Holistic Feathers

Why oh why is it soooo difficult to find beautifully-cut, quality clothes if you have a bountiful, curvy figure?

I am having a bit of a panic at the moment. Yesterday morning, I managed to corner my other half over his plans for my imminent 40th birthday … the idea of a party fills me with horror, but I know he has something up his sleeve. So I needed to know exactly WHAT kind of attire did I need to have in mind for wearing on my birthday eve?

“Smart evening wear” came back the response … and I could already feel the panic building, as when an Italian says that, you know you need to be turning up in Summer prom chic!

Disaster. I cannot fit into anything that I already own – my own fault, I know. But I have a week to find something which makes me feel – and look – beautiful *aaarggghh*

I adore Chesca’s ultra-feminine range which is always beautifully-cut and very flattering. But it only goes up to size 24. Hmmmm. Anyhow, you can find Chesca in John Lewis in Oxford Street (also at Ely’s in Wimbledon, I found out recently) and also at their online store www.chesca1424.co.uk

Beige Plus have some truly beautiful clothes at their shops in London so maybe they will be worth a visit, even ‘tho I know that the type of dress I have in mind rarely sells for less than £300 in their stores … a little bit over my budget (by £200+ really!).

I had seen a beautiful dress on Curvety but delivery is 2 weeks. Hmmmm.

I am not a fan of Evans or Ann Harveys – I’ve found most of their garments are of poor quality and/or poor cut in my humble (personal) opinion, although one of my favourite dresses (too dark for summer wear) is from Ann Harveys, from 11 years ago!

I’ve fallen out of love with Marks & Spencer since their decision to take anything over a size 24 off their shop-floor … so they are happy to get the fat-pound, they just don’t want us trailing around in their shops! Anyways, I’ve noticed their size 24-28 range getting smaller and smaller, so it doesn’t really bode well.

M&Co, who used to be Mackays, sometimes have the odd article of nice clothing but nothing which could be deemed as really dressy for the evening …

Even my beloved favourite – Spirito di Artigiano – are out of stock of the prettiest pink dress I’ve seen in a long time ….

(although some of their items can be quite pricey, I really cannot fault their cut or quality of material in any way – and it arrives beautifully packaged, it’s like opening up a precious Christmas gift! Even better, they have their Summer sale on at the moment with up to 80% off so do have a look!)

So … if anyone out there has any ideas, I’d be soooo grateful to hear them … the countdown is on!!!

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I am just so excited by this … if you are tired of trying to move your life forward or end up hating yourself by 11th January as you’ve tripped up on every single resolution made on New Years Eve, then do yourself a huge favour and sign up for a 1-month trial for this amazing programme.

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~ by Christine Kane

Gratitude is more than being thankful one day a year. Gratitude is a practice. For some, it’s a way of life.

Why do some people swear by the practice of gratitude? Why do these people have joy-filled and abundant lives?

In other words, why does gratitude make you happy and wealthy?

• Because gratitude is about presence.

It’s about waking up in this moment and being here – really being here – and noticing what’s around you. Most people are so busy thinking about the next thing, or about their horrid past, that they don’t wake up and look around at their present moment – the only moment there is.

• Because gratitude is about honoring YOUR precious life.

Do you ever compare your life with someone else’s? Do you ever wish your life were better and more like [insert famous person's name here]? Sometimes we can lose ourselves in wondering how we “measure up” to some standard set by our families or by the media. Comparison is the mind killer. The antidote is gratitude.

Gratitude requires that you validate your own life. (And you really don’t have any other life, do
you?) It forces you to say YES to the gift that is you. The choices you’ve made and the changes you’ve gone through – they have brought you here. Even if here is a place that needs a little adjustment, that’s okay. There are always gifts in any present moment.

• Because gratitude is about attracting.

It’s difficult to attract abundance and joy if you are constantly saying “no” to what IS. You say “no” each time you focus on the future or past, or when you criticize something that is in your present moment.

Attraction is about saying Yes. When you say Yes, you shift.

