I’d Rather be Liked

When I first began to study the Bhagavad Gita with my spiritual teacher, she advised the small number of students, “Be aware that when you study the sacred scriptures, Life will offer you the circumstances to understand the lessons.” That is certainly my experience and choosing to live from a higher understanding frees us ultimately from pain, fear and suffering – but (and here’s the catch) – not without experiencing it first. 

The Meaning of Courage

It is in walking through the fire of fear, betrayal, loss, suffering, grief that we see that this is the fire that strengthens the steel of our character and spiritual expression and burns away all that does not serve the Higher Self.

Read more…

Technorati Tags: "Bhagavad Gita", "Sri Krishna", Arjuna, Buddha, choice, courage, desire, evolution, freedom, Happiness, health, Krishna, love, personal, power, prayer, self-esteem, soul, spirit, suffering, Vitality

Willing the Peace and Being the Joy of the Season

From Christmas 2009

Reading time: 10 minutes + -

My Sweetheart came looking for me last Sunday morning to bring me  a cup of coffee.  He found me in the living room washing the floor on my hands and knees.  “Why are you doing that?” he asked.  Anyone who knows me knows that housekeeping is not my usual thing.  In fact anyone who comes to my house without warning is witness to that.

“I just wanted to clean in the corners and behind the tree.” (as if that made sense).  It wasn’t a moment before that I confided I was a little bit sad about Christmas.  It was Christmas Eve three years ago that my beloved husband, George, began his final decent to his death in early February.  Little wonder that my sons weren’t all fired up about the holiday.  Of course, the tears that threatened just eased the flow of the other woes that didn’t quite fit with the tree sparkling with lights in the corner.

Then I just dumped out the whole gunny sack of emotions:  It was five days until  Christmas and I didn’t have the money to shop.  A business venture was turning sour and a friend I trusted had abused that trust.  I had neglected what was most important to me to ‘do’ other things and I was left with the emptiness of time wasted.  My house had been for sale for a year and a half and I had no idea what the spring held.  I had dreams and wishes – but right then I had a floor to wash.

Christmas has a way of shining a Klieg light on life.  Where’s the promised joy?  Where is the peace?  We can blame commercialism.  We can blame religiosity.  We can blame the market, the kids, our job.  But it isn’t Christmas that is wrong.  It’s that we are looking in the wrong place for its meaning.  It is not in the words of “Oh Come All Ye Faithful”.  It’s not in the lineup for Tiffany’s.  It’s not in a cup of eggnog – rum or no rum.  It is not in a Norman Rockwell painting.  It isn’t even at midnight mass.  Peace and joy start on the inside and work their way out.  Christmas symbols are the map to find those twin twinkling lights within. Read more…

Technorati Tags: Bethlehem, birth, Christ, Christmas, conception, consciousness, Eastern, frankincense, gifts, gold, immaculate, Joseph, manger, Mary, men, myrrh, personal, potential, power, shepherds, soul, spirit, stable, star, virgin, wisdom, wise

Before we can find our Self.

There are early morning sounds in the street below me. I have just returned upstairs from the first day at my ‘nano’ office. It is a display window in the lane that runs between Cumberland and Yorkville in the trendy heart of Toronto. I used green painters’ tape to fix a piece of paper with the word INSPIRATION in orange lettering on the back wall. I also placed three smooth stones – two black and one white – on the floor and traced the word again in the dirt and footprints of the last ‘tenant’.

Why did I do that? I’m not entirely sure. Its the first gesture of a new beginning.

It’s my birthday today. And it seems as good a day as any to ask myself such questions. The window will emerge from this one word to eventually display vibrant and joyful works of art by painters I know, respect, love, and admire. They are friends of mine and over the next year we will make the world more beautiful through works of art and more inspired through labours of love. Right here in the middle of the city.

I have not only surprised myself, but I have dumbfounded most of my friends.

Here’s another question: “What the heck am I doing here?” I have not only surprised myself, but I have dumbfounded most of my friends who would have thought they knew me well. Being here, now, was beyond anyone’s expectation a few short months ago. This time last year I was likely sitting on my back deck with a creamy cup of coffee loving how the early morning sun glimpsed through the trees. Read more…

Technorati Tags: actualization, consciousness, evolution, Happiness, love, personal, potential, soul, spirit, will

Holding on to stuff we should be letting go makes it tougher!

