It is always such a relief to m e to find and be with kindred spirits.
My mentor in healing, Sue Maes, is in Ontario, Canada.
My fellow psychic friend Sara Harder is in Scottsdale, Arizona.
It is easy to for me to feel alone, even though I know perfectly well that I am surrounded by the love and support of all my angels. I am always so happy and thrilled to be in the presence of a kindred spirit.
Today, my tai chi teacher, Jeff Cook, took me to lunch.
He told me about the two books that he has been writing. He told me about how he has continued to study with Master Chen and another Chinese master who recently presented him with a scroll of tai chi principles.
It made me feel better to be with someone else who, like me, is always studying.
A person who did not really understand made a comment to me this year:
“Always the white belt, never the black belt.”
Jeff has been teaching tai chi for 25 years and he keeps studying.
I am currently taking my sixth yoga teacher training after 16 years of teaching. I am re-learning every pose from the inside out. How does the energy flow? How can I teach this more clearly? How can I get my students to activate these muscles? I am in a constant state of self inquiry.
It is no surprise to me that I can remember reading Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki and David Chadwick my first year at Brown University. Now that I go to the Atlanta Soto Zen Center for Monday night meditations, I feel I have come full circle.
To approach everything with awe and wonder, rather than as a know-it-all, is the place where I choose to stay my whole life.
It’s part of why I think I can be a medical intuitive.
If you are doing a true medical intuitive reading, you can’t think, “Well, I know what is here.” Or, “I know everything about this person. We have worked together for years.”
No. You have to really look. You have to really listen. You have to be truly open to allowing spirit to speak directly to you about what is actually going on.
I remember studying with my yoga teacher Erich Schiffman, whose teacher training I have taken not just once but twice.
“Your homework,” I remember Erich saying, “is to look at things and say, ‘WOW!’”
Erich’s point was that every thing, every body, every person, every tree is a direct expression of the infinite. Wow! We are all God. God is in us. We are of God, for God, part of God.
After listening to what has been going on with me over the past two years and telling me about his books, Jeff said, “There has something I want to say to you.
“I spent a lot of time looking for happiness. I tried to find the right woman, the right house, the right work. I never found it in those places.
“Happiness is a byproduct of love and service.
“That is what you and I do.”
I nodded. I understood!
He recognized me, I recognized him. He helped me see something in myself that I had momentarily forgotten.
I told Jeff how I had been chewed out in July by a former C.E.O. person who told me it was unprofessional of me to tell people I love them. How I handled the conversation as graciously and allowingly as I could, then fell apart and broke down and cried.
“You know how I end all my emails, ‘With love, Catherine.’”
Sometimes I just end, “With love, C.”
Jeff nodded.
“I like this, because I get to be myself. This is who I am.”
Jeff nodded again.
Do what you love. If you are doing something and you no longer love what you do, change it. Love the people you work with. You got that correct – love them. No matter what they look like, sound like, are like, love them. Find a way.
Then be in service.
A friend of mine who is a very wealthy man tells me a story about his sister.
His sister, who was a secretary at the time, asked him once how she could make more money.
“Do more,” he told her. “Stay later, work harder, contribute more.”
His sister did not understand what he was saying to her.
“Well,” she responded, “I will work more and work harder when they pay me more money.”
Do what you love, love who you work with and then find a way to make a greater contribution.
“Happiness is a byproduct of love and service,” Jeff Cook said to me today.
You can find out about Jeff’s amazing tai chi classes by visiting www.dragoncloudtaichi.com.
Recently I had been deepening my personal practice of yoga, but I hope to go back to study with Jeff again very soon. Even though I am a long-time yogi, I find the practice of studying tai chi with Jeff to be a profoundly transformative experience.
