No time for all this darkness...

We cannot hope for change if we are too busy with what happened in the past

If there is anything that I have learned very well over these last twelve months it is that there is no room for hanging on to old darkness, no hanging on to things such as self-hatreds, no room or time for anyone with a clue and a heart and soul to NOT try to get past all the things that break our hearts. This morning I will be using the idea that within an ethnicity there are many self-hatreds, and there are people within those ethnic groups who use the dark energies produced by those cellular thoughts about who we are collectively and who will profit in some manner from those hatreds, and the sickest part is not only that they will be paid huge sums for the opinions that they hold, opinions which are similar in nature to the collective and ancestral hatreds from the past, but the hatreds offered by these dark souls will be believed and held as the absoluteness of Truth and it will be so for no other reason than that the ignorance which have been adopted as the Truth of a people will have more power set by the collective than will the power of United Love.

Hate that is generations old.

These are hatreds that are not only generations old, but historically old, meaning that these hatreds are a part of our own ethnic history and they are the thing that separate nations of peoples from within. This is the beast which has beget the hatreds. This is the snarling animal that is the thing which has invaded us all, the every one of us, and it is not helping matters of coming together, not only as an ethnic group but also as a group of delusional humans who, for the life of them, cannot see past the big okole that is their hatred, and it is an inborn hatred of self. It would have to be, because only someone who hates their own self would be able to remain as hateful as is the day long. Only people who feel weakened and controlled by the actions of the past, actions which hurt us as a whole feel like they have an ax to grind. The rest of us just want fairness, just want to be seen and known as what truly we are. It is unfortunate that there are more people who would rather fight and run in circles and get nowhere than there are people who can see things as they are and who are willing to fight from a place which is Light, Love and Aloha.

We, as a people, have found that self-hatred is better than fighting from the brain, with a fight that started in the soul, made its way to the heart, called us all Warriors and then, somehow, became the ugliness, the beast that is both culminated of self-misunderstanding, that is born of the notion that we are too weak as a whole to not get emotional, to not get mad, but when the beast turns upon itself, we have what we have, and what we have is an energy of Self-Hatred, and it is the beast which will eat us from the inside out. And it will not eat us up in one bite but rather will do like the vileness that is any kind of cancer and will eat, little by little, til the entirety of the whole has been stricken with the foolishness that is older than anyone fighting for what is deemed as fair and as equal. What is fair and equal and believable in the eyes of the unenlightened many is the emotion of hatred, is the anger that is deep seated and is borne of the energy that is weakness, that is being victimized, that is anything than what truly the human race is.

We have allowed the things that broke our collective heart and soul to be the thing that is the reality of us and for us all, even if some of us fight daily to make it otherwise than this. This is something that together, we can fix, but this is also something that, together, we find ourselves at odds, and we are at odds because of something that someone else said, in another lifetime - their lifetime - that made this fight, at this time, seem as though the hatred is what will win whatever it is that we think we need to win. It is the hatred that we are presumed to have - the very all of us - for other races and other ethnic groups, that has seeped into the minds and the hearts of the many and is now bleeding out into those who are like us. We have become so marginalized in what it is that we want to believe is the truth that we have allowed those things that show many of us to be ignorant, and now that ignorance has bred something new and entirely wrong on the whole. We have come to the point in our own collective self-hatreds that finally, there is a smaller minority of us who are begging, pleading even, for the hate to please stop.

Yet, we know that it won't. It won't because hatred sells more television spots and gets your books purchased in all the formats that you can come up with, and it won't because there are people whose livelihoods will always depend on the seductive nature that is our own smallness. It won't because without the self-hatred, "activists" who are not more than televangelists without the cameras will have no means with which to pay for the continuance of hate placed upon the whole of us by the few. It will not because too many of those who believe themselves to be the very powers that be will never allow a true healing to be the reality, because once there is a true healing, the things that propel them, the things that allow them to have the place in society that they and their egos have will no longer have a place in society if these hatreds are eliminated. 

This is the Beast which we have all, at one time in our lives, in a singular manner as well as a collective one, allowed to give birth, again and again, to the things that wreck our souls.

We cannot hope for change if all we are willing to do in order to push forward through to a better future is to grant people access to the hurts of the past that we were not there to be witness nor victim to. We have all, at one point in each of our lives, have chosen to believe that being a victim is far easier than is fighting to become a survivor, even as being a survivor proves something to us all, on a personal level, and it is proof that is permanent - proof of our own personal power. Sadly, too many of us will never be able to see that if we combine our personal power into the collective whole of things that we will exact the changes that are needed rather than the ego driven changes which are fueled by a collective of ignorance and hate.

We, as a race of human carbon based life forms, have a duty to one another, and when it comes with ethnic hatreds which are not only old, but generations and historically old, this is when we are allowing ourselves to travel back in time, back to when things seemed to be the way that a whole lot of people thought was right at one time, and that a whole lot of people now know is NOT right but who still use those ego-driven ways to promote equality and fairness but with unfair means and a means which really, no one had a choice to have - the color of skin, the place of birth, and the history shared with people who, even as they may not be ethnically the same as anyone else is, they are same in the manner that is human. 

In the manner that is human

In the manner that is human, not one of us is different than the other, but in the manner that is Ego, there are those who prefer for us to see the division between us that is not real, that is not there, that is pointed out because it has to be pointed out to be seen. No one thinks about race, no one thinks about being an ethnicity until someone else brings to our awareness the things which are different between us, which normally are place of birth (not place of origin) and zip code. There is an entire population of people on this planet with whom I share both air and history - ancient history, that is - with, who would rather see to it that people who were not born where they were born not be seen as what we really are, which is the same thing that they are only with a different zip code. If I can see this, and lots of other enlightened people can also see this, and if all one group is doing is saying and assuming what they will in order to feel better or more superior to the rest who are like them in more ways than one, then that tells me that the reason that anyone will point anything out to someone else that makes anyone appear to be 'different' that these people doing the pointing are weaker than the whole, and if they are weaker than the whole in its entirety it means that they are trying to weaken the whole, period. 

