Summoning What Really Matters

Okay, let's take a moment and use all our powers of imagination. Let's pretend for the next 10 minutes. Let's crank up our happiness quotient as if we are children making things up just to try things on and see how they feel… just for the fun of it.

Are you there with me? Is your sense of wonder and excitement palpable? Is your heart racing fast like mine is? Okay - now in this creative feast of a moment pretend your wildest dream has just come true! 

...hey what just happened? 

My imagination just totally shutdown. And my excitement just dropped off a cliff. I had no idea how hard this was until I actually tried it. Turns out imagining as attained your most amazing hoped for outcome in a pretend moment of exaltation is r-e-a-l-l-y scary! To hold space for this kind of completeness, I must confess, is way passed my abilities right now. 

Maybe I need to work up to this "imagination challenge" by first pretending I just read a great book in which the hero made it through some horrible gauntlet and then finally achieved her heart's desire. Perhaps right now that is the best I can do - see my dream as happening to somebody else who is not only NOT ME, but NOT EVEN REAL!
Oh but…

...wouldn't it be grand to feel the way the hero feels - to feel the foggy giddiness of pure joy that eclipses all other joys? To allow my body to fall back in a beautiful crush of surrender and elation knowing nothing else mattered and I could die happy knowing that I have missed out on NOTHING. Wouldn't it feel fabulous to have finally got that which my soul has been demanding for so so long!

Yes, yes, yes, I feel it now. It feels warm in the middle of my chest. It feels like vast and never ending pink and green BLISS.

Hey! I did it! I imagined it!

I guess the trick is to let go of the mind's particulars, the never ending detailed plans, and just work our imagination muscle long and hard enough until our thoughts find their way to (or from) our hearts.

Feeling blissful emotions creates electrical charges you know. Whether these charges arise organically from a reaction to real world circumstance or whether they are actively summoned from a deep well of conscious imagination the energy is exactly the same. 

This is the energy that manifests desire into form. This fundamental understanding is the driver that churns dreams into reality. If this is new information you may find it difficult at first to believe, but it does get easier with practice. And I am convinced if we can begin a practice of dreaming and freely feeling our dreams, the rest will take care of itself.

Experiment and see. Summon your child-like self again. It will be fun, I promise.


What have you got to lose?
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Love Beyond Measure

"For I have learned that every

heart will get

What it prays for

Most " - hafiz

How much Love can you take? 

Let's talk volume here. Is it enough? Is it too much? Can you take just a little more? And just a little more again? Why is there a set amount that is allowed? Does it burn to feel the unbounded vastness of Love's light? Is it possible to conceive of this much Love being at your disposal?

Is a little trickle thru a tiny fissure in the granite of a great stone gorge all you can abide at this time? Any fissure can become a crack. And any crack can break wide open...if you let it.

What about a gusher? What about a geyser? What about an tidal wave? Now we are talking about more than just volume. We are adding velocity. It is too much, too fast! Make it stop - all this Love! It hurts too much!

Let's just stop this all together! Let's just stop this "stopping Love." Let's just let it flow and feel it however it arrives, accept it no matter what it looks like, who brings it, or how fast (or slowly) it comes. 

Make welcome Love. Make welcome Love. Make welcome Love.

This is my prayer.

What does your heart pray for?

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So Many Passions

What does Passion mean to you? 

For the first half of my life I thought Passion was that feeling derived from sex and love. BTW this is also the time I thought sex & love were the same thing. 

Passion was that fleeting thing that waxed and waned according to life's circumstance. It conjured up images of operatic gestures and storylines about extreme choices made in sudden fits of itself.

But in more recent days I am coming to know a different kind of Passion. A more soulful call from deep within that is not sudden or fitful but gradual and steady. It calls to me when I seek it. It patiently waits on me to pick up it's trail. It is not dependent on conditions. It existed then, exists now and will always exist. This kind of uninterrupted Passion shows me the way.

Are these two branches from the same tree? Are they siblings, cousins or ancient ancestors? No I don't think so, their effects are both a call to action, but their way of doing things are so completely different.

Perhaps they overlap eachother like my younger and now older selves. Or perhaps they are companions which simultaneously inform each other like surf and shore? 

I can see conditional Passion's irregular waves roaring and breaking toward land creating an ever changing line on top of the shore. It alternates between exposing and covering up that other species of Passion, the unfluctuating one. Whether seen or unseen, unconditional Passion is like all shores everywhere - unceasingly directional, timeless and forever joining land to sea.

