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If your life is feverishly frantic, confusing, complicated, overwhelmingly burdened – you’d better slow down because there is something you are missing. If you don’t have time to do the things you love, while the things you spend your time doing make you feel and act unloving – slow down, there is something that you are missing.

We cannot expect to be in control of the circumstances in our lives when we cannot control our minds for five minutes. Meditation is the daily minimum requirement that will prevent us from breaking down and falling apart at the most inopportune moments. It is the art of listening. It is a practice which enables us to tune in and fine-tune the key areas of our lives: the mind and the spirit.

Finding the way to joy, peace, abundance, health, and balance requires an examination and evaluation of everything you cherish. In the midst of your evaluation, your higher power will step in and separate that which is false from that which is true; that which is necessary from that which no longer serves any purpose in your life.

If you know that your life is a journey and if you want to make it to your divine destination, you must learn to travel light! Unpack the abrasive attitudes, addictive appetites, and frivolous fears that you have packed away in the crevices of your heart and mind. Pack a tidbit of truth, a capsule of courage, a fistful of faith, and a pocketful of prayer, and be on your way!

You can’t do anything as long as you are afraid of what might happen. Fear clouds opportunities, erases possibilities, and limits the ability to move beyond the place in which the mind is stuck. No matter how difficult we think the problem is, we must muster up the courage to face it.

From where you sit, it may seem that certain people should know better. People are who they are and do what they do whether or not you like it or agree with them. We each have different lessons to learn. We each take a different path to our lessons.  Cheers to slowing down!

Most of us have two lives: the life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

Have you ever brought home a treadmill and let it gather dust in the attic? Ever quit a diet, a course of yoga, a meditation practice? Have you ever bailed on a call to embark on a spiritual practice, to dedicate yourself to a humanitarian calling, to commit your life to the service of others? Have you ever wanted to be a mother, a doctor, an advocate for the weak and helpless; to run for office?  Late at night, have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be? Are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.

It is the most toxic force on the planet. It is the root of more unhappiness than poverty, disease and erectile dysfunction. The more important a call to action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel about answering it. But to yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be. How many of us have become drunks and drug addicts, developed tumors and neuroses, succumbed to painkillers, gossip and compulsive cell-phone use simply because we don’t do that thing that our heart, our inner genius, is calling us to do? Resistance defeats us.

But every sun casts a shadow, and genius’s shadow is Resistance. As powerful as is our soul’s call, so potent are the forces of Resistance arrayed against it. We’re not alone if we’ve been mowed down by Resistance; millions of good men and women have bitten the dust before us.

Look in your own heart. Right now, a still, small voice is piping up, telling you, as it has 10,000 times before, the calling that is yours and yours alone. You know it. No one has to tell you. And unless I’m crazy, you’re no closer to taking action on it than you were yesterday or will be tomorrow—because of Resistance.

As powerful as resistance is, there is one thing we must remember: It comes from within us. Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from within us. We feed it with power by fearing it. Master that fear and conquer Resistance. There never was a moment—and never will be—when we were without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on Resistance. How? This second, we can sit down and do our work.  Cheer to living life to the fullest!

Elimination Day!

Seeds must be planted in the garden. The planted seed must be nurtured with commitment and care. The care includes inspection for and elimination of destructive pests and the uprooting of weeds. People who judge, criticize, blame, and find fault are pests. They cannot be ignored. They must be eliminated from your mind and heart, from your mental, emotional, and spiritual garden. 

In order to have elimination day you must first embrace stillness is the presence of God. Stillness slows the mind, soothes the heart, and directs the mind. Conscious breathing results in stillness. Mediation is the art of stilling the mind. Learning how to be rather than what to do results in stillness of the ego.  Cheers!

RIP – To my Father Kelly Easter Jr.  ” Happy Birthday”! I Launched Sistahology 4 Years ago today in your memory.  I am still committed to this work in your honor.  Continue resting in peace.

The quickest way to turn a bad situation into a blessing is to get excited! Excitement is the opposite of anxiety. It brings a new energy into any situation. Excitement gives you power and puts you in charge of what you do. Be excited that you are equipped to handle it! Be excited that life is trusting you to do the right thing! Be excited that you will do your best, no matter what happens.  Are you excited?  Cheers!

Difficulties prepare you for victory. Failure prepares you for success. Poverty prepares you for prosperity. Ignorance prepares you for truth. God is the one who sends whatever it is you need to be prepared.

It is not easy to shift our views in order to see new things in place of the old. It is often confusing and frightening to make a shift away from the familiar in order to embrace the unknown. Yet it is a necessary labor we must undertake in order to grow. No matter how difficult it may seem, shifts are necessary when the time comes to free ourselves from the confinement of mental, emotional, or physical boxes.  Cheers!

Embracing Grace Under Fire takes a strong person, with much faith and peace within. When we are confronted with betrayal and hurtful acts from others we must embrace grace. I believe strongly that you reap what you sow, and we must learn to resolve unsolved hurts and pains within. Not that it’s easy. Letting go does not always come easy for me and many others. I will admit I used to hold on to hurts and pains; I would simply cut people off, pretend that they cease to exist and not look back! I use to think for what? But, then I started to understand that not letting go was holding me back. It takes maturity to get to the point that you realize that stroking anger towards others does nothing more than keep the frustration and resentment alive inside of you.

