A Storm of Tears

I watched a film last night called August Rush. It's about music, trusting in one's self, following one's heart with great courage and wisdom. It is a profoundly moving film. When the film ended, I was overcome with feelings which I could not name and so began a storm of tears and the releasing of emotions that I had held within me.

I cried because I was so moved by this film and because, although he loves music, I knew that my husband would never watch it - he would consider it a 'chick flick' and would thereby shut himself off from it. So, this magnificent creation, the film and the music presented within it, will probably never be experienced by him. I was angry with him for stubbornly shutting himself off from such beauty, even though I invite him, time and time again to share these sorts of experiences with me. He shuts himself off from a lot of things that are beautiful, that bring joy, inspire love, invite celebration of life. As I love him, I accept his choices. As I love him, I wish for him all that is good in the world. Time and again, I see him turn from ease, from joy, from beauty, from laughter. And this is not easy for me.

Have I told here of the terrible sensation I have lately, that I am living in heaven on Earth while my husband lives in a hell of his own making? How can I bear it? I bear it by taking responsibility for what is my experience, allowing him to take responsibility for what is his experience, and releasing storms of tears when the discrepancy between our two worlds becomes more than I can take.

There is a great benefit to me in this storm of tears, for these releases are necessary. Yet they weary me. I feel like a wet rag this morning. The challenge is to come to acceptance of what is, even when it seems to break our hearts. As we move forward through these unprecedented times we will find our own pace and our own rhythms of being and becoming. Now more than ever, our own truth must be our guide through the unknowns that lie ahead. No one can do this for us. We cannot do this for anyone else.

In a very real sense, we are alone on our journey, yet there are fellow travellers visible through the mists and veils of colour that surround us. I treasure the company that I keep as I progress. Yet sometimes, I move in a different direction than one whom I had counted as close. Distance then seems to separate us, a distance that seems too great.

I wonder what will become of my relationship with my husband. There. I've said it. I move further and further along a path that he has no interest in exploring, much less the will to endure its twists, turns and hazards. So, Lu, here is yet another opportunity to practice trusting, to breathe and accept. And when these are not enough, a storm of tears erupts and cleanses, like one of those thunderstorms that come in the summertime and wash out all of our roadside ditches.

The Sacred Self

We can, perhaps, begin to see a truth emerging.

We can begin to get a feel for where we are headed in this unprecedented time of transition.

We are learning to honour the self, to accept all 360 degrees of the self, all of its colours, all of its tones, its vibrations. We are learning to love our very own self as God also, to see ourselves and all others through the eyes of God. We begin to see the self as sacred. And there is no turning back from that.

You are a sacred being. You are profoundly placed and perfectly positioned in the wholeness of your being in the world. And this is felt in the Now moment. You, in your being, not in your doing, have a sacred purpose. Your divine self-being is in alignment with the World-Whole-Becoming. It cannot be otherwise, for you are here in service at a level so basic that it can rarely be perceived; it blends into the landscape of your existence so that it becomes imperceptible, but it is true none-the-less. You are here in service through your being. You don't need to do anything. You don't need to save anyone. Your individual vibration and unique spirit-colour are your offering.

You are integral, vital and profoundly loved.

Move into alignment with this truth. Let go of everything else.

Through the breath, the deep slow breath, feel your sacred self being ALL-That-You-Are. In the moment, through the breath, do this.

Nothing else matters, for all else is the play of light and shadow on the three-dimensional stage which supports our roles of this, that and the other. It is not petty, this play. It is not to be denigrated. It is service to the ALL, incorporating and informing God-Being so that God can know what God Is, Was and Can Be. It is wonderful and loving, this time we spend on Earth's fair and beloved face. Yet it is a play, a construct, a conception. And the time is now to remember who we really are and why we are here.

That is why we awaken to our sacred selves. That is why the play is changing so profoundly, why Earth's staging of our esteemed production is now morphing into unknowns affected by further unknowns. Yet never fear. For it is we ourselves, we as sacred selves, who create the new World moving forward.

Clarity Requires Clearing

I have written of the process of coming into full acceptance of all that we are and all that we have been. I have written of coming into a love of self so unconditional and inclusive that it is the way that God loves us. I have expressed my belief that it is this process of coming to love ourselves and accept ourselves, in all of our aspects and ways of being, that frees us to become the selves we choose to be in our best moments of wisdom and clarity.

It has come to my attention that this process extends to the other people in our lives as well. Co-workers who threaten our position, employers who seem to undervalue us, siblings who seem to misunderstand us, who remind us of what we were twenty years ago, children who challenge us, spouses who sometimes seem to hold us back from all that we could be. All of these. All of these are ours to come into complete acceptance with. It is for us to do the work of clearing our reactions of ego-based need and fear of lack to the ways in which the people around us have been with us. Only by doing this can we see these people as God sees them. Only by doing this can we see these people with the clarity and compassion that we seek within ourselves. It is hard work and measured only by one's own integrity with one's self.

Hard work indeed. I find myself in the thick of it these days.

I am using as my template the process that I use with my own self as I seek to come into complete love and acceptance of self. So, when someone does something that 'pushes one of my buttons' that is the cue. That is the signal that I have work to do. The work is to look at what I am feeling, as a reaction to what this person has done or said, or not done, or failed to say. Then with unfailing courage and complete honesty, I must identify why my reaction is what it is. I must then accept that within myself. Do I still need his or her approval, after all these years! Do I fear the loss of this person from my life? Do I fear falling out of favour with him or her? Would that cost me dearly? What do I need or fear to lose, that I react as I do? That must be known to me, named by me, accepted completely and honoured as yet another life experience, adding to the unique and perfect store of such experiences, all of which have made me what I am.

That acceptance then extends to the other person. Acceptance of what this person has been for me. Acceptance of all that they are in my experience, all that they have done and said. Deep breathing helps with this.

Acceptance becomes respect and an honouring of the other person in their being and their choices. I find this to be the easiest for me, but it might feel different for you. Finally, appreciation and thankfulness for the other person's presence in my life leads to unconditional love for the other. I don't have to like all of their behaviours to love them as God also. Then, I release the other person from my expectations and my ego-based needs and fear of lack or loss.

For me, this process, although very challenging, is necessary now. I have chosen to hold the light of unconditional love and compassion for ALL within me. This requires complete clarity. Clarity requires clearing of all that is not love and compassion. And it is only through coming into this honouring, this appreciation, and this love that I can release the other and be in turn released. If there is anything, anyone which we still have a 'problem' with, it will remain in our lives, in our awareness as a problem. We are not free from our 'problems', or from any person or situation until we have gone through this process of releasing through acceptance, honouring, gratitude and appreciation. There is no short-cut here. And I feel quite strongly that it is time now, as I seek resolution of all that is not love, to release all of these so-called problems and allow the light and the love that is God on Earth to fill me.

Breathing helps. Honesty with myself helps. But it's hard work and I'll not try to make it seem otherwise. It's work that requires strength of character and courage. We need to face all that is within us that is not completely accepting, honouring and loving.

