Paying Attention

"There is no separation between nature and you. You are to live here with a sense of the planet and you as a vital unit because, in effect, you are that vitality." - Gregge Tiffen [from The Language of a Mystic: Completion available from www.p-systemsinc.com]

What’s your first thought when you look at this picture of Luke and his friends, Mister and EllaBelle? What about their nature calls them to the attention they are paying to my friend on a recent hike in response to her speaking the word ‘treat’?

Although I witnessed the scene first hand from nearby, I didn’t see or sense the rapt attention that I see in the picture. This got me to thinking about what I pay attention to as well the degrees of that attention. The dogs were definitely paying attention to an outside source (i.e. person with treats!), but what is in their nature that prompts this? Is it simply the possibility that a tasty reward is at hand?

It’s no secret that I love nature. I hope that you do too! My love has deepened over the last year as I’ve paid more attention to the beauty that surrounds me. I notice not just the mountain and valley vistas that change with the light day to day, but also the land, the rocks, the trees immediately outside my door. Over the past several weeks, I’ve paid even closer attention to this immediate environment.

I’ve also listened to the land, asking where on the property would be the appropriate place to build a labyrinth. The land answered and this weekend, the layout was completed with sticks and stones cooperating to mark the path. (The attention required to complete the layout is a story for another day.)

Whether you choose to live in a city or in the woods as I do, nature is always present and asking for your attention. Perhaps she has a message. Perhaps she simply needs your acknowledgment and your love. After all you are her vitality. Nature needs you as much as you need and rely on her. And, at the end of the day she will have her way.

Question for the Week: What in nature is calling you to pay attention in a new way?

Adapting Is Our (Response)Ability

"In this planetary school where adaptability is one of the key teaching assignments, making adjustments is a constant demand." - Gregge Tiffen [from The Language of a Mystic: Cycles available from www.p-systemsinc.com]

Throughout this activity-filled month, I’ve had an awareness of how many life changes have come forth in this, the eighth month of the year. It seems that there is something in my life rhythms that calls forth endings and beginnings in August.

One of the biggest changes occurred 35 years ago, August 6, 1979, when my mother died. Two weeks later, my uncle, a fatherly presence for all the years since my own father’s death, died.

With these events, my life suddenly held different opportunities. Looking back, I see now that they presented the opportunity to adapt. How did I want life to be? What would holidays now look like? What changes were needed? What was possible?

Fast forward to August, 2013. Just one year ago the house that I rented (and loved!) for several years was sold, presenting the opportunity to take stock, discern my needs and desires, assess options, choose, adapt, move forward.

Earlier this month yet another new cycle began (this one fully initiated by me!) with the opening of Dragonfly House (website coming soon!!) and the arrival of the first guests to my bed and breakfast retreat home.  A new dance has begun!

I’m discovering that a life worth living is filled with change and opportunities to adapt. Struggle in life comes from trying to keep life and things the same after a change event has occurred.

With every change in life there is choice. Will I step out onto the floor and dance with this change, making the most of every step and crazy turn it may take? Or, will I sit on the sideline, arms crossed over my chest, and miss the moves, those opportunities right there well within my reach?

I choose the dance floor. What about you?

Question for the Week: What change in your life is calling you to the dance floor?

Friendship: A Path to Peace

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born." - Anais Nin

I love how Spirit (Life, the Universe, God or any name you wish to give the flow of energy moment to moment) works.   Ask. Expect. Receive. Simple, and not always easy.

Early this morning as I woke and picked up my journal, curious to discover what the focus of today’s post would be, I felt a pull between two seemingly opposite ideas: friendship and the violence occurring here in the US and abroad.

Although much of my week has been about friendship, I felt a deep need to speak to the violence that is front and center in the news. My heart said that I couldn’t ignore it. And, so I began to write about its roots, that through the ages we humans have built systems – governments and industries – that have fear at their core. The massive weapons industry relies on fear grounded in beliefs that one can destroy another who doesn’t have the force to strike first or defend. We fear death because we’ve lost our awareness that life is more than the body that our consciousness inhabits.

Where fear dwells there is little room for love. As I observe current events and the continued militarization of local law enforcement, I stretch my capacity to love and feel compassion for those who are so fearful that they believe taking another’s life will protect them. I seek to understand and feel love for those who hurt so much that they vilify others whose views do not match their own.

I imagine a world where peace and love prevail, and this morning’s quote, which landed in my ‘inbox’ compliments of HeartMath, brought me to see the connection that friendship is a path, a way to peace that violence can never create.

This week I am blessed with friends in abundance: visits from long-time friends [a 20+ year friendship that began at the first conference of coaches two years before the birth of the International Coach Federation], a shorter term friend [the amazing woman who fostered Cool Hand Luke out of the shelter and gave him the foundation for being the amazing canine companion that he is], and new friends with whom I have the honor of sharing the peace of Dragonfly House as they come to Crestone to study with their teachers.

These are easy friendships compared the relationships that are needed to forge peace. In my idealist heart and mind I see the beautiful possibility of befriending someone who is afraid. Of sending them love and compassion despite our different views of the world. I know that it will require ever more mindful choices of the words I speak and the choices that I make moment to moment, day to day, and beyond. May I be up to the challenge to contribute to peace in this way. What about you?

In the end I wasn’t required to choose between the two topics, but rather was gifted with a bridge that connected the two. Perhaps one path to peace is to be curious, open and seek bridges between seeming opposites and to allow what wants to emerge to present itself.

Seeds of Life

"Thoughts are the seeds of life." - Cindy Reinhardt

One year ago this week, I launched the The Zone blog. It seemed to come forth not from a single seed, but from many planted throughout life. Yet, perhaps somewhere inside me was a single seed that finally was ready to germinate.

When I penned that first blog, I promised an eclectic approach to life and success with a focus on reclaiming personal power and supporting a shift to creating more care, compassion, collaboration and community. I hope that I’ve fulfilled that as much for you as I have for me.

I said that I wanted to challenge our thinking (yours and mine!), poking around the edges of what’s possible, exploring how nature and ancient wisdom define and guide us to success. Only you know whether these weekly excursions have elicited that for you. For me, the discipline of this weekly post has sharpened my observation of nature and self, bringing forth a sense of personal satisfaction.

When I launched last August, I didn’t know that I’d soon be in the midst of moving. I had no (conscious) idea that the home I was offered as temporary housing by a friend would, like dog in a shelter looking for its ‘forever’ family, claim me as its steward. But somewhere, like the seeds that burst forth The Zone, different seeds were ready sprout in new ways.

Those seeds of home, quiet, nurture and nature brought forth this August’s launch of Dragonfly House Crestone. I welcomed my first guests to this place of peace last week. The next guests arrive later today. It seems that it is a part of my natural rhythm that seeds of change bring forth blooms in the form of new (ad)ventures in August. That’s a new awareness for me to reflect on as I look ahead.

Every seed has within it, the potential to develop fully into its full essence. The pine cone brings forth a beautiful tree. The pea pod, nutritious food; and marigold seeds, splashes of color and protection from tomato loving critters. These, like loving thoughts, deserve our care and nurturing.

Other seeds, like the tiny stickers that grab Luke’s fur to get a ride to fertile ground are like those thoughts that persist, yet don’t serve us at all. I think that I’m learning to be as meticulous with my thoughts as I am in combing Luke after each walk to remove those stickers, refusing to give them new, fertile ground to grow on next year.

Reflection for the Week: What thoughts do you need to comb from the fur of your consciousness?

Reflections on Nature and Remodeling

"The mind within does the real seeing, the real interpreting of what the eyes look upon. The eyes can truly be called ‘the windows of the soul’." - Ernest Holmes

I always thought that the bible verse about the eyes being windows of the soul meant that when you look into another’s eyes you can see their soul. Until reading a selection from The Science of Mind that included the above quote, I’d never considered the idea that how I see the world, more particularly the events that I manifest into my life, is a reflection of my soul. Duh, of course it is. And, yet this BFO (blinding flash of the obvious) deepens my awareness that I am always at choice about how/what I see.

In the earthen dam that was washed out on Sunday in a deluge of rain and hail, I can see a huge problem that I inherited when I bought the property and that someone else is to blame. Or, I can see an opportunity to commune with my land and the surrounding land as well as with others who know more about drainage than I to create the best course of action. Do I choose fear and anger? Or, do I choose faith and love?

If I truly believe that every event in my life is there for me and my learning and if I am aware of that belief, then most likely I will choose faith and love. Then I’ll throw in a dash of curiosity: what’s possible now?

Perhaps I would more closely reflect how nature deals with challenges, including those brought to her courtesy of we humans. Remember the western wood peewee nesting outside my front door a few weeks back? Last weekend, just before starting construction of a new deck right below her nest, I thought she’d abandoned it and there were no babies. I climbed up to remove the nest and to my amazement there were two small furry gray beings pulsing. I climbed down and ‘momma bird’ soon arrived to warm her babes. A few days later, two beaks appeared and momma began to feed them. Yesterday they were more active as construction in and around them continued. This morning, the nest is empty, the babies fledged, out of the nest to make their way in the world.

Observing momma and her nestlings living above the chaos of construction noise, people coming and going and hollering back and forth all day for a week, made me present to how I’m navigating the remodeling projects in my new home. My eyes are seeing beauty unfold in the new tile, fresh paint and little touch ups that I’m choosing to do. And, for the most part, my being has danced with the unexpected oversights in planning (mine and the contractor’s) or his (and my) idiosyncrasies.

Luke too has simply observed as his quiet home became a beehive of activity.

Thus, I’m not only experiencing the pleasure of the fresh, new look in my home and the joy of preparing her to receive and nurture guests, I am filled with joy and personal satisfaction about the process. What could be better that that?

Reflection for the Week: How would your life shift, if you knew that everything holds the potential to serve your learning and growth?

Mitigation With Love

"There are lots of things, including changing the kind of inner dialog, that can mitigate anxiety." - Scott Stossel

Mitigation is on my mind this week as I commissioned an awesome crew to help me mitigate the property surrounding my new home. I took on this project with a healthy respect for the potential that exists here for wildfires and, more importantly, with love for the land and the trees. I wanted to give them new life, something that removing dead branches does for a tree. I want to be a good steward of this land.

As I began thinking about this week’s post, I wondered ‘just what does mitigation have to do with life’?

Mitigation is defined as ‘lessening the force or intensity of something unpleasant’; ‘the act of making a condition or consequence less severe’; and ‘the process of becoming milder, gentler, less severe’ (thank you dictionary.com).

Early this morning, I noticed that unlike the 48 weeks prior to this one, I felt tense about what to write. I tossed in a dash of ‘should’ (really Cindy, you should start thinking about this earlier). The trust I feel each week about the message revealing itself waivered. Breathe.

Then, as it always does, the message began to come clear: ‘mitigate the pressure on yourself’. Ahhhh, yes, that. First step: the morning walk. This morning the air is clean, crisp, and cool after thunderstorms dropped blessed rain. Breathe that in. Notice how happy the earth feels under my feet, soft with the new moisture. Smell the freshness. Be grateful. Give thanks. Nature has her ways of mitigating tension and pressure. When we allow her to she shows us the way.

Thoughts and ideas began to flow. The process of becoming ‘milder, gentler, or less severe’, personal mitigation starts within. At its best, love is the foundation.

Like the fire mitigation project I completed this week, thoughts anchored in love not fear make life flow with ease. In choosing loving thoughts, I’m better able to walk through life with grace. Love, patience, gratitude, compassion are just a few of the seeds I can use to mitigate from the inside out.

Unlike the fire mitigation project, personal mitigation is an ongoing process. It requires my presence and awareness to notice when dead branches show up as thoughts that don’t serve me. For only with that awareness can I make the choice to replace fear with love, impatience with patience, loathing with compassion, and ungratefulness with deep reverence and gratitude.

Reflection for the Week: Look deep inside to discover any thoughts that need to be mitigated. Insert love to replace each and every one.

Deeply Touched

"All of love, happiness, and freedom are available in the ocean of consciousness." - Gregge Tiffen

This morning, the fourth anniversary of the death of a beloved dog, Ellie, I’m feeling deeply touched by the beauty and flow of life.

I’m so blessed to live in a place of quiet, natural beauty. These mountains and trees and wildlife have opened me to a deeper, more consistent awareness of the love, happiness and freedom that are available to us all when we allow ourselves to receive their bounty. I’ve come to notice and appreciate the so-called small things in life: the ripening of the first tomato, a nesting western wood peewee outside my front door, the sun breaking over the Sangres bringing light to the day, or an unusual action by Cool Hand Luke.

When something touches me these days it does so more deeply,  awakening a curiosity that wonders 'just what in me is touched by this?' This morning, checking Facebook to see what new pictures of precious Annie-Kay might have been posted (none yet today, darn), I found that I’d been tagged in a post “In The Final Minutes of His Life, Calvin Has One Last Talk with Hobbes”. I can’t type the title without getting teary-eyed. I encourage you to read it here: http://www.tickld.com/x/this-guy-just-changed-the-way-we-seecalvin-and-hobbes

I’ve been a fan of the feisty Calvin and his sidekick, Hobbes, for as long as I can remember. The creativity, inventiveness, and imagination of Calvin, coupled with his devil may care approach to life and love of his friend hooked me into many hours of laughs, smiles and pleasurable reading. This poignant post and Calvin’s last act of love (with a touch of his trademark mischievousness) touched my soul in a way that I don’t have words to share.

It speaks a truth that though the body dies, life and our great next adventure continues. But I sense that it touched something else in me. Something that isn’t quite yet awake. I’m curious to explore and discover just what that is.

And, what about Luke’s unusual action that I mentioned earlier? Two nights ago as I was reading in bed with him snoozing nearby, Luke awoke, jumped off the bed and headed to a corner of the room that’s not particularly dog friendly. As he was coming back, I noticed that he dropped something from his mouth before hopping back up on the bed. What was that something? My very own Hobbes, a stuffed tiger that Luke learned early on is not his toy. He’s honored that training for years, and it was clear that he didn’t put it in his mouth to play. Looking back, it seems he was reminding me of Hobbes in some gentle way and preparing me to receive the message.

Invitation for the Week: Notice what touches you deeply this week. Be grateful for your awareness.

Summertime in the Cycle

"Be aware of yourself. If you are not doing what you want to do and where you want to do it, you are out of your cycle." - Gregge Tiffen, Impatience Fishes and Empty Pond

In two days we reach the midway point in the earth’s annual cycle. We’ve come a long way from the shortest day of light, Winter Solstice, to the longest, the Summer Solstice. In those six short (or long, depending on your perspective) months dark has given way to light. Stillness and quiet stepped aside and invited us to dance and engage more fully in life outside of us. The light, vibrant, active energy of summertime that lay dormant under a blanket of snow has come alive yet again.

Flora offer a wonderful illustration of the contrast between the seasons and this coming of the time of growth and vitality. As winter approaches trees drop their leaves and turn inward. In spring, new leaves appear. And, now dressed fully in their new green, trees provide shade. They bear fruit for our nourishment and eating pleasure and for their own procreation. Flowers, dormant in winter, have their own cycles that bring them out into the light to show their colors, like this cactus on our morning walk.

Elsewhere in nature, streams frozen in winter, begin to trickle in spring and now flow fully in summer’s warmth. And we, though we have lost so much of our connection with the nature’s cycles, somehow naturally follow this pattern.

This year especially I notice that I am. Ideas and projects given quiet, thoughtful attention in winter have come to life. In the cold, dark of winter they were but seeds of possibility, dreams, ideas. Like all seeds though they contain the full potential of what they can be and with the light and warmth of summer, they are bursting forth.

Some days they seem to carry me rather than me having to move them along. Those are the days of magic, flow and synchronicity. When I look back on them, they are the days when I listened and followed whatever my internal compass seemed to say.

Nature’s cycles remind me that everything has its divine right time. The more deeply I’m aware of and in touch with those cycles, the more patient I am with cycles outside of me. My gratitude for the tomatoes on the vine feeds my patience, knowing that one day I’ll taste the wonder of that gift. I’m more accepting and patient when I’m in tune with my own rhythms. I hear those inner nudgings to take action ‘now’ as well as those that suggest I wait, allow things to unfold in their time.

That’s the dance in which the experiments of life and experience of curiosity become an increased capacity to adjust and to adapt without losing who I am. In the longer light, warmth, and outward flow of summer with all of its activity, as I reach out in many directions, let me not forget my own rhythms and cycles in this larger dance that life presents.

REFLECTION FOR THE WEEK: Are you doing what you want, when and where you want?

Dare To Be Loco

"Choose to be a locomotive. The cars will follow." - Gregge Tiffen

As I began to write about this idea of being the locomotive in your life, the two words ‘loco’ and ‘motive’ jumped out and me and as often happens in this Thursday morning writing space, the direction shifted … a least just a little bit. For me, that’s part of the joy of this commitment to write and share each week. And, that commitment is part of being the locomotive in my life, no matter how others respond.

Some days I discover that takes courage. Someone makes a comment that I take for a moment as a criticism. As long as that criticism is in play in my decisions, I’ve become the car, allowing someone else’s opinion to be the locomotive. Awareness first, then the courage to choose differently, put me back as the leader in my life.

It takes courage as well to buck the world’s ways, many of which seemed designed to keep us as box cars or tankers in the train of life, following what they would have us do. Parents, family, friends, schools, teachers, and more are well intentioned in what they offer, but they can’t know us and how we operate. They can’t know what is true for us, just as we can’t know them or any other. [Have I mentioned how I’m learning that living my life is a full time job (especially when I choose to be the locomotive!)? That, if you will, is a story for another day.]

I’ve long thought that many people ‘diagnosed’ as ‘crazy’ in some form need less pharmaceutical drugs and more understanding and space to be who they are.   In my heart I believe they are simply on a different learning trajectory than the systems – religious, educational, business, government – are designed to support. My heart sometimes aches for them and for what we lose in the approaches that we take toward those who don’t conform.

For me, being the locomotive in my life looks like living life as a learning laboratory. My motive is found in the question ‘what can I learn today?’ Some days it may be learning from a tree or a rock on our daily walking paths, or perhaps the soothing sound of a mountain stream has a message. This week I’m being curious about how to stay in my own rhythm and timing as I engage in the process of buying a home. And, at the same time, a small part of me wonders if that decision isn’t itself perhaps a bit ‘loco’.

Perhaps it may not “make sense” by all of the measures of the world. But, in my heart and my being, I deeply know it’s my next big step in life. Operating from that place, I look forward to discovering what cars line up to follow on my track.

Question for the Week: Where might you dare to experiment in the joy of being the locomotive in your life?

Thoughts are The Seeds of Life

"With every thought, whether conscious or not, I create the quality of my life." - Cindy Reinhardt

We humans are such creative and powerful beings. Sometimes, we’re a bit silly too. Silly as in we have moments (hours, days, or longer) when we lose sight of just how powerful we are. Our thoughts are the foundation of that power.

When we forget, it seems as if we hand over our power to another person or an event. And, that they or it, not we, are creating the quality in our life. Who among us has not had the experience of thinking ‘if they (or it) would just change, I would be happy’? Those experiences have the possibility of waking us up and pointing to thoughts (conscious and not), beliefs, and stories that it may be time to shed.

I had just such an experience over the last week when at a tense moment in conversation some unconscious thought took over. I lost my awareness in the moment and with it my power to choose my path, to choose love over some (probably insignificant) fear. It wasn’t pretty.

These are the events in life that give me the opportunity to root out the weeds that pop up in the garden of my thoughts. I like to do so with care, rather than pulling and tossing blindly. Some weeds have hidden, unknown value. Upon reflection, they can be managed differently rather being destroyed. They can contribute to rather than detract from life’s quality.

My favorite weeding tools are contemplation, letting go, and forgiveness. Then, I nurture the garden of my remaining thoughts with gratitude, awareness, and practice.

As I walk through my own life’s events and, as a coach, have the privilege of hearing stories of the events in my client’s lives, I become ever more deeply present to just how powerful our thoughts are. With our thoughts we create joy. With our thoughts we create misery. We choose.

When we spill milk, we clean it up. We choose what tools to use and we choose whether to cry over the spill or to grow from it. With our thoughts we create the quality of our life from one moment to the next and beyond.

Experiment for the Week: Take time to notice your thoughts this week, especially in events that bring tension. What thoughts need weeding? What thoughts need TLC?