Write Away...

I am sitting at my dining room table, enjoying a cup of coffee, and tapping away at my laptop. I have always envisioned this as my perfect moment- the life of a writer. Although I am not getting paid, so I cannot exactly say I am living the dream. Yet somehow, it all comes down to this moment. I think I expected my success to come in a pretty picture, usually involving glowing skin, happy smiles, and piles of money. And maybe that will happen one day, and I can certainly get carried away by the picture. But right now, as the words come to me, I quietly close my eyes, finding my way around the keyboard and let the thoughts flow through me. Success in its physical form is simply a transference of energy from the spiritual realm. Our psyche, happy and healthy, is the greatest success we can master. Feeling energy flow through my body, and coming up with something to say, something meaningful, creating words that have been strung together a million, trillion times, but not quite in this order, and somehow finding a new meaning, is success. Writing for the pure excitement of seeing what I am really thinking, instead of hiding away in my subconscious, is a great success. Feeling the keys as they jump up and down excitedly beneath my finger pads is truly a marvel. Being here, eyes closed, and imagining what the spelling mistakes will amount to, is also pretty amusing. I may not have sat down with any message, nothing bright and clear that will make a difference, but to me, being able to express myself in a coherent, linear form, rather than a mass of words and images in my head, is a huge success. I think today you should write something down too. Get in touch with your inner source of energy. See what you have to say to yourself. And just enjoy the moment, small as it is. And then someday, you can go back and read what you wrote and that moment will be encapsulated for all time.

Being Right Never Felt So Good

As a Virgo, I am going to stereotype myself and say that I fit into that class of people that really likes perfection. I am a stickler for getting the job done before deadline and under budget. And yet, I find myself wondering about the imperfections as of late: those times when the conversation does not go smoothly, the plans that fall through, or when my emotions get the better of me. I like to stay in control, and I always like to give myself a good mental beating when I lose my cool. And then I come back to the idea of imperfection and I wonder if it is really not about getting it "right" at all but to embrace me, my experiences, for exactly as they unfold before my eyes. Simple, yes. Easy? Nah. But that is exactly what started to happen- the proverbial light bulb in my head told me that my lesson was to find grace in losing, laughter when I am getting it all wrong, smiling when the balls I so nimbly juggle begin falling at my feet. And then when that thought sunk in, I felt liberated in a way that theoretical lessons will never do it for me- I started to want to fail. I looked for the opportunity to pat myself on the back when the cards were not in my favor, to feel deep gratitude when what once seemed like an obstacle I had to push down was a gate I simply unlocked and strolled through. And then as synchronicity always plays a part, I read something that just jumped off the page. We are not here, in this life, so that we never experience emotional pain or hurt or even anguish. We are here to overcome it, to even embrace it, and to become more spiritually aware because of it. When we come across someone who is giving us a good fight, we can feel gratitude toward this person as our teacher. And if we do not recognize the teacher, we will be sent an even stronger teacher with a more powerful version of the same lesson. For me, my recurring lesson is to continually re-create my vision of perfection. The conversation or the experience or the relationship will not always go smoothly, but if I can accept that which occurs without the doubt and residual feelings of failure, if I can see it each time as a small win on this journey we call life, than it will always, undoubtedly, without hesitation, be...perfect.

Accept the Unexpected

I am working on acceptance...not just accepting myself and the people in my life for exactly who they are (although that has been a journey unto itself) but accepting of the moment, whatever happens in that space of time. I am learning a lot about this, and frankly I've been a little surprised at what I am discovering for I had this idea that life is supposed to look like I imagined it. I kind of figured that with my new search for peace and purpose, life would be one big crispy potato chip (my apologies to those who enjoy chocolate covered sundae metaphors). The search for acceptance boils down to the here and now...whether things are going the way you would like is pretty much irrelevant to the source of your happiness. At least, that is what is being asked of our acceptance. Life will go this way and that, things are truly out of our control, and the times you can accept it, the times you can be like water and flow through the currents of life, are the times when true peace will be yours. Is this easy to do? Only when you have figured out that it's not so complicated after all, but that could take us a lifetime or one hundred lifetimes. The more we believe we can control the flow of life, the longer we hold on to the illusion that we do not have to "accept" anything, the harder the struggle to live in the here and now. While we live in an ever burgeoning world of complex technology that purports to simplify our existence, remember there is nothing more beautiful than silence, nothing more brilliant than the human body, nothing more satisfying than a moment that offers a glimpse of eternity. It may appear that things are not "going your way" though remember this is a tricky illusion. Once you accept that everything that happens can be and is your way, you will be ever closer to finding true acceptance, to claiming true happiness.

Today, I am going to accept all things that come my way, without judging the experiences as good or bad. How can you practice acceptance in your life?

Is It Now Yet?

I find myself chasing my thoughts into tomorrow instead of taking the moment in, with each breath. I used to be a past kind of girl- going over that which happened and then turning it over and over until I had either made sense of it, or uncovered more memories that complicated it even more. Over the past year, I have made great peace with my past, and rarely spend time anymore delving into it. I have learned that the past is simply a trap in which I fall, one in which I can not become the woman I intend to be because I am too focused on the girl I was. In thinking of the past, I find its only use is to understand it, so I can understand the reasons why I do things in the present. All in all, I tend to live with a great saying I heard once "the past is a different country..they do things differently there". Ironically, my mind now catapults me into the future-- the what ifs of life that can turn a perfectly great moment into a mind fluttering, thought provoking race to nowhere. Whereas I once had a handle on what my days would look like, and life no longer held any surprise, the past was a warm, if sometimes scalding, blanket of memories I could always snuggle up to, and one that held endless possibilities of discovery. Now my life has changed drastically and I have no idea what tomorrow is supposed to look like, and the uncertainty of the future has me questioning everything, and the pit in my stomach that was once regret has settled in as apprehension. In exploring these feelings within myself, I find even more evidence of how much our outside circumstances leave us vulnerable- like a garden that is exposed to the slightest change in temperature and moisture that means the difference between growth or death. The opportunity here is to, metaphorically, of course, find my own endless source of light and water. Left to the outside forces of life, I will always topple in the winds of change. Exposed to the harsh elements of things that do not go my way or words that pierce my heart, I fall into old habits of what ifs.

There are many techniques that can be incorporated for in the moment living. One that I have had a great breakthrough with lately is harnessing your power. I used to believe that if I wanted something to happen, I would have to share it with everyone, thereby getting my message to the universe. If you believe that your thoughts and words are really energy, then you can see how this might be a challenge as you are essentially giving it away. And if someone does not reciprocate your feelings, or if they do not share your desires, it can be very depleting. The universe is very good at listening, and I know now that if I channel my thoughts as intentions of pure energy, I can be very effective without losing one bit of my power. The need to share of ourselves can be a very human and beautiful thing, as long as we are sharing that which we hold in complete confidence and knowing. If we turn to others to hear their opinion or gain their approval (even on a subconscious level) we will be knocked down very easily. When we are certain and steadfast in our path, the potential to be in the moment is so incredibly powerful. If you are not worrying about the future, or what someone is going to say, or has said in the past, then it is so much easier to be present, and calm, and at peace.

Harness your power intentionally. Do not feel it is ever your obligation to confess your deepest desires and, by all means, if you want to share it, sing it loud and sing it proud. In reserving your desires for yourself, your mind becomes attached to the universal source, a quiet place of power that can only root you deeper into yourself and the divinity that is now.