Spiritual Partnership

"Spiritual partnerships are the most fulfilling, substantive, and deep relationships possible. They are relationships between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth. ... No matter who the spiritual partner or spiritual partners are, the spiritual partnership operates the same way." ~Gary Zukav

I have been waiting for directions for my new life. Something less complex than those you get with birth control pills. But something more easily reckoned than the confusing pictograph directions you get with cheapo furniture made in Central Asia. 

Arthur Murray comes to mind. 

I would like some simple footsteps painted in a high contrasting color so I can easily see them. I don’t have to know the whole dance I just want to know what my next step is. And I would like a partner. That way I could keep my head up instead of looking at my feet all the time!

But not just any partner, I really really really really want a partner who as ready as I am for the most fulfilling, substantive, and deep relationship of their life. I want a Spiritual Partnership.

Let's get ready to R-U-M-B-L-E Universe!

What do you really (x 4)  want?

Tag! You're It.

Envision Forward

"There is a way of breathing that's a shame and a suffocation and there's another way of breathing, a love breath that lets you open to the infinite."

~Rumi.

I spent the day at a Vision Board Workshop. This is a yearly ritual which surprisingly has become a touchstone. Each year we choose a word to act like a compass as we wind our way toward a future to which we feel called. Then we cut, arrange, and paste images, along with our word and a photo of ourselves, on to a board. This collage making is intuitive play; it is not pre-planned. It is not work, but I am always wiped out when I finish. Seems conjuring up an entire year in advance takes a lot of focused energy. But the exhaustion I feel is always preceded by an amazing feeling of joy, surprise, and exhilaration, the high of which lingers on for at least a day or two!

2013: ADROIT. My first word. I chose it because six months earlier my husband had died. I was still plenty raw and broken, but had begun to wake from the numbing inertia of the newly bereaved. Up until then, there was like this protective bubble surrounding me, keeping me from being consciously aware of the deep and profound waves of pain surging through my being. I recall feeling all the pain, but I wasn't very present with it - THANK GOD!!!!
I wanted so much to become proficient in the many things I used to hand off to my husband. My word gave me focus and helped me inch my way forward into a daily life I knew nothing about.

2014:ALLOWING. In 2014 I had begun to write and to paint. And I had begun to be very present with the pain. Looking at it's shape, it's many colors, and it's heft helped me become a witness (a survival tactic perhaps) which seemed naturally healing, organic, and well timed. As a witness, I noticed the things I refused hung out longer and hurt more than the things I accepted and allowed. So with the help of my word, I found myself allowing "the all" of things to come and go more freely. This was incredibly healing. And I was, I must add, helped greatly by my dearest friends inviting me to join them in the UK. I was not interested in going at first. I did not feel like traveling. It was my word that helped me say "YES." Allowing allowed to me to transform.

2015: BROADCAST. By 2015, I was learning so much and I wanted these experiences to be useful, I wanted to serve. This was the year I passionately worked to fling my words and pictures out into the world. I held a powerful vision that these seedlings might miraculously one day take root.

2016: CREATE  I had no choice. I was going to have to move. This was not an external fact of life, but a deep welling up from inside. Moving not just from one home to another, but moving into a life completely beyond any I had known before. My word helped me to begin deliberately creating. And I can report this last year has flown by with a new car, a new home, new convictions, new friends, and new joys all blasting into existence.

And this year... I am ready for release. 

I am ready to let go of the heaviness that has anchored me in place. I am ready to let go of being an authority on grief. I am expecting to see again with the eyes of a child and to use beginner's mind to experience ecstatic joys, to witness blossoming everywhere, and to release attachment to all. I look forward to adventure, experimentation, and taking a risk or two. Do you think some of my seeds are germinating? 

2017: PLAYUFUL

Do you have a word for this new year?

Tag! You're it!

Learning to Listen

"Fully absorbed, graciously witnessing, or open and spacious

—which of these lenses is the best way to practice awareness? 

Is there an optimal way to pay attention? The answer is 'all of the above.'" 

