Another big move!

After much thought, I have decided it is time to integrate my selves, my lives, my blogs. I originally began this blog as an outlet for expression that I didn't feel had a place on my life coaching "business" website.

Now, I have launched a new website at www.nancola.com and it includes all of me -- writer, columnist, life coach. Body, mind, spirit. Intellect, goofball, diva.

If you're craving only posts in The Universal Flow, it has its own category with just those entries.

Catch you there.

Mixing it up

Well, clearly something is going on with this blog. I think it may be time to merge it with Write Thinking, which is now featured on the homepage of my new website -- www.nancola.com.

Ever since last week when I was having lunch with a fellow life coach and explaining the genesis of this blog, I've been thinking that the thoughts I put here should be expressed on the other. Streamlining, partly. But mostly it's to mesh spirit with body and mind and coaching and writing and everything else.

Still pondering ...

Open to receive

I am feeling so in sync with The Universe. Columns, interviews, meetings, potential ventures -- they're all lining up nicely.

Stay open. That is my mantra. You will not see the possibilities if you are not open.

Simple as that.

Elevate your thinking

All week long, this quote has been in my head. I've been feeling it lately, bigtime. I know I've quoted it before, but it's an understandable favorite. And I just came across it in an Oprah newsletter:

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
-- A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson

This often gets attributed to Nelson Mandela because he used it in a speech, but it is pure Williamson.

It speaks to me so.

Break in the routine

Didn't do morning pages today. Makes me feel a little off. I always seem to notice their value more when I don't do them.

Hmmmmm.

Must make a point of resuming tomorrow.

Poetry in motion

Back in 2001, I attended a Creativity Camp in Taos, New Mexico. One of the exercises we did called for writing a poem from existing lines with some blanks and then a fixed list of words to fill them in. We had a time limit. The idea was to play with words and stretch them. I just found my poem in a batch of paper I was sorting through:

Serendipity that I sit here in the moonlight?
That I wander, my poignant soul a pool of laughter
The Universe is calling
It smells good, like fresh moonrise or a busy garden
I lunge, my heart elevated beyond a giraffe.

Makes me smile.

Channeling

Got an idea while watching The Today Show on the treadmill this morning. A Game Plan column possibility for FOXBusiness.com. Went to a cafe after the workout and nested in the back with a cup of coffee and a notebook.

Had a hunch that if I gave the thought over to my Morning Pages and just let it flow I'd get some clarity. And it worked. Before I knew it I had a few pages of a column.

Sometimes you just have to let it come through you.

For a reason

From a spiritual sense, the finale of Brothers and Sisters last night was so appealing to me. A series of circumstances that led a young woman, Rebecca, to think she was the half-sister of a large family turned out to be misleading. They were actually not related. It was painful for her and them to find that out after getting to know each other.

But in the meantime, she had developed a strong bond with Justin, who she thought was her half-brother. In the final scene, Rebecca asks Justin to meet her in a lovely, secluded place. And she courageously wonders aloud if all that had happened was supposed to lead her to him.

I love this line of thinking. That out of what seem like painful, convoluted circumstances can come a soul connection.

They kissed shyly. It was lovely.

Her day

Heading out of town for the weekend to celebrate Mother's Day with the family. Mom is cooking. Refuses to go out. Makes me laugh. I just go with the flow.

Each year it seems there is more to appreciate in her. Especially since so many in my generation are losing their parents.

She's a trooper. I'll take her.

Hot legs

This morning I had a talk with a centipede. It was on the bedroom wall. My instinct was to go get the Raid. But then I remembered that in holistic terms centipedes represent forward movement. This gave me pause.

Then I spoke. If you walk up, up, up, I told it, you will live. If you disappear soon thereafter, I said, I'll pretend our paths never crossed.

It did and it did.

And all it left behind were delicious thoughts of forward movement.

Sharing the wisdom

Amazing to me that several points from A New Earth were pertinent in one of my client sessions today. The client was so open to the concepts.

I love that aspect of being in The Universal Flow.

No going back

Joyfully completed the webinar series on A New Earth today. What a privilege.

The awakening process has accelerated in me. But author Eckhart Tolle touched on something with regard to that that has come up in daily life.

"Once this comes into your life, there's no going back," he said.

An "awakened" friend and I have been having discussions on this very topic lately. I talk of straddling two worlds, being able to exist in both. He shakes his head. No, not possible.

Hmmmm.

I will, as Tolle suggested at the end of class, choose presence in my daily life. And we'll see how it goes.

Spring

Really lived in the moment today. Took each thing as it came. Brunch was great. Strolled through the Hoboken Arts and Music Festival afterward. Ran into a friend. Sat on a park bench with him for a while. Drank lemonade. Marveled at the rain that never came, the sunshine that did.

A good Sunday.

Tuning in

The marching orders continue to happen and I am continuing to listen. Ear to the ground, baby.

Interview this person. Teach this group. Take on this client. Write this piece. Play this song. Kick back at this time. Show this person some love. Confide in this one. Don't confide in that one. Attend this event.

The beat goes on. My beat. My foot's a-tap, tap, tapping ... I'm in tune.

Those morning pages

My morning pages this morning came flying off the pen like they haven't in a long time. Maybe the reinforcement from interviewing Julia Cameron this week sunk in and put me more in focus on them again. Or maybe the fact that I decided to write them in a cafe this morning and the two people next to me were so loud that I had to consciously block them out made for a more focused experience.

All I know is they served their purpose well on this day, allowing me to get little pesky junk out of my head and work through an annoying pattern I've seen cropping up in myself. Sometimes, as pen glides over page, the junk just floats away.