HEADING INTO THE HEART

The heart is a funny organ. It is the center of the body, the place where all life comes forward from.  the heart is sustained by our lungs – and is the force behind the distribution of the oxygen and blood necessary for our and organs. The heart is the engine – the machine that keeps it all going.

We are starting to understand that it is important not only to take care of our physical heart – but our spiritual hearts a well; we know now that an uncared for heart can manifest into a thousand different problems. Physical problems like heart attacks and cancer can be directly related to the spiritual and emotional impact of our emotions and choices on the heart.

When I was young and was having problems making a decision my mother would always say “Follow your heart”.   I suppose this meant that she expected there was a great wisdom which resided inside of me, and that if I followed the direction my heart told me to, this would create the best outcome for me.  The thing is, we mostly don’t have any clue as to how to listen to the heart, because we are so busy listening to the mind. The mind tells us all sorts of things.  The problem is, the mind very rarely tells the truth.   It has opinions, judgement and makes decisions based in fear, avoidance and reaction.   The mind tells us we are not capable of a thing, or that we are not worthy of a certain positive outcome. The mind focuses in the past and future and is never ever in the current moment in which you stand.  The mind exists in a constant state of illusion. The world it brings to your awareness is also an illusion. realizing this is like waking up from a very long dream and realizing that in real life – you can fly.

The sound of the heart is silence.  It is emptiness which is in and of itself full.  The feeling of the heart is peace – relaxed and accepting.  Joy and serenity are the results of applying heart knowledge when making choices and interacting with your life. 

Someone with an OPEN HEART is said to be loving, giving, caring and approachable.  A closed heart is someone who is self-protecting, fears vulnerability and probably has allot of ego interference in his or her relationship. someone with a closed heart is difficult to communicate with because they take everything personally. The closed heart shuts out the world in self protection –  and an open heart invites it in fearlessly.

The WAY to open your heart? Act “as if” – from this moment on.  Don’t spend the whole day thinking about all the reasons things aren’t going your way. Don’t spend any time at all thinking about why people aren’t like you want them to be Spend LOTS of time just LOOKING…just observe. Watch…yourself and others.

If a chance to be of service presents itself – do it.  Be a good ear, be a hand, be the change you want to see in your community or family.

Some ideas:

* Love without reserve or requirement. Love everyone – but love YOU first.

* Keep energy giving people – let go of energy vampires: Invite people into your life who help your heart feel at ease, happy and accepted and loved unconditionally.  Deter people who are negative energy for you. The needy, the angry and the resentful.  They have their own issues to deal with. Love them – but don’t spend lots of time with them.

* Be of service – lend a hand.   Say a prayer or hold a positive thought for someone you don’t even know – but would like to see be ok.  Random acts of kindness are a big hit with your heart. Do a service for someone every day …but don’t let anyone know. It’s a secret – between you and your heart. Shhhh

* Understand that love doesn’t mean “people pleasing” – love means knowing yourself, setting your boundaries and filling your own cup before turning to fill others.

* Eat well. You already now what this means.  More green – less white.

* Don’t stay angry – use the anger to discover yourself. . Repressed energy will reveal itself in disease.  Talk things out. Find the REAL reason why you’re angry (Hint: anger is fear. Resentment is fear. Find out what you’re afraid of).

*Resentments will kill you. Don’t have them. Resentments are not natural, not healthy, counterproductive, exhausting, distracting and they are completely unnecessary.   Plus – you have a role in each one.  The second you are able to understand what YOUR part in the resentment is…it will POOF away like magic. OK…well maybe not magic but it won’t govern you, and that’s the goal.

* Silence – every single day, without exception, you need to stay still for a moment and just be QUIET.  Forget about meditating or any of that – just stay still. Stand there. Don’t move. Just breathe..and feel your heart beating.  Feel your pulse…be with your heart.

*Express yourself creatively – Your heart can be “quieted” through a centering and expression exercise every day. I like journalling. It is a steady foundation for me, a way which I communicate with God as I understand it, and allows me to see myself away from my interior emotions.  A good tool also for sorting out resentments anger and fear.

My next entry will be a real down an dirty look at resentment, anger and the aspects of our lives that cause us to close our hearts.

Until then – I hope you are filled with abundant joy and a sure knowledge of the divinity you are in this life.

It is an honour to share this with you.

~Namaste~

All My Mothers

I was 25 when I became a mother and my mother became a grandmother.  We were both caught by surprise by the whole thing.  I grew enormous in my first pregnancy, and while I waddled around managing a health club the owner plyed me with any food I wanted which mostly included escargot sautéed in tomatoes with garlic.   Many celebrations surrounded this pregnancy, and my partner and I at the time made the quick transition from youth to adulthood.

This pregnancy was a milestone for many people. It was certainly a first for both my mother and I – this entry into mothering children.  We were just beginning our own relationship – and now we would become a team and raise this child that was growing inside of me.  We have a unique story my mother and I. Most people don`t really understand it – but we do.

I was adopted at 4 days old by my first parents.  I had always felt “proud” of being adopted.  The story I was told was that I had been chosen because I was special. They found me in a  room amongst a hundred  other babies, fell in love with me, wrapped me in the pink blanket I was known to hail with me everywhere and took me home.  I had a lovely childhood, filled with an abundance of people, birthday presents and travel.   Everyone in my life loved me and I became the focus of attention for my large family which included 4 much older sisters and 2 much older brothers.

My siblings were mostly grown and had moved out of the family home. All except my two sisters, one a singer, the other an artist.  For most of my early years, they plied me with their inspiration, taking me with them everywhere. I remember being as young as five years old, when my parents would wake me and bundle me up to g and see my sister sing in beautiful dinner clubs with velvet cushions that felt nice under my cheek as I would curl up on the bench and fall back asleep to my sister’s strong melodic voice.  I was literally weaned on the live music scene.   I began to get on stage at 5, with her tambourine, playing easily and rhythmically to Chatanooga Choo choo.  Those were the days of live disco and excitement in the clubs ran high as I grew older and began to follow her to dance clubs where women wore flashy eye makeup and men wore white pants.  It was a great time to be growing up.