And for those of you who read this and count me as a friend, know that a hug would not go amiss! Sometimes, it still just hurts!

Pledge of Allegiance

I pledge my allegiance to my Self and to the truth which emerges from within me, a being whole and complete unto herself, knowing her own worth, listening to her own clarity as it emerges, fulfilling her soul's sacred purpose on this Earth at this time.

I swear by the ALL-that-is-all-there-is to love myself and love myself and love myself some more until nothing that anyone says or doesn't say, does or doesn't do, matters to me in any way.

I align myself with my higher self and with my soul's purpose. I move from my center and speak from it also. I proclaim myself as sovereign being. I define my boundaries and accept all responsibility for my experiences, emotions, actions, reactions, feelings and being.

I explore the shape and feel of this new way of being in the world. Like a small child testing the limits of her abilities, her crawling, standing, leaning, walking, I test the meaning of words like beside, under, with and beyond. As a sovereign-self-being, how am I with others? How am I under the supervision of my employer? How am I beside my friend, yet perhaps beyond my friend's consciousness of the ALL?

Do I owe anybody anything? Do you? What are our responsibilities to others now? What are our responsibilities to ourselves when we engage with others? I ask myself these questions because I can't seem to move much further forward until I have answered them.

I understand that everything is changing and that we are each wholly responsible for ourselves, but how does this understanding change my behaviour toward my mother, my sister, my husband, my friend? I don't know. But I'm willing to find out.

I pledge allegiance to my divine guidance system, which is more and more clearly a directional force in my life. I align my being and doing to divine will, and although that might seem to resolve all kinds of issues, it does not. For always, in the moment, the choice is mine. Choosing to step into divine will allows me to trust my own divinity more readily and to offer it to the other. Yet that choice is made all over again in every moment and even as I step into divine will, I do so with my free will intact. I freely choose to step into divine will and accept all that comes to me through it. It is an offering of the fully individuated and sovereign Self to God, to ALL-That-Is.  

I pledge allegiance to my breath in and out, to the pull and push of my body and to this Life, this process, this adventure.

I pledge fearlessness. I pledge service to the ALL-That-Is. I pledge acceptance on a scale beyond any previously predicated.

I pledge to dance to the music of the full 360 degrees of my Being. All of it. I pledge to take this as far as I possibly can.

No time like the present.

Moon or bust.

Step Up

Lately, when I fall back into old patterns of thinking, old ways of reacting to events and situations, I feel the weight of it like glue on my limbs and ink stains on my aura. Yuck.

I feel that we are required now to move forward into a new way of being, a way of being that is in complete alignment with our soul's purpose for us, and with our own sense of ourselves as sovereign and sacred selves being in the world.

So as difficult as it is for me lately when I fall back into old ways, it is like coming home to a warm welcome and a well-cooked meal when I step up into my integrity, into my exalted consciousness of the unity of which I AM an integral part.

Step up.

Step up and claim what you know and ALL that you are. It just feels right to do this now.

This morning, I asked myself a question and actually took the time to sit and listen for the answer to come from within. I asked myself, "Who are you?" And then after a time, a timeless time, I asked again, "What do you believe?" And then, a little later, in a state of complete and utter peace, I asked, "What do you know?"

And it is time now for me to move through my days in the sure and quiet knowledge of who I am and what I know. It is time now for me to offer myself in service to the ALL through my being in this world. It's not about doing. I don't need to accomplish anything. It's about being and specifically, it's about being ALL that I am in my highest state of consciousness. "Dwell on that." I tell myself, "In fact, practice spending more and more time there until that is where you live."

I tell myself, "Step up into the light of your higher self, the divinity of yourself as God also. Step up into knowing what only you can know, for this is not about being subsumed by something greater than yourself. There is nothing greater than you are. You are God being in the world uniquely as you are. Your knowing, your sense of it all, your individual way of being in the world is your contribution to the times in which we live. And it is an infinitely precious contribution."

If you feel it as I do, step up into your I AM presence in the world, in faith in your own being, in trust that the gift you bring is perfect. Step up in the fullness of your conscious choosing to be here now.

That is what I intend to do. It just feels right to do this now. It just feels so resonant with the times, for me. I trust that you will follow your truth, your knowing, what resonates for you.

A Sense of Self-Worth

Again I find myself saying, "It is time now for this."

We have spent years working with the yes and the no of our own worthiness, our own blessed being in the world. All of us have done this. Even the most apparently confident and entitled among us have secretly wondered whether they were worthy. We have stepped up and then back down again, up and then back down. All of us have done this.

It is time now for us to deeply and fully understand how profoundly loved we are by the ALL-That-Is, by God. It is time for us to breathe that into ourselves and move within its truth - this loving appreciation for us that enfolds us like a blessing, like a hand holding ours, always, always. So profoundly appreciated are we!

It is time now for us to begin to live our lives as infinitely and always worthy. We are allowed. We are allowed to experience abundance, ease, joy, love that surpasses any love we've ever known until now. We are encouraged to radiate our own perfect and exquisitely beautiful energies and to create for ourselves the world which we, in our best moments, would inhabit.

That which we have been accustomed to extend to others, the love, the appreciation, the benefit of the doubt, the faith in their innate goodness, the confidence in their ability to proceed in their own integrity.... all of these we are now being asked to give to ourselves. And to give them to ourselves in abundance.

So we begin to make statements that sound like boasting, that sound like vanity, that sound wrong to our highly trained selves - trained in self-effacement and self-denial and self-negation. Let these go.

Yesterday, I was graciously invited to speak of my emotional challenges if I cared to do so, in a circle of women. Oh! I do so love to sit in a circle of women! I spoke of my intention of becoming self-centred, as I have written in an earlier post. I could feel the response in those around me. I specifically said, "I'm practicing not caring what other people think or feel." It felt wrong to say it and it felt wrong in the people around me when they heard it. But I meant it. When you have spent your life living for others, feeling what they feel, doing all that you can to smooth their sharp edges of experience and comfort them when they are in any way off balance... when you are so habituated to looking to the needs of others that you have to force yourself consciously to look to your own needs first, then you might want to practice not caring. It doesn't mean that I'll never care, just that I'd like to have the option of caring or not caring. And anyway, caring feels like it's the wrong word, I just don't know what the right word is here.

When my brother died, I knew that I was broken, badly broken. I knew that I absolutely needed to be cared for. I was not. I cared for others, saw to their needs. And it hurt. And I ended up really badly ill. It was the only way that I could give myself the care that I needed. And I wish with all of my heart that it could have been different, that I could have put my needs in that situation ahead of the needs of others. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to do it. And they, suffering as they were the terrible loss of a truly wonderful man, didn't see my need, I suppose. I've always been seen as the strong one. Many of us women have been seen in that way. How much of our supposed strength was more self-denial than anything else? And what price to us this illusion that somehow we don't matter as much as others do?

We've been taught, especially women, to put others first. It is time now to put our selves on a par with others, not above them. No. Not above them, but on the same level as they are. 

