Penelope's Fall Fashion Guide...?

Longer hemlines coming this fall! Stylesight Margaret Howell Fashions

Quote of the Month:

We are the only true experts on our journey to enlightenment. Filter all information through your own heart.- Daily OM

I wonder how many of you did a double take when you saw the title of this post.  Those of you who know me, know that I am known more for my "ugly" shoes than for following any sort of fashion trends!  Actually, I have several pairs of "ugly" shoes!  I threatened to pile all of them up and take a picture for the photo of the month!!!!  A friend suggested that might not be a good idea - so you get the skirt photos! 

One morning, a few days ago, I was trying to catch the headlines on the morning news shows.  I flipped to one station doing a piece on women's shoes and heard her say, "You know how women love shoes!" and another woman said, "They have a special place in my closet."  I know this may be true for some of you!   I quickly changed to a different channel and heard, "Next fall, the hemlines will be quite a bit longer again.  As little as six months ago, we wouldn't have believed we could like them at this length again!"  For a moment I felt as though I had entered the Twilight Zone..... I was Simply looking for the headlines.... not HEMlines...... AND did that woman just hear what she had said?  

"As little as six months ago, we wouldn't have believed we could like them at this length again." 

Let me clarify that I really do not care if you wear the longer hemline, the shorter one.... or no hemline at all!  This blog is definitely not becoming a site for fashion advice!   : )   At the same time, I am not anti-fashion.  Those of you have been following my posts for a while know that I am not anti-anything.  My aim is to be as judgement-less as I can.  What I do intend with this post is for us to examine our beliefs, where they came from and ask ourselves if the beliefs we have inherited are truly ours and true for us.   

Back to the woman reporting on hem lengths....  here is what I really heard her say.....

"These hem lines are reminiscent of the 1970's.  No one has really worn them much since then.  I, now, like the length of these hemlines.... The reason I now like them is because someone told me I should like them!"   

The Simple suggestion I am making this month is to be AWARE that other people may be guiding your choices under the guise of fashion advice!  Is it possible that in an effort to get you back to the stores the fashion industry has come out with a new idea?  This really  goes much further ..... in addition to people telling you what you should wear...... you can find people who will tell you what to eat, what shampoo to buy, what music to listen to, what books to read, what deodorant to buy, who to vote for, where to live, where NOT to live, what type of car to buy, what type of neighborhood to live in, what job to take.....  even what God to believe it.  I know I might have crossed a line with that last one, but I think it is important to include it as it is at the center of a lot of issues facing us today.... wars.... dividing us along political lines.... etc. 

On this blog, I previously wrote that in some ways this is helpful... in Wilderness of Intuition - June 2009.  Since we have many decisions to make every day and many of them are not really all that important in the scheme of things, the media can be helpful in making decisions about these things... such as which shampoo to use (just as an aside, I went to buy shampoo yesterday and was completely overwhelmed with the choices... what just happened to plain "normal" shampoo for "normal" hair??? Not sure how I missed this transition.... but I could have really used someone to tell me which one to buy!)   

So - I am not anti-fashion, anti-media or anti-advertising or anti-anything... I simply want to raise all of OUR awareness that many of the choices we may think we are making, may in fact be made for us, or at least influenced by, someone else..... and very often that someone else may not have our best interest in mind.
  

I always like to start with the Simple little examples.... it is pretty obvious to see that someone "made up" the length that hemlines "should be" in the fall (at least I hope it is!)  Here is another example.  I remember as a kid using Colgate Toothpaste and that it had "MFP Fluoride!"   As a kid, I thought it sounded very impressive and must have some special chemicals or something in there to make it REALLY good!  A little later in school I did a report on advertising and found out what MFP stands for!  Do you know?  I'll leave you hanging for a little while longer.... (further reading on this topic see The Voice, August 2009)

So - what is it I am really getting at this month?  I alluded to it in the quote above.  We are our own best experts!  I want you to learn to Trust yourself.... your own inner voice... your own guidance.  I call this "Intuition" and have written about it quite a bit on this blog.  That is because it is a guiding force in my life.
  

In my experience, there are 4 parts to intuition. 

1 - listen - tune into and become aware of the mental I-pod/CD/tape or voice that constantly plays in your head.  

2 - hear (distinguish) - distinguish the different voices and where they come from.  Identify voice of intuition.

3 - trust - trust what you hear intuition tell you.

4 - follow - take action!

Watch for more on each of these in the coming months!

If you would like to do some additional reading on Intuition in the meantime, try:

Wilderness of Intuition - June 2009 - This posts includes some suggestions to "play" with your intuition and some personal examples of intuition in my own life.

or 

Be Your Own Guru - January 2010  - This post gives a preview on hearing and trusting.  

Finally

Tolle on Intuition  - To read what Eckhart Tolle has to say about Intuition.