Back home my other sister, the artist, would be my “home ground”, and safe place.  She taught me visual self-expression, taking me to cool places like the YMCA Montreal where she ran an arts and crafts programs for kids,and we got to make masks out of papier-mache, all painted and freaky looking. She introduced me to Swensen`s Ice Cream in Montreal and sang me lullabies.  She taught me how to sing harmonies, always making doing the after dinner dishes fun. And when my parent;s marriage began to fall to pieces, she became my refuge and gave me a home.

I learned about mothering fundamentals with her.  As she had her own children, I would spend many summers and weekends at her place, learning what it was like to have to pay constant attention to small people.  creatively gifted, she would initiate the most amazing projects with the kids and we would spend happy summers under the sprinkler, eating popsicle and watching the kids skip and play hop-scotch on the streets.  Long nights of backgammon, getting my butt kicked in Trivial Pursuit or learning difficult and addictive card games like canasta are all tucked neatly away in my happy memories.

Every life has turning points. One of the biggest ones for me came when at 13 I discovered that one of my four sisters was in fact my biological mother.  This is the part when most people take out a paper and pencil to try to make all the right connections:  My mother is my sister, my nephew and nieces are my cousins and my sister is my mother and my mother is my grandmother, my father is my grandfather and my brothers are my uncles and my sisters are my aunts.  Did you get all that? No? Well don’t feel bad – neither did I for a long time.    So, I just ignored it.

I guess that’s probably the best way to see it at the time.  I chose to continue to maintain the same relationships with people.  Certainly, I reasoned, you don’t have the same relationship with an aunt or uncle as you do a brother or sister? And with my sisters especially since I was so close to them, it was unimaginable for em to have to about     establish some sort of preemptive  distance from them now just because they were really just Aunts?  Aunt seemed less important than they were to me and I couldn’t seem to “downgrade” them.

Most of the people in the family, including my two sisters, did not know my biological history.  It only strikes me now in my adulthood that I had never considered their adjustment to the news and relationships in their own head.  Obviously, this whole “outing” of a big family secret caused some changes.

I was sent to Africa to live with my biological mother where I lived the happiest months in my memory.  My parents meanwhile made arrangements to separate.  My mother moved to Florida soon after I returned from Africa the following year. I was placed in private boarding school. Two years later she died of cancer in Florida.

I graduated and went to university at the young age of 16.  My father was dating again and I had 6 years to spend with an awesome woman what he took up with, She loved big family events and had enough money to spend to have a really great time with all of us, so we would have enormous family gatherings and celebrations for no other reason than just to be together. one year we all went to Florida.  About 10 of the kids (because together we were 12 kids), and my father and his girlfriend. She taught me how to make a chocolate mousse as she had learned at a cooking school in France.  We screwed it up about 5 times but had a terrific time eating the remnants We did art with clay with her girls and played football on the beach.  She made my father happy in a way I had never seen him. And when he refused to stop working because he was addicted to it, and she wanted to have a happy free life from work , she broke up with him and taught me about self-respect and putting yourself first in making choices for your life.

My father remarried another woman after her.  A nurse and caretaker, she helped him in his final years happy and peaceful and well cared for.  A quiter person and less inclined to spend time with the children, she probably gave him the time to himself that he needed after so many years of raising children and caring for other people.

At 25 my pregnancy hailed the real onset of my relationship with my biological mother.  After so many years of missing being my mother, she jumped into grand-parenthood with all of her heart and soul – loving and caring for my children as she would have her own.  We were a great team!  She always respected the views I had on motherhood, supported and cared for me during my divorce. She married and he became the my children’s most loving attentive grandfather imagineable. I couldnt imagine anyone else being their grandfather.   She taught me more in the example of her living than anyone could through the wisdom of their words.  The courage to give up a child and then stick around to support it throughout its life, putting your own wishes and desires aside for the best interest of the child – I can;t imagine how much strength she had.  I am at a loss as to what to say about my biological mother.  Right now she has cancer. We are all afraid for her health.  Long ago we decided together that we would “drop the labels”, that labels aren’t important when it comes to people’ relationships.   Our relationship is beyond label and description – it is sister-mother-friend-guide-partner….it goes on. I am so grateful.

How the story ends…or begins again?  Karma – I ended up with seven of my own children.  In the end no big daunting revelatory thought…just that Motherhood has taught me about love.  Perfect unending unconditional love.

Mothers come in many forms.  I believe we pick our mother – or in my case, team of mothers.  They all teach us different important things:

I picked a courageous woman to give birth to me.  I picked a woman who needed to love again to mother me.  I picked a woman whose eyes see the world beautifully to teach me.  I picked a woman who could help me find my voice to guide me. I picked a woman who would believe in me to help me succeed.  I picked a women who would teach me about forgiveness in the end.

See here`s to all of our mothers – the women who have taught us to be the men or women we are: The women who put band aids on our cuts, made our lunches and told us to go to bed.  The women who listened to our stories of teenage angst and tried to stay out of our way as we were finding our own identity.  Here`s to the women who stuck with us when we made choices they could see would cause us pain and misery – and then still listened to us at 2:00 in the morning as we whined about consequences.

Here`s to the mother`s who have helped you find your soulshine.

Happy Mother`s Day.

Namaste

Matters of the Heart –

Lately we have begun to do energetic retreats on my farm where each month we focus on a specific Chakra and work with horses and in nature to reconnect our awareness and understanding to that specific chakra.  Some say that there are seven of these energetic centers in a human body. Other schools of thought have identified many more – but we keep it to the basic seven. We use our understanding of these energetic centers and our more extensive knowledge of equine behaviour, to help people connect back to themselves through horses.  Our horses are pretty special, and each on seems to have its own specific talent with people.

