Christine Kane
…our unwavering intention calls things to us. Our indecision and scatteredness repel things from us.
– Christine Kane, Uplevel Your Life
I just LOVE Christine Kane. She has helped me so much in the last year — first unknowingly through her blog, then through her e-seminar last fall, then in person at her retreat in North Carolina in March, and finally through her wonderful new Uplevel Your Life program which I’m currently following. I shouldn’t say “finally,” because I know we’ll continue to work together in the future too.
Christine spoke to me at a time when nothing else really did. I had gotten into a funk and my years of Buddhist teachings were not helping me get out. I thought I just needed to practice more — more deeply, more consistently, more regularly, better — but somehow nothing was moving. Reading Christine’s blog, I started to re-energize, to remember my joy and how it’s mine to play with, to remember my own powers of creativity — and I don’t just mean in art.
She talks a lot about creativity, and tends to work with creative types. As a singer-songwriter herself, her roots are in the “creative industry.” But when Christine talks about creativity, she’s usually not referring to songwriting or painting or thangka-making. She’s talking about creating our lives. Living as a creative force in your own life or, better yet, as the creative source of your own life. It’s an empowering and fun way to live and Christine has developed intelligent and effective ways to make it real.
Today, I wanted to cite a quote I’ve had on my computer’s desktop for a while. I get daily quotes from Tricycle Magazine, and this one arrived in April. It’s a Buddhist look at the power of our thoughts:
Renunciation is an effective way to break the “top ten tapes” we play in our heads over and over again. We know most of our thoughts well because we have thought the same thoughts repeatedly. Have you noticed that after a while they do not contribute anything to your understanding or well-being? When was the last time you had an original thought? It is a wonderful practice to renounce a thought after having it more than two or three times.
Sometimes it is harder to renounce repetitive thoughts than at other times, especially if we have not looked at the underlying emotions associated with them. Before we can let go of a thought, we may have to acknowledge complex feelings below the surface, so it is valuable to take the time for an open-hearted investigation.
Some habitual thought patterns are so strong that renouncing them requires the energy of a spiritual warrior. We can call on this energy just as the Buddha called on the earth as his witness when was sitting under the bodhi tree. We can even say out loud, “No! No! I will no go with you. I call on all my powers of strength, love, and wisdom to resist this thought.” Some of our negative thought patterns have been repeated so often they “feel true.” It is their familiarity that creates this illusion. There are absolutely no negative thought patterns that are true. One of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves is to renounce negative patterns of thought.
-Arinna Weisman and Jean Smith in
The Beginner’s Guide to Insight Meditation
Buddhism is all about thought transformation — or, even better, transformation of our relationship to our thoughts and our experience. I like the clear distinction about renunciation here — not of pleasure or of naughty things, but of negative (and false) thinking! But sometimes, even with all the best intentions and years of study behind me, I still struggle and struggle and just can’t find a way to make the shift.
Christine Kane is all about transforming our relationship to our thoughts too, and to creating with them the life we want. The acknowledgement and renunciation of our negative thoughts is important. Christine adds the power of creating new affirming and effective thoughts and living in them, wide awake, even when it’s scary.
I’ve always loved to draw on a variety of sources. These days, Christine is a source that’s working for me. If you’d like to get a taste of her mojo, you can sign up to participate in a free teleseminar next week. I highly recommend it, as I recommend her blog and any of her programs. (And, hey, her music’s good too!)
Here’s the teleseminar info. Click on the title for more info or to register:
5 Simple Action Steps to Take your Life to the Next Level this Summer
Wednesday, June 10th at 8 pm Eastern (5 pm Pacific)
(2 am Thursday in western Europe. Yikes!)
It’s at a terrible hour for those of us in Europe, but should be quite comfortable for those of you in the US.
When you register (for free), you’ll get an email with the phone number and conference-call access code. It will be a regular U.S. domestic phone call (270 area code, I believe) and will probably last an hour or an hour and a half. I hope some of you attend and are as enriched and empowered by Christine’s words as I have been.
Give your intentions the full blessing and honor of your decision, your attention, and your action. And Grace has no choice but to follow.
– Christine Kane, Uplevel Your Life
thanks for posting this. I am on Christine’s email list and have been for awhile, but I haven’t followed through on anything. I signed up for the phone call on Wednesday. This is a good week to take care of these things because I”m alone in the house this week! (Not that anybody ever stops me, it’s an excuse i use, or I get sidetracked and forget).
Vickie, I know all about those excuses. It’s funny when we really stop and pay attention to all the silly games our minds play. It can be quite a show! At least mine is. Enjoy the call!
Hi Leslie,
I just finished Christine’s UpLevel program and it was great! I recommend it to anyone on the fence about signing up.
Thanks for sharing this!
What a great posting I find from you this morning! Christine is indeed incredible. I have been quietly following her since January myself and have found ways to be able to move past things that seemed too heavy otherwise, thus I will continue to follow. Her music captures life beautifully too, it is always uplifting. A call at 2 in the morning though? Hmm…
What an interesting post, about Buddhism and creativity. A few thoughts that came to mind… When I feel that my practice grows stale, I supplement it with bodywork, such as hatha yoga or qi gong – or just spending time outside in the garden, walking, or biking. I recently have come to like the word “allow”; allowing the (un)skillful to just be there, not pushing it away, but also not running toward it…
Anna, thank you for your thoughts. I think supplementing practice with bodywork is a good idea. And nature is a great source of joyful energy, one from which I have felt cut off living in Milan. I like your word “allow.” I have a lot to learn in letting things be as they are and also in feeling my way through to distinctions between allowing and resignation, acceptance and self-sacrificing.
I continue the practices of letting what’s there be there, touching it, experiencing it… And, at a certain point, I felt I also needed a kind of lifeline, an infusion of positive energy that somehow allows me to be more awake with the whole picture.
Louise, speaking of “awake,” I didn’t make it to the 2am call either! But I’m so glad that others did 🙂