Wednesday Wish (113); Suspend. Yourself.

 

photo by david talley via smashingpicture.com

She slips the silk gown over her head feeling it grace the edges of her curves. She is tired and ready to lose herself in her dreams. Ohhh, how she loves her dreams. She walks barefoot on the cold wood floor until she finds the small tufted rug beside her bed. It reminds her of the long grass in the orchard at her childhood home. She stops for a moment to let her toes sink in, to let her memories wash her by.

When she finally nestles in, she realizes she isn’t ready. Not quite yet. Her mind needs something more. Something in her waking world. Even so, she blows out the candle and watches as the moon gently lights up the garden. It’s almost full tonight—the garden with its treats and the moon with its cheeks. The stars are out. The Peepers sing. And the clouds, why, there are so very few.

As she lets her eyes wander, she asks herself questions. Not to know the answers but for the sheer delight of the questions themselves. She wants to Be the questions. To live in the richness of their possibility-laden depth. Because such realms help her. Stay open. Stay alive. Stay as wide as the biggest ‘spanse of sea ….

What do I see with my imagination’s eye?

Where are the colors?

Are they where the adults taught me they always should be?

Or are they otherwheres?

In Neverlands or Avalons or rivers hidden beneath my dreams?

How do I suspend my trained mind

In favor of an open heart

An open being

Inviting creative mystery?

Where must I go to see the colors in the clouds

Even in the darkness

of a sleepy

moon-lit

night?

*          *          *

My Wish is for you to Suspend. Yourself. To let yourself see colors in the clouds. The clouds you carry like baggage.

Every. Single. Day.

Of . Your. Life.

Your fears. Your anticipations. Your requirements.

Your hopes and dreams and memories.

Those that hurt.

And those that feel like joy.

In your heart, your mind, your body and your spirit.

Suspend, for a moment here with me, all those trained beliefs.

In favor of sensuality.

And feeling.

In honor of gentleness

And of soft, deep love.

And eyes that aren’t afraid to see

Afresh.

Suspend yourself with wings that sit upon your back

Waiting to be felt

Waiting to be seen

Waiting to take you

To the mystical realms of your dreams …

(video)

An Easter Wish

...because it feels so very good

 to send my love out into the world

 to every single one of you.

*Happy Easter*

Resurrect your Self

Back to love.

Wednesday Wish (112); Broaden your Self

photo by katerina plotnikova via www.boredpanda.com

The cold North Sea wind whistled through my earrings and turned my cheeks a rosy pink. I pedaled harder, letting its frigid strength renew the power of my legs, my frozen fingers, my fast beating, invigorated heart. I was an American girl, after all, a child of the Cold War, of capitalism-is-good and socialism-is-bad, and here I was pedaling my bike to school in Europe, eighteen years old, with the Berlin Wall still standing just a couple hundred miles away. I was on my own, a lone foreigner in a beautiful new land and this fresh, freezing wind was my competition. I was not going to let it win.

By the time I got to school, I was exhausted. My legs felt like jelly, my hair was a scraggled mess and my heart was beating right out of my chest. I was a mess and I knew my father would be proud because I fought the wind and won. I walked up the stairs to my first class with a proud smile on my face.

Learning college-level math in a foreign language is not something I recommend. Truth is, probably every other person in my class would tell you that it wasn’t anywhere near college level math. But for me, a young woman feeling like a character on the ‘Peanuts’ listening to the teacher and her ‘blah, blah, blah’s’, it might as well of been Phd level math. I didn’t understand a single word.

So when my desk mate, Ole, mumbled the answer to one of the questions and didn’t raise his hand to share it with the rest of the class, I was shocked. The math teacher chastised the class—did no one know anything? Were we all asleep? (Or at least that’s what I thought he was saying.) I looked over at Ole. Still, he sat silent.

            “Why don’t you raise your hand?” I whispered to him. “You know the answer!”

            Ole shook his head, and took a second to collect his thoughts. His English was impeccable so I knew he both understood me and would have no problem responding. “We aren’t like you Americans,” he said. “We Danes, we don’t like to stand out, to shine, as you say in English. We think more of the group than ourselves.”

            I blinked in thought, waiting for him to continue.

            “If you stand out in the USA, most of the time you are praised, rewarded for beating others out. Here in Denmark, it doesn’t usually work that way. If we stand out too much, we don’t have as many friends because we are thinking more of ourselves than others. If we brag, we are avoided, not embraced.”

I started to argue with him in my head, but each time I did, my argument came up short.

            We all deserve to shine … yes, but we ALL deserve to shine

            Speak your mind …but isn’t it better to first, do no harm?

            Show your talents … but give others a chance to do the same

            Think of yourself … but what about the satisfaction of thinking of others?

So I sat mute, stunned into silence as I watched a young man in my classroom say nothing of what he knew for the sake of the group.

