Category Archives: musing

the life that is waiting

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The life that is waiting for me is real and gritty and human
and full of struggle and love and disappointment and joy and connection.
The people there are real and flawed
and I still have to do my work
and clean the bathroom
and deal with my husband’s snoring and dirty socks.

It is not a sugar coated, glossy magazine styled life.

Will I quest for this life?
Will I give up the illusion that life can be,
is suppose to be, Pinterest and Instagram’s love child
for the sweat and heartbreak of the flesh and real,
growing older,
bones of living?

Will I give up my fantasy life for the one that beats here, now?

I don’t know.
Because it requires me to walk through the pain held in this body, this spirit, this life now.

 

These words came the other morning in response to a prompt.

“We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” ~ Joseph Campbell

I filtered through many dreamy, transformed, glittery, visions of my life that is waiting for me before this truth spilled itself. The life I have been waiting for, the one that waits for me, is the one I have. If I let myself live it. Not because it is perfect, but because it is mine. It is imperfect and raw and tattered around the edges and within it beats my very real and vulnerable heart.

It holds, I hold, each of us holds, a universe of all things. I often say there is a sensuality to living and this is what I mean. That living this life brings us into our body, into our felt reality of grief and joy, beauty and pain, anger and forgiveness. This is the glory and grace that is full living.

It is the pain in your muscles when you have worked out. It is the puffy eyes after a good cry. It is the delicate breeze with just enough chill to send you for a sweater. It is a lover’s touch, a baby’s giggle, the smell of dinner cooking, the anger caught in your throat, the spinning thoughts at 2am, the break up, the death, the sun rising each and every single day no matter what and the warm cup of tea that will greet it.

In my journal I said I didn’t know if I would choose this life. This real and gritty journey. As soon as I set down my pen my elemental nature I knew I would, knows that I do. It took the self attached to perfection and doing it right, who is so tired of fighting, it took this self a bit longer to sort through her resistance. To set down her striving and forcing.

I will continue to collect what strikes my fancy on Pinterest because it is fun and inspirational. I will continue to court beauty on Instagram, mine and others, because it is a worthy practice of the sensual heart. Dreamy, glittery, inspirational beauty is not bad. In fact it seeds the path before us- if we make space for the inevitable and very human bumps and hurts along the way. I have been judging them as wrong and proof of my failing. I have been trying to make them go away instead of allowing them to teach me. Deepen me. Heal me.

When I say there is a sensuality to living, I mean the all of living. I needed the reminder. Because life has been dull and hard and I have been discouraged. I will continue to need the reminder because I am human and get pulled to shiny, glittery, illusions and judge myself by them. Perhaps you do too.

I needed to dive deeper than the false gold of perfection to find where my heart lies. I found it in the real and gritty glory and mess of this life, here.

*******

I have openings for a few new private coaching clients beginning August. If you feel that having support in diving deeper into your sensuality of living, your own bone and flesh life that is waiting for you, let’s connect and see how I may be able to help.

because some days the world seems out to break your heart

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It is okay to take a break and smell the air after it has rained.
It is fine to look closely at the wet ground knowing treasure lives there.
It is acceptable to stand in the misty damp with out shoes on.
It is all right to wish for the birds to sing just for you.
It is allowed to play in and savor a world that also makes you weep in pain and grief.

In fact, it is necessary, required, essential, practical and sacred homecoming to yourself; to feel the aliveness of the earth
rising to meet you exactly and fully where you are in just this excruciating moment.

This is the way of the devotional self, the practice of finding yourself in the larger flow of the world, the simplicity of belonging to the cosmos simply because you are here.

This is how we stay sane in a world that on too many days seems out to break our hearts.

yesterday i baked a cake

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Yesterday I made a cake.

I beat the eggs and sugar until creamy, fluffy, and the most soothing soft yellow color. I watched as ribbons of it fell off the beaters as I lifted them from my favorite vintage Pyrex bowl.

