Centering Tools

Rhythms

Plugged and Unplugged

I think, untampered, days are designed to open up like flowers.  They each offer a universe of multidimensional feasts to the senses, teeming with rich, multifaceted life on this flowing earth plane. 

I have spent the past 9 days visiting my son and his partner, my daughter and son-in-law, and my 6 month-old grandson in New England.  I've seen great cities, forest-ringed ponds, and rock-strewn,wild ocean shores.  I've seen history greatly matched with the current HBO special, John Adams, about the founding of our country, and yet continued to be very much plugged in to the world with its equally poignant, peaking political struggles.

One short Day Far Beyond the City

Day-to-day life doesn't care about all this.  It just flows and grows within its own unfolding rhythms. 

A few short miles from the bottlenecked east-coast interstate I lay on great warmed rocks, casually placed as if strewn by a careless giant, alone except for the ever-pounding surf gently spraying its salty foam before me in small explosion after explosion.  The overgrown trail hasn't even sprouted  rose buds, only prickles that easily grab and entangle my hair as I hike, but the radiant sun high in a cloudless blue sky promises spring, and it seems to me the ocean laughs and rejoices.

Nearby my youngest daughter, soon to come of age, stands triumphant on the highest rock, arms outstretched to touch the bright blue sky, laughing at the crashing waves far below.  We just took a day, a great day to see what the newly-opened earth was up to, even far from the rest of our family who live so close to land's end. 

Unending Treasures

The next day I'm knee-deep in my grandson's lopsided smile as we sit in an old, slanted Adirondack chair in a tiny closed yard surrounded by peaked houses, in the midst of the vast metropolitan spread.  Birds don't care about all this - they just sing, and my grandson continues to turn his head seemingly by degrees as he listens intently to their trilling chorus.

If we let it be and partner and rejoice in it, life embraces us and sweetly leads us to its treasures.  But we have be able to survive first, and be given space and opportunity to surrender to what's naturally real - not to mention, of course, centrally be willing to be present. 

Meet the Challenge to Survive

It really doesn't take much, said Henry David Thoreau, who, over a century and a half ago, spent a year in a small hut overlooking the pond I walked earlier this week writing his memoirs, as a guide to restoring rhythms.  He reminded us that we otherwise "lead lives of quiet desperation", which I believe is the price we pay for being out of touch with who we are and what we are, minus our attachments and conditioning.

A year was his choice, and an amazing choice it was - such a guide to us all, who continue to so greatly profit by his sacred record, On Walden Pond, which reads like a flowing meditation.  A day was my choice, and when I return next week to my home so far away from here, and my work, it will be an hour or two as many times a week as I can grab. 

Perhaps I'm greedy, but I don't think so.  I'm just trying to survive, knowing long ago without my rhythms my Self is gone forever.

For You

The only way to know yourself is to know your rhythms.  How ironic that when we settle back in a comfortable, supported position, close our eyes, and tune in to our deepening breath, we enter our sacred center from which we can then radiate outward in corresponding essence partnership with the natural world.

So here, of course, are my recommendations - today's Top Ten:

1.  On as regular a basis as you can prioritize, get yourself out in nature for an hour or longer.

2.  Every day spend five minutes or longer simply being fully present and singularly focused on your regular, deep breaths.

3.  Spend fifteen minutes or longer each day observing the world you live in with all your sense fully "plugged in" - see, hear, taste, touch, smell.

4.  Let yourself be lovingly touched by life - animal, plant, human, earth, air, water, fire - beyond judgment.

5.  Be greatly honest with yourself and others.

6.  Listen unconditionally to your feelings, and watch them release themselves like waves beyond your ego-driven interference, miraculously offering their meaningful gifts to you.

7.  Spend five or more minutes every day sitting outside, empty - by that I mean, not thinking or doing anything.

8.  Sit by a body of water as regularly as possible.

9.  At least once a month, take a half-hour and record your worst fears, asking your restored rhythmical self to accept and, through its endless flow, release them as You Will.

10. Every day, say to yourself 10 things you love about life, and take a moment when you've finished to settle back, close your eyes, deepen your breath, and say,  "Blessed Be".

(Picture downloaded from Wikipedia Commons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Henry_David_Thoreau.jpg)

Integrative Tarot for Self-Healing and Spiritual Development

My Tarot History

I was first introduced to the Tarot when a friend in college excitedly told me he could do a “reading” for my future with this original source of intuitive cards for spiritual development.  Once I viewed the compelling images of the 74 cards of the Alistair Crowley Tarot deck he presented, I was “hooked” for what is now 34 years of studying and presenting related workshops on the power of the Tarot to integrate and support self-healing and heightened awareness.

I expect to continue this wonderful exploration throughout the rest of my life.  In a time when we reach, sometimes desperately, for transcendent meaning and timeless solutions to sustain and renew us, the Tarot offers many creative pathways to enlarge our perception and experience.       

Mythic Origins in Atlantis

Precursors to modern-day playing cards, the Tarot, according to some reports, originated in ancient Egypt, even from legendary Atlantis, as an encoded source containing the secrets of the universe.  Twenty-two cards called the Greater Arcana, deleted from present-day playing cards, are said to be the source of these universal secrets of spiritual power. 

I frequently use the Greater Arcana as to enhance insight, awareness, creative expression, and mind-body healing with clients I see in my Centering™ practice.  Each of the twenty-two cards speaks to us through commonly understood myth as an easily-translated spiritual metaphor that can have tremendous relevance to better coping with common life challenges.  These metaphors provide transformational guidance which support integrative self-healing and development. 