Now, and moving forward, our own wholeness and well-being is of the utmost importance and must be our primary concern, for we are the ones whom we have been waiting for. We are our own future and as those who lead the way for others, we matter a great deal. We are worthy of honour, of respect, of abundance, of love, of appreciation, of joy, of light, of our own unique greatness. And no other human being on this planet or recently departed from it can provide for us this sense of ourselves as worthy. No one else can do this for you. And you cannot do this for anyone else. This is our own. Each of us must grapple now with this sense that we are somehow unworthy. This is now a time when the old paradigm of some being good and powerful and accomplished and others not being these is exposed as an outdated illusion. We are ALL that we are and it is perfect that we are as we are.

As if it were in any way possible for you to be unworthy! As if it were in any way possible for me to be unworthy! We are divinity expressed in humanity's perfect imperfection, in human consciousness, as limited as it is and has been. We are God also. We are as much God as is the music of the spheres, the vastness of the oceans, the distance of the stars, the perfection of a wild-flower, the look in the eyes of a child that breaks open our hearts and minds, the undoing of us that we see in the eyes of a child. We are as much God as is all of that.

Breathe it into yourself as you breathe the air around you. You are invited now to feel this and to work it into your sense of yourself in the world.

Practice. Practice saying, "I am worthy." Breathe. Then say it again. "I am worthy of all good things, of all resolution of my soul's purpose through me, of my own creativity, of the perfection that I AM." Then breathe again - breathe! Say, "I am worthy."

Repeat as needed.

Find Your Joy

We are in such times as have never been. So it is said, and so do I feel it. Not only do I feel it, I feel it waxing, like the moon in the days before she's full.

What we fill our consciousness with will be given to us. What we are vibrating as, we will receive more of. Anger begets anger. Lack begets lack. Abundance begets abundance. Love begets love in a great and glorious flowing. Such are the times.

Remember that old saying, "Be careful what you wish for; for you will surely get it." Well, multiply that by 10 and then add in all of your thinking, believing, saying, vibrating, calling forth, fearing, inhabiting and on and on and on. Such are the times.

If you are anxious, it will be intense anxiety, growing and feeding on itself until you feel overwhelmed by it. What to do then!? Choose another vibration and energy and the effect will be almost immediate. Choose courage, for example, and courage will grow and feed on itself within you until you can stand courageous in the face of just about anything. Choose again then. Choose wisdom perhaps. Or perspective. Or divine knowing such as has never been experienced by you.

Choose ease, if you will. Choose joy. But it's not enough, my friends, to choose these and not then allow yourself to become them. It is not your words alone which will take you where you say you want to be; it is your vibration, your energy.

So, find ease within yourself. If it means going to a yoga class or dancing in your living room for half an hour to get all the kinks out, then so be it. Find ease and flow and then sink into it, feel it fully. Remember the feeling and choose an image or word or action that will instantly recall you to the feeling of ease. Find it, claim it, and then bring yourself into a vibration of ease and flow, which is another way of saying trust. Oh I know, I use that word a lot. I use that word a lot because that is what we are being asked to become. Trust. Trust trusting. Trust trusting trust itself.

Find your joy and your gladness. Find these within your life, your experience, yourself. Find your joy and let it fill you. Let your joy resonate throughout your being, throughout your body. What brings you to joy? Is it a person, a place, an activity? Is it God's love? Is it your own love? Find your joy and flood yourself with it. Let it fill you. Your multi-dimensional vibrations will resonate with your joy's vibrations and the two sets of vibrations will become synchronous. (I'm using words for something that is beyond words and beyond our minds' abilities to comprehend fully. Move from the words to the vast dance of feeling and knowing, choosing and being that is behind them.)

Your vibrations will become the vibrations of joy, of love, of gladness and the whole world of being and becoming will then give back to you the vibrations that you are expressing. It is really that simple. What we are, we attract. (That is the true law of attraction by the way. It's a little bit more than what we say, or even what we say we believe; it is what we are that attracts.)

Fill yourself with abundance and with the feeling, experience and resonance of abundance and you will attract abundance. Fill yourself with lack, with fear of lack, with anxiety about not having what you need, with resentment of others' abundance and oh yes, the whole world of being and becoming will give back to you the vibrations that you are expressing. Ouch.

Find your joy. Live it. Share it with others as you choose. Choose the world in which you would like to live. Is it joyful? Peaceful? Trusting? Or is it something else entirely? For as we make our own situation, our own reality, we also make the world. More on this in a later post.

Blessings of joy be yours!

Trust That All is Well

I've been practicing trust. I've been practicing trusting my own processes and sovereignty, divinity and ability to create for myself the experiences that best serve me. It's a bit of a challenge sometimes, but I feel that I'm getting the hang of it.

There is another level of trust, one that I am only now beginning to realize. If I trust myself, do I trust others? Do I trust, for example, that my aging mother is exactly where and as she should be? Do I trust that my extremely stressed out husband is exactly where and as he should be? Do I trust that the experiences he is providing for himself best serve him at the highest level?

People talk to me about their lives and every time someone tells me about something challenging or difficult that happened to them I make sympathetic noises. "Oh, oh my goodness...." I honestly don't know how to respond verbally to these sorts of expressions. If I truly and deeply and totally believe that everything that happens to us and through us is for our highest good, then why would I express anything but delight in everything that happens? Yet people are struggling. My friend fell and hurt her knee quite badly; should I be delighted about that?

"Oh, oh my goodness...."

On one level I am in complete trust that she is sovereign and divine, that she, whether consciously or otherwise, is creating for herself the perfect sequence of experiences to bring her to where she has chosen, on the level of soul, to be.

On another level, a social level, I am expected to make the socially appropriate response to her experience of pain, of upset. So, I do.

And then there is my propensity to want to bring others to where I am, as if I were some sort of Moses in the desert of their lives. When I put it like that, it's easy to see just how absurd it is. I am divine human being. And so are you. And so is everybody else. No matter how it might appear; so is everybody else. The drunk, the drug addict, the prostitute, the politician, the police officer, the compulsive liar, the battered spouse, the hoarder, the fear-monger.... All of them are divine human beings, perfect always in their imperfection, beloved of God and of all that is of God in us. 

And it is not for me, or for you, or for anyone else to 'save' them. Such is the way of self-delusion, as if I could possibly know what is for their highest good. As I wrote in a song once, "Minds will question, souls will know." It is for us to allow them to be what they will be, to become what they will become. It's easy enough to do this with strangers. It's almost impossible to do it with those whom we genuinely care for, as if they were a part of us. Our children, our spouses, our parents and siblings.

They say that family is the greatest teacher of true compassion, true wisdom, true love. True compassion accepts all that a person is and chooses to be and to experience. True wisdom offers that acceptance with a humility that gives the Other space in which to move and grow in unfettered freedom. True love seeks nothing for itself, but only the will of the Other in his or her being and becoming. 

