Posts Tagged ‘Being’

A New Window on the World

Thursday, July 9th, 2015

My Window on the World

I’m writing you from my bed. I’ve been here a good deal since my surgery six days ago. I do get around on my scooter walker, and also have a wheel chair we used today for my first post-op visit to the doctor. Things are going well on the whole–and this land out the window is an important spot for the healing I still have ahead.

The Sutherland Valley where I live is a beautiful, unspoiled place on the edge of the wild, and has been my healing sanctuary ever since we moved here 14 years ago. Then, I was in the middle of chemo treatment for my first round of breast cancer. These mountains and this land have been a comfort and source of beauty and inspiration for what seems like too many physical challenges.

And yet, I keep recovering, keep learning, keep being inspired, keep finding that life still holds magic and mystery and unanswered questions and unexplored territory that compels me to answer a call.

The view out the window beckons me to enter the majesty of life, even when I am trapped in pain or limitations. Look at all there is! The endless, ever-changing play of light, the land moving from parched to green and back. The line of shadow that seems to be an impassible boundary but is not. Shadow and light. Beauty.

Beauty is my medicine, and I am graced with it all around me. Even in this season that I’ve always proclaimed to hate I find wonders.

So I will write to you from here, musing about the view outside this window, showing you some of its moods, and sharing some of mine. I’m not sure what to expect on this next journey of healing, but I’m on it. Committed. On the way. What will be revealed–in the landscape, in my own nature? How will my foot and the rest of my being respond to this surgery? How will I begin to walk when the time comes?

It is way too soon to know. This is a time for quiet. For being, not doing. For resting, not working. And yet writing is part of my solace and my reaching outside these four walls for contact, for dialogue.

Questions for you to ponder:

  • What do you do and how do you respond when you are sequestered and limited?
  • What is your part in the journey of healing? How do you work with your body? Your emotions?
  • How does the land around you participate in your process? Do you feel energy from the mountains, or water sources or land features nearby?
  • How do you make larger meaning out of an illness or surgical procedure, even if chosen? How do you turn it into an opportunity?

These are questions I’ll be pondering in coming weeks. Let me know your thoughts!

 

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Tools for Taking Back the Pilot’s Seat

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

Sometimes I cringe when I meet someone who asks me what I do. Answering either “life coach” or certainly “energy medicine practitioner” or for sure, “shamanic practitioner” can lead to immediate Eyes Glazing Over Syndrome.

Sometimes I do better when I tell a client story, but the best approach is asking questions. Like, “Have you ever had the feeling that something is missing in your life, even if you’ve read a lot of books, had therapy or tried meditating?” (At this point, I am checking for “Woo Woo, Checking Out Now Syndrome.)

But I persist. “Do you ever feel confused about your purpose? Or feel that your passion for your life has gone flat?”

Even though such complaints are vague, most of us have experienced them. Someone who says “Absolutely not” would probably not want life coaching or any personal development enrichment.

In reality, we have all experienced feelings that some might call burnout, and others might describe as being out of balance. Even someone who has never quite found that path, that center, usually can recognize these symptoms. The vocabulary isn’t important. And so…what?

I would call the feeling of being in our center, on our path, feeling passion and purpose “the pilot’s seat.” And I would say that the one who has taken the pilot’s seat in such moments must be the essential self. The one who is all about our life force, or soul.

Sometimes the essential self manages to take the pilot’s seat “by accident,” or really without our effort. In those moments we might call grace, we simply know and we simply are.

When you’ve been there, it’s painful to be dislodged from the pilot’s seat, or to have it commandeered by sub-personalities, or by the ego, who is not well-connected to essence.

Sometimes just the awareness of being off-center is enough to correct the situation. Other times, we need help. We need tools. Here are some to consider:

  •   Deep talk, soul sharing with a friend or advisor who listens well
  •   Traveling into invisible realms for guidance, through meditation, prayer, dreams or shamanic journeying—or my Sand Spirits Insight Cards!
  •  Any breathwork or meditation system that leads you back into your heart
  •  Asking the Great Mystery for help
  • Work with changing old beliefs and releasing old patterns

If any of this resonates with you, I invite you to call me for a complementary phone consultation. Or if this has helped you remember your own tools, please add your comment!

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Posted in bringing out your gifts, centering techniques, coaching, conscious evolution, consciousness, Dreams, Flying, happiness, healing, Imagination, inner landscape, meditation, mindfulness, Photography, returning to essence, Sand Spirit Insight Cards, seeing oneself, self-healing, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, spiritual practices, Tools for seeing ourselves | No Comments »

Taking the Pilot’s Seat: Controlling Airspeed

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

When I walk on the beautiful land in the Sutherland Valley, beneath the Catalina Mountains, the land reminds me that Mother Earth has a heartbeat, a rhythm. Being in nature attunes my body to her rhythm and reminds me of my own natural pace. So does meditation—it is a way of stopping to check in with the Source, and with my own body/mind, and re-calibrating.