Greater Arcana as Archetypes

It has been said that the order of each of the twenty-two cards of the Greater Arcana describes the progressive journey of developing consciousness that we are meant to take as incarnating souls seeking enlightenment through our spiritually-directed experience on the earth plane.  The titles of each of these cards are archetypes in and of themselves. 

I like to use the Rider deck, which I feel offers powerful multidimensional images that easily lead the viewer, whether they are familiar with Tarot or not, into deeper levels of   authentic, self-directed spiritual understanding which can then be well intuitively directed throughout one’s life.  I also typically suggest as a reading resource any books by Eden Gray, particularly The Complete Guide to the Tarot, which offers clear, insightful descriptions of the meanings of each card and how to integrate the Tarot with astrology, the Kabbalah, numerology and meditation.

Archetypal Meanings of Each of the Greater Arcana

Join me in an imaginary romp through each of the metaphorical portals of the Greater Arcana and their corresponding archetypal titles as the necessary steps we must take as spiritual beings adventuring through lifetimes on the earth plane, to successfully complete our ordained evolution.  Each card offers its own unique challenge as necessary healing and creative transcendence to support the next.  And so we begin . . .

0 – The Fool.  The challenge is to accept the fact that we cannot know, as we live our life, all that ultimately supports choice, and yet we must choose and accept responsibility for the choices we make.  When we find and ultimately surrender to our spirits, we let them dictate our choices.  This allows us to heal, evolve, and unleash the strength and power of  this newly-integrated Self who can correspondingly change reality.

I – The Magician.  It is this extended Self who can cocreate reality through drawing on divine inspiration, and shift experience.

II – The High Priestess.  Now the spiritually aware Self has the power to discern how to express and direct spiritual understanding in the physical world, and keep its secrets as part of known spiritual responsibility.

III – The Empress.   All the potential of abundance on the physical plane can be created and enjoyed as limitless possibility and full cognizance of the universal law which supports it, for integrating individual with common good.

IV – The Emperor.  Conscious rulership over all decisions holistically directs intent and corresponding action to create right order and provision in the world.

V – The Hierophant.  The capacity of rulership extends to create a divinely ordered society and be the spiritually responsible representative on the earth plane.

VI – The Lovers.  The fully revealed and available divine masculine and feminine selves, integrated and balanced within enlightened consciousness, birth an integrated, loving being who is at peace within.  All resultant experience becomes a mirror of harmonious, blessed relationships.

VII – The Chariot.  The completely integrated Will can successfully direct all lesser parts of the Self toward higher, spiritually chosen ends with accompanying awareness and action.

VIII – Strength.  Accepting the unconditionally loving gentleness of the spiritual center allows unending strength to correspondingly “gentle” all parts of the Self, especially the perceived shadow, to tame and redirect impulse toward divinely guided choicemaking.

IX – The Hermit.  Matured through completed experience, one is free to undertake a spiritual quest for enlightenment to scale the heights of corresponding perception and understanding of the nature of existence.

X – Wheel of Fortune.  Fully revealed destiny moves in alignment with consciously-directed, spiritually-guided action to create corresponding cycles of desired experience.

XI – Justice.  The well-integrated personality is now free to eliminate any excess baggage that no longer serves it, and rebalance and support just outcomes.

XII – The Hanged Man.  One is now ready to consciously choose to sacrifice the ego to resurrect the resultant spiritually-freed self to exist at the next highest level of consciousness.

XIII. – Death.  A complete transformation occurs through the death of an old self and old way of life to “wipe the slate clean” for spiritual rebirth.

XIV – Temperance.  Fully revealed spiritual consciousness experiences everything in moderation, and all in right integrated balance and direction.

XV – The Devil.  A complete understanding of all that creates and support bondage in relationships through surrendering to the physical world by separating the Self and the Self in partnership from the spiritual world occurs through resultant experience.

XVI – The Tower.  The above understanding extends to the world which must seed its own destruction through being built on a correspondingly faulty foundation, to insure necessary healing and enlightenment.      

XVII – The Star.  Awakened consciousness knows how to draw from fully developed intuition and accompanying divine guidance for integrated healing and resultant miracles.

XVIII – The Moon.  Complete intuitive understanding integrates with all emotional cycles, and determines experience.

XIX – The Sun.  The freed inner child can move through the physical world in trust, wonder and delight, and receive all corresponding gifts as expressions of the spiritual power of love, happiness, abundance and creativity.

XX – Judgment.  The fully revealed spiritual determination of the truth of existence offers redemption for all linked beings, and the power of forgiveness.

XXI – The World.  The whole, completely integrated spiritually aware being exists knowing oneself as the very center of the world and the Self who carries the world, and therefore chooses all reality, all experience as a reflection of the One.

Your Own Integrative Spiritual Journey

Where is your present experienced and spiritually directed step?  Let each title speak to you and perform its own integration, offer its own path to self-healing and spiritual development.

May your journeys be fruitful.  May you receive many blessings.  May you find your own integrated sources of freedom and the way to lovingly extend these to all to whom you have the honor to meet. 

   

Feeling is Creation

The Transformational Dream

I don't always remember my dreams, but I did last night.  I had a short, interrupted sleep, so thought it was interesting that I remembered them all so clearly. 

I am in need of this message right now, to be sure, in the midst of a sad, old crisis involving my beloved daughter and her father that, so far, is going as well as can be expected towards necessary new resolution and hopefully, new beginning.  So here is the message from the dream(s):  Longstanding, deeply-felt feelings create multidimensional reality. 

