Just released! My newest CD of transformational chants.

Spiritual traditions have been doing it for thousands of years. Scientists are confirming its power through research. Entire books are written about it.

It has transformed my life… and it could transform yours.

What is it?

Singing your prayers!

Singing and chanting not only produce immediate physical and emotional benefits, they are profoundly...read more »

don Miguel Ruiz and Melissa Phillippe

All of us want happiness. What we may not realize is that no matter what we’re feeling, happiness is available to us at any given moment!

All we have to do is stop believing ourselves.

We’ve got to stop telling the same story in our head! Here’s my journey in this practice....read more »

Photo: Barbara Stafford

Count your blessings. There is magic in it!

We can’t focus on what’s good about our lives and feel bad. We just can’t. Not if we’re really appreciating what’s good.

Here’s the magic of gratitude. Whatever we vibrate, the Universe responds to. So not only do we feel better in the moment, we are also creating a happier future, with more things to be grateful for in it! Our feelings in this very moment are...read more »

It’s been an intense time for me of late but I just completed another quarter of school and am catching up on things, including posting another blog. I never really know if anyone reads these, then every once in a while, someone will say something about something they read here. It always shocks me a little, but in a good way!

Here is another excerpt from my Ukraine journey a few months ago. It may be the last one, we’ll see. This one is from much later in the journey – when we were already at the Scienc of Mind Convention and the participants were about to arrive:

Tonight we did a ritual.Peter and Ira and I were in a group together and our word (to hold and be with all week) was freedom. We walked the labyrinth with that word in mind…a beautiful, amazing labyrinth of stones painted bright (florescent!) green – then with glow lights out there, it was amazing – right by the sea too. Quite something. So we all walked it tonight.

Right away I got off the little path, took a wrong step and poof – lost my way.  I was told and guided back on by the guy who made the labarynth (I thought this was particularly entertaining – you know – as an external manifestation or symbol of getting off the path in life – guided back on by...read more »

Hello there,

I had hoped that I was going to be able to update my blog and stay more connected while I was traveling this past couple of months. I was in Santa Barbara, then after 4 days went off to Hawaii to pack up my things from what has been my home there. I was back in No. CA for about 8 days and then off to Ukraine, home 5 and to Cape Cod for a week. WHEW!

I have been asekd so here it is:

Ukraine was absolutely fabulous. It was inspiring and mind-opening, as travel to foreign countries seems to always be for me… and a big part of this was simply appreciating where I live, so grateful for my friends and family and life here in northern CA. I met beautiful, sweet, amazingly open-hearted and loving people in Ukraine. It was so fabulous, both the time with the other Americankis I was with, but also with the Ukrainians I met.

I’ll get to posting some video – SO fun to sing my song ‘Joy and Peace’ in Russian, and awesome to hear any of them sung in two languages at one time. Such a heart-opening sweet time.

If you were one of the generous people who helped to support my music being there, through donations to TEMENOS, thank you so much! And everyone else,  thank you just for reading this blog.

I am so very...read more »

I’ve experienced it many times after returning home from a workshop or retreat. I used to feel it after coming home after spending a long time in Hawaii.

That quiet, gentle, tender, squishy feeling. Soft and surrendered. Cracked open.

Such a beautiful feeling. Deep and powerful, yet soft and so very, very sweet. I find myself crying at just about anything tender.

And sometimes I get a little scared about going back out into the “regular world.” It seems like the rest of the world doesn’t have the same sensitivity going on at all. And it can feel quite frightening.

And yet, I consistently find that when I remain open, as much as possible, and practice releasing fear over and over, all those regular people respond by softening right back at me! Maybe we’re all just waiting to be met and seen as what we really are beneath the hardened outside persona: cracked open.

I am just back from a week in Hawaii. A week of beautiful, exquisite, excruciating and fabulous completion with what has been my home there with my beloved and soon-to-be-ex-husband, my sweetheart of fourteen years. Fourteen awesome years. Directly from there, literally the next morning, to WomanSpirit for four days of drumming and singing, teaching, and opening with a gathering...read more »

This was actually written and didn’t get posted – oops – September 7, 2009

More change. What’s with that anyway?

Cruising along, thinking life is amazing, which of course it is. And WHAM!

There’s a line from ‘Kicking & Screaming (Down the Path of Transformation)’: “I get to thinking I can handle any old change. Then something new shows up. My life is rearranged, and suddenly I’m struggling and feeling so strange as I go kicking and screaming down the path of transformation.”

Whether it’s a new relationship, going back to school, or just a brand new consciousness, Life seems to continually cycle through the blasting of the old and the creating of new structures (as Miguel used to call them). Miguel was a master at blowing up structures. During my studies with him, right about the time we’d think we had his philosophy figured out, he’d completely change it. Perfect teacher! Just keeping us in surrender.

Life does that too, it seems. Life. Perfect teacher.

Have you ever used one of those GPS systems with audio? Whenever you go in some direction other than what the program had in mind, it will say “recalculating route.” It’s quite a bit robotic and can be very funny, especially if you’re with someone and lost and punchy…for instance.

This message can be quite reassuring when you’re lost. First of all, you know you just took a turn IT didn’t have in mind for you to take! But there are times when it’s actually better to go another way than it thinks. In those times, it can be quite entertaining regardless.

This is my new favorite sayings for life. As I get to thinking I have some direction or goals I am heading toward, and then the Universe comes along and POOF, off I go down some completely unplanned and maybe even unpaved path! You know the moments I am talking about, right?

You think you’re going to do x, y and z in the next few hours, or weeks, or years, and then suddenly that is NOT what is happening ANY more!

There is often a time lag for me, the time during which I am updating my internal program. I guess you could say that I am moving through the phases of grief as I let go of the dream of what was to be.

In these moments (or months or years, as the case may be) I now have...read more »

I have a dear friend who is struggling, once again (still), with staying sober. Before I was about to go in to the hospital to visit them, I called another friend in sobriety for support.

He said there’s a guy at meetings he hears all the time say, “I am not even the littlest bit surprised when I hear another person has gone out and used and died. What I am amazed about is that you are here, in this room. Any of you!”

When I responded that, yes, indeed, the statistics certainly are against us. He said the greatest thing:
“Well – it is un-natural for an addict NOT to use!”

What a great (and true) statement.

It got me to thinking: as I approach 19 years clean in only 10 days now – about what else I do that is seemingly impossible. For instance, maybe it’s also quite un-natural for a mind to be manageable or to not think. To rest. And yet, we can do it.

And sometimes it is those un-natural things, then, that lead me to my greatest joys and freedoms. hmmm

Regardless, we do the un-natural and the amazing every day! We really are quite amazing!

Enjoy your possibilities today – for they are truly infinite!

I can not believe how much time has passed since I wrote in this blog! Yikes!

I have been to Hawaii, to both the Big Island and to Lanai and also to Mexico (to be there with my beloveds, David [husband] and Miguel [Ruiz]). Awesome blessing of a journey – all of it!

I have been reading a friend’s blog now and then, and THEY just have the littlest things in it! So I am doing that now…letting myself off the hook if I don’t have some grand inspirational message.

I have had a whole new level of experience of living IN the light AS the light of late though. But it is so challenging to write about it.

It seems to be tweaking my whole “create my own reality” thing. Cuz, in THAT awareness, what’s there to create? Everything’s done and perfect. So it has been an interesting dance.

Especially given that I am writing my new show (see August 2 blurbs all over this site) and am so very excited about that. And yet it is all true – all is perfect and all is well – and I am still creating new things…

And in the midst – it is also true – time flies!
☺