Moving On As Love

We are moving into our new home on Wednesday. I have been packing for days. As usual I am with the multidimensional shifts happening in my heart and life as well as in our world. Change is in the air.

Here are some eternal life lessons that are up for me today.

• Let go: What a gift to reinvent ourselves in the moment and lovingly, ruthlessly stay current with what and who it is we really are. What is necessary to take on the journey? This includes objects and possessions as well as ideas, concepts and beliefs. What IS reality? And what do I really need? How can I best serve today, now? Letting go of whatever no longer fits or supports our life direction is essential, on all levels. Letting go is a gift.
  

• Keep it light...Sometimes less IS really more...less stuff, less words, less emotional charge. There is enough density and heaviness already in the world. Can I keep a light heart, a lightness in my step, even with the weight of stress, packed agendas and life intensities? All the while staying grounded and engaged in cultivating the very core rhythms that truly nurture life?
  

• Feel Into the Space.This morning I packed Talia's beloved stuffed animal collection. She has been creating elaborate plays, concerts and gatherings with her 30 some odd friends. She calls them "friends". Before she left for school I told her I would be doing more packing. I am sensitive to how it feels for her to have her life packed up into boxes. I keep feeling into the space to sense what will serve her to stay secure and at ease, even while her familiar home is turned inside out and recreated. "May I pack your stuffed animals", I asked? "And is there a favorite one you would like me to leave out?" She took a deep breath and said, " Well, yes Mama, you may pack whatever you want. Please leave out Kitty and Clara Beara, because they need to be with me." Her tenderness and request was so kind. It brought tears to my eyes now as it did then.

• Gratitude as Guide: After doing a silly departure dance in the driveway, as Kenya and Talia drove away, I got to work, like a focused whirlwind of energy. Yet with everything I packed there was a palpable sensation of gratitude. I felt gratitude for every niche of our home and how this sacred space has supported us to thrive. I took down the string of lights around the mantel, leaving the sun and moon candle holders, a Buddha and prayer flags. Those will be the last items to go. They are essential space keepers. This home, even with it's sluggish plumbing, cavernous hallways and brick oven bedrooms (in the searing hot months) has been a haven. It has contained timeless moments of laughter, love, tears, affection, dance, play, rest, creative juice and celebration with family and friends. It held us through big transitions; weaning, birthdays, potty training, deaths, new beginnings, leaps of development and leaps of faith. I am grateful for every single one.
  

• Move on As Love: I am equally grateful for the beautiful new house we will inhabit. I am excited to build a new nest and delight in the sanctuary that home can be. One of the simplest pieces of inner guidance that comes to me these days over and over again is to "Move on as Love." Whether we need to move on to new places, new faces, new phases, or complete relationships, agreements, projects...whether we are moving on from challenges, grudges or hiccups along the way, we can move on AS LOVE...
  We can trust the Winds of Change when we move on as love.
  I guess that comes back to today's lesson #1.
  Let go!
  
  Have a glorious week y'all!
  

Spacious Being- Stop, Drop and Flop.

Stop...Pause.
Drop...Drop in.
Flop... be held in Love, in the Mystery, in your deepest self.

There is a sacred marriage of being and doing and I am always in the dance of living this harmony. I sense this true intimacy and unity is available in any moment! I wrote the following thoughts a few weeks ago after falling asleep and waking suddenly from a dream.

I am coming out of the dream time to broadcast a very important message:

GO TO SLEEP!
I know, this may sound contrary to all this "waking up" I constantly spout, but it is not at odds with awakening at all. Nor is it a polarization to the "Carpe Diem" of living fully.

The last few nights, I have fallen asleep in total ecstasy. I snuggle beside my 3 year old love bug, massaging her feet to the soundtrack of my sweetheart's deep, loving voice telling an epic bedtime story. Last I remember, he was talking about shooting stars with rainbow trails of light. Then, Talia's breath fell deeper and her body dropped (and flopped) into the bliss of sleep. Mine too apparently, till I got myself up to come bring you this important message.

During the Winter season, all kinds of living things draw inward, root deeper into the Earth, into darkness and stillness, only to emerge with new life in the Spring. Bears hibernate, nights are longer, our psyches call us into a deeper quiet, "being with" and " dropping in" to the depths. Are you responding? Are you stopping to pause? To rest and sleep? The Dalai Lama says, "Sleep is the best meditation". I admit, I definitely am not getting enough sleep. Are you?

Lately, I stay up late doing creative work and then savor sleep till the crack of dawn or a bit later, if I am extremely lucky. I can count the number of nights of uninterrupted sleep I've had since becoming a parent, on one hand. Extra luxurious nights have minimal swats and kicks from little limbs in the bed or my kind hubs takes our little one to the bathroom instead of me. But even beyond sleep, lately, I am feeling the need to just STOP. Where is my "off" switch?

The richness of my life is a joyous blessing that I treasure with gratitude. However, if I am not mindful to stay in balance, my life, my body and my mind get over active. Whether the over activity comes with working or playing, dancing, running, writing or thinking, traveling in cars, planes and trains, there comes a time when I need to stop, drop and flop!

In my family, we experience "flopping" as a total letting go. It is a complete surrender to having to hold up our bones as well as our postures of an engaged "go for it" human. Even our nervous system releases any grip when we flop. Lately, I have been craving the "flop." Flopping on the couch and doing nothing or flopping on the Earth in the sunshine, this is ecstasy. I am after the no-thingness, the just be-ingness. I want to dissolve all agendas and responsibilities of time, caretaking and cultural agreements. I want to be like the frogs on the canyon walls that lounge all day and commune with the elements of water, earth, wind and sun.

I know that quieting the monkey mind and nervous system rev is a moment to moment choice. I know this choice is available any time, any where. There is a quality of reflective spaciousness that though subtle is pure soul food. While I often experience being lit up by the muses of movement and expression. Stillness, quiet and stopping also fill my cup and refuel my soul. I love prayer, ritual and meditation for all these reasons. They bring intention and attention into the very breath of now and the time space continuum (which can sometimes feel like a fast train going everywhere at once) disappears.

I know how to live in the world of people and things. Yet the Indigenous idea of time as a circle is really much more nurturing and ultimately more life giving to me.

I invite you to join me...stop, drop and flop. Step out of linear time, even if just for a few moments and be receptive to what you discover there. Stop, pause, breathe. Drop in more deeply into your core, your source. Flop into the arms of the Divine.

And with a long, luxurious exhale, in just an instant, we are deeper in our center, where nothing is lacking, relaxed at home in our selves, wherever we are.

Ah yes, Spacious Being.

How about you? How do you strike the balance of being and doing?