15 Authors in 15 Minutes

The Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included) who've influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. 

1. Rilke
2. Wayne Dyer
3. Deepak Chopra
4. Margaret Laurence
5. Maya Angelou
6. Tom Harpur
7. Dan Brown
8. Paulo Coelho
9. Ken Gire
10. Mary Oliver
11. Eckhart Tolle
12. Christopher Dewdney
13. Osho
14. Wei Hui
15. Malcolm Gladwell

So, who's on your list?

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house. 
Every morning a new arrival. 

A joy, a depression, a meanness, 
some momentary awareness comes 
as an unexpected visitor. 

Welcome and entertain them all! 
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, 
who violently sweep your house 
empty of its furniture, 
still, treat each guest honorably. 
He may be clearing you out 
for some new delight. 

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, 
meet them at the door laughing, 
and invite them in. 

Be grateful for whoever comes, 
because each has been sent 
as a guide from beyond.


~ Rumi ~

Power

Perspective is everything.  Change your thoughts, change your life (Dyer).   And sometimes I just need to have a mini-crisis to get myself back to where I am suppose to be.   I definitely know when I wander off the path!

And for me the way out requires a re-commitment to quality quiet time, to get re-grounded and re-focused.  To remember what it is that I want out of life and bring my daily actions back in line with my beliefs.

I believe in things unseen.  I believe that my life is unfolding in the direction that it is meant.  I believe that today is a good day and that the lessons I am here to learn in Earth School will present themselves to me as they are needed.  I believe that overcoming this current dip in the road is an achievement my mind and heart needs to make.  And I will persevere.

Could it be the weather?

My heart has been heavy these past days.  I'd like to blame it on one or two things, but these things usually come from a basket full of small things collected from corners and under beds.  Before long they are spilling out into the hall and jamming up the closet doors.  Someone has to pick them up!

Maybe I'm sad.  A lot of things in my life are changing.  A few things I WANT to change are clogging up the drains and making me frustrated.  

I suppose it all just needs time.  And I need to settle into a new rhythm of accepting the things I cannot change.  For the time being, anyway.

Today is October 27.  In eight months I suspect the waiting and the games will all be over.  In terms of a lifetime, a short time to wait indeed.

Favourites

It is a grey day here in the north.  The air still.  There are just a handful of leaves that remain on one of the poplars in the backyard.  They're hanging straight down, like they are frozen in place and you'd have to pry them with some hard metal object to make them move.  Everything is whitish, looks and feels like snow is about to cover us up in a blanket.

I have a couple of appointments today, so I'm home from school.  And tomorrow night I am hosting a 40th birthday party for Jeremy. I know once I get going on my to-do list it will be a full day!  I guess I will keep savouring this coffee for a bit longer.

There are two places I wish to share with you today:  My friend George Breed's Zen Baptist blog and my favorite photographer Dave Brosha.

First, George.  I've been following him online for a long time.  As long as I've been blogging, so since about 2004 I guess.  In the world of the internet that is an eternity!  And George is always meta-morphing, although he would prefer you call it meat-morphing.  He reminds me to see the world in new ways.  To examine and change these superficial belief systems we hold on to.  On a deep level that I don't always have words for, he refreshes me at a soul level.  Thank you, George!  Next year when I'm on sabbatical (sounds so decadent when in fact I'm running away for a year without pay) I may take a road trip to where he lives and stalk him in person. Be warned!

And for more soulful good stuff check out Dave Brosha.  God how I love his work!  I briefly got to meet him in September when I made a quick trip to Yellowknife.  I am inspired by his creative eye.   Especially his interpretation of the north.  If you like his work and are on facebook you can "like" him and get almost daily updates of his latest photo shoots.  It triggers something really good inside of me to see someone doing what they love and sharing that gift with the world!

Take care my friends.  The weekend is on its way!

Thank Goodness!

Today was a substantially productive day!  I feel so accomplished!  It was one of those days that just leaves you feeling satisfied with how it all went down.  Like you won, even though there wasn't an actual game.

When you define yourself, you are essentially building fences and walls.  And casting in structure form who and what you think yourself to be.  You create a double-sided list of what you consider permissible and what you do not.  And this list gets extended to everyone you encounter.

Are you setting up relationships to fail before you even give them a chance?

Examine your building material.

Gardening

Within us all there is this deep seeded need to tell the truth.  To be a truth-teller.

It is not about individual white lies or black lies, but about the lies we live out in our life's drama in front of the crowd.  In front of ourselves.  In front of the people we love and are afraid will not love us back if they knew the truth.

We worry that they wouldn't be able to handle it if we stopped flocking with all the other sheep.

But while we are talking about truth, remember the audience.  Those that surround us in our circles of family, friends and acquaintances are all playing our their drama too.  And mostly they are living embodiments of their own webs of untruths.  We become these tightly intertwined works of art in which it is difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. They believe us and we believe them.  

And what if we are all telling stories?  Making-believe to make the others happy?  To make each other feel safe in fabrications and falsehoods?  Which serve only to disintegrate us from the inside out.

Zen Buddhists think of the mind as a garden.  Within the garden are the seeds of everything ~ all of the good and all of the bad.  It is the job of the gardener to cultivate which seeds will blossom and thrive, which in turn makes up the bouquet of living.

What if you started today to tell the truth about those parts of yourself that weigh on your heart?  That are reminders that you're not quite on the right path?  That whisper in your ear possibilities.  That there's more than this.  What if today you changed your drama and the way it is playing out?  What is keeping you from it?

Every time you live your purpose a little closer to the truth you free not only yourself but those around you.  In giving yourself permission to be who you are, you in turn permit others.  You change the composition of your garden.  New things bloom.

Lead your own story.  Courage builds courage and is very contagious!

Tuesday

It's only Tuesday, but still, it has been a great week.  And I'm torn 50/50 in this very moment between blogging and reading.  I picked up a Deepak Chopra book on Saturday titled The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire and I want to delve head first with a snorkel so I don't even have to come up for air.

And so it would seem that the book just won out.  Keep your chin up and your heart chakra strong.  xo

Just for a Minute

Refuse to be defined.  Stop defining yourself.  Resist listening to the way others want to tell you who you are and what you like.  You're so much more than all of that.

Just try living for a while.  Let it be what it's gonna be.  Allow it to surprise and delight you.

Going Back in Time

I was in the tub, thinking about synchodestiny... because that's what everyone thinks about while having a hot soak, right!?  When a fleeting picture of us as kids reeled through my mind.  I was about 7 or maybe 8 and wearing a white cotton dress.  It was a beautiful summer's day and the sky was blue.  We were running through a field, you pulling me along by the hand.  I was laughing out loud and it was slowing us down.  You looked back at me and beamed with delight.  The wind seemed to be blowing just strong enough to keep my long blonde hair out of my face.  We saw each other so clearly, like we spent our lives looking for the adventure in each day.

And I know it was you.  Were we sharing in some secret plan?  Or perhaps we had just played a prank and were running away before they found out what we had done?  Whatever the case may be, I was exuberantly joyful.  Finding myself, even now, please to have shared in such high spirits.

Most curiously, I can't help but wonder which of our lifetimes together this was?  I know for certain it is not from this one.  For we have yet to begin this time around.