Today I woke up to face my usual routine of trying to feed and dress four children, and getting the older two ready and out the door for school. I woke up this morning pretty tired, after a stressful weekend involving the basement flooding and the subsequent cleanup. I was running around finishing the school lunches that I had started last night and I was trying to find socks for my oldest son, getting interrupted continuously by the younger three as I was searching for a pair.  

I was upstairs in the mist of the controlled chaos, when my oldest son hands me a freshly made cup of tea. He completely caught me by surprise. He has never once done this before. In that moment, I truly felt seen. He saw me working to get everyone’s needs meant, and this 10-year-old boy thought to give his mom a cup of tea. It almost brings tears to my eyes even when I write it. I can almost guarantee you that when he is an adult, he won’t remember this simple gesture, but it will be a moment I will remember forever.

The Divine works in simple ways to show, through others, the love the Divine has for us. Let the Divine work through you today, even in the smallest of gestures, because you may never know how impactful your simple gesture may be.

Namaste

Whatever the struggle, continue the climb. It may be only one step to the summit.

I love this quote because its truth resonates so much with me. It may seem hard sometimes to continue the climb up the mountain, preserving on this journey we call life, but many times what we are working so hard to obtain may be closer than we actually realize. The Divine never promised that life would never have trials, but the promise is that the Divine is always present, even during trying times. The Divine is in the center of every moment, but to find its energy, you must be centered.

During the night last night my basement flooded, and I allowed this to become a reason to lose the alignment I have with my spirit. And because I was not aligned, everything today seemed to take much more energy compared to if I had been centered. I was too much in my head today, and because of this I had disconnected myself to the Divine’s energy. And it would have been this energy which would have helped to make my day easier, even though I had to clean up a flooded basement. I have learnt a lesson today. It is ultimately my choice whether or not to center myself. Instead, I let myself get too carried away with negativity. What can I say, I am definitely still on the journey up the mountain, but you never know I may only be one step to the summit!    

Namaste

Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make, both consciously and unconsciously. If you can control the process of choosing, you can take control of all aspects of your life. You can find the freedom that comes from being in charge of yourself.

In order to be in alignment with our spirits, we must take responsiblity for all levels of our being. We are responsible for what we think, for what we say, and how we behave. I think that many people are so overwhelmed with the stressors and the distractions of life, they spend most of their time reacting to life instead of being proactive by creating the life that they want. Creating the life that you want is not usually the result of one moment, but the incremental build up of many moments over time. What makes up a moment and how do you learn to build many moments together to create the life that you want?

If you could take a slice of time and isolate one moment from it, from your perspective in that moment, what variables do you think would be involved to create your experience? If we spend our whole life in the confines of our head (as the quote below indicates), there is at least one guarantee, that our thoughts are involved in every moment. Another variable is our free will. In every moment we have at least some basic level of choice available to us. Also present in every moment, that you are here on this earth, is your personality. Another variable is the emotions that we experience, and we experience at least one emotion in every single moment. Lastly, the ego and the spirit are consistently present. They just take turns being at the forefront depending on which one  of them has our attention.

So in each moment the players at the party are our thoughts, our power of choice, our personality, our emotions,  our ego and our spirit. When I think of these variables, that when combined together make up the moments we call life, I think of the analogy of water and the various outcomes that can be produced from the same substance . If you take water and expose it to varying degrees of temperature, based on the temperature the water is exposed to, the end results look very different. The water could remain liquid, semi-solid, completely solid, or anywhere in between. There ends up being many different possible outcomes based on the exposure of one thing, temperature.

A moment in our life is very similar. If you take a moment in time, all the variables mentioned above are present. Our power of choice,  in relation to a moment in time, is like the temperature that water is exposed to. Our choices have the power to ultimately decide what our experience of any given moment will look like. For example. you could choose to add anger to a moment, you could choose to add spirit driven thoughts, or you could choice to follow the voice of your ego. What we choose to add is like the varying degrees of temperature. We could have an icy cold experience or a boiling hot one in relation to the exact same moment, based on the experience we choose to have. Our choice ultimately decides how we will think and then behave.