What seems to happen for me is that as I study a particular center,  my life events revolves around the issues that the chakra we are studying brings up. The fourth (current) chakra addresses matters of the heart – the issues of love – and I find myself challenged and riding the wave of events and activities around me.

To bring you up to date – we have explored the first three Chakras.

The first dealing with the basic necessities of life – companionship, food shelter, clothing, a job – this Chakra is very “earth bound” and tends to deal with the most early memories a person has. The ones that teach us about how the world functions.  The memories explored in this Chakra have to do with our parents and the family group we were raised in.

The second Chakra has to do with you creative nature – again an “earthbound” physical chakra.  Here we observed how we work in groups, what our creative styles were and how we could go about in our lives expressing our creativity.  This chakra also deals with out relationship with sex and creation as a sexual process.  Many women in the retreat had never considered their sexual experiences in a way that contributes to their understanding of who they really are. This one lasted the longest – talking around  fire into the wee hours.

The third Chakra dealt with emotions.  I suppose the spiritual goal is to, as they say, become “master” of our emotions, but I am not sure it is possible to be a human and really do that. Even Jesus was supposed to have lost his temper with all of the merchants doing business in a church.  The Buddha was overcome with grief when we saw all the poverty around him.  These are human emotions.  It’s what we do with these emotions that lays within our power. It is not within out power whether or not we have them.  The study of this chakra in nature in encouraged through quiet presence and awareness.  Horses encouraged us to be present with emotion and realizing that emotions can’t kill you but is simply present to allow you to understand yourself in any situation.

And now we have come to the fourth chakra – and issues of the heart and the energy of love. 

Historically we are confounded by love. we have complicated it in a way that is amazing to me.  We have different “applications” for love – romance, children, family, friends – we seem to believe there are different forms of it for tailor made for each relationship. Each form of this love is more or less open and vulnerable and giving than the next.  We love conditionally.  This is human nature. We love with expectations, and requirement and need. We love because it is good for us, or because it makes us happy and we feel good.

We pull back our love and close our heart when things don’t go the way we think they should. We withhold love when we fear being emotionally damaged by our vulnerability. We use the idea of love as a weapon to get what we want from others.  We say “I love you” with autonomic regularity, rarely giving consideration to the real meaning of the words.

The fourth Chakra – the energetic center of our “heart” as well as the physical center of our body. It is the bridge between the earth bound and ethereal chakras. The heart is the jumping off place – faith is it progenitor. is where we are coming up to in the next retreat.  It is an issue of love – compassion, empathy. The heart Chakra is the  first portal to the “other-world” – the spiritual eternity every human questions and ponder.  Buddhists and Hindus will tell you that you have access to this paradise of gentle living, here in this lifetime – if only you could give up all of your preconceived notions of right and wrong, and accept the present moment.

The heart has everything to do with the current state of affairs you find yourself in.   The energy of the heart is most present when EGO is sleeping.  HEART and EGO don’t speak the same language, so they don’t really hang out together much.  EGO finds that when HEART speaks, he goes to sleep, quickly bored of the sweet drone of her voice. When HEART is open, SOUL loves to come out and play!  She likes to find other souls and talk with them. SOUL loves to play when the playground is full of love.

In preparing this next retreat, I am driven to better understand what the heart is all about.   In my search for understanding, the Universe seems to be providing me with ways to explore what “conditional” and unconditional love is.  What true love means, and how it fits into my life.  The “feeling” of love with anyone in my life seems to be expanding and I feel a tremendous peace and lack of anxiety about the future – a rare and pleasant state for me.  I am present – with my heart – and find that my thoughts and concerns turn from personal introspection to a compassion and concern for the people in my world.

To better understand…I wrote  poem to share with you.

WHAT LOVE ISN’T

Love isn’t  being nice to everyone.

Love isn’t letting the world use you as a doormat.

Love doesn’t mean that everyone will like you.

Sometimes the greatest acts of love

cut to the deepest place,

and can change you forever.

And that’s ok.

Love isn’t ice cream on a cone,

or sweet flowers in a vase.

Love is a goodbye,

when hellos are holding you back

Or you suddenly hear your own lie.

Love is an ear,

when the mouth wants to move.

Love is seeing you,

without needing to see myself.

Love isn’t a complicated thing,

It’s all in the heart,

Opening wide -

and suddenly expands…

Creating a new star.

Love is expansion

Holding within it’s own self

the possibility of everything.

~Namaste~

NEXT RETREAT – MAY 19 -

SOUL AND EGO: Writing Our Own Stories

This is what Soul Would Say:

Earth has an ego and a soul – just like we do. The massacres in Boston yesterday, were the ego – an ego we are ALL responsible for.  The Ego wants to make a point, it wants to be RIGHT it wants to “win” and it wants to “own” the material.  This makes absolutely no sense at all.  Does it make sense to you?  Ask yourself the hard questions. It won’t hurt.

Often it takes a catastrophic event to remind us that we are all a part of a living cell; a macro-cosmic environment which is our planet.  Just as with our human-physiological selves(the microcosmic version of earth) when one system is out of whack, the whole thing goes a little screwy.  The planet has an ego just like we do…and it has a Soul.  Yesterday Boston saw another ugly display of Ego trying to make a point about something unimportant and completely motivated by fear. This is a difficult time of change.

The fact is that right now  the energetic system of our planet is readjusting, and we are seeing all sorts of strange  happenings personally and globally. Bombs at the Boston Marathon, epidemics of cancer, teen suicide, grown men shooting children in the face for wanting to go to school, mental illness at an all time incredible high.  The planet is sick. Did you know nearly 850,000 people this year alone will kill themselves?

We have incredible strength and power in our thoughts.   What you think will be created.  I not only believe it, but when my Ego is quiet enough, when I am diligent in my spiritual practice, I can even work with this idea directly. We all can. It’s not some special magical power like a super hero or religious leader that only special people get. It is a power which resides equally within each of us.  The choices you make will directly implicate how much of this power you become aware and connected to.

That is why there is so much power in prayer – no matter what your belief system; prayer is universal.