So now, I'm going to practice another kind of trusting. I'm going to practice trusting not only myself and my own journey, but all others and their journeys. It's a bit of an ego blow; acknowledging that they do not need me to get them anywhere, to teach them anything, to guide them in any way.

Unless they ask, of course. I know a lot about gardens and plants. I could teach them that if they ask. I know a lot about living alone and cooking for one person. I could give advice on that subject if someone inquired.

When I was younger (not much younger), I had a passionately held desire to be the wise one who would bring others to wisdom, to peace, to joy. Such is folly. And it dismisses the sovereignty and divine knowing, soul-self knowing, of the Other. There's a name for it, a rather nasty name. It's called co-dependence. That's when I am dependent on another's dependence on me. It's sneaky because it hides under an illusion of grace and wisdom and generosity of spirit.

So take a deep breath, Lu. Take a deep breath and learn to trust that all is well in ALL of creation, not just my little corner of it. And especially in these days of high drama as we approach the year 2012, there are people going through all kinds of dramatic events and experiences. Offer the self in its whole-being. Offer your energy, but not your guidance. Trust them. Trust Gaia. Trust God. Trust this process. You don't have to save anyone. Get it? No one needs to be saved. They are exactly where and how they should be.

Trust that all is well.

Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept it....

Some of you may not have spent enough years on this beautiful planet to remember the beginning sequence for all of those old Mission Impossible episodes. I love making light of the process through which we are so courageously moving, as we all too often become a bit heavy with the enormity of it. Mission it is, and a grand one, one that serves the whole of Planet Earth, of all of humanity and of the ALL-That-Is as well. Mission impossible it is not. We are more than half way there and doing very well.

Your part of this mission is quite simple, really. Love yourself.

Encounter yourself fully in all of your being, knowing, remembering and feeling. (Hear the echo.... feeling, feeling, feeling.... )

We are all moving through a process of letting go of the last remnants of our experience which we are not totally in love with, coming into love, coming into complete acceptance. Every time we release another illusion of not being divine, perfectly imperfect, wholly love expressed, we come a little bit more into the ALLness that we actually are.

Remember, God is all-inclusive, there is nothing that is not God. We are God also. Therefore, we are resolving and releasing into love all that we once denied, rejected, feared or otherwise considered to be less than God Being in the World. What we end up with is God - everywhere we look - God. There is nothing else. There is only God Being in the World, and God is love expressed.

We have been, over many years, actively taught NOT to love ourselves. It was considered selfish, vain, self-centered and arrogant, foolish and unwise. Oh, dear. Our mission now is to undo the effects of all of that training in self-denial and self-judgement. Our mission now is to embrace ourselves in delight, in joyful appreciation of all that we are and all that we are not. Our mission now is to love, love, love ourselves in the world. Yes, we're still human. We're still in bodies that ache. Believe me! I know that our bodies still ache! Love the ache. Love the sore feet. Love the sniffly nose and the cold fingers in January. Love yourself as you are. That is your mission now.

Again, I come back to that image of the child. A child with cold fingers, with a sore tummy.... you'd love that child! You'd love and love and love that child. You are that child. Love yourself as you would a beloved child standing in your kitchen, dripping melted snow all over your floor and sniffling. Love. Love. Love.

We are human beings. This is a great and glorious thing, this thing that we are. And we are so much more than just these bodies. We are the sniffles and the snores and the sink that needs scrubbing, but we are also the imagination, the multi-dimensional awareness growing, the love for others, the heart that gives, the wisdom of a soul-self that is older than this Earth. We are all of this and more.

So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to look into the mirror and love yourself as you are, as you are right now.

Love and appreciate, enjoy and delight in yourself. You'd be amazed at how enlightening an experience it is. Perhaps the final frontier of our emergence into the new energy of the times is this delight in our own selves.

Intentionally Yours....

Dear World,

I intend to hold myself in sanctified space, offering you that energy, that vibration without any conditions or expectations.

I intend to enjoy the moments, each one perfect in its entirety.

I intend to center myself in self-love and Unity Consciousness.

I intend to dance on a weekly basis.

I intend to eat homemade bread with profound gratitude for the goodness of it.

I intend to walk the hills that surround me with a pull and a push in my leg muscles and a quickening of my heartbeat and a growing appreciation for the ALL in the NOW as I walk.

I intend to position my decision making in my heart, rather than in my mind.

I intend to step into Divine Will on a daily basis.

I intend to love you, World, unreservedly, unconditionally and with wry laughter. Oh, yes! For you do things that are unexpected and sometimes uncomfortable and often challenging to my sense of self.

I intend to consciously intend as the days lengthen and the shadows slide from blue and grey into green and violet. I intend to stand in clarity, to become a conscious co-creator of my experience of You.

I love. I intend to become better at that in the days and weeks to come.

I remain, truly and intentionally yours, here in service and in joy, in love and in light,

Lu

Treat Every Experience as Passing Reality

Many years ago, when I was a young woman not yet twenty, I attended classes at Marianopolis College in Montreal. The college was housed in an old nunnery, rock-walled and drafty. Up on the top floor, the fourth floor, in a corner room, a priest with a surprisingly cynical smile, the spirit of a rebel and a flair for drama taught a course which I have never forgotten. It was called, 'Man in Pursuit of Playfulness' and touched on everything from Greek myth to the plays of Jean Paul Sartre.

One of the things that Father Menke taught us was that change is constant and inevitable. He urged us to treat every experience as passing reality, moving through our lives, not something that binds us, but rather something that relentlessly presses us toward the next experience, and the next, and the one after that.

When I am struggling, or tired of something that is surrounding me (weeks of grey skies come to mind), his words offer me a positive and optimistic way forward: "Treat every experience as passing reality."

When I am in bliss and joy, loving the moments as exquisite jewels on the string of time, his words sound an admonition not to become attached to any one expression of the sacred life force within and around me: "Treat every experience as passing reality."

Some say that time is behaving differently now than it has in the years past. Some say that time is going faster now, or that it is reacting to our thoughts about it, quantum-like. Some say that 2011 will show us time going faster than ever before. Treat every experience as passing reality. It shall not last. It shall not stay. We are invited to present ourselves to the present moment and to hold our consciousness there.

Interestingly, when I am in the Now, time moves at just the right speed all along. It seems to move much faster when I project myself into the future and rush, rush, rush to that next experience, that next task, that next endeavour. It seems to lag and drag when I nostalgically linger in past doings, experiences long shadowed by years.

Treat every experience as passing reality. When I realize the full import of that imperative, I can only be in the moment. It is going, going, gone. And it will never come again.

I used to think that it would come back. As an amateur botanist, I'm forever roaming the landscape noticing what grows where. What could be more immovable than a plant for goodness sake!? It's rooted. But no, going back, the next year or two years later, the plant has sickened, or the grove is cut, or the conditions have changed completely due to flood or drought, or they've all been shaded out by fast growing competition. And a thriving community of something rare and wonderful is gone.

