Being Courageous

I've been reading this book: "Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously". There are so many great pearls of wisdom that I want to share from it!! But there are really too many for one sitting SO I'm going to randomly open the book and share a quote. Here we go:

"Fear is nothing but absence of love. Do something with love, forget about fear. If you love well, fear disappears. If you love deeply, fear is not found.. . Be courageous in love, take courage. Be adventurous in love; love more, and love unconditionally. If you have some conditions in the mind then you will never be able to love; those conditions will become barriers. Because love is beneficial to you, why bother about conditions and don't ask anything in return. If you can come to understand that just by loving people you grow in fearlessness, you will love for the sheer joy of it!"

I say be fearless in your love!! And this requires no barriers, no walls! This requires being courageous because to love this freely you will have to face your fears and sometimes this isn't easy. But once you face them, you see them for what they truly are- illusions!! If you resist looking at them, they persist and you make them real.

So once again, let's be courageously in love!

Living Passionately: Take One

I've started a new Landmark Education seminar: "Living Passionately". The intention of the seminar is "to leave you playing the game of life with purpose, grace and ease." One of my assignments this week is to share with at least one person what I am committed to getting out of the seminar and I'm hoping by sharing through my blog at least one person will read this b/c it's late and I haven't talked with any one personally about it!

I feel like I'm really living my life with more passion than I have in a long time, but I know that I could be "playing the game of life with purpose, grace and ease" more fully. I want to discover what my blind spots are to fully embracing my life with passion and I want to use whatever tools this education has for this seminar in order to do that. I am 100% committed to participating in this seminar, doing the assignments and getting as much out of it as I can to cause this transformation in my life.

So there it is. .. .and to close I want to share this quote that was read during the seminar last night. A Zen poet said, "A person who is a master in the art of living makes little distinction between their work and their play, their labor and their leisure, their mind and their body, their education and their recreation, their love ad their religion. They hardly know which is which and simply pursue their vision of excellence and grace, whatever they do, leaving others to decide whether they are working or playing. To them they are always doing both."

I'm happy to say that I'm feeling this myself more and more in my life!!! After this seminar, I hope I can define myself in this way completely!

Courage: A Valentine Message!

So it's Valentine's weekend and I'm holed up in my house which is surrounded by a winter wonderland (yes, Atlanta got dumped on yesterday in a big way). I LOVE IT!! It is so gorgeous and today the sun is shining as whisps of snow are being blown in the sunlight everything glitters. It's magical.

I sat down about an hour ago to eat my Valentine breakfast (a croissant lathered in chocolaty nutello!) and continue reading my latest book: "Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously". The second chapter is where I left off and it is entitled, "What is Courage". Here are some quotes that I thought were especially appropriate given the Valentine theme going on:

"The word courage is very interesting. It comes from a Latin root "cor", which means heart. So to be courageous means to live with the heart. And weaklings, only weaklings, live with the head; afraid, they create a security of logic around themselves. Fearful they close every window and door- with theology, concepts, words, theories-and inside those closed doors and windows, they hide.

The way of the heart is the way of courage. It is to live in insecurity; it is to live in love, and trust; it is to move into the unknown. It is leaving the past and allowing the future to be. . . .A person who is alive, really alive, vitally alive, will always move into the unknown. There is danger there, but he will take the risk. The heart is always ready to take the risk, the heart is a gambler. The head is a businessman. The head always calculates-it is cunning. The heart is noncalculating.

To live through the heart is to discover meaning. . . The head cannot listen it is very far away from the unknown. The head is filled with the known. What is your mind? It is all that you have known. It is the past, the dead, that which has gone. Mind is nothing but accumulated past, the memory. Heart is the future; heart is always the hope. . . Listen to your heart. That is the only scripture I prescribe: listen very attentively, very consciously, and you will never be wrong. And listening to your own heart, you will never be divided. Listening to your own heart you will start moving in the right direction, without ever thinking of what is right and what is wrong."

I'd like to type up the whole chapter here but that seems inappropriate for this avenue of expression. . .too much information! So I leave you with the challenge to make a commitment this Valentine's weekend to follow your heart and live your life!

Being Unreasonable Part. 2

I'm reading this fabulous book which everyone should read. It will rock your world! "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression in to Opportunity for Women Worldwide". At the beginning of Chapter 3 there is a quote by the famous playwright, George Bernard Shaw, "Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people."

