Posts Tagged ‘living today’
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
Just because you are reading this, I think you deserve congratulations for taking the time to read something just for you! No matter what your holiday traditions, this is a busy time!
Which is why I ended up reading my own Flying Lesson #2 over again. It’s Bring Enough Fuel for the Journey. Here are some excerpts and thoughts that struck me all over again as good advice for the season:
It’s food for thought that even though there’s no excuse for running out of fuel in the aviation world, we consider running on empty a normal part of our culture. In some circles there’s even a sort of nobility attached to being such a hard worker that everyone knows you never sleep. Even when people refer to someone as being a workaholic, rarely do they shake their heads in sadness or suggest a good treatment center. In many cases, overworking and overdoing is considered the means to success.
But when we have the ambition to fly, to rise above the gravity of our current situation, self-care becomes a crucial function. If we are going to push the envelope and move into a lofty territory where humans have only dreamed of operating we’ll have to pay attention to everything we’re doing and be conscious.
Being conscious is what piloting our lives is all about. And the proof of the pudding (especially the Christmas pudding) is how well we manage our own energy.
Have you ever stopped in the midst of rushing around to listen to a small voice saying something like, “What AM I DOING?”
This is the same voice who might ask other wise questions, like:
- How about a 15-20 minute power nap?
- What if I just took a hot bath instead of…
- Is the food I’m about to eat truly my premium fuel?
- What if I went to bed at 9 tonight?
- Do I really want to go to that party?
- Is this conversation nourishing me?
Never running out of fuel is about taking 100% responsibility for not burning out, not depleting yourself, and for knowing and cultivating the kinds of premium fuel that truly give you energy. Who else will do this for you?
Hmmm, maybe Santa. On the other hand, why not put this present right in the center of your being this minute:
Peace.
Joy.
Freedom to manage your own energy.
May you find the generous heart within that wants to give you these gifts this season.
In love and light,
Pam
Tags: consciousness, Flying, Flying metaphor, holidays, inner landscape, inner peace, living today, managing change, managing energy, managing stress, musings, new life, perception, Photography, spiritual practice, The Beauty Way, winter
Posted in aviation, conscious evolution, consciousness, creativity and empowerment, Flying, health, inner landscape, loving ourselves, new life, nourishing ourselves, Photography, seeing oneself, self-healing, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, spiritual practices, Tools for seeing ourselves | No Comments »
Monday, December 5th, 2011
How do we pace ourselves during this holiday season so that we can “fly” through busy schedules, family relationships, celebrations and sometimes travel? After all, the body doesn’t know the difference between “good” and “bad” stress. What it does note is an imbalance.
To fly a plane, a pilot has to master the controls of four forces of flight that act on the airplane: thrust, drag, lift and gravity. The engine can provide the thrust, and power also provides lift. But we don’t want to overdo it, either in the air or on our holiday rounds.
If it’s all thrust, we’ll burn out our fuel and be too speedy to be in control. If we let drag take over, we won’t have the speed we need to fly. Lift is wonderful, but getting too “high” isn’t always wise. Gravity, on the other hand, can bring a body down too quickly, whether it’s made of metal or flesh.
Piloting is the art and science of managing our energy so that our vehicle–whether it has wings or not–can operate with the most ease and efficiency possible. After all, that’s what it was made to do.
Here are some tips for managing your energy so you can soar through this season:
1. Use your mental “dipstick” to mentally measure the energy you have every day, on a scale of 1-10.
2. Decide what your personal minimum should be.
3. How and when will you pause to re-fuel? Schedule breaks.
4. What is your premium fuel? Is it solitude? Prayer? Family? Nature? What have you learned about this?
5. Discipline yourself. Does that seem dreary? It won’t if it means you get through the holidays with your well-being and cheer intact.
6. Joy is the key word for this time of year, but sometimes it’s hard to come by. Track your joy. Pursue it. Treasure it. Give it. It’s good for you!
Tags: consciousness, Flying, Flying metaphor, living today, managing change, perception, Photography, spiritual practice, winter
Posted in aviation, coaching, conscious evolution, consciousness, Flying, happiness, healing, health, nourishing ourselves, Photography, seeing oneself, self-healing, shifting paradigms, spiritual practices, Tools for seeing ourselves, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 5th, 2011
I walk along the Pacific coast of the Baja peninsula. The stones at my feet are thrown across the sand like a random galaxy, and I connect their dots, picking out constellations. As the tide encroaches, waves wash up stones and other objects. Suddenly, I have company—a mystical sand woman! Her head is a glowing coral stone that seems to contain her facial features. Streaks of iron filings paint an aura around her head and give her a clear neck, shoulders and gown. She silently declares to me that she is a sand spirit, a form here for a fleeting moment.
