I was recently talking to a friend who is in her early thirties about marriage. She stated that she thought she had waited long enough to “do it right the first time.” On one hand, I agreed that she is old enough and mature enough to have figured out who the right man for her might be. On the other hand, I have issues around the phrase “getting it right the first time.”

In today’s modern American society, it’s rare that someone actually meets their true love on their first date ever. Most people date many individuals before they find a person whom they want to marry. It’s also rare for people to wait until marriage to have sex: Ninety-five percent of Americans shed their virginity before saying "I do." In addition, approximately 75% of women have cohabitated with a man before marriage. The majority of couples are engaging in serious relationships without a legal marriage bond whereas previous generations of Americans did not do so. Technically, the majority of people aren’t getting it right the first time: They are simply not making a legal bond until they feel extra comfortable that they have found their forever person. 

For thousands of years, the Catholic Church and most Christian churches have frowned upon divorce. While it has been under the guise of a religious dictate from God, I actually believe this was a control and stability based decision. Most churches continue to publically denounce divorce while the majority of the members of the same churches divorce and remarry, sometimes more than once. The churches uphold the mythological belief that we should find one “forever” person and marry that person for the rest of our lives.

However, I don’t know that “doing it right the first time” is actually what the goal of marriage should be. I believe that marriage is a sacred union, but I also believe that it is temporary: Our marriage vows end with death (though many Mormons do not agree with that), and we are free to remarry once widowed even in the most conservative of the mainstream churches. While we are alive, I believe that marriages should exist to help individuals grow. That might mean having children with a partner so that we can experience parental growth and the challenges that come with taking care of other beings who are utterly dependent upon us. It might mean learning how to live with someone who has different beliefs, actions, hobbies, or habits than us. It may mean spiritual growth as we challenge each other to find the Divine in our marriages. Whatever it means to each couple, I believe that they have been brought together to learn some life lessons that they could not learn without the other. When those lessons have been learned, then it is time for the couple to move on to new relationships where they can continue their growth.

Thus, I don’t believe that “getting it right the first time” should be the primary goal of marriage. Instead, I think we should be choosing the right partner to help us grow and change through the next stage of our lives. If we are able to stay well-matched with our partner as our lives take us through many joys and challenges, then by all means, “‘til death do us part” makes a great deal of sense. However for the large percentage of people who find that their individual growth takes them in a different direction than their spouses, divorce should be an acceptable and supported practice in our society. Divorce should not be viewed as failure, but rather a change or even a graduation. Two people who were once well-matched have learned the lessons they need to learn from each other and are now ready to go in different directions. While divorce will still be emotionally difficult as most major endings in our lives are, there’s no reason it needs to be made shameful. Rather, our goal should be finding the right person for this point in our lives and accepting that some day we may move in a different direction from that partner, whether it is because of divorce or death. If we enter into relationships that help our souls grow, then each one will be "doing it right" even if it is not our first relationship or marriage ever.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

A story was circulating the internet yesterday about a woman who lost 112 pounds after only making one significant change to her diet: She stopped drinking Coca Cola. I believe that is entirely possible, especially since she admits to having been addicted to Coke, previously drinking 424 grams of sugar per day. (The recommended daily intake from the American Heart Association for added sugar is 25-38 grams; I would say that is still too high for the average day.) The book Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss does a great job describing how addictive sugar is and how dangerous it is for our bodies. Moss also details how the soft drink companies know but choose to ignore these dangers.

I believe this kind of weight loss is entirely possible based on my own history. I experienced similar results when I cut regular soda out of my diet in high school. I didn’t drink that much soda, probably only 2-4 a week, but when I stopped drinking it, I dropped from a size 16 to a size 12, probably losing 20 pounds. However, I unfortunately made a poor decision when I stopped drinking regular sodas: I started drinking diet sodas. NutraSweet, the brand name for aspartame at that time, gave me headaches. Yet despite that, I drank the diet cola anyway. I discovered that if I drank Diet Coke or Diet Doctor Pepper often enough, I could build up a tolerance to the aspartame that prevented the headaches from happening most of the time. In retrospect, I ponder at my rather stupid decision to intentionally drink something I knew my body didn’t like. However, after the weight loss when I switched to diet from regular, I didn’t want to go back to regular.

I then became a diet soda addict. All the way through college and grad school, I drank 2-4 diet sodas per day. I would periodically see forwarded emails about the dangers of aspartame and how it converts to formaldehyde, but I chose to ignore them as the paranoid rantings of conspiracy theorists. After I had my kids, though, my health fell apart. I became intolerant to most synthetic chemicals. Very quickly, I figured out that diet soda was not something my body was going to be ok with.

