Chasing Thistles. Removing Quills.

Yes, it is August. And, yes, that is SNOW.

If God bids me to chase thistles, I would gladly do it.  Dionysius

If you transpose ‘God’ to mean ‘universe’, you will understand this to mean that whatever the universe is asking me is my greatest joy. Trust that the universe is intelligence and therefore wisdom, harmony, understanding, and love, so you can’t go wrong. Gregge Tiffen (Echo – Sept. 10, 2012)

I’m coming to understand that the universe doesn’t distinguish between what we might think of as ‘major’ events and those we probably consider minor.  All events are opportunities to learn and to be our best self no matter how great or how small we think they are.  In this intelligent universe every event holds the bidding for that which is being asked of us in that moment.

Two events among many this week stand out as reminders that what the universe places before me is where I’m being asked to put my attention. They reminded me as well that, indeed, the universe IS intelligence.

Shortly after arriving, weekend Dragonfly House guests with reservations for a two-night stay informed me that they would “be out of here tomorrow morning.” I was a shocked and started to go down the path of a fearful (how will I replace the lost revenue?) reaction. I stopped me. Turning off the tap of negativity, I tapped into knowing that this event is meant to unfold in exactly this way.  I wished them a good night’s rest, reminded them of breakfast timing, and I let go.  Within a few hours of bidding them farewell the next morning, I had reservations in both guest rooms for appreciative guests who needed accommodations at the last minute.  Memo to self: Yes, things do unfold for the best.

Yesterday Luke had his first (and I pray his only!) encounter with a porcupine, returning from a foray into the woods during our walk with a face full of quills. He was clawing and rubbing his face on the ground, obviously uncomfortable, yet not seeming to be in pain.  I moved into action more calmly than in hindsight I could imagine, first removing a few that I could easily grab with my fingers and a gentle tug.  The easy ones out, we began to walk toward home. Two B&B guests who had arrived earlier in the day crossed our path and followed us. With their help, only two pesky quills remained, one lodged just inside Luke’s upper lip.  Luke wasn’t so keen with the removal process despite my consistent efforts to keep him calm. Our local vet came over, but our efforts to get the quill removed from his mouth were nil.  After consulting we decided to leave it for a day to see if the quill would come out on its own.  Yes, it did – within the hour. Second memo to self: Yes, things do work out.

Later, when it was time to lay my head on the pillow after each of these events, I did so with gratitude for the event and with satisfaction for having met each, consciously or not, with the knowing that, indeed, the universe IS intelligent and I benefit when I tune into that intelligence.

The beauty of an early morning start to our first walk of the day.

The quills ...

Banishing Negativity

Grateful for another day of the sun rising over the Sangres!

Negativity can’t create anything. It can't even create further negativity because that energy just maintains itself.  Gregge Tiffen (PS 52, Series 8, The New Experiment, Week 47)

Negativity is a misapplication of the laws of the universe and the rules of the planet.  Patrece on behalf of P-Systems, Inc. (PS 52, Series 8, The New Experiment, Week 47)

I don’t know about you, but some days it feels like our world has become a cauldron of negativity. Is it any wonder that we don’t seem able to move forward, given that negativity doesn’t create anything? How can we possibly address what is on our own plates in terms of life, not to mention the plethora of critical issues needing the best of each of us collectively when fear and hatred are being hurled at us from so-called leaders, the media, and even one another?

While turning off the news or taking a break from social media may give us relief from time to time, do these tactics sustain us in maintaining a positive approach to life?  While I’ve long preferred and, hopefully, been successful at maintaining positivity in my life, I can’t claim to have banished negativity completely. Hey, I’m still human after all.

And yet, I honestly think that I’m doing pretty darn well with my personal positivity score.

But a weekend experience of allowing my ‘inner snarky’ to surface at about the same time as this week’s installment of PS 52 arrived, coupled with wondering why a project I’m involved in can’t seem to move forward, prompted me to take a look at negativity – that within as well as that beyond my reach. I was quickly reminded that my ‘inner snarky’ surfaces when things don’t turn out like I want them to (duh!): a show is late starting and I leap to ‘they are wasting my valuable time’, leaving in the dust relaxing and enjoying the moments of peace or extra time with a friend.  I quickly return from negativity-land, but I wonder: why do I go there in the first place?  Answer: habit (‘nuf said).  Solution: awareness + choosing differently.

