Get Inspired!

Night lingers. Dawn slips through the crack on the horizon, pushing into the darkness, lighting up the night.

Snow still covers the ground but warm temperatures are quickly melting the evidence of its fall. Wisps of spring dance on the horizon, just over the next hill, the next valley. Promises of blossoms to come tantalize my senses.

I search for my first sight of a robin.

I am in the time of waiting.

Like Lent.

That time when the promise of something greater than this winter landscape enters my soul and pushes me into wakefulness.

March 9 Mandala

In the Soul of a Pilgrim retreat I am taking through Abbey of the Arts, I wrote in my retreat journal, "Love blossoms in dark and light for love is the portal to my heart." It was in response to the mandala I drew that day to honour my journey into the desert.

One of the processes in the retreat is to create a mandala a day representing your journey.

I have been inspired by this process. I've used different mediums. Even created a digital mandala using Paint.

And in the process, the exploration of medium, of expressing my state of being through a daily mandala has inspired me to keep creating. Keep exploring. Keep moving deeper into the desert.

What about you? What gets you inspired? What fires up your desire to explore the hidden landscape of your heart?

To give your inspiration muscles a boost, I am sharing a composition from one of my favourite groups. The Piano Guys.

They never cease to inspire and amaze me. They never cease to wake my spirit up!

Namaste.

Dragon Country by Joyceann Wycoff

My lovely blog sister Joyceann Wycoff sent me an email last night with an invitation to "Vote for Me!"

Joyceann signed up for the "Top Self-Help Author" competition and in the past two weeks has created a mini-webpage and a video ... and also a Tweetinar (a 28-day VERY mini-seminar which launched today). The competition is about marketing as much as writing and needs to gather votes to support her application.

So.... here's the invitation.

Joyceann's blog, Peaceful Legacies, is one of my favourite daily stops in the morning. She is always filled with wonderful insights, graciously shares beautiful art and poetry and ideas with anyone who stops by. For the month of January she shared a Rumi reading, card and video a day -- and it was beautiful and inspiring and really refreshing to read and listen to every morning.

I dropped into her Dragon Country site -- and got caught up in the possibilities. I'm excited to receive the videos and content she's going to be sending that will inspire me to step fearlessly into my Dragon Country so I too can 'live the life of my dreams'.

Now -- not that I'm not. Living the life of my dreams. I love my life. But.... (don't you hate those buts?) there are things I want to do, things I need to do, things I must do, to fulfill on my promise to the world -- to share my gifts with open-hearted abandon. To nurture my best so you can be your best. To live in the rapture of now fully alive to the wonder and joy of this moment.

So... here's the invite. Click on over to Dragon Country ... an adventure in transforming your life.

Please help Joyce make this book a reality ... go to http://dragoncountrybook.com/ and vote for her in the Hampton Roads "Top Self-Help Author" competition.

Dragon Country Tweetinar: Twitter: @jwycoff (Could this be transformation in an eye-blink?)

And... forward the link to everyone you know!

I'm inspired. Hope you are too!

May your day be filled with wonder, may you dance in the wonder of you through every moment of your day.

Nameste.

Surrender and fall in love

Sunday, March 25

Sunday morning. I wake and wonder, what to write. It’s the same old, same old. Believing the process must be known before I begin, rather than just being in the process and letting it unfold. Wanting to direct the action from without, rather than being directed from within.

I’m in Vancouver. It’s raining. But, it’s green. This is such a beautiful city. Flowers bloom. Trees are in blossom. The air is sweet.

Perhaps one of the things I like most about this city is I do not have memories of the journey into hell with Conrad attached to every place. My memories here are of healing. Of reclamation. Of restoration. It was here that I first awoke from the nightmare of that relationship. It was here that I first faced the truth without fear, without believing that the lie was safer. It was here I let go of the lie and began the process of turning up for me.

It was here I came alive.

Memories are such tricky fellows. They can hurt or they can restore. When I let go of the need to hurt myself with memory, I become focused on forgiveness, not anger. And forgiveness is so much lighter than anger.

Recently A. was angry about the situation with her father. Do you want to love him or hate him I asked. Love him she replied. Then forgive him. Forgiveness will move you into love. Anger will keep you stuck.

