, that's not how I want it to be" then, stop reading that book and stop writing that story. Start telling a new story. Tell the story of how you want it to be.

Most people would think of me as a positive, optimistic person. I've been at it for over thirty years. Yet, I was surprised at how much of my language is focused on the truth of my experience rather than the enthusiasm of the dream I am moving toward. I realized not "telling it like it is" is going to take some practice. But practice I will. I'm going to tell myself a new story and share it with the world.

Ah-Ha Moment at Theresa Foley's Writers' Group in Venice

Theresa Foley read a passage from p. 72 of The Vein of Gold by Julia Cameron at last evening's Writer's Group in Venice, Florida.

"When I teach the concept of creative ceilings," writes Julia about what I had earlier that evening described as my own glass ceiling, "I often talk about Chicago, a city filled with old buildings that feature wonderful, high, ornate pressed-tin ceilings -- ceilings often obscured by a lower, "modern" Styrofoam ceiling. It used to be a game of mine to tap the panels of these Styrofoam ceilings (they weren't really solid) and see what glories they had hiding up above. In many ways, we are a lot like those buildings with the artificially low ceilings. The hidden gifts we believe to be far above our creative capacities are often merely obscured from our view. A tiny whisper of the gift may remain, tapping at our consciousness like a mouse scratching at the ceiling. When we hear the whispered wish of that gift, we say, "Oh, I could never do that! That's so far above my head...."

OMG. Immediately the Light dawned in my consciousness and I perceived the illusion of the ceiling and the gifts hidden above. That was my "Ah-ha" moment.

Like the writing practice I learned and loved from Natalie Goldberg's book about living the writer's life, Wild Mind, our next exercise in class was to write for six minutes about "The Gift". Here is my six-minute essay:

"The Gift" by Raphaella Vaisseau

How intriguing to visualize the hidden ceiling above the glass ceiling that I have felt so inadequate to crash through. Suddenly it felt light and airy up there, with smiling faces and cheering crowds who have been waiting for me to climb on up, jump up, rise up to be on a level I have held myself back from. I've known it was me all along, but still, nothing seemed to lift me above until now. I'm enjoying the effortlessness of it all, the floating, joyous feeling of ease and accomplishment I would have thought would come from hard work and breaking glass to force my way in, but the accomplishment that has a sense of knowing and a confidence and also has a joke about it. I'm falling into the arms of the wise ones, my guides and angels and all who have gone before me. It's a celebration and a party. I'm dancing now on what once was the glass ceiling I could not see above.