As I reflected a bit more, I allowed myself to see and acknowledge the shifts and pruning of habits and beliefs that I’ve done over the years that contribute to my capacity to maintain positivity in our sometimes negative and chaotic world:

• Practicing gratitude for ALL
• Immersing myself in nature, self-care, and care for Cool Hand Luke
• Nurturing curiosity, especially when I don’t know how to move forward, shifting from declaring ‘I don’t know how’ to asking ‘How can I? What if …?’
• Taking responsibility vs. blaming others
• Developing my capacity to say ‘no’ to opportunities, events, and others that don’t represent the quality I want at that moment
• Nurturing and developing my core belief in the abundance and intelligence of the universe
• Nurturing patience for myself and for others
• Learning to enjoy my own company
• Continuing to learn about and experiment with how energy works
• Remembering that life is an experiment and events are here not for me to be right, but rather as gifts for my learning, AND that I have a band of personal guides that are with me all along the way
• Make and take time for fun!

For the sake of the universe, the angels, the planet, nature, humanity and ourselves we need to banish negativity.  Ground zero is right where we live. It’s you. It’s me. It’s up to each and every one of us to forge a path to banish negativity in all of its insidious forms from our lives. The quality of our future – this life and beyond – depends on it.

Taking time for some fun at Crestfest 2016!

Another beautiful sunset on a beautiful day in the Sangres.

Mother Nature, Planet Earth

The early morning sun begins to shine on the peaks

Mother Nature, planet Earth, gave us our power, our life, our energy. Ideally, we learn and teach fidelity for the land. We are to take care of the planet and to take care of the body that birthed us. It is everything to us. Take care. Do not destroy it. Do not turn your back on it. That is taking dominion. Gregge Tiffen (Mother Nature – May, 2007)

Years ago when I lived in the city, it was an effort to escape the concrete jungle and put myself in the woods or on the beach of the Gulf of Mexico. I always preferred the woods. After an interim move to a small canyon on the West Texas plains, I now find myself at home in the quiet woods of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Here appreciation, gratitude, and love for nature and for my physical body grow.

Here I am nourished by what my five senses take in:

• The distinguished song of the meadowlark and the gentle sounds of Cottonwood Creek as she flows down the mountain and through the foothills
• The beauty of snow-capped peaks by day and clear, vast starry sky by night
• The solid, yet uneven earth under my feet and chill of the morning air on my cheeks
• The freshness of the earth and the pines after a rain
• The flavors of produce fresh from a friend’s garden or greenhouse and of pine pitch when my hand is sticky and I lick to clean it

Here I notice how my senses work together: sight and touch keeping me upright as I walk on rocky trails.

Here my ‘sense’ beyond my senses becomes more known.  I deepen my connection to the earth and come to know her as the source that sustains me.  I aim for my choices to reflect this knowing.

Here I take care of the earth and of this vehicle that consciousness has chosen for the ride this sojourn.

Here as I plant the seeds that know they are carrots, beets, beans, and squash, I scatter seeds reflecting what I know about the Universe and what I’m curious about.

The seeds are sown. Let the growing begin!

And, here knowing now what I didn’t know when I lived in the city, I see that I can honor Mother Nature, planet Earth, my true family wherever in the world I find myself.

I invite you to join me in the experiment to embrace the dominion we were given. In the weeks ahead, wherever you are, take time to notice and honor the ground that you walk on.  See, hear, feel, smell, taste the planet that is your home. Remember that you are not separate from her indeed you are integral part of the play.

Learn your lines and play your part well.

A friendly junco greets the day

Humility

Spring is bursting out all over Southeast Hill!

All animals on this planet help forge a living energy chain, tying together the power of Nature to the manifestation of life.  Gregge Tiffen (It’s Springtime: Flow with the Power of Nature – March, 2007)

As I end this month that found me focused on caring for beloved canines far away from my home, my heart is touched by two aspects of nature: the beauty of flora and the steadiness of fauna.   

I’m writing this week’s post a bit early with the intention that, as it lands in your box on Thursday morning, I will be driving through the canyon lands of Utah.  Today, as I prepare to head home to begin a new month and another trip around the sun, I’m struck by how nature simply IS.

I’m humbled and in awe of the buds and the blooms that have burst forth in the past week here in the neighborhood that’s been my home this month.  I’m curious how spring will reveal herself along the 1200 miles or so of our journey.  How will spring be showing when I reach home in a few days?

But as much as I love trees and flowers, it is the animals that I hold dearest in my heart this day.  I’m grateful for all the animals on the planet and for the energy that they receive in support of all life, including that of us humans. In the year ahead, I want to deepen my understanding of this vital relationship.

And, I’m especially grateful for Luke and my cousin’s dogs. My three weeks caring for them were rewarding beyond measure. I’m humbled by what they have given me the opportunity to learn: grace, dignity, adaptability, patience (to name a few), and even humility itself. 

