Blog Archives
To Live
We often take for granted the things right before our eyes and even the things we’ve experienced in feeling because we are focused on achieving or racing against time. And quickly the incredible moments, people, and experiences disappear without our acknowledgement and without truly receiving what they have to share that can enrich our lives.
When you wake in the morning or before you go to bed perhaps you can reflect on those things and leave the rest for a few minutes, as it will still be there when you’re done, however the rest may not.
And along your day try raising your eyes to the sky, turning to your left or right to really see who and what’s besides you, or pay attention to your footsteps and how you are walking through life on your way to the next to-do on your list.
What are you missing today?
Your child’s desire for a hug or to know you more?
Your partner’s need for you to see or hear them?
Your animal companion’s pain they’ve taken on to help relieve your stress and get you to pay attention to what you’re neglecting?
How beautifully unassuming someone or something looks because they are unaware of their light shining through?
How nature has miracles to give you each day to help inspire and guide?
How incredible you are but never noticed the richness of what makes you you?
How amazing it is that you are breathing and have a choice every moment as to how you want to experience it and what you can do right now to make a difference?
Please don’t walk through life without ever knowing what it means to be living.
What If It Were Easy?
Too often we spend time worrying and conjuring up every angle in our heads of the worst case scenario and how hard something will be.
But what if instead we asked, “What would this look and feel like if it were easy?”
And then, imagined a variety of potential scenarios of exactly how wonderfully fluid and magickal that would be, rather than every awful one we normally do.
The reason we stress is because we’re operating on old habits, conditioning, and patterns that are in cruise control rather than taking control of the steering wheel and guiding our lives along the the path intentionally with conscious presence to our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and even how our bodies our reacting to those things in each moment.
We often are forcing things, operating on “shoulds”, stretching ourselves thin, doing more than we actually need to be because we “think” we have to, over-complicate situations by worrying, and miss the simple paths because we believe, “Life just COULDN’T be THAT easy!”
As the end of the year comes to closure and I know many of you might be thinking on New Year’s resolutions or simply wanting to rewrite your life for the upcoming new beginning’s year of 2017, perhaps you might reflect upon how to rewrite your approach to life and begin a new chapter with you as the author and the path as one of grace and ease.
Living with Conscious Intention & the Release & Embrace that Reflects Your Truth
This New Moon in Sagittarius drew out the Truth and offered us opportunity to expand into our empowerment. These crystal beings were my partners for this journey.
I listen to their essence and intuitively am drawn to which crystals would assist most greatly with current focuses and align most fluidly with the energies.
How do you harness the energies available?
Ritual, intention, going within, creating sacred space and sacred presence, inviting crystal beings, elementals, your higher self and divine forces into your daily practice, meditation, nature communing, creative self expression, greater wholeness of being…?
There are so many ways you can live life with conscious intention and work with all that is available to you to create alchemy.
Whether you utilize tools, modalities, your unique gifts, etc. the power lies within you above all else and the rest is your access to remember and stand in that truth and strength.
I’ve been blessed to have many crystal friends over the course of the years that have assisted me in knowing myself and harnessing my gifts to greater depths.
Many have moved on to assist others (including these 2 amazing herkimer diamonds above) and nearly all moved forth to new guardians both during a public and most recent private offering directly after that, leaving me with the least amount of crystals I’ve had (not counting crystal jewelry) in my presence.
I’d been guided that the last 20 (which includes 3 crystal wands) hold the frequencies of my current path and are some of my most cherished friends connected in some cases with my beloved rabbit companions who have moved on.
At some point some of these may be ready to assist others, and like now, I know that letting go is what opens new doorways and new experiences and friends to join me.
It’s amazing to observe how our lives evolve and the reflections of those changes all around us.
In many ways I’ve seen nearly all of what my life was released to the collective well to make room for the new in my own, which others have opened for me, and to allow others to step into their own versions of space I used to hold.