Gratitude says, “Yes, I love this!” And then more of this is attracted, because the this is what you’re focusing on.

• Because gratitude is about choice.

How you translate any situation is the situation. What you choose to see is the truth (for you).

This isn’t proposing that you live in denial or phoniness. It’s reminding you that your translation of any life situation is your choice. We’ve all heard stories of people who have ignored others’ translations of their talent, their projects, their art, their looks, their lives. These people chose their own translations and succeeded. You always have a choice when it comes to how you look at things. Choose to choose gratitude.

• Because gratitude is about wisdom.

I think people believe they’re being smart if they criticize, complain, and focus on the problems of the world around them.

Smart? Maybe.

Clever? Sure.

But not wise.

It is wise to look for and find the knowing place in your heart. It is wise to choose joy. It is wise to honor your riches. It is wise to focus on and grow the blessings of your life.

• Because gratitude is about recognition.

Use your power of focus to hone in on beauty and on what makes your heart sing. Recognize the spirit in your life. It’s all around you waiting to be noticed. In the words of Franz Kafka, “It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

• Because gratitude is about receptivity.

Gratitude makes you receptive. It makes you a vessel, waiting to be filled.

I carry a tiny notebook with me everywhere I go. In it, I write down song ideas. I write down quotes I hear. I write down ideas for stage stories. As I do that, I become more receptive, and more ideas and songs come to me. It’s a tool that says to my subconscious, “Send more my way!” And the subconscious always responds.

Gratitude is the same way. It says, “I am receptive! Send more!” And more arrives.

• Because gratitude is about creativity.

Creativity is really all about attention. (So is genius.)

When I write a song, I build a relationship with that song. I spend time with it. I get to know it. I pay attention to it. Artists do the same thing with drawings. They spend time in rapt attention, and the drawing is born.

Gratitude is how we Live Creative. It is a creative act to notice and pay attention to the moments of your life. Some days it’s an enormous act of creativity to find things for which to be thankful.

Start today.

Performer, songwriter, and creativity consultant Christine Kane publishes her ‘LiveCreative’ weekly ezine with more than 8,000 subscribers. If you want to be the artist of your life and create authentic and lasting success, you can sign up for a FRE*E subscription to LiveCreative at www.christinekane.com.

WANT TO SEE HUNDREDS MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE?
See Christine’s blog – Be Creative. Be Conscious. Be Courageous – at ChristineKane.com/blog.

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~ by Patricia Diane Cota-Robles

You have the ability to make a positive difference in the world. This has been a roller-coaster time of miracles and challenges. It seems as though these extreme experiences are being used to wake Humanity up at warp speed. No matter how hard people may try, their I AM Presence is not allowing them to push the snooze button in order to go back to sleep. It is time for people everywhere to remember who they are and why they are on Earth during this auspicious moment. Important changes are taking place, and in spite of outer-world appearances, we are beginning to see evidence of people in every walk of life reaching out to make a positive difference.

2009 is numerically an 11-year. Eleven is the Master Number that reflects the transformation of the physical into the Divine. The many activities of Light that have taken place this year have provided us with amazing opportunities to move into the highest level of consciousness we have experienced since our fall from Grace aeons ago.

November is the eleventh month in 2009, so we are blessed with the powerful 11:11 numerical frequency throughout this entire month. On November 11 and 29, 2009, we are blessed with 11:11:11 numerical frequency, which will be an incredibly powerful time for all of us.

Whether we consciously remember it or not, each and every one of us has been preparing for a very long time to assist during this unprecedented time. We all have unique skills and abilities that no one else on the planet possesses in exactly the same way we do. We have volunteered to assist in helping to change the old, obsolete behavior patterns that are responsible for the pain and suffering Humanity is enduring. This is being brought to our attention by our I AM Presence, our God Self, because the time for us to begin fulfilling our Divine Missions is NOW!

The only reason we have not been cocreating lives of joy, happiness, prosperity, loving relationships, financially and creatively rewarding jobs, vibrant health, fulfillment, enlightenment and every other positive experience is because we have forgotten that we can.