Visions Versus Feelings

I don't know if I really wanted to face that.  I've very much, since I was easily 15 probably, understood visions do come true . . . sometimes. 

Feelings, though - all feelings - the ones we love that seem all-too-elusive - and the ones that stay with us uncomfortably and plague us painfully no matter what we do - also create experienced reality.  Those experiences, of course, are much harder to face, and then how can we deal in a way that serves us, with that reality, let alone allows us to survive it?

The Reality We Least Want

I  think the real word here, rather than "create" regarding how feelings produce corresponding reality, is "magnetize".  So in the all-through-the-night dream I just had, I was clearly told and shown that the "survivors guilt" - as it is called - over the sudden death of my husband, and the terrible, unresolved pain I continued to feel for so long over those feelings "matched up" with the terrible, longstanding guilt my daughter's father also hated and couldn't  - to this day, I believe - shake. 

That combination, I suddenly understood in the middle of last night, is what brings us the reality we least want.  Feelings generate passion, which is intense, unrelenting, most magnetic energy - the kind that very much creates reality. 

Karma is the Great Spiritual Challenge

When we refuse to accept, because we feel hopeless about what we fear will happen as a result, the painful feelings that emerge from a hurt that cuts us to the core, those intense opposing energies generate what I call "compromised" reality that produces an equally hopeless outcome.  The spiritual challenge, which I am moved to call karma, is designed over a significant time -even lifetimes, to offer us oportunities for central healing and growth.

In key therpeutic terms, we are forced to complete a central, multidimensional cycle of grief which always brings us to acceptance - truly - of the impossible.  Reality correspondingly shifts, and the "new beginning" the psychologist who met with us yesterday described, begins to emerge.

The Possibilities for Miracle-Making

How critical for ourselves and our world that we begin to understand and accept the immense challenge to work with this!  Think of the possibilities for miracle-making and great, harmonious transformation!

I think we're meant to help each other to this effect.  My daughter and I watched a movie the day before about 10 questions the director asked the Dalai Lama, who defines "harmlessness" as always reaching out to listen and seek to understand each other.

The paradox, of course, is to never stop reaching out and being willing to listen, acknowledge, and seek to understand ourselves and the great mystery of our own feelings, particularly our pain.  It is a great, hard adventure, and always, we are meant to return to an equally mysterious, reflective inner well of trust and patience in our own inherent spiritual cycles.   

My Space

Create, Express and Choose Your Identity

Of course I learned about this amazing, rich, wonderful cyberspace universe from my four children, now aged 15, 22, 24 and 30 – all of whom have their own “domains” in it.  I must admit I like the title and the invitation to create, express, and choose how to identify, highlight, and focus on oneself with an eye to freely, confidently sharing it all with the world.

It occurs to me that in my Centering® practice I centrally support clients finding, keeping, expanding, and creating their own inviolate space; and that it is a mysterious journey with surprising, wonderful results that emerge through both hope and woundedness.  In a world with increasing focus on the external and all its complicated pulls, no wonder we are so happy with creating, in the blank space of the inviting Internet, my space.

Connect in Simple, Meaningful Ways

Who are we, really?  How do we want to be in the world?  What are our widest dreams, deepest goals, and clinging visions?  How do we relate, anyway?

My Space artfully draws this all out of us, makes us so suddenly eager to display it all for the world to see.  I think the central invitation is to connect in simple, meaningful ways to ourselves and each other, and thoroughly enjoy all corresponding journeys.  What an ideal vision of how to live one’s life, how to experience relationships!   

The Price of Joy Lost

Joy can be in short supply these days.  There is so much fear, so much wear-down, so much greed, so much obligation, so much anger that the joy that is the best, most basic part of who we are and what we are evaporates and eludes us.   

We pay a price for this loss.  We age mentally, physically and emotionally.  Our spirit dies, and we become dead inside.

A Short Guided Meditation

I invite you, then, to celebrate the brilliant fullness of summer, and in the spirit of then harvesting your innate capacity to experience – even generate – joy, to join me in the following guided meditation to experience My Space: 

Settle back comfortably, arms and legs uncrossed, close your eyes and deepen your breath.  Count five full, deep easy breaths to yourself.   

Of course I learned about this amazing, rich, wonderful cyberspace universe from my four children, now aged 15, 22, 24 and 30 – all of whom have their own “domains” in it.  I must admit I like the title and the invitation to create, express, and choose how to identify, highlight, and focus on oneself with an eye to freely, confidently sharing it all with the world.

Redemption: A Romp Through Historical Definitions, Archetypal Myths and Personal Challenges

We have, in our Judeo-Christian culture, managed to associate the season of Spring with redemption; rebirth with freedom and saving. Saving a whole people. Saving souls. Redemption offers a promise of life everlasting through acceptance and forgiveness. Redemption offers, as well, personal sacrifice as an opportunity for completion.

These are interesting linkages to contemplate and consider as implants in our psyches, and much more, perhaps. How can we structure a spiritually driven map which outlines a new definition of giving, receiving, healing and development?

It has been said that the New Millennium offers us awakened consciousness. To me this means being reborn as an aware, fully empowered being, taking full responsibility for myself as part of the All That Is (God/Goddess). To cast ourselves as mythical characters on a journey through the Exodus story, through the Easter story, opens wide the possibility of accepting what one feels guided to understand as a divinely dictated path of sacrifice, courage, love, surrender and reawakening.