If what any person who claims to be a "National Leader" deems as being the thing that is the common thing about a people, that that thing uses division, that thing uses what is the shadow part of a people, then that person is perpetuating a darkness of a collective whole and it boils down to that person and their goals and their feelings and their ugliness and does not speak for the whole. 

What does not speak for the whole is the idea that since I am a person born "on the mainland," that this means that somehow, as an ethnicity to a place of historical origin, since it is that I was not born wherever "there" is, that I am not right, that I am damaged, that somehow, I am not at all like those whose fight for equality would be one that would include the all of us. This is hurtful. This hurts a whole lot of people, all over the world, because the simple fact of the matter is that children of all cultural backgrounds are born all over this big beautiful rock, but that this does not mean that these children of certain origin are somehow not ethnic enough.

What my point is...

My point in using these things that I have been met with, that a whole lot of people like me have been met with, is to show the whole of you that when we are more inclined to see only what is not the same within a group, even as the group as a whole is essentially the same, it is a hurt within a hurt. It is a place that no one wants to be but is also a place that too many people who share culture want to believe is a "for us or against us" mentality. And hell yes I am against the kind of thinking that divides a people, no matter where that nation's origins are, no matter how that collective thought came to be, no matter what - I am against the belief that a whole lot of culturally-adept-but-human-being-moronic have, and that belief is that it does not matter how you were taught as a child who is part of a culture and that only your birth zip code matters. I am against the idea that to get us where we need to be as a race we have to divide us so that the purity of the hatreds that are generations and historically old can be the ONLY thing that gets seen. I am against anything at all that pits brother against brother, sister against sister, tribe against tribe, nation against nation, namely and specifically a nation within a nation.

I am not at all impressed with the idea that there are people who behave as though if you were not where they were at the time of your birth, that this makes you not the real thing. And I promise you all right now that there is no one realer about anything "equality" than this person writing this right now, and since it is that we draw to ourselves who and what we are, and since it is that our souls mirror one another's, and since it is that beauty attracts beauty and ugly attracts ugly, then this means that I am blessed in that I do not draw to my life people who will willingly divide a people, will divide themselves from their own kind, all because of a hatred planted in them by their ancestors, by their ancestor's ancestors, and by the people with whom they share a likeness in darkness.

The time is now, guys. I am making the call out to the collective Soul of all that is "race," yes, including the all of us in that group called "Human."

NOW IS THE TIME, EVERYONE !

Now is the time that we all, no matter our ethnic origins, no matter where we were born, no matter who we are, need to knock off the ignorance. At this time in history too many of us are blinded by hatreds that are old, that are only reborn when people....so called "activists"....get involved in something with the wrong and selfish intentions. There are many of them, in fact, too many to be able to list them all, and I would not waste my time with highlighting them here in MY blog because the truth and the fact of the matter is that these purveyors of ancient hatreds and ancient methods of being controlled by other people is just not something that I want to be part and party to.

I do not want to be one who gives the energy of hatred, but of healing, not only of the one, but of the all. I want to see that nations of indigenous peoples can come together with nations of people who are not of indigenous ancestry and be together in mind and in spirit because we are already here together in the physical. I do not want to be here, in the present, seeing all of the ugliness that is the hurt of the past, the anger of the past, and the cellular knowledge of what is not okay, what was hurtful and caused generational and ethnic anger and hatred to be the thing that is passed on to the people in  my life, namely my children, namely the collective of the future which is nestled and safely protected within the Na Mamo who are our kids, collectively.

To this point, those who would raise their brood in the energy that is anger and mistrust will continue to share only that energy with the world, and it is in that sordidness that tells a people that they have the right to place hatred on to others and it is their duty that they share not the culture, not the beauty of a people, but the hatred for others who are not like them. This is the same thing that is seen in religion, and people die over it. This is the same thing that is in racism on the mainland, and people die over it. This is the same thing that religious people confront the LGBT community of the world with, and yes, there, too, people die over it.

People die over the hatreds that they have been given because all they have been taught is to hate and not to use the energy that is that same hatred to turn it into something useful and to do something right, good and positive with it. I could take these generalized pieces of hatred that a whole lot of ethnic Hawaiians like myself have, and give to my children, their friends, my cousin's kids, my brother's son, all my hanai (adopted) keiki (kids) and show them, too, that they can also hate as well as any adult can, or I can use it to do for them, as well as the rest of the planet, the right thing and show them that nothing is more lovely than being able to share with the world who you are, for real, and nothing is more lovely than being able to remain true to who you are while allowing others to just be who they are, too.

Yes, even within the very same ethnically divided group such as both sides of the coin called the Nation of the Peoples of Hawai'i. This is what I call us, us Kanaka Maoli, and I really do not care to hear if I have spelled it wrong, or that I cannot be part of it because I was born in Los Angeles County, California, where it is also know, and lovingly so, as being "The 9th Island." We here on the 9th  love you guys there in the 'Aina with a fierceness, and we are met often with the idea that we are not as real as you are there because we are here. It does not occur to you that when you do this stuff, when you think of us as people who you have to prove are not the same as you are, you hurt us. And the hurt is real, deep, and stays with us for a long, long time.

You hurt us because we are you and you are us, and you hurt us because when we bleed, it is the blood of the ancients which also spill from our veins. When we cry, it is the wailing of the 'Aumakua which is heard. When we rejoice, it is all of the heavens which open wide and smile down on the whole of us and show us that we here are also Na Mamo, are also the cherished and the chosen. Yet you there seem to think that it is a zip code that matters, that who you are is more important to this ...whatever it is that you have turned it into....thing that really, ALL Hawaiians are a part of. Not just you, or me, or your silly drunken Auntie named "Sweetheart" or "Honey Girl" who is the reality of the whole of us all - but it is us all that is the whole of us all.

