I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

Diane Ackerman, Poet
[quoted in Newsweek, September 22, 1986]

Wow, I have never heard of living ones life to the fullest described in such simple yet in such profoundly true terms. I imagine living ones life just the length of it, like sleep walking through life. Have you ever had a day where somebody simple says, isn’t it beautiful out, and this has made you realize that you have yet to take the time that day to notice. How many things in your life, that would create width, go unnoticed?

I know for myself, that I need to slow down or else I am left living just the length of my life. In the past, the more stressed I would become, the faster and less conscious I would go throughout my day, as if I was trying to run from life. I am saddened at some level for all that I have missed on those days when I had forgotten to take the time to live in moment and feel alive. I am grateful now that I am starting to learn what it means to live consciously through life. Living consciously does not always mean feeling joy, but the guarantee is that you will feel, and there is nothing better than feeling to awaken you to the width of  life.

Namaste (I see the spirit in you which is also in me.)

If you have ever been around children, you know how persistent they can be when they want your attention. All of my children let me know in their own way, if they feel like they are not getting their due attention. Today it was my oldest daughter who told me loud and clear that her well for my attention was running low.

After filling my daughter’s well, I started thinking about how persistent our spirit can be when we are ignoring its guidance and passions. I have on many occasions put my spirit last on the list, but I am comforted with the fact that, it is going nowhere. No matter how long I ignore it, it is like a patient and trusted friend, waiting for my next phone call.

Our relationship with our spirit is like any other relationship we honor in our lives, it needs our time in order for an intimate bond to be built. It is the difference between talking to one friend every few months or talking to another friend every few days. You may cherish both friends but it is the friend, who you talk to more often, who is going to know the more  intimate details of your daily life. This same principle applies to our spirits. If we form an intimate relationship with our spirits, we will be better able to understand and intuitively follow its subtle guidance system.

Your spirit promises you that it will never reject you, it is persistent but patient, and its sole goal is to lead you to the Divine. Forming a relationship with your spirit needs to be a conscious decision on a daily basis, but the rewards span a life time.

Namaste (I see the Divine in you which is also in me.)

I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.

Mother Theresa, social activist 

I find this quote so inspiring! Even Mother Theresa, a woman who was so committed to following her heart and passions, had to rely on faith to get her through the tough times. We have all felt at one time or another that life has served us more than we have asked for. For me, it is during these times that I let go of the things I can’t control and I focus on where my heart is leading me. This truly takes faith on my part, that the Universe is not giving me more than I can handle. This faith gives me the gifts of peace of mind and the ability to trust a force greater then myself. I hope that you too will find these gifts when you are feeling overwhelmed with God’s trust!  

Namaste (I honor the spirit in you that is also in me.)

I have learnt that being connected to your body is truly a spiritual experience. I see it as spiritual because you have to be in the moment to honor its subtle and not so subtle cues. The body never stops communicating with us. The sad thing is that many people live in their minds and not in their bodies.

Our bodies were given to us from the Divine to allow us to experience deep pleasure. If you didn’t have a mouth, how could you taste the food that you love the most, or imagine not having sexual organs and not feeling the pleasure they bring when you are consumed with passion.

Our body is a gift but as women we have been socialized to live disconnected to this gift. Our bodies have become markers by society to determine whether we measure up or not. We are taught from the wider culture that to fit in we must manipulate our physical self in some way, through dieting, over exercising, dressing in the “right” clothes and sadly the list goes on.

What we are really being told is that as women, we should take up as little physical space as possible. Why is this? Is the power of our spirits, which is expressed physically, so intimidating that we must shrink it in a physical way? Don’t you think that at some level we are all rebelling against such confining standards? How many diets have you started but not completed? I believe that you didn’t complete them, not because you failed, but because your spirit felt suffocated. Your spirit is persistent and it uses the body to get its message across. Many people even confuse the gnawingness of spiritual hunger as physical hunger. We need to settle into our bodies and stop listening to the ego or the inner voice telling us that we do not measure up. 

