Category Archives: Essential Journey

Always, there is Love.

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blessing

It is easy sometimes to not see everything in our life as a manifestation of life being a blessing.

It is easy to see our troubles as life being filled with trouble. Our sorrow’s as life being sorrowful.

When we focus on the clouds, we forget that. behind every grey cloud, the sun still shines, the sky is still blue.

I counted my blessings this weekend. I walked with Beaumont at the park. The skies were clear, the temperature warm and I felt the blessings of life surround me and fill me up with every breath.

I walked alone with the pup and with many blessings in my life too. C.C. A  girlfriend I haven’t seen in a long while, People and their dogs Beaumont and I have met on our walks.

I spent time with friends on the weekend too. On Saturday I met a girlfriend for lunch and she told me about the life blossoming within her body.

“The greatest gift in my life has been my daughters,” I told her. “I can’t think of anything in my life that has changed me and deepened my understanding of life and its precious gifts and the power and wonder of our humanity, more than becoming a mother.”

Becoming a mother gave me the gift of seeing life as a blessing.

In becoming a mother, I chose to awaken. To dig deep within me to find the core of who I am in the world so that my daughters could grow freely knowing who they are in the world is precious, unique. A gift.

And I am thankful.

Sometimes, the journey has been filled with grey clouds rumbling above as I cowered beneath my fears. Sometimes gentle rains have fallen and sometimes torrential downpours have pummelled my body as I closed my eyes in fear of the darkness all around me.

And always, the sun shone behind the clouds. The blue sky beckoned above me with its infinite possibilities. And all I needed to do to see it was to lift my head and open my eyes.

I lifted my head and opened my eyes to the blue sky above this weekend. I held my face towards the sun and felt its warmth beating upon my skin. And I felt joy. And awe and wonder flow all around me and within me. And in their presence, I felt Love invade my body and fill me up. Completely.

Like the sun shining behind grey clouds, like the blue sky beckoning above, I knew. Always there is Love.

It is love that keeps use safe. Love that holds us in its embrace even when we fall into troubled waters and feel like we are drowning beneath our sorrows. There in the turbulent waters, there in the tears streaming down our face, there in the sorrows bending our backs, there is Love.

In love, life is a blessing. Always.

And when I live from a place where all of life is a blessing, when I embrace even those things I see as trials and tribulations as blessings, life is full of wonder and awe. It may not always be easy, but it is always life in all its magnificence. In all its glory. In all its Love.

Be a vessel of peace. Be a champion of joy. Be Love.

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When I go to take my C-train ticket out of the dispenser, I discover there is one in the tray already. “Oh no!” I think. “Someone has forgotten to take their ticket.”

I don’t want them to risk getting a fine if they’re caught on the train without a ticket so I walk up and down the platform asking people if the ticket is theirs.

No one claims it but one woman tells me, “It’s a thing. I heard people are just buying tickets and leaving them in the slot for someone else to get a free ride.”

Oh! I love the idea but now, what am I to do? I’ve got two tickets in my hand.

Eureka! I’ll pay it forward.

I walk back to the dispensing machine and place the ticket I just bought into the slot and keep the found one. It expires sooner.

I smile all the way home.

People can be so encouraging, so kind, so inspiring.

Later, I take Beaumont to the off leash area for his walk. While picking up after him, I see some dog deposits left by another owner. I consciously keep my thoughts on how I can be of service and clean up the poop.

As Val wrote the other day, when we meet violence with violence, or in this case, when my thoughts are negative, I create more of what I don’t want in the world.

I want to create a world of love, joy, harmony, peace.

I must be that which I want to create in the world. I must think thoughts that shine into the darkness. I must do the things that open doors that lead to better.

I must be the inspiration I seek. Feel the hope I desire. Breathe into the joy I want to create all around me.

Today, as you go about your day, I invite you to take every opportunity the world presents to create better. Hold a door open for the person behind you. Smile at a stranger. Ask someone how you can help. Listen with a soft heart. Hear with an open mind.

You may think they are only acts of small significance, but small acts create big waves when they ripple out to touch other hearts to repeat them, again and again.

If you feel a negative thought creeping into your thinking, shine a light of hope and possibility on it. Don’t let ‘the ugly’ steal your peace of mind.

Be a vessel of peace. Be a champion of joy. Be Love.

Namaste.

In the flow, all that exists is love.

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My Mandala of Love

My Mandala of Love

Yesterday, in a comment on my post, We are the Betrayed. We are the Betrayers, Val wrote, “I’m not sure if we can kill her off, no matter how much we might want to. My heart says love her more and accept her for what she is, after the pain and betrayals. Where we bring violence – even in our dreams, we feed more violence. Release can only come through love and understanding.”

