She's fresh, exciting.

The whole spa mania has come out of a much larger spiritual-psychic-metaphysical paradigm shift our culture is experiencing. I think we live in a pretty darn amazing time. I can practically feel you rolling your eyes and asking if I've read the paper lately. Well, yes, too much, I'm afraid. But my desire to the explore healing arts--what The Land of Spa is all about--is a desire to be a part of a larger recognition that we are here to stretch our boundaries. I think it's happening in the 21st century at break-neck speed. Man has been in a constant state of evolving consciousness and in doing so we've risen beautifully to the occasion and failed miserably--all balled up together and happening at the same time. I think that's important to remember when we're reading the news or watching it on tube. There are teachers all around us, a lot of them are in the healing arts, working in The Land of Spa.

I went to an amazing workshop this weekend. It's called the Art of Allowing and it is led by Esther and Jerry Hicks. Esther has been channeling a collective nonphysical entity named Abraham for years and they share their knowledge in the form of these cross-global seminars based on the law of attraction. (If you can call workshop cruises to the Caribbean "global.")

It's all really cool for those of us who want to explore beyond our seemingly three-dimensional existences so that we can make the most of our time here. So, I wrote this essay based on Abraham's concepts. I hope you'll find it . . .refreshing!

I’m So Fresh!

It all started with “The Secret.” You know, that DVD that’s sweeping the planet because it’s supposed to reveal how you too can attract the perfect life, easy as ordering off a menu? Oprah—who bragged how she knew the secret before it was The Secret—dedicated a whole show to it. I caught the fever, too, maybe because I was delirious with a real fever, which is why I was on the couch watching daytime television in the first place.

Well, “The Secret” just didn’t work for me. I couldn’t get past the cheesy dramatizations and how all these gurus, free thinkers and gazillionaires that were interviewed seemed contractually obligated to say “the secret” instead of what it’s really called, which is the law of attraction—something, by the way, that Isaac Newton was on to before you, Oprah, and Plato before him, even. But I have to give that DVD credit—and to me for attracting it! Because of it I found a better secret.

It was my psychic who divulged the best spokespeople ever to peddle the law of attraction. It hit her after shuffling the tarot cards. Did I have questions for the cards? “Well, I have this book idea that I’m wondering if I should pursue,” I say. “Do you like the idea?” She asks, laying them out. “Well, yeah,” I say. “But I feel like the time is ripe now and all I can think of is that I’d have to put my income-producing writing aside, which means I’d be looking down a barrel full of poverty.”

She looked at the cards. “First of all, it’s a very good idea and you could be very successful if you write it.” Then she turns to me. “But you’ve got to stop thinking “poverty” and start replacing it with words like “productive, creative, purposeful.”

Oh, boy. I’ve been through this before. This being my mind. It resists. I used to complain to my therapist how I was afraid of getting too healthy for fear I’d lose my artistic ace-in-the-hole. Oh, how adorable I must have seemed to her back then! (Notice my positive spin there?)

Since the therapy years I’ve had my chakras read and my soul retrieved. I’ve been rebirthed and I’ve danced with horses, all in an attempt to lose my negativity and locate my true essence, which is apparently a success magnet. None of it ever stuck. I used to have an alter ego who wrote quippy tales about her elusive search for inner peace. One day, I thought, I’d package them into a book called “The Reluctant Spiritualist”—until I found out that it’s now the title of someone else’s book.

Now, according to my psychic, all I needed to stop giving my fortunes away was to buy a book called “Ask and It Is Given,” which she recommends to all her biggest head cases, or as she put it, her “high-functioning, intelligent clients in need of a ‘mental shift’”—like that’s supposed to make me feel better. (Actually, it did, briefly!) This book is one of many by a nonphysical collective consciousness named Abraham, channeled through Esther Hicks. I did get nervous when the psychic told me that Abraham and his crew assigns desire-attracting exercises—I hate homework—but I bought it anyway.

I really like Abraham. They never lecture, are funny, though I’m not sure it’s intentional, and they use quaint turns of phrases like being “tossed about the bushes” to describe the feeling of mentally going negative. And I love the homework! Truthfully, I haven’t gotten passed one assignment, which I attracted when I randomly opened the book to The Focus Wheel Process: Imagine you’re behind the wheel of a car. Every time you have an unchecked negative response, or attempt a fake-positive response, you know it because it feels like being tossed in the bushes. Abraham offers tons of tips on how to stay focused on the now, joyriding to plenitude.

My very favorite tip is so simple, please accept it as my gift to you. (And there’s more where that came from because there is enough of everything to go around!) Whenever you lose your way, all you have to do is focus on the word Fresh, as in Here I stand in a fresh place. I love the freshness. I am aligned in fresh energy, with fresh desire that will bring fresh results.

Aaaaaah. Like a spritz of Springtime, right?

I know what you’re thinking: Sometimes it’s so fun to go neg you just don’t want to stop. But there’s something about the brevity and optimism of the word that turns your head around. You know how the dog whisperer Cesar Millan can knock bad behavior out of a dog just by poking it and going sshhh? He says he’s “refocusing” the dog’s attention, from, say, getting ready to waste Cesar’s unflappable Chinese Crested Hairless dog, to the offender registering an expression of the most profound I-was-lost-and-now-I’m-found serenity. Fresh is like that.

Just yesterday I found the ringtone to Kool & the Gang’s song “Fresh.” (She’s fresh, fresh! exciting. She’s so exciting to me!) I’m going to download it on my cell phone so every time it rings it’ll refocus me just like a poke from Cesar would.

For variety, try stretching it out. Frrrrrrreeeeeeesshhhhhhhhhhh. Abraham says to hold it for 17 seconds, as long as it takes for another thought to join in and vibrate your new belief. (Not as easy as it sounds.) For fun pronounce it with a southern drawl, as in fray-assshhhhhhhhhhhh, or roll the r like a Latin lover. Frrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrresh.

Sometimes I think of excuses to use it on strangers, like to the grocery stocker who’s piling apples I’ll ask, “Are these freshhhhhhhhhhhhh? If you’re feeling susceptible, make sure you’re not attempting this on a Saturday when grocery shopping can throw you in the bushes in way under 17 seconds. Until you’ve seen results, I caution against doing this during actual driving too, when you can come dangerously close to inflecting fresh like you would that other f-word and end up muddied and entangled in shrubs.

Not everyone needs constant refreshing. My boyfriend says other drivers are always nice to him. He credits it to his flashing the peace sign when he lets someone cut in or vice versa, creating a whole chain reaction of peace. I’d always been jealous of his little peace sign, which wasn’t very fresh of me. But now I’ve got my own secret code. Which is so
. . . fresh!