It’s such a beautiful process and journey we are creating together and trickling out to one another by letting go and embracing simultaneously.
I’m so excited about the new recreation of my life and life’s work and look forward to sharing it all with you, as I also look forward to witnessing and experiencing your new.
There is so much creative expression being channeled right now and new versions of everything that’s ever been, which is awesome!
Dare to create outside of the box and don’t try to be like anyone else or fit yourself into a limiting definition and paradigm that squeezes the life out of you.
Your courage to create new and more expansive versions of you creates potential for us all.
Live Your Dreams Now
Life is fleeting…a blink of an eye…yet many of us keep pushing off the things in life we know in our hearts we would love to experience AND came here to experience.
Tomorrow is no guarantee, but you do have this moment.
Express the things you’ve wanted to share with others, do something courageous toward your dreams, experience something new you haven’t, and savor what you do have.
It may make all the difference and begin to write a new chapter that begins the first day you really start living.
You’re Only As Strong As Your Weakest Link But As Wise As Your Strongest
Back in 2002, when I still watched television, I remember the game show, the Weakest Link. The premise of this game was to have a team of players trying to reach and bank a set target within a limited time period by answering a chain of answers correctly. The chain was broken if one player answered incorrectly, or if they decided to bank the money in the chain already. When a player answered the question wrong, they were eliminated and the game show host would see them off by saying: “You are the weakest link. Goodbye!”
Obviously, each team hoped to have what they thought to be “strong” players, as that would help them to achieve their individual goals. They didn’t always recognize where the “weakest” link would be, so it was important to each do their best to keep in the game in order to potentially make a play for their win they helped to grow.
In this scenario, the “strongest” links were self-serving in their quest as well, and therefore not truly acting from the spirit and wisdom of “team effort” for a greater good. After all, these games are focused on winning and that tends to be an individual goal rather than being in the spirit of unity.
Now, I’m not about “winning or losing”, nor supporting a game of humiliation as a spectacle, but the premise here of the “whole” being only as strong as the weakest link within that whole, I feel has some important symbolism in terms of integrative healing processes that have been a focal point for everyone. And especially so if you are wanting to move into the fullness, freedom, and expansion of you, since doing so involves having done the integrative, deep, and honest work that will bring you to the realizations that have always resided within, awaiting you to embrace their truth.
You will only be able to do as much as is equal to the amount your shadow aspects have been loved, embraced, integrated, and transmuted. This is evident in the things that suddenly crop up or trigger you, or perhaps even completely pull the rug out from under you when you thought everything was peachy keen.
You can be chugging along feeling things are all lining up and incredible, then suddenly hit a break in the train track along the way and boom! Crash goes your puffed-up ego and positive “I think I can” fluffy engine with a domino effect of all your cars/pieces smashing one into the other, all the way down to your caboose, because you weren’t keeping in conscious, full-spectrum connection with the whole picture.
You can’t fake your way through life and you definitely can’t spiritually bypass the shadows within you that will blare at you from all angles until you revisit your natural feelings in a deeper, holistic way.
It’s not about judgment either, so weak doesn’t mean bad, wrong, or less enlightened…it simply is a piece that hasn’t seen the light yet, nor has been nurtured with the wisdom of your strongest parts that can lovingly assist them into empowerment, if given the committed attention and energy.
To explain how this works, remember that a link is something that holds things together. So in the case of a chain, if you pull from each end of it, your ability to break the chain is in proportion to how strong the links in the chain are, which dictates the amount of force it would take to do so – small or large.
It is said that if every link within the chain has the ability to withstand a strong force without breaking, then the chain is strong. If just one link breaks with even just a weak force, then the whole chain is weak, despite the strength of the other links. (hold that last thought until I revisit it shortly)
Something can come out and bite you in the butt by surprise because of untended old beliefs, repressed and denied emotions, and past pains unhealed.