I remember when the dream was unfolding how I worried about using violence to kill off this part of me that was killing me. “Can you not just love her Louise?” my subconscious wondered aloud to my dream-self.

“If this were a sabre tooth tiger attacking you, and you had to make a choice between life and death, what would you do?” my dream-self asked. “Love it or love yourself enough to claim your right to live?”

And the answer was —  claim my right to live.

 

In the physical world, like Val, I believe using violence is not the road to peace. It is the path to more violence.

In the metaphysical world of my psyche, my dream was not about violence and using it to get what I want.

Looking at it through the lens of choosing between life and death, the violence falls away to reveal truth shimmering in its absence. Life is precious. Life is magnificent. And in the unique expression of my life, I must choose to love my being with all of me, letting go of those parts that fear being all of me.

Standing in the dissonance between life and death, I must choose to live everyday without fearing death. I must choose to be conscious of this beautiful, miraculous gift of life I have been given and honour it, cherish it and treat it with Love in all ways, through all things, with all my being.

In Colin Tipping’s, Radical Forgiveness, he suggests holding a wake for the ‘inner child’ (not the playful, creative inspiring inner child, but the whining little brat who lives in the backroom of our minds). He writes that our spiritual evolution depends heavily upon our recovery from our worst addiction — our addiction to the victim archetype, which traps us in the past and saps our life energy. 

I see the killing of that part of me that was killing me as an essential act to let go of my victim archetype and further my spiritual evolution. I see it as an act of love freeing me to be the conduit through which Love flows in its eternal journey of life. In my being with the flow, I become the flow. In the flow, all that exists is Love.

Namaste.

Full Moons Rising and all that Jazz

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Harmlessness is not negativity or inaction; it is a condition of perfect poise, a completed point of view and divine understanding.
Dr. Joshua David Stone

It is the time of the Blood Moon (did you see the red colour of the moon – that’s because earth cast a shadow on the moon). Of the full moon, super moon, also called harvest moon (when the moon is closest to the earth and appears larger because of its position on the horizon) and lunar eclipse aligning to open gateways to possibility for all humankind to find another way of being present here on earth. Source

The four moon’s state of being (the first time since 1967) calls forth the need to cultivate ‘harmlessness’. To not act out thoughtlessly and unaware of our impact, but instead to act with intentionality, to be conscious of both the yin and yang of everything we do and to know, we are the change we want to create in the world.

“Ugh!” my critter mind wails. “Can’t we just revert back to being unconscious? Unaware? Unawoken?”

Just as a river cannot flow backwards, the mind cannot unknow what it has learned.

Dang. I just wanted to moon gaze without having it be all esoteric and heady.

Moon gaze away! says my mind of knowing. Just keep your eyes open, and your heart too.

This moon calls for us to open our hearts completely. To let go of fear and apprehension that we will never be perfect enough and surrender to the human imperfection of being all we can be when we release our need to be perfect. Which is why when I read the title of one of Joshua Stone’s books, “The Soul’s Perspective on How to Achieve Perfect Radiant Health: A Compilation”, I had to laugh.

Striving for perfection is a fool’s game. Perfection doesn’t exist.

Ahh that critter mind. He just loves to play with my thinking I know it all.

And deep within, a voice whispers, “Breathe. To cultivate harmlessness you must let go of criticism.”

A friend and I were talking yesterday about Canada’s upcoming election. She has chosen not to engage in the criticism of our current Prime Minister, no matter what.

I laughed. “Well, that’s challenging. There’s so much of it going around!”

But I don’t have to engage in it, my friend replied. I don’t have to take part in adding mockery and criticism to any conversation.

And my heart feels heavy.

I have contributed through criticism. I have been part of adding to the mockery, not just of our current Prime Minister, but in many ways.

Back to the drawing board. Time to release self-criticism and judgement and flow into intentional harmlessness, with myself and all the world around me.

It is Monday. The business week begins and I find myself feeling on edge, in turmoil, without calm within me.

Good, says my knowing mind. Stay with the unease. Dig into the unsettledness within and allow yourself to feel it, be it, know it. This is a time of allowing the universe’s energy to guide you. Don’t struggle to be in charge of your life, allow life, all of life, to be in charge of you.

Fine. Whatever.

But dang it. I really did just want to dance beneath the light of the full moon rising and gaze into my lover’s eyes and toss moonbeams on the waves of passion emanating between us! Now that would have been fun.