Information and a relatability between each other is also emerging at a furious pace.  We need to both acknowledge and use our “powers” as soon as possible.

Beyond how you eat and and whether or not you do yoga, this power is accessible and available to you. You just have to decide it really. The amazing thing is that once you know how to access your own, then you can directly help the entire planet. We all can.  One person – one light at a time.   Quantum physics is constantly re-proving how far reaching the implications of a simple single thought can be in epic detail.  It’s really an amazing age to be living in.

But we have so much tragedy. That’s the way it is when things change. Similar to the 60′s when an energetic shift in consciousness caused tremendous social upheaval as well.  It amazes me how we still idealize the 60′s in our popular media, with it’s flowers and love, cool beads, music, sexual liberation and civil rights – often forgetting that these great acts of creation, either ideological or artistic, were propagated by tremendous national and international pain and fear.  The 60′s and 70′s were a precursor to what is happening now, and they were chalk full of tragedy and drama and horrifying events.  The death’s of great minds and leaders, social upheavals - again a readjustment period.  We are experiencing a stepped up version of this time in our current circumstance I believe.

Now events are much more powerful and pervasive. We have a physically globally connected singular world mind, in the form of the internet. Its consequences and effects are beyond anything we could ever have imagined and we are just at the very tip of something that is inclining us to learn how closely connected to all of the energies around us that we really are.

Some people are starting to understand the implications of this and are hopping on the bus with both feet towards a fearless conscious evolution.  This emergent understanding of ourselves as energetic spiritual beings, connected in every way to and from our creative source, far supersedes anything religion has ever attempted to delve into. Why? Because weren’t ready.  Learning anything, I have been taught with horses, is like learning the alphabet.  You cannot make too many words if you skip learning certain letters.  You need the whole alphabet to make sentences. And so, now, we have access to the whole alphabet, and we are starting to write our own stories.

The only things that will last are the things we attach to the only aspect of existence that doesn’t change – and that is our own personal consciousness. Our energy. Our US-ness. The I AM part of you. Even if you have never heard this, I bet somewhere inside of you this makes some weird kind of unrelatable sense. That’s the way deep truth feels. Intangible but solid.

Boston was a horrible tragedy. But so are the countless deaths in Afghanistan every day.  There are many hundreds if not many thousands of children who have watched their own fathers die there, as did the little 8 year old boy who sadly experienced this with his own father at the Boston Marathon Bombings.  Are those fathers less important to their children?  I don’t think so. We just need to stop killing each other.

Segue…

I am going away for a few days to be alone. It will be good to clear my mind.  I like to meditate and gather my energies back when I have a chance to do this – unplug from technology and remember what I feel like – unhindered.

I am very lucky in my life to have the help and support of an incredible Tribe. My tribe is very special. We have consciously chosen one another.  We choose to be honest and supportive. We help each other be brave and fearless in our life choices, and we mostly spend time reminding each other of who we really are.

Everyone needs a tribe. Ego hates my tribe. When I “hang with my tribe”, in whatever form it is in that day, ego is mighty quiet.

He wouldn’t get a word in edgewise over the cackling anyway.

~Namaste~

ROUND 13: Soul Sings a Song!

There are two things I have come to know for sure in life. The first is you WILL get what you pray for – SO BE CAREFUL!  Maybe (probably) it won’t arrive in the form, shape or colour you thought it would arrive, but I can guarantee you my friends, that if you pray earnestly for something..you will get it.

The second thing that I have learned is that the more we think we know how this life will turn out, the more incredibly wrong we will find we are.  There are surprises EVERYWHERE! At every turn, I have been shown the unpredictability and absolute adventurous magic of this life, and I am in awe.   Sometimes, the story bends and turns darkly.  It can be filled with loss and drama and grief, as much as it can overflow with love and gratitude and joy.

How I experience any event in my life entirely has to do with how determined I am to stay spiritually connected.  Soul keeps me and my overly active mind on the straight and narrow.   Ego is always  busy lifting power weights and gearing up for when I let my presence and awareness slip away.

Ego has a chance to come out and play if I don’t sleep enough, don’t eat well, don’t excercise and meditate. Ego has an especially great time if I forget to set boundaries, go around motivated by people-pleasing and allow myself to dwell in the illusion of guilt from the past or anxiety in the future.  Ego never seems to exist in THIS particular moment.  Where there is a desire to maintain a conscious contact to our creative/creator source, without the encumbrances and limitations of human expectations on that relationship.

But life isn’t all very predictable, and knowing where and when to head off Ego at the pass becomes a challenge of staying present and aware in this moment. I think God keeps it real – so there are curves in the road.  And thank God for those curves!  If we could know the ENTIRE story and how it were to unfold BEFORE hand, we would probably just stand there terrified to move forward at all like deer caught in the headlights.  It’s those curves that give us space and allowance and time to assimilate the next set of challenges on the road.

 

There are always surprises…you never know how anything will turn out really.

******************************************************************************************************************************************************

Soul hears a knock at the door…

She opens it and finds another – just like her…

Loneliness lifts. The sun shines.

Thank God for the curves in the road.  She is surprised that she is not on her knees.

In fact…She is elated.

A song fills the room – a sweet soulful melody, moving in and out of time gently like silk.

Soul begins to sing inside, deep in the place where songs are created.

Ego sends out a muffled barely audible sound from beyond the mind- Soul doesn’t hear him.

“That song sucks”.

Soul smiles and continues her sweet composition.

The stars turn their faces towards the Her and stand still in rapt attention.

The sun and the moon dance lightly between one another in the falling midday sun.

Her song is a breath of relief that she is till here – she feels it deeply in this moment- the one that is her gift to herself.

Soul is on fire. In this moment there is only her song and nothing else.

The sound of something like a summer night compliments the tune. Soul feels like she is writing with the whole world as her orchestra and Love is her muse.

Ego…?

What ego?