This is the same thing that MUST BE applied to the whole of us all who inhabit this planet, who expect that we should be able to venture on into the future with eyes opened wide to the things that we know are truth, are ours, are made and here specifically to show the world that we seek peace, not hatred, and that we are Love, not lost, and that the All of Us includes ALL OF US and not one preferred bunch of same humans over another. The color of our skin does not matter unless you are trying to profit from it through measures of hatred and generations old anger. The zip code on our mail does not matter as much as the idea that the zip code on our mail is all on the same planet at the same time. The middle names that are comprised of all 12 letters of the Hawaiian alphabet mean nothing if the only words being formed and used are those which divide us all.

The All of Us need very dearly to take a look at the things happening in Hawai'i right now, the things happening in Florida right now, and we all need to think for a moment about how it came to be that we would hate each other over something that not one of us had a choice in - what race we are, and how that is the greatest way to show to people how ignorance and how old hatred of people who NONE OF US KNEW WHEN IT HAPPENED BECAUSE NONE OF US WERE THERE OR BREATHING BACK IN THE 1800s, but a whole lot of us are willing to hate people because someone a long time ago messed with our ancient ancestors and now we feel like it is our right to take up a bone with strangers and pick it!

Really? You mean you have nothing better to do than mess with other people over something that you really have no control over? You really wanna keep on the hatred?

Wouldn't you much rather be the person who, just by your birth right, are meant as the purveyor of the Aloha that you have no issues with when it is said to a stranger of certain paler origin as they get off the plane, wallet open, ignorances to who you are and what you are up to, completely open for you to take advantage of?

Is someone like that mo' bettah fo' you when they have some Kala for you? Is that all they really are to you?

No wonder why you think they say bad things about you...you have given them no other choice but to, and really, you are showing us your guilty conscience from the inside, out, and yes, that guilty conscience is something that you have over people like me...people who are ethnically like you, but whose zip codes run along the neighborhoods dotting the 5, 10, 210 and 15 freeways rather than the highway called "Kam."

When it is that we, as humans, want to use who we think we are because we think that other people are just going to give in to our whims, it is at this time, no matter your origins, that you need to check yourselves before you wreck yourselves.

Nothing gets done when you are running around in circles. The only thing that happens is that you end up dizzy.

By my own count, I am thinking that we have a lot of people who are dizzy from running around in the same hateful circles. You have gotta be tired. Perhaps you ought to stop fighting so much for the thing that you think still applies and learn now that what it is that you are doing is the opposite of that thing that you call
"pono," because to be "pono" you have to sorta be right...

And the way you behave is not right...it is left and right, just like the two cheeks of the okole called ignorance.

I Love You All !
ROX

Reverend Roxanne Cottell is the Kumu Hula and Creator of the Healing with Hula Program for Women and the Co-Founder of Na Hula O Ka Wahine 'Ui - The Sisterhood of The Soul. She is a blogger, book author, choreographer , Public Speaker, Domestic Violence and Emotional Abuse Survivors Advocate and Spiritual Coach. If you would like to contact her for speaking engagements, Spiritual Consultations, or for anything else, please send an email to reverendroxie22@gmail.com 
(c)  Roxanne K. Cottell. All Rights Reserved

...from the inside

To fix what is outside of us, we have to go from the inside...

We are all asking ourselves where we are supposed to go from here?

That is easy.

We go within.

We have all lived outside of ourselves for so long, worried about who would see what it was that we were trying to hide from the world and not realizing that we were not hiding a thing. It is our fears which have again reared their ugly heads, and it is the collective fear, not of anything other than ourselves, that causes us to see what we do not want to see, and we see it in the people who we don't think the Shadow exists in, and really, the Shadow is nothing to fear because just like the light, so, too, is the Shadow a big part of who we each are.

We have to go within, but a lot of us are afraid of what is there that we cannot see

There is always something that lurks beneath the surface of our personal safety net. We like the darkness, a lot of us do, because we can hide our sins there, or at least we think we can. The reality is that, if we looked at things in the manner that is a dark closet or an attic or a basement that we keep on throwing things into without the light to show us what is there, eventually, as if we didn't know this, it gets pretty cramped and cluttered in those places. Yet, we keep on amassing these piles of stuff that we refuse to look at, stuff  that means something to us in a sentimental manner that really, what all those things are doing is taking up space.

Think about all the shows that feature people who are hoarders, who are addicted somehow, and you will have in your midst the reality that is the cluttered mind, the reality that is the pain buried beneath all that stuff that a person just continues to pile on top of an already big pile of things that may be sentimentally ours but they are sentimentally ours in ways that might be to our own detriment. Hanging on to things that no longer serves a purpose for us, things and people who cannot teach us anything more than they already have, only hurt us in the long run.

Our limited thinking does not allow us to want to think in a manner that allows us to want to look at all these things as clutter. Our limited thinking always tells us that when we want to do better that we are up to no good, and always, someone makes this the truth for us one way or another, and that is when the over-stuffed nature of the closet we hold all these experiences in becomes a detriment. It is one thing to recall with a fondness the way that our dearly departed loved ones used to talk with us, but is quite another thing to remain in the part of the recollection that keeps us there in that hurt and in that heartache where we are ready more to stay there because we think it is comforting us. While it might be comforting to us that we can recall these times with fondness, it should be disconcerting to us that we want to hang on to those times and those things and those people so that we do not have to feel the burden of the loss.

It is in the burden of the loss where we are confused. We want to believe that we will never be able to be the person we were when what was so cool happened both for us and to us. We have not yet gathered the strength to deal with the loss, so we only recall when things were good, and we do not bother with the thing that is the reality of it all. The reality of it all is that we cannot change things outside of us to match the inside, and when we do not allow ourselves to feel our own pain we become someone who we were rather than getting to that point of being who we are on a daily basis.

