Category: conscious change
Let the Light Out

Let the Light Out

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In these times of trouble and chaos, I find music is something that helps me calm and nurture myself. I generally create songs and store them in a folder until the album feels complete. I did that with the Realms album, which is being released July 22nd. But this morning…something different happened.

I was doing my yoga practice with Ernest and remembered what I heard during my meditation this morning: Let the light out! It’s so easy to get buried in the troubles of our times, to collapse into fear. When I asked, how do I make it through this time of darkness? The answer was like a bell ringing with clarity: Let the light out! During every stretch, I imagined light streaming out of my body, clearing away darkness and stuck places.

Then, I sat down with my harmonium, flute, and voice and two songs came forth. So a mini-album is also being released July 22nd.

Thank you to everyone streaming my music! I’m actually making a little money from this creative effort! Every time you stream my music, I get a little bit of money from the streaming platform. So thank you so much! Someone is listening!! YIPPEE!!
What We Hold in Our Hands

What We Hold in Our Hands

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Most everyone I know is struggling with the state of the world, especially the deconstruction of the country I call home. Add to that the Climate Crisis, which is not only being ignored but worsened by the current administration, and species extinction occurring at an alarming rate, desecration of oceans, lands, national parks, national forests…there’s no need to expand the list because if we are paying attention, we know. Oh….how painfully we know.

With some of my friends, we’ve collectively pondered, “How do we maintain our joy? How do we maintain our sanity seeing the things we hold most sacred destroyed by an administration that has one goal and that is to elevate itself above everything and everyone and fill their coffers with money. It’s challenging to maintain balance and to even breathe when every peek into social media or a news feed exposes another crime against humanity, against Nature.

But….I think I might have discovered a way to help maintain balance within myself. Two things happened recently that have shifted my concept of how to practice self-care while staying informed.

First, I watched a short video by Ron Griswell and the basic message was “My joy isn’t separate from my resistance. It’s the core of it.” My joy is the greatest resistance. Nobody can take that from me! If they do, I’m giving them power over me and that’s just not going to happen. Our minds can be our greatest strength (or our biggest downfall).

Second, I listened to a podcast with Parker Palmer and Carrier Newcomer with their guest, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. She talked about the death of her son by suicide and how she holds her grief as sacred while at the same time holding space for beauty. She presented the idea of holding grief, rage, anger…whatever is ‘eating’ at us in one hand and sitting with that while simultaneously holding beauty and love in our other hand. Rather than denying our rage, our anger, our grief keep it in our hand, hold it. Acknowledge it. And then hold what brings us joy and beauty in the other. 

This brought a solution to a visceral level for me where I could sit with all of my emotions and allow each one to be honored. By doing this practice, I’m not denying any feeling. I’m not gaslighting myself into thinking everything will be okay. I don’t think everything is okay. In fact, everything is far from being okay. But I also think there are things that are right…like practicing compassion towards others, opening our hearts to the people and places and creatures we love. Why do we think we can only feel one way or the other?

For everyone suffering anxiety, grief, anger, rage right now about the state of the world, know that holding our joy and love is the core of our resistance to the meanness and destruction happening all around us. We don’t have to dismiss one feeling to have another. The key is to welcome them all and create a loving space for all emotions to have a home within us. We are, after all, multi-faceted gems of light at our core. So let us be a lighthouse and shine.

Curacao
Change

Change

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I was recently listening to a podcast called Living Myth by Michael Mead. He was talking about change and how we crave it yet have within us a fear of change and so push against it. I reflected on how much change is needed on a political scale in our country and around the world…the corruption, the evil that perpetrates deeply into the foundations of governments. We want this to change, we want the truth to come out. And yet….seeing the truth, as it arises, is quite shocking and we might…for a moment or two…wish we didn’t know what we know.

Unfortunately, we have lived too long turning our heads and hearts away from the despicable, abdominal, immoral acts of those in leadership positions because sometimes…many times…it’s easier to simply look the other way. If we pay attention, then we have to change.

I don’t believe an elected official or group of officials will create the change from depravity to morality we seek. That change must come from within ourselves, each of us taking responsibility to see and acknowledge the truth about ourselves and the world in which we live. And then adjust our trajectory in life so that it aligns with the world we truly wish to create. 

It’s not a time to hide from the ugly truths emerging, but rather a time to shine our inner light, no matter how small we believe it to be. Daily acts of kindness, compassion, and love generated within each of us is what will create the change we wish to see in the world. We no longer have the luxury of time to wait on the next president, the next Congress, the next world leader. It’s up to us.
The Door is Open

The Door is Open

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My hound often sits outside the pet door and barks to come inside….when the door has the solid panel removed. I’ll say, “Come on Vernon, the door is open!” And after a few minutes of thought, or something akin to thought, he comes through and climbs into his purple leather recliner. 

This morning, one of my cats did Vernon’s version of ‘the door is locked and I can’t get in.’ So I told her, “The door is open!” And she came inside.

This was an unusual behavior as Tawanda is super-smart (not saying Vernon isn’t super-smart…his nose is beyond intelligent). Any time something unusual happens, I stop and pay attention. Especially after the contemplation I had this morning.

I kept hearing: The door is open. Walk through! So I wrote it down and put the paper beside my computer. As I begin the work day, the paper kept staring at me and I remembered a story I shared at a book event this weekend.

I was hiking with a friend up Alum Cave trail to LeConte Lodge. There is a point where the trail flattens out after nearly five miles of climbing. The higher altitude forest opens up and it’s pure magic. Thick carpets of green moss, the smell of balsam fir, beautiful spruce and fir trees create a wonderland of beauty. On our way back from the lodge, I stopped and pulled out a flute and stood in the forest and said… ‘this is for you…thank you.’ 

As I played the melody, I felt my heart open and then a rush of energy move through me that brought me to tears. There was such connection with the forest. I felt it on a cellular level. 

As we hiked down, I contemplated the experience and realized the only thing keeping us from being in such profound harmony with life is ourselves. The forest is always there…open, strong, beautiful. We simply have to open our hearts to feel that Oneness.

In the book event with my friend and writer, Thomas Rain Crowe, I described the forest and flute moment and how I realized that the only thing keeping us from experiencing Oneness was ourselves. And the ‘fix’ is to open our hearts. 

To be in Oneness, to feel love and connection, we simply have to open ourselves. We’ve spent years building walls of protection and it was smart to do that when we were kids and trying to grow up and find our way. But as adults, those walls keep us from connecting. We can become addicted to adding to and stabilizing those walls, reinforcing them, to keep ourselves safe. But then, our world becomes smaller and scarier because we’re repeating our fears over and over. The way out of that fear cycle is to find ways to open again. For me, it’s with animals and forests…rivers, the night sky. When I dare to open my heart and listen to the forest, the rivers, wild animals and my own four-legged kiddos, I find I hear again and again, “The Door is open! Walk through!”

—

Misery is found in our self-created prison. 

We sit inside the cell and carve days into walls of stone

As the rusted, open door of iron bars silently waits.

A beam of light illuminates the opening

And we marvel at the beauty of it sparkling 

In the dungeon of our shadows.

It whispers, The Door is open. Walk through.

By the magic of grace, we walk through the open door

Of our heart and know freedom.

The Door is open. Walk through!