The more I learned, the more I realized that those forwarded emails about the dangers of aspartame weren’t paranoid delusions. They were reality. Medical studies have since shown that aspartame does convert to formaldehyde and binds with organ tissues. As I worked on healing from Lyme disease, part of the journey included my body doing a lot of intnse and spontaneous detoxification. At one point, I spent about a month detoxifying from what applied kinesiology showed was formaldehyde. While all of us are exposed to formaldehyde in our lives because it is used in paper, pressed wood, wallboard, furniture and much more, I suspect the amount of detoxing I was doing was related to my previous diet soda addiction.

Water now makes up the vast majority of my liquid intake with caffeine free herbal teas being my other beverage of choice. My body is much better off this way. I don’t miss the aspartame headaches, and I know my body appreciates me not polluting it with unnecessary chemicals and sugar.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

According to one theory of life, the universe, and everything, all of our actions are based in either fear or love. When we make decisions about all of the details in our life, our choices come from a place of fear or love. If we choose to come from a place of fear, then our lives will be fearful and we will see the world as a dark scary place. If we choose to come from a place of love, then we will see the world as being filled with an abundance of love that is available for all who open themselves to it.

I have seen this recently in my life with regards to Craigslist of all things. I use Craigslist quite often to get rid of things I no longer need; I occasionally sell things on there as well. I often have boxes available, so I will post on the free section for someone to come pick them up off my front porch. When someone I knew said he was having the trash company come pick up moving boxes from his house, I suggested that there would be many people on Craigslist who would love to have them to free. At that point, he informed me that Craigslist is a dangerous place and that there are now safe exchange places at police stations in his area for Craigslist users. I didn’t even try to counter this discussion because it was clear he was in a place of fear. I agree that one needs to use common sense when selling high value items on Craigslist. I was contemplating selling a camera lens at one point, and had I done that, I would have required the sale to be a cash or money order transaction which we would have exchanged in the lobby of my bank so I could verify the deposit and so we would have cameras watching the exchange. However, when it comes to boxes, I am not reselling them. No one is going to short change or harm me. I leave them on the front porch, and I let people know to just take the boxes without ringing the bell. I’ve never had problems. I see this as sharing resources that help minimize the damage on the planet, and in a way, spreading love around. I come at it from a place of love.

One could also argue that those who carry concealed handguns are living in a place of fear. Every person I know who carries one lives and works in areas where a gun is unnecessary. They are operating from a place of fear, though, and they can’t feel safe in the world without a loaded sidearm. To me, that is a sad place to be. Even when I was a woman working in a low SES neighborhood and school or as a woman navigating the world alone, I never felt a need to have a handgun. If something suspicious is going on, I dial 911 and let those who are trained professionals deal with the issue. I realize not everyone feels they can safely call in the police, and that is a true problem in our society with fear at its roots, too. However, all of those whom I know who are concealed handgun holders are also Caucasian and not likely to experience negative racial profiling when working with the authorities.

One can also see people who live in fear when it comes to finances. Even if they make an upper class salary, they are certain that they will run out of money. As a result, they becoming stingy with donating their time, their money, and their energy to others. They do not want to run out of anything, so they hoard what they have. However, the Universe seems to function under a “you have to give to receive” type of premise. While I’m not advocating giving away all one’s possessions or even forcing one’s self to live in poverty, I do think we all need to be a bit generous in whatever way we can be in order to keep the good karma moving around. Operating from a place of love dictates sharing with others rather than greedily accumulating millions beyond what one needs for basic comfort and enjoyment.

So how does one go about shifting one’s world view from fear based to love based? For starters, turn off your television as much as possible. The news is by far the worst thing to watch as broadcasts are sensationalized and are designed to strike fear in the viewers’ hearts. Advertising on television and also is often fear based. If you don’t take this medication you won’t be able to function for your family. If you don’t use this highly toxic cleaning product, your family will die of a rare contagion or maybe just get the common cold. If you don’t use this insurance company, you’ll lose everything you own. All of these messages do add up and do begin to wear on your worldview even if you don’t realize it. If you turn off the television and other sources of advertising for several months and then come back to it, you’ll be surprised at how insidious the messages seem.

