I am in the midst of creating something new and different in my life. I am opening to the energies around me, and listening for clues in the process of this creation. I have been having some experiences of creating in the moment when I'm able to be present. I am also learning to trust that resources will be made available to me, and that guidance will come to me for connecting with those resources. This is a tremendous time of living with energy shifts, opening to potential changes, and placing myself in the hands of Divine Compassion. I am moving into my life in small and subtle ways that feel large and transformational. Riding the waves...
"Do not worry or speculate about the future. As much as you can possibly connect with your higher self in the present moment, this is your future. Connection with your higher self--being in the moment--being who you are--creates the future for you. We are constantly creating our future in the NOW." --Sue Whitacre, July, 2009
Sometimes the only right thing to do is to let go of any semblance of a plan. This is the place that I find myself in. I am opening and listening and following. I am hearing guidance that feels very unfamiliar but that also feels right. This guidance holds the qualities of expansion, the unknown, and amazement. It leads me toward next steps for my life and for my soul's work. I am letting go of all that has distracted me from this forward movement. I am focusing on service and I am in the hands of Wisdom.
"Let go of what you think is just reward. Let go. Trust. Create. Be who you are. Take your hands off the steering wheel. The final piece of reaching for authentic power is releasing your own to a higher form of wisdom."
--Gary Zukav
Life moves us in the right direction if we are willing to listen for clues that come our way. We steer a course that is fairly unsatisfying when we make random choices based on cultural expectations. I often pay attention to what activities give me energy and to what activities drain my energy in order to understand more about what are best directions in which to move. I know that making a difference in other peoples' lives is important and fulfilling to me. I also know that my choices in the past for culturally prescribed ways to do this have not born fruit. I'm not able to predict what pursuits will bring these experiences into my life. So I have to allow myself to open my mind outside the box, and trust that I will be shown the best path toward fulfillment in my life. Letting the process unfold is my current daily devotion.
"We must undergo an initiation process that does require letting go of the familiar and comfortable. Through ordeals and ecstasies, we come to know what we were born to do, what gift we were meant to bring to the world, and what vision is ours to embody."
--Bill Plotkin
This time of fall feels very rich. It's a time of gathering all of the bounty of the year's harvest. Some creatures gather and store food for the coming colder months. We freeze and can and dry the foods we've grown so that they can be enjoyed when such fresh foods are no longer available. The plant world creates pods and seeds that are packed with the life that will later bring into being the next generation of their kind. This feels like the place that I find myself in. Reveling in the abundance of this past season and its offerings, and creating capsules of life that will burst forth in the next season of growth. These points of focus feel like an invitation toward expansion. I am closing out and letting go of what no longer serves, and opening to what wants to come to life for me. The energy of expansion infuses this process.
"The time has come for you to re-create God, using the fullest expanse of your imagination. Even if you do this, you will still under-imagine God. There is no separation between you and the Divine, between you and your neighbor, or between you and [ascended beings]. There is also no division between you and any other living thing. Each aspect is but a mirror image of the other, and all fit within the grand design."
--Meredith L. Young-Sowers
As summer winds down and systems gear up for fall activities and semesters, I am feeling the swirling breeze of change energy. My mind wants to go through all sorts of machinations about how I can step in and effect change. I've been here before, and this feels oh, so familiar. But this time I am being encouraged to effortlessly let the changes happen. To be prepared for anything, and to flow with the unfolding that comes to me. I am in the hands of the Universe as I express through my human life. My mind is best engaged in noticing where my energy flows naturally, and what involvements give me energy back. I have also found myself deeply participating in the bountiful harvests of summer, and preparing fruits of the earth that will nourish me through the winter. Whatever changes are coming, I find that my best grounding is in the present moment. Calming presence is a gift.
"Resting in the present moment gives us a connection to stability and ease--an anchor in turbulent waters."
--Tara Brach
Patience is a virtue.
So I've heard.
I do believe it, but not so much when I most need to experience it. These days of growth are challenging. Mostly I enjoy them. Every now and then I am brainwashed by my thoughts to be under the impression that nothing has changed. How ridiculous. In the midst of the green flourishing of plants, and the wild blooming of flowers, my rational mind dares to declare that nothing is changing. It's all old.
