Meditation Energy

Nine years ago, I wandered into an Annapolis art gallery and discovered Storypeople art prints by Brian Andreas. I was still grieving, and found his slice-of-life art more comforting than more traditional expressions of sympathy. For this Memorial Day, I offer a link to his site: http://www.storypeople.com/storypeople/Home.do

There are many stories, here are a few suggestions to start:

Living Memory
Empty Spaces
Hidden Ocean
Missing Piece
Thousand Moments
Hard to Forget
One Us

Storypeople book collections:

Going Somewhere Soon: Collected Stories & Drawings

Strange Dreams - Collected Stories & Drawings

Trusting Soul : Collected Stories & Drawings

There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling rain & remember it is enough to be taken care of by myself.
-Words of Comfort, Brian Andreas

8:12 am EDT

Pause. Ground yourself. Feel the rotation into a fresh start.

Focus. These are the strongest concepts for this new moon:

Intellect and mental activity
Knowledge of material existence
Change and adaptation
Dissemination of information
Local travel and transportation
Education
Electronic communication, internet and computers
Integration of male and female energies
Writing and speaking
Social activities
Siblings, neighbors, colleagues, roommates
Breath

The next two weeks will see more in the way of human evolution than this planet has seen for a very long time.
-Stephanie Azaria

You must always work not just within but below your means If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.

-Picasso

Ideas from meditation practice. Detach from the outcome. Watch but don’t try to control. Stay in the present, don’t bring in old resentments or speculate about how much worse it could become. Maintain a sense of humor. Do the work before you. Clear your own energy (and secretly spritz the office with Bach essences). Be responsible to your colleagues but stay detached from their dramas. Forgive management.

Day after acupuncture. Jazz is showing a preference for the bed where we gave him the treatment, which is temporarily in the dining room. He sleeps very soundly, all night, when he used to be up at 3 am every morning. His appetite is voracious, he is eating everything I put in front of him, including new stuff like oatmeal and spinach.

He seems a little dazed in the mornings, like he’s had a couple beers.

The counselor said I would know the moment that I had enough. I thought it was last August, during a three-hour meeting during which the owners harangued us: “Why are you forcing us to abuse you?” Although I wanted to stalk out, I didn’t want to abandon my post - or rather, abandon my coworkers. And while things didn’t exactly improve, they settled into a less dramatic mode for awhile, it was even engaging at times. There seemed to be more room for ideas and some independence.

The definition of insanity is…. you know the rest. One email did it. All progress is over, back to where we were months ago. Instead of angry and frustrated, I felt resigned. This is not going to change, you cannot change it. And now it’s over.

There were three things in my life that needed to take place before I could consider changing jobs. One of them had dragged on for 7 months, another for 6 weeks, they both resolved on the same day, clearing the way. There is one more project to check off my list (again, something hanging from last fall).

Jazz has his first treatment. I hold him still from the front, while the vet approaches him from the back, putting the needles along his spine (about a dozen). Jazz doesn’t seem to notice until she tries to put a few in his legs. The vet notices that his temperature runs very warm. He’s always been like that, I tell her, but apparently it’s unusual for this type of dog. We hold him still for a few moments, he doesn’t exactly relax but he stops trying to escape. After she takes the needles out, he stalks away and flops down on the floor, his back to us. Then he gets sleepy, he comes back to us and tries to curl up on a pile of blankets on the floor, he passes out in a completely awkward position. Ten minutes later, he is up and hungry, stalking through the house, chewing on a cardboard box until I get him his dinner.

We are also using Chinese herbs (Rehmannia Eight) twice a day, and a more varied home cooked diet. In a few months, we’ll test his numbers.

Other resources:

Vet Confidential: An Insider’s Guide to Protecting Your Pet’s Health

The Well-Connected Dog: A Guide to Canine Acupressure

Shiatsu for Dogs (Allen Photographic Guides)

To clarify -

Pros
Exceptional coworkers
Quality product
Very good commute/location
Mastery of the current job
No life/death responsibility
Relative job security

Cons
Culture of narcing
No responsibility or autonomy
No opportunity for promotion
Lack of discipline/direction by management
Micromanagement causing inefficiency
Lack of professionalism and structure
Years behind in technology

Part of finding a new job is disengaging from the current one…..

“The other wrinkle in the playing out is tremendous flux and turmoil in some organizations as the group consciousness grapples with what the entity wants to be. In a number of instances I have been observing key members try and try to steer a floundering organization into a direction they consider reasonable and right. After pushing against the tide – or engaging in the drama – they are hitting a limit, simply unhooking their attachment to the organization and letting the flux work itself out. This can take the form of walking out, taking a leave of absence or continuing to participate on a reduced, personally satisfying scale. If you’re embroiled in organizational politics, consider these approaches as options for liberating the energy you are tying up. Is the group in alignment with who you are now? What action is in alignment with you?” - Kathy Biehl, Fortuna Works

http://www.thecosmicpath.com/weekly-weather

God turns clouds inside out to make fluffy beds for the dogs in Dog Heaven, and when they are tired from running and barking and eating ham-sandwich biscuits, the dogs each find a cloud for sleeping. They turn around and around in the cloud… until it feels just right, and then they curl up.. and they sleep. God watches over each one of them and there are no bad dreams.

-Cynthia Rylant, Dog Heaven

Dog Heaven