the sun is hitting the window at just the right angle to cause your head to turn
and you catch the glory of light bouncing off of and between
Nature
Just
Outside
Your
Window
and in that moment you find yourself
renewed, reminded, ready
to take your next step, your next glorious step into life
it only looks humble and mundane
like writing out bills
or doing the dishes
or getting ready for a meeting
but really it is the thing connecting you to everything you dream
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Do you know I have a private corner in this virtual temple?
That is how I think of my Luscious Soulful Beauty e-letter.
I share more thoughts and ideas on living a connected and soulful life that I don’t share anywhere else, and it is the first place I announce exciting stuff.
I cleaned the house, the kind of cleaning that happens when guests come.
Today
I wondered why I am devoted to my guests coming into a clean and neat home and I am not equally devoted to giving this same thoughtfulness to myself.
Today
I chose to be curious instead of plop myself straight into failure-as-a-human land.
Today
When I chose to be curious instead of self judgemental, I noticed brief moments of contentment amidst tasks I hate.
Today
As I acted from devotion to another, I took wholehearted action in an area I typically aviod as much at possible. Because I want my guest to be welcomed with spaciousness and beauty in my home.
Today
I felt my heart break a little when I realized I do not hold the space of such devotion for myself.
Today
Because I chose curiosity instead of judgment I am left exploring how I would be different if I treated myself with the gracious consideration and devotion I give my guests.
1. I woke up before dawn from a very disturbing dream. I found watching the sun come up very soothing. Nature will always calm a jumpy mind.
2. Yesterday I had a ball of anxiety in my chest, perhaps the precursor to the dream this morning. Me thinks something big is getting ready to shift.
3. It was challenging to not chase away the anxiety and just let it have its corner of my day. I’ve been getting signals that I am trying to make change happen too fast, pushing for an outcome. My Priestess is reminding me that allowing is the energy to cultivate right now.
4. Allowing is not the same as waiting, abdicating responsibility, or avoiding action. Allowing is leaving the door to all-that-is open and inviting what comes though to sit and have a cup of tea.
5. Having a cup of tea is not a life long commitment. It is just a moment, this moment, right now. Breathe in, breathe out.
6. My pace right now is slow and internal. Trying to make it big and external is me trying to play by someone else’s rules. This never works.
7. This is what guidance looks like at times. Allowing all-that-is to have space in this moment, inviting even the uncomfortable in for tea and a bit of conversation.
Sometimes, if you allow it, the random is the guidance.
We think of guidance as a flash of insight, the wise words of a sage, a divine sign that eliminates all doubt and confusion.
I say this is the end result of guidance.
Guidance is a journey where the information, intuitions, synchronistic happenstance, all the subtle and not so subtle signs, point you to where you want to go- where you most need to go.
Guidance is a process that can only happen in willingness.
It is a sacred request from the Unseens to open to the wisdom needed at this time, in this moment, for these circumstances.
The pathway through which guidance finds you is not always logical, expected, or even practical in ordinary ways of thinking.
It requires Trust.
Discernment.
Courage.
Imagination.
Attention.
It asks you to pause and step outside the ordinary.
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The above is the opening to The Path of Guidance, a companion workbook to the Guidance Sessions, my newest service offering. This is a two part, sacred conversation blending the practical support of coaching with the intuitive insight of Tarot.
Sometimes you want some direction and clarity.
Sometimes you want to find your way back into alignment with your self and your life.
Sometimes you need some sacred space holding and a partner to tune you into the quiet truth of your heart.
If this sounds like you, if it is time to step outside the ordinary and find more of yourself, look and see if you are guided to have your own Guidance Sessions. Details here.
“My session with Sandi was one of the most powerful and magical experiences I’ve ever had in a coaching session — or a tarot reading.” Elena DuCharme, Attorney and Performance Coach.
In my last post I wrote that your Priestess self “is the practical expression of your feminine divinity in the world. Kind of like your personal, cosmic superheroine.” I thought I would highlight some of her qualities so you can recognize the part of you that is her.
…
She seeks the truth that lives beyond the rules, conventions, and niceties of everyday life.
…
She knows that purpose and passion are realities to unfold, not measures of relevance.
…
Her heart beats in time to the eternal rhythm that threads lifetimes together.
…
Her whispers and wisdom may not sync with your linear timetable, but listen and you will hear what is in the space between logic and time. Then make the linear sync with you and they will call it magic.
…
She believes the energies of pleasure, beauty, and desire, are sacred and essential for you to do your good work.
…
She is as compelled by the mysteries of living as by the grit required to live it.
…
She has no use for convention for the sake of fitting in, doing for the sake of approval, accomplishing for the sake of belonging, or waiting for things to get better before you start.
…
She is your ultimate truth teller, peace finder, world changer.
