Green card blog post
January 27th, 2012Travelling afar and travelling within
January 20th, 2012
As I write, I’m coming to the end of Paula Constant’s story of walking across the Sahara dessert. It’s called ‘Sahara: A journey of love, loss and survival’.
I’ve always loved tales of people taking on incredible challenges; be it walking across the Sahara, ascending Mount Everest, or choosing to live in foreign countries where they don’t know the language or customs and even sitting down to order a simple meal becomes a momentous accomplishment.
I too have had my fair share of travels – over land, air and sea – and I guess some were more adventurous than others.
Sailing from Toronto to the Bahamas is amongst my most memorable travel experiences. As are walking in the Andes, canoeing in the Amazon, and swimming in the billabongs of Kakadu National Park. Read the rest of this entry »
Planning for happiness in 2012
January 13th, 2012
Often people who are dealing with a problem in their lives ask me; ‘Can you just deal with that issue for me? Can you just fix me without me having to do anything myself?’
The truth is that I am trained to, and do occasionally, do healing work in this way, if the soul/the spirit is willing.
This kind of work is limited though because human beings are designed for conscious evolution, for consciously developing their understanding of themselves and the world around them.
Therefore to rely solely on another to heal you is to skip a phase in your personal development. It also means missing out on your right as a human being to heal yourself.
When you hand over your power to another in this way, you also miss an important truth; that you’re doing the work all the time, even when you’re not aware of it. You’re either putting effort into happiness or you’re putting effort into dissatisfaction, discomfort and disease.
Handing over your personal healing power to another is the equivalent of growing and nurturing your victimhood.
The work that frees you from any such victim mentality is to bring your awareness to the present moment.
To ask; where is my energy, my effort being directed in this moment?
This is the work; to pay attention.
When you do this, you don’t look to others to solve your problems, to offer their opinions, or to heal your wounds – emotional, physical or spiritual.
You don’t look to others because you know innately that all the power to do so lies within.
I read once that one of the attributes of a happy person is that they plan for happiness. And so I wonder, in 2012, is this what you’re planning for?
If you are, this is not something which starts tomorrow. It starts today.
It starts now.
Planning for happiness isn’t about hope or anticipation or waiting until you’ve got a better job, house, relationship or family.
There is only one way to plan for happiness and that’s to find happiness in this very moment.
Find something to be happy for right now and build from there.
Don’t expect every moment to be happy. Particularly not in the beginning. But notice the moments that are and consciously bring more and more of your energy to those times.
As you do, 2012 will become a year of unfolding layers of deeper and deeper levels of happiness.
I look forward to joining you in the unfolding.
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Photo credit: Jasmic
This is your life – live your dream and share your passion
January 6th, 2012A friend posted this picture on facebook a few months ago. A simple and effective guide for living in 2012, methinks!
The top 10 of 2011
December 30th, 2011
One of the things I love about my ‘job’ is the feedback I receive about the blog. Sometimes this is shared via the comments section below and sometimes it’s of a private nature – shared with me in personal emails or in conversation.
I am always thrilled to receive feedback, to know that the blog is speaking to people and that people are benefiting from my efforts. It is this which keeps me writing, even when the ‘business side’ of Dakini Grace seems to demand my attention.
And so, as we say goodbye to 2011, I wanted to take a moment to firstly thank you for reading. All my life I’ve wanted to write something that would make a positive difference in another person’s life. Starting the blog and receiving feedback on its content is one way I’m seeing that dream unfold and for this, I feel blessed indeed.
I always wanted to take a moment to reflect back on 2011 and share with you the 10 posts that seem to have touched people the most.
You may find your own favourite in the list, and perhaps not. Either way, I’d love to hear from you – what were your favourites? How did they influence or inspire you, or perhaps change your thinking around a particular issue?
DRAWN FROM LIFE
How’d you get to be happiness?
In praise of shyness and freeing yourself from its restraints
PHILOSOPHY, SPIRITUALITY, SCIENCE AND POLITICS: THE MELTING POT
Consciousness, abundance and the need to transcend Descartes
Democracy and abundance: what we can learn from Indigenous people
Energy, consciousness and matter: it’s all expanding at an accelerated rate
PERSONAL AND SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT: TIPS, TOOLS AND OBSERVATIONS
3 easy steps for uncovering your life purpose
7 misunderstandings about personal development
A simple guide to changing your emotions
Stumbling forward towards aligned living
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Photo credit: Matt Callow
The sacred in every moment
December 23rd, 2011
As Christmas draws so near, I’m drawn to reflect upon the journey we each take toward a deeper understanding of life and the true nature of existence.