I love this place were the land and sea meet. I am fixed by it's constantly changing and changeless nature. It is here at the shore's edge we are able to see all the possibilities of becoming our truest selves. It is here where choice and moment meet and I become awake. 

I am grateful to be able to recognize this enduring flow of things and to periodically live in my own becoming.

How do you experience Passion?

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Like Walking on the Moon!

Love is a many splendid thing, but it is NOT something concrete -  nor is Will, Reason or Imagination. Yet we've all experienced these insubstantial (yet very foundational) things. 

We've all felt love for a person, place or thing. We've all willed ourselves out of bed. And we're always Reasoning... "Is it better to do thing A or thing B?"

In general, none of these intangibles can be weighed on a scale, held in our hands or seen with our eyes. But they are no less real than the frozen tundra of Greenland, a fig leaf or the elephant in the room. I am sure you get the picture - right? 

Yet because they are unseen they always seem to be neglected. There just never is a good time to examine the weight of them on our lives. Or the unlimited possibilities of holding them in our consciousness. Or to experiment with them to see how they can help us manifest a better life for ourselves.

For me, when I caught wind that I could intentionally make muscular my ability to see and fortify Love or Intuition -- insert your desired intangible here -- it felt exactly like walking on the moon! What a strange and beautiful place to be, but how do I navigate? At first, in this unfamiliar place I was unable to grasp things with my goofy large gloves and only able to breath from my own limited supply of recirculated air. And I was sure the tank would run out sooner or later. Then I started to take a walk out into the unknown.

Now, after some time playing with these ideas, the gloves have come off. I am untethered! I am examining "the thing" I want from every angle. How do I feel about it? What do I believe. Why do I believe what I believe? Is this belief of mine really true? 

This helps me form a clearer picture of what I want and what I do not want. And from this place IT IS EASY to hold in my consciousness exactly the effect I want to show up in my life. And damn it if I don't see real evidence of my most heartfelt desires right in front of these new eyes of mine. They may not be in the form, color or shape I pictured but they are just what I ordered! 

The trick I found was in not planning how, but just holding the result in mind and more importantly feeling how I would feel when my intangible showed up. Then, having refined it, just let it go.

This takes some practice. I've had to renegotiate within a different gravitational pull. But now -that I sort of have the hang of it - the air is less rare and my tank is always full!

What new thing will you try today?

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Happiness is a Choice

"Happiness can be cultivated" says Shawn Achor, author of Before Happiness. He calls it Happiness Hygiene and says it is as essential to living as brushing our teeth and eating right. Here are 5 Two Minute Happiness Drills which Achor's research has proven to actually have the power to make us happier people. His work challenges us to do one or more of these drills for 21 days in order to experience the real difference for ourselves.

Shawn says these practical changes in our behavior are happiness building blocks. These practices allow us to see more meaning in our lives thus increasing our happiness. Which in turn creates an experience of deeper and more enduring joy... for ourselves and others. That's right, Shawn says as we care for our own Happiness Hygiene there exists the real possibility it will spread to those around us.

So here are the 5 Two Minute Happiness Drills that may change the world! Or just make you smile more often. Either way - this is "good stuff making!"

1. SAY ALOUD three NEW gratitudes when you awake each morning.

2. MOVE your body in fun mindful cardio activity - OK this one wants about 10 - 15 minutes!

3. SIT in stillness or meditate - quietly watching your breath for 2 minutes does count!

4. SEND A THANK YOU note, email, or call to someone you know.

5. WRITE a detailed recollection of a happy moment from last 24 hours for just 2 minutes.

If you are like me --- looking at implementing yet another regular routine can feel daunting.  Well suck this one up & GET HAPPY DAMN IT! It is only two minutes... and we need you on our team! 

Too rough?

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Love & Power

I will give you my love, but I will not give you my power. I never made that distinction before! They are not the same and cleaving them like this feels true and right. 

For a brief moment I thought I had to get permission to love. But then I came to understand there is no need as love is a giving. 

And so, bringing with it Freedom and Joy I can say, "I love you." I can give you my love, but I do not have to give you my power. 

This kind of Love is no longer a makeshift lean-to, an add on or a form of currency. This kind of Love has a broad and sturdy foundation and is not subject to storms and high winds. It is upon this kind of Love anything can be built. And that "anything" can stand for eons. I am replete.

Got any revelations of your own?

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Heartbreak

"Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option." ~Mark Twain

It is real - the root of the thing. 

But is made distant by

the everything else.

