“An epiphany: when the veil is pulled back.” ~ John O’Donohue

I love epiphanies. Sensory bursts of revelation, inspiration, and realization. For instance, my space revolution sessions could be called space revelation sessions, to reveal the nature of their offerings.

Epiphanies are revelations, manifestation of one’s truest self, aha moments that fill you with wonder, realizations that sink their teeth deep into the substance of our lives. No, nothing really changes on the outside or even on the inside but there is a sudden flash, viewpoint, deeper perspective shining light on something. Moments bursting with truth in the showing forth of one’s nature. When in moments of intimacy,

‘the soul of the commonest object … seems to us radiant.’ ~ James Joyce

They are the points of illumination along our path. Markers. Signs. Messages from mystery. These epiphanies are spiritual but not disengaged from life. Evanescent in nature, they have very practical applications.

We spend so much time veiling ourselves. What can we learn from all those parts that we have kept hidden from view?

A lot, if we dare to remember another kind of language. Our environments can assist us in offering these points of illumination, communication, and transmission. When we start caring for the spaces we neglect in the inner and outer landscapes of our lives, there is a surge of energy, and integration begins to take place. Flow unravels, awakens, wild and free. We are remembering how to inhabit and enliven the most sacred of spaces, our hearts.

With love,

“Millions of people are suffering: they want to be loved but they don’t know how to love. And love cannot exist as a monologue; it is a dialogue, a very harmonious dialogue.” ~ Osho

Indeed, we thrive when we experience a dialogue with all life. This dialogue is an exchange, enlivened by intimacy, the kind that fills you with trust, curiosity and real engagement. A certain intimacy with the objects that surrounds us, the people we come into contact with, the art we create, the gifts we explore and the spaces we inhabit. Our relationships extend beyond our interactions with people. We have relationships with spirit, soul, objects, spaces, art, nature and life itself.

What are the conditions that foster intimacy? A willingness to explore, to discover, to breathe fully. Like water, like air, like sunlight. Intimate spaces: organic, warm, inviting, welcoming, nourishing, wild. Mindful relationships with the myriad manifestations of life revealed in the every day, the sacred pulsing in the mundane. Here is the quote from my last post introducing my take on wabi-sabi to you, from a beautiful book I treasure, Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren:

“Things wabi-sabi..beckon: get close, touch, relate. They inspire a reduction of the psychic distance between one thing and another thing; between people and things.” ~ Wabi-Sabi

A sense of intimacy beckons us to bridge the gap that separate us, to illuminate the space between us, soften our gaze and integrate. What if that which we label as ugly, difficult, and unbearable had something to say? Make space for deep listening. Yesterday, I saw a film with good efforts to take the point of view of plants. However, I was not pleased when Pollan, the author of the book (The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World) that this film is based on, states that plants don’t have consciousness. They DO. Plants have consciousness and it is time we listen and receive their teachings of love.

The sense of hierarchy between observer and observed is obsolete. It doesn’t serve us anymore because it doesn’t reflect the richness of possible experience revealed in our daily interactions. We know that the observed is transformed by the gaze of the observer. What escapes us is the observer being transformed by the observed as well. When the rigid hierarchies and identities of observer and observed fall apart, when we surrender expectation and melt in a sea of awareness, what rises in the place of outgrown notions is the process of transformation and alchemy. Ultimately, the consciousness of life observes, experiences, embodies, transforms and realizes itself. We are all part of the web of life.

In the wild, all beautiful things perish. Intimacy demands that you witness the cycle of life fully, from seed, to sprout, to bloom, back to the earth. It is easy to become intimate with what we already love. What about becoming intimate with what we dislike and even fear, all that makes us uncomfortable.

“Wabi-Sabi represents the exact opposite of the Western ideal of great beauty as something monumental, spectacular, and enduring. Wabi-sabi is not found in nature at moments of bloom and lushness, but at moments of inception and subsiding. Wabi-sabi is not about gorgeous flowers, majestic trees, or bold landscapes. Wabi-sabi is about the minor and the hidden, the tentative and the ephemeral: things so subtle and evanescent..to experience wabi-sabi means you have to slow way down, be patient, and look very closely.” ~ Wabi-Sabi

Slow down, be patient, look very closely. This might elicit fear as we approach ideas of slowing down, aging, withering, our own mortality. I invite you to get closer to something that you neglected, ignored and did not regard as beautiful before. Open your mind. Open your heart. Be present. Take a good look around. What catches your attention? Get closer. Hold it. Behold it. Let it shine. Bathe in its light. Let love flow.
Experience intimacy. If you allow this ancient air to fill you with inspiration, you might experience a beauty never seen before,

“…an altered state of consciousness, an extraordinary moment of poetry and grace.” ~ Wabi-Sabi

May your days be filled with poetry and grace and the flow of true intimacy and mystery dancing between us. How do you feel when someone or something looks into your soul? That is intimacy. Feel it. Revel in it. To see and be seen is a gift.