 

HEALING WITH HORSES – THE THIRD CHAKRA

HEALING WITH HORSES – THE THIRD CHAKRA

WILLPOWER – INTUITION – FEAR- GUT FEELING- PERSONAL POWER

Building Spiritual Confidence

Third Chakra Lesson Of the Horse:  “You’re allowed to be afraid – but you can’t let it govern your choices and actions”

 

A horse naturally knows when you are comfortable with being approached as demonstrated here by JJ and Tiara.

The third chakra is considered to be the center of energetic power of a person; it is our “gut feeling”, our intuition and our desire to move forward – our willpower.  If your third chakra is out of alignment or is blocked, then you will experience lack of feeling powerful, lack of willpower, hesitancy in decision making, and an inability to move forward on plans you have for yourself.  You will continuously questions your intuition or gut feelings about things.  You will find that you ignore your gut, and then regret it.  Physiologically, Third Chakra blockage results in digestive issues and sensitivities.

We are encouraged through the study of chakras to become aware that we are both physical and energetic beings – spiritual in nature, and connected to a higher source, in whichever way you conceive of that source.  Through the practices of presence and awareness, we become more in tune with our connection to that divine source and the manner in which it communicates to us directly, is through our “gut instincts”.  Connecting with that source and really understanding where your center of power comes from – is the ticket to the removal of all fear.

Historically we have downplayed our instinct in favour of pure rationalism – today that is changing. Women especially have been taught over the millennia to “tune down” their inner navigational systems. In North America the culture has been created around a belief that “emotional response” is weak and invalid, when in reality, an ability to listen to and make decisions based on a faithful understanding of the “Still small voice” within – is the most powerful choice a human being can make.  Not paying attention to our inner guidance has resulted in the evolution of a culture run entirely cerebrally and materialistically – and that kind of focus is getting us nowhere fast. .  We have entered an age when this is simply no longer enough for what we need to survive and thrive.

By participating in any program which allows you to return to a basic presence and understanding of your “gut”, individuals are contributing to the healthy continued evolution of the planet.  We are finding that reconnection to nature and to animals in general, horses specifically is an effective way of living a more peaceful and energetically connected life, allowing you to rely on your instinct as a real tool in decision making.

There are many ways of perceiving and dealing with our chakras.  Horses are an exceptionally effective way of understanding where your blockages lay and how to manage them.  Horses reflect a person’s interior energy.  They are not aware of what you are trying to tell them on the outside, but rather focus on the true energetic intention you bring into your interaction.  You can be smiling on the outside, but if you are deeply frightened or sad in truth, a horse will know it and will reflect this back to you in no uncertain terms.

PREY VS PREDATOR

A horse is a prey animal. Therefore its only resource for survival is its ability to run. On occasion horses will use a “fight” response when they are afraid, but this only occurs if they feel trapped or unable to escape a perceived threat.  See any similarities to the way you might handle conflict in your life?

In horseback riding, I often teach that the most important part of your body to be aware of during any equine interaction is the third chakra solar plexus area.  It is your center of gravity in the sadlle. If you know where your center is, you will have a more connected safe and enjoyable ride.  By being aware of the sensations in the solar plexus, you bring yourself immediately back to center and into a space of recognizing the present moment in your experience.

When I ask a new nervous rider -

“How are you feeling”?

Often people will unconsciously put their hands to their solar plexus if they are feeling nervous or anxious.  If they are feeling joyful and relaxed, their hands move to their heart.

One of my favourite lessons taught to me by horses is that we are all allowed to BE AFRAID…we’re just not allowed to let that fear govern our decisions.

Horses do not react aggressively if you are afraid. This is a myth. Horses however will not stay with you, stand beside you or feel entirely comfortable with you, if you exhibit signs of insecurity because they will sense this and fear that there may be a real reason for being afraid, putting them in a state of preparedness to flee.

If your mind is scared, which happens to everyone, horses can teach you how to allow that to be, but generate a centered peaceful feeling in your body.  This is a matter of awareness and discipline. Now, imagine if you could take this kind of awareness into your interactions with people in your life? Your body is allowed to be fearful, but your mind is centered and relaxed knowing that the fear is only generated by your thoughts. The results can be quite fantastic.

The third charka can be a response to intuition  – our higher sense of knowing that goes beyond thought and human emotion.  We feel our “gut” when we are going to make a move in our life and are not sure which direction to take.  |We pay attention to our gut with our children.  We pay attention to our gut when we are placing bets on a football game.

Honing the ability to listen to and TRUST your “gut”, is a most important tool in spiritually understanding your life. Horses can be very helpful.

In this chakra exercise, we will work with horses to understand both how powerful our conscious and subconscious intentions can be, and how our intereacvtions with animals can help us to know our personal truth on a more profound and functional level.

Horses are animals which exist entirely off of “gut feeling”. By spending time in quiet observation  of the herd we will come to see how their subtle yet complex system of communication, based entirely on “gut instinct”, serves to keep horses both safe and balanced within their herds.  We will spend time sketching drawing or representing the horses in our own creative way.  Then in the round pen, each participant will be given the opportunity to work energetically one on one with a horse of their choosing.

The activity begins by using your gut to choose your horse.  Then later, once you get to know the personality of your equine partner better, you will come to understand and explain to the group what it is about that horse that attracted you, what it was in their energy that reflected back to you something about yourself which is of key importance in your spiritual development.

Horses make us vulnerable.  They are big, we are small. They are mysterious to most people and yet,  are quite obvious to them.

Being vulnerable and aware of the sensations of your body in a state of vulnerability will allow you to transpose what you learn about yourself, into your “non retreat” world.

Horses are gentle brilliant teachers.

I look forward to the continuing journey with you!

QUESTIONS:

1-      Can you remember some times in your life when you had a “gut feeling” about something and ignored it? What happened?

2-      How do fear, anger and resentment feel in your body?  Where do they arise?

3-      Did your parents and environment teach you to honour your instinct?

4-      Are you afraid of horses? What is it that makes you afraid? List all of the “things” you can imagine happening that are bad in your interaction with a horse.

