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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"When I Grew Out of…"

"When you feel peaceful joy, that is when you are near truth" ~rumi

I smiled when a friend used this phrase in an email recently,"When I grew out of…" It reminded me that, even after the age of 50, we do grow out of things. It let me know that whatever I am going through right now is important and okay and I will grow out of it. And from it I WILL GROW.

Let's do Spring this year ... consciously! Let's reflect on those things we have grown out of and those things we WILL grow out of! 

I have grown out of the sensibility of relying on others to do things for me. I am doing things for myself now! 

I have grown out of accepting denigrating thoughts about myself AS TRUE for I know they do not serve me in any way!

And I have grown out of judging. There is no possible way I could know the totality of me, much less the totality of you, so passing judgement seems absurd!

And I am currently growing out my old life. I can feel it receding fast like the sudden drawing back of sea water revealing 400 feet of shore line before a tidal wave slams into the coast. Sounds scary and violent and dramatic, I know, but it feels right and good and organic too. 

Birth is like that. 

So let's do Spring consciously this year! Let's reflect on those things we have grown out of and those things we WILL grow out of! And those things we are becoming!

I write these words out of Love and Compassion. This is what I have grown into. These are the things I am becoming! This is my place. I will allow the rest to unfold.

What compassionate words do you have for yourself?

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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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Peace From Wanting

"Normally, the test of greatness in the arts is the ability to state deep feelings and perceptions simply, clearly, and well. Indeed, it may well be said that until a person can express a thought clearly and simply, he hasn't yet fully understood it himself.” ~ Swami Kriyananda, from the book 'Art as a Hidden Message' 

We are all artists because we are always creating. 

This is my own simple prayer...

"I want everything I have. 

I have all I need. 

This is my very own peace."

What words do you use to create peace within yourself?

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A New Way to Love

"The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky,

Are also on the faces of people going by.

I see friends shaking hands, sayin', "How do you do?"

They're really saying, " I love you" 

~from Lyrics "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong

I am IN love. 

Not like "what is his name?" kind of love. 

Not like "every Cary Grant movie ever made" kind of love. 

And not like "co-dependent attachment you can't do without it" kind of love.

What I mean is I am always "IN love" because I am always surrounded by (in) Source (love) all of the time.

Feels great to use these words - "IN love" about myself when I know it is not some bullshit positive thinking word game but my honest and real Truth.

Feels great to use these words - "IN love"  about myself when I know that this love cannot and will never be taken away from me.

Feels great to use these words - "IN love" about myself in such a new and different way than ever before -  so fully, passionately and completely.

Within this Love I am safely held. And it just feels great!

Can you dig it? Too quote Billy Crystal as Louis Armstrong, "I knew that you could. Oh Yaaaah…"

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Don't Postpone Joy

Today I am here...

"Picture in your inner eye, your inner sight, four avocado seeds on the window sill. Three are suspended in a glass of water and have sprouted. One is still dry and papery and brown. Each of the sprouting seeds has its own character. One has two long roots, like two rubbery legs folding around each other in the bottom of the glass. Out of the top rises a cluster of tiny seedling leaves, and surprisingly, on this one, these leaves are white -- little tight white albino avocado seedling leaves, coming out of that big hard seed knob. Another has one short straight root and one straight shoot bearing green leaves at the top. The third has neither root nor shoot, but the whole seed has been split open by a thrust from inside, and the two halves shoved apart by the germinating seed force -- that little bunch of stuff, big as the end of your pinkie, shoving those big doors aside like a tiny Samson. It is a wonderful sight. And now let us look at the fourth seed, dry and papery and brown, nothing showing on the outside. But within are a life force and a living plantness which we cannot see with our ordinary eyes. If we are to behold the wrinkled old seed in truth, we have to behold it with imagination, with our inner eye. Only with the inner eye of imagination can we see inner forms of Being and Becoming. In this lifeless-looking seed there is a germinating center, totally alive and totally invisible."~ from The Crossing Point Selected Talks and Writings by M C Richards

I am the fourth seed today - "dry and papery and brown, nothing showing on the outside." I know when it is time I will robustly broadcast my own special leafy self - wide and tall and full. And I too will bear fruit which will bear seeds that will in turn bear fruit and so on and so on...

Knowing this is power. 

In the meantime I am NOT willing to postpone Joy until I sprout. For it is Joy that nourishes me. Yes - no matter the stage or state of my germination I will nourish Joy.

What do you nourish within yourself?

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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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Good Purposeless-ness...from Other Voices

"like the lovely, free-form edge of a bird's wings, we cultivate our essence, an alchemy of soul.....this, simply by being present and alive.....yes, fully alive...…" 

~ in the blue

Our Strength Found in Fragile Depths 

"I am especially struck with the idea

of the purposeless life,

filling the well with snow.