In the last few months, I have made a conscious effort to honor my body by listening for it’s need for food, rest, pleasure and exercise. I hope that you too will begin to honor your body in such a simple and spiritual way. 

Namaste (I honor the spirit in you that is also in me.)

Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, writer

Many times I have wondered to myself, how does one feel connected to their spirit when they are just plain in a bad mood!?! I think that you can guess that this has come up today because I am not my usual happy and smiley self! And on days like this, I feel like it is even harder for me to see the Divine in myself. Does the Divine ever get this grouchy or is it afraid of me too!

 I used to feel like a bad person if I was grouchy and other people took notice of it, but now I think it is okay. I don’t think it is written anywhere that in order to feel the most connected to the Divine, we need to be happy all the time. There is no condition on the presence of God. I believe we were created to experience the rainbow of emotions, not just half the spectrum.

 Emotion is not in and of itself a negative thing. I believe it is a communication tool used by our souls to help guide us to our best possible self. What can be hurtful  is our inability to recognize what we are feeling or the harmful ways we may express emotions. An emotion is just energy running through our bodies. If we deny our emotions, the energy from them gets stuck in our bodies. Or we may choose to express it in an unhealthful way, hurting our self or others along the way.

In order to express emotions in a healthful way, you first must become aware of what you are feeling. Scan your body; it truly has many stories to tell. Most of the time, we try to go within our minds to see what we are feeling, but the ego lives in the mind and emotion lives in the body. A broken heart might express itself as tightness in the chest or excitement might be felt as butterflies in the stomach. You just have to be with yourself and in the moment to sense the clues of emotions.

Once you become aware of your feelings, acknowledge it as way that your soul is communicating to you. After you have validated your emotion, you now have the power to choose the way that you want to express it. For example, if you were feeling a deep sadness, you may just want to sit in the moment with that sadness, talk to a friend or write in your journal.

Our power lies in how we express emotion. It is through this power we are connected to our spirit regardless if we are feeling  joy or anger. The Divine’s power is always present, even during a bad mood!

Namaste (I honor the Spirit in you which is also in me.)

Recently I have decided to take up running, which has completely taken me out of my physical comfort zone. I haven’t run since eighth grade and we will just say that this was a little while ago! I took an early morning run today. I haven’t run in a week because I had pulled my groin muscle and I wanted to honor my body, and let it take some time to rest and heal.

When I was running this morning, my legs started getting tired pretty quickly and I felt like stopping, and then suddenly I looked up at the sun. Ever since I was a child, I believed that God lived in the sun. While I was running today, I prayed that the sun would share its light with me, giving me the energy to continue to run.

After I prayed, I thought about how in life there are many times when our own light feels dim and we need to call on others to help heal our light or to go inward and allow it to heal. We need to honor these seasons of life because if we don’t, when other seasons require us to share our light, we will not have the energy to do so.

We have all been there, when life requires a lot of our attention, in a new job, the arrival of a baby, in a relationship, or while taking care of an elderly parent, and if we do not honor ourselves by taking times of rest, we will be stretched and our light will burn out. Many of us are running on empty, because times of rest are dramatically outweighed by times where we must go outwards and share our light. God wants us to share the divine gifts given to each one of us, but we cannot do so if our light is running low. Honor yourself today, and take a rest and bask in your own light so when life calls you, you will be ready to share its brilliance.

Namaste (I honor the spirit in you which is also in me.)

I Am
Chakra, American Singer

I am your truth, I am your destiny
I am desire and despair
I am your glow inside your beating heart
I am the love that leads you there
I am your soul, I am your soul

I am the darkness where you disappear
I am the light that leads you safe
I am the shepherd of your laughter and your tears
I am your pleasure and your pain
I am your soul, I am your soul

I am the faith that leaves your spirit strong
I am the sunlight in the rain
I am the universe inside your mind
I am your pleasure and your pain
I am your soul, I am your soul
I am your soul, I am your soul

I am the courage that inspires you
I am the knowledge that you gained
I am the people you will choose to be
I am your pleasure and your pain
I am your soul, I am your soul.

The Road Not Taken
Poet: Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.