5-      Finish this sentence… “ When I have a gut feeling I….”

6-      How do you protect yourself when you feel threatened?

7-      State 10 things in your life you have POWER over. List 10 things you are POWERLESS over.

8-      Where does your personal power come from?

ON MAKING CHANGES…

Times of Change

How do you know when it’s time to make a change in your life?  How do you know if it’s the right change in the right direction?  What are some of the drastic changes you have had to make in your life? What was the motivation behind the changes?   How are the changes you make different as you get older?  Are you aware of the truth behind the motivation for the choices you make?

It’s time to make a change in your life when what you are doing is not longer working for you. What does “working for you mean”? This is a very individual thing.  I would however say that, to really understand personal needs, Maslow’s Hierarchy can be of great help:

In this pyramid Maslow ascribes certain labels to the stages of human personal development – a list of ascending needs, beginning with the basics of food and shelter, all the way up five stages to “self-actualization”, the place you get to when you begin to look for the deep inner meaning in life – when your exterior/ physical needs feel fully secured.

Let me premise by saying, humans generally don’t like change. whether we bring it on ourselves or it comes round the bend and takes us by surprise, we spend the majority of our time resisting the effects of change.  We live in denial. Even though the one thing we are absolutely guaranteed each day is that things will change; people will change situations, your body, the planet, your relationships – we persist in resisting.  We seem often overwhelmed an unprepared for it, as though it just snuck in through the back door and smacked us on the head.

I am not suggesting that you live your life in a diligently prepared manner – where I live we call that paranoia.  But you can come to the knowledge and understanding that not only will change happen, but you are able to both withstand it, survive it, become even greater and grander BECAUSE of it, and flow with whatever it requires of us. We have within us, as of yet untapped inner resources which can propel us to greater and greater awareness as to how handle the inevitable shifts in our lives.  I want to tell you now that there is nothing you need to learn, and nothing I can teach you about this. You already know this inside. I have nothing new anyways, to enable you to handle change and manifest whatever you want in your life.  You have been given everything you need already.  Your job in life is to figure out how to listen.  Pay attention to your inner voices that manifest the reality you live right now.

I always thought the concept of manifesting was really bogus.  How can someone manifest anything in their life – wouldn’t everyone be driving around in sports cars, living in gigantic houses if we could all do that? Wouldn’t poverty be eliminated and war abolished in favour of a perfect planet?  No, for me,  manifesting was for the rich and famous, who could manifest their dollars into empty dreams come true.  They weren’t for ordinary people like me who were trying to find some deep inner meaning and cohesion in my life.

But then I discovered what manifesting truly means – it means becoming starkly aware of your inner drive – the thing that moves you forward that brings you energy, that gives you inspiration and that lights up your world. It is the thing that makes you lose your sense of time when you are deeply embroiled in it, and it is the idea that motivates the next ten.

Manifesting occurs when the intention I hold inside of my own mind and heart is deeply aligned with the best interest of the universe. In other words, if you are following your “destiny” you will discover a path of least resistance, which brings you, one step at a time, to the path in which you can be of highest service and purpose in your life.  Now, this doesn’t mean that your path, if it is in the best interest of your life and all those around you, is necessarily the easy one, nor is it always the least painful one.  Our paths in life are scattered with challenges and bridges that make us stronger and more capable for the next hurdle to overcome.  It’s like we are building up a psychic muscle with each new sorrow and challenge.  The sooner we understand the benefit in the things we believe cause us trouble pain or strife, the more readily able we will be to move along our path.

A word on destiny:  we do not have one destiny. I believe “there are many roads to Rome”, and that ultimately, the place where we find our highest calling and we are able to be of service in some way to our lives and the lives of others, is as individual as each person.  How you get there and how it feels for you will entirely depend on what you are trying to learn about yourself.

My experiences in motherhood helped me better understand this process.  I had three biological children and four step children, who were all raised together as one family.  When my birth children were babies, I remember thinking at times, when they were sick or I suffered from lack of sleep, that I didn’t know how I would handle it getting any more difficult. I was pushing myself past limits of patience, worry and personal neglect that I had never experienced. And yet, as they grew older and stronger, we faced more and more challenges together as a family – even more difficult than the sleepless night, and I survived. Not only did I survive, but by the time they became teenagers, I remembered fondly the sleepless nights of infanthood – as I relived sleepless nights, but now for a different reason. Over the years, I realized that there were many times when I was so overwhelmed by the love and desire I had to give them the best life, that I learned to turn things that felt out of my control over to a greater power – the same power that guides our intuitive thoughts to the creative places within our hearts that put us on the road to purpose.

It’s the same voice that shows you how beautiful the world is. The same voice that comforts you when things seems completely out of control. Over time, you lose this need for control and even understanding.  You adopt an “it is what it is” attitude– and let things unwind with less and less interference.   The more you practice this the more you see that in some way, you will always be guided and cared for in your choices.   You will become more of an observer of your life, than a director or captain.  You will deveklop faith that in walking across the river, the next stone will appear upon your path.

Your changes and choices will come because the universe moves forward, with or without us.  If we do not make a conscious choice towards change, I assure you the universe ill remove what is standing in the way of your spiritual progress, and will remove it for you.

Choices made with the motivation of fear or avoidance, moving away from something (fear of confrontation ) have little energy behind them.  Choices made with creation and newness in mind; carry a greater energy for sustaining themselves.   Being honest with yourself about why you are making the choices you are making, is paramount to personal happiness.  If not, its like running through a forest with a blindfold on, and I guratee you will hit many trees.  Understanding your personal truth, with no judgement (put the gavel dowbn…it is what it is!) is the most empowering action you can take.  It is the mechanism that removes the blindfold, allows you to stand still and see all of the trees in the forest.

Surprise! This is the kind of change no one really appreciates. It’s the change you didn’t ask for, but fell upon you.  Death, divorce, getting fired, losing your house – these are chaos change. The shift in your reality, the sudden death of something you knew somewhere was no longer serving purpose, but you didn’t know how not to have it in your life.  Then, when it was no longer there…you found you had resources within yourself that you would not have otherwise become acquainted with.  Every day can bring new surprises. Being aware of your ability to handle whatever comes your way – can make for stronger more self assured decision making. Dance like no one is looking!