At the end of everyday, for now and forever, the gift you were given by the Divine is the power of choice. So to run down the list of the variables found in every moment in time, you can choose what thoughts to think, how to react emotionally, whether to focus on your spirit or ego, and whether or not you will limit yourself by your personality traits. Don’t look at life as something that happens to you and you just react to it. Start looking at life as a way of choosing in every moment, of everyday, what you want to experience and how you want to represent yourself in this world for the short time you are here.

Namaste

No matter where you go or what you do, you live your entire life within the confines of your head. 

(Our power lies in the choice we make when deciding what to think.)

To fulfill ones innate potential, learning to love one’s self is only the first step. Although this step can seem at times like a journey up the side of a mountain, it is just the beginning of the spiritual journey of being one with yourself. The more connected you are with your spirit, the more your spirit is in the forefront of your life and the less power your ego has over your mind.

We tend to assume our thoughts are ours even in their conception, but I want to challenge this thinking. When a thought enters our mind, it is not of us until we grab on to it and feed it with attention. The ego or the spirit is the source of  all first or original thoughts, but we are responsible for whether are not we feed into these thoughts with time and attention, allowing the thoughts to then grow. One thought, with our time and attention, can build into a story that we then could possibly continue to replay in our minds for years. 

An example of an original thought coming from the ego would be the thought, I am not good enough. Now when this thought enters our mind, we have two choices. First we can dismiss this thought as untrue and move on to the next thought we have. Or we can believe the thought “I am not good enough” and add to it with examples we find in our lives that reinforce our feelings of not being worthy. By adding our side to the ego’s story, it ends up becoming our own story and in this process we lose a lot of our innate power.

In contrast when we add to the story of the spirit, we end up feeling empowered because we have reclaimed our inner source of power. An example of our spirit’s original thought would be, I am created in the image of the Divine. If you find examples in your life that confirm this first thought and then you add your own story to ”I am created in the image of Divine”, you will then increase your sense of inner power. We have a choice whether we want to own and be apart of the ego’s story or our spirit’s story. Our power is found in this choice.  

In order to help us decide which story we will support as becoming our own, we need to learn how to discern the difference between the ego’s voice and our spirit’s voice. This will allow us to become conscious when we choose which source, the ego or the spirit, will get more of our energy. At first this can be confusing because we have always assumed that our thoughts are our own. What is really going on in our minds in a conversation between us and our ego, or us and our spirit.  When we are engaging in a conversation with our ego, the voice of our spirit gets less audible, and visa versa. Many of us are confused as to what the voice of our spirits sound like.Our spirit’s voice is calm, centered, clear, consistent, repetitive, and confident. The ego’s voice is insecure, competitive to the point of wanting to dominate, the ego doesn’t look beyond itself, it gets angry easily,  it is impatient, and it is intolerant. Once we start to recognize the unique voice of our own spirit, versus that of our ego’s, we can cultivate our relationship with our spirit by focusing on it, and  we can  honour its voice by listening to it and engaging in conversation with it.

A way to get more familiar with the voice of your spirit is to sit with yourself and just let your mind run through its thoughts. If the ego is producing thoughts, just ride them like waves but don’t engage with them. When we don’t engage with thoughts, they fall to the side, and new thoughts enter. If you feel like your spirit is behind a thought, starting asking your spirit questions, and have a conversation. I think that we tend to take a passive role in the relationship with our spirits but any relationship requires the involvement of two or more. We must take a much more active role in becoming one with our spirits. Start conversing and see what happens. You just might be surprised at what your spirit is trying to say!

Namaste

Accept everything about yourself–I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end–no apologies, no regrets.

