Today I opened Holy Wow! Volume III… The HazMat Variety Show… to page 54. “When you are human… you must be strong… resolved. ‘I will not be consumed by bitterness.’ You must not allow grudgement, resentment, vengeance to twist your Life. You must not let bitterness win.”
 
This is a substantial decision you make inside yourself. A choice. Choosing to release yourself from bitterness is your inner work. 
 
Sometimes it’s easy to think… “I’m going to hold on to this bitterness, by golly. That’ll show him!” (Or “them” or “her.”) Holding onto anger, annoyance, feeling slighted… is not the ally it wants you to think it is.
 
Cutting right to the chase… the only person your inner bitterness hurts is you. 
 
Keeping that bitterness churning inside… making sure your resentment and distress are well-nourished… only fortifies your suffering. Generating self-inflicted obstacles. Self-inflicted pain.
 
Another person may have triggered your initial upset… but you keeping your distress alive and well in your gut, in your thoughts, in your inner Life… is you inflicting pain on you. The harsh clamp bitterness has on you poisons your inner environment. Making where you live inside yourself sour… acidic… unpleasant.
 
At this point… it has very little to do with the “other person.” The only person who can release yourself from your distress is you. 
 
Be kind to yourself. Assert self-compassion. Do yourself a favor. Let it go. Jump off the inner-torment merry-go-round. Release yourself from self-imposed distress.

​We humans are quite a fascinating bunch. Someone arrives back from a trip or vacation. Have you ever noticed? You say, “How was it? Did you have a good time?” 
 
“Oh yeah, it was great. Except this one bad thing happened.” They proceed to tell you about the “one bad thing.” Really? 
 
I’ve longtime wondered… how is it we humans are so captivated by negativity? Enchanted. Bewitched. “I’m sure I can find something here to fuss about.”
 
The negative is not the only thing happening. Negativity is not our only choice.
 
In the mid-80s, I began practicing a resource I guarantee you will pry off the barnacles of negativity and level your inner playing field. The wonders of gratitude. Spoiler Alert: If you’re thinking, “Oh sure, that. I know about practicing gratitude.” Unless you have exercised your gratitude muscles… unless you have actually practiced gratitude… you have no idea about the intriguing powerhouse that is gratitude.
 
At first, I followed the suggestion… “make a daily list.” “Today, I am grateful for these 3 things in my Life.” Hmmm… interesting. This gave me a different perspective to look back over my day. To look back over my Life. Looking for the good stuff. The “not so bad” stuff. Things that made me smile.
 
Truth is… they’re here, too. Looking for them… you find them. 
 
There are no rules for what you get to be grateful for. The sunset. That chocolate milkshake. A friend’s kindness. The moving parts of your day going smoothly. A stranger’s kindness. The fact I’m drawing breath.
 
Over time, I began to see… the significant difference between thinking gratitude and feeling gratitude. Give that one a spin. Feel grateful.
 
Feeling gratitude reveals an unexpected gift. Bringing an unanticipated affirming quality… to yourself and your Life. 

​Today let’s do another random tiptoe thru the Holy Wow! tulips. Picking up Volume I… The Blessing Is Being Here… opening to page 137. “Now here is something you are going to find fascinating. One way you can see the uniqueness of each human’s emotional packaging is by watching several people as they each have a completely different reaction to exactly the same stimuli.”
 
I have always found this fascinating. When you’re young… you believe everybody thinks, feels, perceives the same way you do. It doesn’t even occur to you they don’t. 
 
Getting older… experiencing more different people and more fascinating circumstances… you can’t help but see… one person can be tweaked and put off by the same thing another person finds engaging and hilarious. Each with our own unique emotional packaging… completely coloring how we experience our world.  
 
Many diverse ingredients make up each person’s emotional stew. One person’s upset or another person’s amusement have very little to do with whatever the stimuli, circumstance or interaction may be. Each person’s reaction(s) to their Life comes from the entirety of their own… karmic… ingrained… multi-experienced… self.
 