So it’s a way of pointing out the weak points, or parts in need of your love, within you. You will find greater strength with all the new you are creating when you’ve refreshed and strengthened the old, weathered foundation/weak points.
But rather than measure yourself by your challenges, feel humiliation, shame, or defeat about the weaker aspects (as the game show liked to capitalize on), it would benefit you more to be grateful for them showing up and messaging you – seeing them as a helpful, valuable, and incredibly useful partner wanting to provide you the insights and tools to build the greatest creations ever.
Embracing your vulnerability and honesty with love, rather than judgment, ridicule, or self-punishment will provide you the gentle grace to fly. Self-punishment only keeps you caged.
But now let’s push play, from our previous hold, and take a look at the flip side as well. Is the chain really weak, because of some pieces needing your attention? Or is it that these weaker links are requiring your most wisest, strongest parts to step up to the plate and truly enact “real” strength to operate from their full potential?
While your weakest, untended parts/link may hinder, they do have their beauty and perfection for their presence in your life. And I have firmly believed that they hold the key to the most beautiful of your gifts and strengths when realized for what they are behind the distorted mirrors. There will always be seasons of change and inconstancy is part of the constancy of change. Your weaker and stronger parts don’t have to be a dichotomy of black and white duality, but rather the perspective of harmony within perfect elements that when understood, can create alchemy in your life.
Small tweaks to how we see and feel about things does change everything.
So, in fact, you are also as strong as your strongest links because the strength within their wisdom can be utilized productively, rather than as a force against or powering over the other parts. You can harness their innate clarity, courage, and compassion to meld with their counterparts to provide them exactly the cultivation they need for transmutation.
The wisdom of your strongest links wouldn’t dismiss the weaker links with a simple “goodbye”, as takes place in the game show, just because they don’t currently have the “right stuff”, as this can turn into denial or suppression since nothing was ever addressed. No, they don’t just go away by thinking them gone or ignoring them.
Instead, the wisdom of your strongest links would recognize there’s a vital ingredient the “weaker” have that will greatly impact the empowerment of the whole, so it is in the stronger link’s best interest to find ways to draw out and fortify the fine points rather than completely dismiss a part of the “team”. They have the vision to see that doing this will make them a force to reckon with, that will open more doors for ALL of you.
So rather than be the perpetrators of ridicule, enlist your strong links to replenish, renew, and reactivate the links in need, by utilizing the wisdom recognized in their call for help.
In this way both your so-called “weakest” and “strongest” links can rise to the occasion and support the fullness of your whole being.
Getting “Real” Really Is Key
Little by little I’m seeing that people are coming to understand that there’s more to creating change than simply being “positive” and reciting affirmations, which is so refreshing. And so it seems that another round of inner reflection about your emotional landscape is coming up as an important topic again to reflect on, as you are working with integrating the deep roots of your experience.
I’ve written a lot on this subject including this August post:
It’s Okay to Feel ~ Allowing Your Humanness To Be The Reflection Of Divinity It Is.
So I smiled when I read this short MindBodyGreen article, a few days ago, by Aimee Dufresne:
Stop Being “Positive” and Start Getting Real (Joy) In Your Life
In it, Aimee shares a few of her own simple hints and good places to start, to help you to “get real”.
As she puts it, just being positive is:
….”like trying to fit into the cutest pair of shoes that you want so badly but the only size available is a half size smaller than your feet. So you push and prod and tell yourself you can do it. You can bend your big toe and walk at an odd angle. Maybe the shoes will stretch if you wear them long enough. That chaffing isn’t so bad, is it?
Yes, it is. The further you push and force yourself into something that doesn’t fit, the more struggle and angst you will feel.”
So, if you have found yourself doing some of the spiritual bypassing, “fluffiness”, or denial with your emotions, where you “fake” a reality of feeling, crack a smile, and simply affirm otherwise, then you may want to check the links out and revisit your natural feelings in a deeper, holistic way.
