Tag: inspiration

The Wholeness of the Wild Sea

(Note: I’ve been revisiting some musings I wrote in my journal when I last visited the coast. These pieces capture my meditations on themes of brokenness and wholeness. A few days ago, I shared the an excerpt from these musings in the blog post The Beauty in Broken Pieces. In today’s post, another titbit.)

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After last night’s rain, the sky is a patchy tapestry of pale blue and fluffy grey clouds. The once stormy black ocean now glistens like sheets of molten gold. The world has transformed itself into a new day.

What did it have to lose, surrender and release for it to be so? What did it have to gain, accept and carry forward for it to be as it is now?

We will never really know the wild magic of night that unfolds while we sleep. Our minds know only what we see. I guess that is the gift of living from the heart, because the wise heart knows the unseen. It taps into mystery. It seeks out beauty and sacredness. It intuitively traces pieces of wildness along unseen paths to secret worlds of deep and feral magic.

That place within us, the heart, the wild essence, knows the transformative path that the black night ocean has had to take to become the illuminated body of light that I see on the horizon. And it knows too, the path that our own souls need to take from dark and stormy places of brokenness to the healing light of love.

Each droplet of ocean water has had to be open and willing to allow the rays of sunlight to enter its body and become illuminated. Each ocean droplet is a piece of wildness intuitively called to gather the light to become a seamless glimmering ocean – one body, one life, a million pieces of wildness dissolving into one light of wholeness.

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Hamani & Following What Lights You Up

(Excerpt from Flowering Within)

Every spring thousands of sakura trees (cherry blossom trees) in parts of Japan break out in bloom. The landscape comes alive as a blanket of soft pink and white spreads across its vast expanses. When the wind washes through the trees, the delicate sakura petals shake and fall quickly to the ground, some filling rivers and turning them pink. For more than a thousand years Japanese culture has honored this enchanting picture of beauty through the practice of hamani – flower viewing or flower watching – with people coming from all over to witness  and celebrate the serene unfolding of spring through these ancient forests of sakura trees.

Hold the image of these blooming sakura trees in your mind’s eye for a moment and imagine something. Imagine that when you are inspired, when you’re attuned to your inner essence and when you tap into the flow of grace, your heart flowers with the same kind of wild splendor and spreads a special kind of magic across the landscapes of your life. You light up in your center and your inner petals open to let your spirit shine. Your authentic Self steps forward and when she does, can you come to her with eyes full of wonder and honor her inner flowering through your own practice of hamani in the same way that flower viewers in Japan bear witness to the sakura blossoms?

The Flowering Within Paperback is now available on Amazon. Click here…

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How Can You Rise & Set Yourself Free?

The new moon tip-toed in like a silent dream gathering winter’s cold breath under her cloak and lulled the earth deeper into slumber. The days are mostly sunny and warm, but come late afternoon, I light candles, burn cinnamon and sweet orange scents and I throw a blanket over my knees to stay warm as I write at my desk.

A few days ago, I was breathing the morning light in with a cup of steaming tea when I looked at the flower pot on my coffee table. I noticed how the cyclamen buds rise like swans from the soil and then turn and spread their petals upward like feathered wings in flight. They seemed like a secret poem, an ode to the mystery of flight, quietly reminding us to spread our own wings and soar.

Cyclamen swans

Their faint whispers inspired two questions that I’ve carried with me lately: How can you set yourself free just a little bit more today? How can you rise above the obstacles in your path and fly closer to your dreams?

Sometimes the answers are not easy ones. Like when setting myself free means that I have face my fear of confrontation to stand my ground. Other times they’ve offered simpler options than I’d have imagined, like putting on some music to dance with my husband at the end of a difficult day instead of allowing myself to wallow in negativity because of the little things that pricked up my sensitive soul. Either way, I like that asking these questions have given me the opportunity to shift my thinking, deal with situations that I generally tend to avoid and take small liberating steps forward.

This is probably why I drew inspiration from the cyclamen flowers to string together my wild word mantra this week.

The Cyclamen Inspired Wild Words: Rise, Fly, Wings, Adventure, Expand

The Mantra: I am willing to rise above self-limitations that keep me trapped in negative cycles. I choose to spread my wings and fly. I am ready for new adventures that help me to soar and allow my soul to expand.

Cyclamen wild words mantra