Karen Monroy's Blog
A Blog About Life and Stuff that Happens

Archive for January, 2010

Practical Application Working with the Energy of Money

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

I had noticed a member of my technical support team was not her usual self. Amy was curt, and ill tempered. After a short period of time I inquired if everything was okay.

Amy’s answer concerned banks, and I knew instantly from key words Amy used, she was  in the throws of trying to get a modification of her mortgage.

It gave me pause, as I am a wizard when it comes to knowing about financial systems and their intricate workings. These workings are the details of ‘money skills’ I teach after one has learned the emotional and spiritual skills about the energy of money. Amy’s circumstance is exactly why I teach, the way I do: unlearning first, then relearning emotional and Spiritual skills.  More over, Amy reads what I write-she’s commented on what I write and has not asked for help.

I asked Amy if she wanted help, she said, “That would be great!” Then I asked her to carefully consider why she had not asked for help long before what looked like to her the 11th hour. This was the ‘homework’ I assigned her.

As Amy pondered her homework question and gathered up the documentation necessary for me to assist her she became increasingly astonished at two things: help was in front of her all along, and it never occurred to her to ask for the help.

“I have a degree from MIT for Christ sake!” she exclaimed when we spoke the following day. “How is this possible?”

Amy is an excellent example of the self-inflicted suffering with-in the human condition: overly programmed to see the linear aspect of life. From birth, through your education (with rare exceptions) to your job-it is a progression of linear thought. In Amy’s case she was so busy complying with providing the requested paper: spread sheet on expense? No problem she is an excel wizard. Copy of bank statements? No problem she has them.

Spiritual Practice allows us to unhook and ask the question, “What is this for?” Amy is no different than any of us. Along the way of  indoctrination in linear thought, (request/comply) something dreadful happens-we think we are good discerners of cause and effect. We think if we comply with a request, there will be a certain specific effect. We falsely tie two data points together and are upset by the lack of desired result.


Amy and her partner Sam, thought their problem was a lay off, and they lacked enough money to pay the mortgage. Then when the mortgage was hard to pay on one salary, and they fell behind, they relied on the Bank to give them quality information about modifications and followed the banks directions on how to apply.

In their minds, cause was the layoff and effect was the hard to pay mortgage and resulting frustrations.

In reality, the cause was the limitations of their thinking. Sam had been getting ‘clues’ about his companies instability for a while. They even discussed Sam beginning to consult ‘on the side’-just in case. So here it was, the blessing from the Universe (and it never fails to bless) in the form of an idea, and because of the linear thinking (I don’t have time, I have a job, lets wait and see) it was dismissed. The Universe is so kind, it put more hints in front of Sam:  “you should start a consulting company,” said friend at a gathering. Sam’s response? Yes, you guessed it-back to the linear thinking-all the reasons why he couldn’t.

The truth does set you free-but it usually pisses you off first. Sam and Amy were no exceptions. Having done their homework, Amy and Sam were now willing students to see themselves and the situation differently.

In their case these were their action steps:

*Well-worded letter to the president of the bank listing the banks infractions against the new legislation. Sent to his private email address.

*A copy of their profile run in the software the law requires every lending institution that received TARP money to use in assessing modifications (banks keep this software a secret!) clearly demonstrating they qualify.

*Complaints to the three appropriate State and Government entities who over see the banks detailing the violations.

The result is a response from the Executive Resolution team of the bank, apologizing for the problem, overseeing the proper implementation of the modification, and termination of the foreclosure proceedings.

If you are thinking to yourself, that sounded way to easy. Then you are trapped in linear thinking. Your power in your life here in Earth School is dependent on one thing: being willing to evolve, and escape the limitations of your thinking. It’s the hardest thing I know to do.

Please  use the buttons below to share this article or comment!

Thank You!



Finding Spiritual Principal in the Small and Not-So Mundane

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

Sustainable Prosperity and Shoes

Who isn’t a shoe nut?  Some of us could go broke on shoes alone-part architecture, part personal statement it’s easy to understand the shoe fetish.  While shoes may seem trivial to discuss in the face of Principles, an accomplished practitioner applies Principle to the big as well as the small; knowing every thing counts and the Universe sees it all. It’s the practice of Principles that gives us the prosperous life we want.