 

Pride: it cometh after the fall too

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Pride must die in you, or nothing of heaven can live in you.     — Andrew Murray

I wrote last week about The Fall. About landing on the cold, hard cement in front of my office building downtown and the mind chatter that ensued.

At Choices last week, while chatting with another coach about monkey mind chatter, I shared what happened and told them that I was shocked to see how, even before I knew if I’d broken anything or not, my mind immediately leaped to that place of, “OMG! I hope no one saw me!”

Imagine. Lying on the ground, not even sure if I am hurt or not and all I can think about is my pride.

On Monday, I gave a presentation on homelessness to a group of University students. After the presentation, a woman came up to share the story about her daughter.

“She’s lived in a group home for 20 years,” she shared. And she told me about some of the things she’d done to protect her daughter’s well-being and to ensure she always had a nest egg to support her, no matter what happened to her mother.

“The Public Trustee manages her money,” she told me. “Yet, when I tell other parents about what a great job the Public Trustee has done for my daughter, they balk and say, ‘no way’. Their pride won’t let them use a resource that makes a positive difference.”

Pride. We all have it to varying degrees. And we all suffer its consequences.

When I was lying on the ground, my pride said, “You look ridiculous. People will think you are…. weak, stupid, drunk, ignoble…  A host of impressions my pride could not abide.

Truth is, after falling to the ground, it would have been wonderful to have someone come over and ask me if I was okay. To offer to help me back up. To see that I had fallen and ensure that I was okay. Deep within me was a need to be cared for, cherished, helped.

Instead, my pride would have me believe, I did not need anyone’s help. I did not need assistance. I did not deserve someone else’s concern.

English cleric Charles Caleb Colton said it well centuries ago,

pride quote

Where does pride hold you back? Where are you not asking for what you want because pride tells you not to?

 

Savouring autumn.

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“Savoring calls me to slowness: I can’t savor quickly.  
Savoring calls me to spaciousness:  I can’t savor everything at once.
Savoring calls me to mindfulness: I can’t savor without being fully present.”

Christine Valters Paintner,  Abbey of the Arts

Here on the eastern edge of the Canadian Rockies, autumn falls in graceful disarray. Summer leaves turn golden and crisp chilly mornings awaken each day with hints of frosty filigreed mornings glistening on the horizon.

Autumn is my favourite time of year. It is a time to savor sun-soaked days filled with long golden rays of light lengthening the day’s shadows. It is a time to breathe deeply into morning’s indolent passage from night. To savour sunlight bursting with fierce determination across the windswept land. It is a time to settle into evening’s cozy light embracing the earth as the moon sends the sun early to bed behind the snow-tipped ridges of the Rockies sprawled out across the horizon.

It is a time to harvest. To pluck still green tomatoes from the vine and gather round the hearth to share in autumn soups and hearty breads. It is a time to gaze into the faces of those you have gathered round the table to share in autumn’s bounty and to treasure the faces of your loved one’s shining in the light of a hundred candles glowing in the night.

Autumn is a time of release, of moving into stillness, of letting go to fall with grace into silent rest.

It is a time of preparation and renewal. Of savouring the paradox found in summer shedding its vibrant cloak of bounty as you prepare the soil for winter’s long rest yet to embrace the earth.

I find myself in autumn’s gaze balancing the tension between releasing old ideas that no longer bear fruit with harvesting the abundance of all the seeds I’ve planted throughout the year.

In the tension of release and gathering I find myself looking inward, seeking comfort in the well-worn pathways to my heart.

In autumn’s slow, long light filtered through the branches lining leaf-strewn paths, I see the way more clearly. Life is an eternal circle of release and renewal. Relinquishing and rebirth.

Autumn soils bear the inspiration of spring’s first flowers even as trees shed their leaves in the sudden gusts of north wind blowing in on a breath of Arctic chilled air eager to embrace the land.

Autumn reminds us there is life and death in everything. It reminds us to hold onto life and to honour the dying as we release our fear of the unknown. It reminds us to let go and surrender to the beauty and the sorrow of living on this earth, and of leaving it. It urges us to dance in the sun’s shortening gaze and release our fears to the night.

Autumn is a time of contradiction and contemplation. It is a time to celebrate the bounty of harvest, and to prepare for the scarcity of winter.

Autumn urges us to give thanks, to sip the sweet wines of vine ripened grapes and to rejoice in letting go of summer ripened fruits as we dig into the earth to savour the rooted bounty growing beneath the surface.