Sometimes it’s a change you are looking at; maybe a change of relationship, job, friends, hobby.  These are conscious decisions. You have time to process the potential moves you will make, the hazards and even the preparation for making changes.  The rule of following the energy that gives and avoiding the energies that take is good advice.  Life can entirely change in such a positive way when we consciously go to what gives us energy and avoid what takes it.

I sometimes work with women who have suffered from sexual abuse in their lives. In a recent meeting of minds, we were discussing how we broke out of these entrapments.  Each one of us, although the stories differed greatly, had a similar chapter ending on that porti8no of our lives.  There was a point where a decision was made, not by our physical minds, which had spent so much time preventing us from standing up for ourselves in the first place. The decision came from an interior mind – an inner knowing – as to just how, when and where to handle and end the abuse occurring to us.  It was a soul-choice over which no human mind would have any power.

When the soul decides to act upon something that is vital for its continued progress, it simply will.  This came as a great relief to us.  We suddenly saw that we had a lot less to worry about then we thought.  We saw how much we were powerless over and then even more brilliantly, we saw EXACTLY where our power DID come from. The REAL power: the extraordinary power of change and choice that resides within you.

The key to successful change within anyone’s life, is developing a knowledge of what that “soul voice” sounds like, and learning to trust your instinct, your gut, the inside voice that is the true calling of your soul.

It won’t be easy.  Some days you will question your direction, not to mention your sanity.  But, in the end, I guarantee you that following that ‘still small voice” to the place where you are your greatest most grandest version of yourself…will never disappoint your sense of adventure and fulfillment.

~Namaste~

 

THE WAY OF STONES

THE WAY OF STONES

The Creator of us All,

Is a great river,

And you are one of a million billion stones

Dropped in,

To roll and tumble,

Together and apart.

 The river will move you at Her will,

Guiding and protecting.

But you will resist…

For that is the way of stone.

You begin rough and edgy,

Fused to the tension of the heartstrings

And Attached to the mountain,

Rooted and Unmoving.

But the Universe will have her way!

And grief and fear will chisel at you,

Spurring you on to change,

Until you can do nothing else,

But let go and be

Torn free

Only hang precariously

From one precipice

To another.

Until suddenly

 You are propelled into the flow!

Released by the All that is everything

That which loves you most.

But we forget – For that too is the way of the stone…

Rocked by circumstance and suffering,

Each impacting your solid self,

You cannot help but resist!

Forgive.

In time,

Resistance is diminished.

One by one,

The solid heavy pieces of yourself,

The ones you thought you really needed,

Crumble easily away.

In this only – there is no choice.

Sometimes quickly – Sometimes slowly,

You become stranded at times,

Cornered by other stones.

Until you see that they are not your way,

And you finally surrender to the call of the river.

Now your edges have beveled away,

And you are LIGHT!

You begin to maneuver with ease,

Wallowing in your new found freedom,

And in a final CRACK!

You shudder and open,

 A tiny pebble now reduced to

The Truth.

An ethereal sparkle – perfect and unhindered,

You are moved gently onto the shore,

Only to find yourself

Snuggled sweetly beneath the foot of a small child

Building castles in the sky.

And there – your soul is released

Into the All that you are.

~Namaste~

Josee Brault

MAJOR LESSONS IN BLUES

My recent performance at the illustrious Femmes en Blues III in Montreal taught me some grand lessons for which I will be eternally grateful!  I’ll share them with you in the hopes that you won’t make the same mistakes I made.

First I have to begin by making a terrible admission to you:

I never really liked the blues.

It’s boring. Standard. Repetitive.

Right?

Wrong.

The music I chose for the event was selected admittedly haphazardly. Every song to me, up to thAT point, sounded like one of only four songs which represented to blues in my head.  Each song only differed by changing lyrics and cadence so I paid little regard to any of the real complexity of the songs.  I threw the general choices out to my Facebook friends and followers and a few good suggestions came back. I had to pick four in total, so for the final two remaining,  I really had no idea what to choose. I looked mainly for what sounded like ”standard blues” to me – like”Ball and Chain” by Janis (everyone “expected me” to do a Janis) and “Hound Dog” (easy…right?) originally by Big Mama Thornton, and crucified later by Elvis.

The F.E.B. festival is created by some very talented and professional women. An all female band, we only had one rehearsal prior to the show and everyone was expected to learn their songs on their own.  I went into the rehearsal thinking (there was my FIRST mistake!) that I could “wing” these songs./ They’re just blues after all. I was so very very wrong on so many levels.

I came home after getting my ass kicked in rehearsal, and sat down to do some real work. When I began to learn Big Mama’s “Hound Dog”, I realized I was faced with a song that was intuitively complex. I had paid no mind to the intricate and off set patterns of vocal and guitar entry and exit. I had sung everything in a 4×4 (my entire life??), but then later realized that most of the earlier foundation blues was extremely complex because it had not followed what we established later in the 50;s and 60s as a very predictable pattern of music.  I discovered we have dumbed down our music over time!  Sadly we have often have lost the real passionate feel of the intuitive offset patterned blues. As I was learning this lesson, my fingers accidentally touched a YouTube video for “Ball and Chain”, the last concert given by Big Mama Thornton in 1984.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSAOHwQhPcQ

In the video, we see a very old Mama. She puts out her cigarette, sits down, looks carefully at the audience as though she is sitting at a table about to tell a frank and frightening tale. It looked so intimate,  except that she was looking out at a sea of thousands of faces. She announces she is going to do a tune “in my own way”, and so begins “Ball and Chain”. A rebuke to Janis Joplin’s interpretation of her music in the 60′s. I had a rough history with this song.  Firstly, many people because of my rough voice and my big red hair, feel Janis when I sing, so I almost feel a pressure of doing her songs, although I don’t relate to her as an artist or singer at all.  I was at first doing Ball and Chain, which I had plucked quickly and mindlessly off the internet. I listened to the beginning, it sounded like a standard three chord blues and I just threw it into the mix, only later taking the time to really listen to the whole thing and discovered that in actuality it was  Janis screaming a horrendous lament for 8 minutes and seven seconds.  Recorded live just a few months before Janis overdosed, it was truly an anthem of misery. I couldn’t do it.