Reason For Rainbows
Just because….
I was inspired this morning when I woke up and saw the 8 paintings I’ve done so far, displayed across the floor in a rainbow collage that tickled my heart and soul. I then knew instantly I was being guided to post some rainbow inspiration, so I am sharing these photos that I’ve taken of some rainbows showing up in my life and this enlivening music by Yanni (whom I listen to so often), as there is always a “Reason for Rainbows”.
Okay, so maybe the reason is that the way I live my life is from the full spectrum of the rainbow, and then some.
Maybe it’s because my palette as an artist of life is limitless in breadth of colorful experiences and I am one who loves to dip into life fully and make splashes with vibrancy.
Maybe it’s because our feelings are like a rainbow of reflections that are beautiful in and of themselves. And, when fully expressed, are a miracle of natural art that IS only because of the integral flowing strokes coming together.
And maybe it’s because life just simply is a rainbow of experiences that I find to be an exciting adventure.
I know I am definitely experiencing the colors of life in high definition these days and that equates to pure harmony. I have even seen this weekend the mirror of this not only in my current paintings I’m creating, as I continue to explore the unlimited colors and combinations, but also in two sunsets back to back that have been stunning, high-definition, colorful sunset displays of the Universe giggling along with me in my “rainbow explorations”. Who knows what today will bring. It’s a suspenseful surprise always!
“Life is like a rainbow. You need both the sun and the rain to make its colors appear.” ~Unknown
I’ve already shared about letting your feelings move through you and allowing your humanness to be the reflection of Divinity it is. The feelings that you bury, never go away until you embrace, forgive, and allow them to move through you. A good place to start is to always be mindful and conscious of what you’re feeling, thinking, saying, AND doing. See how these are setting the tone for your day…and life..and be willing to receive the origin of these feelings (as there is always a trigger to something behind it) so that with recognition and accountability, you can let them go.
Feelings are like all things natural…they must keep cycling through or you end up fighting an exhausting and futile battle against the inevitable.
Each color of your wings is a color of your truth and spirit to share. Don’t be afraid to let it flow. Spread your wings wide and sore to the heights of you.
“Dare to love yourself as if you were a rainbow with gold at both ends.” ~Aberjhani
Please Don’t Cry Mother Gaia!
Today I wanted to highlight Sonya Oak’s lovely short story ebook: Please Don’t Cry Mother Gaia! which mirrors my own heart’s reflection and work towards creating a return to compassionate harmony on Earth and throughout the Cosmos.
Sonya contacted me while she was writing this, to ask permission to use my article information, which helped confirm her understanding of what Mother Gaia is: Gaia – Earth Mother and Turtle? Ancient Wisdom For Conscious Living” – http://ezinearticles.com/?id=1341797. She so graciously listed me along with other contributors in her bibliography, but it is she who I would like to place the spotlight on, as I LOVE her story!
Please Don’t Cry Mother Gaia! is a quick and colorfully sweet read, which she is granting rights to others to post, copy, distribute and embed freely, at no charge. Her intent was to create a story about Earth and animal rights issues, as well as health and veganism that is more playful and easier to digest, while still maintaining the integrity of the information that is serious at the core. And she managed to do just that! Her story is sweet and presents the information in such a loving, endearing, magical way through the eyes of the animals, Earth and beyond. A great and easy, quick read for children and adults alike.
I love the energy of it, which emanates in such a positive and compassionate way! I think it’s great, and as I am a child at a heart, this touches the child within me and us all, at a vulnerably innocent level without intrusive rhetoric. Things don’t have to be complex to make a difference.
Thank you Sonya for being a part of spreading this light and love, sweet sister, in an accessibly easy way. I hope that many will discover the messages you share from your heart to theirs.
For more about Sonya Oak visit: http://creatorblessings.com/about_me.html
Here is the link: https://acrobat.com/app.html#d=Pw1tP7IpC2gBSOZBYy3FLQ