I need to change my “attitude,”—an aviation term for the angle of the airplane– to pull the nose of my airplane up a bit and slow my speed.

When I think of the idea of slowing my pace, my “small mind” immediately panics at the thought. What will I miss? What will I not accomplish?

Fortunately my “larger mind” responds by asking, “Where are you going so fast? What is your destination or goal that is so crucial? Isn’t the journey the point?”

My small mind says nothing.

I remember Thich Nhat Hahn’s cautions about our pace, his advice about mindful walking and mindful eating and avoiding multi-tasking.

My small mind points out how many things I accomplish by multi-tasking. Is that really true? Recent research points out that our brains don’t operate at maximum efficiency when we do more than one thing at a time. Maybe we are sacrificing focus, intensity and depth of thought, excellence in problem-solving.

Perhaps I suffer from the aviator’s dreaded plague, “get-there-itis,” the disease that leads to unwise decisions like flying too late, or into bad weather, or when sick, or in conditions outside our expertise. If we crash, we might ask ourselves what was so important about that destination and how much time we really saved.

If I take time to gaze out the window, perhaps I’ll really see something like the scene in the photo of the water and cloud formations along the Sea of Cortez. What’s the hurry, really?

These are thoughts each of us must bring to consciousness as we pilot our way through a year that may challenge us to drop old patterns, to take responsibility for our own energy, to ask treasured family and friends to support us as responsible pilots who have taken the left seat. We may not be able to manage the strong winds of life, but we can manage ourselves.

What are your thoughts?  Interact with us at Facebook.com/FlyingLessons!

 

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Posted in aviation, Being, coaching, conscious evolution, consciousness, Flying, happiness, healing, health, inner landscape, loving ourselves, managing change, meditation, mindfulness, new life, not doing, nourishing ourselves, Photography, returning to essence, seeing oneself, self-healing, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, spiritual practices, The Beauty Path, Tools for seeing ourselves | No Comments »

Nature and your power of self-reflection

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

I’m at the beach right now, so I am seeing scenes like this and reveling in being near the ocean, which I have loved deeply all my life.

When I was little, I “found God” at the ocean. When I looked out at the horizon, I thought it was so wide an infinite that God must live there. The ocean is still a wonderful place for self-reflection.

Have you noticed the dark streaks in the sand made from iron filings? I’ve always loved their patterns. Have you seen how these streaks are particularly strong above and below and around stones at the water’s edge? When the waves come in and then recede, they leave streaks in various shapes.

That’s what I noticed the day I discovered that the combination of stones, streaks and other natural objects created forms and figures! And even more amazing, they seemed to come alive and speak to me.

That was back in 2000, and since then the Sand Spirit images have spoken to people all over the world, revealing the power of their intuition in moments!

If you haven’t learned about these images, look for them at your local shoreline. Or, just join us for a free webinar where you can be introduced. (Email me at pam@ThroughADifferentLens.com)

You’ll love this magic tool that will help you gain insight on any issue in your work or life.

What do you see in the image below? What does this form or figure say to you?

I look forward to sharing the story and the images with you!

Sand Spirit image #28

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Posted in consciousness, creative imagination, healing, Imagination, inner landscape, nature as mirror, Photography, Sand Spirit Insight Cards, seeing oneself, self-healing, shifting how we see, Tools for seeing ourselves | No Comments »

Being

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

being

Being is wide-hipped

and wide-lipped.

She is like honey spilled

all over myself

spreading, oozing, sticky, adhering

to all my persistent doing.

Gumming up the works,

widening my cells, opening my heart, expanding to connect with all.

Being is curious.

She follows each feeling, each perception

without having to do anything at all.

She listens and sees

by moving under the thought or feeling

and simply holding it,

being it. Knowing it.

And then the most curious thing something happens

without will.

Something occurs, just appears

and then there’s a bit of doing to be done.

Not out of effort, just out of responsiveness.

And Being says that’s all we have to do. Really.

Just fully be and see what occurs

and respond to that.

That’s all.

Good bye to the hard case of doing,

to the constricted determination,

to the marching and the gritting of teeth,

to the stridency, to the striving, to the pushing up hills.

Hello to the honey, my honey, who is Being.

To the Mother who holds the seed,

the womb of the stars,

to the One within me who has already done it all

who knows it

and who simply

Is.

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Posted in Being, conscious evolution, consciousness, divine feminine, Guided imagery, Imagination, inner landscape, loving ourselves, meditation, not doing, nourishing ourselves, Photography, poem, returning to essence, seeing oneself, self-healing, shifting paradigms, spiritual practices, spring, The Beauty Path | No Comments »