Nurturing Compassion

A Road Less Travelled - No Speedsters and Dust Here

Be kind and forgiving to everything and everyone, including yourself, at all times without exception. Dr. David R. Hawkins (Power vs. Force)

One morning earlier this week as I sat by a warming fire in the pre-dawn quiet, a single word eased into my awareness:  compassion.

Wondering if Muse was aiming for an early start on the blog, I was curious that nothing framed the word. No question. No thought about it. No instruction or idea that I ‘should’ feel compassion for someone or something. Simply the word, compassion.

As I sat with the word for a bit, I began to wonder how compassion feels in the body. Putting attention on my heart, I began to imagine each breath coming from my heart. I frequently practice this heart coherence breathing, summoning feelings of gratitude, appreciation, care, each of which generate their own sense of peace, calm, and inner warmth.

Mind (‘not to be confused with me’, chimes in Muse) said ‘surely compassion should feel like these.’ But no feeling came. Nothing good or bad. Just emptiness, an opening for discovery.

On our morning walk a short while later, I was (‘yet again!’ chimes in Muse once more) triggered by someone speeding along the dirt road, kicking up clouds of dust. Guiding Zadie Byrd and myself off the road, I released my automatic outburst – a ‘what’s your rush? snarl’, then admonished myself for not being more patient. Done with that, we continued our walk, my attention on Zadie Byrd and the morning’s exquisite autumn beauty.

But awareness of my habitual reaction didn’t fade as such incidents usually do. Perhaps ‘compassion’ had something to say… (‘Ya think?’ says Muse whose humor is in high gear today.)

‘Just what is compassion?’, I wondered settling in to explore. Merriam-Webster tells me that compassion is sympathetic consciousness (awareness) of others’ distress with a desire to alleviate it (“Compassion.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compassion.).

Exploring further I learned that compassion is a 14th century word that shares some of its etymology with the word ‘patient’. Hmmm…patience as an element of compassion. ‘Now we’re getting to it,’ Muse suggests: a path to nurturing compassion, to inviting her to live more fully in and express through me.

Compassion beyond the shared sense of concern for a friend’s health or wellbeing. Compassion beyond the care that comes forth when someone close is grieving a loss. Compassion beyond caring for those in the path of war, violence, poverty, and social injustice. These are the places we are likely to feel compassion even when we don’t see the ‘how’ of alleviating the distress we witness. Compassion that flows so naturally that perhaps I take it for granted, assuming that I truly know enough to care.

As I write this, I feel the superficiality that may sometimes rest in my so-called compassion. I’m challenged to look beyond, to explore compassion (or its absence) in those domains where I find myself annoyed, impatient. Compassion for those with whom I disagree. How can compassion coexist with our differences? How does judgement get in the way of true compassion?

For isn’t this the ultimate nature of Oneness, of living in the nonduality that is the true nature of our Being? Of the Universe? And wouldn’t living in and from THAT reality generate the kind of world we would choose to live in?

Like gratitude and other higher states of being, compassion strengthens from nurturing over time with the practice of principles such as this suggested by Dr. David R. Hawkins in his seminal book Power vs. Force:

Be kind and forgiving to everything and everyone, including yourself, at all times without exception.

Thinking back to the speeding motorist and other ‘annoyances’, I’m reminded of these words from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama:

A truly compassionate attitude toward others does not change even if they behave negatively or hurt you.

As I prepare for an afternoon walk, I’m guessing that I’ll have the opportunity to practice calling forth a truly compassionate attitude.

Webs of Life in the Woods Out Back

BEING: The Work Within

Fall Beauty in the Neighborhood

Our greatest contributions to life are not found in what we do, but rather in who and how we BE in the walk of our doing.

I feel winter slowing creeping in here in the Sangres. Cooler temperatures brought the turning of leaves, some now beginning to let go and make their way to the ground in gentle autumn breezes. The season’s first freezing temperature was felt this week. The abundant harvests of summer fruits and vegetables shifts to the harvests of fall: apples, potatoes, winter squash, the makings of warm, nourishing soups.

