With Ed and Lin Murphy

In this workshop, we will:

• Look at the shifts and trends in the world of work.
• What new skills are needed and how do they match with what you want to contribute
• What’s holding you back from having work that is fulfilling?
• Right Livelihood – generating the income you need in a way that serves you and others.
• Have fun through a lively conversation about work, creativity and the life force.

Saturday, October 13, 2012
1PM – 4PM
One Big Roof
Pre-registration required.
e-mail Lin at lin@linmurphy.com
or call 518-269-3333  AND
Mail $25 deposit to hold your place to:  Lin Murphy, One Roof Holistic Health Center, 58 Henry St. SS, NY 12866

Balance is a destination, not an end product.  When I think of being in balance or out of balance, it’s a moment to moment endeavor, or hour by hour.  What I need one day is
different from what I need another day.  One day, I may need to take a long walk in nature alone.  Another day, I may want to work long hours to complete a project that
I’m engrossed in. Some days I need time along, others to socialize and be with like minded people.

Making Work/Life Balance Happen — Top Ten Tips

1. Slow Down, Life is simply too short, so don’t let things pass you in a blur.
Take steps to stop and enjoy the things and people around you. Schedule more time between meetings, don’t make plans for every evening or weekend and find some ways to distance yourself from the things that are causing you the most stress.
2. Learn to Better Manage Your Time.  Avoid Procrastination.  For many people, most of the stress they feel comes from simply being disorganized- and procrastinating.  Learn to set more realistic goals and deadlines–and then stick to them.  You’ll find that not only are you less stressed, but your work will be better.
3. Share the Load.  Even though we may sometimes feel we’re the only ones capable of doing something, it’s usually not the case.  Get your partner or other family members to help you with all your personal/family responsibilities.  Taking care of the household, children, or parents should not be the responsibility of just one person.
4. Let Things Go. (Don’t Seat the Small Stuff)  It’s simpler said than done, but learn to let things go once in a while.  So what if the dishes don’t get washed everyday or that the house doesn’t get vacuumed every week. Learn to recognize the things that don’t really have much impact in your life and allow yourself to let them go–and then not beat yourself up for doing so.
5. Explore your Options. Get Help.  If you are feeling overwhelmed with your family responsibilities, please get help if you can afford it. Find a sitter for your children, explore options for aging parents and seek counseling for yourself. In many cases, you have options, but you need to take the time to find them.
6.  Take Charge.  Set Priorities.  Sometimes it’s easier for us to allow ourselves to feel overwhelmed rather than taking charge and developing a prioritized list of things tht need to get done.  You need to buck the trend. Develop a list. Set priorities. And then enjoy the satisfaction of crossing things off your list.
7. Simplify – It seems human nature for just about everyone to take on too many tasks and responsibilities, to try to do too much, and to won too much.  Find a way to simplify your life. Change your lifestyle. Learn to say no to requests for help.  Get rid of the clutter and baggage in your house–and your life.
8. Build reserves of time -Be knowledgeable about all your time- personal time, sick time,and vacation time. Plan and track carefully to maximize both your responsibility to your employer and to yourself by taking time when you need it.
9. Get real.  There are only 24 hours in a day.  We all know this fact but act as if we can manufacture minutes, hours, even days! Instead of racing against the clock get into the habit of overestimating time. And use unexpected time for de-stressors like a power nap, visualization or breathing and stretching exercises.  Use your lunch hour or “found” time through out your day to: buy gas, return personal calls, rest, walk, socialize, errand and health care appointments.
10. Negotiate a change with your current employer — Progressive employers recognize the value of good employees and many are willing to find ways to help current employees deal with short-term or permanent changes by family situations.
Employers also now know that a relaxed and refreshed employee will be more productive at work and encourage vacations and time off to rejuvenate.

In the end, the key word is balance.  You need to find the right balance that works for you. Celebrate your successes and don’t dwell on your failures.  LIfe is a process, and so is striving for balance in your life.

Create an Inner Sanctuary

To begin, set aside time to sit quietly every morning in peaceful contemplation for as long as you can with your journal beside you. This may be familiar if you have meditated before; any centering practice you are used to will work to quiet the mind and prepare the inner field. The Emergence Process is not a substitute for any basic practices you are already doing, but rather an extension or deepening of them.

I strongly advocate cultivating an inner receptivity, an inner listening and attunement to the signals of the Essential Self. These intuitions are the way the deeper self informs us and guides us.

Your own Essential Self, as you access it through your meditation and writing in the Inner Sanctuary, will offer you guidance, inspirations, and practices as well. That guidance, when added to the guidance we are giving you here, will create for you a unique manual for the Emergence of the Universal Human you are now becoming.