Happy Homecoming!

So often in life we avoid humility, fearing that we don’t or won’t measure up. That we’ll be humiliated, embarrassed, feel low or foolish.

Noticing my own feelings over these three weeks, led me to explore the word ‘humility’. I discovered that its root is the Latin humus, meaning grounded, humble, of the earth.  I loved that discovery! It put a whole new depth and light to my feelings.  They are right in tune with and flowing from the earth.  There is no humiliation in that, no matter what stories I might conjure up or comparisons to others I might make. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

And so it is with most everything we do if we are willing to make that our choice no matter what.

Earth's School of Events

For Whom Does Your Bell Toll?

No event touches our life that does not have a use in our overall development. Gregge Tiffen (LIFE: The Staircase of Many Steps – January, 2008)

More and more I find myself curious about what I’m learning from every event in life. Even when that learning isn’t so clear that I can articulate it, I have this sense of embracing life’s events as a learning lab for my evolution.

We seem to do that easily with life’s so-called ‘challenges’. Part of how many of us navigate those events is to acknowledge that they are part of ‘life’s lessons’. That’s where I found my own awareness this week as I faced a computer challenge. What was the learning of spilling liquid on my keyboard and watching the screen go blank?

The obvious is ‘keep liquids away from keyboards’, a lesson I assumed I knew, but certainly didn’t apply. We often discount this level of learning as not important, but even learning to tie our shoes (something most of now do without much thought) has value beyond the surface in the connections it makes. How is it that we learn to deftly move our fingers to form bows that secure our shoes on our feet? And, what in that learning do we apply to hundreds (maybe thousands) of tasks every day?

Events like this wake me up and pull me out of my tendency to not be present in each moment. It reminded me that although drinking a cup of tea while using the computer isn’t rocket science, I’m better served if I do so with awareness and care.  The event also gave me the opportunity to choose how much to beat myself up (very little, I’m happy to report), to do what I could in the moment (turn the keyboard upside down and lightly blow a hair dryer across it), and then to let it be. 

Letting it be proved to be easier than I thought. Perhaps I’ve learned that I can only do what I can do, and energy exerted after that is wasted. Since the event happened on the weekend, I took time to make a plan for getting critical tasks done on Monday. I shed some cleansing tears. With gratitude and faith, I asked the Universe to assist. Then, I went to bed.  When I woke, I didn’t rush to see if the computer would power up. I didn’t even think about it as I engaged in my morning rituals. In hindsight, I have a sense of personal satisfaction about that.

Then, late morning before heading out for a long walk with Luke, I thought about the computer and decided to discover whether it would turn on. It did. Wowza!

I felt deep gratitude, not only for having my computer, but for the event and the learning that it brought forth. The cleansing tears that followed, those were tears of joy.

Life is learning. Learning is life. We cannot ‘not learn’, but we can choose to not embrace life as the learning lab that it is.

What is your choice?

A Holiday Wish

Walking in the Snowy Woods ...

May the greetings of Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, and Blessed Solstice be a salutation not spoken lightly in passing to others as much as it is a greeting first to you, then to Heaven, then to both of you together in the ultimate form of Joy!  Gregge Tiffen (Winter Solstice: The Christmas Story)

Words are few this Christmas Eve morning as the dawn breaks to a fresh blanket of snow here in the woods.  My heart is full from sitting in the silence of Solstice, hiking with Luke, time with friends, and time for just me. 

I feel deeply blessed to be alive at this time and curiously concerned about how I and we will be with the future as it unfolds.  But that is for the new year just around the corner, not for this day.

Today, I simply wish you this ...

May the peace and balance of this Solstice time be with you through all the days to come.

Solstice Tea

May you know the harmony of this time when all of heaven and all of earth coordinate.

And Heaven and Nature SING!

May your life be filled with joy.

These are a few of my favorite things!

And, May you know the blessings of this holy season throughout the coming year!  

Receive the Gift of Solstice

It's Beginning to Look (&Feel) a Lot Like Winter!

What I would exhort you to, what I would give as a gift to you, what I would lay down a soul for, would be for your awareness to recognize that this is a personal event for your life. It is the time that has been set up on this planet for you and Heaven to be with each other without interference.

May the reindeers pull your sleigh filled with new awareness across the rooftops and into the fertile green valleys of a truly new season.  Gregge Tiffen (Winter Solstice: Giving To Yourself)

Each year I seem to discover that my sense of the potential for reNEWal in this season deepens.  I savor this time when ‘all of heaven and all of earth coordinate’ for my benefit as a very personal ‘me to me’, ‘me to Thee’ and ‘Thee to me’ experience.