Who we are on a daily basis is not who we were when we lost what we lost, and instead of thinking only of the loss, we should be looking at the lesson that we learned through that loss.

We have to change things from the inside if we want things to be different. We have to deal with who we were so that who we have become and who we are right now makes sense...

If we want to see change, we have to do it from the inside.

I Love You All
ROX

The Magnificence of NOT knowing what is to be revealed

We learn a lot of lessons in life. Sometimes, the sweetest thing is waiting to be revealed. It is not up to us to guess, but only, to wait for the revelation of it all.

In my personal private life, the one which I share with a few people who I connect with on a completely different level than the physical one only, much is revealed to me, at least, as far as what anyone will learn in their lessons, through the actual physical manifestation of things. Some of the things that were revealed to me while talking to a woman who I will refer to only as "Rose" were things that no one, not even my cousin Kai who knows me well enough to know the truth in this, could possibly know without also knowing me as well as Kai does.

Her name is Rose

I took it in the manner that is the Rose of Sharon, this meeting of this lovely person whose name I only know as being Rose. She wore a Harley-Davidson bandana on her head to cover the evidence of her physical frailty. In her Spirit, in her heart, this person is anything but frail. This person revealed to me so very much about who I am and more, the things that she read for me and while I was in her presence astonished me, because in those words, in some of those things that, at the moment, I am just beside myself about, I found out that there are things that I did not know why they needed to be done, why I have to do them still, and why it is that those things keep cropping up. "You don't need me to tell you why, lady. I just have to tell you that whatever it is that you are afraid of will not go away unless they are done..."

Of course, I sat there as she explained to me what she saw, who she saw, and told me her reasons as to the reason that I have no idea about and more, the reasons that I simply am just baffled over, and it has everything to do with the person who I am becoming. Rose told me things that not a lot of people who do not know me all and only know, and she told me that the moment that these things happen for me, and not TO me, that there will be a bigger truth that I have been waiting to know, that I have been racking my brain for months about, and it all has to do, not with the people that these things have to come to pass with and because of, but more, with the things that I teach and I Spiritually give to people on a daily basis.

A Drive on that Place Called "The Wild Side" 

We didn't drive anywhere, me and Rose. But it was way wild the things that she told me, and much needed to be heard by me, even though a whole lot of it made me squirm uneasily. The reason that it made me uncomfortable is not because this Wisdom Keeper knew me so well, but that she knew, that she knows that I, too, am part, a big part, bigger than I know or realize, of the grand Universal thing about things.

Without leaving La Verne until about 10 P.M., I took a ride on the Wild Side of things for a minute, and saw through the eyes of this woman named Rose those things that I just do not want to deal with at this time, things that I am not ready to go through, things that have to be done. She told me that when the time comes, and I am ready to see them for what they are and even as I already know what a lot of those things marked as "they" are already, I was challenged in the Soul by her words, and eagerly, I listened to what this person had to tell me. She struck me as a Wise One, as a piece of belief called "The Rose of Sharon," because her words, for me, were not marked with anything more than the Love borne of Wisdom, the Wisdom from someone who, even in her frailty, is her strength.

It was an outer strength so marked by an inner peace, a reserve of things unknown and a Soul which refuses to take itself to the depths of its physically assumed frailty. Rose, by any means, is anything but frail. She saw this about me and told me that no matter what, I know what to do, that I am exactly where I need to be at the moment, and that while sometimes, things hurt, sometimes, things make no sense, and sometimes, the things that we cut ourselves from are not meant to be severed but embraced. Even though I know that the shadow side of me keeps on prodding me to do things, think things, make light of things, there are things that, without my needing to really, truly know why, have to be done, and they have to be done so that I can finally be done with the level of things as they are. In order for things to climb to the places that they need to climb to, I have to, you have to, we all have to give in to the things that we work so hard to not deal with.

It ain't that we are not willing to face Truth and stare it in the eyes, but that we want to pick and choose when we will face them...

Now is the best time to make sense of things rather than to make light of them. I know this is the thing that this woman was telling me, because in her machinations of the way that energy works, I found out that I fear a whole lot of things, but that I am well on my way to finding out why I fear the things that I do. I fear what I fear because of the past. If we can let go of the things that are scaring us, asking ourselves questions about why we are so afraid, and asking ourselves what we can do to make us not afraid of them anymore, we can then bother to also know what is the lesson therein contained for us.

My fears are quite ridiculous, as Rose confirmed for me, and again, I was told that the thing that I am doing now is the thing that I am supposed to be doing anyway, and that the things...there is more than only one thing that is scaring the crap outta me at the moment...that make me want to crawl into that zone called "safety" is the thing that I have to deal with. I am not afraid of things in the literal sense. I do not bodily fear these things. My soul...the shadow portion of it, that is...fears being revealed in the sense that is the sensual and provocative and all of those things that can be marked as being the regeneration of things, the renewal of the energies that were prevalent and only for me a little over a year ago last month, and those things which were as they were last year at this time...well, they are the same, but not, and they are "not" because of the things that I have given to them.

The things that I have given to them

We all give a whole lot to the things that we think about. I think about a whole lot, all the time. I think about how many times I have changed my mind, only to come right back to this place called "home," even if it is only in my mind. I have gone over, in my head, at least a dozen times a day, the things that I want to do and the things that I have already done and always I know that we are all learning, all the time.

It is in the things that we are willing to give to a situation, to a person, to ourselves that will always reveal what they are meant to when they are meant to. I see a whole lot of change, and I sense the same fear that I have about certain areas of life, and all of it boils down to the idea that the only thing left that makes these fearful things go away is me. I am the end component in the fear, in the mistrust, not in other people, but in my own self and in my abilities to see things happen as they are meant to and not fret over what I am not seeing that I would love to see. I would love to see that every single one of my friends would be able to be happy and comfortable in their lives at present moment, and I would love to know that my kids are always going to know that patience is the most important thing when we want to see changes. I would love to know that everything that I do and have done and will do are all somehow going to end up with my getting exactly what I want.

