5 Gifts of the Flu-A One Love Nugget

After 2 days of feeling quite miserable , I finally surrendered to the obvious: I had a flu bug and no amount of simply slowing down my mega tasking and keeping a bright attitude (I was not sick! Just a little under the weather!) was going to keep it from flattening me. I got flattened.

Here's what I also got:

• Healing sleep, dreaming and integration time to digest big changes in my life.
• Much needed practice in asking for help and being nurtured.
  
• An opportunity to Stop, Drop and Flop ,allowing deeper waves of emotion to flow. I wept till I laughed. Coming undone felt so liberating.
  
• A phat piece of humble pie. Vulnerability, like connection are queen!
  
• A huge dose of gratitude and awe for hubs & daughter and their devotional, sweet love.

The Universe is generous. I am a believer...we always get what we most need.

Ten Guidelines for Glorious Living

Blessings and love to you!
I intend your Summer is flowing with joy. It has been weeks since my last post. I have been riding the current of grace, enjoying unplugged, radical playtime and lots of travel.

As I reflect on the past few weeks, I notice some basics that have enriched my living beyond measure. In the spirit of good sound advice, here are ten guidelines for uplifting, fine tuning and regenerating your glorious life.

• Be Love. Expand and deepen the ways in which you embody, receive, sustain and transmit the frequency of divine love.
• Create more. Consume less. Be creative and resourceful in your ability to enjoy more with less consumption. Examples? Buy bulk foods instead of massive packaging, eat locally grown, organic produce, make art or music instead of buying expensive entertainment. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle in all ways possible. It just feels wholesome and sane.
• Take a Media Fast. Get your consciousness deeper into the Dreaming and Mystical realms and out of the entrancing frequency control of the mass media machine. Dare I say it?...UNPLUG!
  
• Get your feet out on the Earth...In the sand, in the mud, in the water. Kick off your shoes, merge into the ground and be replenished. (Read Earthing, The Most Important Health discovery Ever?)
  
• Practice Satyagraha (Truth-force). Satyagraha is a relentless search for truth. Gandhi said, "It is an attribute of the spirit within....It is a process of educating public opinion, such that it covers all the elements of the society and makes itself irresistible....it teaches us the art of living. Satyagraha, is to me the universal law of life."
  
• Nap.
• Travel. See new places, meet new people, expand your world.
  
• Be still and Quiet. Savor even a little silence everyday.
• Laugh, Play, Sing, Dance.
  
• Serve-Touch and Be Touched by Life.

Now, it is your turn...Share some of your fave latest guidelines for glorious living...
Rock on! ZENJOY your every moment!

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?