Those mornings, you know the ones I mean, those mornings that sing a song of such sweetness that we cannot but linger in their colours, and we have to hurry to get somewhere and we say, "Never mind, it'll come again..." But it doesn't....     not just like that, not exactly. That's why I take photographs; it's an attempt to hold that moment.

These days are intense as change comes to the world, as energies of change and becoming flood us, as the waters rise in distant places and threaten our sense of what is normal and what is expected. These days are strong in us; we ride them like surfers riding the big waves that herald a storm.

Remember to breathe. Remember to breathe deeply. Remember to love. Remember to laugh. And then, treat every experience as passing reality.

Shine the Light

Some call us lightworkers. Can you feel the light within you?

Some call us standards. We set the standard vibration in this new energy. Others can match it if they choose to.

Some call us pathfinders. We show others the way forward into Ascension and beyond by finding the paths for ourselves and then following them with courage, grace and trust in ourselves and in the process.

What I need to remind myself of these days is that it is not for me to try to change the world. It is not for me to try to change anybody in the world.  It is mine to live as light, play with light, create with light. It is mine to shine the light. The light is not mine; it is of Source. It shines through me, in me, and with my own unique play of colours, shadings and hues.

I need to remind myself that I set the standard vibration when I allow myself to be ALL that I AM in this unfolding. When I trust, I hold that peace within me that is of God. When I do that, I set the standard for others. And of course, I am not alone in this. I am one of many. I choose to serve the ALL-That-Is in this way, by holding this trust, this peace within me, by being a standard in this way.

I went to a meeting at the Sunshine Center where I offer my In the Moment activities. There was a young woman there who held a centered and calm energy even when others became emotional. She seemed so grounded! I practice that groundedness. I seek to emulate that centeredness. I'm working at it now very consciously. I know that I will become that which I focus my intentions on. As I do this, I will become more and more the standard of light and love that I have chosen to be. The vibration of light and love, of trust and peace, is like pure water in the mountain stream. It doesn't seek to change anything, yet it offers itself for any who would drink of it, and as time passes, it sculpts the land inexorably. We radiate light and love and so it is available for any who would like to take it into themselves, who would like to become filled with light and love themselves. Yet we do not seek to change others. We accept them as they are. Slowly but surely, as we proceed in this way, the world around us changes in ways that we can ony begin to imagine.

As we make our way forward into this new age, we find our way through uncharted territory and go through transformations that humanity has never before undertaken. These are heady days! The adventure is well underway. Each process that we enter into, each intention with which we move forward, is a testament to our courage and our commitment to the ALL and to the Ascension of ourselves and our planet Earth and all of humanity. And as we step on into the unknown, we can show each other the way through our words and our sharing, our writings and our artistic works. We can join with those who travel as we do into this new age and share with them our realizations and understandings.

Shine the light of your being, your learning and your divinity. That light is growing brighter and brighter every day now.

We are illuminating the way forward for ourselves and for all of humanity. And we are doing this in love and in light and in joyful service to each other, to our own truth, to our soul's purpose.

Shine!

   

Play Time!

What feels good now? Do that.

Is it self-indulgent? You deserve it.

Is it fun? Exciting? Does it fill you with joy and pleasure to think about it? Then go for it.

Don't worry. You're not going to hurt anyone. You're not going to become imbalanced if you enjoy yourself thoroughly today.

What do I feel like doing now? This is always the perfect question to ask yourself. And then trust the answer that comes.

You know, I was thinking about yesterday's post here and I realized that all of my life, I have sought to help others, improve the condition of others' lives, benefit others through my presence. All of  my life I have been in service to others. That's fine, but often I found myself in service to others at the expense of myself. That's not fine - not even a little bit.

"So, enjoy life," I tell myself.

Center yourself within and be true to that.

This is my practice for the next little while - centering myself within, and specifically within my heart, breathing in that feeling and then moving from there into joy in the moment. I thought that I was being good to myself over the past years, and in many ways I was, but this is a self-centeredness which brings me into integrity such as I have never allowed myself. Never. Ever. Ever.

Even just typing the word 'self-centeredness' feels wrong. How can it be wrong to be centered within your own being? Yet we, especially women, have been taught not to center our consciousness from within ourselves. Where then is our well-spring of being? How can we be true to ourselves if we are not self-centered?

So, I'm taking deep breaths and literally going within to find my place in the moment. I'm practicing referring to my own truth even when I am conversing with others. As a person of integrity, you would think that I would be doing that all the time anyway. But as an empathic intuitive who has found it very challenging to know what is hers and what is not, this is a practice.

Talking candidly with a good friend yesterday helped me to see where my practice and intention now lie. I'm ready for the challenge. Be true to yourself, Lu. Enjoy yourself. Center yourself within yourself and play in the world.

What feels good now? Do that. It's play time!

Self-Love Leads to Joy

It runs counter to what most of us have known as our way of being with others for most of our lives, but it is time now for us to put ourselves first.

I know how hard it is to read that. It was hard for me to write it. Yet, it is time now for this.

We know that each one of us is completely responsible for his or her own happiness, fulfillment, joy and comfort. We know that sovereignty asks of us that we always be true to ourselves. We know that honouring the free will and path choices of the Other asks of us that we always allow them their experience. It is so challenging, for me and I suspect for you as well, to allow others whom we care for to have their own experiences even when those experiences are uncomfortable, challenging, difficult and even life threatening.

Our resonance with the frequencies of joy, gladness, love and peace may not be compatible with the frequencies that other people are choosing for themselves. It breaks my heart to say this, because there people whom I have cared for very much who seem mired in misery. Do I join them there? Do you join others in their unhappiness?

There is no true service to anyone in trying to bring them to unconditional love, acceptance, joy and radiance if they are not choosing these for themselves. And if you are wondering what someone is choosing, look at what they are experiencing. It is that simple. 

If you sacrifice your own happiness and joy to try to bring happiness and joy to another, you fall out of grace with your own soul-self being, unless of course, it is the path of martyrdom and self-sacrifice which your soul-self has chosen for you in this lifetime. (If you wonder about this, you can converse with your soul-self; you can ask for guidance.) Self-sacrifice is not loving to your own self and as you move into sovereignty and honouring of other's choices and of your own truth, your energy will no longer tolerate self-sacrifice and co-dependency, which demean your very soul. We are being asked more and more insistently to act in accordance with our deepest truths and in complete love and honouring of ourselves.

Fall in love with yourself and act accordingly. Do what brings you joy and gladness. Seek and focus on those things that you love and are radiantly enthusiastic about.

Self-love is the only true pathway to love of others. For when you provide for yourself all that you need and choose to experience, you approach others with no need and you can then truly love them and appreciate them for who and what they are, not for what they can give to you. When we love and honour ourselves, only then can we truly love and honour others and that attitude of love and honouring others grows within us as our love for ourselves grows. It comes about naturally, with no effort or struggle on our part.