When we are faced with a ‘must have’ pair of shoes, it’s very hard to remember any kind of basic Spiritual Principle. The first handy one to whip-out: the accoutrements do not make the person-rather the person makes them. Nothing you could ever buy will make you better, or change who you really are. Centered in the Truth that you are not deficient, apply these Spiritual Principles:

Be Aware, Be Honest and Discern:

Discern between need and want. Be honest with yourself. You do not ‘need’ the shoes. You ‘want’ the shoes. With this honest insight, the urgent nature that overcomes many while shopping is dispelled.  You are free to shop the sales, clearances, ‘racks’, ‘basements’ and over-stock resellers for something that works for your wardrobe and complimenting you. Desperation is the devil-tell it to ‘get thee behind me’. If you do not have a practice of awareness, you’ll believe your own thinking when you say, “I need those shoes!”

Giving and receiving are part of the same Energetic Loop-everyone in the Loop must be blessed:

Everyone includes the workers who manufactured and assembled the product. Keep a card in your wallet of manufactures to stay away from. No matter what you will not buy their brand for their practices. Use the power of your word to give feedback to the stores, “did you know this brand uses children labor to achieve these low prices?” Affirm your unwillingness to vote your energetic dollars in support of any company with inhumane practices. How do you know which companies have what practices? Check out these websites: http://www.globalexchange.org  http://www.dol.gov/ILAB/media/reports/iclp/sweat/indonesia.htm  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luWubx6vIlM

Responsibility: Use what you do have well:

Appreciate, and be grateful for what you do have. This allows you think about proactive maintenance. Waterproof your shoes, clean them with the proper cleaner, polish, shine—you name it-take care of them. Make them last longer by adding gel inserts or purchasing quality to begin with. I have a pair of Farragimo pumps, handmade, from Italy-cost a fortune. They are 10 years old and you would never know it.  I’d have spent 3 times the money over tens years on replacing the cheaper shoes. Go for the long haul and quality. Tell yourself, “I can’t afford cheap”.

There is always flow:

I keep my wants in mind and buy with the flow. My running shoes are a good example: I can buy great quality name shoes at the overstock outlets, or  savings on the clearances ahead of the need. I recently bought the same pair of athletic shoes I saw for 129.00 in July, for 49.00. I won’t need these shoes for another 4 months or so-but 4 months in a box won’t change their usefulness to me.

Finally: Always remember the most Sustainable product is the one you never bought in the first place. If you can’t name off the top of your head at least 5 outfits/uses for your prospective shoes, slow your roll. Walk away, let yourself clear your system of the initial stimulus. Put them on hold if you have to, but 60 minutes later you won’t be ‘dying’ for the shoes.

Hopefully by now you have guessed these basic Principles are to be applied to all area’s of our life-big and small. It’s all about the practice of the Principles, not reciting them. Substitute Shoes for anything you want, and practice. You’ll be blessed-I promise.

Quality v. Quantity and Twitter Tales

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010


I believe I recently committed what some would call twitter heresy: I said the heck with numbers and purged my following list by 60%.

In essence what led me to this seemly drastic measure was I got clear on what I wanted to do with twitter. I got clear on what it wasn’t doing for me and what it could do, if I cleared the clutter.

Don’t think you have clutter in your list?

After spending a few weeks having a software developer and my assistant run some numbers for me I can tell you most likely somewhere between 40% and 80% of your list of followers are “crap”. I mean that in the nicest way of course.

Clearly with over 27 million users on twitter, it’s impossible to run data on the whole shebang. But us economists are well known for our theories and little testing of said, while us psychologists are well known for studying everything from the navel to the past lives. Where twitter was concerned a compromise was in order.

I found a way to Run data for a few individuals (beginning with experimenting with my account @KarenkmMonroy) to see how much clutter I actually had. I was a bit on the low side-33% (compared to the other test accounts) of which were spammers of one sort or another.