As you go forward, try to select love-based activities in your life. You could go to a bar and drink heavily on Friday night, or you could go to a yoga class. You could go to the beach to find a hookup for the weekend, or you could join in a service drive or charity event. I’m not suggesting that you never participate in solely recreational activities, but consider whether or not you can make your recreation time more constructively loving rather than self-serving or hedonistic. If you do whatever activity you have planned, ask yourself who will benefit from it. If the answer is more than one person, especially if those people are strangers, you’re on your way to changing to a love based process of decision making.

When you are faced with choices in your life, begin asking yourself not only what is the right thing to do but what the loving thing to do is as well. Try not to let fear rule your decisions. Even though you may be scared about making a loving decision, follow your intuition instead of your fears and see if you can make your life and the lives of those around you a bit happier.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(This is a continuation of yesterday’s blog post about my college roommates.)

My second roommate (“A”) and I were good friends within a few weeks of meeting each other. We both shared a warped sense of humor that helped cement the bond. Though we were both introverts, she had a need to explore the world that I didn’t really share that point. She didn’t like going places alone, though, so she would often tell me, “Get ready. We’re leaving.” I’d ask where and she’d respond a movie, driving in the Hill Country, antiquing, or whatever she had already decided she wanted to do. I would tell her that I didn’t really want to go, and she would talk me into going with her anyway. In retrospect, I am glad A did because we went on some fun adventures that I would never have done otherwise. One night, A decided she was going to use sidewalk chalk and draw a cartoon figure of hers all over the campus sidewalks. She took me along as her lookout. That’s definitely not something I would have gotten up to otherwise!

At the end of the school year, A decided she wanted to move out of the dorms. I didn’t have a car, and so living off campus seemed daunting and inconvenient to me. I knew I only had one more year left, so I decided to stay on campus. By then, I had other friends in the dorm. One of them was losing her roommate as that woman moved off campus to live with her boyfriend, so the two of us decided to be roommates the following year.

During that second and final year of my undergraduate studies when we were no longer roommates, A and I would get together periodically to do fun activities. Things seemed off for a while between us, but I couldn’t figure out what was up. Towards the end of the school year, A finally came out as being gay. Suddenly so much about her and some of her behaviors made complete sense. My instinctive response was to be mad at her for not telling me sooner! However, I understand she was still figuring it all out herself. Once A came out, our friendship really didn’t change except that she was a much happier person now that she was able to truly be herself.

After I graduated and moved to Boston for nine months to work on my master’s degree, A and I stayed in touch via e-mail. She made plans to come to my wedding with her then-girlfriend, a woman whom I really liked. A and I watched with great amusement as one of my future brothers-in-law flirted with her girlfriend at the rehearsal dinner. At one point I asked A if we should be merciful and tell him that A and her girlfriend were a couple, but A told me, “No. I’m having way too much fun watching this!”

When I moved back to Austin in 1994, A and I continued to be friends through her final year of undergrad and beyond. When she would get together with my then-husband and me to do things, it was him who became the third wheel, not her. A and I were like the sisters neither of us had ever had. We often wouldn’t talk for weeks but then we would see each other multiple times within a short span. It was just how things worked with us. We could always pick right back up where we left off with things.

In 1998, four years after I got married and moved back to Austin, A took her turn to move to Boston for nine months. I helped her finish packing her apartment and took her to the airport with her cats. It turned out she couldn’t stand living in Boston, but while she was up there, she met a girlfriend who eventually became her life partner. When I went to visit A in Boston while I was doing dissertation research, I got to meet her partner, “J,” and liked her. When they moved back to Austin together, I was happy to have J as an additional friend though I never got to know her well.

Shortly after that, my firstborn daughter died. A called and offered to do whatever she could to help. Since she had previously worked at a photo developing store at the mall, I asked her to help me find someone whom I could trust to make enlargements of the very few photos I had of my daughter. She found someone she felt was trustworthy, and I took my negatives to him. He did a great job and was very compassionate toward us. I was incredibly grateful to A for that assistance. Her parents, whom I had met several times and been at their house outside the Dallas-Fort Worth area twice, also sent a bereavement card which really touched me.

Then, a few months later, everything changed. A and J decided to move to another state to pursue grad school and better jobs. I was sad to see them go, but I understood. However, a great silence ensued. Even before they moved, I didn’t get phone calls returned. Any attempt to make contact was thwarted. I had no idea what went wrong. Before the one year forwarding period ended, I sent a letter to her old address in hopes it would find her in the new state. In that letter, I offered apologies to her for anything I might have done and let her know I missed our friendship. More silence. As the internet blossomed, I tried to make contact with her through various social media sites, but I again was met with the stunning silence.