Self-love leads to joy. In fact, it is the only pathway to joy. Others can bring you great gifts, but if you feel dependent on them, you will not feel safe and secure within yourself. You will feel insecure and uncertain since you can never wholly control the behaviour of another person. Feeling insecure and uncertain, you will not be able to release yourself fully into joy.

Put yourself first. Self-love leads to joy. Be a guide for others, that they might find their own joy, their own love of self. We cannot make each other happy, joyful, fulfilled, or even contented. As difficult as it is, we much now honour fully the choices that those around us make, the experiences that they give to themselves and the paths that they choose to travel.

My road lies in sunlight and violet shadows, singing with joy and clothed in the love and the light of the ALL-That-Is. It is time now for us all to choose our road and to travel it in integrity. It is self-love that will take us there.

Moving Through Love in These Challenging Times

I've been reading about the floods in Australia. When I listen to the news these days it fills me with amazement. So much drama is flashing out all around us. So much is changing. So much is changing so quickly. It's pretty intense. Last night, at around about 3:00 AM, I lay awake and I could feel the energies of change and transformation flooding into our atmosphere, flooding into my energy field. What shall become of us?

Way back in 1999, I wrote a song called 'Moving Through Love.' Actually, I think it sort of wrote itself through me. It came out all in a rush. I think that the lyrics of that song are relevant now. They speak of hope and faith. They ask that we look to our own hearts for the answers. They invite love as a response. They remind us that we create our World, our reality. We feel energies coming in, oh, yes! But we have the ability to create our own responses to those energies. Feel. Be. Trust.

Moving Through Love

Oh, what joy! Oh, what gladness is filling up my life

As I take the time to explore this love.

Look around, all around us is song and laughter

And the cloudscapes are moving through love.

You say, "Earth Mother feels such pain!"

Well She's stronger than we can conceive.

You say, "All hope is dead and gone."

I say look in your heart and believe.

Never doubt, never fear, the time is drawing near

When we can build on our dreams and make real our love.

All you think, all you dream is what Earth will seem

To those soon borne on the strength of your love.

You say, "Earth Mother feels such pain!"

Well She's stronger than we can conceive.

You say, "All hope is dead and gone."

I say look in your heart and believe.

All we say, all we do, is what will be true,

Not just for us but for those whom we say we love.

Every day, every way we can make this World

A place where people feel nothing but love.

Is it possible? Is it possible that the Earth could become a place where people feel nothing but love?

Yes.

Yes, it is.

I'll see you there.

Manifesting Your Desires

I mentioned in a post last week that manifestation of all we choose for ourselves is becoming easier and easier. I thought I'd say more about that in this post.

Easier doesn't mean that there's no challenge to this. It's a paradoxical situation though, because the manifestation of what you desire will come through your level of trust and your ability to effortlessly choose and then let it go, releasing it into total trust and pure peace in the moment.

So, if you are expending any effort to bring to you that which you seek, you are creating blocks to its appearance in your physical reality. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't go shopping. It means that you shouldn't go shopping in an anxious and harried state of mind, resentful of the fact that you have to go looking for this thing - whatever it is, fearful of how much it might cost... You get the picture. Use joy and peace of mind as your benchmarks. If you are experiencing joy, ease and peace of mind, you are where you should be.

If it is financial abundance which you choose for yourself, the challenge is that most of us have so much emotional baggage about money, and lack of money, that we bring anxiety and fear of lack into our energy field when we make that choice for financial abundance. We block the very thing that we have chosen by our underlying belief that we cannot have it.

The good news here is that in these unprecedented times of personal and planetary ascension into higher consciousness and energy vibration, we can bring ourselves into that exalted state of consciousness that is pure joy, unconditional love and peace much more easily and readily than ever before. In that essential trust that all is well, that all is as it should be, that you are profoundly loved and that all that you choose will come to you, manifestation of your desires and preferences is truly effortless. Thinking about how it will come, what it will look like, how you can manage it - these are unnecessary and counterproductive thoughts.

The mind's worries, anxieties, plans and preparations will create obstacles to your experience of the manifestation in effortless ease of your choices. So, the challenge here is to place yourself in that state of consciousness that knows no lack or impediment, nor fear of any lack or impediment. The challenge is to place yourself in that and then to maintain it as times passes. Underlying beliefs can and will get in the way if they are counter to the experience of effortless ease and abundance. So, if you have a belief that you are unworthy to receive such joyful, easy abundance, then that will be your experience. If you have a belief that only through diligent and careful planning and control of the elements involved can you achieve your purposeful choosing, then that will be your experience.

The tricky part here is that underlying beliefs are just that - underneath, subconscious, not easily recognized unless we lift the covering and see what's there. So, there's work involved. But the work is all on your own self, not on the world around you. It isn't that you need to go out and work hard to achieve what you want; you have to open up yourself to yourself and release old beliefs, old patterns of fearing, needing and wanting, old guilt, old shame, anything that does not acknowledge you as an effortless and joyful creator of your own experience.

One more thing to take note of here is that your desires cannot be for another person. In our creations, we cannot infringe on the free will and creations of another human being. For each of us is sovereign and deserving of that honouring of our free will and our choices. Our choices are at the heart of what it means to be human. So, even if that person is your son or daughter, your spouse, your best friend or your parent, your choices cannot be for that person. Choose only for yourself. Choose joyfully. Choose what brings you joy to imagine. Choose the easy option. Choose what you find beautiful. Choose and then take a deep breath and let it go, trusting that what you have chosen will come to you. The hard part is maintaining that level of trust. The energies that surround us now, in 2011, allow that trust to more easily become our constant state of being.

I'm practicing to be joyful and I invite you to do the same. I am literally bringing myself back to trust, ease and joy whenever I find that I have strayed from these. This practice is not without its challenges, not the least of which is to unfailingly be in one's truth and integrity at all times. Yet we can do this. We can do this now much more readily than ever before. Indeed, there is an imperative here. When we do this, we hold a potential of joy and ease for others. We say nothing, make no claims, yet by our very simply being in this way, we create and offer a potential.

May all that you choose, all that you love, all that you desire, be made effortlessly manifest in your experience.

  

Play Well Together

I've read a lot of texts on the internet lately referring to what we will experience in 2011. There is a fairly unanimous sense that it is going to be an intense experience. Waves of energy washing our planet and our own consciousness, earth changes, personal transformations, the imperative of releasing all which no longer serves us as we go through this time of ascensional transition - all of these are challenging to say the least. Some may bring us to fear, or to exhaustion. Some may bring us to question the very essence of ourselves, and that is always most difficult. Human beings don't like to have their foundations rocked.

In 2011, it seems that our foundations will be rocked.

Personally, I'm not worried. I've waited for this time of transition with soul-self anticipation. It is, quite simply, why I came here. But that doesn't mean that it will be easy or without challenges.