“When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

To all our relations. With love,

Marjory

Full Moon blessings dear ones!

I took this picture in Coral Castle, Miami. We have much to learn from mosquitoes.

With  love,

I took the picture in the background of this beautiful message one day wandering through the streets of Miami. I saw a beautiful pattern of what appeared to be cracks in the surface of a low wall on the street. I saw mountains and valleys in these cracks resembling the shape of a beautiful landscape.  They had a mind of their own. I was transported, immersed in their world, mesmerized by their beauty.

And so here I am, still breathing in the beauty of that moment. I love beauty that catches me off guard, melting mind and flowing heart.

Today, you can open your awareness to something in your field of vision. Go ahead, get closer. Release your search for perfection. Get messy. Appreciate. Observe. Be transformed.

“Things wabi-sabi..beckon: get close, touch, relate. They inspire a reduction of the psychic distance between one thing and another thing; between people and things.” ~Leonard Koren

Because it is time to play together! More on the beauty of wabi-sabi soon! With love,

It is time to go beyond paying lip service to feminine principles and really put them into action. What stands between our sleep and our awakening is just a song away. Listen up, listen deep with your heart dear ones:

“In the distance a hum, the soft sound of people waking up: waking up to what is possible for the earth at this sensitive juncture, waking up to the call that is coming form our ancestors and from future generations, a call to awaken.”
~The Turning Tide Coalition

We are indoctrinated into learning; it is the western way after all, but truth is revealed when we undo, uncover, unveil and peel away the layers of misperceptions that obscure our experience of being and of life.

And so here is a layer of experience. Money. Money is still taboo. It might not feel that way but it still is. I wonder what this word evokes for you and if you are willing to share your thoughts. There are a set of assumptions that rule the way we let it control our lives, without our ever questioning its past, present and future as well as our relationship with it. Either way, revered or scorned, money remains an unconscious part of our lives until it is brought into the light of awareness and used for good.

I want to explore our ambivalence around money. Discuss the ways we feel about it. Bring up its history. Wash away its soul. Renew its purpose. Awaken its heart and in this way restore our sanity, our wholeness, our sacredness.

I read The Soul of Money: Reclaiming the Wealth of Our Inner Resources by Lynne Twist in January, 2012 and I have been digesting her words of wisdom ever since. I applaud Lynne’s courage to highlight the opportunity that we have right now to awaken the heart of our relationship with money, not as a measure of who we are, because abundance and radiance can’t be measured by money; but as a conduit of a new vision of flow with the power to benefit all of creation.

There has been a great schism between money and soul. Lynne Twist’s book The Soul of Money is about healing that divide, about aligning heart with power, money with soul and feeding our hunger for meaningful lives once and for all.

THE SHADOW

But first, let’s talk about its shadow. Money is of the most misaligned aspects of contemporary life. Money seems to have lost its soul or did it ever have one? Its power could reach all, however, it stays only with a few.

“Money itself isn’t the issue. It is neutral. It’s the power we give it that gets our of control.”

Many of us have feared financial wealth because of its corrosive power throughout history. I have been aware of this dark side of money all my life. Yes, money is a conduit, a carrier of intention and purpose. It has been, however, often used as a measure of worth, success, goodness, ability and intelligence.

No doubt many feel repulsed by the shadow of money, for it

“has been used as an instrument of control and punishment, emotional escape or manipulation, or as a replacement for love.”

People have in the name of money and power

“killed for it, enslaved other people for it, and enslaved themselves to joyless lives in pursuit of it.”

What have we traded for money? Our souls? People sell their souls for money and sacrifice the most sacred of things, their spirit, their consciousness, their life force, even their mother Earth. Kill or rather die slowly for a false God. We tend to think that we are making a living but we are slowly dying inside, our souls withering like malnourished plants, tamed like caged birds with no song.