It took me over ten years beyond the last time I talked to her to finally let go. While she had been one of my closest friends for almost a decade, it was clear that A was unwilling to have me in her life any longer. The only possible understanding I had for why she might have cut off our relationship was if her new partner felt uncomfortable with the bizarre and close but definitely platonic relationship A and I shared. A and I both knew that there was no chance in hell of me dating a woman (or her dating a man), and we accepted that we were friends and nothing more. However, I could completely understand how a insecure partner might have been threatened by the close friendship we shared. Yet not knowing for sure was torture. This was someone for whom I had a platonic love and whom I wanted in my life no matter what the conditions were.

Oddly, it was my unrequited love for a man which actually helped me let go of A and the desperate desire to make contact with her again. That man and A reminded me of each other because of their incredibly warped but wonderful senses of humor. The friendship I had with each was similar in some odd ways. And when I finally accepted that I would never get over that man while I was still friends with him, I also reached a place of peace with no longer having A in my life either. I realized that after all that had happened in the intervening decade in my life, we might or might not have anything in common anymore. But most importantly, she had made a decision to cut me out of her life. While that hurt because I had no understanding of why it happened, I still had to respect her decision and let her go.

Today is A’s 42nd birthday. I still remember her every year and wish I could send her an email telling her to have a great day. If A were ever to show up in my life again, I would welcome her with open arms. But until the time when we meet again, if that ever happens, I have to be content with sending her good wishes in my heart. I hope that wherever she is and whomever she is with, that her life has turned out better than she ever dreamed it could.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

A kinder, gentler path to healing trauma

Many of us have unfortunately experienced traumas in this life or past lives that may include but are not limited to natural disasters, rape, abuse, warfare, deaths, accidents, childbirth and health difficulties. Many conventional approaches to healing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) seem just as traumatizing as the original events because the healing techniques force us to face painful issues that our bodies, minds, and spirits are not ready to handle.

Join Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., to discuss holistic methods to be used in conjunction with traditional therapy that can help you approach traumas in such a way that you will minimize the trauma of healing yourselves. Topics to be discussed include dissociation, anxiety, depression, energetic beings, tapping, the body-mind-spirit connection, energy medicine, intuitive healing, and more.

Sunday, September 20, 2015
Casa de Luz, Serena Room
1701 Toomey Road
Austin, Texas 78704
Doors open at 7 pm
Seminar is from 7:15-9:00 pm.

This seminar requires a belief in a higher power outside of one’s self which could be qi or a deity. 

Out of respect for those who are chemically sensitive, please refrain from wearing chemically based perfumes, colognes, and aftershaves. Essential oils used in moderation are fine.

Please fill out the reservation form below or reserve your space on Meetup.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

My graduating high school class had 51 young women in it. The school was small and Catholic; everyone knew everyone. I thought I wanted to go to a small liberal arts college, but when I visited The University of Texas at Austin as a senior in high school, I fell immediately in love. Sometimes you just know when you have found the right place.

As a National Merit Finalist, I got priority admission for the dorms at UT which always had waiting lists to get in. However, as a freshman, there was still limited availability. While I requested to be assigned to a female dorm, I was instead placed on a co-ed floor at Jester Center, a dorm that holds between 3200-3300 people. After a pre-K-12 school of less than 600, it was a massive living space that was rather intimidating for many reasons.

At that time, the only matching algorithm that UT Student Housing used was smoking or non. As you can imagine, that did not create good odds for ending up with a roommate who was a good match. I checked off non-smoking. My first roommate also checked off non-smoking even though she was a smoker because she did not want anyone smoking in the room. So right off the bat, the matching algorithm was a completely failure.

"H," my first roommate, was a from a small town outlying the Dallas-Fort Worth area. She had been at the top of her class at her small rural Texas school but she arrived totally unprepared for college. She was there to party. By contrast, I was there to get an education. H hit it off with a woman in an adjoining room. After H broke up with her steady boyfriend back home after learning that he was already sleeping around only a few weeks into their long distance relationship, H and the woman next door quickly made their way to Sixth Street with the explicit intention of getting laid. They managed to get drunk that night but somehow failed to procure willing men.

