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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…