I suppose all life is just that anyway,

but we are obsessed with purpose" 

~Thomas Merton

____________________

"The longing to live free from care, or to live what Merton in his letter to Suzuki calls the purposeless life, should not be mistaken for a simple disregard for others or for the world, or a willingness to live without care for persons or things. Rather, it expresses a hunger to discover a more honest, free, and open way of living in the world that enables one to see and respond to the other without succumbing to the temptation to think of such relationships only in terms of their utility and purpose. 

Indeed, one of the fundamental questions raised by the contemplative tradition has to do with how best to understand purpose and utility in human life, and whether the meaning of things depends on their having a purpose or a use. Also, whether an insistence on the fundamental value of utility and purposefulness undermines our very capacity to see and notice and respond to the world in its own terms. 

At its roots, these are also questions about what kind of value we attribute to things like play, imagination, attention, and prayer; and whether they can be understood, at least in conventional or economic terms, as having any purpose at all. Especially important in this regard is the cultivation of the kind of capacious awareness that can help us learn to feel and take in the beauty and power of the world for its own sake and refrain from evaluating it purely in terms of its utility. 

And while the cultivation and practice of such awareness may not be sufficient in itself to help us redress the pernicious effects of our utilitarian and acquisitive culture, the recovery of such capacity will almost certainly be necessary to the kind of sustained imaginative, ecological, and spiritual renewal of the world" 

~ Douglas Christie

_______________________

"liquid life in motion

So from the ground we felt that virtue branch

Through all our veins till we were whole, our wrists

As fresh and pure as water from a well,

Our hands made new to handle holy things,

The source of all our seeing rinsed and cleansed

Till earth and light and water entering there

Gave back to us the clear unfallen world."

~ Edwin Muir

In Blue | October 15, 2014 at 6:03 am | Tags: aliveness, awakening heart, awe, beauty defined, deep kindness, deep longing, deep play, fragile beauty, free spirit, fresh perspective, inner divinity, nurturing beauty, sacred awareness, seeking the sacred, spirit in flight | Categories: Beauty | URL: http://wp.me/p1Wc4z-2J5

What Is is OK

Work in Progress

Glimpses of letting go

Glimpses of holding on

And the living in between

Galloping forward 

I am a work in progress 

Rocking back and forth this way

Steadiness seems out of the question right now

But as sure as the letting go and the holding on and the in between happen over and over again

I will survive

I will thrive

I am alive

Hum 

Paying Attention

A Centipede was happy quite 

until a frog in jest said,

"Pray which leg comes after which?"

This raised his doubts to such a pitch,

He lay bewildered in a ditch

Considering how to run.

~ Author Unknown

Taking yet another e-course with Thomas Moore, author of "Care of the Soul", we are studying The Holy Fool: Finding Spiritual Liberation in Foolishness and Humor. This is right up my alley some would say. Today's discussion is on 'The Fool as Inner Guide.'

Within this lesson is the idea of being NOBODY. Sounds strange and perhaps awful to some. The problem with adversity is that it is very hard to appreciate it in the moment. 

Being nobody can be very liberating. It can allow us to be unencumbered by societies' (and our own) expectations. Being nobody breaks open the cask of possibilities and, while frightening, is also very exciting.

Emily Dickenson's poem, "I am nobody" holds in high esteem this idea and suggests that 'if I am nobody than perhaps so are you.'

"I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Are you - Nobody - too?

Then there's a pair of us!

Don't tell! they'd advertise - you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!

How public - like a Frog - 

To tell one's name - the livelong June - 

To an admiring Bog!"

But I have always found it very important to recognize everyone I meet as important and somebody. Those who wear the costume of stranger - wait staff, clerks, and fellow classmates - are not NOBODY, but some bodies vibrating next to me. They are to be heard and valued. Sometimes, if I am not paying attention to my life I do not recognize their value in the moment. But when I take time to reflect on the day and on all the interactions I have had - this idea is reinforced 100%.

How can both these ideas - being nobody and being somebody - exist simultaneously? Being here - in this  paradoxical space - is a vast and benevolent experience. 

Don't think about it too long lest you end up capsized in a ditch unable to run. Just vibrate yourself on toward your next task at hand and remember with Love you are nobody and so am I!

Are you paying attention to your life?

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My Ego - Not Yours! Mine. Mine. Mine.

I sent my ego to the "timeout chair" this morning. I am sitting here smiling imagining this silly and sweet happenstance.

What would my ego look like if I could see it? Is it a smaller version of myself? It seems to be an innocent who does not know any better, but is not me as a child. It is a part of who I am right now, the part that has limited vision and reflexively stomps or rejoices. 

I sent my ego to the timeout chair this morning not to be judged and sentenced. I am showing it the way forward toward a new sensibility because it is part of me that deserves to be loved and understood. I am rerouting it toward a more all encompassing nature beyond it's usual pattern of instantaneous and emotive "me-me-me-ness."