Remember
Not only can we create the lives we dream of, this is our purpose and reason for being. We are Children of God, and we have been invested with the gift of free will. Our thoughts and feelings are creative. Whatever we focus our thoughts, words, actions, and feelings on, we bring into physical form. It is time for us to remember this Divine Truth and for us to consciously choose to create the lives we want instead of inadvertently manifesting, through our fears, the experiences we do not want.

It is time for us to reclaim our Divine Birthrights and to fulfill our Divine Potentials. As we take charge of our lives, we will be effective examples for our loved ones and friends. We will be positive catalysts, and the results of our efforts will be exponential. We are all One, and the Universal Law is “As I Am lifted up, ALL Life is lifted up with me.” We can each make a positive difference. As we change our lives, we will change the direction for Humanity and for all Life evolving on this planet. Never underestimate your ability to be a powerful force of good on this planet.

You have been preparing for a very long time to fulfill the mission you agreed to accomplish in this lifetime. Not only do you have the skill, talent, wisdom, courage and strength to accomplish your mission, our Father-Mother God and the entire Company of Heaven are standing in readiness eagerly awaiting the opportunity to assist you. These selfless Beings of Light are with you now. From inner levels they guide and protect you, and they intervene to help you every time you ask them to. You are never alone. If you ever feel doubtful that you have the power to make a positive difference in this world, just remember the entire Company of Heaven is there to help you every time you ask for their assistance.

The first step
When you begin to create a plan to make a positive difference in your life, the first step is to take a good look at your life as it exists right now. In order to change your life, you must first be aware of what presently exists. So take some time to evaluate your life as an objective observer. This is not a time to berate, criticize, or condemn yourself for past mistakes. That only adds more negative energy to the situation. The purpose of this evaluation is to help you see what it is you like about your life, and what it is you would like to change. Usually people know their lives are not what they want them to be, and they may be aware of some major problems, such as finances or health, but they have never actually taken the time to evaluate their overall lives. This is a crucial step toward making a positive difference, so invest the time to take a thorough inventory of your life.

In order for you to succeed in transforming your life, you need to plan where you are going. You need to have objectives and goals. Most people spend so much time worrying and dwelling on the things that they do not want in their lives that they have not taken the time to figure out what they really do want. Remember, what you think about, what you hold in your mind and put your attention and energy into, you draw into your life. So it is time to stop worrying about the things that you do not want and start focusing on the things that you do want.

Patterns of thinking and emotional responses are usually habits you have allowed yourself to develop without much conscious awareness. Now that you have decided to take charge of your life, you no longer need to just muddle through the day. Instead, you can deliberately control your thoughts, words, actions, and feelings. Since it is a natural law that what you put your attention and energy into, you draw into your life. It is only logical that you take the steps necessary to let go of destructive programming and begin creating for yourself a fulfilling, happy, harmonious, abundant, and peaceful life.

Exercise 1
Most people rarely feel that they are negative; so one of the things I have them do is keep a scratch tally for an entire week of every negative thought or feeling they experience. Notice I said EVERY negative thought or feeling. This includes the little, trivial, petty things that you allow to pop into your mind, such as the person that pulls in front of your car that you think is a jerk, or the service you received that you feel was lousy, or the lady at the supermarket that you think is a slob, or the disgust you have for yourself for overeating, or the anger you feel if the car breaks down, and on and on.

My experience has been that by the end of the week even so-called positive people have several sheets of tally marks and are astounded at how often they were negative and shocked at how oblivious they were about their negative thinking. So, the next step toward your decision to make a positive difference in the world is to observe your daily responses for an entire week. Pay very close attention to your thoughts and feelings and keep a simple scratch tally of every negative thought or feeling you have. Do not empower the negative thought by writing it down, just keep a scratch tally of it.

This is a very valuable exercise because it clearly shows how many times every single day you are misqualifying energy without even realizing it.

Many people are wallowing in the poor me syndrome. They feel that they are really good people, but all of these terrible things keep happening to them anyway. What this exercise reveals is that we may not be doing catastrophically negative things like mugging people or robbing a bank, but we are often nickel-and-dimeing ourselves to death with trivial pettiness.