“The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live.” – Norman Cousins

Hungry Ghost Syndrome

We can’t remain silent. We need to reveal the patterns that are screaming for healing. Our culture suffers from Hungry Ghost Syndrome. Never ever feeling satisfied. We have simply forgotten what nourishes us. We are confused. We are hungry Ghosts engaging in an unhealthy pursuit of money without really feeding our souls. The ultimate irony is that money can’t buy the things that our soul is hungry for. Our relationship with money exhausts itself trying to cover up, satisfy and quench our bottomless spiritual hunger, our hungry ghost syndrome.

There is this notion that financial poverty is the state we are to fear, despise, avoid at all cost, when it is in fact spiritual poverty the root of most of our problems. There is this unspeakable truth that Mother Theresa articulated so well when she counseled Lynn to love the rich for they too suffer greatly:

“There is no recognition of the trap that wealth so often is, and of the suffering of the wealthy: the loneliness, the isolation, the hardening of the heart, the hunger and the poverty of the soul can come with the burden of wealth.”

Expressions of fear

As a species, we are very unskilled at handling this human invention called money. What we often do in our pursuit of money is lust and chase after it, hoard it at the expense of starving our souls. Let’s call this grasping.

At the end of the other spectrum of experience, what we do in rejection of money is often hide from it, check out and ultimately disown our power. Let’s call this aversion.

Aversion and grasping both boil down to fear, extreme patterns taking a hold of our hearts and spirits. Unless we have healed the way we deal with money as the conduit for our values, ideals and passions, it is likely that we will experience money in unhealthy ways. A disconnect from love and power. Soul without money or money without soul.

There is a third way, when money no longer divides but unites, when it becomes aligned, infused with heart and soul, embracing our humanity and honoring and serving our deepest values, becoming

“more and more a way to express the longing and the fulfillment of soul.”

Dispelling the lies

“Our relationship with money is based in an unexamined and unquestioned set of assumptions that are lies.”

Money can become a conduit for our deepest aspirations and dreams. So how do we get there? In order to come back into alignment we need to dispel some of the lies corroding our sense of self and shine light on some of the truths illuminating the nature of the universe.

The lie of Scarcity

Some think that poverty is inevitable. The belief that there simply isn’t enough for all in this world. How do we go from not having enough to a culture of accumulation, waste and disregard for life escapes my mind. Lynne refers to our justification of poverty stemming from a belief in scarcity, lack and and overall feeling of not being enough. She refers to Adam Smith’s Modern Economics as a system based on greed and fears of scarcity.

The lie of More is Better

The result is a fear driven culture that feels that more is better and participates in a chasing game that ends up biting its own tail. The beliefs that dictate our experience of money seem to be ingrained in all other systems. Praise the Goddess, for the consumerist, competitive and elitist tenets of patriarchal culture are being dismantled before our eyes.

THE LIGHT – A CALL TO ALIGNMENT

Money has shown its darkest shadow already. It is now time for it to show its brightest light. We tend to forget that we belong to nature and that we too operate under the principles that govern all life. We are indeed slow to embrace new scientific discovery and even slower to accept spiritual laws that facilitate another model of life that allows for more flow. This new model of partnership, cooperation and collaboration comes alive when there is a free flow of giving and receiving that reaches all in the appreciation of everyones’ gifts.

Liberating truth

These are the pillars or principles of a more feminine model rising based on natural law.

Cooperation

“Respected evolutionary biologist Elisabet Sahtouris notes that nature fosters collaboration and reciprocity. Competition in Nature exists, she says, but it has limits, and the true law of survival is ultimately cooperation.”

Abundance

“There is a natural law of abundance which pervades the entire universe, but it will not flow through a doorway of belief in lack and limitation.” ~Paul Zaifer

Sufficiency

The Achuar, indigenous people of Ecuador, live “ in the experience and expression of enough, of what I call sufficiency. Instead of seeking more, they treasure and steward thoughtfully what is already there. In fact, their efforts today are devoted to protecting what is there- the rain forest - as a resource for all of us…Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience. A context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough..We feel naturally called to share the resources that flow through our lives- our time, our money, our wisdom, our energy, at whatever level those resources flow – to serve our highest commitments. Our soul and money interests merge to create a rich, satisfying, and meaningful life.”

Your true wealth

You are made of heaven and earth, of soil and star dust, of flowers and sunshine, of water and wind. How can you experience your true wealth? Feel a wealth of resources and gifts flowing through you now, always.