Although I begin to feel the pull within to the slow, quiet, inward time that winter brings, there are tasks to complete before winter weather settles in. She’s only flirting with us now, gently reminding me that it is time for the baskets of geraniums to be tended and prepared to come inside and for the kindling box to be filled. There are shutters to paint and reinstall and winter supplies to be purchased and stored. Yes, there are tasks to do.

Sidelined from those tasks for several days last week, my energy was redirected to healing a shoulder that called for my attention using the language of pain. As I engaged in the process my first actions were directed toward relief, then to correcting whatever was out of alignment and opening the flow of any blocked energy.

I felt deep gratitude for the Chinese herbs I have on hand and for the local healing professionals who worked me into their schedules. As the pain eased energy was freed up to engage curiosity. I’d noticed a pattern – same pain, same time last year. Hmm…what might I need to see, to explore, to understand? In the questioning I was opened to an exploration of old ancestral habits and patterns of the women in my lineage – mother, grandmothers, great grands, and beyond. The insights brought some understanding and a desire to more deeply explore. That will be part of my winter’s ‘work’.

Right on time the information found its way to me and Muse to support the process. Cycles cycle in just that way when I am open, observant, curious, and allow them to emerge. I was reminded yet again of the importance of tending to who and how I BE in the process of doing whatever is before me. Muse suggests that the choices of Being are ultimately far more important that what we choose to do.

The work of Being is an inside job that reflects wide and deep into the world. I was reminded of this by the words I read last night shortly before making my way to dreamtime, words from a book that I pulled off the shelf as the result of a conversation earlier this week. Curiosity, synchronicity, allowing, cycles, life.

The outer work can never be small

if the inner work is great.

And the outer work can never be great

if the inner work is small.

Meister Eckhart 

Our world – humanity and our precious planet home – need the best of our Being now. We need to not simply understand, but to know and live the interconnectedness, the Oneness of all that is. I’ll be tuning in to several sessions of Humanity’s Team’s 2022 Global Oneness Summit, Birthing a New World. Because indeed we are birthing a new world and her nature will be determined by who we BE. https://www.humanitysteam.org/Global-Oneness-Summit

And Beauty in the Mountains

Imagining ...

The Portal

For the awakened imagination there is no such thing as inner poverty. John O’Donohue (essay The Celtic Imagination: Experience and the ‘Web of Betweenness’ in Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

I returned to reading John O’Donohue’s brilliant, moving words this week, simply picking up the book and thumbing pages until sensing I was where I needed to be. I’d come to the reading time with no particular intention nor with a question in search of an answer. I came for nourishment, as his words never fail to feed this soul.

The essay I landed on and quoted above ends with this:

As in the rainforest, a dazzling diversity of life-forms complement and sustain each other; there is secret oxygen with which we unknowingly sustain one another. True community is not produced; it is invoked and awakened. True community is an ideal where the full identities of awakened and realized individuals challenge and complement each other. In this sense both individuality and originality enrich self and others.

Imagine we humans are that diverse and complementary rainforest. For a moment I think of the divisiveness I observe here in the place where I live as a micro to the countless conflicts beyond this sacred place.

Then O’Donohue’s words spark memory of a long held ideal, vision, belief that when we each discover and follow the path of our purpose, our passion, our gifts, we will experience healing of all that divides us. We will harmonize with one another naturally never by force as well as with all life and our beloved planet home, Gaia.

I reflect on the extent to which our current world falls far short of this imagined ideal and how, sadly, our systems are designed to create something far different than true community. Hence ‘community’ is not invoked or awakened in much of daily life. Nor is our true nature, yours and mine, called forth into expression. Rather our true selves and true community lie in wait as potentials that we’ll attend to ‘someday’. Someday when we have time. Someday when we can ‘afford’ it. Someday when …

Perhaps that is why we witness and experience so many systems failing. Perhaps those systems that have pitted us against one another in oh so many ways are calling forth our ‘someday’ in this moment, suggesting that for humanity survive, ‘someday’ is now. Perhaps fear and ‘winning’ at any cost, the highest ‘price’ being the peace of the soul from which our true essence can arise – individually and collectively – have run their course.

Our world – humanity and the planet - need our truest selves to attend them. Amidst the world’s chaos and breakdowns how might we put more attention on invoking our own true essence, that ‘secret oxygen’ with which we sustain not only one another, but first, ourselves for the sake of our wholeness?