H rapidly became the roommate from hell. We were not a good match in any way. I was a morning person. She wanted to party all night. I had fairly Catholic values at that point; despite having been baptized just that summer as a born-again Christian, H's actions and values were questionable. She wanted to start smoking in the room; I refused to allow it since it was a designated non-smoking room. We had agreed to share various chores in the room, though it rapidly became clear that she was not going to do any of them, and she tore into me for asking her to do her part. Yet at the same time, she felt free to borrow my clothes when we hit a cold snap and she hadn’t brought her winter clothes down from home yet. Her only interest was herself and her needs. Once again, I had found myself living with a narcissist.

A male high school friend of hers and his roommate set up a secret competition: They were trying to see who could get her to have sex first. The friend was in our room one night giving her a backrub on her bed while I was studying on my bed. He announced, “This bra is in the way. I’ll just take it off.” My Catholic school girl self was mortified and completely unsure what to do. Were they not clear on the fact I was sitting right there? Was the proper etiquette to leave? Yet at the same time, it was my room, too, and I really didn’t want to walk across the street to the library to study. (I have no idea who actually won the competition but I’d be really surprised if one of those guys didn’t succeed by the end of the semester.)

Within a few weeks, H had decided that I was the worst roommate ever. She dragged her mattress into the woman next door’s dorm room and proceeded to live there. The smell of pot constantly waifed out of their room. H came in our formerly shared room periodically to get clothes and give me an evil eye. She was not happy that she had to live next door in order to smoke and party all the time.

After the school year was about six weeks old, another woman on the floor came knocking door to door to get information for something or another. She asked me where my roommate was, and I told her that H had moved next door because she hated me. The woman doing the survey went next door and talked to H. The next thing I knew, H was announcing to me that she and the survey woman had decided to swap roommates. I would be moving into the other woman’s room and she would be taking my space. I was given no option, but considering the current status of things, I figured it could not be much worse. We made the switch immediately, and then applied to Housing to make it official. Our resident assistant did a “counseling” session in which she tried to work out our differences which was rather amusing. Once we convinced her that there would be no positive resolution, she applied for and received the official permission to get us to switch rooms. We signed the paperwork, swapped keys officially, and moved on with our lives.

The woman I moved in with had also decided things couldn’t be any worse than what she’d experienced with her first roommate, so she was fine with me moving in. While she was a night owl and tv addict, we were able to be respectful of each other and make it work. Within a few weeks, we were great friends. Meanwhile, gossip on the floor was that H and the survey woman hated each other with a passion. I have to admit that I was amused at that given how the two of them had treated my new roommate and me. By the end of the semester, rumor had it that H was just leaving a bottle of Jim Beam on her nightstand. She left UT at the end of the semester to move back home and go to a UT branch school, but supposedly there was a notice in the dorm mailbox that she was officially on academic probation after her less than stellar performance in her first semester at UT.

Those first few weeks of college being partnered with someone I had almost nothing in common with were really rough, but the friendship I ended having with my second roommate was fabulous. Tomorrow’s blog post will talk more about that relationship.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

There’s no profit in jealousy. ~Quark, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

In Season 6, Episode 7 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, one of the leading characters named Quark is dealing with jealousy. He is a Ferengi, a species known for believing that “earning profit was the sole meaningful goal in life, superseding all other endeavors.” When one of the other characters teasingly asks Quark if he is jealous, he replies, “There’s no profit in jealousy.”

Quark is right according to the theory of scarcity and abundance thinking. This theory promotes the idea that if you see the world as having a deficit of time, energy, or products to meet everyone’s needs, then your world will be defined by scarcity. You will struggle to have enough in your life because you believe that the world is that way. In contrast, those who believe in abundance will find that there is always enough of whatever they need. So a person who is jealous and operates under the motivation of jealousy who be viewing the world through a scarcity model of thinking, and as Quark warns, that person would find no profit.

As I have been working on preparing a meeting on jealousy for my meetup, I realized that one of the ways in which I have dealt with jealousy in my life is through a scarcity mentality I previously held. I was raised in a family that was raised by those who grew up in the Great Depression. My grandparents had to leave school after eighth grade graduation to get jobs in order to help keep the family fed. The whole nation was living in a time of scarcity. As anyone who has known people who lived through the Depression knows, many of them did not let go of their fear and scarcity mentality even in later years when finances were stable for them. Those who were in fear of losing their money again were often very conservative-- if not downright stingy-- with their money. They passed this scarcity mentality on to their children (the Baby Boomers) who passed it on to their children (Generation X, my age grouping). As the Millenial Generation comes of age, we  are finally seeing the legacy of the Great Depression no longer having the same influence on today’s young adults as in previous generations.

