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.

Rilke

I love the dark hours of my being,

My minds deepens into them.

There I can find the days of my life,

as in old letters, already lived, 

and held like a legend, and understood.

...

Then the knowing comes.

Fall, Winter, Spring

I'm so in love with life right now!  It seems to be overflowing me in every direction.  I feel full of joy and am constantly bubbling with excitement... and I can't articulate the exact reasons why!  But part of me is plugged into an amazing frequency that is making my whole self vibrate with optimism and glee.

Nine months from today will be June 27, 2011.  This school year will be complete at that time.  NO, I'm not wishing my time away.  In fact I am enjoying everyday and feeling very present in these moments.  Perhaps when you know things are coming to a close, you can slow yourself down just a little bit more than your usual to enjoy them.  One thing for certain is that 9 months is not a long time!

I don't know exactly where life is taking me.  But I know I want to go.

She said.  

Tonight.

The thing about drinking too much wine is that it takes a while to kick in.  And by that time, it is far too late!  Why must it feel like such a good and sophisticated idea in the beginning?  And why oh why am I such  a slow learner...?

Ease.

Life is chalked full of interesting possibilities and coincidences.  And it seems once you start moving in the direction of some of those possibilities, coincidences start piling up like your favorite ice cream flavors on a homemade waffle cone!

Be completely in love with your life.  Recognize the parts that bring you joy and name them.  Say them out loud with a grateful heart.  Find within them the energy that heals you.

Don't expect it to be easy.  In the thing you want the most (it's obviously not easy or you'd already have it to enjoy now) you have to open yourself up to receiving.  This takes courage.

Whenever I'm in a yoga pose I find especially challenging, I try to find that spot where I can let it be easy, the place where I love the pose so much that my body cooperates and surrenders. Usually I find it in the breath, the moment I decide to just be and allow the world to swallow me up with its beauty.

Energy

In the last month I can see that I've opened up to new energy currents.  I've know for some time that they were there, waiting in the wing, but it was as though they waited on the other side of a divide I had no access to cross.  Until recently.  I'm sure that in some capacity I will be blogging about it often in the months to come.  At the very least eluding to the ways I feel these new energies changing me and the possibilities that are coming into view.

For some time my 5th chakra, the throat chakra has been giving me grief.  Late in the summer, just before returning back to Alberta from summer holidays, I went to see an intuitive channeler.  Apart from my name and birth date (information given to her by my aunt prior to my visit), we had never met and she knew nothing of me.  To my great pleasure the first thing she spoke of (within 60 seconds of my reading) was a need to open around and in the throat.

She told me that the 5th chakra is seeking to expand my voice box to grow.  And as my soul essence works and blends with my human self, its focus is the throat and that I have been reflected in my language more than I have been realizing in my life up until now.  As I thought about the types of writing you are prone to find here in my little blog, I decided that she was/is exactly right.  My written language especially, finds expression in things here that I have not made space for in daily life.  They make up my interior landscape but are yet to be seen on the outer.

Since returning I've given a great deal of contemplation to this chakra.  (Among a host of other things!)  And realized that part of opening up would require a new direction of truth.  I'll just say that it is a truth I've feared for so long I've stopped counting the years.  When I got home, it was as though it was impossible to keep up such facades any longer.  In fact, maintaining the status-quo was causing me physical illness.

My beliefs in the mind/body connection are strong.  And truth, has this way of finding its own platform to be heard on.  I know that it is directly linked to the many coincidences and synchonicities that have been sliding in and out of my vision lately.  One being these energy currents that are at work on my behalf and effortlessly moving me forward.

I feel a gratification for these present moments and the future.  And it is stemming straight out of truth-telling and the wondrous joyfulness that floods your heart when you let go of fear and do the thing your higher self has been pestering you to do.

This amazing intuitive woman whispered many things about myself to me.  This is just one small piece of the package she gifted me with.  But what I learned most importantly from the experience is that my own intuition is sound and strong and I need to give serious credence to this aspect of me!   It is incredibly freeing to think about the future with knowledge of all of the guides and energies that are available to me and working on my behalf to direct my path.

Finding

I have long been in search of FREEDOM.  I really like what this has to say.

She said.

I've decided to open my other blog back up.  :)  So thanks for being patient while I was on a temporary shutdown.  Also, my url has changed.... just in case you were one of  the amazing people who has me bookmarked!  Peace.  She said.  

With Thanks

This week I had my grade 3 students start a Gratitude journal.  And they are so adorably on board that it makes my heart sing when I watch them concentrating on the things that they are thankful for and brings them joy.  To model the way I want their journals to look, I myself have been making a 5 part list on the board each day and leaving it there.

And really, it is the simple things in life that form the foundation of our happiness.  I'm thankful for breakfast and clean water to drink.  Hot showers.  Epsom salts for my bath.  A dash of cereal cream for my coffee.  A full tank of gas to get me to and fro.  Yoga pants.  Family.  Friends.  Comfortable shoes... there is an infinitely long list of things for which I am grateful.  And it feels good to think on these things.

 Fix your thoughts on what is true, 

and honorable, and right, and pure, 

and lovely, and admirable. 

Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

Philippians 4:8

Last night, Laura and I went out for some girlfriend time.  And while we were together, talking and eating fat laden food and drinking blue martinis, I was so grateful for our time even as it was happening.  We've been the kind of friends that endure, that can make it through the rough patches, that randomly say "I love you" and mean it deeply.  

Her mom was diagnosed with Alzheimers in the spring and has deteriorated quickly, recently having been hospitalized and now temporarily in a nursing home awaiting a permanent placement.  Nancy is only 62 years old and her life has been stolen.  She's trapped in times and places from long ago.  And her situation makes me both profoundly sad for my dear friend and her family as well as eternally grateful for the gift of life NOW.  A reminder to not squander it on things that don't matter.  To not let it be consumed without regard for what I want out of life. 

Someone asked me this summer what I want out of life.  I think I said something like I want more life.  I want to experience it fully.  I want to become in a sense transparent, so open to it all that it flows through me with an endless sense of joy and opening.  And I'm pretty close to that.  I am feeling and experiencing it at an increasing rate.  And gratitude just swings the door wider.  Sets a welcome mat for everything I want.  

Laura wanted to know what has changed with me.  She told me that I'm different since coming back from the summer away.  More like my old self.  More like the me she met too many years ago to count.  I smiled at her across the table.  Happy that she is keenly aware of all my subtleties.  And I have changed.  And am so grateful for my ever evolving spirit.