For each person it is different.
Some follow the path of organised religion.
Some adopt an intellectual path, attempting to understand the world through analysis.
Some read the literature of and/or sit with enlightened masters.
Some learn tools and techniques which help them to clear out old and limiting ways of experiencing the world.
The path you choose is yours and yours alone.
The path that others choose is irrelevant. Read the rest of this entry »
You are an eternal being
December 16th, 2011
A few months ago I was in a state of light sleep; that time when the body is slowly waking up, but not yet ready to rise and greet the day.
I was dreaming of something or other and then through the dream came the following words; ‘you are not a contemporary being having a contemporary experience, you are an eternal being.’
The message was delivered simply, clearly and directly.
The effect was that I immediately became aware of the ways I’d been focusing on the minor and trivial details of my life and I took some time to refocus.
Later that morning I wondered what it would mean if we were all to view our lives from this broader perspective.
I wondered what it would look like if, instead of seeing ourselves as tied to our bodies, names, families and cities, we not only knew, but had a conscious, every moment experience of also being eternal.
I wondered how the world might function if there were a mass awareness that we are all eternal beings, choosing this body, this name, this family and this city, at this particular moment in time, and also knowing that at any moment, we might morph into something different, something other, something more.
I wondered, if each of us lived from this place, how differently we might view the world. How differently we might make decisions. How differently we might treat one another.
- How differently for example, would you treat children and young people if you saw them as eternal beings, just like you? If you saw that they were in fact just as wise and all creative as you? If you saw beyond even that; that in truth, they are you?
- Would you condescend to try to mold them into an image that makes you happy; to ask them to behave in ways that don’t embarrass you? Would you be concerned about where they ranked at school or on the sporting field if you knew that they were in truth, eternal beings, dressing up in a costume, playing a role? If you knew that they had deliberately chosen that costume and that role for this lifetime?
- How would you treat your ancestors who have passed? Would you consign them to the recesses of your mind, viewing their influence as something long past? Or would you experience their presence as alive and available in every moment, with love and guidance always on offer?
- Would you ease up on yourself perhaps? Would you stop telling your ‘poor me’ stories? Your stories about how life could be if only you had been born in a different family or city, with different educational opportunities, health or appearance?
- Would you see each moment as a precious gift? An opportunity? Something chosen rather than something imposed?
You are an eternal being.
As an eternal being, you are showing up in a specific form, within a specific space/time continuum. And still you are eternal. It’s not either/or. It’s both.
The problem is that most of us are focused on just one side of what is often presented as a duality.
When you are willing to be both eternal and individual, not as a dichotomy, but in a space which exists beyond dualism and which is comfortable with apparent contradictions, only then will you be able to:
- access the wisdom of the ages whilst simultaneously harnessing your understanding of how to download apps to your iPhone,
- make decisions about which jobs to pursue, which houses to live in and which schools to send your children to, all the while knowing that these decisions are actually minute and quite insignificant in the context of eternity.
- stop worrying so much.
You are an eternal and all powerful being and at the same time you are a speck of dust at a point in time, in the universe.
The ego riles at the second of those statements and sometimes it wallows in it. But when you’re ready to see the truth in the statement, you’ll see its great beauty and you’ll revel more deeply in the uniqueness of this particular life experience you’re living.
You’ll stop trying to fashion the world as you’d like it to be and instead you’ll begin appreciating the world, exactly as it is.
The caption accompanying the photo above is from spiritual master Osho who said; “To be in time is to be asleep: to be awake is to be in eternity”. You’ve already spent much time asleep, now is the time to wake and reside in eternity.
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Photo credit: Alice Popkorn
In praise of shyness and freeing yourself from its restraints
December 9th, 2011
I was a very shy child. Very shy. My mother says she had never in her life met someone so shy.
I didn’t like being handed around to other people as a baby and when I started at ballet school I used to hang off the teacher’s leg for a long, long time before I was willing to join the class.
