When you bump up against something unfamiliar or uncomfortable,
it’s just a reminder of what you love.
Photo courtesy of Shari Irby.
Finding love
Tag Archives: Peace
Bursting with Power
It doesn’t matter how much power you have if you don’t allow it to burst out and serve you.
So many times I have used my power to suppress my own needs, my voice, my self-advocacy…all for the sake of “preserving the peace.” But, how can peace be preserved when a battle rages within me to suppress my own feelings and needs simply to avoid the risk of imploring you to revel in my power to know myself. Ah, yes, there is a chance that you will be wounded in the wake of my power, but that wound I can hold with much greater compassion than the devastation that comes from turning my power against myself.
My power transforms from exploding within to bright and shining rays of love and truth when authentically attuned. I begin to recognize that honesty is a demonstration of true prowess and the recognition of woundedness an opportunity to be powerful in kindness, forgiveness, and grace.
My power magnifies when I allow it to burst out and serve me, so much so that it can hold all of the discomfort, all of the woundedness, all of the needs and feelings — yours and mine – and in that outburst peace is preserved.
Manifesting
Like begets like.
Peace leads to peace.
Kindness breeds kindness.
Suffering can lead to ease.
Mistakes become opportunities for growth.
Loss makes room for freedom.
Fear dissolves in faith.
Whatever I cultivate as my experience, I have the ultimate power to accept or shift the paradigm. Every experience serves me even when on the surface it may look grim. When I align an experience with the goal of knowing love, the love that is there always – not between people but that creates people – everything comes into balance, harmony prevails.
I no longer need to label my experiences as good or bad when I know that all experiences unfold before me so that I can explore what it is like to be my best self.
This is the process of trust.
Reflections
I am an open landscape on which you paint your experience.
I mirror back to you just what you put out there.
If you aren’t sure of what you are painting,
pause,
step back,
clear your mind,
open your heart.
Come sit a spell in my grand, vast emptiness before you start to fill the canvas with elements that may not produce the landscape best for the both of us.
Tread gently on the rolling hills,
pause and watch the rising and setting sun,
see ocean…
flowers…
wild flowing grasses…
Deep wooded forests.
The landscape is yours in which to play.
Just remember that whatever you add to this landscape – the meeting of your choice of media, colors and textures – is yours to assimilate and accommodate, not mine.
Kaleidoscope of Change
What is regular? Normal? The way things are “supposed to be?”
It seems our nature is to crave stability and consistency, to look around us for the expected.
Can the expected really be a constant pattern of change, redefined based on circumstances?
In the fall every tree chooses a slightly different timing and color and pattern of change based on its relationship with the earth, the air, and its surroundings.
Even the evergreen loses some leaves, changes shape, and becomes something different year after year.
This shifting is considered beautiful, an often awe-inspiring evolution.
No tree taking the exact same steps, no one looking the same, yet all normal, regular, naturally changing.
This change allows the tree to thrive.
I must remember there is no right or wrong in change, simply an opportunity to be unafraid, vulnerable, and resilient.
Think about the possibility.
Stepping Through
Every change has a transition, a pause between what has happened and what is left to do.
This threshold offers a clear and open vantage point,
an opportunity to be fully present, not leaning back or lunging forward, but knowingly and confidently stepping into who we are now ready to be.
Whether recovering from an illness, overcoming loss, or realizing dharma, we come to this threshold not by accident or failure but as a reminder of our power to heal and know greater peace and ease.
In this doorway lies an intricate and yet simple network of universal connections fueling our every desire and supporting our every need, holding us, preparing us, reminding us we are ready to carry on. We are never alone.
We do not need to know what lies beyond this doorway, or to worry about being received on the other side.
We need only remember the full and unwavering choice we have to be here, to step in and step through to the wild and beautiful landscape infinitely sprawling before us.
Photo credit: Clifden Castle Ireland, gateway to the wild and beautiful, captured by my mischievous soul sister.
At the center of my being
Right there, in between the meandering branches of my life,
the shifting sands of time,
the ebbing and flowing waters of my mind,
and the soft current that carries my heart,
there is a bright and constant light
that moves and shines through my existence,
the steady point that reminds and renews me over and over again,
guiding me back like a porch light,
to the warm, quiet, stillness of my eternal home within.
Photo credit: Brian Danahy (from the port of Mykanos, Greece)
Ripples
May ripples of love and acceptance help you see all the good in others so that you can see it in you too.
Loss, Not Lost
Grief…it’s not about the loss as much as creating and being able to access a little warm place in your heart where you hold that connection forever.
I used to think that grief was the act of severing ties and throwing away something special because it was lost.
But now I know that grief is a process of storing the memories of the specialness of every experience regardless of its labels, conditions, and how it came to be or not be.
Grief is experiencing the loss without getting lost.
Steadfast
When I become the mountain that I see in the distance, I feel my steadiness, my ability to withstand the currents of the winds and the torrents of rain. I may be walked upon by people, animals and time, yet the cracks, worn paths, and decay only add to my character and beauty.
I reach towards the sky never forgetting the love of the earth – the earth within me.
When I feel my true strength, I no longer need to be strong
Monday Mindfulness 