Wouldn't we all?

Wouldn't we all just love to know all the answers to the questions that we have that have been haunting us for as long as it all has been, and wouldn't we all just want to know that what we see in our minds is the absoluteness of what is to happen rather than only a representation of what is to be?

Of course we would. We would all love to know what is going to happen next, and for the most part the majority of us are savvy enough to pay attention to the patterns which visit our lives at a constant, but then no one would be around for me to show these patterns to if we all bothered to really think about our lives to this moment.

If we always knew what was going to happen, life would be boring, we would not be able to taste the thrill of not knowing, the thrill of everyday being "6 year old on Christmas day" excited. This is what we should be like, everyday - a 6 year old, anticipating his parents waking up so that he can rush to the side of the tree and gleefully and unmercifully and with total glee and excitement, rip to shreds the paper which hides the truth of the gift beneath.

If we could approach each day with that sort of energy, just imagine the things that we would see in our lives. If we chose to wake up daily and see what is ours as the challenges of the day, we would see, too, the path that we are not only following, but more, the path that we chose and it is the path, we find out, too, that we alone are building.

And alone, what we are building is nothing short of this thing called being magnificent!

This is called Being MAGNIFICENT

This is called being magnificent. This is called being able to deal with waiting for the best things in life to come to us and this is called trusting who we are is good enough in the eyes of Spirit as well as ourselves, to just simply wait until the best comes to us. Period. We cannot force things to happen for us. When they are meant to happen for us, they will just happen for us.

What else we cannot do is force other people to get it in terms of our happiness, to understand where it is that we are each coming from and more, to know for sure that who we are matters, that what we think is all going to make sense for us each one day.

Being magnificent, by the way, is something that just comes naturally to us all....we just need to stop believing the lies we have been told. Being magnificent means that no matter who thinks that there is better out there, at least for them, that who you are is the best version of you that there can be. Being magnificent means that we have accepted who we are for us and not for anyone else. To be the most perfect rendition of who we each really are is the most precious gift which anyone could ever have. The very moment that we can each and all give ourselves that one little chance at grabbing on to our own light and hanging on to it for dear life and realizing that we alone are the only ones who can change our story line from "bleh" to "YEAH!"

We are who makes all the difference in our own world. This means that we alone will be who figures out first just exactly how magnificent we are.

No one will know it until you know how magnificent that you really and truly are!

For anything like that to happen, though, it is important that you just learn to chill and wait because the best is yet to come!

I Love You All !
ROX

Reverend Roxanne Cottell is the Kumu Hula and Creator of the Healing with Hula Program for Women and the Founder of Na Hula O Ka Wahine 'Ui - The Sisterhood of The Soul. She is a blogger, book author, choreographer , Public Speaker, Domestic Violence and Emotional Abuse Survivors Advocate and Spiritual Coach,  and also a group trainer for business in the area of etiquette, person-to-person communication, office group trainings in proper etiquette and clear communication. To reach Rev. Cottell for any reason at all  please send an email to reverendroxie22@gmail.com 
(c) 2013 Roxanne K. Cottell. All Rights Reserved

Happy Fathers Day...Hawaiian Time, that is...

Our Dads only want us to do what makes us happy...

Tonight I am going to write about something else. I was writing when it hit me. I was messing around with my photo editing software, doing some work for my little cousin, Kisha. You see, Kisha is very excited. She is about to embark on the most scary (first time on a big fat roller coaster scary), beautiful (because I saw what she is doing, and I know she is going to make this her work of beauty that is always in progress), thrilling thing in the world.

"My whole life, my Dad has inspired me...even Now." How important right this moment is, and we would not know what these kinds of moments are like without our dads. It is the very truth, as we know these days in our technologically sterile, void of contact that is the truth of us, that we are more inclined to no longer reach out to people, at least the most of us. I say much about the Brennecke Ohana, because they are my family. These people are some of the very most Loving, close knit family of siblings that anyone has ever known. Really. Most recently...okay, not like, recently recently, but the "addition" of the new "baby," of the family, who goes by the name we have always called him...yes...We....the Soares Ohana....the all of us...he's just Drew. When we are talking about families, I am certain that there is not another group of people with whom I am so happy to have grown up with than these people called my cousins. And I adore them and Love them all so very dearly much. The Soares-Brennecke-Petropolous-Dickerson Family has always been my most favorite group of Perfect-together Misfits...the Very All Of Us.

Kisha...The One and Only but Never Lonely Girl of the Brennecke-Petropoulos Bunch

Without Kisha's family...without her brothers....they are not her Step-anything, guys...just like Micah has never been, either...without her older brothers, Jim and Jeff, I have no idea of what real rock music sounds like. The Good Kind, that does not make you want to hurl the moment you hear the first note play and only is "good" to everyone for a whisper silent moment - this is what Jimmy brought, and the idea that I don't have to be bullied by anyone, ever,  always came from Jeff. Then there is my boy...my cousin, Jason, who is more like my brother...and, of course, Drew, my other almost-brother.

And then there is Kisha, the only girl.

Kisha and I are very close, just like sisters. We have always been. I can remember being small kids, running across the street to Booth Park, summertime, to "Summah Fun." Even as I visited my ancestral Home Land as a child as often as did my cousins, it was not always to my grandparents' house in Honolulu. But when it was, even though I cried to come home (I rarely stayed longer than three weeks, tops, without my parents. I missed my parents), I can barely recall having a bad time there. When I went and stayed at Nana and Tutu's house in Pauoa Valley ("Across da Pahk") it was always Kisha who was there. We fought like sisters at times, but at the end of the day, we loved each other still. This still is the truth of the Now. And yes, like she was inspired by her father,  John Brennecke, Ph.D, the guy who everyone knew as "Uncle Jack," I have always been inspired, in some small way, by my dad and his example.