How would your life play out with this dictate? At this moment, what might you imagine you are being asked to let go of? Do you sacrifice for the greater good? Can you love beyond yourself? What will you courageously stand for?

Can you surrender a whole way of doing, being, thinking, for a fully re-birthed, divinely conscious self? What do these words mean to you? Can you bring yourself to stretch your understanding, acceptance and capacity to forgive yourself and all others, all history from a place of compassion, of irrelevance?

The Exodus and the Easter stories teach us that all of this doesn’t come cheap. It costs on many levels. There is great pain and suffering as a kind of exchange, perhaps, for the vast, terrible pain and suffering that comes through slavery, ignorance, missing information, missing guidance. Results, though, are bathed in light, ascension, celebration, affirmation. In return we enter the other side.

Can you find and envision your other side? Ask what it costs you to get there. Ask what support you need from spirit. Ask what it is you are willing to do, or perhaps, what you can simply no longer avoid. Let yourself be recreated as something larger than anything you ever dreamed you were, or were capable of becoming. What is this loving sacrifice that comes from a new place of understanding, trust and spiritual grounding with which you may redeem yourself and others, as you are called?

The personal sacrifice is, of course, the ego. We are nothing in the physical world, knowing our bodies are literally dust. We prove, through evolution, awareness, and commitment that we can wholeheartedly offer ourselves to another as a brother or a sister from a deep place of honesty, caring nothing for our own conditioned need for external security and validation.

Speaking what the heart knows to be true transcends cultural, societal boundaries and dictates, and does not demand obeisance or come from preconceived requirement. We can therefore let go of expectation and fear of loss, moving beyond ã carried into what our Judeo-Christian world calls the divine plan. When we feel part of a great mystery we are transmuted, and can be as a divining rod to support others transformations. New relationships are formed, and we feel the capacity for soul connection and a seamless coming together for the common good.

So think, dream and act, trusting in mysterious, loving plans that offer rebirth and sacrifice of old pain and limitation, and needless, ego-driven, violent suffering which diminishes and submerges larger consciousness. Answer your own call to set yourself free and step up to the plate by courageously choosing your greatest responsibility, in a way that lifts and lovingly envelops you. Let guidance find you in this new land, and open all parts of yourself down to your very cells — receiving, letting go, understanding and offering yourself as a reborn, seamless part of creation.

By Marjorie Baker Price, April 2001 Newsletter

Opening Your Spirit

When we are moved to take spiritual stock, we are naturally moved to ask for and be open to receive blessings. We are then further stimulated to seek to give and, in our heart of hearts, trust and honor our power to share.

An Inner Journey

Here is an inner journey that you can do to ignite your capacity to receive through your own opened spirit.

Close your eyes, deepen your breath, and settle back into a comfortable position. Imagine your breath carries you easily and effortlessly into your heart.

Ask Your Heart What it Most Wants

Listen and write down whatever the answer is (this may come in pictures as well as words). Then write this answer in the form of a question.

With your nondominant hand (the hand you don’t write with) imagine a wise, loving higher being speaks to you. Write down whatever comes up in response as the answer to your question. 

When you have finished, close your eyes for a moment and say “thank you”, and simply stay present for a few moments with your sensations.

Record Your Experience

When you’re ready, open your eyes and record whatever you want about your whole experience. Then reread your answer. Consider one choice you can make through this experience of renewal to begin giving and receiving this direction. 

Commit to carrying out this choice, and record the results.

Trust is Our Key Recovery Challenge

In a world that screams to us in so many ways of what is not trustworthy, we have been increasingly caught up in a corresponding sense of doubting our own worth, our own inherent spiritual power and our own fundamental center of courage.

As you determine and become clear about what in your heart of hearts you know are courageous choices you can make, and as you see you can survive these choices, so do you recover trust and your power to receive your heart’s desires . . . for you recover your power to create them.

It is Time to Celebrate . . .

. . . your power to renew yourself and your choices. In this way you learn how to transform your experience as you seed the full flowering of your spirit’s desires.

A Healing Obsession

Fifty Times-Plus Reads for The Lord of the Rings

I have a confession to make. I have read The Lord of the Rings by J. R. Tolkien more than 50 times over the past thirty-two years beginning with a course requirement while in my last year of undergraduate school, many lifetimes, it seems, ago.

I’ve just finished watching the extended version of the movie on DVD for probably the tenth time. Fortunately, because my son is home for the summer before starting graduate school, I was even happier to not watch it alone. He is quite an avid fan himself.

 
The Heroic Quest

I am a sucker for The Heroic Quest. When I was a child my mother used to take my brother and me to our local branch of the library every week, where I managed to read every book on fairy tales the library possessed. 

I have an insatiable hunger for myths, and agree with some literary critics who say The Lord of the Rings was the finest example of a great myth written in the twentieth century.

I believe all the elements of the heroic quest are wonderfully exemplified by Tolkien in this great epic, which offers the essentials for spiritual survival and ultimate happiness in one’s lifetime. 

 

My List for Spiritual Happiness and Completion

 
So here is my “list”, in no particular order:

1. We are meant to undertake a Great Quest to complete a well-lived life of personal transformation. It is our birthright and our greater destiny – how we are meant to offer ultimate service, including sacrifice, in the world – that creates and extends our authentic integrity.

2. Great Quests are not taken alone. Companions are meant to accompany us, and they pretty much present themselves in “right order” as needed.

3. These are archetypal journeys, meant to express great themes that inspire and extend us as human beings, far beyond what we might assume is our real capability.