Yesterday proved to be a very busy day and I really had to make a conscious effort at the end of the day to honour some time in silence. (Read the previous post about the three-day challenge!) It was nearing ten at night, and I was looking through my jeans to figure out which ones I wanted to keep and which ones were going to be given away. In the process of deciding, I tried on pretty much every pair of jeans I own. Almost all the jeans I tried on, and this is no word of a lie, were too tight. I was like, what the heck happened. I admit that lately I may have indulged in a few more treats than usual, but nowhere near enough that apparently caused all my jeans to be switched with smaller sizes!!!

Of course all this jean trying on happened right before I was going to take my time in silence. So after I had tried on my jeans, I sat down in my room to honour the time that I had promised myself. This time proved to be a time of clarification for me. In the past, if my jeans we noticable tighter, I would have instantly felt bad about myself and the treats I had obviously been enjoying. But honouring silence allowed me to reflect, and I actually didn’t feel necessarily bad about myself. I had the realization that my sense of self-worth is found at a much deeper level than what is viewed at the physical level. Therefore things can change, for the good or the bad, at the physical level but who I am in the core of my being will always remain the same and does not need to be affected by changes at the physical level. My power lies is the choice that I have whether or not I allow my inner sense of self-worth to be altered by external factors.

I can’t tell you how good it feels to realize that you are so much bigger than what society says you are. If I follow what society has laid out as the parameters that a woman must conform too to have any value is this world, my spirit would cry with despair for its innate power would never be fully utilized. I will no longer underestimate my power and I hope that you will not as well!

By the way, I went out today and bought a pair of jeans in a larger size, and I will wear those jeans with my head held high!

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

There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.

When we feel a sense of restlessness within ourselves, many times we need to go inwards to hear what our spirit’s whispers are trying to tell us. We can not hear the voice of the Divine if our minds and lives are too busy for silence. If we are constantly distracting ourselves, our spirit must compete with a lot stimulus in order to be heard. 

I have four children and my youngest son struggles to get his voice heard in our family. There are many times around the dinner table that at least three of my children are talking at once. The older two have learnt from experience that the louder their voices, the better their chances are of getting heard. My four old just can not compete with the older two’s combined volume, and more often than not his voice gets lost. I have to work harder to hear his voice in the chaos, and he finds not being heard very discouraging. I often will silence my other children, so my son can have his turn and be heard. This takes a conscious effort on my part, or else his voice would easily be lost amongst his siblings around our kitchen table. Our spirits are much like my son, trying to be heard beside more dominant voices in our lives. We need to make a conscious effort to silence the things around us, so our spirit’s voice can be heard more clearly amongst the excess “noise” around us. 

Many times we wonder why we do not feel connected to the Divine but the Divine is always holding out a hand. Our responsibility is to hold out ours. You can figuratively hold out your hand by taking time for rest and silence, honoring this time a sacred. At first it might feel awkward and unnatural, but like with any habit if it is done on a consistent basis, it becomes easier and one day it will seem almost automatic. What we are trying to do is to change the habit of distracting ourselves with too much stimulation, and replacing it with quite and peace. We owe ourselves and our spirits to do this on a daily basis.

Sometimes we may find silence intimidating because when we are quiet with ourselves, it requires a level of intimacy that many of are not used to . To know yourself intimately, you must be with yourself in silence. And this means sitting with every feeling that you have and every thought that you are thinking, and not fearing the outcomes of either. In all the schooling we get growing up, we are never taught the basics of how to have a relationship with ourselves. We are not taught how to process emotions, experiences, and trials and tribulations. I can only imagine how much more we would be connected to our spirits, and as a result how much more healthier our relationships would be, if only we were taught such valuable tools. 

I have already put out a challenge on the Inspirational for Women Facebook group, and I want to extend it here as well. The challenge is to honour a period of silence each day for three days. You can start with a shorter period of time to get use to it or if you have no problem with sitting with yourself in silence, challenge yourself to go even longer than you are used to. Push your limits. If you notice that you are starting to get uncomfortable, honour the silence for another five minutes. This will help you get past any uncomfortable feelings which may arise or get past a habit of distracting yourself with busyness. It may be hard at first to honour this silence, but soon you will enjoy it and even crave it.

Good luck and leave any comments if you want to let us know how it is going!

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