Discover your treasures. Share your gifts. Your wealth are your gifts, but they are gifts only when you share them. Can’t find them? Look inside your heart:

I lived on the shady side of the
road and watched my neighbors’
gardens across the way reveling
in the sunshine.

I felt I was poor, and from door
To door went with my hunger.

The more they gave me from
their careless abundance the
more I became aware of my
beggar’s bowl.

Till one morning I awoke from my
sleep at the sudden opening of
my door, and you came
and asked for alms.

In despair I broke the lid of my
chest open and was startled into
finding my true wealth.

~ Tagore, Indian poet and mystic

And what if security wasn’t how much you got in the bank but how much you let flow through your heart, your life? Your gift is your offering to the world. Your work is love made visible. Mother Teresa saw herself as “God’s pencil” and stated: “the way to know me is to know my work. I am my work.”

Water like Flow

Let your true wealth flow in and out, free to nourish all soils of life. Money, like space, is a conduit for flow. Any unbalanced expression of energy creates friction, obstruction and hinders life’s movement. How can you experience money as a conduit, as sacred flow? By becoming aware of the choices that we make and their repercussions. By allowing our money to carry our richest intentions, desires and life sustaining dreams.

“Money is like water. It can be a conduit for commitment, a currency for love… Money flows through all our lives, sometimes like a gushing river, and sometimes like a trickle….It can carry guilt, shame and regret or rich blessings…When it is flowing, it can purify, cleanse, create growth, and nourish. But when it is blocked or held too long, it can grow stagnant and toxic to those withholding it or hoarding it….Stop the flow of money toward those people and products that demean life.”

 

Healing the split

We are healing the split within ourselves. We are healing the split between us when we realize:

“In the context of sufficiency, philanthropy and service become an expression of interconnectedness.”

An example of bridging the schism that separates us is this indigenous mythical story of the condor and the eagle, of the people of the north and the South coming together in reciprocity. In a system that has taken pride in devaluing one underneath the other, the time is ripe for a coming together, joining forces on equal ground. The prophecy says that when the scientific and intellectual people of the Eagle join the intuitive and heart based people of the Condor, it will be a time when:

“A new alloy consciousness will emerge that honors the Eagle people for the remarkable accomplishments of the mind, and honors the Condor people for the deep wisdom of the heart- and only together the crisis will be resolved and a sustainable future will emerge for all.”

More good news:

“Our struggle around money, and all the tension, fears, and excesses that go with it, has a parallel in nature. Evolutionary biologist Elisabet Sahtouris says that the caterpillar, at a certain point in its life cycle, becomes a voracious, over consumptive glutton consuming everything in sight and within reach. At this point in its evolution it can eat hundreds of times its own weight, and the more it consumes the more fat and sluggish it gets. At that same moment of developmental excess, inside the caterpillar the imaginal cells begin to stir. Imaginal cells are specialized cells, and in the minority, but when they connect with each other they become the genetic directors of the metamorphosis of the caterpillar. At some point in the caterpillar’s feeding, frenzy stage, the imaginal cells usher in the process in which the over-consumptive caterpillar becomes the nutritive soup out of which the imaginal cells create the miracle of the butterfly.”

A time of rebirth

I love Lynne’s approach to realigning our money with soul. I use a similar approach to realigning our spaces with soul in the lost art of soulful space making. Space, like money, can be used to imprison or liberate, contract or expand, impoverish or enrich our experience of life. Our intentions vibrate through all our creations. At the end, when we examine our longing to heal our relationship with money and space, what we are really expressing is our desire to heal ourselves.

We are the caterpillars of the world, birthing a new dream, re-dreaming the world. May love and awareness permeate all our creations imbued with the power to flow from heart to heart and may we experience and share our true wealth.

We are waking up as the imaginal cells ready to create a new dream of miraculous co-creation for the benefit of all life. To letting money become a true conduit for love. To making a living in a way that truly honors our spirit, our heart, our aliveness and the preservation of all that we hold sacred.

With love,

* all quotes by Lynne Twist from The Soul of Money unless otherwise stated.

When we stop listening to our hearts, silence gets thick and a sense of arrest floods in. Fear creeps in. We start over thinking, and doubt and inertia take over.

We have learned to tone down our excitement, ignore our desires, distrust our emotions, downplay our heart and instead, have developed resistance towards the very things that make us feel alive.

