(originally posted 5/7/15)
This blog post is from 6 years ago. Since then the beautiful interviewees have transitioned to heaven. They were the grandparents of a dear, old friend of mine. Here is to their legacy living on. I’m incredibly curious about love and the power of love in its many forms. I’m also very curious about love in relationships. So I’m on a mission to interview couples who have been together for a long period of time and are still in love. I’m off to find their secrets and share them with you. Meet Jane and Al. They are both 93 years young and live in Oregon. Or as Jane says, he’s almost 93. She likes younger men. Which brings me to my first secret. A sense of humor. They were joking back and forth as individuals and as a couple the entire conversation. A little bit of fun is always a wonderful remedy. They met for the first time in 7th grade but reunited right after college. Jane volunteered for the USO in Seattle. Jane and her friend were in charge of the dance they held every Sunday night. This particular Sunday it was raining and she didn’t feel like going, but she didn’t want to let her friend down so she went anyway. And there was Al. Her friend said that Jane knew him from school and wanted to bring her over to him. Jane was excited that he looked different than she remembered and they had a nice time getting acquainted. Al had to leave for a week to go to Canada because he had been serving in the coast guard. When he called Jane a week later to say it was Al, her answer was, “Al who?” They both laughed about this as they were telling me the story. They started dating and a year later they were married. That was 69 years ago. So what are the secrets to such a long, successful relationship? Enjoy the list below. Family. Having a wonderful family has held them together. It’s really important in the later years. Al explained the secret this way, “With couples, it’s love at first sight or other times it’s fight after fight. But people who really love each other grow closer and other people who aren’t so sure about each other grow farther apart. Patience and Understanding were the two things Jane said she learned in her later years that she wish she had known when she was younger. She said you need to get used to living with another person who has different ideas. We aren’t all the same person but that’s ok. It’s funny though because maybe Jane has more understanding than she realized because when I asked Al about her, he said that she’s always been understanding. Acceptance is what Al wished he could have told his younger self. It’s important to try to understand and accept each other. It’s not really important who wins the argument in the end. I thought this one was crucial. Not always the easiest, but the most rewarding and loving. As much as you think you have the answers, you don’t. Jane explained that it’s such a changing world. She said, “You have your own little world. Then the outside world enters into the relationship and you have to make an adjustment to that. Many new things come up. Each other’s tastes are different.” You have to be flexible, open and understanding there. You can’t expect to know everything when you are young. Sometimes they don’t agree on everything but that’s just the nature of it. Just being aware of that seems to help. Jane said that Al’s relaxed nature helped the relationship because things never seemed to get to him and she was grateful for that. They enjoy their time together. They have been avid world travelers, visiting more than six countries together. During tough times they turned to their faith in God. You need to be thankful. There are so many people that can be picky about little things. Jane suggests avoiding this the longer you are in the relationship. And last but not least, the final secret Jane and Al have for us is to respect each other’s individuality. It seems to me that the most common theme here is understanding. If we can all take one thing away from this I hope it would be that. All of us as humans want to be understood. Someone’s advice to me once was to always try to understand the other person instead of trying to be understood. This allows you to come from a space of love. Jane ended our conversation with a smile in her voice by saying, “It’s a real journey though. A real, fascinating journey.” If you'd like dive deeper with me in my popular 11 day healing course, "Profound Healing Through Self Love" Click Here...The Intro and Lesson 1 are free!
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(Maybe it's just a little shift in perspective)
(Originally posted 1/12/16) I’ve been thinking about big things lately. Deep things. That’s kind of normal in this Jamie body. I like to contemplate the soul and existence and why my socks still look dirty after I wash them. And during one of my ponderings I was thinking about Love and God and Peace. All the same things to me disguised with different letters of the english language. I got to thinking that we make these concepts out to be so illusive. We think they are these big, grand things we spend our whole lives trying to “get” or “achieve” just like everything else. When we see them in that light, they do seem a bit far off and too big for us little ol’ us. “Love” seems too divine, like for monks and stuff. “God” and “Universe” seem so... God! And “peace” seems like a short lived experience for only the lucky ones who must have done something really great in their past life. But, I’m beginning to disagree. The reason we don’t feel these “things” more often is because we view them as difficult to obtain. I realize now, it’s the other way around. It’s that easy. Love is so simple. Peace is who we are 365 days a year, for our whole lives, underneath thought. It’s our default state. (even if we’ve forgotten because of so much “suffering” thought piled on top, like a lawn under and dozen kids after the candy-showering of a freshly cracked pinnata. Love is just okayness. It’s simplicity. It’s acceptance. It’s subtle. It’s anything uncomplicated. Peace is the same. And so is God. And the Universe. Gentle, simple, there everyday. It never goes aways. But sometimes we can’t see it if we are looking through the wrong lense. Maybe we just have to begin to see that it’s here everyday. All the