Wishcraft: My Daydreams about a perfect life

     Every afternoon about this time I feel like talking to someone especially when I have spent the better part of the day alone.  I thought I would write a little bit of what I have been working on daily.  It may sound surprising to you to hear that I actually work on things in my life.  After all, I don't have a job that pays money, and sometimes even to myself it seems like I go through days, weeks, months without much on my agenda.  While it is true that I sometimes don't have anything concrete to show for my time, I think I am always busy with the project, the aspiration to live well.  Since I can remember I have wanted to improve my life, my psyche, my relationships, my spirituality.  I have wanted to and have contributed to this world in positive ways.  What I crave now more than anything else is not a job or something that I can point to and say "There! Look what I have done!" but rather what I crave now and probably what all other cravings were made of is Peace. I want to wake up every morning and feel loved and nurtured.  My guess is that most of us want that.  I am pretty convinced that we can do that for ourselves with prayer, meditation, visualization, contemplation, on second thought, perhaps this is perfection and not actually achievable on this plane....
     OK back to what I began with and the title of this post.  I am reading a book called "Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want" by Barbara Sher.  I have known about the existence of this book for over 15 years, I have had the book for a year, and just began reading it this fall.  I think the title put me off a little at first.  It sounded too "New Agey" or gimmicky...it is a great book.  There are excersizes in this book that are building the kind of peace I mentioned above.  One excersize asked you to write down 20 things that you really like to do.  What I discovered is that I do almost all of the twenty things on my list on a weekly basis. My list was very simple, read, write, run, eat good food, have coffee with my friend, day dream, teach a class, meditate, pray, bake bread, garden, watch a sunrise, travel...you get the idea.  I also saw that most of what I had written cost me nothing, and there was a fair balance between alone time and time with people.

As I said in my last post, I feel like I have turned a corner in my life.  I have my sense of humor back, I am making new friends, and I feel like I have a future...I remember back before my sister died, I would lay on the sofa, napping and feel that life was vast, limitless.  There was this luxurious feeling that let me nap knowing there would be plenty of time for everything.  After Binky got sick, then eventually died of cancer, there was about three years where naps were almost impossible.  Sleeping became an issue, because in dropping off to sleep, my defenses down, I would panic at the thought of the the finiteness of life.  At any moment you can be gone from here, or your loved one can be gone.  I felt very insecure, there was no foundation, nothing to rely on.  Right underneath the surface I was terrified.  I woke up in a panic in the middle of the night a lot. It has been a journey through that time...many times it felt like days or weeks went by without much happening on the surface.  I continued to meditate, I got some help for the panic attacks, I continued to read, I retrieved a book of devotions that I had used many years ago, I rediscovered some things that brought happiness,  I began to heal.
     So, I am a different person today.  I have recovered some peace.  I know that God loves me.  I also know that this wonderful, luminous life does have limits. I have an updated list of maxims that I think are important for my life.  They are as follows:  Live Now.  Nurture Yourself. Reach Out in Love. Forgive. Set Proper Boundaries. Trust God. Belieive the Best About People.  Try New Things. Listen to Your Heart's Desire and Do That.  LOVE.