Sunday, June 18, 2006

Finding Your Passion of Life

It feels sometimes like my mind never stops finding new things to fascinate me it's sort of like being a baby and watching the prisms dance across the walls of your room every one is some how different and fascinating and your just completely in awe of it. Thats how I feel about life.
And the more in awe of life I am the more never ending I seem to be come.

Sometime you just have to have Priorities life can be to heavy, routine and draining if you don't live it. I'm not totally irresponsable, but sometimes you just have to throw your arms around life and enjoy.

"There is more to life then increasing it's speed." ~ Mahatma Gandhi with this in mind and this being the time of your life How are you spending it? I read this last year before I learned about the lumps in my breast, but I don't think I really appreciated the words until later.

But I twisted it with my own thoughts and feelings, I think it was about managing time originally. It also mentioned "How much do you value your life?" "Do you treasure each day?" and my favorite part of course "Or do you allow each new day to carbon copy the one before, basically unnoticed, unappreciated and under used."

My twist on this was not about managing time but finding my passion for life and to create it new and fresh with as little copying as possible (we all have routines) but I want to make the most of every second.

I think people need to think of life as a lover, it should be intoxicating, indulgent (as long as no one is hurt) seductive and lure us to the very height of our inner self, life should reflect the heart and soul that burns inside us be an unedited, undiluted and uninhibited expression of who we are. I think this but I don't do it not all the time, anyway the world I don't think is ready for this some are but it makes others very uncomfortable. This is something I think the world is starving for and won't even know it.

Finding Your Passion of Life is like touching that which burns in the very depths of us all.

Saturday, June 10, 2006

The Secret of Life.....Only you know.

The journey within can be a time of refection as well as growth. It will have its moments of great sorrow and great joy. And as we move deeper within we face who we were, who we are and who we hope to be, we face many processes and fears as we reclaim ourselves and remember that in the darkness shines the greatest light of all.

In the movie city slickers( sorry but yes sometimes you can find some wisdom in a movie) the question is asked by Curly (Jack Palance) asked "Do you know what the secret to life is? And he holds up one finger and says "One thing" Mitch (Billy Crystal) asked "What's the one thing?" only to be told "That's what you have to figure out."

There are many paths in the journey of our lives, some will be smooth and in calm waters like a lake deep in the woods, others will be wide and rolling like the ocean deep and dark in spots with troubled winds. The journey of our life began long before our first thought.

You can learn to think, to feel, to see, to hear. You can be encouraged to deep thoughts. Taught to question and wonder, but in real no one can give you the secret to life this is "One thing" only you know.

In my journey through life I have learned to embrace the child I was, the woman I am and the spirit I will always be, to look where I've been and to face who I am.

My only advice to a searcher of the secret of life is to not see with your eyes but with your soul, to feel with your heart, learn from yesterday, live for today and hold on to the hope for tomorrow.

Ask yourself "What is the One thing?" and remember the old saying "If you find it not within then you'll not find it without."

May you find all you desire, achieve all you attempt and rule your own destiny.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

What would your soul consider a waste of time?

They say "the eyes are the window to the soul" wonder if spontaneous answers and actions are the doorway to the same soul. I asked a friend "what would your soul consider a waste of time? He wrote a very good explanation (spontaneous) then gave more as he thought about it, but in the first one of his explanations I loved a part and well I don't know to me I was thinking yes this is good when I read about Split Mountain and the use of his imagination I loved the part about the "central place where all realities are valid and can be sampled, none have domination over the other. It was where I could Love everything without prejudice."

I have to say he conveyed a concept beautifully. From what I read and someone else may see or hear it differently (I love being different ha-ha) this is very essential to the soul that center place he spoke of I call the grounding or balance between worlds our choice of this plane of consciousness with that almost elusive bond we have with a plane of unconscious. The alluring and demanding presence that there is something more. The ability to sample, explore and look and experience life openly, freely and with a child like Love and pure understanding.

It doesn't matter what path a person walks their faith, their color, their language the goal has always been the same to transcend to a higher self or to return to the Divine or the One.

What would my soul consider a waste of time? (I was asked this once before and I don't seem to recall the answer it was two years ago, but I know as I grow my answers change)

I think it would be a waste never to truly experience life, I see people everyday and listen to them they drive to work each morning and never see, feel or hear beyond their reality, they never see how green the grass is or how the hills seem to roll in the wind, they never feel the energy of the earth or hear the trees. Sadly enough all this we also do to people, animals, places and things.