When I said that to her I turned those words into myself. Am I an angry or a forgiving person? How do I want to live my life? In love or anger? Love. Then the answer is simple. Step into forgiveness. Let anger go.

But….

Ahhh, the eternal but. What about what he did. What about what she said. What about how he lied to me, hurt me, betrayed me.

What about it?

Can I change it? Alter it? Affect him or the past?

There is nothing I can do about it, other than to hold it in place with anger and let it fester or forgive so that I can surrender and fall in love.

My friend N. always says, Anger, like acid will corrode the vessel containing it.

Anger, like acid, will corrode the heart. Anger will harden arteries, stiffen spines and break bones.

Forgiveness will open a broken heart to love. Forgiveness will open arms to loving. Forgiveness will set me free.

My gift for myself today is to walk in love, through every moment, every step. My gift for myself is to treat the world with the loving kindness I deserve.

Time passes and I flow with it

I was in Vancouver for the weekend and did not have web access. But, I did keep my commitment to write every morning. I couldn't post what I wrote and am catching up and posting now!

Saturday, March 24

Funny how every morning begins with, I’m so tired. I flew to Vancouver last night. My plane was an hour late. An hour to kill. An hour to fill. To waste. To get through. To put up with. To enjoy.

Late plane. Airport bar. I sit by the window. I order a glass of wine. Why not? Time’s flying and I’m grounded for an hour. An hour filled with no expectations other than to wait for time to pass by. I watch the world outside the warm enclosure of the restaurant. Jets come and go. Land. Take off. Taxi in. Taxi out. Baggage trucks pull up to their silver hulls. Empty bellies. Fill bellies. Baggage handlers scurry to and fro loading suitcases for other travelers going places unknown to me. Expected by them. On time. They move out of the periphery of my world. Everything bustles with energy, activity, purpose.

I sit and wait. And watch.

An hour with nothing to do. Unscheduled. Unplanned. Unaccounted for.

Is the world passing me by while I waste an hour or is the world simply passing by while I indulge in the joy of doing nothing but sit and watch it pass by for an hour?

Time is a continuum. There is never more, nor less time. An unscheduled hour does not need filling. It will pass. I can be frustrated. I can pass it with my peace of mind intact. An unscheduled hour fills me with the possibilities of doing nothing. It is an unexpected gift filled with the possibilities of reveling in the joy of one hour to sit and relax, to drift, to breathe.

Does the world pass by, or, pass me by?

The latter is the victim’s voice. The world is busy while I am inactive, inanimate, ineffective. In both cases I’m watching. Yet when I state, pass me by, the voice is passive, yearning, mournful.

I watch the world pass by with me in the flow of time. An hour to enjoy the panoply of life played out before me. I am the centre of my universe as the world revolves around those who are the centre of their own universes. I am in a world of personal universes touching briefly, moving on, in and out constantly moving in the flow of time.

I sit and watch and breathe and enjoy the moment to not have any demands, no responsibilities, no emergencies. The world passes by as I pass an enjoyable hour in its thrall. As I release the switches holding my mind in check, I begin to feel ideas floating into the periphery of my thinking. I pull out my notebook, begin to write. Ideas flow as I surrender into the moment. The outline for The Dandelion Garden: Cultivating Joy In Every Day Occurrences begins to take shape.

I am in the flow, connected to the collective whole from which inspiration flows through me. It ignites my imagination. My fingers fly and I feel the angst of time passing without me getting caught in the anxiety of having to track each passing moment. I ease into the joy of being in the moment. Alive, I surrender, and fall, in love with the moment where right now is all I have, all I need, all I want.

Goals and other heady places

Day two. The alarm ruptures my sleep. I stumble out of bed.

I've made a commitment. I must keep it.

And I know, after 11 days, this will begin to feel like a habit. Eventually, perhaps it will become like an addiction where I must do it to feel like my day is setting off on the right foot.

This morning I stumble from bed. I try not to think about what I will write. Will I be able to write. Will the words appear.

I fall into faith. Trust. Belief the words will appear.

But the theme? Where is the theme? Where is the import of my words. Perhaps that is the importance of this exercise. Sometimes, I need to let myself write 'bad'. Sometimes, I need to let words appear without forcing poetic constructs. Without looking for deeper meaning.

It isn't the meaning behind the words, it's the act of writing every day that is important. It's the process of keeping my commitment to myself.

