A lesson on never crossing the finish line...

My lesson for this moment: The work is never done. The goal is never achieved. The finish line is never crossed. This is because of the ever-expanding nature of our universe and our human experience. When I work on or work towards something, the work I have done to this point affects the nature of what I am doing. My work then expands and becomes something else, something new, something brighter, something bigger. As much as my deep desire in life is to be able to check things off a to do list, this is not the nature of life. Sure, we can complete small tasks and bucket list items but even those "items" we've completed have changed the nature of everything else in our life - everything about ourselves. And we are prismatic - even holographic - there are so many facets to each of us that can be changed and affected simultaneously by one tiny movement in life. Even our thoughts change things.

So, I am challenging my belief that I *should have* achieved something else or completed something in particular by now. When I stop and think about, with each step I have taken to build what I am building in life, I have significantly enhanced, strengthened, altered and expanded my work - and my life. It is ever growing. I cannot feel badly about not being "done" by now. Because there is no done. When my work is done, I am done. The nature of life allows me to feel that crossing one finish line was only a step in being prepared to cross the next finish line.  All these finish lines take us to the final finish line of a life well lived.  By that time, and only at that point, will I be done.  And when I'm done, when my work is done, I return home to the other side. And I'm far from ready for that.

The Divine Cycle: Birth, death and rebirth...

Hey, humans!  We are surrounded by nature and nature offers us lessons whether we are paying attention or not.  Today, I was presented a humble lesson on birth and death (and darn if that doesn't somehow also have the sneaky little lesson of letting go attached to it!)

Birth and death are two perceptions of the same process. Everything - every animal, every plant, every minute, every relationship, every breath, every idea you have - everything experiences the two sides of this dichotomy in order to grow, change, and be present in this moment as it is intended to be.

Today it was my orchid that offered me the lesson - by both being born anew and dying in part at the same time. Since 2004, this beautiful plant has blossomed every winter. Today, it has at least six purple blooms waiting to be born. It also has a decaying, dying leaf. The plant is not unhealthy, it is simply putting its resources into being born anew, and not into keeping one very old leaf alive. We, too, must focus our energies on the parts of us that wish to grow, and be willing to simultaneously allow what is no longer necessary - or what must be given up - to wither and die. It is part of the natural order of things to live and die and be born anew. Don't spend all your energy on keeping something alive that is simply ready to go.

As you see the things around you - beliefs, ideas, relationships, perceptions, and purposes that once served you - now decaying in your life, rest assured that what is leaving you will create the space for the energy to be born anew in your life.  And what will be born anew will be full of the wisdom you've gained and the love you've found for yourself so what's coming will only be better than that of which you are letting go.

Namaste.

Death of a leaf empowers birth of budding new life.

Look for what is yours....

Boy, was I right when I last wrote about moving at the speed of life.  Moments for me to sit down and write my inspirations here for you to read have been hard to find - but they fill me with love and they are a gift I have to give so I know the opportunities and inspiration will continue to find time, even as life moves faster and faster.

Everything is speeding up.  Everything is happening so fast.  Whether it feels like things are falling together or falling apart, life is moving so fast - for all of us.  Things are coming into your life that are uniquely yours - be open to them, accept them and most importantly, use them, and use them for Good.

Even the most beautiful things in the world require maintenance, cleaning, airing out, protection and repair.  You are among those most beautiful things in the world and right now, you, too, are experiencing a cleaning out and a rebuilding of old parts that were broken or new parts that have yet to be built.  This will happen in very unexpected ways in unexpected places - or sometimes your growth will happen in the simplest and most mundane of ways - ways you won't even notice until you realize you've grown and released something you used to hold onto so tightly.