4. They engage our whole beings, and require courageous choice-making – even  demand from us our complete willingness to offer our lives, if necessary, to complete the heroic mission that presents itself.

5. In that sense, and perhaps in related others, heroic quests include an essential sacrifice that ends up being our key to greater transformation.

6. As a result of experiencing our heroic quest, our relationships, our greater purpose and our world view profoundly change for the greater good.

7. Heroic quests always involve understanding and practicing magic.  

 

The Mystical Number of Spiritual Completion

Speaking of which, the number seven is considered to be a mystical number of spiritual completion. Consider your inner call to embark on a heroic quest that fulfills all of the above seven elements.

Might you already be fully engaged in a heroic quest that begs to transform your life, and bring you to greater creativity and service? Imagine this is true.

 

My Closing Recommendation for You

Here is my closing recommendation for you. Settle back comfortably, close your eyes, take a couple of deep, cleansing breaths – and imagine yourself experiencing a Great Heroic Quest.

Make sure all the above seven points are covered. When it’s all over, take a little more time and write it all down.

 

Enough to Shake the World

Now consider what would happen in your life if you brought your Heroic Quest into it as fully and creatively as possible. That is your exact blueprint for spiritual transformation and happiness.

We are all versions of Frodo Baggins – and that is enough to shake the world, which begs us to participate in all ways that touch and inspire us.  

Accessing Your Vision

Imagination is Everything

Imagination, says Einstein, is everything.  Our imagination is how we envision. 

When we know how to access our inner vision we are able to connect with our core, and our true spiritual essence is free to inspire and greatly touch us.  How can we do that? 

The Road to Envision

The following guided meditation and journaling exercise offers a multidimensional “road” to that end through your chakras, understood to be energetic centers located up and down the spine, all the way to the top of your head.  Explore whatever your sense of your heartfelt vision is for your life however your imagination leads you, and see what happens!

Think of your vision as a shimmering bubble of fine energy emerging from your mouth as you lightly exhale your breath.  This is the release of your spirit.

Your Vision is a Seed of Light

Feel your vision planted as a seed of light, a radiant gift from spirit, in the deepest, most loving core of your heart, like a seed implanted in a womb of energy. 

Then feel a spiritual cord from your heart to your crown chakra, an energetic center at the top of your head, through which your guides in the higher realms speak to you.  Imagine how they completely envelop you and send you love, clarity, and higher thought. 

The Emotional Core of Your Vision

Ask your heart what it wants and needs to be set free.

This is the emotional core of your vision.

The Mental Core of Your Vision

Ask your mind, your intellect what it needs to ignite passion and begin a dance of power.

This is the mental core of your vision.

The Physical Core of Your Vision

Ask your body what it can joyfully, easily support and run with as a stretch and opportunity to remake itself along lines of light.

This is the physical core of your vision.

You Are a Vision from Spirit

See yourself as a vision from spirit. 

Imagine you can view your life as a vision from spirit.  Journal your impressions, as well as the following:

A Spiritual Opportunity to Create Your Dreams

Your work…..

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Your relationships…..

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A Spiritual Opportunity to Extend and Grow

Your play…..

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Your environment…..

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See All Others as Visions from Spirit

See through your guides’ eyes all others as visions from spirit  (as in the story of Genesis, “God created…..”)

Hold your vision as a chalice, a Holy Grail, in your hands, and when you’re ready, imagine yourself drinking it.  Feel it grow, spreading and taking shape all around and through your being.

Let Your Vision Birth Itself

Then feel it birth itself….take shape in multidimensional relationship to you.  Let yourself resonate with it along what feels like a synchronistic vibrational frequency. 

Then let it go, understanding now that you have released it so that it can lead you as its call to service.

Loving Alignment with the All That Is

Consider the following directive, and record your impressions:

It is openness….which comes from willingness….which comes from trust….which comes from freedom….which comes from awareness….which comes from spirit….which leads us full circle back to the dream from whence we emerged….that creates and completes pathways of evolving beingness, creative consciousness, and alignment with All That Is…of which we are a loving part.

Our Primary Directive – to Dream and Create

There is only and endless present, and that present is filled with love.  Therefore, create and dream.

And dream…..and create.                                                                                                                                                                               

The Down Side of Advancing Technology

The New Cardinal Sin – Take A Break

More and more I hear from my clients what seems to be fast becoming an impossible wish in our culture – to take a break from being perpetually “plugged in” to a seemingly endless “to do” list. This implied societal sin has occurred thanks, in part, to exploding technology, coupled with increasingly complex personal and professional management challenges under the guise of being productive at all costs.

I don’t think we’ve escaped the Puritan dictates that began our country. As a matter of fact, I think these “work, work, unceasing work” directives seem to reign supreme with the fairly clear death of the 40-hour work week, the vast array of family external activities that make predictable dinners a thing of the past, and the leakage of these directives into leisure time.

The Technology-Driven Spider Web

Cell phones hog and dog us in restaurants, cars, and meetings. Somehow it is increasingly less permitted to “unplug” from communication technology that, although it gets smaller and lighter, spreads like a spider web to capture and link us to the world at large “24-7”.

Today, as I saw clients in individual and work sessions, I heard the same wistful request – to have it be okay to not have to be continually available to our own, and others’, archetypal taskmasters.

It Seems Odd Now . . .

I remember the days when I drove or sat in a car minus a cell phone. I remember the days when I sat in a restaurant minus a cell phone.