~ jack kornfield

While walking in the woods I gave way to the moment and opened up my mind and my heart to allow whatever wanted to come forward to do so. Can you tell I have been doing work with RECEIVING?

So what came darting into my focus? "MAGENTA!" No, I didn't see it. I felt it. I felt the idea of MAGENTA and all the ideas I hold around it. They zoomed like a swarm of kamikaze bumble bees into my awareness. It was not scary or painful, but it was fast, strong and immediate.

And as ribbons of fallen leaves crunched below my feet, it's deeper meaning elegantly began to unfold for me. 

I am a painter. MAGENTA is a color I make by mixing a fair amount of red with a tiny bit of a blue. It is also one of my two favorite colors (the other being orange, by which I was, incidentally, being engulfed in this autumnal wood.) And MAGENTA's components, red and blue, signify the root and third-eye in our energy-bodies. 

The ROOT Chakra is found at the base of the spine and there lives our subtle sense of well being. We feel grounded and safe when this energy is not shaken or blocked. It's vibration is slow and it's color is red. 

The THIRD EYE Chakra vibration is blue. It is located in the space between the eyebrows. It moves faster and is an aperture to a vast reservoir known as intuition or consciousness.

Gleaning all I know, which really is not a lot, I came to understand -  in an instant - to welcome change. All at once I felt relief. And I knew it was my Truth because I recall the lightness and warmth that attended this knowing.  I was completely joy-filled and my whole body smiled.

I am sure I am not alone in feeling knocked off center by change. But simultaneously, I understood that adding even just a little blue (consciousness) to new conditions will be enough to cause things to shift. I was being clearly informed that change expands us and is always a favorable thing. MAGENTA was my message to enjoy, like a favorite color, newness and to welcome it with wonder and without fear. 

These words, by the way, were not part of my original meditation. All these words are in the rearview mirror of that experience. I write these words now to remind myself and to make manifest more of the same good feelings of relief and excitement.

And perhaps they will remind you too? Perhaps you will feel invited to reach toward your own inner guidance system? Like mine, it is embedded within. But unlike mine, the way you access it will be of your own organic choosing. It is for sure just waiting for you. Waiting for you to decide 

to be silent,

to be open,

and to listen.

Are you ready to be more connected?

Tag. You're It!

Powerful You

"Only one person can make your journey. No one person can impede your journey. Perhaps it is time to stop asking others to be responsible for our journey, and find that which is inside our own
Soul. We are the change. Do not give away your Power. Not today. And never again. The Power of which I speak is Love."

I have experienced the end of the world before. I imagine many more people than I can also say this. For me it was when my husband was diagnosed with an illness and died twenty two days later. It was then the ground melted out from under my feet and my ability to think and reason dissolved into thin air.

So if you are suddenly feeling blank, disheartened, or even worse - enveloped in fear... come along now and know it will be alright.

Please do recognize your feelings at this moment in time. Acknowledge what is. Then use this moment to change your inner world. You have the power to do this. Choose to make a shift from fear to self-soothing. You have all the power in the world to do this one thing. Become a little less afraid, shift consciously to taking good care of yourself in this moment. Make yourself shift your feelings toward love rather than fear. I promise if you take this little step you will begin to see a way through to the next moment and then to the next. 

The way was shown to me, down from the ledge, in my darkest hour by many who loved me. I was held in love by family, friends, neighbors, and counselors. And I learned to hold myself in love in a new and more radical way than I have ever experienced before.

So let me hold you in love in this  moment and say to you it will be alright. I love you. Be kind to yourself first RIGHT NOW. Give love for yourself and more love will follow easily when you do this one little thing.

Are you ready to be this kind of powerful?

 Tag. You're It!

Ready to be Powerful?

"Time and space are not conditions of existence, time and space is a model for thinking." ~albert einstein

Looking forward to a new and rich life! Looking backward toward a deep and abiding Love. I am doing this hokey-pokey dance lately and I wanted to take this moment to recognize the importance of both and their impotence as well.

