by Charles McAlpine | May 6, 2013 | Blog
Another year under the belt..! How fun to gather and celebrate four years of being a part of and a gathering place for this spiritual community! I am always amazed at how celebrating a milestone, be it birthday, anniversary, birth, death, or any other significant life event, creates a deeper awareness of the journey we’ve been on. I hadn’t spent much time recently, thinking about our 3rd Anniversary celebration… Until setting up and experiencing the 4th! For the past couple of days, it has been front and center in my thoughts. Maybe some of it is comparisons. How the food, drinks, decorations and entertainment were set-up. Who was participating.., who was not. Yet, the bigger awareness is what a different place I am in emotionally, mentally and even physically. I had very clear memories of how stressful it was going into our third year. It was not unusual to be wondering (in fear), if we would even survive as a business. Would it become profitable before my personal resources were drained. Worry, fret, worry, fret. This year… That has energetically moved on. It is not the sort of thing that I burn brain cells on. How fun to come to this realization. How thrilling to realize that it is simply an old story. It’s perfectly in its place, as a story from the past… One that doesn’t need to be relived or kept alive. A memory. This reflecting on the past also supports looking to and imagining an even more amazing optimal future! If everything can shift so dramatically in a few short months… What else is possible?? Something...
by Charles McAlpine | Apr 29, 2013 | Blog
There is change afoot. It is time to celebrate and time to reflect. We are preparing to celebrate the 4th Anniversary of becoming “a center for intentional living”… the birth of Storm Wisdom. So, it is easy to focus on how different it feels now, than when we first opened our doors or any of the annual celebrations we have hosted since. It is a magical time for us… yet there is also a bit of melancholy too. You see, when I was inspired to create Storm Wisdom, I was woefully unconnected with the spiritual community in the Phoenix area. I had been doing a lot of my own spiritual growth work through seminars and retreats offered by “Lucid Living”. However, most of these were held in California, Mexico or Canada. (BTW… Lucid Living has an all new membership website, offering their amazing teachings and materials at www.LucidLiving.net). Which meant I had a strong community of support. Just not here in Phoenix. However, as I would tell people about my dream of what I wanted to create, they would tell me about places in the valley, where they thought someone was doing something similar. “Angel’s Serenity”, “Lightworker’s Gifts”, “Rainbows from Heaven”, and “A Peace of the Universe”, were all places that people pointed me towards. The first time I went to “A Peace of the Universe”. They were closed! It was a Monday. As I stood outside the door of this well-hidden space, I thought to myself… “I don’t know how long they have been open, but they will NEVER survive in this location! I had driven around the...
by Charles McAlpine | Apr 22, 2013 | Blog
Process, process, process! It seems that everyday there is a new awareness for me in my ever evolving journey toward enlightenment! More these days, than ever before, the lessons, language, messages and insights are starting to come together in a way that might make sense. IF… I pay attention or at least stay open to all that is unfolding. This week, I have been witnessing old behaviors and coping mechanisms. They reveal how they have hindered my personal desires for shifts and change… with the realization that they have been with me for a LONG time. These are the ways that I thought I was coping or even growing in the context of some situations. In reality… Not so much! Let me describe a couple that have come up this week. The first is replaying or rerunning a situation or conversation over and over in my mind! Most of the time, when I catch myself doing this, I am aware that it has been going on for awhile. By the time I catch what I am doing… I am emotionally on edge. I feel tense or angry, frustrated, martyred, or.., (any number of other feelings)! This week, I found myself reliving an e-mail I received 6 or 7 years ago! In the e-mail a manager from another area in the company, basically said some things that felt disrespectful. And my boss who was copied on it.., responded in a way that felt like my options for retaliation were limited. So here I am, years later still crafting the response that would make me feel superior. The response that would...
