Posts Tagged ‘musings’
Tuesday, October 9th, 2012
It’s so easy and delicious for me to sink onto a place of beauty in nature and feel safe in that “All Is One” feeling. Next to ocean, or stream, or wind through the pines I am reminded of the life force that courses through all things. I am in my safe landing space at those times.
And then we know there are other moments. Moments that suck. Moments that are almost intolerable. Moments when we don’t want to be here. Moments when we feel like life must be against us. These moments do not feel like safe landing spaces.
So what to do? Especially since those ‘other moments” are when we need a safe landing space the very most.
Well, I say we create beauty. We must.
I love to talk about Victor Frankl, because he is the most extreme example I can come up with of a human who could create beauty out of the most meager ingredients. A concentration camp survivor whose whole family was exterminated, he credited his survival to his decision to find meaning in every day.
If he could do that in those circumstances, surely I can do it in mine.
But how, in those moments of despair, frustration, fear, or anger do we create beauty? There is a lot of ugliness in the world, after all.
I think it’s a choice. About how to see. Without being a Polyanna, without denying, we can choose to see beauty.
I can choose to find the beauty in an ordinary task like peeling a vegetable that God made, or even cleaning a toilet I’m lucky to have. I can choose to find beauty in weeding a garden where I’m making room for new life. I can choose to seek out the beauty that accompanies some of the worst tragedies, where in the midst of great loss there is some moment of exquisite love. I can choose to not be blind, but just to see “through a different lens.”
Maybe this is part of our work on earth. At least it makes our journey here more lovely.
Do it for you. Create beauty just to make your day better.
Do it for someone else. See if that doesn’t make your day better too.
See if when you create beauty, it doesn’t make you feel safe somehow. Safe in the fact that you are a creator. Safe in the fact that there is beauty in the first place. Safe in the fact that creating beauty is a well-worn path. A sacred one. One which has eternity in it.
Ah, now you have landed. In a beautiful place. On solid ground.
Tags: beauty, consciousness, creative imagination, creativity and empowerment, Flying, Flying Lessons: How to Be the Pilot of Your Own Life, Flying metaphor, inner peace, musings, Nature and the soul, perception, Photography, spiritual practice, The Beauty Way
Posted in aviation, coaching, conscious evolution, consciousness, creative imagination, creativity and empowerment, Flying, happiness, healing, Imagination, nature as mirror, Photography, seeing oneself, shifting how we see, spiritual practices, The Beauty Path, Tools for seeing ourselves | 5 Comments »
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!
Tags: Being, consciousness, Flying, Flying metaphor, inner peace, living today, managing change, meditation, musings, Nature and the soul, new life, own pace, Photography, spiritual practice, The Beauty Way
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 24th, 2010
Are you familiar with fractals?
This flower might not technically qualify, but it’s close. We can look at the whole thing and say it’s a flower. Then if we look at each section, it’s made of…miniature flowers. Flowers within flowers. Other more “exact” fractals might include a cauliflower.
Mini-worlds. That’s what fractals remind me of. The macro and the micro.
Our bodies are, of course, magnificent examples of the macro and the micro, of mini-worlds contained in a framework that is contained in a macro world that is contained in a galaxy…cells within cells. Bodies within bodies.
What worlds do you contain within you? What physical ones and what examples of cosmic consciousness?
I believe that in some sense, we contain everything, just as we are contained.
And what do you think?
Tags: inner landscape, musings, perception, Photography
Posted in Being, creative imagination, Gaia, Imagination, inner landscape, nature as mirror, Photography, seeing oneself, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms | 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 »
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
Maggie just had her “happy” and she is two. What did she have to say about that? “My happy June.” Yes, her birthday was in June. And on the day, she just kept saying, “My happy.”
It is her happy. She has every right to have “happy.” None of us would want to deny a two-year old as adorable as my grand daughter her “happy.”
And as for the rest of us? Do we know as certainly as Maggie that it is natural and right for us to have our own “happy?” If so, why does it seem hard to hang on to sometimes? Why are we so affected by outer events that we forget about that birthright? Why do we just hand over the power we have to claim “happy” for ourselves?
This is a simple wish for you to find your “happy” right now, independent of any challenges or sadnesses happening in your life. It is still your “happy” and it doesn’t even have to be your birthday, or June.
This is your moment.
Tags: birthright, challenges, consciousness, happiness, inner peace, musings, perception, Photography, ups and downs
Posted in children as teachers, conscious evolution, consciousness, happiness, loving ourselves, new life | No Comments »