That's all for this month's addition of Penelope's Fashion Guide!  If you have read this far, you know it should be called, Intuition is your Guide... on fashion and everything else!

If you have any examples of intuition in your own life, please feel free to share them in the comments section below.  I think it is useful to talk about it and the ways it is working for others as I think we often miss it and don't realize that it was in fact intuition.  Or - you can just let me know what you'll be wearing this fall!

Oh, and we haven't had a Question of the month for a while... if you know what MFP stands for (regarding Colgate Toothpaste) enter it in the comments below too.  Answer next month! 

Keep it Simple!
Penelope

Tolle on Intuition

Here is the additional information I had promised on intuition.... I love the way Eckhart Tolle describes intuition in the interview below.

Eckhart Tolle on Intuition

You could say that intuition is a kind of knowing, but you don’t know how you got there. You know something, but you don’t know by what path you’ve arrived at what you know. It’s a sudden arising of knowledge or knowing something, but one might say, “I don’t know how I know this”. What is at work here is non-conceptual intelligence, when intuition arises.

Intuition is not arrived at by thinking, not by logic. It’s arrived at in a way that we cannot explain. It is closely related to creativity and inspiration. Inspiration also comes from that place. It is given to you. It is given to all great artists, musicians, writers, and even great scientists who made deep discoveries that were revolutionary – like Einstein. Einstein had a ‘sense’ of his theory of relativity. Before he could fully prove it, he already knew it was true. It was intuition that came to him. Of course, he had done a lot of thinking before that happened.

Sometimes you have to do a lot of thinking, and then suddenly, thinking doesn’t get you anywhere anymore, and you stop thinking, and you go out and take a few deep breaths. Or you go out into nature and sit under a tree. And suddenly, intuition is there. Something you couldn’t have arrived at through thinking.

It’s vital for every human being to contact that place within, where intuition arises, because otherwise you are confined to the limitations of your conceptual mind.

Otherwise, your life is just repetitive, and no new ideas can come. If it’s a fresh and new idea, it comes from a place where all creativity arises - which ultimately, is the stillness within. That’s where intuition arises. If you can be still even for a moment, then there’s a possibility that some intuitive thing arises as a thought or as a spontaneous thing that you say, and you’ve surprised yourself. Maybe somebody needs your help or advice, and rather than thinking “I should be helping that person. What can I say next to help them?”, rather than that you just become still, listen, look. And suddenly you may find yourself saying something. It’s intuitive. Suddenly a deeper intelligence comes and uses your mind.

That’s what we call intuition. Realize that this is at the basis of all creative activities, all truly creative activities. Perception is something that comes from the outside, and intuition comes from the inner. It comes from you. It is essentially one with who you are, intelligence itself.

The easiest way to develop intuition is to develop the ability to be still. Rather than “trying” to develop intuition, go to the place where all intuition arises. You don’t need to worry about becoming more intuitive if you focus more on being still. Not necessarily for long periods of time, but have moments of stillness in your life, so that every day is interspersed with moments of stillness.

You could just close your eyes and take one or two deep breaths. Or you don’t even have to close your eyes, but while you’re listening or looking at somebody, feel yourself breathing. Feel the inner aliveness within your body.

If you are looking at your computer screen, look away for a moment, or close your eyes for a moment, and take one or two conscious breaths. It brings you to stillness.

Wherever you are, there are always opportunities for a moment of stillness. And that is vital, because otherwise your life is unbalanced. If you don’t find stillness, all you have is activity - one thing after another. And this covers up your potential intuitive faculty, continuously. Seek out moments of stillness. Even the busiest person can do it. If you’re driving home, or driving to work, every traffic light is an invitation to stillness. There are so many opportunities for stillness.

Stillness is where intuition arises.


For further reading, I recommend Eckhart Tolle's books The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment or A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61)

Intuition and Your Own Guru

Quote of the month:

When you trust and act on your intuition,

you increase your self-esteem,

build trust in yourself and

experience a profound sense of security that no relationship or

amount of money will ever give you.

- Cheryl Richardson

Last month, on the post titled, Be Your Own Guru, there was a question that I thought might be useful to address on a post.

The question was:

What if you have two voices and both feel like intuition and they are opposing ideas, what do you do then???

My answer:

Thank you for your good question!

In my experience, if the two "voices" are in conflict, typically only one of them is truly coming from intuition. There are a lot of "voices" in there as I discussed in the Intuition post. There is also additional information on where they come from in the post titled The Voice (you can also find links to both of these in the top box on the right column.)

As a reminder, for me, intuition is never fearful or suggesting something that may cause harm. It also does not have an "excited" charge to it, though it may subsequently feel energizing as opposed to draining. The information itself, is matter of fact.

As always, I suggest practicing with simple things that do not really matter (like buying apples or oranges) in order to better recognize one's intuition in more challenging situations where one's ego and fear may be much louder voices.

