Category: awakening

Cracking Open

Buried Seeds by Mark Nepo

All the buried seeds
crack open in the dark
the instant they surrender
to a process they can’t see.

This innate surrender
allows everything edible
and fragrant
to break ground
into a life of light
that we call Spring.

As a seed buried in the earth
cannot imagine itself as an orchid or hyacinth,

neither can a heart packed with hurt
imagine itself loved or at peace.

The courage of the seed is that once cracking,
it cracks all the way.

It’s late Winter and especially in the North, we are yearning for Spring—for more sunlight, for more opening, for new growth, inside and outside…

Wintertime offers us the space to surrender, to return to our inner ground, to gestate our bodysoul’s wisdom so that we can soften enough to crack open and be ready for the invitation of another Spring.

Spring is almost here—at least here in Minnesota, the Spring Equinox is almost upon us! Spring Equinox is midway between the longest night of the year, at Winter Solstice, and the longest day of the year, at Summer Solstice. This year, the Spring Equinox occurs at 5:45 pm on Friday, March 20th. On the morning of the Equinox, we will have a solar eclipse with the moon covering up the sun, blocking out up to 98 per cent of its light. And the evening before, the Earth and Moon will be as close together as they possibly can be, giving rise to a so-called Supermoon, but because it’s a New Moon, we will be lucky to see the hint of a very large sliver in the sky.

Here in Minnesota, Spring suddenly blew in for a week so that we are finally consistently above zero and even melted! Even though more seasonal temperatures are coming in now, we are officially dreaming of Spring. Everything that has been underground, that has been composting and preparing for new growth, within and without, is getting ready to break ground into Spring’s new life.

Nature can be our teacher in this process of cracking open. Many plants have been dormant all Winter, hibernating, their energy pulled back into their roots or stored in seeds. Others literally died and returned their fragile plant bodies to the earth, where they mixed with other surrendered plant bodies, and dissolved into the ground becoming compost. Now these plants—both the dormant ones and the dissolved ones are getting ready to regenerate and send forth new growth—sprouts that will turn into plants that might bloom or even bear fruit come Summer and Fall.

We, too, have had a chance to surrender, to return to the ground during Winter, to let ourselves dissolve and re-form. We, too, have been like buried seeds, surrendering to the dark unknown possibility of cracking open. From this darkness, from this openness, deep wisdom can arise, which Spring invites us to put into form in the world.

So, this is the time to get ready to nurture your soon-to-be sprouting seeds. To prepare for the regeneration of your energy, for the sharing of your vision in the world…

What seeds are buried deep within you? What is yearning to come alive in you? What wants to arise from the compost of your life, to be re-formed and lived into this year? What new learning or new growth might sprout from the regenerative compost of your suffering? What has been cracking open, ready to sprout and come into the new life and light of Spring?

Choose one thing you’d like to nourish, to nurture like a new seed, just beginning to reach toward the surface of the earth. How can you fertilize the soil so this new part of you can begin to grow? How will you tend this seedling—what support and nutrients does it need? What practices do you need to put into place to assure mindful, steady growth?

Remember, no matter how dark your Winter has been, no matter how unknowable the new life of Spring feels, there is at least one seed within us that wants to grow and awaken and come into greater and deeper contact with Life, that wants to crack open all the way.

Listen to that. Trust that. Nourish that.

If you’d like some support listening, trusting, and nourishing your seeds, check my calendar and join me.

Saying Yes to Love—Part II

This is Part II of a 2-Part Series on Love for the month of February. Part I explores how essential it is to say Yes to Love in relationship. This second post focuses on practicing Love. Although originally written for dear friends whose wedding I officiated, and, thus, about the personal Love relationship between two people, everything here applies to Love in any relationship—with yourself, with your friends, with your family, with an animal friend, with a partner, with the Beloved. Read the poem that inspired this exploration.

Saying Yes to Love also implies unconditionality.

I practice Love which is not dependent on whether or not…

  • Dave remembers to put the toilet seat down,
  • Or brings out the garbage,
  • Or pulls the sheets off of me to his side of the bed in the middle of the night.