Focus attention on the Essential Self

In your silent time, recall as much as you can the guidance or inspiration you’ve already been in touch with—the actual feeling tone of your intuitive experience—and also any qualities you remember about this evolutionary impulse that has motivated your process of transformation. You may recall those earlier experiences. Remember how warm and safe you felt. Feel the intimacy and compare it to the feeling of anxiety and compulsiveness that can characterize local self.

If you ask for the Essential Self to come into your consciousness, it will signal you in some way or another, not necessarily as mine does, and not necessarily in written words. It may happen in flashes, insights, images, or hunches. Watch for synchronicity to show up in your life… When you ask your Essential Self to communicate more clearly, it will—one way or the other. Expect the unexpected, and anticipate the new!

Journal

To begin with, as in all the steps that follow, create and place yourself in your Inner Sanctuary. For your first journal exercise, write and describe from memory any key experiences or insights inspired by your Essential Self. This will help you get acquainted with the Essential Self by bringing it to your conscious attention.

What did the voice or inspired thoughts tell you? What did it feel like? Describe any messages or insights that you have received, any qualities you have noted that characterize the inner guide.

Once you have done this, try this exercise: Write a letter addressed to “Dearly Beloved,” or whatever name you choose for your Essential Self. Describe your current situation as precisely as you can, the good and the apparently difficult. Ask the most important questions you may have, as clearly as you can; then release all thought, have no preconceptions. Develop the habit of a poised mind, like a sailboat on a calm sea waiting for the wind.

Our purpose here is precise. It is to establish direct contact with the inner voice, the still, small voice expressing as your Essential Self. Start writing any sentence as the inner voice, and see what unfolds. Do not edit, judge, or correct anything. If nothing comes, that is fine. Continue to be still.

If you have been hearing an inner voice and writing in your journal before, this process will be relatively easy. If you have not yet tried this, simply follow the steps with no expectations. Find your own way to connect to your inner guide. In may be through other paths than words, like a felt-sense or deep intuition. This much I know for sure: Whatever happens will be helpful. Everyone has within a deeper, wiser, all-knowing self.

Questions for Reflection

When have you felt you were your best possible self, your Essential Self?

Describe any experiences you have had of your Essential Self, any messages, or guidance that you have received.

How do you best connect with your Higher or Essential Self. Is it through hearing an inner voice, or some other way of accessing it.

What does it feel like to be your full potential self?

What are the special qualities of your Essential Self?

As we approach the winter solstice, the shortest day or longest night, depending on how you look at it, we have an instinctual need to decorate our homes with lights,  light candles,and even bon fires. In ancient days, they didn’t know for sure the sun light would return.  I’m reading a book called “Emergence” by Barbara Marx Hubbard.
What I’m getting is that we, the human species is giving birth to ourselves.  To a new kind of human… a lighter human, the next stage in our evolution.  What does this mean and what does it have to do with buying a Christmas tree?  We are celebrating the light of the world.  Jesus was an avatar.  One who came to teach that we are all light beings.
He taught us how to Lighten Up!

We know that we are a part of the whole and everything we do effects everything and eveyone else around us.  We are after all energy, light, and love.  We are shifting from ego to essence.  From our heads to our hearts.

I’ve been having  conversations lately with people about what this means and what they think is happening.  Many are suffering, frightened and lost. They are
off center.  If one has no vision, no framework for the shift that is taking place, it can be overwhelming and disorienting.  My experience of it is that old structures that no longer serve are disintegrating right before our eyes.  This is a good thing, but not easy.
What will replace these structures, institutions?  I have a vision of a world where we can enjoy life.  Where what we enjoy doing is what we are rewarded for and how we make our living.  We create sustainable, life affirming communities.  It is my nature to focus on the spiritual, and the metaphysical.  So, although there are changes on all levels… financial, government, medical, education, media, the arts and so forth,  I’m mostly interested in what is happening in our inner worlds.

“The coming of a spiritual age must be preceded by the appearance of an increasing number of individuals who are no longer satisfied with the normal intellectual, vital and physical existence of man, but perceive that a greater evolution is the real goal of humanity and attempt to effect it in themselves, to lead others to it, and to make it the recognized goal of the race.  In proportion as they succeed and to the degree to which
they carry this evolution, the yet unrealized potentiality which they represent will become an actual possibility of the future”
~Sri Aurobindo

“There is emerging from out of the mist of myth, religious and scientific, a new thought, so new, so ancient.  This thought is that the transcendent God of History indwells in each of us as us.  Our relation to all avatars is that of younger siblings, sisters and brothers who are awakening at last to the awesome and exhilarating  truth, the final fact of the ultimate covenant.  We are the heirs, the operative expressions of divinity itself, now!