I remember the days when there were no voice mails. I even remember the days when there were no personal computers.

Plugged and Unplugged Through the Spiritual Art of Letting Go

These and more related communication “toys” are an integral part of my life now. And yet I note, much as I dread power outages, the depth of the sudden, peaceful SILENCE when they occur – and the sense of overwhelming relief in the midst of panic, over the inconvenience and shock of being unplugged.

I passionately work with people to plug in to their deeper, intuitive, spiritual selves to ignite self-healing, insight, creative thinking, awareness, and free emotional expression. I invite them to even go deeper into this “space of no-thing” and ingest a most rare commodity these days – the ability to completely let go.

The Capacity to Restore Joy

I believe this is still called taking a breather. Most well-named, I’m thinking. So why do we struggle so much with simply giving ourselves well-earned permission to take this breather, a sure bridge to wellness, ease and joy?

I met with a client today who “couldn’t remember what having fun was like . . . couldn’t think of what fun is”.

Recovering What We Have Lost

What have we lost through the technological gains of the past two decades?  Is that loss necessary? Can we recover and better integrate letting go, letting be and unplugging in ways that serve, recharge, heal and empower us?

I, for one, am finally going to bed after a long, rich, achingly productive day with very few “breathers” – finally, then, to breathe, escape, and guide myself to a universe where being reigns supreme as one’s aware consciousness agrees – and I invite you to do the same.

Count them, now - eyes closed, completely unplugged to the outside world – five full, deep, easy breaths. And then simply let go, let be, and stay there for a while, for an endless while . . .

Restoring Our Power to Create A New World

We do know how to create peace – and be our own free, empowered person.  What kind of world could all of us then create?

Happy landings . . .

One Day’s Universe

Sometimes I like to reflect, in as many meaningful dimensions that I can consider, the emerging themes that seem to present themselves in the course of a day-evening working with clients. Today this is what emerged, in the order in which it now presents itself to me:

Shame is a “lock-in” that forces us to belong in a place of perpetual victimization.  Powerlessness fuels it, and so we erroneously conclude there is no way out other than to ceaselessly blame . . . anyone, anything and ourselves. 

There are no Guarantees

The cry here is to forgive, and correspondingly accept.

Because there are no guarantees and we can only count on perpetual change in our lives, when we face reality we become very present with whatever environmental rhythms we find ourselves in. The challenge is to synchronize with them.

The Healing Power of Acknowledging Feelings

When, for whatever reason, we refuse to be fully present, we are thrown into a no man’s land of “empty”.  Anybody would freak in a space like that, so what is the confusion about in “not knowing what’s going on here?” 

It’s far better to simply acknowledge the feeling, trusting we’ll survive.

There is no Waiting

I did a lot of hands-on-healing today.  I worked with people with life-threatening illness, and listened to a lot of desperately honest self-questions in the face of realizing “there are no guarantees” about life, and so there is no “waiting” for – whatever – it doesn’t matter. 

This is All There Is.

Our Capacity to extend Beyond the Known

I found myself asking, where does visioning fit in?  It is not delusion, not illusion – just our capacity to extend beyond the known, allowing a heartfelt desire to show itself in our opening consciousness. That is magic, and where all “cutting edge” shifts occur with our own corresponding unique, unfolding process.

At this time of still struggling with somehow finding myself looking, as if with a microscope, at every area of my life from a place of “not knowing”, and amazingly enough, continuing to be willing to face the terror of that and find myself strangely comfortable with whatever happens, I can at last safely admit that I Don’t Know.

The Circle is Complete for Revealing

Its a relief, and puts me on equal ground with all others.

The circle is complete, and a new direction can finally reveal itself to and for me.

Opening Your Spirit

 

When we are moved to take spiritual stock, we are naturally moved to ask for and be open to receive blessings.  We are then further stimulated to seek to give and, in our heart of hearts, trust and honor our power to share.

An Inner Journey

Here is an inner journey that you can do to ignite your capacity to receive through your own opened spirit.

Close your eyes, deepen your breath, and settle back into a comfortable position.  Imagine your breath carries you easily and effortlessly into your heart.

Ask Your Heart What it Most Wants

Listen and write down whatever the answer is (this may come in pictures as well as words).  Then write this answer in the form of a question.

With your nondominant hand (the hand you don’t write with) imagine a wise, loving higher being speaks to you.  Write down whatever comes up in response as the answer to your question. 

When you have finished, close your eyes for a moment and say “thank you”, and simply stay present for a few moments with your sensations.

Record Your Experience

When you’re ready, open your eyes and record whatever you want about your whole experience.  Then reread your answer. Consider one choice you can make through this experience of renewal to begin giving and receiving this direction. 

Commit to carrying out this choice, and record the results.

Trust is Our Key Recovery Challenge

In a world that screams to us in so many ways of what is not trustworthy, we have been increasingly caught up in a corresponding sense of doubting our own worth, our own inherent spiritual power and our own fundamental center of courage.

As you determine and become clear about what in your heart of hearts you know are courageous choices you can make, and as you see you can survive these choices, so do you recover trust and your power to receive your heart’s desires . . . for you recover your power to create them.

It is Time to Celebrate . . .

. . .  your power to renew yourself and your choices.  In this way you learn how to transform your experience as you seed the full flowering of your spirit’s desires.

Honor is Acknowledgment

Honor By The Wayside

I want to begin by saying the very first word in the title above is not used much these days – hasn’t been for a long time. It was pretty extensively used, and hugely popular for millennia through the 19th century – then it kind of fell by the wayside into the twentieth. And we’re sailing past that by six years now, and counting.