It’s not an “if” you do this kind of proposition!

Even if he hasn’t done something I had hoped for, I still look at him and say “I choose you.” I still say Yes to Love.

Because saying Yes to Love is choosing to live a life that is worth living.

When I say Yes to Love, I open myself to something greater than my limited understanding—

  • To the possibility of both of our growth and transformation,
  • To the mystery of the depth and breadth of the heart,
  • To this moment of limitless possibility.

In order to do this, we have to be willing to feel and allow everything—

  • The old wounds that will get retriggered by our partner,
  • The shame of doing the same unskillful behavior over and over again as we try to learn a new one,
  • The pain of not being able to open our hearts in the moment,
  • The suffering of being stuck and unable to see our way through,
  • As well as the amazing joy, gratitude, and bliss of Love.

For feeling is the language of the heart. And sharing these feelings with our partner is the language of intimacy. It is Love saying Yes. It is saying Yes to Love.

So, I encourage you to say Yes to Love every day, every moment, every chance you get. As Gregory Orr encourages us in his beautiful poem:

Later for “but,”
Later for “if.”

Now
Only the single syllable
That is the beloved,
That is the world.

Yes. May we always choose to practice Love.

What are some concrete ways you
practice Love?
With yourself? With others?
How could you deepen your practice?

Read Part I of Saying Yes to Love.

Saying Yes to Love—Part I

This is Part I of a 2-Part Series on Love for the month of February.
This first post explores how essential it is to say Yes to Love
in relationship. The second focuses on practicing Love.
Although originally written for dear friends whose wedding
I officiated, and, thus, about the personal Love relationship between two people, everything here applies to Love in any relationship—with yourself, with your friends, with your family, with an animal friend, with a partner, with the Beloved.

 
By Gregory Orr
If to say it once
And once only, then still
To say: Yes.

And say it complete,
Say it as if the word
Filled the whole moment
With its absolute saying.

Later for “but,”
Later for “if.”

Now
Only the single syllable
That is the beloved,
That is the world.

Yes. Unequivocally, Yes.

Conscious relationship, for me, is about learning to say Yes, over and over again, to Love.

Love can open in us as a gift, as a grace, but for the most part, Love is pretty hard work!

I find that Love is a practice of choosing to say Yes to the needs of the relationship, to being and acting as Love in each moment.

  • Even when I’m tired and just want to fall back into the comfortable slumber of “my way,”
  • Even when I feel disconnected and would rather lick my wounds,
  • Even when it would feel better to pretend everything is OK when it’s not,
  • Even when I’m not feeling very loving…

Because Love is bigger than a feeling. Love is a choice.

  • Love chooses connection.
  • Love chooses trying to understand.
  • Love chooses generosity.
  • Love chooses hope.
  • Love chooses to accept my partner’s reality, even when it’s not only different from mine, but might seem downright crazy or misguided.
  • Love says Yes.

For a long time, practicing Love, I would find myself saying Yes, but…

  • But what?
  • But you don’t see the whole picture…
  • But that’s not really what I meant…
  • But I would do it this way…
  • But…

Dave called me on it—many times—and he still may have to from time to time. It is a pretty engrained habit!

  • He let me know that when I say “Yes…but,” he only hears the “but.”
  • He no longer feels heard or acknowledged.
  • It’s like that “but” negates everything else I’ve said.

I have come to understand that the “but” is a turning away from Love, a choosing to separate a part of myself from the Yes of Love. The togetherness of Love. The generosity of Love.

I’m not saying we have to agree about everything—we don’t!

  • If I have a different idea, I share it.
  • But I try not to before acknowledging the Yes.
  • Yes, I see and hear you.
  • Yes, you are right in your truth.
  • Yes, I value and respect you and your expression.
  • AND here is my truth…

This is practicing Love. I won’t always get it right, but I will continue to practice.

How do you say Yes to Love?
With yourself? With others?

Note: Part II of this Valentine’s Day blogpost came out at the end of February, so we can remember to keep practicing, even when the romance of Valentine’s Day, or falling in love, or a candlelight dinner is over….