Once you complete this exercise and acknowledge that you may not be controlling your thoughts or feelings, but just allowing them to happen, you can move on to the next step of changing those bad habits and begin to take control of your thoughts, words, and deeds.

Each time you put forth the effort to deliberately program yourself into constructive thinking, the stronger you will become and the more natural the positive response will be. Before you know it, your pattern of thinking will automatically be positive instead of negative, and you will have established a new constructive habit.

While you are going through this process of gaining control of your thoughts and feelings, you need to be tolerant and forgiving of yourself. If you find negative thinking or negative feelings creeping into your consciousness, you need to stop, empty your mind of the negative thought or feeling, take a deep breath, regroup, and then look for the positive side of the situation you are dealing with. Don’t give any more power to the negative thought by berating or condemning yourself for the transgression. Just let it go, flood it with the Violet Flame of Forgiveness, and focus on the positive side of the situation, no matter how small.

Begin your new habit of positive thinking by looking for the positive side of every person, place, condition, or thing you encounter. The general rule is that we can easily spot the flaws in other people, but unless someone is a genius or looks like a Greek God or Goddess, we rarely notice their positive attributes. In this exercise you must go out of your way to search for something good in every single person, place, condition, and thing you come in contact with. Sometimes this is a real challenge. Some people you know may seem so objectionable that the only thing you will be able to appreciate about them is the color of their socks, but you must find something good in every instance.

After practicing this for a while, you will come to the realization that, no matter how bad things seem or how degenerate a person may appear, there is a spark of hope in every situation and a spark of Light in every person. By consciously putting your attention on that one redeeming quality, rather than giving momentum and power to the negative, you can turn that destructive situation into a positive experience, and you can often give the negative person the incentive he or she needs to find a better way of behaving. This may sound too good to be true, but I assure you that this is the natural Law of Attraction, and it is as accurate and as workable as the Laws of Mathematics, Music, Physics, or any other science.

Exercise 2
The next exercise I want to share with you is designed to help you reprogram your thinking with positive affirmations. People who have used positive affirmations have always known that they work, but they have rarely understood exactly why. Now, with more and more research, we are learning how the process works.

Through positive affirmations, we can deliberately send forth constructive thoughtforms that will accumulate additional positive energy and return to us, bringing with them what we are affirming. The difference between a prayer and an affirmation is that in prayer we are usually humbly asking for something, and in an affirmation we are actually invoking God and our I AM Presence to command Universal Light substance to flow through us constructively to create whatever perfection it is that we are affirming.

There is another very important reason why affirmations work. When we make a positive affirmation, we begin with the words I AM. These two words invoke our I AM Presence and connect us directly to our omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Father-Mother God, All That Is. This all encompassing Presence of God is the Universal Source of All Life.

Everything in the Universe is comprised of electronic Light substance vibrating at different frequencies with various densities. The words I AM reflect the all-encompassing Oneness of all Life. “I” represents Alpha, the beginning, “AM” represents Omega or the ending, meaning our Father-Mother God, the Universal Source of All Life, is the beginning and the ending of all that exists.

When we invoke the Light of God by using the words I AM the Light automatically responds. It flows through our thoughts, words, actions, and feelings and obeys our affirmations.

Affirmations are designed to help us begin reprogramming our negative thinking into positive thinking. The longer energy is accustomed to flowing through the brain in a particular pattern, the easier it is to just keep flowing in the same pattern. For instance, if we are used to being critical or judgmental of others, that is a pattern we have developed and the energy flows very easily into that groove of the brain. If we want to change that habit, we have to consciously begin developing a new groove through which this energy can flow. The more we withhold the energy from the negative, critical pattern and send it forth through the new constructive pattern, the sooner we will have changed the bad habit.

When we first begin observing our behavioral responses, we are usually shocked and a little overwhelmed at how ingrained our trivial, petty patterns are, and it seems as though it will be a monumental task to overcome them. However, once you begin to consciously take control of your thoughts, words, actions, and feelings, the changes will take place much more quickly than you can envision at this time. Once you really develop the habit of positive thinking, the critical, petty, trivial things that so easily pop into your mind now will not be part of your consciousness.