“Fear is excitement without breath.”  Robert Heller

In James Joyce’s Dubliners, most of his characters seem to face this fear based state, paralysis. Feeling trapped, they can’t move forward, and only see the river of life pass them by. Eve in “Eveline,” sits by the window with dust accumulating all around. She is immobilized. Something has frozen deep inside of her and she remains inert, closed, shut down.

Paralysis stems from fear of being seen, swallowed, mistaken, shamed. Stuck in the past with fear of being hurt, of making a mistake or the wrong choice. Tripping on guilt, afraid of change, transformation, metamorphoses, the nature of life. We cut our emotions short. Our malnourished souls are terrified of our own light.

We are a culture of blocked hearts, of paralyzed emotions. Emotions have not been given the wings to fly, space to unfurl, nor the dignity and respect they deserve as avenues of expression. They linger unsavored in the dark recesses of our psyche. Our emotional life lies unresolved, unwelcome, repressed and dammed like the rivers of our natural world, unable to flow in freedom. Clipped wings of a bird that can fly no more.

Paralysis is the inability to move, flow, regenerate. It is stagnation, the arrest of motion and the interruption of life’s movement. We all frieze at one point or another in different areas of our life. So, how do we get out of a state of inner paralysis? How do you awaken flow?

Stir the pot. Revolutionize your space. Get upside down if you can. I loved doing this as a child. Now I practice yoga. Hello inversions: headstands, handstands, forearm stands. What does the world look like upside down? Well, the world seems already upside down so a new healing pattern could emerge from these inversions.

When you stir the pot so to speak, all that was at the bottom of your heart starts rising and for a while downward and upward start swimming together, touching each other and changing each other in the process. They just needed some movement to start flowing again, to find their right place in the order of things. The way it happens when you stir a cup of tea and the leaves dance in the tea water, delicately searching for their place to reveal a new healing picture, state, pattern, vision.

If things are too settled, too solidified or stifled, they leave no room for motion, for small adjustments that increase alignment. Our bodies, minds, hearts, and even creations self adjust if we get out of the way. This is already happening. A miracle unraveling inside your being each time you inhale and exhale. A constellation of particles says yes to life so you can live.

At some point, your shell breaks and you feel all there is to feel. Whatever is underneath will most likely rise to the surface. So just make space for it. Let your breath melt the frozen sea inside you. Your emotions thaw, ice turns into liquid gold. This is alchemy of the heart. Slowly, inertia gives rise to a new sense of momentum and flow.

Trust the wisdom of your body responding to life. Simply trust. Make space for the stillness that allows you to feel this flow of nature, of the universe. Marvel at the flow of the ocean, a bird in flight, the opening leaves of a plant absorbing sunlight, the gentle breeze on your skin, the courage of all life unfurling before your eyes. See with your heart. Walk, dance, meander, taste your freedom. Your whole being infused with it, celebrating life’s movement.

“You were wild once here. Don’t let them tame you.”  ~Isadora Duncan

Fear melts in the presence of love. May we all feel excitement flow with breath,

* Amazon River. Photo by Leo Freitas

March Full Moon, 2012. Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose, California. Photo by Rick Baldridge.

Happy Full Moon dear ones! I have been digesting my wonderful adventures in the big apple and getting into the swing of things again. If you need to align with the spirit of new endeavors, adventures, projects or the manifestation of your deepest life giving desires, there is nothing like making space for them!

“What art offers is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit.” ~ John Updike

We don’t so much create flow as awaken, facilitate and romance it. All of life wants to flow. Ever present and often dormant, this pulsing force waits to be unleashed, harnessed and used for good. There is simplicity, elegance and intelligence in a space that cultivates flow. Healing your relationship with your space and your space and environmentprecisely enables you to ride the energy of flow to express and share your dreams, passions and gifts.

In this age of rapid change and transformation, it is lovely, nourishing and satisfying to have a home space that grounds, deepens and expands the awareness of your place in this magical universe. Use these six simple suggestions, ways to awaken and connect with flow in your space and life.

1. Romance flow. How is your space welcoming flow? Imagine your home greeting life with a smile. Let your front door celebrate flow’s arrival. Free up the circulation of energy in your space with clear paths of movement. Flow loves meandering pathways as it transitions from the outer to the inner spaces of your life. Imagine being greeted by a star, a mandala or a burst of color as you come home..

