Joy

My husband and I live one row of houses away from the "Little Spokane River Nature Preserve" … from every window of our home we look out upon hills covered with forest. I love the 70 foot pines surrounding our house, the hiking trail being a block from our front door and the wildlife that comes and goes on an ongoing basis.

At the beginning of this summer, I decided that I would begin to feed the birds to see what I could attract. My immediate favorites were the tiny American Goldfinches with their bright yellow bodies, and their black wings, tails and skull caps. I was filled with joy by their bright happy color, constant chatter and the swooping funny way that they fly, but their visits were only occasional and they never stayed long at the feeders. Then one day I noticed at the feed store a bag of bird food called "Finch Lovers Blend". It is a premium mix of sunflower chips, thistle and Niger seeds and the label claimed that finches and other small colorful birds love this mixture. I decided that if I wanted to attract more of the joyful little birds then I needed to provide what they loved - so I purchased a bag. The new food first filled the feeders about 3 weeks ago and today my yard is filled with yellow birds. Now there are usually 5 to 7 Goldfinches (or Pine Siskins) on the hanging feeder and there can be as many as twelve more on the covered feeder, a few feet away. The trees close to the feeders are also filled with birds and the air seems to be alive with them.

Life is much like my bird feeders. Consciously or unconsciously, we decide what we want to attract – joy and abundance, or scarcity and pain. With our decision, we put out the energy that will attract those things into our lives. If we fill our internal space with fear, anger and negativity, we will attract more circumstances that will make us angry, fearful and unhappy. But, if we first set our intentions to live a life of alignment with our heartsongs, and then fill our "feeders" with thoughts of acceptance, openness to Spirit and a happy expectancy - we will attract all the good things that God so badly wants to give us.

What is in your feeders today?

Passion

Travel is a very spiritual activity for me. To get out of my regular routine, visit new places, experience new cultures and expose myself to new ways of being in the world always leaves me a larger version of who I was before the adventure and I find it transformational.

One such trip was taken with my first husband and four other couples to the island of Moorea in French Polynesia in 1997. Moorea is a stunningly beautiful heart-shaped island just a short 30 minute ferry ride from Papeete, the capital of Tahiti. There were many wonderful things about a February visit to this magical island: the eighty-something degree air is almost exactly the same temperature as the eighty-something degree water; the island is completely surrounded by a coral reef so there are no waves crashing on the beach - it is much like swimming in a pool; the scenery, hiking, snorkeling, jungle, cultural center and the activities available made every minute full of beauty and fun. But my very favorite part of the trip was the people who are native to this enchanting place. The first thing that I noticed is that most of the people were quite poor according to American standards, yet I rarely meet anyone in America that radiated the kind of joy that I saw in these faces. They were fiercely proud - they took offence if you tipped them for any of their services, and they were full of passion.

I heard it in the voice of the man who ran the "Swim with the Sharks" tour. He knew the sharks intimately, had each of them named and loved introducing them to you - the tourists. From the way that he talked, you knew that he was passionate about the sharks, the ocean, his island and the fact that he wanted to break the bad press that sharks around the world receive. He was full of passion.

I saw it in the face of one of the girls that befriended us and took us all over the island in search of a certain trinket that my friend just had to take home with her. She barely knew us but she loved us and would do anything to help us. She was full of passion.

I watched it in the work of the two guides that took us on a snorkeling adventure to another small island. They paddled us to the site, showed us where the best snorkeling was and then cooked us a traditional meal of chicken and breadfruit cooked over an open flame and sashimi, a raw fish salad. They did everything from their heart with a deep passion that I rarely see here in the states.

After spending a week with these amazing and wonderful people, I came away a different person - one determined to live from the heart as I had seen these people do. However, it wasn't as easy as it looked. In a world of stressful jobs, unhappy marriages, over-busy kids, too many bills and too long a to-do list, it is very difficult to live from our hearts and we lose touch with our passion.