The answer of course comes from deep within and we must first be willing to put our toes in the water, then dive into the deep well. While our journeys are unique and individual to each of us, they hold the potential for invoking true community in our world: world as diverse and complementary as the rainforest. Self as an integral part of that world. Self and world as life generating, life enhancing. Self and world as whole. The Heaven of our dreams manifest on Gaia.

Imagine …

Raven ‘Cawing’ Forth Magic in the Woods

Gratitude & Curiosity - The Dynamic Duo

Starry Night (courtesy of Unsplash)

Coupling curiosity and gratitude offers an antidote the fear, angst, and confusion of our world. The energy of the two together leaves little room for such distractions. Indeed, it paves the way for love.

I woke early this morn with a grateful heart. Feeling a deep sense of gratitude in my whole being.  Blissful peace. While I’ve long practiced breathing gratitude in and out, the deeper sense I experienced this day is one I want to cultivate further, to live in and with as I walk this earth.

I step outside long before dawn to be with the dark sky, the stars, the planets, galaxies beyond our own. Mars high in the sky directly overhead. The little dipper nearby. Awestruck by the peace and beauty. The quiet. Stillness. Gratitude more deeply anchored.

Gently a nudge from Muse stirs something inside. I think of curiosity, like gratitude, a ‘friendship’ that I’ve cultivated over the years.

Being reminded of the important role each play in my life, it occurs to me in a blinding flash of the obvious, that together the two make a powerful pair. Thanks to Muse, I am from time to time an ‘oracle of the obvious’.

I sense that coupling curiosity and gratitude offers an antidote to the fear, angst, and confusion in our world – individually and collectively. The energy of the two together leaves little room for such distractions. Indeed, it paves the way for love.

For a moment I wonder ‘what becomes possible in my world when I walk in both gratitude and curiosity rather than with one or the other’? In the next I recognize that I experienced just that yesterday while I was on the ground gathering pine nuts under a pinyon tree near the house.

While being deeply grateful for the abundance, I was likewise aware that I wasn’t in sync with the rhythm of the trees, particularly when the nuts would fall. I’d been placing sheets in areas where I thought nuts were ready to drop. Thinking that a particular tree was ‘done’, I’d moved the sheets to another tree a couple days before.

To my surprise the tree that I thought was complete had a dropped an abundance of nuts during the night.

“That’s what you get for thinking,” Muse chimes in with a chuckle. “Listen to the trees!”

As I sat beneath the tree, I expressed my gratitude. And I asked for guidance. How might I listen and hear your rhythm? As if in response I wondered about the indigenous peoples whose land I occupy. How did they harvest, prepare, use this bounty? How did they relate to this tree? To these woods? How might I cultivate their reverence and care for Mother Earth more deeply in me?

Gratitude it seemed had paved a path to curiosity. The sense of feeling both was palpable and reminded me of a community meeting that I attended recently where neither gratitude nor curiosity seemed to be present. Rather than being curious about what isn’t yet known, many people were demanding answers. There was little, if any, gratitude for the work that had gone into organizing and preparing for the meeting. It was a bit chaotic to the point that I too became a tad annoyed. Yet I remained grateful for the team’s efforts. I wondered ‘where has curiosity gone?’. How can we become more curious about possibilities rather than leaping to opposition grounded in fear?

Beyond my community and its challenges, I wonder the same for our world. How might we evoke gratitude and curiosity into our public conversations? For surely this dynamic duo in partnership with one another are powerful antidotes to the fear and anger so present in our culture today.

Will you join me in sprinkling more seeds of gratitude and curiosity in your conversations and your observations of our world? Of your world? Let’s pave this world with love!

A Developing Cone - Three Months Before Maturity

A World of Peace. A World of Gratitude. A World of Harmony.

Grateful for the Peace and Harmony of Mountain Mornings

It’s up to us to create the more beautiful world we want to live in.

The today is the International Day of Peace established in 1981 by the United Nations General Assembly. Today is also World Gratitude Day, an idea birthed at a Thanksgiving Day dinner in the meditation room of the United Nations building (yes, there is a meditation room in the place where world leaders and representatives gather) by Spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy suggesting that there be a day of thanks the whole world could celebrate together. And today is the eve of the Autumnal Equinox.

A trifecta of opportunity to be grateful and express our gratitude, to create peace within and be that peace as we walk in the world, and to consider what this day of balance when light and dark are equal holds as summer fades and autumn steps forth. A day to consider that it is ‘we’, individually and collectively, who are creating the future and to reflect upon our vision for that more beautiful world.

It’s cloudy here as I wake before dawn, the waning crescent moon visible for a moment as clouds move about. Fall is in the air. Crisp mornings. The first hint of changing leaves a appears high in the mountain aspen groves, the promise of that beauty soon to behold and a signal to begin in earnest preparing for winter.

Muse smiles, sensing my urge to ‘get going’, a smile that gently reminds me of how I want to walk this labyrinth of life: at peace in a world of peace, with awareness and expression of a grateful heart, in harmony with all of life.

I hold this not as a goal to achieve, but as a contribution to, as Charles Eisenstein says, “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

And so, I’m drawn to acknowledge and share days and events such as this that can grow to become wholly days for all of humanity. Days for recognition and for reset. Acknowledging the potentiality in each of us for peace, gratitude, harmony. Adjusting course to align with that potentiality. Each in our way for there is no ‘one size fits all’ formal that so many desperately try to find or create. Everyone has their story; we are all different, we are all the same.

As I go about the tasks of this day, I do so with awareness that days like this offer up the opportunity to heal separation and become whole, indeed, to live into the wholeness that is the truth of this world and the world beyond. Having experience the power of gratitude up close and personal over many years as a part of my personal practices, I’ll be watching the world premiere of Louie Schwartzberg’s new film Gratitude Revealed with a grateful heart and vision of all that IS possible in our world.

How will celebrate the wholly holiness of this day?

And Abundant Pine Nuts to Harvest

From Conflict Arises Beauty: Everything is Music

Sunflowers, Sun, Trees, Sky - Beauty Abounds in the Woods Out Back

The mystery of music is its uncanny ability to coax harmony out of contradiction and chaos. Often the beauty of great music is a beauty born from the rasp of chaos. The confidence of creativity knows that deep conflict often yields the most interesting harmony and order. John O’Donohue (Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

We have fallen into the place where everything is music. Rumi

As I read O’Donohue’s essay on music one recent morning I felt a gentle nudge, a Muse reminder of the beauty in life that can arise from conflict. O’Donohue’s words typically carry me and open possibilities far beyond his topic. No exception to that found in these words.

I thought of conflicts past when I was less conscious than (hopefully) I am today and felt gratitude for the beauty in my life that has risen like a phoenix from ashes of the past or any other such mythical tale. I see threads of beauty throughout the journey in the choices, effort, angst, allowing, letting go, holding on. You know, life.

I reflect that although I didn’t consciously set out to create this sacred sanctuary in the woods of the Rocky Mountains, step by step the Dragonfly House emerged from a conflict that has roots in the events of September 11, 2001. Five years passed before I moved to Colorado and another seven before I landed in this spot. Twenty plus years (perhaps I’m more patient than I thought) and still evolving at its pace through ‘chaos and contradiction’, confusion, uncertainty, even fear. Fueled along the way by Nature, beauty, care, love, joy, friends, beloved canines, to name a few.

This perspective offers me context for a current conflict that has me engaged and curious (after going through a brief stage of rage and furious). Navigating what has become a challenging working relationship, I’m in the question of how to participate in a way that creates beauty. Beauty in the collaborative relationship as well as in the fruits of that labor. What music wants to rise from what is currently ‘raspy chaos’? How do I conduct myself to bring beauty into both?

Beyond the human defined bounds of the dot on the planet that I’m blessed to occupy, what beauty wants to rise in humanity? In Nature? What if we would hold greater intention to create music and beauty in all of life? What pivots and new scaffolding would call such beautiful music forward in us, for us and for Mother Earth?

Muse smiles at my leap from me to we, acknowledging my care for our world while gently guiding me back to the choices before me to make and the actions I need to take right here in this micro-climate that is home. In them is my power to create beauty here that extends to the world beyond. Music indeed.

Writing complete as day began to dawn, I closed my journal and looked out into the woods, discovering a large black bear ambling through the landscape 50 feet or so from the house. When it ambled out of sight, curiosity led me to read up on the spiritual meaning of bear: Awakening the Power of the Unconscious. Feel free to amble through any time Bear …  Did someone say ‘music’?

Bear in the Woods

For Your Health, Pivot to Self-trust

About Ready to Burst into Bloom

Distrust of the body damages the core of us. Stephen Harrod Buhner in Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm

Sometimes when I’m reading, a few words or a sentence or two will fly off the page and land in that inside place that knows my truth. I experience resonance, sometimes a confirmation, sometimes a sense of ‘aha …’. For sure, the words capture my attention. And Muse generally chimes in that ‘this’ may be a topic for a future musing.

Such was the case yesterday when I read Buhner’s simple truth about the importance of trusting the body. The short sentence was in a sea of scientific, technical language about the role (and importance!) of serotonin in our bodies and in all of Nature. Muse suggests I assure you that we aren’t about to ‘go scientific’. We aren’t! Honestly, I’m amazed that I’ve slogged through 200 pages (so far) of science, but the ongoing journey to deepen my connection to and communication with Nature keeps me engaged, curious, and turning the pages. Unlike the science classes of my college days, the final grade is reflected in my satisfaction with life. No pressure there!]

Take a moment to dance with Buhner’s words: Distrust of the body damages the core of us.

If we don’t trust the body, we damage our very being, our core. Just as certain vitamins support the immune system, trust supports this vehicle we inhabit.

This idea landed deep, evoking heart-felt gratitude as I recognized that I listen to this physical body. I listen because I’ve learned to trust what it knows, having built that trust over years of listening, experimenting, experiencing, adjusting, and generally sustaining pretty darn good health.

Muse seems to be speaking on behalf of body, reminding me that I don’t always honor what I hear the body say. Yep. Truth! Sometimes the body says ‘rest!’. I ignore and push through. Or a craving for chocolate may override body’s warning to avoid.

Listening to this vehicle isn’t a solo journey. I seek out tools and professionals to give more voice to what my body is saying. They help with interpretation. I take and use what seems aligned with the body’s needs, letting go of that which doesn’t resonate.

For the most part allopathic medicine doesn’t resonate with this body. Chinese medicine, in particular acupuncture and Chinese herbs, does. A daily mug of Chinese herbal formula created by my Oriental Medicine Doctor after she reads my pulses and listens to what I share is one of the most nourishing practices of my day. As I reflect on how it is that I have such trust in my body, this experience rises to top.

I’m grateful to Buhner for pointing to trusting one’s body as an important element in creating, sustaining, and maintaining health. And, for opening the door to reflect on that trust. I notice that the awareness and exploration alone seem to deepen the trust I feel.

What about you? Do you listen to this vehicle that you move about life in? Do you heed its messages? Do you trust?

Spinx Moth (Hummingbird Moth) Enjoys the Blooms (thanks to my friend S.T. for catching this beauty!)

Living Into Sovereignty

Art in the Afternoon Sky

There’s a sense of sovereignty that comes from life on a mountain. Tara Westover

Muse woke me before dawn this morning with this gentle nudging: Sometimes one must get in a box to know just how that box doesn’t fit. For only when one knows the details of how something doesn’t fit can one begin to design and create what does.

Hmmm … I knew almost instantly what Muse was referring to: a box of the legal/medical system I’ve recently experienced.

I’m in the process of attending to some life decisions that I need make, updating wishes and instructions for when my time in this vehicle is complete. For a while I’ve been ‘trying on’ (actually, trying to make fit) the language presented as choices by the legal and medical systems (no, I’m not about to hop on my soapbox about that, so stay with me).

None of their choices felt ‘just right’, so I chose the ones that seemed to fit the best, settling for less than the perfect fit I desired. I did so because I wanted to be done AND because I didn’t see any other possibilities. I was in the system’s box, compromising my sovereignty and my wishes to fit so that I could check the ‘completed’ box on my ‘to do’ list.

Somehow it didn’t occur to my inner rebel to look outside that box for other possibilities.

That prompting came in a conversation with a trusted friend and advisor who with deep conviction challenged me to, “write your own words!”. Gulp. Say what? I can do that?

I was at once embarrassed (Why didn’t I think of that? How could I allow myself to get so trapped in the system’s box?). And I was relieved. With her words, the possibility of ‘having my cake and eating it too’ opened.

I could execute the ‘close but not a perfect fit’ documents as written, thus relieving the pressure that what I had in place didn’t reflect my wishes at all.

And I could declare that executing these documents doesn’t close the door to creating that ‘just right’ fit. I can take time to explore, co-create, and discover how to implement language that’s ‘just right’: language that fits my understanding and beliefs about life and (so-called) end of life, as well as my desires for comfort as I exit this physical body. Then I can work with my attorney to add whatever legalese is necessary.

In choosing to live more fully into my sovereignty, I feel the fresh air of empowerment and freedom. This is how life is intended to be but doing so is not easy in a world that prefers we choose from its boxes, boxes designed not to honor our free will and sovereignty as universal beings, but to control. I’m excited to explore and discover in what other life domains I may have boxed myself in, not remembering that I am the co-creator of this life.

Muse gives a nod and posits a query about the collective: Is it any wonder that there is such anger and angst in your world? No matter how conscious one is, this conflict is ever present in all. It seems that the more conscious we are of the conflicts and constraints imposed by our systems the more at choice and sovereign we can be. Perhaps as we raise our awareness, we’ll be better able to build sustainable, sovereign community systems. And that, suggests Muse is a story for another day.

Cheerful Morning

Calling Forth the Beauty in All of Life

Rainbow Over the Stupa

Only if there is beauty in us can we recognize beauty elsewhere: beauty knows beauty. In this way beauty can be a mirror that manifests our own beauty. … To achieve a glimpse of inner beauty strengthens our sense of dignity and grace. John O’Donohue (Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

On our walk yesterday afternoon, shortly after stopping briefly to help a neighbor, something caught my eye as I looked at these amazing mountains: a faint band of red, a rainbow beginning to form.

I watched as the other bands of color slowly became visible – yellow, green, blue, purple. Beauty unfolding on the stage before me, the sacred Sangre de Cristo Mountains a splendid backdrop. Continuing to watch, colors brightened, faded, brightened again through several cycles as rain moved south. Zadie Byrd patiently sniffed the territory in no rush to move on from the beauty her olfactory system was discovering.

As the rainbow faded, we walked on. With the mountains behind us the vast San Luis Valley now offered its own visual feast. When we rounded the corner toward home, the mountains were once more ahead. Taking in the sacred landscape, I discovered that the rainbow had brightened once again and, from our vantage point, was hanging over the largest of several local Buddhist stupas. Another dose of stunning beauty.

Now, as I write before dawn, the tingle of rainbow’s beauty returns. Or, perhaps, it lingers. I’m reminded of this O’Donohue wisdom which seems to mirror my experience:

The experience of beauty has for the most part a particular force. It envelopes and overcomes us. Yet there are times when beauty reveals itself slowly. There are times when beauty is shy and hesitates until it can trust the worthiness of the beholder.

The visual beauty of the rainbow eventually faded but the imprint of its beauty on this heart lives on, a gentle reminder that beauty is first and always an inside job. Beauty is always present to the heart that beholds her.

I gently close my journal feeling that Muse and I are complete. I notice that beauty has been our focus of late and am curious about Muse guiding me here. No,’ nudges Muse, ‘we aren’t quite done yet.’

Questions emerge: How might we call forth the shy beauty hidden in the so-called problems of our world? Of the bumps and bruises in our individual roads of life? How might we demonstrate our worthiness so that beauty will be revealed? How might I behold that beauty?

My questions hang like the crescent moon over these mountains as dawn breaks.

I think of how slowly and deliberately Nature revealed hidden aspects of her beauty during the Covid pause two years ago. Wildlife returning. Skies clearing. Clean waters flowing. What was our worthiness to witness that? How could we allow it slip away in our quest to return to ‘normal’?

My attention turns to a contentious issue here in my community. How can I call forth the beauty that is surely hidden in the divisiveness? How can I demonstrate my worthiness so that any shy beauty can be revealed?

With a gentle nod, Muse seems to say, ‘Simply stop, look, listen, and love. Know that beauty IS there in each and every player.’

Indeed, beauty IS there. And so it is with all the world’s seeming darkness as well as the dim patches in our own lives. Gentle rays of light penetrate deep to point the way when we stop, look, love, and listen for beauty and light of wisdom within.

Now, about that mouse that visited the kitchen overnight … surely there is beauty waiting to be revealed.

Morning Moon Over the Sangres

Reminiscing As Year 10 Begins

Morning Clouds Bring Beauty & the Possibility of Blessed Rain

Speak what you think today in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.  Ralph Waldo Emerson

So began The Success Zone 15 August 2013. I described my intention for weekly posts as “an eclectic place for your personal success!”. I don’t recall precisely what prompted me to use these particular words from Emerson, but I do know that they hold true for me today: what I think (feel, sense, know, etc.) and say today may not be what I think (feel, sense, know, etc.) and say tomorrow.

For indeed we change as does the world we navigate, those humans with whom we share our planet home, Gaia herself, and the cosmos in its entirety. Moment to moment. Day to day. Year to year. Lifetime to lifetime.

When I started the weekly blog, I was steeped in the growing profession of coaching, (re)building a coaching business and finding/creating my place, my purpose, my role(s) in life. Today, no longer in the business of coaching, I aim to bring the best of my coaching presence and skills into life and (with support from Muse) to these weekly musings. Today I recognize and accept more deeply that finding/creating place, purpose, role(s) in life is a journey, not a goal or a destination and that success is a matter of satisfaction, contribution, and fulfillment more than of money or acquiring more ‘stuff’.

Place, purpose, role(s) pivot with new circumstances, new knowledge, and insights. Awareness, agility, and adaptability are skills to strengthen. New thinking that leads us to personal and collective pivots is the order of the day (and, likely, for many tomorrows).

Who among has not made significant pivots in the last nine years? Who among us has not rethought and pivoted again as life conditions change and as heart and soul tap our being and point us to new possibilities or a new way? Who among us is the same today as we were then (or, heck, even yesterday)?

Certainly not moi. In the early days of the pandemic, The Zone pivoted to become The Pivot (120 weeks ago – if you be counting). A change in name and focus had been bubbling in me for some time. Clarity came as I saw the need to make changes in my own thinking, my beliefs, my habits and as I witnessed the Earth’s responses to our collective global pause. For me it was the beginning of reexamining EVERYthing, of exploring wider avenues of thought and possibility, and of seeking out those people, places, and pockets that are building the new, a process that’s likely to happily engage me for the duration of this lifetime.

In sharing my engagement, discoveries, and curiosities I aim to offer introspection, inspiration, insights, intelligence, and information for your journey of discovering and navigating your own pivot points. As Muse reminds, surely much change is afoot. Perhaps some wisdom will emerge along the way.

As it was in the beginning, The Pivot will continue to be eclectic. My curiosity runs both wide and deep. And one belief that isn’t likely to shift is that ‘one size does NOT fit all’. Likewise, The Pivot continues to support individually and collectively reclaiming personal power as a right and a responsibility and seeks to challenge your thinking and mine.

As it always has been, there is rarely an ‘editorial plan or calendar’ for what will come. The Pivot emerges weekly in response to the promptings – internal and external – of life and to (mostly) gentle nudging from Muse.

I (WE! – suggests Muse) aim to bring more beauty to light and life. Beauty not just of the visual sort, although certainly I’m steeped in the natural beauty of place (and not likely to pivot away from sharing that), but beauty of the heart, the soul, the spirt of life. Beauty that is of sight, sound, and all our senses. Perhaps beauty that is beyond our senses, yet ever present when we are open to receive.

A deep bow of gratitude to you for being with us on the journey and some beautiful words to remember as we engage in the days ahead.

Being here is so much. Rainer Maria Rilke

The human mind is in itself a world with huge mountains, deep valleys, and forests of the unknown. John O’Donohue

Morning Moonset over the San Luis Valley