2. Invocation. I invite you to do this on a regular basis: Offer a prayer of gratitude, connect with your intention for the space, light a candle, smudge and physically clean your space really well. Play beautiful music, hum, sing, dance, journal any emotions that may come up, hold them gently in your heart and release them back into the universe. Make this an act of communion, of deep connection with the divine.

3. Release. Release is part of maintaining balance in our lives. Liberating energy with the art of letting go of things that are no longer in resonance with your spirit.  Tonight we have a gorgeous full moon in Libra, if you’d like to go deeper with this process, here is  my post Full Moon blessings. A feminine approach to self & space renewal.

4. Invite nature in. Let your space open up to nature. Connect with your local ecosystem and feel the power and healing inspiration in your natural environment. Let flowers and plants brighten up your environment. Open up the windows for fresh air & have artwork inspired by nature that speaks to you. Repurpose, recycle, reuse! Here you have mason jars with growing herbs for your kitchen and recycled light bulbs with flowers!

Mason-jar-planter-board from notjustahousewife.com

Recycled lightbulbs diy vases by duitang.com

5. Express your heart song. You can align your space with your highest intention, your deepest purpose. Only have things you truly need, love and cherish.  Embrace something in your space today that represents your truest aspirations. Would you love to have a view of trees and don’t? Paint one!

Photo by Homeanddecor.net

Photo by Warren Heath

6.Use your space! Neglected spaces have stagnant energy. Start loving your space and it will love you right back.

Your space is sacred and so are you! May these suggestions help your space flow, nourish, and inspire your brightest unfurling. Remember to slow down, listen and stay receptive. There is so much that wants to awaken. What are you making space for?

With love,

We often travel in spirals, arriving at the space where we got started. I have been consciously making space for joy and magic in my life.  Magic happens when we listen deeply with all our heart. Listening, seeing, welcoming, receiving creates a beautiful state of receptivity. Such was the flavor of my last trip to NYC, overcome by a sense of enchantment, wonder and awe.

Einstein was right on when he said:

“The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.”

The mystical resides in the every day. They are not separate. The mundane infused with the sacred. After all, the sacred is just life experienced with a heightened state of awareness. You can actually see the sacred in a pile of dog poop. I wrote an essay on the bathroom as sacred space, subverting a spirituality that is disembodied. (You may subscribe to my list and get it as a gift if you wish)

I experienced NYC, Manhattan to be more precise, as a breathing living being. An animal. Divine in its frenzy, permeability, and kindness. I walked the streets of the big apple fast, with ardor and passion, like a puma traversing the land. I let the life of this land touch me.

Some of my most treasured memories are the conversations with kindred souls. Engaging, creative, expressive, delirious for truth. My first bites were delicious, nourishing, invigorating. NYC, the big apple, is full of heart and magic.

One night, I got on the train after a day of adventures, when a man entered and sat in front of me. He looked like he had worked the earth. He had soil on his skin and clothes. I am calling it soil rather than dirt. I have never liked how we call soil dirt. Our soil is sacred. Anyways, He was holding two daffodil flowers in his hand. His gaze, his gestures, his whole demeanor was breathing devotion. He was making sure these two flowers were all right, checking their roots still contained in earth. You could feel the love emanating from the exchange as I believe the flowers were feeling the love he was radiating.

This gentle and sacred man inspired me to show the same love and devotion for everything that I touch with my hands. To be grateful for these hands that can experience the sacred so intimately. Tears trickled down my face. Heart burst open on a train. No, you don’t have to go on retreat, you don’t have to climb a mountain, you don’t have to follow a formula that promises guaranteed results. All you have to do is open your heart and let the alchemy of life do its magic.

I had just attended a live conversation by Deepak Chopra and Vandana Shiva on the importance of preserving our seeds and cultivating our soil from and for life, not war. How we feed and replenish the land and our body reflects how we feed our soul. Or not. And so I pondered amazed at the immediacy of this message and the love flowing so strong that it could barely be contained in my heart. I simply marveled at the interconnectedness, serendipity, synchronicity and magic.  Flow in its most natural and raw motion.

Those precious flowers and the love for all that the earth gives birth to..

Views from multiple levels, shifting perspectives, enriching vision.

Mesmerized by the spiraling forces expressed in this beautiful sculpture. Yin and Yang.

I was able to witness that magical moment of blossoming. The first blooms of spring. Fresh. Courageous. Victorious. In love with life.

I found a corner, a piece of haven in Central Park. Two wonderful little structures framing a gateway. Do you remember why you arrived here? The portal opens when you remember the gift you are ready to receive..