No, not of his words, but of his fire. His drive. These traits I inherited from him, as well as my fierce nature...all from pop. I was asked to tell her story, and it took me a few days - til about an hour ago, while I was creating some things for her to use on her company Facebook Page, before I could see, through her story what I see, too, through my Father's eyes.

Through my Father's eyes I am seen as perfectly imperfect. Yes, I may be a bit to deal with, and sometimes, if the moon is rightly placed for it, I can be downright brooding and moody. I have never ever seen my mother brood, even though I know she does. But Dad? Oh yeah, plenty of times. So, since it is that I have been tasked with this writing, about this wonderful thing that my cousin is finally doing, and also, since I didn't know what to write for Fathers Day, I chose this blog post to say a few things at one time.

I am looking at my cousin through what I imagine her father sees, saw, has always seen...my little cousin is probably one of the most creative, driven individuals I have ever known. No matter how Arien in nature this woman is, and even when she was a little girl caked in mud from head to toe, screaming like a banshee, all the way to the day that she graduated from college, my cousin has always been my Uncle Jack's little Girl. There was no one like her on the planet, just as I know that, for as nutty as I am, and as argumentative as I can be with the man, and no matter how dearly he wants to save me from myself sometimes because I get caked in mud by the slings and arrows that life throws at me, in my father's eyes, there is no other nutcake on the planet who he is sometimes beside himself, usually laughing and shaking his head in disbelief at the thing his baby princess - me - just muttered. I know that my dad knows that I am who I became because in a lot of ways I am like he is, and Kisha and I are like each other in a lot of ways, and we both were inspired by the fathers who raised us..by the guys who we each call "Dad."

It is a father's lot in life to do his best at inspiring his daughter to become the person who she is meant to be, who is the realest version of herself that she can be, because no one likes to be lied to. It is a father's lot in life to show to his daughter what it is like to give respect and receive it as well, because Uncle Jack always told me, at least, that the only thing that anyone needs to actually get is a clue in life...because in order to give respect you have to be able to receive it. It took me a lot of years to figure out what he meant by that, and it was not until most recently that I figured out what he meant by that.

It sounded like "Tita, you only gon' get what you are willing to accept is yours!" and yes, it is the truth.

Kisha accepted that it was her choice to live her life, to be happy and to listen to what her Dad, my Uncle Jack, my dad's good friend and the guy who Kisha loves each and everyday of her life, even now, as he has gone Home to Spirit...she says it all the time....she said it to me today, in fact...

"My whole Life, My Dad Has Inspired Me...even Now..." says Kisha, when talking about the start of her new life as a brand new business owner. She will open Duds and Doodads this month in La verne, California, the very town she grew up in. Every time I talk to her, I can actually hear the sparkle in her eyes. But always, too, I know that she and I both can see her dad smiling right now.

"...you have to learn to receive...," said the Professor...

Yup...my whole life, even and especially through the times that I have not exactly been a gem through...my Dad, he has inspired me...even Now...

Happy Fathers Day...almost a week late, even....to all those dads out there whose daughters will one day look back, think these same thoughts....

I Love You All !
ROX

Living a Life Led By The Soul Within Us Each

We are far more than just what meets the eyes

Human Beings ...we are a silly lot. We think that we have to prove to the world that we believe in things outside of ourselves, and never are we more inclined to NOT tell people that we also need this proof. Proof of what? Of the Great Spirit, God, The Goddess, Godde...Love...the real kind which comes from somewhere inside of each of us, that's what. We want to live peacefully, our needs met, everything perfect.

We do not realize that to live the perfect life we must accept that in a human, carbon-based life form way that we are anything but totally perfect. We are perfect in our imperfections, but that does not happen for anyone unless we are willing to accept these things about us and everyone else, too. When you choose to live your life by the seat of your beleaguered Soul is when the meat of things begins to soften, is when where we have been and what we have seen and all that we have ever gone through, while it might no longer matter, very suddenly it makes sense....perfectly imperfect sense, at that.

WE are magical and special and all of those other things that we do not want to believe, and we do not want to believe these things because we were never taught to accept that we are imperfect, but we are also special. We were never taught that we can appreciate who we are and not only to appreciate other people. We were only told that we need to have respect for other people, but rarely were we told or even taught that we each deserve respect ourselves. We were taught, told, shown, some of us had it beaten into us, to respect others, but in that respect, which, for some of us, was not good enough for those who were demanding it, we were not given any. This is the soreness in the Soul, and this is the collective broken heart that together we choose to remain held onto and to suffer through.

And the reality is that we do not have to suffer for anything, anyone, any reason. We will hurt, but we don't have to suffer for the sake of someone else.

Following the Light of our Selves

How about you guys? Have you all had enough of this garbage that calls on us to sacrifice til we can't see straight? Have you had enough of feeling like you do and have you realized yet that someone else's crap is not your own? I am learning this daily, and daily it pains me to see the things that I see and to know what I know and daily, too, I know that this is almost done, that we are ...I am...spinning my wheels for nothing, worried that Spirit does not hear me and does not know what She is doing. She knows what She is doing, and I know this because even when my days start with the energy that makes me want to slink back to bed, and when I am faced with putting gas in the Wonderbucket or buying what I need to for myself I am aware that I am fine. Even though my brain might hurt from all the things that it has taken in and filtered through it as being "bad" and even as I know that there are things that could be better than what I have in front of me right now, they are, in essence, getting better, or at least getting a little more palatable for my Piscean brain to digest.

If there is anything that I needed to learn these last few days it is that I had to return to that place where Spirit is Who leads me, Who Guides and protects me and my great big Soul. It is the Soul within that has never let me down and never for one moment given up on me or given in to the whims of the Ego, and too, it will always be the Spirit Who will help me when I need it the most, because no matter what, Spirit is the thing that my life is lived by, and it will always be that part of me who is in control.

It will always be Spirit which guides me through tears, even if it is sent in the form of a text from a 19 year old boy who calls me 'Mom," and who texted just to know that everything is okay.