Visioning Your New Year

I used to have a lot of trouble coming up with New Year intentions—all it ever felt like was an exhausting, never-ending to-do list, what my colleague Laura calls a “devil’s to-do list.” I’m still working out exactly how to do it each year, but it’s feeling more comfortable, more like an invitation to land in myself and envision my life.

What better time, in the middle of winter, to make space to dream about how we want our lives to be? You can read about dreaming during our winter cave-time in more depth here.

One of the things that I really love doing is taking the time to look back at the past year—I usually get together with a girlfriend sometime around the cusp of the year, but you can do this now, too. We spend time going through our journals to get an overview of the patterns, the learnings, the moods. We ask ourselves questions like: “What did I learn, integrate, accomplish? What do I want to remember? What can I celebrate and what do I still need to focus on or let go of?”

Then we look forward to the New Year, at what lies ahead and allow ourselves to dream. What is calling to us? What do we need to integrate / learn / lean into? What do we want next? After writing and allowing time for this exploration, we usually draw at least a Goddess Card and perhaps another visioning tool to allow more guidance from the unconscious to be part of the process. When we’re ready, we share what we are understanding and support each other’s paths and visions.

Sometimes we choose a word or a phrase as a North Star. Sometimes an image really captivates, and just recently I read about choosing a “beautiful question.” Steve Quatrano explains: “Questions also fire the imagination. A question is a puzzle: once it has been raised, the mind almost can’t help trying to solve or answer it. In this way, questions enable us to begin to act in the face of uncertainty; they help us to organize our thinking around what we don’t know…”

This year, I chose the Goddess Card for Coventina, who represents purification, and from my hearthstones, the word “faith.” I’m playing with my beautiful question…Its current form is: “What needs to be purified within me so that I can live in more faith?” It feels like there could be many layers in this—and it feels simple enough to answer, two other important criteria for beautiful questions…

May you find more beautiful questions
than to-do lists to light up
your vision for the 2015 New Year!

* Coventina image from Doreen Virtue’s Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards and the heart with “faith” in it is from a set of Hearthstones.

New Year 2015—Reconnect with Your Feminine Essence

connection, relationship, magnetizing, rest, listening, pleasure, savoring,
embodiment, earthy, leaning back in, feelings, flow, sensual, appreciating…

These words grace an index card at my desk. What do they all have in common? The expression of yin, or feminine energy. The words are written in red, orange, and pink, further inviting a luxuriating and rich experience.

When you read those words, how do they land?

Most of the time, my mind jumps in and says something like: “Sounds nice, but who has time for all of that?”

When I do take the time to take them in, I feel myself leaning back in. I feel myself landing in my female body. This body, just as she is right now. And the more I land, the more I feel these qualities…

Our masculine-oriented culture emphasizes their opposite: independence, autonomy, selling, action, speaking, working, analyzing, head-orientation, detachment, pushing forward, thinking, goal-focused, practical, competing…

When you read those words, how do they land? I feel overwhelmed and tired…

As women, we are often so immersed in the masculine culture we live in that we forget our feminine birthright, the feeling of savoring the art of living in a female bodysoul.

Read those feminine words once again. Breathe them into your body, into your heart, into your soul. Linger in them. Luxuriate in them.

When we, as women, own our feminine essence, we are more resourced. We are more who we truly are. We are more able to operate in a masculine-driven culture without losing our balance, without losing our way.

How might you invite more of your
feminine essence, more of who you really are,
into your life in this New Year?
What baby steps could you take
to inhabit your feminine bodysoul more?

The Deep Darkness of Winter Solstice

The Pathdeep is the darkness,
with no light at all,
before and behind,
and to either side

I love this text from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Gilgamesh. It invites me into the truth of this season. It is dark. The darkness is deep and long, and will be at its darkest depth this weekend. The hours of darkness overwhelm those of daylight.

I was recently in Anchorage, Alaska visiting my sister’s family for Thanksgiving, and it was still dark at 9 am! We took the kids to school in the dusky darkness. By 4 pm, it was dark again. It was really dark before and behind, and to either side.