I photograph these forms for four days, not touching anything. Back at home, I am delighted with the images, but still have no idea what I’m going to do with them. Two weeks later, I go in for a routine mammogram and am diagnosed with breast cancer. The rest of the story is about how the Sand Spirits become part of my healing journey and eventually part of others’ journeys as well.
I invite you to explore using the Sand Spirits in your own personal life, to activate the ocean of wisdom inside you! They will help you find your purpose and passion, help solve practical problems, facilitate deeper communication and bring out the healer within.
On Saturday, October 8, you can set aside 6 hours just for you and give yourself the gift of working with a tool that will show you how to move ahead in any area of your life and evolution. For information and to register, copy and paste this link into your browser: http://tinyurl.com/sandspirits.
Tags: beauty, consciousness, creative imagination, Essence, inner landscape, inner peace, living today, musings, Nature and the soul, perception, Photography, Sand Spirit Insight Cards, spiritual practice, The Beauty Way
Posted in authenticity, bringing out your gifts, consciousness, creative imagination, Creativity, creativity and empowerment, Guided imagery, happiness, healing, health, Imagination, inner landscape, nature as mirror, nourishing ourselves, Photography, Sand Spirit Insight Cards, seeing oneself, self image, self-healing, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, spiritual practices, Tools for seeing ourselves | No Comments »
Monday, September 26th, 2011
My friend and assistant Cynthia Wheeler was in Encinitas CA with me this week, enjoying a respite from the Tucson heat and enjoying the beach. The other morning she came back from a walk breathless with excitement.
“I met a young woman on the beach, “ she said, “who saw me taking pictures of the sand spirits I found in the sand, and offered to take a picture of me using my camera. I thanked her and asked her if she had ever seen the sand spirits on the beach. She looked puzzled, and so I showed her one.
‘See this figure on the sand? ‘ I pointed. ‘If this stone were its head, see how the streaks in the sand look like a robe, and these streaks around the shoulders…’
‘Oh! It looks like an angel!’ She was excited. ‘I needed this today!’
‘And so I told her,’ Cynthia went on, ‘that if she asked her angel—her sand spirit—something, she would hear an answer.’
‘I will?’ Her eyes widened. And so I assured her that if she listened with her whole being, of course she would. And, I suggested she google Sand Spirits and find the Insight Cards and even join us on the free webinar. She said she was going to go right home and do that!’”
Cynthia is so generous by nature that I wasn’t surprised that she had struck up this touching conversation with a stranger. What did surprise me was the reminder that even people who walk on the beach all the time may never have seen the figures nature has created there. I often hear people say, “I’ll never see a beach the same way again.” And I think that is a lot.
If we begin to see even one thing in a new way, our whole life can change in that instant.
May something appear to you in a whole new way today!
Pam
P.S. Join us on our free webinar Thursday at 4PST! It will be recorded, so be sure to sign up even if you can’t attend.(Sorry–you’ll have to copy and paste this long url into your browser! http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07e4u7zku02c910453&llr=bvhm8ccab
P.P.S. Go to Facebook.com/PamelaHale9 to see the photos of sand spirits I found this week in Encinitas!
Tags: beauty, consciousness, creative imagination, inner landscape, inner peace, living today, musings, Nature and the soul, perception, Photography, Sand Spirit Insight Cards, spiritual practice, The Beauty Way
Posted in consciousness, creative imagination, Creativity, creativity and empowerment, Guided imagery, happiness, healing, Imagination, inner landscape, nature as mirror, Photography, Sand Spirit Insight Cards, seeing oneself, self-healing, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, spiritual practices, The Beauty Path, Tools for seeing ourselves | No Comments »
Monday, October 11th, 2010
Nature and the Human Soul
I just enjoyed another weekend at our Rocking X Ranch in the Sierra Ancha mountains of Arizona. The time in nature always relaxes my body and mind, and leaves plenty of room for my soul to speak and to listen. My favorite sound is the wind through the Ponderosa pines, that sounds like the ocean. My favorite feeling this time was the cool air that was so refreshing after record-breaking heat in Tucson. And my favorite sights are too many to name. But I liked the way the sun came through this old glass that held my iced tea as I read by the stream.
I finished Bill Plotkin’s big and important book, Nature and the Human Soul. How right he is that our culture (which he calls “patho-adolescent,” is not what makes us true adults. We grow instead, by our immersion in the wild, natural forces that are akin to our souls. Then our task is to harvest what we learn from outer nature and our inner one, and bring it back into the world. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if more of us could do this?
My reading and musing made me feel so fortunate that I have a place to remember who I truly am, and how lovely the universe is that birthed me and this life I love. Experiences like this nourish my passionate desire to bring tools into the world that help us “see the shape of the soul,” “make the invisible visible” and make the “unconscious conscious.”