I quickly got in touch with the organiser of the event, apologising for pulling a song after the deadline, but I explained there was just NO WAY I could do this song.  I remembered this as I watched Big Mama Thornton focus her eyes, clearly in the past, and tell some man how she felt about his “hanging around her neck – like a ball and chain”…wow. I was blown off my chair. Her face twisted, her eyes rolled back in her head and her wide smile shone like a diamond in the blue light of the stage. It was magical.  This was a level of blues so honest and so completely visceral it entirely changed her appearance. She became at once beautiful and awesome…bigger than life.  I watched her eyes transform, and I saw her energy move the band through the ins and outs of the story. My heart-felt full, my eyes had tears and I realized that at that moment…I GOT the blues. I felt it, I knew it…and I was humbled. How could I have taken such a vastly important song as ‘Hound Dog” (which contrary to Elvis’s meek interpretation is not at all about a dog at all), and sung it with such a lack of respect! I could clearly feel Big Mama beside me, poke me with her elbow and say “girl…if you is gonna sing my songs, you better do ‘em right!”. “Yes Ma’am”, I replied silently and reverently. Oh boy. That night being called up on stage to perform my songs at The Femmes en Blues, I was not surprised by the feeling of calm and companionship I felt with this wise elder. She had stayed with me the whole week I diligently learned my songs.  I stepped up to the plate alright…but not alone.    Nothing that is as fabulous as what happened that night could ever be done alone.  Only grace, and the help of a friendly guiding hand, can bring you to this kind of experience. Here’s to hoping you all get the blues!

~Peace~

ROUND 9: A NOTE FROM SOUL

A NOTE FROM SOUL:

I have been struggling for years with the idea of what God is, but tonight, and not ironically, I found God in Big Mamma Thornton and the blues.  So, I really don’t know what your idea of a Higher Being is, I’m pretty sure we all generally believe in something yours sure can;t be any stranger than Big Mama Thornton. God is our pure creative instinct. It feels separate and apart from us only because religion has interceded as a unnecessary middleman in our divine relationship. So, my version of God includes a bunch of religions that i found appealing, philosophies and beliefs. Even some rituals which can make me feel like I am being more actively connected to my spiritual life.  I don’t know what to call that “creative being” that made us and everything, but I do believe one of those exists.  Not separate and apart from us, but very much inside of us, and equally accessible when we choose to remember we have access to it.

This pure divine energy in us can best be used in creative pursuits.  We humans are creating machines! We create cities, countries, people, technology, science. We create cultural norms, beliefs systems, and entire patterns of illusions that we have all agreed to live by, mostly to our detriment.

Everyone at some point asks who they are and what their purpose is in life.  I really don’t find the answers so difficult. We are all each other, and we are here to learn ourselves and then take our highest creative talent and use it for good in the world. That’s it.  Sounds impossible, but Star trek has been right about lots of things, so I am hoping Old Gene was n track with his future Utopian Society, which enabled New Generation to have an entire world of people who studied and didn’t need money.  Doesn’t that sound ridiculous?  It shouldn’t though, should it?  We can’t achieve what we cannot even imagine.  SO, if we can IMAGINE Utopia, then we can move towards it with global conscious effort.

I say let’s shoot high. Stop focusing on the symptoms, like our crappy doctor’s do, and focus on the BIG PICTURE, which is that the world needs a quick and dramatic overhaul. Either we do it, or I guarantee you She will.  At any rate, the more we perfect our skills in communicating with each other, as we do here in blog land, the better off we are in all areas.  I find people get away with allot less these days, and that is a comfort.  It means we are forming a global consciousness, a sort of planetary cultural belief system. This will really make all the population spill over much easier to integrate and absorb into hosting cultures, simply because they have prior knowledge through the internet.

The fact is we all have a deep inner knowledge of exactly who it is we are.  It is our quest to define it falsely that has led to each and every one of our most brutal moments in evolutionary history.  From a micro or macro cosmic view, everything from personal ego to global religion, to greed – people are at war to gain a definition of themselves. Palestine, the jews – this fight won’t end until defining themselves by their religion is understood to be extremely self limiting. We are born to be creative beings – by labelling ourselves, we definitively narrow the definition of experiences we are willing to have.

But, the fact is, we are all given a creative talent, some spark of passion for something, that when we undertake this activity, we are transported; we feel at peace, out mind is quiet and whatever we come out with at the end it always feel like time well spent.  I feel like this when I sing, or play guitar, paint, sketch or write even.  This is our inner creative being.  It is the highest expression can undertake to bring to the world.  Each person in the world should feel free to explore in freedom and peace and joy, no matter who they are or where they live.  But we all KNOW this at a very fundamental level.  It’s not like the world is full of BAD people, there are very good people as well. So, why, if there are 7 billion of us, can;t we make it so that everyone has what they need, so that children get an education and sick people see a doctor? Why is this simple stuff so difficult?

It’s difficult, in part. because of “who” people think they are.  The wealthy hold their riches like in an eagles talon, while those who have known suffering or lack, more freely give of their material goods and themselves.  The fact is, suffering is the best route to understanding compassion.  The Buddhists have it.

I am optimistic.  I believe that the technology which has been emerging will bridge the gap and create fellowship and understanding, maybe not in our lifetimes, but eventually, people will no longer be able to focus on differences and ignore the fact that we are ALL THE SAME.

~Peace~

ROUND 9 UPDATE: EGO is biding his time, quietly taking notes like an undercover reporter hiding in the back-alley of my mind.