Full Spectrum of Love

Photo by Jonathon Reid

"Sunset is still my favorite color. Rainbow is second." Mattie Stepanek


What is clouding my awareness of the full spectrum of Love? How do I greet the EVERYTHING and allow this Landscape of Love to unfold more fully? My talisman, my incantation, my newest prayer is "Yes, and..." Yes, I miss my loving and departed Mother since her passing. And I know she is still with me. Yes, my father, whom I dismissed so many years ago, never shared his heart with me. And he sits with me regularly to tell me of his unending Love. Yes, I am completely healed from the passing of my loving husband of 20 years. And I will always carry within me a still lake of tenderness that is easily waked. 

These are not the competing statements of a vacillating mind. They are the warm and gentle notes my heart sings about the mysterious workings of the Landscape of Love. They are comprised of acceptance, compassion, and a desire to know the full spectrum of the Landscape of Love. And they are the best words I can can bring together to explain this resurrected feeling of wholeness that is growing inside me.

Gone are the days that I beat myself, or somebody else, up after recognizing a feeling I judged as wrong or painful. Gone are the doubts that swirled inside me that spoke to my brokenness and raised an invisible white flag over my head which asked everyone to "PLEASE FIX ME."  

So as I take a deep breath... I engage in a new wiser way of being which dissolves "the other" in accordance with Love. I take off the shackles of "either/or thinking" which restricted my growth for so long. Yes, I see we are all Divine and Innocent souls deserving of Love and Kindness. And I begin with my Self.

What is your favorite color?


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Becoming Wide and Open

"Your beliefs become your thoughts 

Your thoughts become your words
Your words become your actions
Your actions become your habits
Your habits become your character
Your character becomes your destiny"

~mohandas ghandi

There is an energy that is spoiling my peace. It crackles and shifts the silence within me. And deep down and all through everything I know - I know this energy is good.

Even though I feel nauseated by its unusual character and unfamiliar tones. Even though I know nothing about what is to come. Even though I feel afraid...I am willing to endure the uncertainty of cascading next events because deep down and all through everything I know - I know this energy is good.

I am opening to the changes of Spring.

I am open to the casting off of my cocoon. 

I am open to the emerging of my new me. 

I am open to the merging of the flows - the flow of my soul's river with the flow of the rhythms of the world. 

I am open to the merging of the flows because I know deep down and all through everything I feel - this merging is good.  

I am wide open.

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Advocating for Meditation

"Through the sacred art of pausing, we develop the capacity to stop hiding, to stop running away from our experience. We begin to trust in our natural intelligence, in our naturally wise heart, in our capacity to open to whatever arises. Like awakening from a dream, in the moment of pausing our trance recedes and Radical Acceptance becomes possible." ~tara branch

Everybody has their own unique natural state, their own baseline from which all their experiences begin. Some say we can move up the vibration of this - our unique natural state - to enhance our experience of life; to increase the amounts of JOY and LOVE we are able to know.

If you knew this to be the truth, why would you not set about immediately to begin doing it? 

"The realization of eternal truth comes at the expense of all of our illusions." ~adyashanti

Aha! Well I have had nothing to lose recently so my way of raising my vibration is through meditation. If I mindfully begin by setting my intention to make more abundant JOY and LOVE in my life and then practice quietly sitting still - in a way that makes sense for me - I have found I do generate just that. Not by direct effort, i.e. analytical planning out a strategy with steps and goals, but by simple use of my breath and my mind and my body in a standard practiced way. 

I use these same capacities, my breath, mind and body, in every other of life's routine situations. When I am brushing my teeth or washing my face or cooking a meal I use them to stay healthy, to shed cells, to grow and transform. So why not use my breath, mind and body (over time) to amp up my perception?

Like clothes that are worn in bright sunlight and washed and then hung on the line over and over again - Meditation has helped me to indirectly become slowly bleached of hardship and sorrow. My natural daily responses are fading away from material concerns and focusing more toward a wholistic embodiment of loving energy. I do not know where this will lead but this is the direction in which I am going! 

Oh I still go grocery shopping, make plans, art and money. But gradually I am coming to see with these newer more joyful and loving eyes. And I see that all is well. Really...I swear! And all this "all is well" jazz started by just sitting quietly and not trying at all. This is a feat in itself - I know.

And so unlike the way we have been taught to strive for JOY and LOVE. So alien and perverse and cliche! But it works for me. This is my chosen path. And I am still living the same life I have always lived - just better by every measure.

What does your path look like?

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In the Stream

Today I am noticing my open heart is a garden where everything placed in it grows. And everything that comes from it nourishes. And when I relax into the flow of life, life provides all that I need easily and comfortably. 

LIFE is on my side!

What better motivation can there be to arrange things in your life so your heart space is the preeminent filter through which all things flow?

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Summer Time Well Being

A long, long time ago in a far off land my best friend was a boy named Michael who lived up the street. We were both around 6 or 7 years old and we loved playing together. 

I recall sitting in the ivy under the big oak tree with big pillows stuffed under our broadly stripped cotton shirts and mom serving us lunch as we played at being Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. We also collected rudimentary fishing gear while wearing those unstuffed shirts and spent many lazy days catching snapper off a pier in the sound. 

We configured and re-configured race tracks in Mike's basement. And much to the chagrin of our older sisters - we played at being spies, learning how to be stealthy, sneaking up to eavesdrop on their older-kid-doings in the fields at the end of our street. I think that was the only time we were actually quiet!

We climbed trees, road bikes, caught frogs in window wells and butterflies in nets. We mixed potato chips with our Bazooka bubble gum as we watched the Wizard of Oz while propped up on our elbows on pillows on our bellies close to the TV set. Back then it was a real event because the Wizard of Oz only came on once a year! And as I recall this event also signaled the coming to the end of "summer time."

"Summer Time" was not only a season, but a quality of time. It was  when we generally enjoyed enjoying life. It was when school let out and we readily cast ourselves a drift to do NOTHING and loved every moment AND it's unfolding. There were no expectations of accomplishing goals or making the grade. We just got up with the day and made it up as we went along.

We were off the clock when we were in it. We were in summer time. We are now in summer time. We are well. We are just well... well... BEING.

How will you spend your summer time this year?

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