This season, the events leading up to Solstice brought me the gift of looking at my attitudes, up close and personal. Some serve me. Others do not. The later will not be invited to the new me, the one that emerges from the release at Solstice. They are not who I am and do not serve how I want to participate in the world.

I’ve called on last week’s post, Prelude to Solstice, several times this week as I walked through the local controversy, creating responses and proposing a way forward.  ‘Take Heaven.’  ‘Take Peace.’  ‘Look.’  Yesterday a friend reminded me to include grace.  In a flash, I realized that she had been working overtime. I know that ‘the day will break and the shadows flee away.’  Grace brings that knowing.

Early Morning Coziness

I feel good about how I’m addressing the situation (and great about the team I work with). I’m not so pleased with the energy that’s been required and with those moments when I simply felt overwhelmed. Luke and the beauty of nature brought me back to balance.

I’m comfortable not knowing the outcome and how the public will respond. I totally trust its perfection – whether it’s an outcome I prefer or not.

As I put this experience, as well as business (and busy-ness too!) aside, I invite (really I implore) you to embrace the personal, individual nature of this season.  Take some time just for you.  Take homage at heaven and earth coming together. Feel the presence of nature.

And, let go. Release attitudes, be they good or bad. Release the people in your life, all of them – those that are meant to shall return.  Release hopes, dreams, fears, goals, regrets. Let go of EVERYthing.

It is only the empty goblet that can receive the next sweet taste of the abundance that life will most surely bring.

My Goblet is Ready

I wish you boundless blessings in this sacred season and in all the days ahead!

Life Flows

A beautiful, soft morning across the San Luis Valley to start my day.

We are part of a natural flow of experiences in which all that we are really doing is allowing ourselves to participate in the flow.  Gregge Tiffen in Deeds are Fruit, Words are Leaves (October, 2008)

Events, many unexpected, seem to show up right on time to benefit me in some way.  I’m learning to trust more deeply that natural flow.  Beneficial events aren’t just those that feel good or bring me pleasure. Especially when I look back, I can clearly see how challenging, unpleasant events brought growth.

I don’t always get to that perspective immediately. When I do, I’m able to meet the event with curiosity, gratitude, and (hopefully) a modicum of grace.  It’s humbling and gratifying to remember that I and I alone choose how to walk through life’s events.

And, so do you. Life flows and we choose how to participate. As I prepared to participate in a somatics course this week (graciously offered by two awesome colleagues and Newfield Network), I was reminded that life flows in all directions. To paraphrase master somatics teacher, Stuart Heller:

Life flows up and Life flows down. Life flows forward and Life flows back. Life flows in and Life flows out. Life flows right and Life flows left.

Stop for a moment and let that sink in.  Better yet, stand up and move in each direction: up, down, forward, back, in, out, left, right.

Life flows out. The course and the flow reminder were just in time for me to demonstrate the power of how we walk (and sit) through life’s events to a coaching client who was trying to figure out how to broach a sensitive topic with a team member. As we explored possibilities, I suggested that she shift how she was sitting. After shifting from sitting on the edge of her chair and leaning forward to occupying the whole seat, leaning back and opening her chest, she discovered a new range of language was possible to engage in the conversation.  

Life flows in. Recently I’ve received several surprise presents that made my heart smile.

Warning signs sometimes flow into life to wake us up.

Life flows down. An issue with my health presented the opportunity to explore the depth of my conviction about my body’s ability to, with proper support, heal itself.  As I scheduled acupuncture appointments, body work, drank my herbs, adjusted my eating habits, I realized a missing ingredient: bringing my belief and my intention consciously and clearly into the process.

Life flows up. So, I’m creating a new practice to engage all of me in the healing process.

Life flows back.  As the bed & breakfast high season winds down and winter is on the horizon, I found myself experiencing some angst about money and completing the ‘get ready for winter’ list of household tasks. I needed to gently guide my thoughts to a track other than worry.

Life flows forward. Within a couple days of putting my attention on remembering that ‘all my needs are met’, I received a phone call from a woman needed temporary housing. We created an agreement that meets both of our financial requirements. In addition, she’s helping with the winter chores (a good thing as temps are dropping and we could be graced with our first snow soon) AND caring for Luke and our home while I travel next week.

Life flows. Stop for a moment and look at the events in your life over the past week. What do you notice?  How do you feel?  How are you meeting life’s flow, especially when its direction may not be exactly what you thought it would be?

Winter's white blanket is edging our way.