…
If you want to awaken more of your Priestess self, consider my offereing Culitvating the Priestess. It is a coaching journey that will give you the energetic and practical tools to claim your authority, create your sovereign life, and give the world your unique gifts.
What does it really mean- “have my life together?”
A perfectly clean and decorated house?
A new fancy car?
A 6 figure income? Or is 7 figures the new success marker?
Getting to your goal weight?
Having a neat and tidy family where the members never come home late, forget to call, fight over homework, leave the leftovers and dirty dishes out all night, or forget the one thing at the grocery store they went for in the first place?
Maybe when you can do the head stand in yoga class (unassisted of course), or run the half marathon, or just learn to love green juicing already- then, then, you will feel sure of yourself and have it together.
But of course, even if you could pull it all together you realize it’s too late anyway because shouldn’t you have checked all this off the list by the time you were 30?
But feeling decades behind can be motivating, right? Like you need to catch up.
Here is a not-so-secret secret:
You will never be all together.
Not all at the same time. And the bits that do come together, they will not last. Life will forever be in flux, it doesn’t have a timetable, and you will always being adjusting to that.
No matter how neat and organized the house, it will get dirty again. Laundry will pile up, the couch will get stained. Your hair will clog the drain and you will have to fish a big, slimy, black hairball out of the pipe with the bent end of a coat hanger. This last bit may or may not make you want to throw up. It happens.
You will overindulge at the holidays, gain back the 5 pounds you lost, yell at your kid/ friend/partner/neighbor because you haven’t slept in the last 5 nights and you just don’t have an unfrayed nerve left. Or because your cat died 6 months ago and you still miss her like crazy.
And when these things happen will you use them as proof that you don’t have it together and have that mean you posses an inhuman flaw that must be hidden until it can be eradicated.
Here is a bigger not-so-secret secret:
You are not alone.
We are all at least a little crazy, more than a bit imperfect, and ever so likely to fall painfully short of our own expectations on a regular basis.
You do not have exclusive access to the striving for perfection and failing miserably club. The membership is huge. I know this does not really make you feel any better about how not together your life is.
So you buy the fancy car. But it comes with a big car payment and insurance bill that stretches your budget just a bit beyond comfortable. It will ongoingly need gas and oil changes and new windshield wipers and at some point it will will get scratched or dented.
Making more money will help, yes? Surely the 6 figure (or is it 7 figures?) income will help you feel better. Except that it doesn’t because you worry about losing the job, the clients, the business, or you get so burned out trying to make it all happen that you have a knot in your stomach all the time because all you really want to do is sit and sip your tea by the window and maybe embroider a fancy handkerchief like your mother told you your grandmother use to do when she was growing up.
The weight of it all is overwhelming.
Which leads you right back to the demand, the plea, to just get your life together already!! You may find yourself embellishing this with one or more colorful swear words. It’s okay. You would not be the first.
And here is the tragedy:
All this wishing, trying, wanting to have it together and what you make it mean about you that you don’t, it drowns out your inner guide, leads you to grasp at the illusions of a meaningful life rather than allowing your Soul to lead you where you are most meant to go. It leaves you cut off from the part of you that holds your purpose, your vision, your sacred life journey.
It keeps you from your Priestess self.
Who is she, your Priestess self? Most simply put, she is the practical expression of your feminine divinity in the world. Kind of like your personal, cosmic superheroine. More about her coming soon. For now just know that the worry about “having life together” is the spiritual equivalent to getting stuck in quicksand and the rope that will pull you out is your connection to your Priestess.
Next time I will talk more about your Priestess, who she is and how she shows up in your life. Until then check out these other posts. I think you will find them interesting.
A well smudged home will change the course of my day.
A “random” heart shaped rock at my feet gives me the courage to admit a deep truth I have kept secret.
A shuffle of cards helps punch through mental fog that keeps me spinning in circles instead of acting.
There is a profound practicality found in what many dismiss as airy-fairy.
At the heart of any practice labeled woo-woo is the ability to bring present the more real hidden away in the complexity, and distractions, of the material, consensus world.
Sometimes what is is perceptible with our 5 physical senses does not give us complete information. Often we need to look behind the veil of the rational world to get the deeper, fuller truth.
When the unseen of life is allowed presence we are grounded in a more complete, a more real world. Rather than ignoring or escaping reality, we are brought ever deeper into it.
We find greater capacity for knowing ourselves and what we want, what is being called for and what is needed. Life expands beyond cause and effect and into dimensionality and wonder.
Purpose and power live here.
This is not blind trust, setting aside of logic, suspending belief, or wishful thinking. It is nuts and bolts information gathering, conscious choice making, and ultimately, practical life building.
The mystical woo is not a special effect used to fill the gap between the real and not real, it is an essential building block of what is real.
(if you want to find your own balance of practical woo you may be interested in The Guidance Sessions. Please take a look.)