Now for the opposite: there is a lot of talk about that in our world without ever using the word. 

Global Dishonor That word is dishonor.

A close associate of mine used that word not long ago, and I was struck by the thought that although there is a lot of related commentary inferring dishonorable behaviors present in the global political world in the media concerning all societal organizations, somehow “honor” and all its derivatives has been kind of deleted from our common vocabulary.

Why, I wonder?

The Path of Right Relationships

So I thought about honor and what it means to me. What came up were other words like honesty, integrity, character, service; and phrases like “taking the high road” by doing the right thing, being willing to be held accountable, keeping one’s word as a binding contract.

My next thought was that honor is the necessary link to establish and participate in “right relationships” with ourselves, others, and environments.

The Original Meaning of the Word “Sin”

Then I thought, so dishonor involves the opposite of all the descriptions of the preceding paragraph. “Sins” could be the inference there.

The original meaning of the word “sin”, by the way, comes from a Hebrew word that means “missing the mark” – in other words, a mistake that, as far as I understand through the characteristics of honor and dishonor, results from both a lack of willingness and awareness.

Acknowledgment Supports Honorable Choice-Making

That consideration led me to in turn consider that acknowledgment supports honorable choice making and responses in our lives.

Please note, given the obsession and ceaseless delusional chasing after dictated perfection in our culture – “perfect” isn’t required or possible. Intent is, just as it was understood to be the directive rather than the dictate in choosing honor rather than dishonor a hundred years ago, when these words were still part of our vocabulary.

How Your Life Could Change

Would your life change in considering your behavior in this way? Your choices . . . ? Your relationships . . . ? Your reality . . . ?

Its a cleaner opportunity to more comfortably and profitably live with, I believe, and certainly a spiritually responsible one, which provides tremendous freedom and corresponding opportunity to create and evolve.

The Hard Gift You Can Give Yourself

These are the invisible directives of me continuing to return to a gage that surfaced nearly a decade ago which moved me, kicking and screaming, to feel the only viable choice I had (didn’t want) to make was initiate a divorce: being able to look myself in the mirror.

It was a hard gift I insisted on giving myself, but I knew then, as I know now, that there was no other way to survive, and I would be held to it.

Sink Your Teeth Into What Is Real

Interesting, I’m finally thinking, that this word “honor” used in what has, in related context, been described as “gentler”, more polite times, is a hard gift that brings anguish and sacrifice. 

You know, it might be even more demanding than that “must be perfect” dictate currently in fashion in our world – but at least it is real, and we can sink our teeth into it.

There’s Only an Endless Present . . .

Can You Unconditionally, Attentively Stay Present with Your Feelings?

 How able you are to unconditionally, attentively stay present with your feelings extends to how easily you can channel your intuition for any higher purpose.

We live in a culture that has critically conditioned us for thousands of years to run from our feelings; and, in running, to feel forced to stuff, manage, fix, and further manipulate our heartfelt sensations.

Feelings are the Crucial Key to accessing Your Intuitive Power

Feelings are the crucial key to accessing your intuitive power. Try this experiment, and see what happens to further develop and enhance your intuitive ability:

Spend several moments several times a day over these next two weeks closing your eyes, deepening your breath, and checking in with your feeling sensations. In this deeper meditative state, ask yourself, “How do I feel?”, and have paper and pen handy to simply record your feelings. 

No conclusions, no evaluations - just your feelings.

“My Feelings Say . . .”

After two weeks of doing this experiment, then complete this next exercise for the next two weeks after you check in with yourself about how you are feeling. Complete, then, the following sentence by writing whatever pops into your head: “My feelings say . . .”

Following this two-week period, set aside some uninterrupted time to review all you have written over the course of the month’s “experiment”.

Your gift of Self-Love

Insights will flow. Your intuition will speak to you. 

Enjoy the gift of Self-love and all its fruits, including igniting your power to share your gift with others!

A Poem of Freedom

I wanted to share this poem which emerged for me through this experiment:

"Ornaments of Freedom"

By: Marjorie Baker Price, copyright 2007

 

There is this aspect of Freedom
I hold it in the palm of my hand
Papery thin
It seeps through like
Grains of ancient sands

It calls for me
Beckons me
In the softly hushed whispers of a dream-like slide show

And I open to receive its delicate caress
Its soothing glassy exteriors
daintily displayed in a
pristine convex universe

I glance and behold

Once

Twice

A tiny spark, after all
Enough to ignite the world.

 

 
I invite you to share your inspirations.

Intimacy – A Love Letter to Your Soul

Opening Your Power to Receive

With great love, affection, and heartfelt wishes to correspondingly receive, as you seize your own authentic power to experience and create, all that composes intimate connecting with your spirit, here is my love letter to you: Do we know the meaning of the word “intimacy” in our culture? Do we know the meaning of the word “love”? How about the word “soul”?

The Soul’s Love Letter

What if you were to write a love letter to your soul now? WRITE NOW. Right now.

The Space of No-Thing

We enter the space of no-thing . . . it is the abyss which yawns open, begging us, only extending itself to us, really . . to enter. But the black whole is taboo, we say here – now – and for all those thousands of years . . . and yet, the womb, the womb, the softest root which sustains us, envelops us, it is our world, our connection . . . and now, we run from it.