Future thinking, when enlived by positive emotions is called "visioning" and is empowering. Ruminating on negative future events is power depleting and sets a drag on creation and well being. Neither is a great place to hang out for long. It is here we can make a choice.

Past glories and loves and hurts and sorrows are almost of no use at all; except in how we allow them to shape us today. Where do we begin and end our personal narratives? Our life stories always seem to fit neatly between seminal moments in time. 

Is your present lived from immutable memories of childhood angst or high school glory days? Should we live into our future from these frames we placed around these segments of living from so long ago? It is here we can make a choice.

What if time shifted direction in your mind and you could jumble up events to suit yourself? What would right NOW look like if it were unshackled from the past and determined only by your imagined future? It is here we can make a choice. It is only in the Now that the power of choice exists. 

Can you sense the power in this simple shift in thinking about the direction of time? 

Are you ready to own your power?

Tag! You're it!

Hurly Burly

“When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.” 

~ Pema Chodron, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living

If you think about, I mean really take the time to sit quietly, you come to the Truth of things. As you begin to reflect like this, you may feel an emotional wave rising within you. And if you allow it, you may begin to see differently. 

If you think about it, I mean really make the time to sit quietly and allow the emotional wave roiling up inside you, you may find it very intense at first. But then, if you allow it, something different happens. 

The thing that was big, uncomfortable, and scary changes. 

If you think about it, I mean really sit quietly and reflect and watch it, the energy that was your emotion becomes a new thing. A thing you had previously no ideas about. It becomes a guide to a place unknown. 

That's why it felt big. That's why it felt uncomfortable. That's why you were afraid.

And then something amazing may happen...if you think about it, if you really create the time to sit really quietly, and really allow, and really reflect, and really watch. This is where your Truth is. And once you divine your Truth you can then easily stand in it. This is a feeling of Confidence, but like never before. This is Confidence without Ego.

I know this Truth. I have found great comfort here. I wish you the same vast, wordless, bliss-filled space.

How do you comfort yourself?

Tag, You're It!

Salvage Work

"What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you." 

~Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Salvage work. Picking through the wreckage to save the good bits. I have been doing salvage work for the past 4 years. Now I look around to see the world in front of me because I know what is in front of me is what I am feasting upon. In the rawest part of my wrecked life I was not unlike a hawk using only my instincts to feast on the roadkill my life had become. At that time, right after my husband died, I did not have access to any other skills.  So I nourished myself this way as a pure act of survival. 

I am better now. I have become an artist. Now I enjoy making new things. Now I seek beauty out at every turn. I love to express myself. I am not always industrious and I have had to make peace with this. I am loving and I can be emotional. I have exercised that last skill quite often over these 4 years and have had to figure that one out too. Understanding I am NOT my emotions was the first step to my salvation. Separating my essential self from the passing energy of my feelings has raised the speed at which I have been able to heal.  




Did you know what you choose to make time for shows you what you deem important? And even if you do not think you have a choice, you are ALWAYS choosing. It cannot be otherwise. If you think it is...you are not looking closely enough. 

I used to make time for rummaging around the sad parts of being me. I used to make time for weeping uncontrollably because I knew this was healing energy at work. I used to make time for contacting all my friends and loved ones to make sure I was staying connected. I was choosing to heal.


I still do some of these things, but I am now making time for meditation. I am choosing to stay connected with that which is central to my being. It is here where peace lives. My new life craves this kind of peace. 

I am also making time to paint, to love myself by eating better, to design a new home, and to help others when and where I can. This 'paying it forward' is newly important.  There is much Joy for me in service. So I am making time for it. But, in this too, there must be balance. So sometimes I hang up my superhero cape and just make time for being me - to play. 

Do you see the pattern here? Just look at that for-which-you-make-time. Do you like what you see? What is fundamentally important to your being happy? If you look closely enough, you will begin to uncover the belief system on which you have built your life to date. All from just looking around at what is in front of you. 

So if you are not happy with what you see... I wonder if I even need to finish this sentence? 

I am grateful for these awarenesses, and I wish the same for you!

Tag! You're It!