I am creative and powerful

Yet I cannot shun the weight of it

It is cornered - me and it together

Win some, lose some

Be careful what you wish for

It cannot be you 

It can never be you

It can only be the Truth

Not enough chocolate in the world...

A Walk in the Park

"I am great sun but you do not see me.

I am your husband but you turn away.

I am the captive but you do not free me.

I am the captain but you do not obey.

I am the truth but you do not believe me.

I am that city where you will not stay.

I am your wife, your child but you will leave me.

I am that god to whom you will not pray.

I am your council but you do not hear me.

I am your lover whom you will slay.

I am the victor but you do not cheer me.

I am the holy dove that you will slay.

I am your life, but if you will not name me seal up your soul's tears and do not blame me." ~ from a 16th century inscription.

My job and my joy is to simply be myself. So why isn't this a walk in the park? Who better to know how to do this than me? No special training is required. Nothing need be bought or sold to achieve "Lani-ness" because I came complete, whole and perfect. And I will go out that way too... funny thing is this is true whether I recognize it or not. 

What has to happen to allow fresh, pure, and unencumbered Lani molecules to collect and disseminate with ease and grace?

Full throttle love. Full throttle trust. And full throttle imagination of what life could be like at it's best. When I allow these things it is a walk in the park to just be.

At this point I believe my job and my joy then changes. I believe my job and my joy then becomes dissolving into all that is... definitely NOT a walk in the park! I've got some work to do. 

What work do you have in front of you?

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A Messy Life

My life has made (and is making) a transition as we speak from orderly to NOT. And I am becoming accustomed to it somehow. Through grief I have warmed to uncertainty. Is this why folks want religion - to acquaint themselves with the roiling of life? And to make friends with it?

I recall letting things & circumstances happen in my youth to which I merely reacted. In this way I was carried along a path that brought me to this moment. With no overarching belief system in place I managed just fine.

Now I stretch and anguish to know how to get back to the ease of that way of living, but with an awareness about it. An awareness that allows more depth and communion with myself and others. Perhaps I am on my way there by not only recognizing the value of a non-linear messy miraculous life...but agreeing to allow myself to sink my teeth into it?

What do we have to lose by "going for it?"

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Fabricating a Life

When I was sick, before Michael died, he would make me a cup of tea if I asked him to. Not anymore. And when I was sick and he came to bed, if he saw I had scarfed one of his pillows he would say plainly, "Come on - give it up." And he would take it from me when I was reluctant to do so. Not anymore. So I have to make my own tea now. But I get all the pillows! Just a peek into my memory bank about Michael and our life together. If you are scoring - seems like a wash. But of course, it is not that simple. Wish it was. Day-to-day I think, "who I am...now?"

I did not experience it like that at first. Death of a spouse, at first, was just so much swamp to be moved through. So much heavy, thick and somber muck to be cleared. And it was relentless. Day and night, inside and outside, close and far away - something was always calling to be cut away, signed for, or hugged and cherished.  And in the beginning there was so much to do and so many folks to help. We got through it.

Now it seems I am more settled into my game. Things are in there right places and friends have moved on. Not away from me necessarily, just back into their own lives, their regular routines. I can be trusted to handle things by myself now. Though I still ask for help when I need it. And I have made new friends!

So here I am, creating a new life. I know...it sounds so daunting. Funny thing too - I just realized -  I do not recall ever doing this before. I know I made choices and I ended up in places where I met people and I did things. But looking back, none of it seemed to be so deliberate. At least not as deliberate as it is now. What's up with that? Is it normal to be so carefully pondering each piece of that life as I fashion this new one? Is this new life not made of whole cloth? Living consciously is the difference, I think.

In aiming to live consciously I am coming to learn how to ask for what I want. And at the same time I am defiantly learning Acceptance of what is. Doing these two things in concert is a gift. Doing these two things in concert intertwines my own true nature with the true nature of that which is Universal. Back and forth I go, traveling between Acceptance and Desire. Sometimes feeling deep pain and sorrow. And sometimes I move with Grace and ease. What makes the difference here? It just depends on how awake I am to the moment.

Living intentionally with both Acceptance and Desire is a struggle. But it is these opposing forces which chug the cogs on the wheel of life forward. It is this shuttling back and forth between the two that weaves us into eternity. The minutes tick by, the kettle boils and the standard falls. Consciousness just naturally oscillates in character. This has really bugged me in the past. "Why can't I stay awake more?"  Now I know it is OK. It is just the natural warp and weft of the fabric of life. Acceptance has cleared the way for fabricating a life made up from my deepest desires. Can't wait to see what those will be...

What is hard for you to Accept?


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