A spiritual life is a life lived from the heart - a life of passion. A spiritual life is where one consciously listens to one's heartsong, consciously chooses how to spend each minute of one's day and then lives each moment with passion. You aren't able to perform your job with passion? Then it is time to find a new job. Stressful relationships drowning out your heartsong? Then it is time to off-load some old relationships. Living beyond your means stamping out your ability to live from your heart? Then it is time to get out of debt and simplify your life.

It is now over ten years since I made the commitment to get back to living from my heart. It has not been an easy journey nor a journey without tears but it has been more than worth it. Find your passion once again. Live from your heart. Listen to your heartsong.

Never Too Late

The little girl in the yellow dress twirls until the skirt stands out straight and round as the yellow sun.

The young foal jumps and runs and kicks like the new life within him is exploding through his limbs and feet.

The hardness and tightness in the old woman's heart melts and releases down through her feet and into the ground.

Her gray eyes flutter open just in time to see a tiny hummingbird flit by the window reminding her that joy and new life can be reborn in us all.

Acceptance

As a young, childless teacher in my early twenties, I believed that all of the problems that I saw in my students' behavior could be easily cured with proper parenting. At the age of 28, my soul invited into my life a beautiful baby girl. The adoption agency warned my first husband and I that she had a few possibilities for scary health issues in her genetics but because I firmly believed that the correct environment was all that was needed to create perfect children, I paid little heed to their warnings.

It was not long before it became apparent that this little one was not well...by four months old she was diagnosed as "Failure to Thrive". This turn of events did not fuel my theory that "proper parenting could save the children of the world," so I redoubled my efforts to coerce this tiny human to eat, grow and flourish. By seven months old she had almost completely stopped eating... by thirteen months she was in the hospital for a calorie count to determine if she needed to be put into an eating disorders hospital. I was devastated. I began to wonder: could it be that the more I tried to control her to get the desired outcome - the more she fought against me?

With the help of an excellent pediatrician and some wise counselors, I learned to accept this precious little one for what she was - a sovereign child of God who had the power of choice. I began to honor what she was trying to tell me by her refusal to eat... I began to work with her to help to find her healthy weight. By the time that she was three years old, she was still tiny but she was very healthy and happy. Needless to say, this small addition to our family transformed my beliefs about life and taught me about acceptance.

As children of God, our lives are closely monitored. Only those people and those things which will help us find our true Heartsongs are allowed into our lives. This is hard to embrace, especially when we have difficult people in our lives and our favorite belief systems are being challenged, left and right. However, it seems to me that life is much like being the mother of a strong-willed, failure-to-thrive baby. The more we fight against difficulty - the greater the difficulty will become. When we honor the difficult situations and difficult people as lessons, and learn what they are trying to teach us - we become wiser. Life becomes easier.

It may be too much to ask you to embrace the people and situations in your life that are making you crazy right now... but perhaps you can begin to relax and ask: "what are these people and situations trying to teach me?" This question will move you to your true essence and to your Sacred Heartsong.

Grounding

While my step-daughter was here visiting, we spent a few days in Seattle. Seattle is a beautiful city with many wondrous things to see and do, but we all agreed that the highlight of our visit was the Seattle Aquarium. We spent the morning touching anemones, starfish and sea urchins, and staring face to face with fish large and small of every color. Everyone came away with a favorite exhibit but my favorite by far was the octopus.

The large and beautiful specimen was in a hamster cage-like tank that was actually two large tanks with a tube of water connecting the two. I watched in fascination as the almost red animal moved across the bottom of the first tank - always connected to the rocks underneath him. He then sent one long arm through the tube to then be in contact with the rocks on the floor of the second tank before he began to move through the tube in route to his destination. By the time that he was fully through the tube and his body settled onto the floor of the new tank, he had changed colors to match the new tank's floor and was now almost white.