Many don't hear the elderly struggling, our county has literally described our time as a time of disposable children. Many don't see people they see fear, hate and anger. Never realizing these same people have the same concerns and ability to love, fear and hate. Mankind has a great flaw what it doesn't understand it fears and what it fears it wants only to destroy. We kill not for food but for the thrill of the hunt, not for survival but the trophies.

This limits our experience of life, every breath of life is a blessing, every dream a possibility. So I say find your passion of life, live each day as the greatest adventure. There are 86,400 seconds in the day miss one and it's gone forever, it takes only one second to smile at someone, in less then five seconds you can say "I Love You", "I'm Sorry" or "I Forgive You" or simply give a hug. Just imagine the wonderful things you could do with the rest of those seconds.

We all have bad things that have happened or that will happen, the struggle for life is not getting through it like a chore, its making each second mean something and creating something from even our darkest moments into something positive glimps of something beyond. Its wisdom, hope, compassion, these develop who we are and where we are and where we are going.

It's like the story of the message in the sand and the stone. Really and this is a good way to live each day writing the wrongs and harms others have done in the sand that it be blown away in the wind and the good carve it in stone this is the foundation of something worth building on and remembering.

Sunday, June 04, 2006

The Dragon and the Labyrinth ..... A journey within

The Bhagavad Gita describes the mind as turbulent and obstinate. 'The Chariot of the Body': The five horses represent the five senses (tongue, eyes, nose, ears and skin). The rein symbolises the mind, the driver is the intelligence while the passenger is the spirit soul.
(I don't know the artist or where the defining came form but I loved it)

Going inside yourself is perhaps the greatest terror a person will face. How well do you know yourself? I have thought on this a great deal lately.

In December 2002 I took a look at the depths of my own self, now I find myself looking yet again into the dark reaches within me.

But I see a difference one of growth, of understanding one of a new strength.

The journey within never ends when you think you have finally gotten the answer some where inside comes a new question, humans are amazing creatures they evolve some over night, some over years and even the very things they thought were settled evolve.

Women are not taught to evolve, their not taught to look at themselves so many never realize that wonder with in themselves or pass this on to their daughters, their sisters, their nieces or to a young woman starting out on her own.

In 2002 the sense of my depth is very different then the evolved sense of my depth of 2006.

the guardian, the beast, the dragon of the labyrinth seems smaller now, or perhaps I'm larger now and those dark paths lighter, easier to venture down, to face and to embrace before they are opened up and cleared away.

" A sense of my depth: from December 2002

"A woman searching for herself, must descend to her own depths... As she decends, a woman touches her strength, a certainty that changes her." ~ Circle of Stones by Judith Duerk

I have thought on this for days it really touched something off inside me, my depths there are many paths much like a labyrinth each one has a face of the phases I have passed through some are sorrowful, some are angry, some are frightening but they are all parts of who I was and where I came from.

And to descend to that depth is to face myself, the strength I touch upon is my spirit(soul). The spirit of the child crying in the night for the pain and betrayal she had been forced to share, the young woman seeking to be more and wanting to belong so much she would conform to be what others wanted, the mother mothering and fearful of making a mistake, the wife wanting to be loved and to love in spite of the differences and the woman learning to live to breath and to embrace her own self.

These are only a few paths in the labyrinth of my depths there have been many turns, many stages these are the easiest to face the other paths also have a guardian and they are kept safe until I can face them which I do gradually.

I recently was fascinated to hear an instructor speak of the guardian we have inside and to even mention it being a dragon he got my attention and then I was frustrated to hear him say we had to destroy this beast.

I am born in the year of the dragon as is my daughter but I feel differently about the dragon then this instructor I don't see the dragon as a beast, my dragon guardian is there protecting my spirit, my secrets and its also there giving me guidance and strength and understanding.

It walks with me in the tunnels of my inner person and I draw upon that strength. I've come to face myself many times and learned what positive I could make from the negative and I've come out stronger so I don't believe in destroying the beast but working with the guardian which is my strength and positive self.

I was not taught to be strong by any woman in my life, and my mother though I saw at times strength in her I saw more often the depression and the self pity of her own life marking and tormenting her always it was "poor me, I never had this or that, no one ever loved me"

Twisted and broken she looked most the time bitter but she past on the negativity easily, words were weapons and if she learned she could hurt you she would. But I learned a valuable lesson from a person who I'm not sure meant to teach me that a woman was an amazing person with strength and could do much more then she ever thought possible I learned this from a man.

