A Subtle Vibration

Have you ever become aware of an unseen direction? An indescribable sense of something that has significance or of being attracted to something so clearly that the attraction is arising from beyond your normal sense of self?

Myth authority, Joseph Campbell, described the feeling of being helped along his path in life by thousands of unseen hands. There is occupation and then there is spiritual occupation. According to Campbell, the notion of following your bliss or spiritual occupation came to him through the Sanskrit term sat-chit-ananda, which represents the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence. The word sat means being. The word chit means consciousness and the word ananda means rapture. Campbell came to the conclusion that rapture is a vehicle for being & consciousness. In The Power of Myth he states, I thought, “I don’t know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don’t know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being.” I think it worked.

Finding a Vehicle

Celtic artist Loreena McKennitt recalls a feeling of being chosen by music. Over time she found her place of connectedness and it became her vehicle. She mentions being absent of the strongly extroverted personality best suited for a career in music but instead of being more at home on a farm or an informal gathering of friends. In fact, she had no intent of going into music at all but instead felt the music pull her out of the path she was intending and into the unknown. I have one of Loreena’s projects called The Book of Secrets and I absolutely love her artistry in this cd. In this recording you can feel the heart that beats for this music, her connection to it is very pure.

Connecting with Rapture

Loreena became smitten with Celtic music in the 70’s but her real journey began when she developed a passion for Celtic history and found herself drawn into the rich, ancient tapestry of sounds and rhythms and stories she found there. Loreena acknowledges being deeply interested in the connections between physiology and our spiritual and psychological beings, and the many events and experiences that inspire us. Through her exploration of Celtic history she discovered myths and traditions that resemble one another from far corners of the globe, people who share traits and yet are distinctive. She states, “My starting point is the belief that, in one way or another, we are all an extension of each other’s history. Wanting to learn about our neighbours is also a desire to learn about ourselves.”

Where is your Passion?

Most of us have not given much thought to this question. We are concerned with paying the bills and providing for our families. Perhaps we are even concerned with attaining or maintaining a lifestyle we believe will make us happy. To most of us the notion of existing through passion is scary…or a luxury that is reserved for those strange artsy types. While it is true that the artsy types are more likely to allow this force to enter and guide their lives, like Joseph Campbell I maintain that passion and bliss are for everyone. If you can start to notice the fear you hold around creating a passionate life…you are on your way to discovering your vehicle. The biggest obstacle to this endeavor is our fear of what doing something great will bring to us. The truth is we all have enormous power. We are wielding this power recklessly all the time, unaware that we are transforming everything we encounter. Finding your passion is no less then purposefully and responsibly wielding your power…so the way I see it, it is irresponsible to live life in any other way. Spend some time cultivating an awareness of those unseen senses of direction in your life…it just might be your passion calling!

A Day to Shop

Last week I had a play date with my friend Sarah. We get together once a week to hang out and let our kids play. Her first child and my youngest are only four months apart in age and are high energy, enthusiastic play partners. Sarah’s husband was making plans to take their little boy out of town for a weekend and she wanted to know if I could join her to do some Christmas shopping. I was thrilled at the idea of picking up some local gifts so I gleefully assigned my husband child duty and we made our arrangements for Christmas shopping at the outlet mall.

Systematic Gift Giving

The following Sunday morning I woke up early and sat near the fireplace enjoying the sunrise. I started thinking about how I usually decide to buy gifts at Christmas time. The normal criteria my husband and I use of (a) spend in-between $30-$50 per person and (b) buy something from their list seemed off. Also present, was the deep frustration I experience with the people who fall outside of this criteria. You know, the people who have everything they want, refuse to make lists or buy what they need just before Christmas (I am actually very grateful for these people for making it tough for us to create a system). I decided to venture deeper into these feelings with the thought of there has to be a better way than this!

A Better Way

This year I am conducting an experiment. I came to the conclusion that buying gifts with the focus of price tags and lists is dissatisfying because it does not acknowledge the energy behind giving…this is a much needed non-material focus! The whole thing was lacking a deeper meaning. So the question I asked myself was…how can I give this a non-material purpose? The answer was to think big.

Thinking Big

If I could give anything to the people in my life for the new year…what would it be? I mentally scrolled through the people I would buy gifts for and thought on the largest scale of which I am capable. If I could give you one thing, anything to improve your life for the next year…what would it be? The answers that came back were startling. In my mind I began assigning what I call themes to different people according to need or desire. I found myself giving comfort, peace, guidance, self-worth, contentment, love, growth, balance, health, joy, abundance and more. These themes I realized, are the non-physical anchor I was looking for…they are the meaning behind the giving.

The Marriage of Material Gift-Giving to its Non-Material Partner

So this year I am assigning themes to the different people in my life. I am not looking at lists or prices. Each theme represents something that I wish to manifest in the life of the recipient in the coming year. Each gift I buy will have a connection with the associated non-material theme. To complete the transaction I am including a hand-written note explaining that connection and the powerful intent that empowers the gift. It is my hope that throughout the year when the gift is thought on by the person receiving it, they will remember my intent for them and without even realizing it…will also be focusing their own thoughts toward that end, thus in essence bringing those very things into their lives. Giving and receiving are part of the same process. So this year…I will give with intent!