However, I never really had thought about the scarcity mentality as being a part of jealousy. To me, I always labeled it insecurity. Yet one of the major roots of jealousy is insecurity. People are envious of others for having things or talents that they might never have. Those who are feeling insecure become jealous when they don’t work through their true fears. For example, I see insecurity and jealousy manifest as a scarcity mentality among many of the alternative healers in Austin. I have watched one healer greedily scarf up any resources I am willing to share with her and others in our circle so that she can build up her files, yet she is unwilling to share any of her resources publicly. I have experienced an intuitive publicly demeaning me during a meetup so that she could look like the more gifted psychic. In another situation, I had a healer refuse to acknowledge my part in a joint healing we did because it was more than his ego would allow.

All of this is nastiness is insecurity rooted in the scarcity mentality: Individual healers are not able to accept that there is more than enough work in the world for those who are talented and willing to give their best to their clients and patients. The fears are rooted in ego, not grounded spirituality, for the fears show no trust in the Universe. If the healers are on their correct path, then they will receive all the work and financial support that they need to be happy in life.

Every once in a while I do feel the green-eyed monster rising up in me, especially when I see other people whom my ego has judged to be less talented than me achieving things that seem way beyond their abilities and reach. I have to pull back on my own reins and remind myself that different people are on different journeys in their lives. Each of us are meant to experience different things at different times. When I see people flocking to a healer whom I know is dangerously misguided, I have to remember that that healer is teaching his/her/hir clients an important lesson in life, one that I might have already learned but which other people still need to grasp. For me, the lesson at that time is to remember that there is abundance in the Universe, and that I am walking the path that I am meant to walk. 

I believe that if we put faith in the Universe and if we follow our intuition and stay on our correct path, then we will often find abundance. That doesn’t mean we will never experience times of drought or pain in our lives, but when we do, those times of drought are often meant to help us grow and change in ways that will eventually bring us greater abundance than we could have imagined. Keeping our egos in check and in the words of our teachers, “keeping our eyes on our own papers” will help us to grow and prosper rather than wallowing in jealousy, fear, and insecurity.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

This is a topic I’ve written about before, and it’s a topic I’m sure I’ll write about again. However, it’s incredibly important, and it’s something I see abused regularly in the metaphysical community.

Common sense and metaphysical ethics dictate that those with metaphysical gifts should not check out other people on a metaphysical level without their permission. On one level, as an empath, I can’t help but feel people’s emotions, especially when they are poorly shielded and highly emotional. If they’re having a bad day, I will likely know. That is what they are broadcasting, and I don’t have to do anything to ascertain that information just like I don’t have to do anything but look at them to tell they are wearing an orange shirt and blue jeans.

However, on a total different level, many metaphysical practitioners and healers are able to talk to higher powers to find out more personal details about another being. If I wanted, I could ask higher powers why the person above is having a bad day. If someone on the other side is willing to talk, I might discover that he has been fired or the woman he has had an affair with is leaving him or his best friend just died. Regardless of what the reasons are, I would have just crossed over into unethical behavior. All of that is none of my business. I am doing nothing less than prying into a situation where I have no reason to be. If that man had asked me to contact higher powers on his behalf to understand where his depression was coming from, then it is ok for me to do so.

I recently had another metaphysician take it upon himself to check out my metaphysical state and then send me an email with details about what he had discovered was “wrong” with me. He did not have my permission to do so. I am well aware of the issues he discovered; they are something I’ve been working on for months with other healers to change. The result of him doing this and telling me, though, was that I felt like I had been violated. I let that practitioner know that he was acting unprofessionally and unethically (and this was not the first time I've had to tell this practitioner similar things). What he did is no different than a stranger leering in someone’s windows: Just because he’s capable of pressing his nose up to the glass to see what’s going on inside someone’s house, it doesn’t make it the right thing to do. The next step from there is to just go inside someone’s house and check things out because they left their doors unlocked so they must not have wanted people to stay out. Yet all of us know that there is a societal expectation that we don’t walk into other people’s houses without their permission even if the door is unlocked. It’s rude, and it’s an invasion of privacy. Even if the door is open, unless there's a trail of blood that you can see or someone screaming for help, rules dictate that you don't just walk in. The same is true of checking out someone’s metaphysical body (which is their spirit’s house for the time being) without explicit permission. Even if you have the best of intentions, it's still wrong.