It will always be Spirit which guides my words when speaking to a child whose eyes look like mine, whose face is the semblance of my own, and who, for her 15th birthday, only wished for my own happiness.

It will always be Spirit which wraps my own human arms around a little boy for whom monsters in the darkness can be slain by his mother's Love, and it will always be Spirit who will always Love that I Love these three young people so much.

It is the Soul within us which speaks volumes through the actions on our behalf by others that will always also be the proof of Life lived through, with, by Spirit. It is through the eyes and the Love of the Soul of a person who you love more than you know you do that is the guide to all else.

I Love these children far more than I Love anyone, anything, else...

I Love You All !
ROX

The Truth Which is Yours

Truth is not a stretch by any means...

Let's get a few things absolutely clear here, okay? Truth is Truth. There is no way around it, and there is no way for it to NOT be the Truth in Fact, and even while whatever is the Truth might not be Your specific Truth, again...Truth is Truth and it cannot be changed.

No matter what, the Truth is the Truth and like the days on a calendar, it can never be changed

Not one of us can change the absoluteness that is Truth. Truth is like water - it just is what it absolutely is, and no matter how many times we try to change ourselves so as to accommodate it and more than that, no matter how many times we try hard to place ourselves into a situation where the Truth becomes the thing that is apparent and immediate, the truth behind The Truth is that there is not a lot that a person can do change the Truth other than to simply live with it and within it.

Living With and Within Your Own Truths

It is not as easy as anyone might think, the thing called Living Within Your Own Truth.

To live within one's own Truth...well, it is like living within your own skin and having no issues with your own self, really. When we think about all the things and ways of being that we have tried on and which did not fit, we find that returning to the truth we thought was ours is comforting, but the truth about that, too, is that while that which comforts us might have been the truth in the past, more and more we also find that we are itching to at least try also forming a new truth about ourselves and what it is that we are willing to know as the Truth which is Our Own.

In my world, the Truth which is my own is the Truth which I can live with that is about myself. You see, for the most part, we are all taught as children to live within our means and never to go outside of it. To live by that which can be seen as the Truth which belongs to someone else is only a measuring stick really, and in that truth are the kernels of Knowing that we often times are told and taught by our well-meaning parents as being the only Truth there is about a thing - that only other people can tell us what is OUR truth. Really, the only Truth that there is about anything at all is the Truth which we are able to deal with on a daily basis and that is also a Truth that is our own. There is nothing wrong with telling people who you are, and there is nothing wrong with being able to live within the confines of what is a Truth that we can deal with. A Truth we can deal with, even if it is a Truth which was formed by others and which rings like our own does, is a Truth that speaks to our Soul, our Egos, our everything, and is a Truth that we are still willing to live by, even as it is a collective Truth.

It all boils down to what it is that we are each willing to live with, what we are willing to see and to know and most of all, to accept as the Truth as it applies to us and our lives. When we are willing to do all of these three things, this is when the Truth of us is easier to deal with. When we are able to accept that maybe we are not everyone's favorite person, and when we can accept that we are not perfect, that we are not always going to be right - this is when we are more able, not only as a human carbon based life form, but also as a Spirit, to live within what is our own Truth.

Our own Truth will not ever look exactly like anyone else's. Our own Truth is one of those things that while we eventually accept and embrace it, we also can never change it. Who we are essentially never changes. The person who is within us is the person who the world does not know. Only people who are of likeness to us will ever know who we really are, and believe it when I say that immediately, and no matter what, it is our Souls which know who it is who has our backs and who are only there to make sure that whatever Lesson it is that the Universe is trying to teach us, we learn. When we can accept who we are, what we are each all about, what we have to offer to ourselves let alone anyone else, this is when life turns out to be the thing that we set out for it to be.

While it is a beautiful thought that who we are will be loved and accepted by ALL those around us we have to remember that this will never be. What will always be, though, is our individual opportunity to be able to learn to Love our very selves, no matter what. We are the highest octave on the string of notes called "Our Individual Life" and we are who makes or breaks us. We can only do so much for other people, but we can do a whole lot for ourselves and for who and what we are and aim to be. It is never anyone else who has to accept us or who we are - that is ours alone. To believe that someone else is who will shoulder the burden of Our Selves is preposterous at best. To think that anyone else is supposed to take the responsibility for how we feel, yes, even after they have been incredibly foolish enough to tell us their truth (and even expected us to just be cool with it...nope...not gonna happen) about who we are.

The Truth which is yours is the Truth that you have created for yourself. If you have a bunch of turmoil in your life, it is time that you stepped back and looked at it all for real and thought to yourself about the Truth that is the fact that you called it all into your life somehow. If you have a bunch of confusion in your life and it is making your head swim with nonsense all the time, dive on in there and ask your Self why it is that you have not bothered to STOP with the looking at the Truth that used to be and START looking at the Truth that is, because the Truth that is IS YOU and was created by You, too. Once we each and all can think this way and more than that, ACCEPT what is the Truth of us we will see the changes. We will notice that while the world around us does not change, our thought about it and our entire way of seeing it as it really is also changes. We start thinking in the manner that is us being able to handle our Truth and our being okay with the idea that while we might not like what we see or what is the fact of the matter at the moment, we also know that like all else, our Truth may never change, but the things that comprise our lives always will.

We will always be a certain way until we are not. We will always believe certain things until we no longer have to. We will always be the person we each are. We will always Know that what is happening in our lives is the Truth as far as our lives are concerned at any given time and for whatever reason we might have. The Truth is that life changes always, and whether we like it or not or want it to happen or not, it is going to change.

The only question you should ever have is not if you can handle the change, or if you are going to like the changes, but rather and only what your Truth in all of it is.

Think about it...

I Love You All !
ROX

Other peoples' time is valuable

When it comes to things that other people offer, no matter what, it pays to value them and their time...