I have made the assumtion that spammers are problematic for everyone. There are various forms of spam, and I think studies I have read, had it all wrong, spam is the majority of the content–if you do the twitter equivalent of free love–follow everyone who follows you.

Before I go into some data I want to introduce the tool of discernment:

Our minds are not organized to quantify data we are unaccustomed to. Some examples:

An astronaut can appreciate the vastness of space differently than someone who’s never flown at all.

While everyone had some idea that the bail out recently completed by the United States Government was big, what kept the masses from taking to the streets: they didn’t qualitatively quantify the number in the bail out. It wasn’t about too big to fail; it was about too big to comprehend.

It’s the same problem a seeker has: the Universe is too big to comprehend so the temptation to believe one is separate from all that is –it’s immense.

No, I am not digressing, you’ll need this information, trust me.

Basically, what appears to be happening on the individual basis on both the following and follower side of twitter: the larger the numbers of folks who follow you, the higher percentage of crap. It’s the law of diminishing returns. And 10,000 seems to be the ‘magic’ number. Once over 10,000 your percentage of spam followers significantly increases. (if you are dying for the data contact me and I’ll send it to you, but I didn’t intend this to be a ’scientific’ paper so I’m not going to makes folks gag on the data)

My initial goal with twitter was to connect to other people who provided interesting (to me) content.  So I came up with the brilliant idea of following someone because folks  I followed like them too. I thought it would be a great idea, because some culling surely would have been done. Wrong.

Turns out there is plenty of “free-love’ and not much discernment on twitter.  You wouldn’t believe the numbers of porn, suspended accounts for suspicious behavior and spammy crap were in folks following list who clearly didn’t ‘roll’ that way. Why? It’s the old numbers thing: conventional wisdom says numbers are everything.

Spiritual Principal (and everything is spiritual-as everything is energy and form is just the container) informs us clutter is always undesirable. Is begins a ripple effect that leads to frustration andthwarts fulfillment.

So I had thousands of followers, but disconnected by the loud mouths tweeting, ” don’t pay for white teeth”, and “get more followers”, I decided to use a piece of software developed for specific traits of spammers. I un-followed about 60% of my following list.  One result of the mass un-follow was the drones, bots of all the spammers un-followed me back. But I had other very desirable results: I received the immediate information I was looking for—tweets I wanted. I could interact with others in ways I had not been able to previously, and have actually made some mutually supportive friendships that have bloomed outside twitter.

Is un-following twitter hearsay? It would seem so, but to me, no.

I wondered how I would follow folks moving forward after the purge. What kind of criteria could I set, and I wondered if others had the same problem-tons of crap following them and they in turn following back.

I asked the software developer if he could target some specifics for me on both sides of the follow and follower list. Yes, he could and we were in business. I picked a random sample to run numbers on. Now, when I say random I mean at the moment in time I need to give him names, these folks were on the tweeter feed, three of them I follow and three of them I do not.

@ ActuallyNPH @SarahPalinUSA @shellyKramer @skydiver @mashable @iconic88 @inspiremetoday

I began with this group and thought random testing should continue up until print time and it did. I ran numbers on 20 other twitter accounts. Regardless of how the users were chosen, their ‘crap’ following mirrored the above tests run on the initial group and ranged between 40-60%.

Exactly what do I mean by crap? Glad you asked.

If the folks who follow you did any of the below:

Try To Sell 24-7

Multiple @s

Nothing But Links

Tweeting The Same Links All The Time

Tweeting Identical Tweets All The Time

Now Absent

No Activity In Over A Month

Deleted Account

Not Active Yet (Fewer Than 10 Tweets)

Don’t Interact With Anyone

Hardly Follow Anyone

Mass followers and no tweets

Pointless babble

Allowing spam tweets to get more followers

Humans consistently overestimate the value of a thing, and are very poor at estimating the benefit.  This conundrum has been the bane of behavioral economists and psychologists.