time. And it’s not such a big far away thing. And we don’t need anything to change on the outside world to achieve it. It’s already ours. That’s the great illusion. If I could just have that thing I’d feel better. If I could just have cleaner socks, more people would like me. Open your mind a little today to the energy of love feeling like the energy of a gentle friend in your life instead of a scary monster. Maybe God feels like a sweet pet you adore instead of a big man on a loud speaker who gives you a twix only if you’re “good”. Maybe peace is as attainable as laughter instead of this weird detached state you’ll achieve and never be able to relate to other humanoids again. Let’s not complicate these magnificently simple gifts of ours. They are all around us and they’re ours for the easy taking. If you'd like dive deeper with me in my popular 11 day healing course, "Profound Healing Through Self Love" Click Here...The Intro and Lesson 1 are free! (originally posted 10/29/15)
I’ve immersed myself in the study of my inner-workings, my mind, my spirit, the divine, human potential, healing and the like for the last 5 or so years of my life. When one lives in this world, one hears many phrases over and over again spoken as commonly as the words “the” and “and”. Phrases like, “surrender”, “universe” and “be” are a few. They become somewhat trendy like soy lattes and Uber. You hear them so much that they begin to have an intellectual meaning at first. Then one day after years of marinating in your halo adorned noggin, they hit you on a deeper level and you think, “Ohhhhhh, SURRENDER!” or “Wowwww, UNIVERSE” or “Yeah!!!! I just need to BEEEEEEE.” I recently had one of those moments with the word “nothingness”. As a young (super young) and curious woman in the Los Angeles spiritual community, my well-meaning self would hear the phrase, “We are everything and nothing at the same time.” I’d then put my fist gently under my chin like a scholar, slowly bobble-doll-nod my head and agree with my peers saying things like, “Yeah, totally, we are all and nothing at the same thing.” (what?!) Until recently, I realized that maybe I actually had no idea of what that might look like. But last week I got a deeper glimpse. One of those aha moments. And I am so very lucky. Because I’m aware of many of my judgments and belief systems, I see what goes on in my head a lot. (Yikes, bikes) Sometimes, I don’t know what to do or not to do with them, but I see them nonetheless. In these instances, I bring my bag of Halloween goodies (tis the season) to an outside source to help me see what I can’t see myself. (Like what I do for other people.) Things trigger us all, but what I like to do is get curious about those pings and pangs I feel. They are just thought in the form of emotion. What is this? Is this thought since it feels like a smelly baby diaper would smell? Do I need to trust this? Sadly, many people aren’t taught to question these feelings. They trust everything in their heads. Schools don’t teach that most of what goes on up there is useless and fleeting and just moving energy. Most thoughts aren’t true because they are coming from fear. My hope for you is to get curious too. When you shed the light on the monsters, you see they were only a shadow. Every. Time. Because, well, simply put, there is only love. And if we aren’t seeing things that way, our mind is just out of control. Getting back on track…EARTH to Jamie! I used to do a lot of digging around in my beliefs around success and I’d ask myself, “What would it feel like if I had everything I wanted and people judged me but I just didn’t care.” Well, I would feel free. But with that feeling of freedom came this sense of nothingness. Like, there would be nothing else to “achieve”. (Ah, Thank you ‘American Dream’ for that one.) It felt as though in that space things would cease to exist or some how spiral out of control. Or that there would be nothing else to do there and how can you do nothing? It was as if my ego needed to be doing to feel satisfied. And then it hit me. Oh my soul! The nothingness I’m describing is peace. Nothingness is who we are! It’s our true nature. It’s the peace people speak of. The nothingness is peace! Our true state is connected to everything at once. It’s the nothingness. Nothingness is peace. Holy cow, how sneaky the ego is. Peace was right in front of my face and it was making me feel uncomfortable. I was questioning it left and right. Trying hard to stay out of that space when all I desperately wanted was to have that peace. I already am that peace. I just needed to remember it! And feel it and know what it was. So, now I recognize when I feel that and I acknowledge it. When I’m slowed down and not needing to control or ‘do’, I’m just being. Being inspired and taking action from that place. Being in the moment. Just being. Whistling do re me as I walk the dogs. Laughing at myself. Kissing long and hard. Feeling music in my bones. Our mind may come back on line in these moments sometimes and feel a little funny because our mind tries to keep us safe based on past experiences it has associated to something uncomfortable related to that peace. But just noticing that this is what it is doing is usually enough for those thoughts to pass and fade. As I like to shout on the mountaintops, “It’s all about awareness.” My wish for you is if you have a sense of this nothingness I speak of, sit with it longer. Let it be your normal. It’s your home base. Let it be uncomfortable and then let it get more comfortable and then let it be so peaceful you become the next trendy guru who rides an Uber while drinking a soy latte. Marinate there as often as possible. No need to force it. Just trust it. It’s you. It’s me. It’s all of us. The all and the nothing. Now, how cool is that? If you'd like dive deeper with me in my popular 11 day healing course, "Profound Healing Through Self Love" Click Here...The Intro and Lesson 1 are free! |
About the AuthorJamie Wozny is a passionate Spiritual Teacher who writes for souls who are curious about activating the principles of radiance, authenticity and magnificence within their own hearts. Her purpose is to help you awaken to your Soul's True Nature one article at a time. Archives
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