There have been times in my life where this has been true, too. Deep is the darkness, so deep that I can’t see around me, with no light at all. At such times, it’s helpful to remember that we have choices. We often fumble around trying to see in the deep dark. Instead we can practice surrendering to its depths. And we can seek the light.

Winter reminds us of the mystery of dark and light, of their entwinement, of their ultimate embrace. Each cannot exist without the other—if there were no darkness, we would have nothing to contrast it with, nothing “light.” And without the light, what would “dark” be?

So, as winter invites us into the deep darkness, can we surrender to it, allow ourselves to dive in and become familiar with its depths? What might we find in the darkness? What visions, dreams, gifts, might be there for us to uncover, for us to release into?

Winter Solstice and the other wintertime holidays mark the beginning of the return of the light, at the cusp of winter. Winter Solstice falls on Sunday, December 21st at 5:03 pm CT this year. As we surrender to the darkness of wintertime, we also, paradoxically, are reminded of the light, which will grow ever so slowly from this day until Summer Solstice.

deep is the darkness, with no light at all,
before and behind, and to either side

This winter, how will you enter consciously
into the darkness?

How can you surrender to winter’s depth,
and at the same time allow the
ever-returning light within to slowly
and faithfully guide you along your way?

Are You Listening?

There’s so much to listen to here in this Western culture we live in—news, talk shows, music, weather, random TV shows and movies, our family, our bosses, our inner critics…The list can be endless and overwhelming.

What if you could decide what to listen to?
What if you really took time to tune into that?
Whose voice(s) would you choose
to listen to?

Wintertime invites us into deeper listening.

Deeper listening…deeper than what? Deeper than the outer sounds, deeper than the “shoulds” inside your head…Listening deep inside yourself, where there is quiet and stillness and wisdom. A wellspring to draw upon, if we turn in to it.

Especially in the colder climates, winter really does invite us to go inside—into our actual houses where it is warm, less in contact with our neighbors and friends. We are drawn to cozy up to the woodstove or sink into a warm bath, to light candles and sip warm drinks, to read books and journal, to reflect on our lives.

This deeper listening can be an invitation to surrender to nature’s call, to hunker down and in, out of the cold. In following winter’s lead, we also follow the rhythm of our souls. Our souls need to rest, to go within, to connect with the deeper wellsprings that nourish us. And from this place, we come back to the world more refreshed, more able to respond, more able to live authentically in the world.

The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you,
the better you will hear what is sounding outside.
~ Dag Hammarskjold

Of course, we can do this anytime, even in the midst of the holiday chaos, but it’s a lot easier when we can actually set aside undisturbed retreat time to really listen. Here are a few suggestions for how to create mini-retreat times for yourself any day:

  • Carve out silent journaling time.
  • Add in slow yoga or other mindful movement.
  • Sit in meditation, contemplation, or prayer.
  • Settle in with a cup of tea and look out the window, at the fire, sipping slowly.
  • Take a Do-Nothing Break.

Whatever you do, see if you can drop below the to-do lists, the “shoulds,” the noisy voices of our culture, and listen for the voice of your soul—S/He may speak in words, in intuitive hits, in physical sensations, in feelings, in images or symbols…Listen for your own deeper knowing and wisdom and heed it.

How do you make time to listen within?
I’d love to share ideas about this
essential part of our self-care and wholeness.

Holiday Frazzle? Try this…

Frazzled, harried, rushed? Not enough time to get it all done? What if I told you that there is a simple, short and sweet practice you can do to support yourself?

Frazzled, harried, rushed? Not enough time to get it all done?

I get it!

The holiday season can be such a challenge! We want to enjoy connecting time with friends and family, to leisurely pick out the perfect gifts, to make yummy and nourishing foods…And we still have to work and take care of family and home and try to squeeze in some self-care time for ourselves…

It can feel really overwhelming!

What if I told you that there is a simple, short and sweet practice you can do to support yourself?

I know, you’re probably thinking—I don’t have time for one more thing! I felt that way, too, when I first started doing this, but I soon found that it was not only doable, but really helpful.