You could sit there thinking to yourself that what you do is very valuable, and it likely is. Yet, there is a huge portion of the population for whom it is nothing at all to take what they will from another person without compensating them for their time, even in a small way. People love to be appreciated. When we appreciate others and are grateful simply for the thought of our helping them get where they need to be we are exchanging Love on a higher level.

An exchange of higher energies

There is nothing quite more deflating OR defeating to another person's Spirit than to undervalue who they are by undervaluing what they do. If anyone does anything at all for another person, a kind word is wonderful, but to be appreciated through that person telling another person of how great a job they think you do is pure bliss. It is wonderful to be recognized for the things that you do. When a person is valued not only as a person but also for the things that they do in relation to other people, regardless if it is in a business sense or otherwise, a person will always know that they are valued because they will want to continue to help others, even when they, themselves, are without a whole lot. I know this animal. I have known this animal my entire life, and most recently was introduced to the idea that sometimes, even though we might be Loved and cared about, even though who we are as a Spirit might be valued, there is nothing at all like being valued for the work that you do.

There is nothing like seeing the smile on a friend's face when they come to you, saying thanks for hooking them up with their last gig. There is no feeling like the overwhelming sense of pride in one's self when they know that they were able to help another person, especially if that other person could really use that help.

We don't realize how important we are to others until it is time for an even trade of energies. This could be anything. An exchange of energies traded for time spent on someone else's dream is the highest form of gratitude that there is, and it is because when we do things for other people, automatically we are doing for ourselves. When we give to others a piece of ourselves so that they can realize what it is that they have always wanted to, we immediately get the gratification of knowing that what we have done for someone else is valuable enough for others to take notice. When other people take notice of what we do for them and they tell another person that we have done anything at all, this is when the compensation of who we are versus what we do comes into play. Even as who we are sometimes melds with what we do, we are no more recompensed for our work than what we expect.

If we expect to be respected in the manner that we care to be, we have to expect that as the reality and without a sense or an inkling of doubt behind the thought. When we doubt something, it will always be that we will get what we need, but the thing is, it won't be as grand as we want it or desire it to be. It will be what we think it is. When we decide that we are valuable beyond even what we want to believe, this is when the fun starts. This is when we start to see that who we are is more valuable than what we do, and at that time what we do becomes that much more noticeable. It becomes more apparent that who we are is shown in the work that we do.

It might be shown in the work that we do, but...

There are always going to be people who believe that somehow, they are owed by us. There are always going to be people who will grace the planet thinking that they can do what we do but why should they bother since we are doing it for them?

Well, with that line of thinking, why would anyone bother to do anything further for anyone else if they were not going to be evenly recompensed for their time? It is an insult, not only to a person's intelligence, but also to their Spirit. It is an insult to believe that the person who does anything for someone else is going to be willing to do more when their time is not valued, and it is going to be an insult to anyone who takes pride in their work and for whom what they do matters. It is an insult beyond anything imaginable when we do something for other people and when our work is not appreciated and more, there is no energetic exchange for the work done. When we choose to believe that what we do is more important than what another person does and that person is helping you with your dreams, and you decide that you do not need to trade energies with them that are positive, MANY things can and do happen. It is at this point that people either take it out on the other person by not only no longer doing what they did for them, or worse - they "undo" the good by chasing it with vengeance.

We create our own Karma when we choose who is doing good by us and who is, by our own definition, doing nothing at all and when we choose to act on it, or not act on it, behaving as though we could do this all on our own. The last thing that anyone wants to believe is that on one hand our work in undervalued, and on the other hand, in the thoughts that would be those in the Karma creator's head, that we can do just fine without their help. And this is not illegal, but it is immoral and unethical. To believe that someone else's time is not valuable just because they happen to be happy doing what they do is WRONG. Lots of people are happy doing what they do because they are doing what they want to do AND being compensated for it. This is what is called an even exchange of energies.

How can anyone POSSIBLY think that to have someone else do them a favor is somehow the joy -to have been asked....?? HOW? That may happen, but it will only happen one time. No one I know likes to work for a pat on the back. Eventually, and no matter what, those who we decide whose work is valuable versus who we think is valuable and can live without compensation...yeah...those are two very different primates...one primate is funny and behaves like it and the other is primal and angry....think about it.

When we value a person but not their work it creates resentment and people get angry.

The Other Side of the Coin

When someone's work is valued and people take notice, we find that in that value is the seed of trust, of Love, of wanting to be part of the bigger energy that is the All That Is. When we choose to recompense that same level of energy to others, that also shows. It shows not only in the work they do for us after we have chosen to not give them their just due, but more, it also shows in the way that they treat themselves. It makes a person feel like they are not valued for the things that they do, and when we expect that they will do it just because we expect them to, this is where the resentment begins.

When we think that who we are is enough to make a person treat us fairly is where the onus begins on our part. There are a whole lot of people for whom I do a whole lot for, and most of those people are grateful and almost all of them somehow compensate me for my time and my talents - and these are talents that not a lot of people can claim to and no, they are not of the Spiritual but of the actual means, meaning that my work with words and pictures is some of the best around, or so I have heard.

Yet, there are those few smaller companies for which I have done a WHOLE LOT for and who think that giving a person no choice in the compensatory energies is somehow okay.

No. No it is not.

.Other peoples' time and talents are valuable to them. People charge real money and expect an even exchange of energies for the good work that they do. When that does not happen, resentment becomes huge and the drive behind the action becomes the dive that the person who needs to be compensated becomes easier to delve into, and that is a very hard place to be for a person. I know this animal, because I am this animal, and it is one thing to be rabidly on fire for the work that we each do...

...yet it is quite another beast to think that what we do on either side of the energy is somehow not as important for the person it was done for as it was for us and more, as it was for us to be finally recognized for it.

I Love You All
ROX

We do ANY kind of wedding ceremony

...even that of the last minute Shotgun variety

(No firearms required)

Send me an email for more information