Old thinking, old patterns, old ways of being in the world. I am not under the jurisdiction of all things old. My perception can easily change. My wish for things to change can be realized in this moment. Because things are changing--and for the better, always.
Patience was handed to me today in these two things I heard today from a person who fully recovered from a cancer coma. She was naming things that are truly important in life.
"Love, not fear, keeps you safe. All challenges are gifts."
--Anita Moorjani
Life is ever-changing, ever-shifting. We are moving with the changes and expressing our individual selves along the way. Our old conditioning would have us grasping at any branch or reaching for any quick fix to retain some vestige of control over the flowing current. Our best solution is to let go. While fear is our first and oldest response, it only slows down our process of co-creation and life expression. Over and over, it helps me to be reminded that the present moment is the place of strength, power, calm. Being in each moment with as much presence as we can bring is the ultimate strategy for living a life of full awareness, and full-out authenticity. Each moment is a hand-holding with the Universe. That moment is the place where Truth and Love are transmitted, delivered, and expressed.
"Here is the challenge. Stop. Look. Listen.
Nothing is in the way.
Spontaneously, life is bursting forth."
--Steven Harrison
I have no idea. What's happening in my life. What's on the way. This is the warrior's way. I am on the warrior's path. It is an unsettling feeling. And yet it feels alive. Like I'm on the growing edge of change. I choose to stay in the present moment as much as possible. To know that the work I am doing now is the work I am supposed to be doing. I have a part of me that wants to dart around, searching for some clarity, some idea, some solid direction or certain goal. But that's not the way of the Universe, nor the way of human wisdom seekers on human life paths. I am developing compassion along the way--for myself; for others. This must be the purpose.
"A warrior accepts that we can never know what will happen to us next. We can try to control the uncontrollable by looking for security and predictability, always hoping to be comfortable and safe. But the truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty. This unknowing is part of the adventure."
--Pema Chodron
Moving with the motions and changes of life is like floating on the ocean tides. The tides are huge--they are part of the big picture. And yet the movement is constant, and the water is ever-changing. There is nothing to hold or stop this water's flowing beauty. This is the largest kind of freedom. I am being encouraged in my life to flow with my life's guidance in the same way that waves wash up on the shore. Beautiful, graceful, and life-affirming; also moving as part of the bigger picture. Ultimately, living in this free way allows for the greatest expression of my authentic life. The best things in life are free.
"All good things are wild and free."
--Henry David Thoreau
When you begin to think outside the box, you one day come to understand that there is no box to think outside of. This is the day you realize that you've been living a life of dualities/polarities. And that a life of freedom, love and joy is best lived outside of these human-made containers and constraints. I am discovering these things--especially that joy is the immediate by-product of such an understanding.
Spring light boldly shines--flushing out darkness, cobwebs, and old thinking. Allow this time of spring to stretch you outside--outside of your home and your containers.
"Enlightenment is life without a future, liberation from the pretense of safety.
Without a future, where did the past go?
It is the end of the known, and the endless exploration of the Unknown. It is the end of the struggle to be anybody or get anything.
It is the end of looking for anything.
It is the end of trying to become anything.
It is the end of trying to hold onto anything.
It is the end of trying to make something happen.
What a relief!"
--Scott Morrison
Fed by radiance, I am aware that my inner light is continuing to expand and to push beyond the box that my thinking head wants to keep it in. It's a slow, gentle, mellow process. This is good, since it's more like a seepage than a flash of enlightenment.
Because it's happening slowly I am able to receive it more easily. The small doses allow me to integrate and utilize the larger light. I have greater freedom to open, and to allow love to flow.
"The soul is a candle that will burn away the darkness,
only the glorious duties of love we will have."
--St. John of the Cross
"Your spirit is urging you continually to live with love and compassion...loving your way into the realization of God."
--Meredith L. Young-Sowers
This is a season of Light.
Light that has continued to be provided. Light that has been promised. Light that has come. Light that returns. Light that acknowledges gifts. We are here to live and be and shine that light. Sometimes we feel like our light has been dampened, shadowed, or nearly extinguished. We may feel disconnected from Larger light. No matter how dark our lives may seem, a spark still lives in us. It is our task in life to find that spark and to fan it into a flame.
"Love is a tower of light. Inside, blazing fire."
--Jelaluddin Rumi