With positive affirmations, we form new constructive grooves in our thinking patterns. For this reason it is important to read your affirmations the first thing in the morning and the last thing before going to bed at night. The exercise in the morning will begin the constructive flow of energy through the brain and set your attitude for the new day.

The exercise at night will help by drawing the positive affirmations into your subconscious mind; so, you can reprogram yourself while you sleep, as in sleep learning. Research is proving that what we think about at night before we go to sleep is carried into the subconscious mind, so it is a good idea to put your attention on something constructive. For heaven’s sake, don’t watch the news just before going to sleep.

I AM AN INSTRUMENT OF GOD

I AM weaving my gifts, talents, skills, knowledge, strength, courage, compassion and love into the tapestry of the Divine Plan for the New Earth.

I AM responding to my Heart’s Call, and I AM God in Action.

I AM Consecrating my thoughts, words, feelings and actions to be the greatest force of good I can be on this planet.

I AM making a positive difference every day.

Through the focus of my attention, I AM expressing the following Divine Truths:

I AM One with ALL Life. I AM Divine Love. I AM Infinite Abundance. I AM the Harmony of my true Being. I AM Vibrantly Healthy and Eternally Youthful. I AM a Peace Commanding Presence.

The actions I take everyday improve my family, my job, my community, my city, my country and the world.

I have a Healing Touch. I AM communing everyday with my Father-Mother God and the Company of Heaven.

Through my thoughts, words, actions, and feelings I AM Transfiguring this planet into the New Earth.

And so it is.

(From I AM Cocreating the New Earth: A Book of Invocations. available on the website Era of Peace)
Copyright © 2009 Patricia Diane, New Age Study of Humanity’s Purpose Era of Peace
The information in this sharing is being given to Humanity by the Beings of Light in the Realms of Illumined Truth. The Divine Intent of these celestial sharings is to encourage, empower, uplift and inspire Humanity by allowing us to see the bigger picture during these wondrous but often challenging times.

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Yep! Me too!

I LOVE autumn, its my favourite season … but I just feel a little at-sea at the moment, as if my creative spark needs a little refuelling – a little extra juiciness to send my brain cells off on their overactive way again!

If you feel like this too, then I would really recommend visiting SARK’s beautiful, inspiration website and maybe – just maybe – you may consider joining me on SARK’s Awesome Anytime Adventure.

Here is what you get …

SARK’s Awesome Anytime Adventure is a 30-day tour to the most breathtaking destinations within you.  So if you are feeling …

- Tired or exhausted…

- Like you’ve lost your “spark”…

- Creatively or spiritually stuck…

- Overwhelmed by the details of daily living…

- Like you aren’t making the most of life…

- Burnt out or bummed out…

- That life is passing you by…

- Ready to expand your experiences of pleasure and joy…


- Eager to practice self-care in new, creative ways…

- Ripe for new wonder and adventure…

… visit Planet SARK and join me on my merry adventure – maybe we can share stories at the end of the Awesome Anytime Adventure?

With much love and gratitude to @thesoulawakener for introducing me (@moonpoppy) to the wonders of SARK!!

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These wonderful affirmations were given to me by a dear friend recently and I’d love to share them with you …

• Today I lovingly accept myself exactly as I am; I gently nurture my mind; I release the need to judge and criticise myself
• Today I gently whisper to myself all of my many positive qualities; they are a reminder of my individuality and uniqueness
• Today I accept that I always do my very best in each and every situation that I face and this is all I can ever do
• Today I lovingly accept myself exactly as I am; this way of thinking nourishes my soul; I easily release the need to compare myself to others
• Today I accept exactly where I am in my life; today, in this moment, I have an opportunity for a new beginning; I choose to take it and move forward with my life
• Today I treat my mind kindly; this empowers me and allows my essence to shine; my life is flowing freely and gently in the direction of my purpose

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