As I stood appreciating this magnificent creature, I was reminded of another spiritual practice that can help us to discover our true essence and help us to find what makes our hearts sing. Creating an empty interval and spending time connecting to the higher aspects of ourselves and the Divine is essential but if we are always connecting up without staying connected to the stability and the constancy of the earth beneath us then we can be too flighty to be able to bring the gifts of our higher selves down into our everyday existence.

I have been taught many different ways to become and to stay more grounded. One is to create an empty interval while having both feet securely on the floor. While in this calm and peaceful space, spend several minutes visualizing your feet sprouting roots that grow deeply into the earth and feel them bringing you more stability and quiet strength. Another method is to do a visualization as you did before but instead of visualizing roots, see a heavy rope or cord extending from the base of your spine and descending deeply into the earth and becoming connected to the center of the earth. As you watch, you can imagine the cord tightening and making you feel more secure and less vulnerable. Another method is to go out into nature and sit on a rock or on the earth or stand with your back against a tall deeply rooted tree, close your eyes and relax into the groundedness of nature. Any of these methods will help you to feel less tossed about by strong emotions, more secure in who you are and what you are doing and like the octopus - help you to stay connected to where you are trying to go. Another way to think of this is, without a grounded lightning rod - you will never attract a flash of lightning. Without being deeply grounded - you will never attract a down flow of Spirit - from your higher aspects or from the Divine.

A regular grounding visualization or activity done for several minutes a couple times a day can make a real difference in how you move through the world, how you handle difficult parts of your day and how you connect to and pull down higher aspects of who you are. Happy grounding!

Too Busy Saving the World

One of my step-daughters is here visiting for a long weekend. She is a soft and sensitive soul who has experienced a lot of hard "stuff" during her short twenty-three years. As an on-looker, I would expect her experiences to equal bitterness and anger, but she has managed to sage into someone who is wise beyond her years and who loves beyond most people's capacity.

During a conversation, she shared with us a situation that she is struggling with. She has determined that a major change in her life would serve her highest good yet she fears that such a change could possibly cause pain to people that she loves. She seems torn and anxious as she says, "I have a save the world complex!"

I so deeply relate to my step-daughter's dilemma, as many of you may as well. The soft and sensitive among us tend to get the job descriptions of "healing everyone around them" within the systems where we live and work. In fact, we get so busy fixing, calming, soothing and taking care of that it leaves very little time for us to connect to who we are and what we need.

A spiritual principle that has really helped me with my own "save the world complex" is the idea that nothing comes into our life without an invitation from our soul. It is my job to pay attention to the Heartsong Moments as well as the painful moments in my life so that I can learn the lessons that my soul is trying to teach me. You must do the same with the moments in your life. If I rescue you from your lessons before you have learned them, then I am only getting in your way - not helping you at all. To learn to fly, you have to jump from the nest. Is there ever a time when we should help those we love? Of course! When someone asks us about something in our life that they admire - this is a perfect opportunity to share what we have learned. But, we interfere with their most important lessons when we try to save them from experiencing the discomfort that they have drawn to themselves.

Today, do not be too busy saving the world to pay attention to what your life is trying to teach you.

An Empty Interval

Part of my spiritual practice each morning, when I can make the time, is to climb to the top of the mountain that we look at from our front windows. The mountain is part of a nature preserve and is thus full of magically beautiful birds and wildlife. This morning, as I trudged up the steepest part of the trail, I was surprised and delighted to see a pileated woodpecker fly to a dead tree near me. The pileated woodpeckers are the large, crow-sized, black and white birds with the bright red crested heads.

Having this beautiful bird come so close to my space reminded me that it is very easy to be caught up in the lower aspects of who we are - the black and white of what we need to get done in the physical realm, our overwhelming emotions both new and old as well as the thoughts in our heads that zoom along without ceasing like an eight lane super-highway. The beautiful parts of us, like the woodpeckers bright red head, live in the higher aspects of who we are - our soul and spirit. But how do we connect to those higher aspects? How do we rise above the busy doing, the strong emotions and the never-ceasing thoughts to find our higher essence?