How do you chase the image, or the shape, or the flavor or sound of your soul? Where do you go to remember the wild, natural part within you? And how do you long to bring that essence into your world?
Tags: Bill Plotkin, consciousness, Essence, inner landscape, living today, Nature and the soul, perception, Photography, Self, soul
Posted in consciousness, inner landscape, nature as mirror, nourishing ourselves, Photography, returning to essence, seeing oneself, self image, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, Tools for seeing ourselves | No Comments »
Saturday, October 2nd, 2010
I see a funny figure in this Sand Spirit image– a dog or weasel standing on two legs,with its head in profile, looking to the left and showing us a huge black left eye. Do you see this? Its body has a stone at the waist or midpoint and another one near the feet. This seems to be a very grounded figure to me–one who sees and feels in its body and has its feet on the ground in a solid way. I think when I speak with this figure, what it says will make sense.
And how do I come up with what I see in this abstract photograph that began by being an abstract, natural arrangement of stones and streaks in the sand? How do you come up with whatever you see?
I see this way just by opening my active imagination, by using my intuition and my right brain, that non-linear, non-logical way of knowing. This way of seeing is called by some people “second sight.” Another way to look at it is that it’s our 6th sense. Our “common sense.”
What we see through the inner eye is just as valid as what we see with the outer one. And sometimes, even when we’re confused by what we see with the outer eye, the inner one makes sense.
When we are told, “Oh, that’s just your imagination,” one response might be, “What do you mean by just?” Why denegrate the inner eye? It has been responsible for everything creative in the human-made world. Our vision is the beginning of actions we call genius. Without seeing it first inside, we wouldn’t do much.
What are you going to do as soon as you finish reading this? Imagine doing it. See the inner movie? Doesn’t that happen all the time? You run a quick version of what you’re planning through the inner eye, and then you “see” how to go about it.
Now that is just common sense.
What do you think? I welcome your comments!
Tags: consciousness, creative imagination, Imagination, living today, musings, perception, Sand Spirit Insight Cards
Posted in conscious evolution, consciousness, creative imagination, Creativity, creativity and empowerment, Imagination, inner landscape, nature as mirror, Photography, Sand Spirit Insight Cards, seeing oneself, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, Tools for seeing ourselves | No Comments »
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
I love using the Sand Spirit Insight cards to reveal a personal myth that might give you insight into a theme in your own life.
Choose three cards from the pile face down, or just think of three numbers between 1 and 36 and pick those. I chose #33, #16 and #11.
From a completely intuitive place, use the three “illustrations” to stimulate a story that pours out with the least amount of thinking possible. Here’s mine:
One day a mother was thinking hard about how to juggle all the activity and all the dynamics in her family. She had a very colorful, very vibrant family, but sometimes they all were confused and troubled by the changes among them and in the world. They were looking for signs about the Divine path they all might follow.
At times the mother despaired, feeling the grief that surrounded her own helplessness, and wondered if all her experience counted for anything.
Into her dreamtime flew a strange and comical bird, who in his serious form showed her how hunched over she might become if she took all the weight of the world upon her shoulders. Another way, he pointed out, would be to take it all lightly, like a sweet and funny story that was really based on love and on how alike we all are.
See how this story might have helped me? What do you see in the three cards? What story would you tell? Myths, especially when they come from ourselves, give us the gift of the big picture, the universal. This takes us out of the small world that entraps us when we forget that we are all connected and part of one Creation. The spirits from the sea evidently want us to remember that while we are all drops, we are part of the great ocean!
Tags: consciousness, Flying metaphor, inner landscape, living today, managing change, musings, perception, Photography, Sand Spirit Insight Cards, transitions, ups and downs
Posted in bringing out your gifts, coaching, conscious evolution, consciousness, creative imagination, creativity and empowerment, Guided imagery, happiness, healing, Imagination, inner landscape, managing change, nature as mirror, Sand Spirit Insight Cards, seeing oneself, self-healing, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, Tools for seeing ourselves | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
Guanacaste sunset
When we were in Costa Rica last month, I had some heavy things on my mind. Despite the fact that we were so fortunate, despite the profusion of juicy jungle life all around us, I was burdened. (I’m probably not the only one who has had things changing, falling apart and challenging me lately!) So my vacation To Do list had just one thing on it. It was one of the 7 Flying Lessons from my forthcoming book. It was easy to pick the appropriate one: Remember Why You Long to Fly.
As if I had called on her, Nature helped me with this lesson. For most of the first week it had been too cloudy for any sunsets. So when we had a clear evening, we planted ourselves on the beach. It was quite a show. The cloud blanket that had been providing the overcast lifted just enough to be completely lit up, creating a rose glow on everything and everybody. Nothing to do here but point, laugh, exclaim. Pure, unadulterated beauty.