~ Sidney Thomas Lanier

During this holy season of many of the worlds spiritual traditions,  what is being born in you?  Can we imagine Christ being born through us?  The Creative force that we are made of is always streaming through our bodies, minds and souls demanding that we become the light beings that we are.  All we need to do is surrender to it.

Welcome to November, the month of colorful leaves, pumpkin pie, colder weather, shorter days and our American Thanksgiving Holiday and… my birthday!  For Thanksgiving this year, I’m planning to be with my family on Staten Island. My son Jack will be there for his first Thanksgiving home from the Peace Corps.  We’re planning a trip up to “the City”… that would be Manhattan, on black Friday… but not to shop… but  to visit the Native American Indian museum in lower Manhattan. After all,  this holiday is to commemorate  the first meetings of the first settlers with the Natives who lived here.
How I wish we still honored them.  I’ve been wondering lately why all of our Native peoples are on reservations.  It’s like the old Apartheid system of South Africa, only nobody talks about it.  I have been learning from and studying with Native Peoples of the Americas and beyond for many years and they hold the truths that we need in these times we are living in.  After that,  we’ll head up to Occupy Wall Street which is easy to get to from Staten Island.  Speaking of…

Whats New with the Conscious Evolution Revolution?                    

I recently completed a training to be an Agent of conscious Evolution with  Barbara Marx Hubbard and the Shift Network.  Barbara just wrote a letter to the Occupy Movement titled Occupy Wall Street… Evolve the World!
She says:
“Existing structures are all top down: corporations, organized religions, nation states, the US presidency, etc., all designed to win, dominate and control each other and those within them. Liberal democracy was a great advance over monarchy, yet as a system it is failing us everywhere.  It’s not so much bad people as inadequate structures and systems.  We are facing a whole system breakdown.  We need a whole system breakthrough.  The Occupy movement is right at the threshold of discovering a new way through this top down system(that is working for the few at the expense of the majority) it is planting seed of the evolution of democracy itself, a democracy that expresses the hopes and aspirations of the people, for the common good. 
Not win/lose
Not based on demands although they are powerful
Not fundamaentally a protest movement, but the people speaking truth to power.
IT IS A CREATIVE MOVEMENT: A Creative Evolution.”

The time is now!                                              

The Conscious Evolution Foundation
http://www.barbaramarxhubbard.com

The Pachamama Alliance 
www.pachamama.org.
 
Pachamama means earth mother.  While I was in Peru working with the Shamans we prayed to Pachamama and asked what she needs at this time.
She needs for all human beings to wake up.  We have a window of 4 years to turn around the destructive path that we’re on and to create a sustainable future.
I know it can happen.  But it will take each one of us.
The Pachamama Alliance is doing seminars all over the world to help people understand the urgency and the need to turn things around…. especially consciousness.

In joy and peace,

Lin

On a beautiful autumn day last week, I rode the Staten Island ferry past the Statue of Liberty to lower Manhattan.

My father worked for a tug boat company in the New York Harbor, so this is my home turf.
I walked up Broadway to Zuccotti park, the site of Occupy Wallstreet protests. I was a part of the Civil Rights and anti war protests of the 60’s.  I was part of a bigger movement to shift things for the better.

I wanted to check it out.  We had watched the “Arab Spring”, a similar movement sweep across North Africa ousting entrenched corrupt dictators to bring about a democracy.  This, some say is the American autumn.  They are speaking out, sitting in, camping out and organizing, debating and discussing what to do with our failed system that has allowed the 400 Americans at the top of the heapp more wealth than the 180 million Americans at “the bottom”.  Many are out of home, house and food. Students with massive college debt and no jobs to start paying it back. A country spending billions a day in two illegal wars and a government attempting to cut all public services; including public education, social security, medicare and parks.

I arrived and walked around observing and feeling into the space. I had to step over people sleeping on the ground under plastic tarps, others talking in small groups, others making signs or making art, others playing music.  I saw a young man sitting and meditating with a sign that said “Wake up”.  I decided to sit and join him in meditation.

I felt strangely at home in this anarchist, loosely assembled unit.  The lack of “someone at the top” created an alive, creative open space where people could act in the moment to contribute what was needed.

I did see an information table, so I introduced myself and said I was here for the day… what could I do to help?  “Great, thanks for coming, do anything you want…
you can dance around if you like”.  I smiled and moved on, but felt a strange sense of permission. An older gentleman approached me… “you seem like someone wise… why aren’t these kids doing something?” he asked me.  He was very agitated… “ they have to get clear and get organized TODAY or they are not going to have any effect, their message will be lost”.  What do you think they should be doing?  I asked.  They need to come together,  they need a leader, and they need to put out a clear agenda”.  I said I disagreed, that that was a linear, masculine way of looking at what was happening.  I said there is a lot going on here… people are talking to each other, organizing speakers,
they even created a newspaper called “Occupied Wall Street Journal” that states their mission.