The lesson here is really simple: Don’t check out people’s metaphysical state without their permission. Period. Full stop. I wish more people involved with metaphysics would learn to follow this basic rule of courtesy and ethics.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

My kids have always grown up around upright vacuum cleaners. Until I bought a Miele canister vacuum a few years ago, they had never seen one. However, since I use the hose attachment more than anything else because I have no wall-to-wall carpeting in my house, I decided a canister vacuum made more sense for my house when purchasing my most recent vacuum. I had tried my ex-husband’s Dyson upright vacuum and was utterly frustrated by the hose. I complained on Facebook and was quickly assured by many people that Miele hoses were better; many asserted that the vacuums were better in general, too. While I had really hoped to go to a bagless vacuum, I took the advice of friends and bought a Miele S2121 Olympus Canister Vacuum Cleaner. It is every bit as good as my friends promised; it is by far the best vacuum I’ve ever owned.

When the new vacuum arrived, my kids took one look at it and declared, “It’s Noo Noo!” For those who aren’t aware, Noo Noo is a vacuum cleaner-like creature from the Teletubbies, a British show that was globally popular when my children were young. While the show made me crazy with boredom, many toddlers love it. 

Because my household is kind of crazy in the good sort of way, Noo Noo the Vacuum Cleaner had thereby been christened. Now anytime the vacuum is needed, I tell the kids, “Go get Noo Noo.” They also refer to it as Noo Noo, and we’ve got their dad calling it Noo Noo as well. We don’t have anyone under the age of 12 in my household, so when we call the vacuum cleaner “Noo Noo” it sounds a bit odd. However, life is hard enough. We need the humor in it to get through the day sometimes. We certainly need a bit of humor in my household to make cleaning a bit more appealing. The small bit of laughter we get out of calling our vacuum cleaner by a ridiculous name never fails to brighten my day.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

This week, I have been working on preparing an October meeting for my Meetup group on jealousy. I asked members which topics were of greatest interest to them, and to my surprise, jealousy came out near the top of the list. Jealousy is not something I have dealt with at the levels other people have, so it took me a minute or two to think about when I have been most envious of others in my adult life. The first thing that jumped to my mind was paint envy. Yes, you read that correctly. I have spent the past 10+ years being jealous of other people’s colorful paint jobs in their homes. The walls of my house were painted right before we moved in 14 years ago, and they are a very serviceable and resellable white. However, after 14 years of dogs and kids and regular life, the walls are showing lots of wear and need a new coat of paint.

When my ex-husband and I made the decision as to who was going to stay in the house and who was going to move out, there really was not much of a decision to make. Because of my chemical sensitivities, it made the most sense for me to stay in the house that we’d spent thousands of dollars upgrading to make it safe enough for me to tolerate. It has electric appliances, has all hardwood and ceramic tile floors, and hasn’t had fragrance or chemicals used in it in 12+ years. Finding a house like that is a needle in a haystack, and finding another for me in our price range that meets my needs seemed like a very daunting task. My ex wanted to move to a new location to start over, and I really understood that feeling. I was jealous that he got to leave and I had to stay in the house where I’d felt like I’d been trapped for all of the years of my illness including the six that I was homebound.

As we began dividing possessions for him to take things with him, I asked if he would take the white dishes we had registered for as wedding presents. Ceramic dishes don’t usually need to be off-gassed, so this was something that I could get new and not have to worry about reacting to any chemicals on them. My ex agreed, and so I set forth in looking for new dishes. I knew I wanted Fiestaware, and I knew I wanted color. Lots of color. I told my kids that they could help pick out the new dishes I was going to buy. My older son jokingly told me he wanted orange plates with sharks on them. I told him I couldn’t help him with the sharks, but we could have orange for sure. He thought I’d gone crazy that I was letting him have his way with the dishes, but since orange was part of my plan, it was good by me! We now have Fiestaware in lapis, peacock, cobalt, plum, scarlet, tangerine, sunflower and shamrock. Our table is very festive!

For the first few years after my ex moved out, I could only do limited things to change up the house because my health was still struggling and my chemical sensitivities were still so strong. I rearranged furniture, hung some of my photographic artwork on the walls (which my ex didn’t like so I’d never had it up before), and did a few other little things to make the house feel different. It wasn’t as much as I wanted, but it was what I could do at the time.

This calendar year, my chemical sensitivities have lessened further. I finally hit the point where I could paint the interior of my house. I tested a few paints and determined that Dunn & Edwards’ Spartazero no-VOC paint was the easiest for me to tolerate. My daughter and I spent a few weeks debating colors of paint samples and finally settled on our choices. We bought paint, and as I have energy and time, my kids and I are slowly painting the house. We started with the downstairs bathroom and hallway, and the difference between white and peach paint was radical. All of us were so impressed with the difference. Today we started painting the laundry room a deep lavender. I find myself just standing there and staring at the newly painted walls in awe. I am amazed at how beautiful the color is.