I was talking to a woman yesterday in Sutton village, and she, in her wisdom, spoke of community, of this being a time for us to come together. People of like mind, of like heart, neighbours and old friends can come together to support each other through these times. Yet our togetherness brings its own set of challenges. We are capable of sending energy of anger, fear, guilt or disappoinment to each other through our words, actions and vibrations. As we become ever more conscious and sensitive to the energies swirling around and through us, we feel more keenly the energies of those whom we spend time with. Even when we wish no harm, even though we all know that we each are responsible for our own vibrations and feelings, we are sometimes hurtful. And anyone reading this knows, at the level of the heart, exactly what I mean.

Play well together. I give myself this imperative as much as I give it to you. I'm trying to teach myself to say less and listen more, to react less and respond more compassionately and wisely.

It always begins with love of self, honouring of self, self-respect. It begins there. Be in your truth - always. From there, hold respect for others. Be aware, as much as you can be, of the energy that you are sending forth, for others will receive it into their own energy fields. We each are responsible for our energy. What are we sending out? What are we doing with the energy others are sending out to us?

Personally, as an empath and intuitive, I've struggled for years with others' energies. I enjoyably spend a lot of time alone. (Smile) My father used to call me the peacemaker, for I suffer the effects of angry energy most acutely. It literally shakes me to the bone. When we are angry or frightened, our energies are actually toxic to others, as well as to ourselves. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't be angry or frightened, but it helps when we are aware of the effects of our emotional energy radiating from us and into the energy fields of others.

Play well together. When you haven't anything helpful to say, use few words, yet speak your truth from the depths of your divine self. When you are given the opportunity to offer encouragement, honouring and appreciation for another, offer it with gladness. When one comes to you, troubled, take the time to listen and to offer quiet compassion. Your solution to their dilemma is not required. Remember to be clear within yourself about what is yours and what is not. Allow them to find their own resolution. Indeed, in these unprecedented times, we all have the ability to bring rapid and easy resolution to our seemingly intractable problems. I'll say more on this matter in a later post.

Play well together. Practice compassion. It's easy when we are in accord - much more difficult when we stand opposed to one another. As much as we can, let us bring our ego selves into the control of our exalted state of consciousness, our mastery, our highest selves. This is a practice. We none of us are perfectly in control of our ego needs for security of self and sense of position relative to others, but we can practice being in that space of divine peace which has no ego need. Breathing helps with this. Breathing and centering of the self in that space.

Play well together. Offer ease and laughter, friendship and good company on this most amazing part of our journey. 2011 promises to be a real rollercoaster of a ride! We can all use a helping hand and a steady sense of community support. May you have all the comfort of easy companions as you move through 2011, being and becoming. Being and becoming.

A Wide Margin

Henry David Thoreau, the American writer and philosopher, famously wrote that he chose a "wide margin" for his life. He wrote of long quiet stretches in the mornings and late afternoons wherein he could simply be in the moment, in a reverie or a thought, a feeling or a silent communication with all that surrounded him. Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women, knew Thoreau when she was a young girl and he was a man in his thirties. She wrote a diary entry after a visit to his little cabin on Walden Pond. She wrote of how the birds and other small animals would come right up to him, alight on his shoulder and take food from his fingers. He must have cultivated the art of being still and calm in the moment, to have the animals from the forest come to trust him so well.

I have long admired the writings and philosophical musings of Thoreau and sought to emulate his ideals. I too choose to have a wide margin for my life.

Those who follow my blog posts know that I recently struggled through some very old fears. Having done so, I am lighter in a sense, free of the imperatives that those fears engendered in me. I have always loved solitude, but until this most recent release of old fears, I had a hidden fear of being too isolated, of perhaps losing the ability to function in the world. That fear is now released and suddenly I am able to fully and completely repose in the margins of my days - the slow coming of the day's light and the stretch of evening's blessed calm.

In the silence, the stillness and the stretch of the timeless Now, I AM. I am not empty in these moments. I am full of feeling, of being and of sudden knowings, sudden realizations, sudden understandings.

Everything around us is moving, changing or being changed at such a rapid rate these days that I find this time to just feel the movement of it all from a place of stillness to be very helpful to me. Allowing it all to find its own way without any movement on my part feels like trust to me. I am stretching, like honey sliding off the spoon, into being rather than doing.

At various times during the days, weekdays and weekends as well, I am pulled into doing for others, serving their needs and expectations, meeting their vibrations. It is wearing on me, as I choose to be in the crystalline consciousness of the zero point field, in the timeless Now of the ALL-That-Is. I find myself being very careful about what I choose to take on and what I choose to walk away from. The expectations of others are not easily put aside, at least not by me. And I choose always to honour the Other. Yet I must also honour myself and meet my needs.

So I enter into those wide margins of early morning and the quiet evenings with no radio, stereo or television disturbing the silence and peace. As the season waxes and the evenings lengthen their light into the western sky once more, I will witness the swing into spring's potentials, for I am so quiet that even the subtle voices of the trees are heard by me.

Perhaps, like Henry David Thoreau, I will become so adapted to stillness and silence that the animals of the forest will come to know and trust me also, although the experience of such grace is not necessary to my sense of being loved.

 

The Timeless Now

Last summer, I had a garden on my husband's property in Pennsylvania. I had tended that garden with a great deal of care and hard work for four years. I had created a large bed of perennial strawberries and last June I had a great crop of them.

I went out every morning before the heat of the day came in. I harvested all the ripe berries each morning and brought them into the house. I sat at my small table to go through them carefully. They were like sweet summer jewels to me.

Some were perfect. Some were a bit marred by being overripe on one side, or having touched the ground. Some were overripe, but still usable; the long hot sunny days brought them to ripeness so quickly. The ones which were perfect, I placed in a white bowl for my husband and I to eat that day. They were delicious organically grown strawberries. The ones which were marred I placed in a plastic container with a lid and froze; I would make strawberry compote with them on a cooler morning and store the preserves in sterilized mason jars to be used at a later time. Every morning, for many days, I added berries to the plastic container. Eventually I had enough of them to make a strawberry compote.

As I sat at the table, my hands sticky with berry juice and the delicious smell of them in my nose, I suddenly was outside of time, opening a jar of compote in the icy white of January, spreading the sweet compote onto a thick slice of bread. I knew, I did not imagine or assume. I knew that I would delve into the experience of enjoying the strawberry compote, that it would bring me back in time into the dew wet garden and the stretch and work of berry picking. It was a moment in the timeless Now, a moment outside of linear time.

Recently, I opened a jar of strawberry compote. I had brought them all with me when I came here last July. I had protected it from breakage and from extremes of heat and cold. I had protected it from the light, for fruit preserves should be stored in a dark place. I had stored the jars of strawberry compote away in my new home. When I opened the jar, I suddenly was back at the table, carefully selecting berries to go into the white bowl to be eaten that day, or into the plastic container to be made into preserves. Suddenly, my hands were sticky with berry juice and my table was strewn with bright red fruit. I tasted again the dawn coolness and the dew-wet grass under my bare feet. I was in the timeless Now, and knew again, without a shadow of a doubt, the bounty of the harvest.

I don't know if I have managed to convey to you what I mean to convey. The Lu who sat at the table with the berries and the Lu who opened the jar and smelled the compote were in the same moment in the timeless Now. They connected. In June, I was the Lu in January, and in January I was the Lu in June.