In order to reach for my best self, the person I am meant to be, I am sweetly aware of my lovely and energetic ego self that requires guidance... from me or from some kind of higher self. That is why the moment I recognized it needed to become recumbent and docile I sent my ego to the timeout chair to "think about what it had done"

For this awareness I am grateful. 

"OK, do you know why I had you sit there a while? Yes - that's right, you can get up now. I love you very much. Now go and play."

Have you a part of yourself that needs more guidance?

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Receiving Love

Oh I can give Love all day long. 

It is automatic and very fulfilling. Every morning I enjoy making sure the needs of my dog are graciously and completely met. 

I feel real happiness making sure my sister has all she needs to be relaxed and feel like a winner. And when I am able to be a provider to my guests so they want for nothing - this is one hell of a yummy time for me. 

I even make sure strangers are not impinged upon as I pick up the shit of my healthy well trained dog! This impulse of mine is done, of course, with a little less enthusiasm, but is no less natural or inate to my being.

But when do I make sure I am ready to fully and completely receive Love? How do I open myself up to accept the abundant possibilities of Love coming to me at every moment from everywhere, everything and everyone?

Can I sopp up Love as automatically as I dish it out? Will I gracefully allow Love into my life without stopping it at the border to check it's credentials. Can I stop batting Love away because I used to be someone else's girl?

When will recieving Love become instinctive, involuntary and impulsive again?

How about from this day forward?

From this day forward I vow to practice letting Love in. From now on I am a receiver of Love from everywhere, everything and everyone. So when I see Love coming I will not duck and I will not hide. I will stay put and let Love spill on to my life. I am porous and soak Love up as naturally as a sponge.

Ah...now doesn't that feel better?

Do you ever stop Love in it's tracks?

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Creating From Wholeness

"I am going to tell a story with great meaning. I am going to make you cry, then make you laugh." 

~ me to myself after dreaming strange things.

In my past I have created things (comedy, paintings, writing... even relationships) from a hungry place so I could feel worthy. Creation to fill emptiness, though still good stuff, is weighted down and stained. It is like taking a breath that is less than full with lungs hobbled by years of tobacco smoke. 

What would it be like to create from a different place - a clearer space - a place that was not so stained? 

What would it be like to be free of this addiction, this need to fill an emptiness, to get love, to feel OK? What would it feel like to create from a pure place of being?

I want to create from this space of already knowing I am loved, already knowing I am worthy, already knowing I am whole. I wonder what those creations will look like? I wonder if they will be different?  And I wonder what that would feel like? I wonder when the screen of broken-ness is removed from my imagination would there be more clarity, more joy, more flow - more art?

I wonder how is this done? 

Here is one idea...

"Very closely allied to the intuition is the faculty of imagination. This does not mean mere fancies, which we dismiss without further consideration, but our power of forming mental images upon which we dwell. These form a nucleus which, on its own plane, calls into action the universal Law of Attraction, thus giving rise to the principle of Growth. 

The relation of the intuition to the imagination is that the intuition grasps an idea from the Great Universal Mind, in which all things subsist as potentials, and presents it to the imagination in its essence rather than in a definite form. And then our image-building faculty gives it a clear and definite form which it presents before the mental vision, and which we then vivify by letting our thought dwell upon it, thus infusing our own personality into it. So providing that personal element through which the specific action of the universal law relative to the particular individual always takes place." ~ Thomas Troward

Dude - why to manifest!

What kinds of things do you wonder? Do you wonder things?

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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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Self Love

Soulfully attending to body, mind and spirit manifests all manner of actual good things into being. Here is another list to tack up on the mirror or place by the bed to remind us of this!

The Top Ten Reasons Why I Exercise By Jessica Ortner 

1) Movement in your body means movement in your life. Over and over again, I’ve seen how true that is for me and my life. When I’m feeling stuck, I know I need to move.

2) Movement is an expression of gratitude toward my body for all it does for me.

3) Movement makes me feel connected to my body and its intelligence, which helps me make better decisions and keeps me feeling like my best self.

4) I’m smarter and more creative when I’m exercising. (Research backs this up; exercise causes increased blood flow to the brain, which stimulates the creative centers in the brain.)

5) Movement is a spiritual experience for me, like a physical form of prayer or a moving meditation.

6) Movement makes me feel strong, confident, beautiful, and sexy, like a force to be reckoned with.

7) Movement helps me be in the present moment, which helps me feel at peace.

8) Movement is one of the ways I show myself love, so when I exercise, I’m reminding myself that I’m worthy of my own love.

9)  Movement makes me feel playful and energetic.

10) Movement makes me feel powerful in a deep and authentic way.

Notice what’s missing here? “Burning calories” and “losing weight” appear exactly nowhere on my list.

Gonna take these ideas and run with them! Nothing bad can ever happen by loving yourself...don't you just think?

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