Karma… the nature you’re born with. Entering incarnation in your own particular emotional packaging. Your own inner wiring. Easily disturbed or agitated. Perhaps laid-back and chill.
 
Human emotional Life is not a linear excursion. Numerous additional factors are continually at play. Family… we learn a lot about what’s silly or terrifying from the family we grow up in. Society… what’s currently acceptable. What’s not. Our personal reaction to past experience is definitely stirred in. 
 
Each and all add flavor and spice to your particular stew. To your particular view.

Einstein
You may recall me mentioning… Holy Wow! had an absurdly long gestation period. As it all finally came tumbling out… I was surprised how often I quoted Albert Einstein. I hadn’t intended to quote him so much. He just kept showing up with the perfect thing to say.

That Einstein! Here’s a guy who truly had his finger stuck in the electric socket of Life. Mostly his reputation is one of scientific brilliance. Curiosity. Inquiry. Probing. Curious about the properties of light and physics. Probing myriad other intriguing matters.

Einstein challenged and changed the way we view our world.

Not as widely recognized… Einstein was a deeply philosophical man. Spiritual. Wise. Insightful. Providing fresh, astute perceptions about being human. Reflections of ourselves. For us to ponder and realize.

​Remember the bumper stickers from way back when… “Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty?” A friend of mine in Corvallis, Oregon, got creative…trimming hers to read… “Act Kind of Random.” I loved that! So, here, I am randomly choosing a volume of my book, Holy Wow!... there are currently 3 volumes, soon to be 4. Randomly opening to a page… riffing on what I randomly find there.

Holy Wow! Volume II… Yikes! Yuck! Yum! Yay!... page 224.

“May the generations before us and the generations after us receive sustenance from the Power of the Presence that lives within us.”

​Oh cool. One of my faves.

We humans are individual molecules of water melded and mingling within the great ocean of Life. We live within an ongoing torrent of evolving consciousness. Effected by all that has come before us. Affecting all coming after us. This is The Flow of Awakened Awareness thru all time. With every breath we draw… we each are activated, effected and participating in this Flow of Awakened Awareness. Playing our part in the here and now is why we incarnated.
​
The lives we each create and live… the choices we make…touch and influence… hopefully enhance… this ongoing stream of mindful, evolving, perceptive awareness. Way beyond random. Kinda blessed.

Aloha ~ This is Dana St. Claire. I am a longtime meditation teacher… ever-fascinated by “the zaniness of being human.” You know… the ongoing questions about who we humans are… how we are… why we are. Always intriguing how it is we do what we do. And why. Being human = quite an endeavor.

Since my early 20s, I have been on the verge of writing a book. Turns out that verge… that edge… that threshold… was several football fields + many Olympic-size swimming pools + a trip to Neptune and back… wide. All of a sudden, I found myself cruising into my mid-60s(!). Thinking, “If I don’t write and publish this book before I go out of this incarnation… I’m going to be really pissed!” I could be more genteel and say… I would be really “upset.” Or… I would be really “frustrated.” Truth be told… I would be really pissed.

After 5 highly effective hypnotherapy sessions… the “tumbling out” I had anticipated for decades came a ’tumblin’ indeed. Holy Wow! It had never occurred to me to write anything about me… my story… my spiritual journey. “Why would anybody want to know about that?” As I began writing after the hypnotherapy sessions… Chapter 1… “Years ago, when my children were little, I sat down on the toilet one day.” Oh… okay. Looks like I’m going to write about myself. As it turned out… all of the odd # chapters in Holy Wow! are my story and general commentary. All of the even # chapters take place in The Interpretorium. Beings who are about to coalesce their particles and incarnate human on Planet Earth go to The Interpretorium for Orientation. General updates on Earth’s current whys and wherefores. Explorations of the wide-ranging controversies and contentments presently activated on this blue-green Planet of Paradox. Explorations, indeed. Let’s go there.