And as autumn descends in fiery beauty, I breathe deeply into the rich verdant soil of my life and rejoice. Autumn is descending. My heart is full and life is a rich and vibrant journey filled with the bounty of this life I treasure and those who make it so rich and beautiful.

Autumn is falling and I give thanks as I rejoice in all I have to hold onto and to let go of, to savour and to release.

In the light of today, there is no past.

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At Choices, I watch people of all ages struggle to step out from beneath the shadow of their upbringings, the burdens of the past, the sadness of the lessons they’ve learned on the road of life that have broken their hearts and undermined their belief in their capacity to live freely and whole-heartedly.

Seldom are the burdens they carry intentional ‘gifts’ from the people who loved them. Most often, they are a reflection of the pain and fears of those who meant the best for them but didn’t know how to give or create ‘the better’ they dreamt of passing on.

Our parents were not handed a roadmap to raising us when we are born.

There is no surefire way to raise a child, to protect them from encounters that hurt them or cause them pain.

All we can do is provide them tools that will help them get up when they fall, move on when they falter and stand tall when the world feels like it is pushing them down.

Years ago, a child psychologist I knew told me that my job as a parent was to ensure my daughters survived their childhood. You’re going to mess up, he said. You’re going to make mistakes. We all do. As long as they can get to the age of 16, they have a chance of repairing the damage you did.

At the time, I remember thinking, What damage? I love my daughters how could he suggest I’d hurt them? Truth is, even before I disappeared into the darkness of a relationship that was killing me, there were things I’d done unintentionally to cause them pain, to wound their hearts, to limit their capacity to live whole-heartedly. I carried my own childhood wounds and lessons learned on the road of life with me. Unacknowledged, they limited my ability to be whole and present with my daughters.

Didn’t make me a bad mother. It did make me very human. And in my humanness, it made me capable of change, if I was willing.

We are all capable of change. We are all worthy of living life on the wild side, on the outside of our comfort zones, never looking back at the things that dragged us down or held us silent in our fears.

We all deserve to love and be loved.

And that’s where programs like Choices come in.

Choices is not a cure-all or magic potion to drink that will fix everything. It’s just a beautifully constructed program with some very well-defined and effective processes that gently and lovingly create space for each person to look inside and heal the broken spaces where the light has been distorted. And in the healing of those broken places, learn to live in the wonder and beauty of who they are when Love can get in to outshine their fear they’ll never be enough.

So many times we think we have all the answers to who we are.

What I’ve learned at Choices is I will never know all of who I am because all of who I am is greater than my fears and wildest dreams. When I let go of the fears that hold me back from being all of who I want to be in a world of love and joy, anything is possible. When I risk letting go of the protective walls and shields I’ve built around me and my heart, I free myself from the habitual behaviours and responses I’ve  adopted to keep my heart from getting hurt and my dreams from getting shattered. And in that freedom, life happens, miracles unfold.

Because, once I tear down the walls around my heart, the world is a wondrous place where my light shines brightly in the freedom of being all I am when I no longer walk in fear that my past is my future and all I’ll ever know.

When I let go of measuring each step by the length of the shadow of yesterday, I am free to walk in the light of today becoming all I ever dreamed my life would be.

Namaste.

A Thursday Thought: Fear is the enemy of greatness.

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fear is the enemy of greatness copy

Fear is the enemy of greatness.

Love always conquers fear.

Love always.

There is purpose in everything.

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Beaumont helping me write

         Beaumont’s purpose is to help me write

Over at Leading Essentially, my friend Ian Munro has been holding a conversation on living on purpose. He is intentional in his approach, organized in his thinking around the subject and has created a pyramid to depict what he describes as the Four Levels of Living Purposefully.

In his post on Saturday, Four Levels Of Living Purposefully, Ian describes Level 1, Perform tasks, as that place of our to-do-lists. Getting things done.

Level 2, Self-awareness, is about being conscious of the demands on our time, internally and externally, and making conscious choices that support our sense of purpose in the world.

Before we can manifest our purpose in Level 3, Embracing purpose, Ian says we must take the inner journey to truly feel it, breathe it, know it so completely that its pull is ever present in everything we do.

The fun begins in Level 4, Engage. The ability to live and work in a way that is completely fulfilling to us.

I love how Ian is so clear on living purpose. In his post, he cautions that living through the four stages can be cyclical. We’re not on purpose at all times, and we’re not clear on how our purpose is being manifested at all times. We move back and forth through the stages.