Whether you can see your healing, your gift, your challenge or the maintenance you are currently undergoing or not is up to you.  Take a step back.  Breathe.  Meditate.  Pay attention.  What do you feel?  What are you resisting?  What are you ignoring?  What are you fighting doing?  What has God given you that is precisely yours?  Step into it, face it, own it, embrace it, love it.  The journey will carry you along but it will continue to present you with those things of yours that are designed to raise you into your higher and greater self.  Think of this time in life as an opportunity to raise your own inner child into the person he or she is capable of being - into who she is destined and divined to be.  I encourage you to look for the signposts along the way and step fully into your own divine path.  Allow yourself to transform, heal what causes you pain and release the things (and people) that keep you stuck where you no longer belong.

The path is yours, go ahead, embark on it.  It may not be paved, it may be dark and scary at times but it is your path and yours alone.  It is said that a leader walks a narrow path.  No one else will pave your way, save for you.  Go ahead, look for it and then take it where you are meant to go.

Moving at the Speed of Life...

Everything is changing.  Everything is moving quickly.  Everything is lining up, turning around, and light is being shone in dark corners.  Our purpose, our challenges, our to-dos are becoming clearer and more central in our daily lives.  We can't ignore things anymore.  We can't pretend things away.  We can't stick our heads in the sand.  We must - and we will - start to create great shifts in our own lives and in the world around us.

The journey has already begun.  You're on the bridge.

Be open.  Whatever shows up is showing up for you.  Yes, things are moving quickly and that's because we are all changing so quickly.  The world is changing at a very rapid pace and while we need to be careful to take care of ourselves and stay grounded, we must also be aware of the shifting, changing nature of life so we can allow ourselves to move into the correct flow of life - and onward to the other end of the bridge.

The speed of life is hastening.  You don't try to fight it because the battle will be too consuming.  Be open to it and to what it is calling you to do.  You have an important job to do.  You have an important job that the world needs you to do.

If ever there was an important time to be busy during the times in which you are meant to be busy, now is that time.  This does, of course, mean that it is more important than ever to slow down when you are supposed to rest.  The increasing speed of life will call you to become grounded and honor your body.  After all, it is this one precious body of yours - and mine - that will carry us stealthily through the shifting changes happening in the world and on to the new world we are creating - on in which peace and love carry us all through.

Knowing it to be true...

Have you ever had a gut instinct that proved to be right?  A feeling about someone or about a situation that was exactly what you thought when the truth came out?  Have you ever felt that you were inexplicably familiar with someone despite only just having met them?

These are all examples of the Spirit being alive in us and actively working with us... and evidence that we are fully present in our lives.  When we are open to our own Spirit (or God), this kind of knowing happens for us.  I've learned that when I feel most alive, most comfortable and most in the flow in my own life with someone or something, it is a sure sign that I am connected to a deeper knowing within myself.

There's a terrible affliction in humankind - one that keeps us trapped, living life in our heads all the time, trying to make sense of things, or worse, trying to make the world fit into our understanding of it. Too often too many of us forget to let go and let life happen.  And more often than not, people don't even realize that this is happening - that they are living life through their thoughts.  We've created our routines, our sense of right and wrong and our ways of seeing the world but they leave little room for seeing the world anew day after day.  There's so much beyond what we thing we know and see each day but it is so easy to miss it.  We forget, in a way, to get out of our own way.

Being open and letting life happen shows us a much more beautiful reality than one we could have written for ourselves in the first place.

I've practiced this openness to life and awareness of my own intuition for years but it's very easy to fall off the wagon.  Fear of loss, worries about the future, shocking information - it all throws us off balance in an instant.  That delicate and hard won balance is worth paying attention to and maintaining because it allows us to experience life in greater dimension.  It's a combination of living in the moment, listening to (and for) our own intuition, and believing that we are each a unique part of a larger story and that our role is critical to that story's success.  No one else can live our lives for us - we are here to live them fully and intentionally in the starring role.