Last night I worked with Ram at Project Forward. I'd put together a course outline for my section of the workshop. I was to talk about setting goals and what's important to attain them. One of the exercises I used was from an amazing course at www.simpleology.com. Each participant in the workshop had a glass of water in front of them. The instruction was to take a sip of water using two different methods. Method one was verbal only. Each participant was to talk to the water and ask it to give him a sip. They could yell, plead, pray, cajole, seduce -- whatever they wanted to get that sip, but at no time were they to touch the glass. After 2 minutes we all agreed -- there was no way that sip of water was going to happen. The second method required picking up the glass and taking a sip. It took 2 seconds.

It was a powerful example of INTENT turned into ACTION.

So often I set a goal in my head and then blithely carry on with my day. Like writing here. If I had simply made the commitment and then never gotten out of bed, these words would not have appeared. My goal is different then my intention of writing here every morning. My goal is to write another book. These pages are one tool, one step leading me to the achievement of my goal. Starting every day with this writing puts my mind into my creative space, it moves me from the rote, the mundane into my inspired self.

The point of the water glass experiment was to demonstrate the need for ACTION.

Goals are awesome. Necessary. Imperative. Goals are signposts on the road. Markers keeping me continually moving forward, growing, achieving.

Without ACTION they are simply a smoke screen preventing me from facing my truth, my reality. When I set a goal and do not take ACTION, I am lying to myself.

Last night at the workshop, I walked in with a clearly defined goal that I asked the group to accept on faith. The goal was, "By October 1, 2007 I will be successfully living independently outside the Drop-In."

I asked each person if they could 'see' the goal. Feel it. Smell it. Taste it. "Can you, just for this session, claim it as your own?" I asked.

Yes, they agreed.

At the end of the evening, I gave each member of the group a binder in which they were to write their goals.

Each person, except one, wrote as their first goal. To be out of the Drop-In and living independently by October 1, 2007.

They had claimed the goal as their own. For the man who declined, fear of letting go of the past held him fast. He looked at me and asked, can I come back even if I don't have that goal? Of course I replied. This is about your goals, you define them, you set them, you walk towards them.

Their task this week was to set a weekly goal that moved them closer to achieving their major goal of October 1. And to track their progress on a daily basis.

The energy when they left the room was envigorating.

I came home and thought about my goal for October 1, or April 1 for that matter.

I didn't have one.

Living without a goal is like getting in the car to drive... somewhere. Every time I get in my car I have a destination. I have a route which sometimes I adjust depending upon the weather. Too often, I live my life without a destination, without a goal!

Recently, my friend G was booked into a personal development program called, Super Choices. It was being held in Chase, BC. He got in his car, drove to Lake Louise and discovered that the highway was closed due to an avalanche. G didn't give up. He spent a night in a hotel and in the morning, upon discovering the highway was still closed, called and asked me to book him a flight to Kamloops. All the flights were booked. He waited in Lake Louise, hoping the highway would open but it didn't. He kept exploring ideas and finally, found an alternative route. He called me from the airport in Calgary to let me know he was enroute to Kelowna. Almost 24 hours after being stopped in Lake Louise, G arrived at the conference centre and walked into the training room. He had reached his destination. He was only 2 hours late for the opening session -- some people never made it.

G never gave up. He did not give in. He did not lose sight of his goal.

Setting a goal is the first step to living a life of integrity. Without goals, I float aimlessly doing the things I have to do to get my day done, but never challenging myself to step further, grow bigger, explore my gifts and talents completely.

Once my goals are established, taking ACTION, keeping the goal in sight, never wavering from my commitment to attain it, staying focused on my intent and exploring alternatives when roadblocks appear -- these are the characteristics of a successful person. These are the attributes of a person of integrity.

There have been moments in my life when I have had a clearly defined goal and 'done what it took' to achieve it. There have been times when I've put the Be. Do. Have. principle to work. -- Be committed to do what it takes to have what I want.

It's time to put those principles to work today.

My goal for October 1, 2007 is to have the first draft of my new book, The Dandelion Garden, A non-gardeners guide to creating the life of your dreams. completed.

My goal for April 1, 2007 is to have the outline completed.

What's your goal?

Where does your Be. Do. Have. inspire you to be the most astounding you that you are meant to be?