This week I set up a meeting with Dollywood Productions business manager, Ted Miller, not necessarily because he believes in my idea (YET) but because I was unreasonable with him and myself. Big thanks to Scott and Susan for being unreasonable with me!! My challenge to all of you is to be unreasonable with yourself and others in living your life with integrity to the truth of who you are as a divine spiritual being. It's only our fears that cause us to be reasonable and play small. Neale Donald Walsh wrote: "Life begins at the end of your comfort zone."

Once again I am reminded. .

As an adult I've been based out of three southern cities which is interesting in and of itself since my roots are in CA and I grew up primarily on the east coast and in the north. . . but we won't get into that!

While in Charlotte, NC, I really ran around, "going, going, going" in all areas of my life and I did accomplish alot. I would also say that my yin and yang were out of balance and more often than not I was operating very much from a place of male energy (is that yin or yang? I can't remember). In Nashville, I had a real awakening to what I call my "goddess" within after some ego smashing experiences. I really spent some time nurturing the feminine parts of myself especially in the last two years I was there and didn't really accomplish alot by worldly standards. My relationship with the divine, though, became much stronger. Here in Atlanta, I'm really practicing balance between my yin and yang. To me that means, starting off my day in a real state of being one with spirit (relationship and intuition being feminine aspects) and moving through my day where the action/doing (masculine aspects) comes from that place. I have had a tendency to run around doing, doing, doing without being in touch with spirit and being guided by my "higher self" (as many of us do). As a result, I have wasted alot of energy doing things that kept me running in circles or don't take us anywhere- or worse, were destructive. I created stress. Instead of staying present and listening to spirit, I worried. So the challenge is to find ways to remain tuned in through out the day and get in the habit of listening to spirit before leaping. I am committed to exercise my spiritual muscles in this way, trusting in what I hear . . .what I feel in my body. This is my commitment to myself this year. . .this is what surrender means to me.

Being Okay with Being Uncomfortable

I have to vent a little here! How does one expect to really grow without stepping out of their comfort zone!? And take so called "risks"? Either you keep repeating things. .. doing the same old thing, pulling from your old bag of familiar tricks or you try something new, put on a new perspective, remain willing to be in uncomfortable, unfamiliar places and not run to your safety zone. . and grow as a result. This isn't easy when you are in the middle of it, but it sure makes life alot more adventurous, exciting, interesting and extraordinary. I see too many people settling. . .doing whatever possible to keep things so called "safe" and so called "easy". . . . BORING! People living ordinary lives who could be extraordinary if they would just face their fears and open their hearts! AND Let's be committed to the growth that intimate relationships can offer you when things get difficult. . .they get difficult because our egos get involved and dismantling ourselves of the ego to reveal the truth of who we are is what it's all about. If you run away from a relationship because of the ego shit it's bringing up for you, you loose an opportunity to really look at your stuff and to exercise your spiritual muscles in the face of the difficulty. You loose opportunities to try new things and put on new perspectives within the relationship- things that you may not feel comfortable with because of the very fact that they are a new way of being for you. I realize that we all need to take steps to peeling back the ego layers and that certain things just bring up too much stuff for us to handle at once- but let's not be wimps either and run away from opportunity just because it's not easy. . .it's not easy only because of the grasp that our ego has on us. And what we resist will persist. Relationships where both people are committed no matter what . . .where both are willing to openly communicate and willingly listen and ultimately take responsibility for their ego stuff will create an opportunity like no other to truly step into divine being and eventually create an extraordinary, joyful, meaningful, and amazing life experience. Come on people. . .this is where the juice is. .. stop running from each other to find spirituality away from the ego's discomfort.

Accepting my Weaknesses

So, I really took on 100% integrity to my divine self this year. And the first thing that comes up for me on New Years Day is an awareness around probably my biggest block to taking this on . . and that is being in full acceptance of my humanness/my weaknesses!! I want so much to be bigger and better than I am that I have a hard time looking and truly seeing aspects of myself that I consider undesirable. In particular, I have felt like I should be above the heartache I sometimes still feel around my ex-husbands affair. I'm really thankful to a dear friend for calling me on that and allowing me to see that and accept it. What I really got in my body is that we will never transcend our humanness until we can fully accept it and look at it and be okay with it realizing that it's part of this life's journey. Really getting this has been sooooooooo freeing!!! What an awesome way to start this new year. Special thanks to Joanne!