For example, yesterday I cleaned my office at home. The inspiration to get rid of clutter and excess paper came from next weekends neighbourhood clean-up — deliver your junk and unwantables and give-aways to the community centre on Saturday and they will haul it away. How perfect is that? And what a great reason to get busy getting rid of things we don’t need.

Now, cleaning my office doesn’t sound like it’s very on purpose. It’s more a Level 1, perform tasks kind of thing.

But, there is a deeper reason for doing it, a heart-calling, purpose driven motivation.

I don’t work well in cluttered space. I know. I know. I can hear my sister Jackie spluttering into her coffee as she reads that and I can see my daughters rolling on the floor, laughing out loud right now.

I am known for my clutter. And it’s true. I love the ‘Zen’ look, I just don’t create it very well!

Regardless of my comfy environment-seeking soul, I like to work in tidy. I think more clearly, create more freely when my senses are not constantly bombarded by clutter flowing all over my desk and in the room around me.

And my office was cluttered. Very cluttered.

So I cleaned.

At the time, I wasn’t creating a difference in the world, or living on purpose, or so I thought, until this morning when I read this quote from 18th Century educator, Horace Mann, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

And I rethought my cleaning yesterday.

What if, cleaning my office was necessary to get clean on something I’ve been niggling away at but never completed? What if, to clear my mind and make space for my creative writing process to awaken, I needed to unclutter my writing space?

 

The book I have been sporadically working since leaving the homeless shelter where I worked 3 years ago, still calls. It still pulls me with its desire to be expressed.

It is part of my purpose “to touch hearts, open minds and set spirits free”.

As Ian says in his post, “We can’t actually live our purpose if we aren’t willing to do any work to make it happen.”

How we express ourselves in the world is a reflection of our understanding of living purposefully.

What is ‘the victory for humanity’ I want to win before I die?

That’s in my intention statement which follows my contract and purpose — “to create a world of peace, love, joy and harmony.”

“I am a trusting woman touching hearts, opening minds and setting spirits free to create a world of peace, love, joy and harmony.”

And I can’t do that if I’m not writing, not sharing my experiences and the lessons I learned about love and life and compassion and kindness working at a homeless shelter.

And I can’t express myself clearly if my work space isn’t clear.

So… it’s all about purpose, just expressed differently in everything I do.

 

Have you given thanks today?

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photo (4)

The mind is like a crazy monkey, which leaps about and never stays in one place. It is completely restless and constantly paranoid about its surroundings. From “Trapping the Monkey” in THE TEACUP AND THE SKULLCUP: CHOGYAM TRUNGPA ON ZEN AND TANTRA. Page 72

Lying in bed, ‘doing nothing’, is a great opportunity to reflect, and to ‘do nothing’. At least, it would be a great time for such indulgence if my monkey mind didn’t keep interfering.

“Don’t be so lazy. Get busy.” Its voice whispers with a sibilant hiss oozing like steam seeping from a lumbering volcano.

The more rational part of me leaps in to defend my indolence. “Get busy doing what? I don’t have to go into the office today. It’s an extra long weekend. Relax.”

But still the monkey mind persists. “There’s gotta be something you can do. Quit lying there justifying lying there. Nobody likes a lazy person.”

Ahhh, the power of the monkey mind to disturb peace of mind and tranquility.

Oh, and Beaumont the eager pup too! He wants to get out and play. I will him to relax. Be calm. Be patient.

Buddha is quoted as having said,“Patience is the greatest prayer.”

If I had one prayer, it would be, “Thank you.”

Perhaps gratitude is the most powerful force for healing.

As I lay in my bed I whisper to the birds at the feeder, “Thank you for brightening my day. Thank you for your song. Your lithesome spirit. Your twittering verse.”

I look up through the green leaves turning gold of the birch and the red buds of crabapples peaking out through leaves and gaze up at dull grey sky above and whisper, “Thank you for your shade. Your whispering leaves. Your beauty.”

Gratitude.

To fall into prayer I must surrender my ego’s need to justify my existence — my state of doing nothing, as well as my state of doing ‘busy’. To surrender, I must release my need to feel that everything I do matters. As my daughter Alexis wrote in a blog, “I am nothing. And everything… I do not matter. And yet, I am matter, so I must.”

I must surrender my need to matter enough that my matter becomes all that matters to me. When I matter enough to cherish the goodness in my being me, to respond from my highest good, no matter the weather, the time of day or night, or the circumstances surrounding me, then I will have fallen into that place where all that matters is — the moment in which I breathe.

I move into gratitude, the gateway to patience. If I had but one prayer, let it be, Thank you.

The question is: Have you given thanks today?