Apathy toward your own life creates disappointment, lost opportunities, sadness, loss, regret - all terribly undesirable things!  So why not be engaged fully in your own story and fully open to all the story lines and walk-on characters that show up?  Only you can experience and share all those wonderful moments in the story of YOU.  And in that story of you, you are the superstar, the director and the producer - fitting indeed since only YOU can know all there is to know... and know it to be true.

You gotta have faith (ah-faith-ah-faith)...

No, not for the reasons George Michael sang about (though that's good too), but for the purpose of getting through.  It seems that we spend so much of our lives getting through something.  An interview, a breakup, a project, a period of change....  We spend very little time in the static space that must exist between one thing and another.  Between achieving/winning/surviving/overcoming one thing before another pops up in our lives.  That between time is as rare as the half of a day when all of your laundry is clean and there is none in the laundry basket.  It's a small moment, it's there, but it's always quickly replaced by a new and growing pile of laundry to be done.  Again.

Unlike the ever-present chore of doing laundry which is mundane, mindless and entirely nonthreatening (save for the part of you that just doesn't want to do it), our ongoing process of getting through something in life just seems to keep coming in surprising ways.  Sometimes we find ourselves getting through something that crept up on us, completely unexpected.  Sometimes it comes as a shock.  Sometimes it's welcome and lovely and you don't mind it at all.  But life is always a series of one thing after another that we are going through.  Or, as you might say, one thing after another that we are living.

Tonight I'm focused on having faith for the getting through.  I'm not talking about the kind of faith that we call upon when we find ourselves in sudden and desperate communion with God.  Not the impetuous kind of begging for the strength to get through something that happens when we are in crisis or hurt or in survival mode. Rather, the kind of faith we have that allows us to move from one phase of life to another.  From letting go of and moving beyond something we know well and moving into the great unknown of the future - having faith along the way that all will be well and banking on it being better than we can imagine in the present moment.

That kind of faith that we humans manage to have in the getting through-ness of life is the kind of faith that is an intimate conversation between ourselves and the higher power that allows us to get through anything. And I do mean anything.  And as humans, across the great span of human history, we have gotten through so much and most of the time we have done it not realizing just how strong we were while we were going through it.

So here's to having faith... and getting through.

Look for the light in one another & open to your own power...

File this one under "Love and learn from one another - especially the ones you can't imagine loving."

As life gets harder and seems to challenge us more, it seems that for many people, a natural reaction is to turn to a very primal response:  To fight.  So many people, it seems, when they are frightened or confused or feel overwhelmed, look for someone to blame.  Some even simply ascribe the pain they are feeling to someone else.  Yes, someone may be involved in a situation that causes you pain, or someone may oppress you in someway.  Yes, there is pain and fear associated with the things in your life that challenge you.  But when you choose to focus your energy on blame, hatred, drama - or if you even just focus all of your energy on trying to figure out another person's motives or reasoning for doing/being/reacting as they have - you lose your own power.  To choose to be fully in your power, despite the involvement of someone who pushes your buttons, allows you to come into your own strength to deal with and learn from the situation.

I strongly believe that the circumstances that happen in our lives are all opportunities for growth.  And a big divine hint for us all is to notice when the same feelings or similar situations seem to happen "to" us over and over. In fact, they aren't happing to us at all.  They are part of the greater intelligence that is guiding us through our own personal growth and learning.  When we consider that all people in our lives serve as teachers for us, and all events and circumstances are part of a divine curriculum of sorts, then we can see that we are simply being guided through the opportunities to learn just who we are and determine for ourselves how we would like to grow and change.  Everything changes.  All the time.  We, too, are part of that universal law of change but too often we fight it or get distracted by the personalities involved in our stories.

So step back.  Quietly thank those individuals for showing you the opportunity to learn and grow and then focus only on yourself.  Those people involved have illuminated a very important part of your path.  Now it's up to you to recognize that light and use your own to head down the path a little further to a place you have not been.  After all, you and only you are here to live the unique lifetime that is and always will be your own.