So what does all of this have to do with jealousy? Yes, I was jealous of other people’s paint on their walls. But what I was really jealous of was the color in their lives. I felt like I was living my life all in white, just like my house had previously been. It was the safe choice. My life until a few years ago was the safe and logical choice, too. I was with a man whom I loved but who was not passionate about me. I hid from my metaphysical gifts. I didn’t explore things in the world but rather stayed within what were deemed safe margins. Now, I want color in my life. Not just my dishes and my walls, but my entire life. I am still rational and sensible, but I want to explore new ideas, new places, and new people. I want my life to be truly vibrant.

Sometimes examining the deeper roots of our jealousy can be very telling. It might seem like we are coveting someone else’s new sports car or their fancy house or their promotion, but perhaps there are deeper issues underneath the jealousy that we need to explore. Once we identify the true source of our jealousy, it becomes easier to work on the problem and create a situation in our own lives that helps us reduce our jealousy towards others.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

When I was in high school, one of the guys whom I hung out with had an inferiority complex around women and intelligence. Any time we took a standardized test, he would come to me and proudly boast his results. I would smile and congratulate him and try to shift the conversation. It never worked. He always forced the issue to a head by wanting to know what my score was on the same standardized test. Every time, without fail, my score was significantly higher even though I was almost two years younger than him and, heaven forbid, a female. He would always get a crushed and frustrated look on his face that once again, a girl had beaten him. Hence, I tried to avoid the topic of testing or grades whenever possible.

As I’ve grown up, I’ve found that there are still many men who are made uncomfortable by intelligent women. One of the quickest ways to scare off a large number of men on a dating site is to tell them that you are a woman with a Ph.D. Other female friends with doctorates have experienced the same. There are men out there who are sapiosexuals, and these are the men I tend to seek out. They are attracted to women who are intelligent and not afraid to show it. Likewise, I am drawn to intelligent men. I want someone who can keep up with me in conversation and discussion. Both of the men whom I have been in love with had doctorates. That’s not to say I wouldn’t date a guy without an advanced degree or even a college degree at all, but I find intelligence incredibly attractive, and I want a partner who feels the same.

Last night, I was watching The Bachelor in Paradise (and yes, you may question my intelligence for doing so!). The Bachelor franchise is my only “reality” television indulgence. This season, there is a man named Joe Bailey who was also on the last season of The Bachelorette. I had a hard time understanding why Kaitlyn Bristowe, the bachelorette, was so attracted to him. To me, he was playing up the stereotype of a Kentucky hillbilly, right down to bringing a bottle of moonshine along with him to give to Bristowe. She really seemed to adore him, or at least making out with him. On Bachelor in Paradise, though, Bailey has demonstrated some very narcissistic tendencies as he emotionally manipulated one woman to advance in the “game” aspect of the reality show. When one of the other men on the show, J.J. Lane, a man who tends to get himself in trouble almost every time he opens his mouth, confronted Bailey about having deceived the woman in question, a very disjointed and pointless argument ensued. Along the way, Bailey insulted Lane by saying he has a sister who is more intelligent than Lane.

Whoa. Really? It’s the year 2015 and a man is going to insult another man on national television by implying that being dumber than a woman is a terrible thing? Things like this shock me, though they really shouldn’t given the number of insecure men I’ve met in my life who have been intimidated by my intelligence. However, I would hope by now that our society would understand that men and women are equal. Clearly our nation doesn’t completely comprehend this concept as women are still blamed for being raped by men, women are seen as being at fault for unwanted pregnancies even though it takes two to tango, and wages for women lag significantly behind. The fact that anyone could still generally assume that all women are less intelligent than all men is really a sad but telling state of affairs.

I have often felt sorry for my poor kids for the educational standards in our family. Even though my kids will only be the third generation of our family to go to college, they’ve got a precedent of a lot of doctorates in the family. Among my ex-husband’s and my siblings and their partners as well as us, there are six Ph.D.s, two M.D.s, one D.O., one terminal master’s and one terminal bachelor’s degree. Three of the Ph.D.s and both of the M.D.s are women. The one thing that my kids will never doubt is that women and men are both intelligent. We may have different innate areas where we are stronger and fields of study that we prefer, but women are not stupid, and insulting women’s intelligence is never acceptable.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC