walk in beauty

My great find of 2018 was a little gem of a book - "The Alchemy of Abundance" by Rick Jarow.

I first met the author in one of our sessions at the New York Open Center's Integrative Sound and Music Institute - at a nine month certificate program for sound healing.

Rick Jarow, is a practicing alternative career counselor, a professor of religion at Vassar College, and the author of Creating the Work You Love, In Search of the Sacred, Alchemy of Abundance, and more.

His popular seminars, based on years of research and practice with lineage holders in both Eastern and Western traditions, focus on interweaving inner experience with effective action in the world.

warm winter wishes

Celebrating the Earth holidays allow us to bring in new energies that enhance our lives 
as we tune in and flow with the Goddess Gaia and the laws of nature. 

These evocative insights are aptly encapsulated in the beautifully crafted words of David Whyte: 

The Winter of Listening [from "The House of Belonging"]

No one but me by the fire,

my hands burning

red in the palms while

the night wind carries

everything away outside.

All this petty worry

while the great cloak

of the sky grows dark

and intense

round every living thing.

What is precious

inside us does not

care to be known

by the mind

in ways that diminish

its presence.

What we strive for

in perfection

is not what turns us

into the lit angel

we desire,

what disturbs

and then nourishes

has everything

we need.

What we hate

in ourselves

is what we cannot know

in ourselves but

what is true to the pattern

does not need

to be explained.

Inside everyone

is a great shout of joy

waiting to be born.

Even with the summer

so far off

I feel it grown in me

now and ready

to arrive in the world.

All those years

listening to those

who had

nothing to say.

All those years

forgetting

how everything

has its own voice

to make

itself heard.

All those years

forgetting

how easily

you can belong

to everything

simply by listening.

And the slow

difficulty

of remembering

how everything

is born from

an opposite

and miraculous

otherness.

Silence and winter

has led me to that

otherness.

So let this winter

of listening

be enough

for the new life

I must call my own. 

Merry Christmas and here's to another year well lived! 

hope & promise

As the holiday season kicks off, the need to quiet and soften our hearts grows with each passing day.

It is apt for the first week of Advent to be dedicated to Hope.

That cherished desire of anticipation and expectation.

Of a promise obtained or fulfilled.

If we surrendered

to earth’s intelligence

we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves

in knots of our own making

and struggle, lonely and confused.

So like children, we begin again...

to fall,

patiently to trust our heaviness.

Even a bird has to do that

before [s]he can fly.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours

tolerate | celebrate

shame | pride

blame | acclaim

inadequate | efficient

pathetic | decent

weak | brave

damned | blessed

flawed | beloved

The legend of White Buffalo Calf Woman

Shame means that you are damned. That you have accomplished nothing. Shame is the opposite of art.

Blame means you have trespassed. That you have sinned by omission or overtly. Blame is the opposite of integrity.

Shame or blame turn every emotion into some personality flaw. Every casual choice manifests as a giant mistake. Every small blunder is magnified into a moral failure.

Shame is passive - coating itself in suspicion and embarrassment. Blame is active - using accusation to propel or project its barbs.

Insinuating. Insidious. Infantile.