Don’t allow anyone’s transgression to keep you in a negative place and block you from doing and experiencing all the wonderful things your higher power has planned for your life. After all the best revenge is living your life to the fullest everyday and being happy! Sooner or later the “haters” will have to recognize! Cheers to Grace.

It’s so easy to believe that external things hold the power in life. We think money, or lack of it, determines our abundance; we think other people’s behavior determines our happiness; we think success or failure, as the world defines it, determines our self-worth.

But it is ultimately our thinking, more than our outer circumstances that determine whether we live lives of harmony and peace or of pain and despair. I have known healthy, wealthy people who were depressed, and people with critical illnesses who could honestly attest to joy.

That which we can see, hear, touch, taste and feel was deemed reality, and the mind was thought to wield little or no power in either creating or transforming material circumstances.

In the realm of thought, there are two main categories: thoughts of love and thoughts of fear. Every single moment, we choose between the two. If I think with love, then I am more likely to behave lovingly and to attract love from others. If my heart is closed, I am more likely to act out of fear. Fear-based behavior tends not to look like fear but like anger or jealousy; it elicits reactions from others that reflect my fear and not my love.

Yet in any moment, we can change our minds. God created us to co-create with Him a world of harmony and peace and joy, which the love in our hearts gives us, power to do. We have the power to be blessed or blame, to forgive or judge. With our thoughts we have the power to honor or mock, to believe in miracles or deny the possibility that they ever happen. When our minds move in harmony with love—through forgiveness or prayer or the simplest tender thought—then mountains move and the universe shifts.

Perhaps there is a situation in your life that causes you pain or anxiety, fear or grief. You can surround it in your mind with light and lift it up to your higher power. Just that simple thought—that we take a situation of darkness and place it in the light, meditating for what we cannot do for ourselves—puts into motion a force for universal good. It is unstoppable and indestructible. It is a field of intention that all be loved. It is, in essence, the power of love itself. Think about that. And think about it some more. And then think about it some more. For as a woman thinketh, so she is.  Cheers!

A smile, A generosity of spirit. Last week some of us celebrated Juneteenth, today I want to celebrate this woman – every woman in our past who found joy, laughter, good lovin’, deep faith and satisfaction – regardless of the sharp realities they faced. God, we ask for that grace, that elegance to always seek health and fulfillment despite the stress of reconciling our history with your Love. This Juneteenth, we release that stress. The stress that writer Opal Palmer Adisa said makes us “look so angry” and “walk like we’ve got bricks in our bags.” The stress that is “hemmed into our dresses, pressed into our hair, mixed into our perfume and painted on our fingers. Stress from the deferred dreams, the stress not voiced; stress from the broken promises, the blatant lies; stress from always being at the bottom, from never being thought beautiful, from always being taken for granted, taken advantage of; stress from being a black woman in White America”. …150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, we release it. Today, as we remember Juneteenth, we take a deeper inhale and an epic exhale. We breathe, let our shoulders down. We walk a little taller. With unrelenting love and commitment to one another’s well-being, we release it. In God’s name.  We commit to move forward and embracing life as we live it today!  Cheers to all of those who paved that path we now travel…………………

Dedicated to all Father’s and of course, my own Dad (R.I.P.)

It’s interesting how it begins

A little bit of lovin’

Two people together like husband and wife

The beginning is here for a new life

Which grows and grows in the tummy of another

The one that would be called its mother

But, let’s not forget the other one

That happens to start as someone’s son

He may not have grew the baby in his body

No less important He is now a father

It really is somethin’ to be his child’s hero

He watches his child grow from zero

Form diapers to prom to college you loan

To even getting a place on their own

You train them for life

And pray they have no strife

From football to ballet

To graduation day

You teach and discipline them

And catch the growing and fun by recording

All the parenting joys and highs

The valleys and lows

Take just like the wind blows

To watch it from up close

Giving medicine in measured dose

Turning daughters into women

And sons into men

Hope they never forget the lessons taught

From the knee its was wrought

Dad is always providing and instructing

Protecting and giving love everlasting

Saving from life’s monsters his little one

Because a Dad’s work is never done

Uplifting, encouraging, watching

The fruits of his labor producing

Pride swells in his heart

Even though now they are apart

But always in the child’s very soul lives

The love and lessons their Father gives

The love is eternal! Enjoy your day!

Cheers!

We can all recall our exceptionally aware moments. Unfortunately, they tend to occur in highly stressful and often life-threatening situations, such as skidding on glare ice at 60 MPH. This is when our fight or flight response takes over. The frontal lobes go offline. We literally stop thinking as the faster-processing and more primitive regions of the brain assume executive control.A lot has been said about kindness and patience.

We have to savor our good moments while we can. But, of course, we will miss them completely if we keep getting stuck inside our own heads. The practical benefit of mindfulness is that as our awareness becomes more heightened and our thinking more focused, we slowly acquire the ability to reel in our runaway thoughts, or at least slow them down a tad. Slowly, we gain skills in negotiating our way through the present. Slowly, we learn to manage our illness rather than our illness managing us.  Cheers to living!