Soon after I became a serious student of spirituality, I was taught the concept of the empty interval. It is exactly what the name implies - an interval of time set aside to be completely empty of doing, feeling and/or thinking. At first, this was extremely difficult for me because I have lived in a culture that emphasizes doing and is somehow very uncomfortable with just being; but with persistence and practice I learned to relax into it and really love it. And the beauty of what I discovered is that as I was able to disconnect from my to-do list, my pesky emotions and my non-stop thoughts, I was able to rise above those parts of me and to connect more fully with the higher aspects of my own being - my essence. Our higher aspects connect naturally to the Divine so the empty interval helps strengthen our Divine connection as well!

I invite you to create an empty interval - ten to fifteen minutes to begin with - and fill it with the intention to rise above the black and white mundane doings, feelings and thinkings and just "be" and you will be surprised by some awesome Sacred Heartsong Moments!

Your Essence

One of my favorite laws listed on the website of Two Worlds Wisdom School is the Law of Happiness. Stated simply it says, "Happiness is doing who you are." This may be simple to state but it is certainly not simple to implement in one's life.

Fourteen years into a difficult marriage, I went to my first therapy session in 1993. I remember telling the therapist, "I don't know who I am - I have lost me!" Over the next few years in my search for wholeness and my true essence, I asked many questions such as:

Am I really this person's wife - is that who I am?

Am I really these people's mother - is that who I am?

Am I really these people's daughter - is that who I am?

Am I really these people's teacher - is that who I am?

Am I really this body with all of its quirks and flaws - is that who I am?

Of course none of these things are who I am at my core. My true essence exists at the level of my spirit but the essence of who I am is difficult to find because it is all buried under who my parents have told me I am, who my culture has told me I am, who my church has told me I am and who my relationships have told me I am.

The realization that I am not what I do or a sum total of my relationships or even the package of DNA that I received from my parents gave me some breathing room to begin to open up to seeing who I really am. It was then that I began to notice Heartsong Moments - sacred moments that seemed to open the door a crack and let me peak in and get a glimpse of the real me. These moments caught my attention because they triggered a special vibration in my heart space - almost a song of energy that reverberated throughout my being.

One morning, while teaching third and fourth grade language arts, I finished up a creative writing lesson, walked through the classroom to see that everyone understood the lesson and had successfully begun their task, and was returning to my desk to check on the readiness of the next lesson. Suddenly, I noticed an unfamiliar rush of energy from my heart flooding my body. It was my first recognized experience of a heartsong. I had taught a good lesson, the kids had caught my enthusiasm and my vision and were working with excitement and energy. In that moment I realized that even though teaching had been a difficult role for me to fit into - at my core I am someone who loves to help someone catch a vision and then watch them move forward with enthusiasm and energy. It is who I am.

Watching for these Heartsong Moments helps us to slowly build a vision of our essence which then invites us to align what we do with who we are and live a happier life. Have you experienced any Heartsong Moments today?

Heart Song

What makes your heart sing? The rough tongue of a puppy on your cheek? Yellow daffodils in spring after too many weeks of snow and cold? The gnarled hand of a beloved elder that touches you with a wise knowing?

We all experience from time to time those sacred moments in life that open our hearts and strike a perfect chord of well-being and bliss. It is within these moments that we can see more clearly the essence of who we are within the core of our being.

The pup that so freely gives unconditional love reminds us that at our core we too can love freely and unconditionally. The bright colors of spring after the drab winter remind us that new life always follows death and that if we will but surrender to what is trying to die - we will inevitably find something new trying to come to life and grow. The wisdom and knowing in the gnarled hand helps us to know that the difficulties of life are able to sage us in beautiful ways. Acceptance of the lessons in life opens us up to a deep knowing.

Keep your eyes open to the sacred moments in life and take a moment to learn something new about what they are telling you about your core essence. What makes your heart sing?