I was thinking about it this morning, and I realized that there have been other such moments, moments when I somehow knew that later I would be in that moment again and when later came, sure enough, there I was.

It is the timeless Now that touches other moments in linear time, because in reality, all moments touch one another, just as all beings touch one another.

My reason for writing of this today is to encourage you to be aware of these moments outside of linear time, moments that somehow supersede linear time. They will come to you when you are wholly in the Now, when you are immersed in the experience of the Now moment, when you are fully appreciative of what is present in that moment with you. I don't think it is necessary that something be physically preserved, as the fruit compote was preserved. I think that just gave me a good example of these kinds of moments to write about. They happen whether there is a preserved object or not, but it might be easier to recognize them when something tangible is created and preserved.

I believe that we are going to see more and more of these moments outside of linear time, touching the timeless Now. I believe that as we become more and more whole in the Now, these ALL-That-Is moments will become more known to us.

I call them ALL-That-Is moments, because when I was sitting at that table I was wholly in the ALLness of the ALL-That-Is, and that is what I touched upon when I saw the future and that is what I touched upon the other day when I saw the past. The link between the moment in June and the moment in January was a timeless moment in the ALL-That-Is.

Don't try to wrap your brain around it. I can't. Just feel it. It's mysteriously wonderful and sort of golden. It's beyond our minds, yet a great gift to our divine knowing.

And if any of you would like to know more about making strawberry compote, just let me know.

Release

Have you felt the need to release as I have?

Have you felt the need to release everything that hadn't previously been released?

I feel as if, over the past few years, I've been cleaning out this large and complex system of spaces within me - all that I have ever been, lived, experienced, defined myself as. I'm not eliminating any of it, but rather bringing it up for review and resolution, acceptance and validation. Slowly and somewhat painfully, over the years, I have gone through space after space within me. I have delved into emotions, memories, feelings and contradictory feelings. I have reviewed actions taken, decisions made, fears managed, challenges met. I have had incredibly clear memories of times long gone. I could smell, see, taste and hear so much of what was occurring at the time; it is as if I were back there, back then.

Just when I thought that the clearing and cleansing and releasing were completed and done, another layer would reveal itself. Lately, as you know from reading previous posts, a layer of fear was uncovered. It is not a surprise to me that it came late to the process, for it challenged me very deeply. We tend to feel that our fears are baseless and shameful. We tend to hide them away from others and eventually from ourselves. It took a lot to bring these fears up into my consciousness for the inevitable review and resolution, acceptance and validation. And while some releasings have been completed by me in a matter of hours, this release has taken days.

All we can do is to work within the exigencies of the process, in the Now, with as much courage and honesty as we can muster. It is enough, I think, that we intend to see it through to its complete release. Our intention carries us forward. I feel hollowed out after the intense movement of emotions and energies through me, after their release. I feel hollowed and quiet. I feel that there is room now within for new understandings, new realizations. I write this with some chagrin, for I had thought that there were few new understandings to be acquired, few new realizations to be embodied. Mistaken, I was.

All my life I have been one who walks the land, bush-wacking, finding old farm lanes and logging trails, or striking out with no guidelines at all. Many's the time, especially in my younger days, when I thought that I was near a road or trail that would circle me back to my comfort zone, my home, my car.... only to find that I had mistaken the lie of the land and had yet another valley to traverse, another wetland to skirt, another hillside to climb before the circle was complete. And this journey into clarity, into the embodiment, the true and full embodiment of divinity in humanity, feels like that. Just when I think that I'm on the last few steps of the journey, another cliff-edge or unexpected depth of watery feeling presents an imperative all its own.

Release. Allow. Accept. Resolve. Validate. Appreciate. Honour. Know.

Only then, can we move on.

Swimming Upstream

It has been a rocky road for me over the past few days and my blog posts have reflected that. Yet, great gifts have been given to me, cradled within the challenges of the times.

I asked the All-That-Is to give me information about my internet connection - specifically why it wasn't working and when it would be working again. I was given the information quite quickly; it came through my own research into the problem and options for solving it.

My internet connection is based on wireless cell phone technology. It uses the cellular network that surrounds me here on Sutton Mountain. When I went down into the village last Wednesday, I couldn't believe how crowded and busy the grocery store and other stores were. Speaking with one of the cashiers at the grocery store, I realized that the village was absolutely full to overflowing with seasonal visitors, here for the skiing and snow-boarding on Sutton Mountain - here for that holiday week between Christmas and New Year's Day. All of those many visitors, or almost all of them, have cell phones and they were overloading the network. It was that simple. That's why my connection worked fairly well early in the mornings and became progressively more unstable and disfunctional as the afternoons came in. It was a traffic jam.

I was most decidedly swimming upstream throughout the experience, struggling and fighting against something that I couldn't clearly see or understand. It didn't require a fight, or a struggle. It required knowledge, patience and understanding.

Yet, it hasn't been just me swimming upstream over these past days. Many of us enter into conflict and struggle with ourselves, with our situations, when we do not need to do so. I had a difficult and heart-felt conversation with a woman I know who was devastated by the fact that her beloved son was breaking free and resisting all of her attempts to control his behaviour, at the age of 17. It's what they do at that age, needing to break free and find their own way, but it is very difficult for parents. She was swimming against the current, finding no strength within her to accept her son's transition. Fighting when she did not need to be fighting, she was wearing herself out and straining her relationship with her son to the breaking point.

It breaks my heart to say it, but I see my husband doing the same thing. He fights situations that do not require a fight. He swims upstream, expending all of his energies just to stay in the same place, because he cannot trust enough to let go and flow with the current.

Can I? I have released a great deal of emotion, of fear and anxiety, over the past days. I have realized some things, asked questions and answered them - more or less. Am I ready to let go? I am sometimes filled with trust and with the peace and love for All-That-Is that accompanies that trust. Can I be filled with trust all of the time? Can I remember to breathe, and breathe and breathe some more, so that I find my center and rest in pure, simple being?

I have to believe that I can. For I intend to do so. So I practice. I am practicing to be so filled with peace that I am in heaven on Earth, as I was mere days ago. I am practicing to be in my truth such that there is nothing that I fear. I am breathing deeply of my being on this Earth, in this body, with this consciousness, of this love. I am breathing acceptance, allowance and flow.

How about you? Can you flow with the stream, effortlessly, fearlessly? Can you trust so completely that you do not fight or struggle against anything? Are you swimming upstream? Are you fighting the current, expending your energies on a battle that cannot be won? Or are you letting go, letting your divine center guide you and provide for you.

I don't regret the struggles of these past days, for they have brought me to a greater understanding of what it means to be human. I had hidden away my deepest fears and now I have brought them out into the light of day, the light of my consciousness and released them. Now, I turn to the flow and feel it and let myself swing into it. And I move effortlessly through time and space, leaving behind the frenzied yes/no and right/wrong of duality.