I added the vanilla. Two kinds, extract and paste. The smell was divine as I watched the tiny specks of vanilla seeds from the paste spread through out the batter as I stirred. Warm and comforting.

I sifted in the flour and then folded, folded, ever so gently folded it in until incorporated, feeling the batter stiffen just a bit.

Then came the butter. Oh so much melted butter is added and again, gently folded in so as not the lose the air created with the earlier beating. Rivers and pockets of butter form and then are split apart with in the creamy batter until it all becomes one.

There is a slow rhythm to this cake. Patience and a soft touch reveal the sensuousness of what some may think of as a boring, too simple cake. But not me.

There is richness and complexity, nuance and layers hidden within what is often so easily disguarded as basic and mundane.

 

I poured the batter into the pan, again watching ripples flow down and spread with ease and just enough languid viscosity to create a kind of of slow motion dance. I think of my grandmother as I scrape the bowl and how she insisted on getting every speck of goodness into the pan, not wasting any drop. I swear she scrapped bowls so clean they didn’t need washing after. Not me. I always leave some of the goodness behind because poetry can be written about the joys of licking bowls and spatulas.

My cake is given over to the oven to let heat do its alchemy. The warm sent of vanilla spreads through out the house as the cake puffs high and browns evenly.

These moments, when the air is fragrant with the comfort of baking sweetness, the anticipation of that first warm bite even though the recipe says to wait until cooled, the peering thorough the oven door wishing it would make the baking faster because the waiting is so hard, these simple moments hold some of the great mysteries of being. How much sensual possibility each moment holds, how the craving to be immersed in a full experience of our senate natures is voiced though anticipation, how being in the moments between expectation and fulfillment stretch time so that we might sink deeper into an experience becoming itself.

And then it is done. My cake comes out of the oven and I place it on a cooling rack, its puffiness sinking just the right amount just as it should. After a few minutes of cooling I turn it over and it is that moment every baker waits for- is the cake going to release from the pan or stick? I hear and feel the quiet ~paaah~ as it drops free.

A perfect cake. Rich, soft, fragrant, intense, smooth, light.

Yesterday I needed something to bring me back home to myself. To slow down the worry bordering on panic. A mix of fear and uncertainty about what is happening in my county and the world was think and heavy. What is outside of my control spinning me outside of myself, leaving me ungrounded and unsure. And so I baked a cake. A simple, humble cake. Each step slowing me down, bringing me present, opening my senses, bridging the ordinary and exquisite of life, returning me to my elemental nature. I felt myself again.

There is nothing new or revolutionary in this story. And yet those things that comfort and return us to ourselves seldom are. Simple practices, old fashion comforts, humble day to day living stuff. Take a walk. Talk to a friend. Notice beauty. Make something with your hands. Slow down.

There is richness and complexity, nuance and layers, hidden within what is often so easily disguarded as basic and mundane.

 

So often this is deemed too ordinary and simplistic for such complex and grave problems as we face today. It is not. There is sacred in mundane, glory in basic, salvation in common and simple acts of nurturing and pleasure.

Yesterday mine took the form of a baking a cake.

~oracle friday~ march 3, 2017- vulnerability

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Vulnerability,

from Venus Rising by Outi Art

Vulnerability is the meeting place of
truth and the unknown

A place where, rooted in full honesty of our being
we risk the mystery of will happen next

It is the beginning of what is meant to be
the releasing of false hope
the unveiling of what is now real

Lean into the charged energy of the moment of vulnerability
savor the expectation of what is now ready to be

This is is not a time of safety and hiding
but one of revealing the heart within each of our longings

*****

Where is life asking you to be more vulnerable and true?
Take at least one small step there today.

beautiful rightness and the quest for our elemental nature

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I integrate slowly. Like honey that has been stored in a cold place, the flow is incremental. I want the resolution, the insight, the clarity right now because the tension in the waiting is uncomfortable. I am often impatient and judgmental with myself. And yet, I can’t, I won’t, jump into things with out my inner alignment anymore. Age and wisdom have done their parts to temper my restlessness and drive for action at the cost of readiness and timing.