The Fear to Love

From in-ti-macy - - the word rolls off the tongue (it seems to make sense rhythmically, doesn’t it?) But I’m afraid I’m afraid I’m AFRAID (what if I find out there is no me as I’ve felt all along – so there has to be a YOU – a you who cares for me, makes up for me, covers for me, does for me (is me? Oh, no!) We must find love, seek love BE love, only love (but we can only be who we are, what we are – is that acceptable? Is that adequate?) We are so afraid to find out.

A Space for Loving BE loving.

That is the choice, the only choice, it skips, laughing from my mouth, runs ever so lightly, freely like a dancer through the heart and back to the soul, who opens to receive it like a mother embracing her child - - - What would it take for me, for you, to drop everything - and find a space for loving?

All That Lasts

Do we know where that space is? Can we feel it? It is only who we are and what we are, all that we have, really, all that lasts, all that we reach for . . .and we know the poor seconds to that love – money, societal status and social/economic position . . . and what else? All that I am afraid of, that I worry about at night when the lights are out and I descend into the blackness of my own bed, my own thoughts . . . they say children sleep unafraid (do our children sleep unafraid?)

How Do I Keep Myself from Loving?

We could ask, how do I keep myself from loving? What do I hate most about another? That is what most cries out within me to be loved. Loss of love terrorizes us, crumbles us, our spirits flee. It is the sacred marriage between all working elements within the self - the intuitive/the analytical, the mother/the child, the happy/the sad, the creator/the destroyer, the hero/the villain, the past/the future selves, the masculine/the feminine – this kaleidoscope of dualities, opposites, that keeps the center, the evolution, the balance.

Consciousness Transcends

Over this past year I continue to find more working parts to myself. There is a sense of being ‘filled in’ in a way that clearly transcends, at long last, what does or doesn’t happen to me, those I love and those I have lost, even to the world around me. I am here.

I Am Loved

I am here. How relieved and endlessly grateful I am to say this, to finally know this! Because I am here and I know I am here, I am loved. My consciousness knows I am loved, and it sends love in return to: *my past *my unfinished present *all possible futures *no futures *all others, without qualification, without fear.

What is, IS

No more. No less. I accept. It is enough. I AM ENOUGH.

Erasing Cultural Conditioning

How much cultural conditioning, thicker than the last great ice sheets enclosing the earth’s polar caps, does this fly in the face of? For the minute we say this, and know, in every cell of our being, in every fabric, every connection of our lives, every nuance of our thoughts, we have broken our karma – our karma of fear and conditioning around separation, violence, and limitation – and we are free. Free to love. Free to love even our soul – our patient, indestructible, shimmering soul, and to love one another NO MATTER WHAT. What we do or don’t do, who we are or are not, has nothing to do with love.

Love is a Given

It simply IS. “I am that I am”. This translation of the central Judeo-Christian prayer is a blessing. Ask for blessings in your life and you are asking for love.

Love is a Reflection of the All That Is

Ask for love in your life as you would ask to see a reflection of what already is. And so we write a love letter to the soul as an exploration of intimacy. There is no risk, only acknowledgment. So mote it be. Shalom (peace be with you, and with your spirit), and blessings.

Discover the Power of Meditation in 10 Minutes or Less

This article outlines the origins of meditation and benefits of meditating. It concludes with a simple meditative exercise.

Meditative Origins

Meditation began as an ancient spiritual practice. It harnesses the natural rhythm of your breath, allowing you to connect with your spirit. You can train the mind to keep an aligned focus. It is interesting to note that the Latin root of the word “breath” means “spirit.”

The Benefits of Meditation

Meditation has been clinically researched in this country and around the world since the late 1960’s. At that time, meditation experienced resurgence throughout the Western World.

Benefits include stimulating rapid relaxation. You relax your body through regulating and slowing your breathing and heartbeat. There are also physiological benefits that have been extensively researched including:

• relieving pain and anxiety

• relieving migraines

• assisting in the recovery from disease

In addition, meditation improves focus and self control.

A Simple Meditation Exercise

As part of this article, I’ve included a short exercise:

Find a quiet room in the house or office where you won’t be disturbed for a few minutes. Discover Meditation in the Three Steps Below

1. Sit in a comfortable position. Make sure you aren’t lounging our slouching. Uncross your arms and feet. This step releases external physical tension and naturally aligns your body, allowing it to stay relaxed.

2. Close your eyes and deepen your breath. Allow your focus to be naturally drawn inward. Align your mind with your body and free yourself from distractions. When your breath becomes its fullest and rhythmic, you become positioned to nurture your entire being with life-giving oxygen. At the same time, you are removing carbon dioxide and other related toxins. These toxins are the sources of tension, stress, and mental blockage.

3. Stay with the feelings you are experiencing. Count to yourself while taking five, full, deep, and easy breaths. Allow your mind to “zone” with the endless flow and rhythm of your breathing. As you relax enjoy all the benefits!

A Few Minutes a Day Meditating Brings Tremendous Benefits of Mind-Body Healing

Get 8 hours of restful sleep in 15 minutes . . . , says Herbert Benson, Pulitzer prize-winning author of the bestseller, The Relaxation Response, about the simple steps of meditating.

He states that 15 minutes of deep relaxation, which is, of course, the foundational results of meditation, produces the equivalent of 8 hours restful sleep on the body and the mind.

Are you and your well-being worth 15 uninterrupted minutes a day?

Will the world come to an end if you take this sacred time for yourself?

Questions Are the Activators of Evolved Choice

How you answer these questions, and act on your answers, may transform your life. The Bible reminds us to “choose life . . . this day”.