It’s what I call taking a “Do Nothing Break” or “Being Break.”

And that’s it! You just stop and do nothing except BE. You’ve probably heard that, perhaps overused, but very apt expression, “You are a human being, not a human doing.” During busy times, we can forget that, and when we do, we get lost. We lose track of what matters most to us–of our core values, of our connections with others, of what makes life most meaningful and enjoyable….

So, give it a try! I suggest 5 minutes, but if that feels like too much to start, try 3. And just stop.

If you need to clear your mind, you can jot down notes, but it’s not a note-taking session. Jot it down and come back to the moment, to your breathing and your senses–looking, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching…Keep returning to the present moment.

Try this one small practice this holiday season and see if you don’t feel like you have a little more time, a little more presence, a little more meaning and connection in your life! (Hint: you can do it whenever you need it—i.e., more than once a day!

Retreating—An Act of Self-Love

I’m just back from our weeklong Diamond Approach Retreat and trying not to scramble too much as I catch up, so that I can be with myself as I land home again.

I so appreciate retreat time to really hunker down and focus on my spiritual practice, without the distraction of daily work, food preparation, clean up, or even the daily choice of when to meditate and do my spiritual practice. It’s all decided for me on retreat, which gives my mind a chance to calm down and let go of control more than normal.

It’s also so restorative and supportive to be retreating in a beautiful place in the country. Just being there, taking in my surroundings with all my senses, is a coming home. I feel myself slow down and land more in my sensual self, in my own inner sense of wholeness, beauty, groundedness.

And all of this, of course, invites my heart to come online a bit more. My mind is calmer, letting go of control, and I am here, grounded, solid, present in my body, which makes my heart feel safe to open, to feel more, to love more, to simply be more available. I had a few really beautiful heart opening experiences, in which, for longer periods, my heart remained really present—there was a sense of intimacy with my heart, of fullness, of impressionability, of deep equanimity, and of self-love. My heart was with me—or more likely, I was with my heart! I feel this now as I write about it, and I am so grateful.

How do you make space in your life for a deeper landing in yourself?

Are there ways you support your mind to let go of thinking and controlling for a bit?

What helps you to land in your body with more presence?

When does your heart feel most available?

Hammock Time, Anyone?

Last week, we put up a hammock under our river birch tree, and it’s amazing! Just having it out there, where I can see it when I walk by the living room window or out the front door reminds me to stop.

Since we put it up, I have taken breaks in it at least twice a day—sometimes only for a few minutes, but even that amount is restorative for my bodysoul.

Lying under the tree, looking at the leaves, breathing, feeling my body sink into the support of the hammock beneath me, letting myself drop down and in. This is harder for me to do when I’m inside or even sitting in my gardens, where I see everything that needs to be done….

Did you know that adequate rest is just as important as healthy eating or exercising or even spiritual practice? We can’t live our best lives, our most enjoyable and nourishing lives, if we don’t slow down. Let me say that one more time—I know I need to keep hearing it! We can’t live our best lives, our most enjoyable and nourishing lives, if we don’t slow down.

The health benefits of adequate rest include improved memory, calmer nervous system, lowered risk of heart attack, and overall less stress. Rest also helps us be more present in our lives so that we are available for our loved ones, for moments of beauty and joy, and for ourselves.

If you don’t have a hammock, consider taking 5-minute “Do Nothing” Breaks. I created this little practice for myself when I was trying to learn to take breaks a few years ago. Just stop, sit down, set your timer for 5 minutes, and do nothing! What does “do nothing” look like? Breathe, sense your body, look out a window, sink into the support of whatever you are resting on. When thoughts arise, notice them and come back to your body and breath, to the view, to the sounds, to the support…. If you need to, write a reminder down, but then drop it—you can come back to it later. See if you can practice this a few times a day and see how it feels. More details here.

I have found that truly resting, even if it’s in short 5-minute increments helps me to feel happier, healthier, and more present in my life in general.

What would it take for you to learn to really, consciously rest? For me, it took getting a diagnosis of pre-cervical cancer (now resolved), but that’s another story! I hope it doesn’t have to be as drastic for you!