Catch A Falling Leaf

The hills are alive enroute to Cochetopa Pass

Life is an enormous power to be understood and used as energy.  Gregge Tiffen (Open Secrets: Ancient Rituals October, 2011)*

In the last few weeks we’ve experienced a solar eclipse, the autumnal equinox (here in the northern hemisphere), and this week’s spectacular eclipse of the super, harvest moon.  Each event had its own power. Each of us experienced the events in our own way, unique to us and understood at our own level of awareness, knowledge and interest.

As we move into autumn with daylight waning day to day on our way to the quiet, inner time of winter, we approach the season of celebration: harvest festivals and the holy days of many religions.  As the leaves are providing their annual show of fall color, I move into my annual preparation for winter and I’m reminded of the energy of connecting with the earth, her cycles and of rituals that emerged from observation.

In ancient times, holy days were truly holy. The people stopped. They celebrated and, perhaps sometimes recalibrated, to be in sync with the planet. They observed. They interpreted. They sought to understand the energy of events and to use that energy.  It seems that they understood intention and the power of the mind in ways that science today is proving. From their understanding rituals emerged.

Happy dog pausing to pose on the trail ... 'come on Mom!'

A drive high into the mountains to immerse myself in the beauty of the turning leaves reminded me of a ritual that Gregge Tiffen wrote about in the booklet that today’s quote comes from: catching a falling leaf. A falling leaf “represents the goodness of Mother Earth,” thus good luck emanates from catching one before it hits the ground. It is said that in ancient times wise women sent the children out to do just that. The caught leaf is carried until the end of the season and disposed of at the Winter Solstice.

Catching a falling leaf is not as easy as you’d think. My car ‘caught’ one that floated in the window. I have yet to catch mine.

I think of rituals as habits or practices that I do with awareness, intention and a sense of sacredness. We create ritual when we bring purpose and a sense of the sacred into life whether catching a leaf each autumn for good luck or blessing our food daily for gratitude and good health.

The pass -- an historic place to steep in nature's beauty.

Back to School/Back to Joy

Early Morning Orbs at the Ziggurat

If we are to live in joy and in accomplishment, we must release our cells from self-imposed restrictions so they can sense, interpret and move us with the changing times. We need to be ready to respond and to use our experiences to our advantage.  Gregge Tiffen (What You Should Get From Education - 2007

It’s ‘back to school’ week here in the Sangres. This morning’s quote provided me with the ‘back to school’ jolt I needed to recognize that I’d fallen into a pattern of rote response to daily events. No joy. No awareness of using those events to my advantage.

Fortunately ‘back to school’ didn’t require pre-school shopping and scurrying around (plenty of the later just tending to life). I simply needed to STOP, breathe, recognize and reset.  I stopped early yesterday, putting my head on the pillow before darkness fell.  I wasn’t aware just what that stopping would bring, and after a few deep breaths of gratitude, I was fast asleep.

It was only when I hit the books this morning for the spark of inspiration to kick off this week’s post that I took the time to recognize (and acknowledge) that I was slogging through events each day.  I was ‘getting things done’ and in the doing I was more focused on what needed to be done next than on the activity at hand.

I wasn’t miserable, but I definitely felt stressed. And, where there is stress, there is no joy and little, if any true accomplishment. Yes, tasks get done, but without the awareness needed for the experience to bring forth any wisdom. Unknowingly, I’d stepped back into some old ways, rotely responding to Luke’s needs, my garden’s call to ‘come harvest’, preparing meals, running my B&B, attending a county commissioner’s meeting, and a host of other ‘to dos’.  The quote above woke me up to that awareness with the recognition that I was moving through life with a sense of dread.

So this day (and probably several that follow) is dedicated to resetting and getting me back in tune.  I started on our morning walk, putting my attention on feeling the cool air, smelling the freshness, and hearing the quiet of early morning in this beautiful place.  I set aside the ‘to do’ list and stayed present, allowing the beauty of the day to envelope me. I returned home, interacted with a departing guest, cared for Luke and then took myself out on the deck with a nourishing bowl of fruit and cup of tea. 

I took some time to reflect on this process of ‘resetting’ and outlined what I wanted to commit to in this reset:

·        Take time as each task is complete to recognize the accomplishment.

·        Step into each task with joy and gratitude.

·        Keep my attention on the task at hand, not ‘what’s next’.

·        Take care of me – rest and nourishment when I need them (not when I have time for them).

I’m clear that the return to my old ways of moving through each day put me out of sync with the current patterns of the Universe and of me. Perhaps that’s true on such a broad scale that the world is in ever increasing chaos.  What if we each checked our settings regularly to ensure that we are in tune? What kind of world would we create if we simply took time to stop, breathe, recognize, and reset?

The Tree of Joy and Wisdom!