On twitter this is how it translates with the illusion that high numbers are desirable or beneficial:

The clutter in your feed is thwarting solid connections in alignment with your interests. The benefits of twitter are limited, until you have a viable list with folks who read your tweets, and in turn you theirs. Test this for yourself: think of someone you want to communicate with on twitter. How do you ’see’ their tweets?

So you know that earlier  idea about not understanding the vastness of something, therefore you do not quite know how to perceive it to begin with? Escape that difficulty, by the specific application of the Principal of Intention.

Ask yourself what is your goal with twitter?

To be a time waster?

Distraction from your day?

To be sold stuff over and over?

To interact, mingle?

To find what interests you?

To explore, see what is out there?

Make contacts and meet folks you would not otherwise?

While I don’t have any twitter ‘rules’ for you, I can tell you the same Principals that apply to life apply here: The clearer you are on this list, the more enjoyment and benefit you will receive using twitter. Don’t fool yourself, there may be 27 million accounts on twitter-but if the numbers hold true 60- 75% of them are crap, and what is left is up to you to wade through.  Saying, “no” to everything is as big as mistake as saying ‘yes’ to everything.

Moving forward, I or one of my assistants will look at the home twitter page of anyone who follows me (I hope folks I follow do the same thing!) to have my list be a diverse group of folks who I want to hear from.

Since beginning this new way of following, quality over quantity, I have been asked to speak at some great events, met some beautiful folks, and been blessed in ways I know I don’t know yet. None of this would have been possible if I chased the numbers.

Naturally, I am going to encourage you to move beyond the vastness of cyberspace, your lack of ability to comprehend the dynamics of the unquantifiable, and commit to making everything you do, including twitter, something that blesses you and you it. Clarity, Clutter, Discernment and Intention. Use them and be blessed.

That’s my twitter story, and I am sticking to it.

Blessings,

Karen

Footnote: My purpose in studying other accounts on twitter at random had to do with seeing if the clutter situation was ‘just me’. I also have reviewed several other twitter studies, reporting amounts of “crap” being tweeted with ranges from 30-70 percent. Rather than to speak in  generalities about twitter traffic, I wanted to discuss the personal experience.

Quiet Mind and Peaceful Heart

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

I spoke with someone recently that I had not spoken to in almost 20 years. Other than annual Holiday card exchanges we had lost touch—like you can when life is going mach six.

Our conversation quickly revealed we were in the past, “are you still riding horses I asked?” No, my friend had stopped about 18 years ago and my question jolted her memory, “oh, yea I remember that old horse!” she said. I was asked if I finished school, “you mean earth school?”  I laughed. “No,” she said, “You had just started getting your doctorate in psychology.” Ooops. It was such a distant memory.

We quickly settled in to conversation, and I was acutely aware—because the voice in my head was loud and clear about it—we were talking ‘about’ us, as opposed to the Authentic us.

It’s a bad habit, the earth school equivalent of the prisoner of war’s “name rank and serial number”: your marriage status, children, job/position/title, location of home(s).

Ultimately, we must admit we only know how to talk about ‘stuff’ and ‘things’: all of them transitory and none of them having to do with the eternal nature of who we are.

I know my best sustaining friendships come from discussing how I am attempting to bridge the gap created by existence on earth school and Who I really Am.

lucy-ethelAfter the preliminary minutes of ‘chit-chat’ I asked my friend if she remembered when we would spend hours contemplating the nature of life and our place in the Universe. She said, “Oh, God, I misses those days.”

“I do too”, I said. And we laughed. In a matter of seconds we were sharing, from the bottom of our hearts about lessons learned, wisdom gained and grace received.

The Synchronicity of our conversation was a great gift from the Universe. She had ended a long relationship that was not blessing her or her partner. And I was in the middle of choices for my work, which road to follow and who to partner with, if anyone.

I, of course had long written the book on ending relationship that was not a blessing. It is familiar ground for me. And she, being the author of several books, in various formats was very familiar with my choices.

So we reminded each other of Who we really Are. How we show-up, with our compassion and intelligent questions of life, and most of all our willingness to try to Love it all anyway.