These were dancing trees, swaying their branches in joy.

I could have sat in this spot for hours under the magnolia tree in full bloom. Loved the warm golden light at this time of the day.

Rapt in reverence. Just let the world touch you.

Let love burn through everything else.

And never underestimate the power of water.

“Poetry is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.”
― Adrienne Rich

April is poetry month. Rest in peace Adrienne Rich.
In the spirit of water and love born from the earth,
 

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. ~Zora Neale Hurston
 

As some of you may know I am in the big apple, enjoying a creative breath, pause, space. Letting my art rest, breathe, absorb. Even in moments of stillness, life flows incessantly. In the midst of silences, negative spaces and all those lines in between, life brims and overflows.

Here is my beloved Chrysler. A gem reaching the sky. The architect in me loves to look up at the buildings beautifully dancing their way into the skies like golden spires.

But there is plenty that draws my gaze back to the sacred earth..

 
Here is a blessing from John O’Donohue for those of you on the road..and aren’t we all making a home on the road on this journey called life?

For the traveler by John O’Donohue

..A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.

May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.

May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.

~ John O’Donohue

~~~

So much heart this time around in NYC. Meeting lovely people and making space for joy and magic. So simple and yet so powerful. What are you making space for? Love to each one of you from this apple bursting with flavors. From my heart to yours,

There is a gorgeous full moon in Virgo rising and blessing us with her moonlight. The full moon invites us to release all that dims our light, all that holds us back in the space of our heart and physical environment.  So excited to share a feminine approach to self & space renewal on International Women’s Day as my third post in my Unleashing Flow Series, the second one was: Open to receive this healing vision.

Why now? We are at a pivotal moment in history. Unconscious ways of inhabiting the earth feel like heavy weight on our hearts and shoulders. We are slowly awakening, healing, finding our purpose, realizing that acquiring more is not sustainable, kind or loving and ultimately, not the answer to our deepest soul yearnings.

We are a species awakening to the realization that we are indeed part of nature and cosmos, remembering how to live more lightly on the earth.

The objects that we choose as our dwelling companions are charged with energy, memory and emotion. When we are unable to find our way in the midst of unprocessed memories, energy gets suffocated in the spaces we inhabit. Clutter blocks the natural flow of energy and depletes us.

Clutter clearing is a sustainable practice that can help us align with the rhythms of the earth and our own hearts as we clear our spaces for new life.

WHEN TO PRACTICE

• When you start feeling confused or burdened with heavy thoughts, feelings, hurts, burdens, patterns.
• When the spaces of your home are crowded with things that are misplaced, cluttered, out of place, broken, unloved, or out of tune with your soul.
• Whenever you seem to hit a creative block, feel scattered, inhibited, afraid or simply stuck.
• When you need a boost of energy, flow and focus.
• When you need to simplify your life and move forward.
• Anytime you want to access the luminosity of your spirit.

LIBERATING ENERGY & LOVE

Release is an emotional process. Clutter clearing is a sustainable practice that liberates energy. It is not just something you do once a year. If you want to feel vital, energized and present to life, experiment with clearing your spaces on a regular basis. When we clutter clear we let go of things we no longer love nor need: memories, objects, emotions and even spaces that have been stagnant for so long are finally released, put in motion. The energy that frees up in this process can propel our spiritual growth on our path to intentional, creative, conscious and mindful, artful living.

AWAKENING FLOW

Clutter clearing unleashes flow. Clutter clearing is a spiritual practice that invites you to empty out all that burdens your soul & get back in touch with your true nature, unbridled, free and luminous in the spaces of your home, office and community. How to begin:

• Light a candle. Set an intention. Invite Spirit to guide you in your release process. Invoke the power of the Goddess Kali for her winds of transformation.
• Open the windows, play inspiring music, offer a prayer.
• Start small, with a corner or drawer. Release. Breathe. Be gentle with yourself.
• Work through the difficult emotions when they arise. Let them flow.

KINDNESS

I encourage you to let go, kindly, consciously and compassionately. Release your clutter by donating, selling or recycling it. The beauty of this process is that as you let go, you find parts of yourself that you thought long lost. As your space clears, something clears inside. Something awakens, opens, releases, and eases within the natural clarity of your being.

May this practice of clutter clearing awaken rivers of joy, creativity, awareness and spaciousness flow free in your heart, in your space, in your work and and in your life, for the benefit of all.

With love,