I get caught in the bias for fast and quick. I love the feeling of the pieces falling into place, the grand download of the plan, the a-ha moment, the “Eureka! I’ve found it” exhilaration that propels me into inspired action and swift progress. In my frustration with slow I forget that these moments of flashing clarity never come without the ground work having been laid by stretches of time learning, exploring, practicing, and allowing.

Every drop of honey is the work of untold numbers of bees. The blossoms that attracts those bees only burst forth after a cold winter. Most of the time the work and time tending are unnoticed or unacknowledged. We, I at least, separate this necessary tending work and time from the triumphant outcome, therefore making that outcome more important than what created it. To have a robust harvest, good and nourishing cultivation must take place first.

Is my pace really any slower than others? More than some and less than others I have observed. Years of living and self exploration, coaching and reading for others, studying the way our individual energy works, what I know is that my way is my way. Just as yours is uniquely yours. There is a beautiful rightness to our way- for us.

It is this ‘beautiful rightness” that I truly crave rather than the faster pace I get hooked into. Not the way it looks for others, which can be so seductive. It always seems easier for those magical others I admire. This ease I project onto others is an illusion of my own flawed expectations. Their way is not mine, nor mine theirs.

It is this Beautiful Rightness I help others find for themselves.

I also call this our Elemental Nature. When we trust it, honor it, use it, lean into it as the the powerful gift it is, our life feels like it is truly ours and we are at home in it.

It is already inside you, I help you listen to it.

Human Design Readings illuminate how your individual energy is designed to flow and how best it in the highest and most effective way. Lumina Guidance is a deep, soul dive intuitive season bringing in Human Design (you do not need to have had a reading) Tarot and Oracle cards to explore what is unfolding in your life right now. Personal Coaching is sustained support as you discover and live more true to your own beautiful and uniquely right way. We each have a life path that is only our own.

In a world that all to often seems built on competition, comparison and the never ending demands to achieve a cookie cutter version of success, it is a radical and sovereign thing to embrace your own way. No matter what way that is.

the world is in conversation with us- always

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This afternoon.

I pulled a card.

A Turning in the Journey.

After weeks of rain and storms, I perused the plants in our tiny garden. A preliminary check to see what is happening as Spring approaches. A plant I thought died last summer is coming back to life.

A Bleeding Heart.

I moved my altar to the space under the window. The place it has wanted to be since we moved here a year and half ago. I resisted this spot because often I try and control the way energy flows in my personal spaces when I feel out of control in other ways.

I laid on my bed watching the clouds out of my bedroom window. Dark grey, stormy clouds against white fluffy ones, against the blue sky. The setting sun, warm through the glass takes the chill off of the room. I wonder what is changing in me and for me as I feel the shift in seasons staring. The first blossoms are on the trees, daffodils are in full glory, the days are getting longer.

A turn in the journey, Bleeding Hearts, sacred space evolution, the seasonal wheel turning.

The world is in conversation with me. Elegant and simple, always happening, always speaking its language of symbol and metaphor. My heart understands even as my mind tries to reason and dissect, extrapolate and predict, trashing about assigning meanings that are forced and overly complected. Ever scrambling to pin down the Mystery.

The most essential part of being in communion with the world is realizing you already are. Follow the stream of what grabs your attention. A deck of cards, something peeking out of the soil, an empty space begging to filled, a bone deep desire to lay down and watch some clouds.

It requires a type of listening. With your body, your senses, your imagination, your non-linear self. It is a quality I attribute to the “sensuality of living”. The ebb and flow of life through and around us, touching our being in concrete and interdementional ways.

When your soul settles you know you have the message, whether or not it comes in words that make any sense at all.

******

Oracles are one of my favorite ways to listen to the conversation the world wants to have with us. So, if you want a little message of self love, Intuitive Love Notes are still available- until February 28.