by Charles McAlpine | Apr 1, 2013 | Blog
As I sit here contemplating where to begin, my mind is drawn to the past. In times like these, when I sense or feel change coming my way.., one of the things I am aware of, from my past, is impatience! I guess I always considered myself a “change manager”. Mostly because the changes that I was aware of were external (moves, relationships starting or ending, new jobs, mergers, etc.). So, my goal was to get in front of the situation and attempt to control the outcome or impact of the change. My impatience came from being able to see the vision of what I thought would be the best outcome for me AND doing everything I could to ensure it happened my way! And yes… I know how arrogant and self-serving that sounds. It is also true. However, if like me, you believed that these changes were inevitable.., then why not maximize the return on your investment of time, money, love, boredom, location, or <fill-in-the-blank>! It was always a very calculated process. A game if you will, and I was impatient to see if I was going to get my way… if I was going to win! Fast forward to this time in my life… What happens when the changes that I feel coming are internal ones? What do you do, when there is no vision of what is to be… When the change is not a job or relationship or move? What happens when the change is “how you live, breathe and walk around in your own skin”? It is hard to be impatient for a change...
by Charles McAlpine | Mar 11, 2013 | Blog
Earlier this week, I was working with a crystal (Picasso Jasper), in preparation for a workshop. The properties of this particular crystal were stimulating creativity, dissolving blockages to our creativity, and helping to move beyond excuses! What has really stuck in my mind was the awareness… That we only create blockages for the things we really care about or that “matter” to us! Isn’t that profound? On one level I know this so well. On another, it makes it so clear that each day the things we spend our time and energy on, are the things that we manifest! You see we all have ideas, dreams, desires, hopes, visions, images, and thoughts for our possible futures. However it is the ones we continually revisit or where we invest our thoughts and emotions, that we are creating. If you have a thought.., (You see a cute puppy, and you think… Wouldn’t it be fun to be surrounded by puppies all the time!?!) and then the thought is gone. You may have planted a seed, however that does not mean anything will ever grow from this. However, if you have such a strong connection to animals and can’t see or imagine yourself doing anything other than caring for and being surrounded by them… That is a different scenario altogether! Then you begin to see animal related opportunities all around you. Your behavior around them has other people take notice. Caring for and interacting with them becomes a part of your conversations. Others who are drawn to animals take notice and start to share their own stories and connections with people and...
by Charles McAlpine | Mar 4, 2013 | Blog
Over the past couple of months, and then again this week, I have read articles about two varying sides of a debate. The subject is people who define themselves as “spiritual, but not religious”, or SBNR for short!. To simplify it… It goes something like this: People who are religious, believe that people who claim to be spiritual, but who don’t belong to a particular religion, lack the fortitude and discipline it requires to follow the tenants, expectations and guidelines of religion. As a result they lack the guidance and structure to have a strong moral fiber… and as a result, can be easily thrown off course and succumb to earthly temptations! They end up doing bad things because they don’t have the structure of religious teachings behind them. On the other side of this debate about SBNR people are the atheists who believe that people develop their moral fabric through family, community and education. They believe the decisions made between right and wrong or good and evil are part of each individuals character. They have a notion that the person who describes themselves as SNBR, is an atheist who is afraid of social disapproval or is someone who wants the “theoretical benefits of faith, including hope of eternal life, without the obligations of actually practicing a religion”. There was even a recent study out of England that theorized that “People who have a spiritual understanding of life in the absence of a religious framework are vulnerable to mental disorder.” ( Michael King, a professor at University College London). WOW! Once again, I find myself in the middle of...
by Charles McAlpine | Feb 25, 2013 | Blog
Oh my goodness… What an interesting and introspective week! It has been all about “the reframe”! You see, sometimes we (okay “I”) get caught up in the circumstances of our life. We start linking events, promises, people, situations, desires, challenges and all kinds of stuff together and we start sending messages to ourselves and building a story. Sometimes it is a great story and it is perfectly aligned with what we want to create in our life (at least for awhile). Other times… Not so much! The problem is once we start telling ourselves these stories… They become real. We know they are real because we have already assembled all the evidence and proof! If you’re anything like me, then you also have this keen ability to associate this new story to old ones you have told in the past… And suddenly you not only have a current perspective.., you also have confirmed, you have a pattern! Maybe these pattern are a good thing, when they have a positive impact. Something like… “Things always work out perfectly when I put my mind to it” or “Wow, it is easy for me to attract exactly what I need!”. What happens when the message we are giving ourselves, doesn’t feel positive? “See… It is hard to stay focused, I never create what I want.” Or “this has always been a weak area for me, there is nothing I can do to change it,”. Or one of my favorites… “Everything I have done was wasted… I am back to square one!”. When we are telling ourselves these stories, it can be challenging...