I said that what I was sensing was that a community was being created.  It was alive, creative and each person had the freedom to connect into it however they wanted.
He heard me out and we parted ways.

Shortly after that, I found a table with young coaches.  They had a sign… “Coaching Visionaries: What is your role in the Occupy Wall Street movement?”  They also had a handout with a list of questions like: “What brought you here?  What excites you about being here?  What are your strengths and skills?”

They were then directing people inside the park to different working groups. I said I was a certified life coach and offered to help out.  They were happy for the help, as the table was being swamped with inquiries.  Lots of people were arriving and wanted to know how they could help. “It looks like chaos” they would say, I don’t know how to plug in. So, I got to talk to a whole lot of people, many from all over the world… inviting them to take their own power and offer whatever they wanted.  For some, it meant just being there and talking to the protestors, to educate themselves about the issues, and/ or bearing witness.

Of course everyone puts their own spin on this gathering.  My spin is that it is a force and a catalyst for us all to look at where we are asleep.  Why are we not “doing” something about the destruction of our own environment and our own life support systems… like our air, our water, our soil and food supply.  Why are we allowing “big business” to put profit over people and life?  How many times do I  get to watch history unfold?  I can tell my kids and my grandchildren that I stood with the group who created the American rising. To come together with multitudes of people who believe in genuine democracy as a reality not a fantasy, and to actively participate in building a better society?

This is a movement to focus on possibilities and shed fear and despair, and cynicism.
Go check it out for yourself.  If you can’t or don’t want to get down there to NYC, join in a local action.

Go to www.occupywallstreet.com  and learn more or donate some money to the people who are there with their bodies and lives on the line for others.

While nner clarity is the primary focus of my life coaching work with women, intentional action is usually the next step. Once you have inner knowing, it becomes important for your outer world to match your inner truth. Anything less begins to feel like a self-betrayal.

But taking action can be difficult. You might be frozen by fear, stuck in old patterns and habits or lose your certainty once it becomes time to actually do something about it.

Don’t worry, you are not alone! This is not your problem, this is a human problem. And the solution is close. As a matter of fact, it is right there in your heart. So, don’t get lost in your fear mind when it comes time to take steps towards your truth. Slow down and listen carefully. The clarity already knows the exact right action to take.

I use mindfulness in client sessions because it allows us to do just that: pay careful attention to the inner voice and see the obstacles more clearly.

If you would like to get sweet short burst of clarity in your in-box a couple of times per month, you can subscribe here  (put in a link)

Lin Murphy, MA, CPCC
Certified Life Coach
One Roof Holistic Health Center
269-3333
www.LinMurphy.com

“Tell me what you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver

I recently returned from Montpelier, Vermont where I attended a gathering of the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers.  I am still in the earthy glow of their powerful presence. They live inside me and I can ask for council.
The Grandmothers were brought together by a common vision set in motion by the Center for Sacred Studies in 2004.  Their first meeting was in the Catskills, in the same place that was my spiritual home for 15 years.
I attended the very first gathering with my daughter, Zoeann.
The council is an alliance of indigenous  grandmothers from all corners of the earth, speaking with a united voice for peace and unity.  They are potent advocates for women’s leadership, social justice, and environmental health and they are so cool!  They teach through storytelling, prayer and fire ceremony.  I learn a lot being around them.
They are witty, funny and they don’t follow the rules.  I returned home with a renewed commitment to my work  empowering women to be their full selves and to be a voice for the earth and all of its creatures.

Here is their mission statement:

We represent a global alliance of prayer, education and healing for our Mother Earth, all Her inhabitants, all the children, and for the next seven generations to come.

We are deeply concerned with the unprecedented destruction of our Mother Earth and the destruction of indigenous ways of life. We believe the teachings of our ancestors will light our way through an uncertain future.

We look to further our vision through the realization of projects that protect our diverse cultures: lands, medicines, language and ceremonial ways of prayer and through projects that educate and nurture our children

Upcoming Event

Summer Solstice Celebration with Lin Murphy
Honor Father SUN on Fathers day AND Mother Earth
Community/ Ceremony/  Fun
Men, espeically welcome to this one.
Bring your fathers, brothers and sons.

Sunday, June 19, 2011
5-6 pm.;  Fire Ceremony
(Please arrive shortly before 5pm so we can open sacred space)
If you come late, you are welcome to participate from the outer circle.

Pot luck supper to follow
Still Point Retreat Center
For directions:  www.stillpointretreatcenter.com
587-4967

We celebrate the longest day, the full light,  with drumming,
chant, and a fire ceremony.
Open to ALL; children and families welcome.
bring a nourishing dish to share for the potluck supper
cost: donation to Still Point

“Tell me what you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver