Walking the Labyrinth (revisited)

My husband and I rose early this morning and walked the labyrinth, as we do every New Years' Eve.  Along with treasure mapping, walking the labyrinth is one of our traditions for acknowledging the gifts of the past year, and for creating our vision of the year ahead.

I love walking the labyrinth!  It really is a sacred space.  We now have one in the city where I live, which is handy because in past years we've had to drive about an hour to get to one.  I'll be able to use this very gentle but powerful spiritual tool more often now.

I've reprinted below my post from last January on walking the labyrinth.  You can use this link to the World-Wde Labyrinth Locator to find a labyrinth near you; I hope the post spurs you to try it.  And if so, I'd love to hear your comments.

After a year of writing this blog, I want to say thank you for your support, and for your very positive and insightful comments.  I am grateful for the light you shine in the world.

Sharing the song in my heart has been a huge gift.  I look forward to celebrating daily tools for the spirit in the coming year.

Many blessings in the New Year!
Sherry

*****

I walked the labyrinth today with my husband, Mike, and my son, Eric.  Bless Eric for driving the hour it takes to get there, just because he knew it was important to his parents.

I love walking into the labyrinth and having the strong awareness of myself as eternal spirit, at the very same time I hear the traffic going by, see workmen moving around and the cracks in the sidewalk, all of the countless small details of inhabiting a body. I love knowing myself as eternal spirit as my path passes by Mike's or Eric's on the labyrinth and I am aware of sharing space with them for a moment, then moving on on our own paths, but each of us always contained by that bigger circle which contains all perfect paths.

While walking the labyrinth, no matter what direction I'm heading or how many twists and turns I take along the way, I'm always moving toward the center, where I know in the center of myself, in my heart, that I am God in expression. In the middle of all of the twists and turns of the labyrinth, the center stands.

Each experience I've had in the labyrinth has been different. I've been guided each time to remember just what was important for me at that time. This last time, I was reminded that All Is Well. In the middle of all of the big issues facing humanity in general and all of us individually, I can be glad for all of it because there is a mighty purpose behind it. All paths lead to an awareness of ourselves as God, without exception.

I remembered that pain is part of the dichotomy that we live in, and aids us in knowing joy. We can never really grasp and own for ourselves one side of a dichotomy until we have fully known the other.

Best of all, for me, was remembering yet again that there is nothing I need to do, no burden I need to carry to fix things. We are all the light of God. We can be nothing else. Everything we experience is contained by and part of that light of God, just like the circle of the labyrinth contains all paths leading to our knowledge of ourselves as God, and light.

What that means for me practically, in this new year, is that I don't have to suffer over what is. What is, is, and it serves a mighty purpose, one that I can trust. It's not easy to see the light in the middle of the darkness, but this year I choose to look for the good in all of it. I am grateful for the light that contains it all.

(In case you're interested, Mike read a book on labyrinths recently. It's called "Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Tool." I haven't read it yet, but he liked it alot.)

Here's to the light!

Honoring Your Gifts

During this time of year, many of us are aware of all that we have to be grateful for.  Some may have had more time to spend with family and friends.  Those who celebrate Christmas likely had presents waiting under the tree, and exchanged gifts with important people in their lives.

It is a time of many gifts, but the truth is that we live all of our lives in the midst of a legacy of treasure.  It’s easy in a busy life to let much of this amazing bounty go unnoticed, so that we miss out on the true magnitude of what we’ve been given.

Every single day, we wake.  We breathe.  The sun rises.  Whether we revel in these things or not is a choice we’re given to make.  Our ability to choose what we hold as real, and what we attend to, is probably the biggest gift of all.

We are here, luminous expressions of perfect consciousness, bringing that light to physical form.  When we wake, God has the experience of beginning another day.  When the sun rises, God delights in the goodness of her creations.  And when we breathe, God is awed by her body’s perfect dance through all of it.

When we turn our attention to all that is right in our lives, and in the world, we help make it so.  As we honor all of our many gifts, we create space for our own, and others', abundance.  It is our conscious acknowledgement of and gratitude for the limitless good that we're a part of that creates it in our daily experience.

So in the new year let us appreciate and nurture the gifts we've been given.  Look for the good that hides behind your most challenging situations.  Take care of what’s important, and remember that awareness is the goal, not perfection.  

Choose as often as you can to see the light of God expressing in everyone you encounter.  Make a list every day of all that you're grateful for.  Take time to notice the small things that bring joy.  Do what you need to do to take good care of your body, that most holy temple of the soul’s expression.  And find a way every day to connect with the light of God within yourself.

May you dance through 2011 in joy and abundance, and may this tool be a blessing. . .

Joy!

It’s impossible for me not to be touched by joy during this time of year.  I love every part of it.  From Halloween on, I am deeply aware of the days becoming shorter and another year coming to a close, creating time for rest, and for the amazing grace of being reborn into a new and hallowed cycle of ongoing creation.

I feel the energy of this time of the year in my body, as a sense of settling in to the peace in my heart.  My body somehow feels more connected and alive as I begin to release what has transpired in the past year to make room for the new.  Even in this period of winter’s rest, my body responds in anticipation as I begin to open to the miracles that will manifest in the months ahead.

Every year for many years, on New Year’s Eve, my husband, my kids, and their significant others sit together around our dining room table and create treasure maps.  Even in those years when our kids aren’t at home, my husband and I always end the year by creating our treasure maps for what we envision creating in the coming year, and it’s become a tradition in our family.  (I wrote a post on treasure mapping back in January in case you’ve never done one.)  It is a time of fun, connection and creativity, and of great joy.

Through all of the ups and downs of the last year, I’ve done my best.  I’ve embraced this precious year and experienced so much good stuff I can’t even put it into words.  I’ve loved and laughed and felt emotions that ranged from deliciously giddy to achingly painful.  I’ve raced around in non-stop motion and surrendered to the regenerating power of sleep.  I’ve taught quite a bit, but learned much more.

I find myself in this 12^th month of the year looking at all I have created, and it is good.  So now I rest for just a bit to enjoy it, and the season helps me do that.  And spirit within me celebrates another sacred year of being here, as one unique expression of the divine.   

I am, and there is no bigger joy than that.

May your heart know the joy of your Being, and may this tool be a blessing. . .

Solving Problems From a Higher Level

One of my favorite universal truths is that we can’t solve a problem from the energy of the problem.  It has helped me countless times manifest a higher outcome by getting out of my own way, and allowing divine intelligence to work its magic.

Solving a problem from a higher place means first acknowledging, and then trusting, that within us resides the perfect solution to any issue that reflects less than our perfect good.  It helps to remember that we are created of the same vast consciousness that created all perfect answers, every loving act, and every moment of inspiration or guidance.  Vast and unlimited awareness of good is not only something we can access in moments of need, it is who we are, at our core, when the veil of human forgetting is gently swept aside.  We are never separate from divine intelligence; it lives as us.

Deciding to manage a problem from a higher vibration can take a good deal of faith, and perseverance, because sometimes it can be very difficult to surrender our worry about a problem.  Every bit of human programming we have tells us that we need to stew, and fuss, and worry, until we solve the situation.  In some cases, a great deal of fear can be involved, which makes turning over the problem to divine intelligence within us even harder to do.  When we are in a lot of fear, we identify with that, rather than divine intelligence from which we are created.

When we turn the details of a problem over and over in our minds, we are stuck in the energy of the problem.  When we continue to relive a conversation or situation in our thinking, expecting that we will somehow get a handle on it, what happens instead is that it just grabs more of our attention.  More and more of our awareness is sucked into a problem vibration.  This is not helpful.

What is helpful is remembering, when the what-ifs and oh-my-God’s that fear speaks are getting me nowhere but upset, that I always have a choice in what truth I will serve.  Even when the voice of fear is loud, I choose to serve the truth of God’s infinite good, living as me.

And as my heart fills with the grace of remembering, I am connected with all that I need to create my own highest good.  My decisions are aligned with a rightness that I not only sense but feel in my heart, and right down to my bones.  My burden is light, and I am blessed beyond measure.

May your burden be light, and your blessings many.  And may this tool be a blessing.

Bringing the Crown Chakra to Gold

The 7th chakra, or crown chakra, at the top of our heads, contains the seat of our knowing.  It is the energy center from which we connect with our deepest truth.  When we pull information seemingly “off the top of our heads,” the crown chakra is being accessed.

The crown chakra, like the other chakras and layers of the aura, can be affected by external vibrations of energy that don’t necessarily belong, but become “stuck” there, so to speak.  When outside energy affects the crown, we lose our clarity, and we can feel like we’re having a hard time finding our way.  We can lose our certainty in our ability to create the outcomes that are truly worthy of us as unlimited creators made in God’s image.

One simple tool for clearing the crown chakra is to “bring it up to gold.”  The color gold is to many the vibration of our highest truth, the hand of God in all things.  To me, it represents that vibration that overrides anything that is less than perfect good.

Bringing the crown chakra up to gold resets that spiritual center to the awareness of the best and highest that we can imagine.  Within this vibration is our deepest peace, our most profound joy, abundant health and limitless creativity.

To bring your crown chakra up to gold:

1. Sit quietly, close your eyes, and allow yourself to relax by breathing deeply and comfortably for a few minutes.
2. In your mind’s eye, begin to picture the top of your head, and visualize in any way that you’d like the 7^th chakra that resides there.  (You might see this as a cone shape with the point toward your feet.  I usually visualize it as a spinning sphere, just because that’s how I started seeing it.  Or you might just picture the top of your own head and know that your chakra is there.)
3. Then, in your imagination, which is our most important tool for creating, picture yourself taking a paintbrush in hand, dipping it into a bucket of bright gold paint, and thoroughly painting your 7th chakra in gold.
4. When it feels complete, take a few more deep breaths and notice any changes in how you feel.  Open your eyes to a new awareness!

I love this tool!  It's simple, and silly, and an infinitely powerful expression of God within us.  Every time I practice it, I am reborn in truth.  In any moment, we can make the choice to reset our experience to a much higher vibration.   And in that moment, we are reborn to the spirit of God within us.

May you create your experience with a child's wonder, and may this this tool be a blessing. . .

Being in Present Time

I’ve said that for every challenge there is a spiritual tool that will bring us back to the light of truth.  My tool for today is being present!

Right now, in this moment, I sit watching the lights on our Christmas tree twinkle on and off in random patterns, and I remember another December evening 21 years ago watching these same lights twinkling.  I was very pregnant and peaceful, and joyfully aware of how immensely right things are in the world.

In this moment all is well.  There is no way to know exactly what the next moment will bring, but right now my feet are up, my tummy is full, and there is nothing I need do but enjoy the peace that those familiar lights, and ornaments, bring to me.

In this moment I breathe; my heart beats.  I am, and that is all I need.  The concerns of the day may arise in another moment, but that moment is not now.

Only in present time can we fully experience the magic of this beloved existence.  It isn’t always easy to keep our focus on the current moment, because life is full of needs and wants and what-ifs that take us out into the future, or back into the past.

A dear friend forwarded me an email recently that said, in part, “There is no situation too big to handle; just put one foot in front of the other.”  What a perfect sentiment for being in present time. 

The past is gone, and I don’t know what the future will bring.  But I can be here right now, with this next step, and the next.  One step at a time, I create my own perfect dance, in time with the twinkling light of my soul.  

May this tool be a blessing. . .