Some suggestions for making a decision:

1 - "Sit with" or meditate on each of them. See which one "feels" right to you. Focus especially in a few areas of your body - your heart, your stomach and your throat.

2 - Visualize a path in front of you with a fork in the road, each representing one of the choices. Visualize yourself walking down each and see which one feels like the better option.

3 - Ask your intuition for clarification.

4 - Does one of the options make you feel tired or drained? If so, this is probably not the best option.

5 - Are they truly as in opposition as they seem? A part of spirituality is to release the outcome. You may not know why you are being guided in a particular direction until after the fact.

6 - Is it possible it is a step 1 followed by step 2? (Usually this is not my experience, but may be for you. My personal experience is that step 1 would come first then later step 2 but again a reason I would encourage you to experiment with and become familiar with your own intuition.)

7 - If you do not need to immediately take some sort of action, then my suggestion would be to wait until you have more clarity. If action is needed and you do not have clarity, I would suggest using the intellect to weigh the two options logically, then move forward as slowly as you can and stay attuned to future guidance. You may start down a path and then realize it isn't the correct way to go.

Check back in a few days for additional information on intuition!

I would love to hear your feedback as well as any questions you may have or topics you may be interested in for the future. I also would like this to be a place where you can share your thoughts about what has worked or not worked for you. Feel free to do so by clicking the “comments” link below, at the end of each post.

All posts will be archived along with other useful information at Simply Spirituality .

Until next month,
Here's hoping you keep it simple,
Penelope

Wilderness of Intuition

Quote of the month:
You have to leave the city of your comfort
and go into the wilderness of your intuition.
What you'll discover will be wonderful.
What you'll discover is yourself.
-Alan Alda

In the quote above, Alan Alda is using the city as an analogy for our comfort zone. Most of us start in the city .... the city in this picture is Miami, in October of 1999, though it looks a little bit different today, with many more tall buildings. In the analogy, the city is safe and comfortable. We know the city. We know where the roads lead and we know where to go shopping for groceries, clothing, sofas or whatever we may need. Alan Alda is posing the challenge to us, at least metaphorically, to leave that comfort zone and enter into the wilderness! An area that we do not know and that may not feel as comfortable. The wonderful reward, he says, will be yourself! That sounds like it just might be a journey worth taking.... so go get your hiking boots, grab your walking sticks and meet me at the edge of the forest!

Have you ever had a feeling in the pit of your stomach? It was telling you not to do something... and maybe you did it anyway? Or maybe you didn't do it. Intuition can come in different ways for different people. Sometimes it comes as a feeling or sensation and sometimes you may hear a voice in your head. Now before you think I might be a little bit nuts talking about voices in your head, I want to clarify that intuition is always peaceful and not fearful. It will not guide one to do anything dangerous or unloving, though it may challenge you to do something you do not really feel like doing... and often it might not always make sense at the moment. Often in hind sight, the broader picture comes together.

The voice of intuition can be difficult to distinguish at first from the other voices that may be mixed in there... like the voice of society, telling you what is "right" or "wrong" for example; or the media, telling you what you should wear or what type of shampoo you should use. You may hear the voice of parent that might still ring in our ears, telling you that "our family does not associate with 'those types' of people" or "....eat meat on Friday!" (Oh, wait, that's religion... that is another voice in there too!) The voice of your culture is also in there.... it tells you how you are alike and different from....or better than or not as good as other cultures, heritages or nationalities. You may even hear the voice of a spouse who expects that dinner will be made in a certain way, the house cleaned in a particular way or that you will earn a certain amount of money..... and of course the voice of the ego or personality is mixed in there, telling you that "they" are not going to approve of how you handled a particular situation, that you are not good enough, not attractive enough, or just plain not enough.....

The voice of "fear" often is difficult to distinguish from intuition but I'll restate here that in my experience, intuition is not fearful. It is calm, yet energizing and peaceful and does not create anxiety. I am not labeling any of these voices as "bad." In fact, we have to make so many decisions every day that in some ways these are helpful. The voice of fear may keep you from doing something dangerous. The societal voice might keep us from doing things that would hurt others, and the media helps to inform us of what products may be available to meet our needs, but adding intuition to the mix helps us to make better choices when faced with those decisions.

So a first step on the journey into the wilderness is to learn to distinguish those voices from one another. [This could be a whole blog post in itself, so consider this an introduction.] To do so, try asking yourself where a particular belief came from? Where did you hear that said before? In the news? At church? Why do you use a particular brand of laundry detergent? Your mother did? The media said it was "best"? Why are you registered Republican? Your parents are? Why do you keep a towel over the toaster? (Oh wait, that's me! And because my family has always done it that way!) With a little bit of practice, it will begin to become more clear to you... and..... meditation helps! ; )

Here are some suggestions to get started with intuition.... try to think of it as "playing" or having fun and don't take any of it too seriously!