As I grew older, I heard such stories and interpreted them to mean there was something wrong with me. I thought I was hearing this; that it’s better to be gregarious and talkative and open and friendly than it is to be shy.
I realise now that there’s no right or wrong about this, there’s simply difference.
Most people who know me as an adult wouldn’t necessarily call me shy. It’s not a label I apply to myself, and still, the fragrance of shyness is often present in my life.
Not in the stereotypical way of being afraid of conversation or of speaking in front of large groups of people.
Of course shyness can look like that, but in my experience, shyness goes much deeper.
- Shyness can look like introversion, or like creating a job where you get to spend 80% of your time on your own.
- It can look like not enjoying speaking on the telephone and/or teaching yourself tricks to overcome nervousness when convening meetings.
- It can look like preferring to meet with friends on a 1 to 1 basis rather than attending large parties.
- Sometimes it looks like spending time with children rather than adults – shying away from the judgments and demands of adult conversation.
It can also look like this:
- the capacity to be with oneself
- vulnerability
- softness and gentleness
- tenderness and grace
- intuition, understanding and a capacity for great empathy
- acute awareness of exposure and, for those that are really willing to sit in that, it looks like a capacity to be exposed and to allow others the same.
Certainly shyness can be used to hide behind all of these things and at the same time, it can be used as an avenue to embody all of these things.
So to every person who has had the experience of shyness; to every person who has been described as ‘painfully shy’ by others; to every person who experiences the occasional torture of shyness, who experiences the world as too brash, too much, too aggressive, I say this – dive deeply into your shyness.
Not as a label but as an experience, as an emotion.
And forget what others say about it. Forget the stereotypical description of shyness.
Dive deeply and find out for yourself. Sit in exposure and allow it to free you.
Shyness serves a great purpose and when you are willing to neither hide behind it, nor cover it up, but rather stand in the midst of it and just allow it to be, you will find there an exquisite beauty. One which serves the world in its gentle appreciation of all that is.
You will also find that in shyness there is strength, there is power and there is a strong, clear, articulate voice which observes, notices and experiences the world in a very unique way.
You may even find that the world is a far better place for having heard from such a voice.
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Photo credit: Zitona
A question to ask yourself
December 2nd, 2011Thank you again to everyone who participated in the recent Dakini Grace survey. Your feedback has been taken on board and is absolutely pivotal to informing what’s to come in 2012!
More on that in the future, but in the meantime, here is the first initiative to arise from the survey: the green card blog post.
In response to the survey query about the blog’s regularity, the majority of you indicated that you’re very happy to receive your weekly posts. A small group indicated that they sometimes find themselves with a few Dakini Grace blog posts stacking up in their in-boxes, waiting to be read.
Knowing that we are all under in-box pressure from time to time, I’ve decided to introduce the green card blog post. The blog will continue with weekly posts and the green card blog post will pop up occasionally within that schedule as a post which is only as many words as I can physically write on a card.
This could be a challenge for someone who loves to express herself in words, but I recently read this by English poet Robert Southey and felt inspired;
“It is with words as with sunbeams.
The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.”
Time to burn then, I say!
Allow the card to inspire, motivate, generate thought or discussion, or provide the spark for deeper contemplation.
As always, the choice is yours as to how deeply you dive into the self. Whatever decision you make in that regard, you should know, I’m always grateful to have you along for the ride.
And so to this week’s card:
Until next week xx
Connection, trust and a scientific reason to engage in social media
November 25th, 2011
I was recently introduced to the molecule oxytocin by a group of people who are interested in keeping natural birth rates as high as possible. You see, oxytocin is released into the bodies of mothers and babies during the labour process and also during breastfeeding. When you watch this video, you’ll realise why people are interested in ensuring that babies have a good injection of oxytocin early in life.
That’s not the reason I’m sharing this today though. I’m sharing it because it’s a timely follow up to the recent blog post where I spoke of the problem of disconnection. As a person who is always looking for the easiest and most effective ways for people to live from a place of connection (or alignment, as I like to call it), I was very interested to learn that:
- there is a molecule in the body which directly relates to our experience of connection, trust and empathy; and
- there is a very easy way to increase the release of this molecule into your body so that you can increase your experience of connection easily and effortlessly.
The video runs for 16 minutes, so I suggest you grab a cup of tea and sit back and enjoy. Read the rest of this entry »