We had giggles over our monkey mind and it’s cleverness, we gave each other tips on monkey mind conversation, and gave power to our deepening awareness.

What transpired was the rare gift of Rising Above the noise of earth school living by deep conversation consciously sought. Buoyed by this renewal of our hearts and minds we basked in the Peace and Quiet that came from moving beyond what we do, to the reasons why we do what we do: expressing our Authentic Self

Ah,  Peaceful Mind and Quiet Heart. Soul smiles, Spirit Soars, thank you God.

Working with Being Blocked

Friday, January 8th, 2010

We have so much Guidance coming to us from the Universe. Synchronicity, symbolism, archetypes and intuition are languages of the Universe. I teach my clients to “prove it” to their intellectual minds that this Guidance is a fact. Until this fact is accepted, your willingness to listen or pay attention is constrained.

We are connected to all that Is.  If we are not feeling it-it’s because we are missing the dialogue. At times we cannot understand the language, or don’t ‘hear’ it, but the effect is the same, we are blocked, circling the same goal or project or circumstance and not feeling good about the lack of progress.

The ego mind would have you ‘persevere’, but Spirit would have you first ask for Guidance.

DSC08862Being blocked is a kind of separation and isolation. Blockage begins a plethora of ego responses: frustration, desperation, blame, worry, panic, and fear. Certainly these responses are ‘helpful’ in the sense that your neurological feedback is indicating there is a problem.  But we get off track and ego has us focus on the effect, not the blockage itself. Like pain from a broken bone- it’s the broken bone that is cause, and the pain the effect.

Treating the symptoms of blockage is a typical ego response and it has a perverse effect. Can you imagine taking pain killers, but leaving the broken bone untreated? Yes, I know it sounds insane-but in truth we all practice this form of insanity with blockage.

I find reasons I am blocked will have to do with timing and flow. I get moving in a direction that is either too soon, or the flow isn’t there, I am meant to be doing something else and yet I persist with my ‘goal’. Then I begin to work on removing the ‘obstacles’—which, BTW, I am very good at-and I don’t stop to ask, ‘where is the flow”? Until of course I am frustrated. Sigh.

Other common forms of blockage I see:

Stuck on what happened

Being literal

Looking for a ‘savior’ as in a human being-not the Spiritual Energy

Doing what another directs you to do, bereft of your intuition

Perception of self: victim, screw-up, nobody

Defending against ‘how things are’

So you can go get more therapy, coaching, attend more workshops, and buy more books-but let me suggest that you surrender your blockage to the Divine Universe and ask that it guide you in all of your seeking. And I also would like to encourage you to realize one thing: your willingness to see the core cause, and your willingness to work at the causal level is all within you.

So I take my willingness to practice and I undo my frustration-I choose again- and ask for the Divine help, “Show me God, the flow”, (it comes in nano-seconds these days). Three other projects completed-with ease and grace. Smile.

I have a client whose language around finding a relationship is, “when I am in a relationship, I will (fill in the blank)”.  Much of her life is blocked, because she is not in relationship.

My client is constantly invited to ‘introspective’ events (Universe telling her this is a “alone” time) but until she was finally willing to go with the flow, ask the Universe which form of exploration was a match for her, she stayed blocked. Happily a few weeks ago she came home from a 5-day retreat. Joyfully ecstatic at the epiphanies she had while on retreat.

I know we will be mining those epiphanies for her growth for months, but the first big one? She talks, all the time. Even when her lips are not moving she is talking in her head. While I knew this, because it was hard for me to get a word in edge-wise: no matter how much the Universe conspired to show her this (her cell phone would drop calls all the time—since she has been back from the retreat, not once!) she was missing it.

Then, in accordance with Universal laws, the minute she was willing to quiet down and stop talking, a date was arranged. She went determined to listen, and while she made progress she could see her talking was an unconscious response to the nervousness she felt about ‘silence’. She could see how she drove men away being uncomfortable with silence. Her date even said, “It’s nice to be with a woman who doesn’t talk all the time!”

Oh, the Language of the Divine. Thank you, God for your ever present Guidance.