• To experiment with intuition, try "playing" with things that don't really matter. In the store, ask, should I buy apples or oranges? Should I buy this apple or that apple? See how each "feels." Try buying the one that feels right.
• I often play with intuition with my boys... guessing which elevator will open first or who might be on the phone (no checking caller ID!)
• Ask your intuition things like what you should eat, where you should walk, or what exercise your body needs. See what feels right.
• When driving, if there are 2 ways to go that will get you where you are going.... ask should I go left or right? Take the long way or the short way? Sometimes the answer may be that it doesn't matter, but if you set your intention to pay attention to your intuition, I believe you will get more information than you think you will.

Also try to notice if following intuition led to something unexpected. Something that you could not have otherwise have known. Say for example, intuition says to take the long way home, and although it doesn't seem to otherwise make sense, you later find out there was a traffic jam or accident on the shorter route. [See below for some of my own examples.]

Maybe some of you do this already in way you do not realize. Often people use intuition at work and don't realize it. Maybe you seem to have a 6th sense for how to handle a particular situation at your work, when to sell a stock, how to take a photograph, how to teach a particular subject, say something the way someone needs to hear it, when to buy a property, how to make a product or where to set a price. I have a friend who is a veterinarian and has been able to diagnose my cat over the phone...without even seeing him, on more than one occasion.

Just to clarify, I am not saying that intuition has to be like holding your hands over the animal and suddenly knowing what is wrong.... I mean it in a much less "out there" kind of way..... Like helping you find the missing piece to the puzzle or helping you put all the pieces together in a way that makes sense. Intuition can be in service to the intellect and the brain. Some might say intuition is the voice of God, some might say it is our higher self, or an energy that comes from inside of us like a "gut" feeling or your conscious.

Albert Einstein is quoted as describing it this way..... "The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you."

I, honestly, do not know where it comes from, but I do know that when I can hear it and I listen to it, it always steers me in the right direction. That being said, I don't often share these types of things publicly, but maybe it will help to hear a few of my own personal experiences with intuition.

• Once I was driving down I-95 in the city of Miami. I was behind a pick up truck when I specifically heard my intuition tell me, "Get out from behind the truck." I had no idea why and it did not seem to make sense, but I did decide to follow it and change lanes. Not more than a few seconds later, a large box came falling off the back of the truck and into the road behind it, right where I had been.
• Often the things I "hear" are much less important, but end up saving me time or effort in the long run. Maybe to buy 2 of something when I think that I only need one or to bring something along in the car that I don't logically think I would need only to later realize why that was a good idea. (This is a small example, but it ended up saving us a lot of time and money. Once I was headed out the door and I heard intuition say to bring my son's reading list along. I didn't know why, but later I ended up at a store we don't often go to and the library was right beside it. I ended up finding several of the books he needed in one stop and without having to buy them!)
• Another time, I was nearly asleep in bed. I sat up suddenly and heard, "Go check the garage door." It was late at night, I was tired, almost asleep... it didn't make any sense to me, but I did it anyway. When I got to the garage, the garage door was up. I had no other knowledge of the door being open, I hadn't opened it, but listening kept us safer that night than we would have otherwise been.
• Another example, when my first son was small, I was putting him into his car seat. I got the feeling I needed to check the seat first. There was a large needle in the seat. To this day I have no idea how it got there or where it came from.

Listening in each of these cases, though they may not have made sense at the time, either kept us safe or made life go more smoothly than it otherwise would have.

I want to also share something I heard recently. When Bea Arthur of Golden Girls and Maude passed away recently, co-star, Rue McClanahan was interviewed about her friend. She described Bea as someone who made her go "out on a limb." She followed it up with "Bea was already way out there on the limb." I believe it is the ability to hear, trust and follow one's intuition that enables one to go "out on a limb," to do what others may not and in this case to help one be more successful and true to who one really is. Just as Alan Alda says above, "What you'll discover is yourself!" Bea Arthur did and both she and the public reaped the rewards of her efforts!

An important part of intuition is having that courage to follow through on what it is saying. Often the ego jumps in there and talks you out of it.... telling you are crazy listening to that voice in your head! ; ) Really, most of what I write here on the blog comes from listening, trusting and following through on my own intuition. I simply suggest try stepping into your own wilderness .... and see what happens!

I would love to hear your feedback as well as any questions you may have or topics you may be interested in for the future. You may comment at the bottom at the blog where it says "comments." All posts will be archived on my blog along with other useful information at: Simply Spirituality or http://simplyspirituality.blogspot.com/

To continue reading next month's post on Taking Stock/Mindfulness.... click here.

Until next month....
Here's hoping you keep your spirituality simple!
Penelope

Photo of the month
The Wilderness, Smokey Mtns., NC, December 1995