Maybe I had gotten the competition part of life all wrong. Maybe life wasn’t win-lose. Maybe I had embarked upon a whole new way of seeing life. And all because of my eighteen-year-old desk mate Ole who once, years ago, thought beyond just himself.

*          *          *

What if we didn’t honk when someone wasn’t moving out of the way, but got out of our car and checked to see if they were alright? What if someone wasn’t acting kindly and we responded with loving words? What if a child chose not to listen and we took it as an invitation to not listen, with them? What if we stopped demanding, taking, wanting for ourselves and started to try on the perspectives of the people all around us? What if suddenly we realized a more fulfilling life could be ours… if we just stopped thinking only of ourselves?

Would we make different choices?

What if life is win-win, not win-lose? What then? Would we stop competing with others and start competing only with ourselves?

What if loving yourself, at its best, is loving everything around you, too? Because isn’t love, in its purest form, all-encompassing, never selective? And then, if we love ourselves enough, and believe in a win-win world, wouldn’t we have more than enough love to go around? Wouldn’t giving be easy, natural, even second nature?

Broaden your Self—your thinking, your love.

… think, beyond …

And shine brighter than you ever have before, 

naturally, 

just as the rest of the world has always wanted you to.

Wednesday Wish (111); Tap Into Your Flow

The metal bucket sits perched on the side of the Maple tree, its blue plastic lid protecting the sacred elixir housed within. Most days the Maple tree stands tall and silent, invisible to even the most aware. But when the metal bucket with the blue lid arrives, the Maple tree suddenly finds herself transformed. As the season changes, as the warmth begins to return after the long, cold winter, the Maple tree begins to be seen and the invitation to share is just too much to ignore. So she does. She shares. Of herself. For days on end.

On others days and other seasons, the Maple tree may be valued for her shade, or for her gift of home to birds and bugs and bees, but these days, this season, she is valued for what dwells within, for the syrup that runs like life energy through her veins.

During the early Spring, the Maple tree is a lone solitary island until she decides to let her inner gifts flow, until she decides to share her vulnerable, inner Self. Even so, she can’t give of that inner self by staying hidden behind layer after layer of protective bark. She has to open up. And even then, it is only the few who dare to take the time to tap into her tasty, sugary syrup that really discover her true inner worth.

*          *          *

As Spring blossoms every bit of life in the Northern hemisphere, let it also blossom you. Shed your heavy coats, your protective layers and dare to tap into your own sacred elixir, that sugary syrup that flows within you, your life energy, your You.

Don’t think. Or even try too hard. For the sacred flees under pressure. Just unravel, reveal, unleash yourself, and like a river racing back to the sea, let yourself go. Let yourself flow. Don’t listen to the rest of the world, to the news, to the hype, to the opinions and scientifically proven truths. Eat what feels right, not what you must. Exercise when you want to, not when you should. Trust your gut, not a textbook. Invest in yourself, not someone else’s dream.

Hear your own voice, find your own smiles, your own heart flutters, your own truths, and give them each wings. Be the metal bucket with the blue lid for yourself and tap into that sacred elixir that is you at your deepest core. For like the Maple tree, this is also your season to share your gifts, your season to be more of who you really are, your season to tap into your flow.

Wednesday Wish (110); Find Your Peach Pit

photo via tnhomeandfarm.com

He’s a simple man because he lets himself be. He doesn’t get all riled up over much. Not by the neighbors’ actions or by the things the politicians say or even by all the wars going on around the world. If he thought about it all enough, sure, they might. But what then? How would he be happy with more layers on, layers protecting his heart from the pains he’d rather not feel?

He doesn’t ignore things, nope. He just looks other places. Places that invite his eyes. Invite his heart. And honestly, places that invite him to smile. From the inside, out.

The hay he turns with the prongs of his tractor’s till, that does it. It reminds him of some of the ladies hairdos at church. How could he not smile at that?

Then the birds that sit in the trees out back. Sometimes he likes thinking he can understand what they’re saying. And somehow, the darn things always make him chuckle.

And of course, there’s the peach pits. Those always make him smile. Those along with the pocketknife that lives either in his pocket or in his hand. Yep, always.

If you ask him, he’ll tell you that he lives a simple life, that anyone could do what he does and that really, there’s nothing to fuss about. He thinks it’s funny that after all these years people still think his peach pit carvin’ is something to be talked about. Some even go so far as to call it spectacular. But then, if you sit awhile with him and wait for him to find an even quieter kind of comfort with you, you might hear something else, something else a little bit new. My guess is that you might hear him say that carving peach pits has been a little slice of magic on his own little corner of life, and that life … just don’t get any better than that.

*          *          *

Maybe the real magic of life is simple.

Maybe it’s been simple all along.

Maybe we all just need to find our Peach Pits

To find that one thing

That helps the happy at our core

Ride its way to the surface

In a permanent sort of way.

*          *          *

Now watch the video, why don’t you … and it’ll all make even better sense.

*          *          *