A Little Wet

O.k. so I live in the Pacific Northwest about an hour or so away from Seattle. Most people who live here or people who have lived here or even people who are thinking about living here will all mention one thing…rain. This is not my first experience of the Pacific Northwest. I lived in Portland for about 6 months in my early twenties and just three years ago I lived in Lake Stevens, WA. The last time we were here I was so sick of the rain and gray and gloom that I was ready to move anywhere that had a different climate. Where did I move? Mesa, AZ. Yes, that’s right, I got to experience the opposite of extremes. When we decided to move back to the Pacific Northwest one of the first things I decided to do was change my relationship with the rainy, gray, cold winters.

A Shift in Perspective

I was walking with my kids in the rain last week. They love the rain. My three-year old daughter takes her hat down, tilts her head back and collects water droplets on her tongue. She delights in the rain and hits every mud puddle she can find. Returning to the house soaked through, she gleefully tears off every shred of clothing and sits down on the ottoman to warm herself near the fireplace. I’ve never seen a bigger smile. She loves the rain. I’ve decided to take my daughter’s lead (not the shedding of every article of clothing although my husband says he wouldn’t mind but the glee with which she approaches rainy days) and rainy days are now excuses to play. We all get out our umbrellas and walk a path in which we’re sure to find lots of splashing opportunities and everyone is soaked with rain and mud when we’re done. For a wonderful musical version of this experience check out Christine Kane’s song Everything Green from her CD Rain & Mud & Wild & Green

So Much Available

One day it was raining so hard on my umbrella that I thought there must be more drops coming down from the sky than there are stars. The abundance that the universe offers all around us is astounding and I was reminded that there is no lack in a rain storm. Nature springs forth…showering us with treasure with no thoughts about too much or not enough. It reminds me to spring forth into my day, to hold nothing back and share with all I can my own version of raindrops.

An Expression of Faith

The contents of this blog entry are near and dear to me and the subject matter revolves around much of what has been surfacing in my experience.

I came across the expression Trust the Process on Duran Duran Bassist John Taylor’s website. I absolutely fell in love with it and this is what it means to me. Life is a process of unfolding to your potential and trusting that your experience regardless of how it looks is a part of that process. I want to go deeper into this thought.

When I say regardless of how it looks it means simply this; the experiences I have are the ones I need in order to grow. This means that everything that occurs in my life is part of a higher orchestration. The purpose of which is to create the conditions necessary for the unfolding of my potential. Have you ever heard the Christian expression the way of the Cross? This is a highly spiritual term which means the worst thing in your life (your cross) becomes the best thing in your life. Trusting the Process is an act of faith. Your faith is in this, all that happens is for the expression of higher good. So embrace it, work with it and let it make you grow!

Resistance

If you look around in your life you’ll see people in various stages of this orchestration. When challenges arrive in our lives or the lives of others our first impulse is to judge and resist it. For me, this impulse is strongest with those I am in close relationship with. I don’t know how many times I have seen someone having trouble in their marriage or with their children and think, they shouldn’t be doing this! It is a challenge to remember the higher perspective. Often times when I see this in others it brings out a fear in me that I don’t want to see, or a complication that I don’t want to deal with but again it is all a form of resistance. What is being resisted? Life. I am resisting life and have placed my energy toward trying to bend it to my ideas of what it should be instead of Trusting the Process of higher good to unfold around me. We limit this process when we try to contain it within our ideas of how it will come.

A New Perspective

When I see what someone else is creating in their lives I remind myself of the truth. I try not to judge what I see. Instead I hold the knowing. I know that they are creating a condition that will set the stage for their greater good. This experience is just the one they need to have as the inner force that orchestrates it all knows what it is doing. I know that there is room for them to create whatever they want in their lives and that as they create they will learn. I have also learned to allow people their experiences, their creations and to know they are qualified to navigate life for themselves.

We can pinch ourselves off from life with the judgments that we make or we can allow ourselves the freedom of making no decisions about what we see. With that comes a love beyond the realms of normal experience because it’s difficult to truly love something when your busy holding it out at arms length so that you can decide if it should or should not be this or that. And this is a ludicrous thing to do because it is what it is, and can making a decision about what it should be effect any real change other than on our personal feelings about it? Now think carefully on this point because this will change the way you think, would you choose to feel negatively about someone or something that is part of the greater good unfolding in this world? What decisions would you make if you knew the power to make something good or bad lies within the thoughts you hold about it?

Open Instead of Closed

My most recent work has been to cultivate being open to life and allowing it to flow through me. Being receptive to the forces working around you and opening yourself to the possibilities hidden in all of life’s situations allows all good to come to forth. Life is motion. So practice accepting what comes your way by holding the knowing that life works for your ultimate good and Trust the Process!