For those of us who have enjoyed the cumulative freedom of catharses (plural) will know that it is like going through a very tiny knothole into the meadow of an actualized life. Hmmm kinda like a birth. Nature is rich with metaphor if only we could grasp it while we are in labour giving birth to our whole Selves! First there is the messy work – oh gawd. And then there is the sweet smelling frilly part. Smiles. The integration. The ‘ah ha!’ moment. You kind of get it and then over the passing days and months you find yourself living life just a little differently. More centred. More trusting of yourself. Expressing more of yourself from a deeper part of your heart. What you ‘got’ at the emerging from the knothole was only the beginning. Read more…

Technorati Tags: actualization, courage, creativity, desire, evolution, freedom, Happiness, health, heart's, mind, peace, personal, potential, self-esteem, soul, spirit, will, wisdom

How a simple reversal of perspective will give you the life you desire.

But first I have to share a word with you that is so significant to our health and happiness it is the only key to our personal joy and to the flourishing of the Earth and the Universe she rests in. So mystical is this word that it frightens us and wakes us in the night and causes war among brothers. So magical a word that when we say it with understanding we are liberated from all fears – forever. This word represents a gift of creation so powerful that it rivals the miracle of our birth. And that word is DEATH. Read more…

Technorati Tags: actualization, creativity, desire, evolution, freedom, Happiness, heart's, mind, peace, personal, potential, power, self-respect, soul, Vitality, wisdom

How to reclaim your heart.

Part 3 of 3

The dragon must die but to vanquish it, it must be lured from the cave into the light. All this drama of heroes, damsels, dragons, heart, and self, courage, and fear is the stuff our our daily life on Earth. Applying the archetypes only facilitates in understanding the active energy of these forces as they motivate or limit us from within, and as they attract external circumstances and relationships to perpetuate and feed the momentum of self deception – the dragon. Read more…

Technorati Tags: courage, creativity, desire, evolution, Happiness, health, heart's, mind, peace, personal, potential, power, release, soul, spirit

Do you feel the hot breath of self doubt on your neck?

Part 2 of 3

I am as passionate about the nature of business as I am about the nature of the body and spirit. For me, a card carrying entrepreneur and risk taker, I devour books on business trends and strategies with equal pleasure as I do ancient spiritual teachings. I am as fascinated in how to develop a new market as I am how to reveal the inner spark of creativity. Actually its all the same to me. Read more…

Technorati Tags: actualization, creativity, desire, evolution, freedom, Happiness, heart's, mind, peace, personal, potential, power, release, self-esteem, self-love, self-respect, soul, spirit, will, wisdom

Can you name the dragon that feeds on your health and happiness?

Part 1 of 3

Today was a bad day. It didn’t start out that way but a series of events – innocuous, small, some positive, some negative, started tripping me up and the next thing I knew I was on a spiral of dark feelings. I didn’t want to be alone with myself and I didn’t want to be with anyone – especially the one who loved me. I thought of calling a friend to see if she’d like to go to a show last minute, but decided she just might and then I would either be pretending I wasn’t bleak or else I would be dumping out a load of useless whining about not being good enough! Read more…

Technorati Tags: actualization, desire, evolution, freedom, Happiness, health, heart's, herbal, iridology, love, remedies, soul, spirit, spirituality, stamina, strength, therapy, Vitality, will, wisdom, worthiness

Does your life reflect your heart’s desires?

When I hear the phrase, “You reap what you sow!”, I can picture my Aunt Myrtles’ piercing brown- black eyes and her mouth clamped shut in final punctuation. The meaning was unmistakable. It was all about punishment for misdeeds. And, man – I was guilty all day long! I didn’t say thank you. I didn’t smooth the pleats in my kilt before I sat down. I cried when she made me cut hair in a ‘pixie’ style. I refused to eat her lumpy burned gravy and it was decades before I ate parsnips again! (who boils them?) I was ungrateful, unmanageable, and ‘too moody for my own good’. Read more…

Technorati Tags: creativity, desire, freedom, Happiness, heart's, mind, peace, self-esteem, self-love, self-respect, soul, spirit, Vitality

How to let go of depression and the other saboteurs of happiness.

The muses, for me, are like a child, predawn, on Christmas morning. They stand quietly near my bed and lift an eyelid and say, “Are you awake?” I roll over and try to ignore the gentle prodding and then there will be a whisper in my mind. Some image – grouping of words – an inspiration of something that might be shared. I promise myself I will remember it all in the morning. But no. It is now that the phrases begin to tumble forth and, well, I might as well swing out of bed and follow the little one in the Doctor Denton’s up the stairs. I can nap later. Read more…

Technorati Tags: body, depression, energy, Happiness, health, heredity, hypnotherapy, Journeywork, mind, psychotherapy, Reiki, release, soul, spirit, subtle, therapy, yoga