A friend who taught me to appreciate being a woman and never let that be used to hold me down, that I had more to me then what the world saw outside.

I think it would have been nice to hear this positive support of being a woman from someone who knew what it was like to be a woman, my mother and I never shared anything with each other not our thoughts, our feels or even who we were.

I have made ever effort to support my daughter emotionally, mentally to share who we are and to encourage her in speaking out, crying out I pass on the Circle of Stones to her and leave it for her to decide but this is a book all women should read mothers should read it with their daughters.

I believe the positive things I have shared with my daughter allow her to share with me and we're stronger for that bond. I think that openness and positive support would have made the walk in the labyrinth my spirit easier because I would have learned earier to face myself and learned sooner to embrace myself to hear my own voice the one of my own truth.

Facing yourself is not as easy as one would think its not always pretty, not always touching and that can be very emotional but in the end its well worth the journey and then you can let it go and move forward or start a new beginning, a time of evolution's growth. "


Whispering Moment of Life



Hope this letter finds you in fine health and high spirit, I guess I am feeling a bit more aware of the little things right now. This gets my mind wondering. And I just felt like sharing this with you its my journal entry.

Sometimes I find myself sort of drifting back in and out of times not so much the bad as the good. The fact that it's night yet again here only gives me more time with my thoughts, but we had two days that were almost like spring and I so with that it made me think of yet another moment, another time and place.

Sometimes in the spring or summer I like to take a drive up highway 70 up through the Feather River Canyon it starts out wide and an amazing view of the world stretching out before my sight.

As I drive further the mountains begin to form the canyon walls, not too closed but enough that the walls of the canyon raise above you on both sides, the Feather River runs through this canyon first on your left then you cross a bridge and the river is on your right.

Here life takes a different view from the one you walked out your front door with, here in this canyon it doesn't demand your attention but it whispers to your soul, once while driving down this canyon I saw what to me was an amazing tribute to life, to the magick moments of life, but how many times had I passed this very spot and never saw it till that moment when life whispered to me.

In the photo "whispering moment of life" you can see a tree and flowers and greenery growing right out of the very stones of the earth and mountains side this is a tribute to the will and the hope of life the earth has and the lesson mankind must learn.

As I drive up into the mountains deeper into the canyon on this whinding two lane highway, the windows down the air moving through the car the cool touch of it against my face and my extended hand out the window, I feel the air filling me with its energy and freedom.

I drive on and it is as if I am driving into another world, such peace and ease. there are a couple different little spots up this canyon that rents cabins for those get away moments, but many times I just drive up to Belding Town there is a bridge which takes you across the river to the cabins there is a small store, a cafe and of course a bar too.

But they have this amazing large deck that looks over the river, and there are tables down by the water. I love to sit on this deck order my tea have my little portable cd player sometimes a book to read, sometimes a notebook to write, sometimes I just sit there and listen.

The wind singing through the trees, the laughing water of the river, sometimes I like to walk barefoot near the water feeling the earth beneath my feet so strong and sure.

Here in this moment life whispers to the heart and soul.

This poem I wrote in memory of Tammi, a spiritual sister who has taken the journey home but stays with me always even though we had brief moments, it seems to fit here too speaking of whispering moments.

For whispering moments are about memories, love, beauty and appreciation of the magick and wonder of lifes gifts. About finding the gifts in each day, in ourselves, in others and in the little things coffee with friends, a chat with a friend, in laughter, in an old photo and seeing old things fresh and new.

I Am

In the rustling of the leaves will I whisper to you.
In the dancing of the tall grass and swirl of autumn
leaves will I caress and lift you up.

I Am Air.

In the crackling warmth of the hearth fire will
I bring comfort to you.
In the light of the sun, moon and stars will
I watch over you.

I Am Fire.

In the babbling creek will I laugh with you.
In the flow of the rivers, streams and oceans will
I walk with you.

I Am Water.

From mountain peaks to caverens deep
will I support and provide for you.

I Am Earth.

I Am never ending.
beginning to beginning I pass
from one realm to the next.

I Am Spirit.
cr. CKOrman "I AM" (written in Memory of Tammi)I wish you many whispered moments. Have a great week.

Always and Forever,
Wych