Being on that beach was like flying. I felt lifted, transported. In the presence of something wondrous and magical. It rendered any of my own concerns small…or perhaps it just bathed them in a rosy light and made me see that all will be well. All is already well, I remembered.
What do you think happened in this scene? I believe I finally re-opened my heart. The beauty had been all around me the whole time, but this overwhelming scene just cracked my heart open, and I remembered.
I want that feeling of flying, that ecstatic feeling, because it re-connects me with the truth. The truth that I am a spiritual being capable of great flights, and that I am connected to everyone and everything.
What makes you remember why you long to fly? What lifts you and transports you and opens your heart and causes you to remember All That Is?
I wish you that experience of soaring. Why not remember today?
Tags: beauty, consciousness, Flying, Flying metaphor, inner peace, living today, perception, Photography, The Beauty Way
Posted in aviation, consciousness, Flying, Imagination, nature as mirror, nourishing ourselves, Photography, returning to essence, seeing oneself, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, The Beauty Path | No Comments »
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
Costa Rican turtles
While I was on an idyllic vacation in Costa Rica, I was shocked to have a disturbing nightmare that “woke me up” with a warning.
In the dream, I was driving a car too fast around a curve. To my horror, straight ahead of me was a toddler standing alone, right in the middle of the narrow road. I recognized her as a young version of my precious daughter, Erin (now a mother in her own right.) As in many other dreams I’ve had, little Erin seemed to represent everything innocent, beautiful, creative and fragile.
There was no time to come to a stop. To avoid hitting the toddler, I began to swerve right, onto the shoulder where there was a small store. At the moment a mother and her toddler came out of the store and walked in front of my car’s path. Confronted by the choice of hitting my own toddler or a mother and her new life, I woke up in a sweat, wondering what this nightmare could mean.
By the middle of the next day my frantic mind stopped long enough to see the simple truth. “Slow down,” the dream was saying to me. “Slow down before you mow down innocence, femininity, creativity, beauty and new life.”
And I was in the right place to practice. Costa Rica has a much slower pace than the U.S. That’s why their favorite expression is “Pura vida,” which means life is pure and good. They seem to get more juice out of every moment than I have in my usual pace. These turtles are good at practicing slowness, so I will hold them as totems.
I take my dreams seriously, so I am still practicing at home. Slow down. Breathe. All I have is this moment–with all its innocence, beauty, creativity and new life.
How do you keep your pace slow enough to make sure you experience “pura vida?” I’d love to hear your comments.
Tags: beauty, consciousness, inner peace, living today, managing change, musings, new life, own pace, perception, Photography, spiritual practice, The Beauty Way
Posted in authenticity, Being, consciousness, divine feminine, Dreams, happiness, healing, managing change, not doing, nourishing ourselves, Photography, returning to essence, seeing oneself, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Saturday, June 12th, 2010
Can you believe this ceiling? It’s part of the Boulder Teahouse, a building originally from Tajikistan that was shipped to CO in pieces and re-constructed. Sitting in that environment with my daughter Laura and my recently graduated grandson, Simon, I wondered what it would be like to live in a culture so steeped in beauty that it is all around you and in you. I imagine, perhaps with too much romanticism, that it would be more difficult to be cruel or thoughtless if you were surrounded by evidence of human creativity and crafstmanship. And, perhaps it would be harder to get lulled to sleep than it is entering a shopping center that looks like any other shopping center in the country.
If it sounds like I’m an architectural snob, I admit this is probably true. I’m in California right now, where architecture in certain areas has been preserved and maintained and honored. I love wandering past Craftsman and Victorian houses, admiring the romantic Spanish colonials and appreciating how the landscaping frames and enhances the buildings. Architecture is part of our highest human expression. To me, dull and repetitive architecture is a sign that the creative spirit has gone to sleep or is not being honored. What happens to a society that has stopped valuing beauty in our surroundings?
We don’t have to be part of that trend. No matter where you live, you can use your imagination and creativity to enhance your nest. What are new ways to put together your belongings that will be an expression of you and your appreciation for beauty? Just the exercise of thinking about this can fire up your awareness and your creativity. When that’s at work, other things in your life can change as well, because you will be awake as a creative being.
What can you take away or add or re-arrange? I’d love to hear your ideas and solutions!
Tags: consciousness, Creativity, inner landscape, living today, perception, Photography, The Beauty Way
Posted in bringing out your gifts, creative imagination, Creativity, creativity and empowerment, Imagination, inner landscape, seeing oneself, shifting paradigms, The Beauty Path | No Comments »
