-- a journey into awareness
When Shiva, our sweet cat died, this poem came to me:
Love fiercely,
Let your heart break
It’s then that Life
knows its worth.*
I think Shiva whispered these words in my ear. She was letting me know how letting myself feel such love, even for a moment, is what life is all about. And yes, that means feeling the grief and pain when something or someone you love leaves you.
Love fiercely! Again and again. Life demands it, and you’ll have no regrets.
* Shiva via besliter 8/11/14
I keep staring at them, willing them to shoot up their yellow flowers. I want the color but my garden is taking its own good time. It’s still May, too early for most of the perennial flowers, especially these Western Sunflowers, to bloom. I’m feeling impatient.
Spring has been here forever. I want warmer weather and the richness of the harvest. Silly of course, and just a passing emotional storm Yet I’m aware that in our world of instant messaging, it’s easy to lose touch with the natural rhythm of things.
Waiting is seen only as a delay. Defining goals suddenly slips into a dissatisfaction with what we have now. Being where you are seems not enough. You forget to appreciate and enjoy what is.
Fortunately I can laugh at my impatience. It too will pass.
I walk back into the house remembering that now is the only moment I have. And, I smile.
As I watched, the tears came. It was a video a friend had sent me. When I told my friend I cried he got concerned, and said he wouldn’t send any more of those kinds of videos.
He thought my tears were a bad thing. But really, they were the kind that come when you ‘re caught unaware and, unbidden, your heart just opens. You deeply appreciate someone’s courage, their caring, their pain, their 
triumph…
This is very different from becoming distraught, worried or distracted by another’s experience. This is about genuine caring: witnessing what is and not pushing it away, appreciating the human experience without getting lost in it.
Crying when your heart opens is like going through a doorway to a place where the “we vs. them” disappears. It’s true love and appreciation.
An open heart, even with tears– it’s a good thing.
I like Peter Diamandis’s comment “you are the environment in which you live. ” Creating works best when we focus on what we want. Negative programing shifts our focus to what we don’t want, fostering fear, worry, and negative thinking. I thought Peter’s study of Times Magazine covers was telling as well.
Cathy Thomas has written about her own creating process in getting her book published.
“For several years I have had the intention of writing a book. …..I can tell you that at the start, the idea of me actually writing a book seemed really crazy. …So what I did was just start… And then…my dream got stuck. I just could not get it to move forward.”
The creating process can be messy, with many opportunities to just give up. In Cathy’s case, there were no 
heroic bells and whistles…just a thread of desire for it to happen that kept it all moving. She listened to her own sense of when to move and when to let it rest. She was open to it not happening at the same time she still wanted it. Creating often requires holding polarities: seeing the end result complete but being OK with not having it; being willing to put a hold on something but still be alert to possibilities…..
Read the rest of Cathy’s post here: Making your Dream Become a Reality.
I found a way to shift my attention away from my thinking mind, to ask questions and to listen for the answers: FOCUSING IN MY BODY. I shift my attention into my body (I focus on my heart), center with my breath and feel a moment of genuine care. As my thinking mind quiets, I can get a felt sense of what is going on. I can tune into an inner guidance that goes beyond my fears, worries and limitations.
My heart-focus filters out the noise my head is broadcasting.
(Some of the science behind this can be found at: www.heartmath.org)
Most of us really don’t really believe what we want matters. But it’s the first step in learning we are creators. We start by wanting something, which leads us to learn about the creating process itself. We begin to trust that we can have what we want. And, it’s only then, that we can hear the invitation to go deeper: to listen to the silence, to step off the edge of what we thought was possible. In Alice of Wonderland’s terms, we fall down the rabbit hole– running into paradoxes, living bigger questions, losing the world we thought we knew so well.
