Now is the WINTER of our discontent...oh good winter, welcome with your blankets of stillness and white

art by Lisa Van Sand

Did you know this line means that we are in the winter timing of all things "ebb" that keep getting in our face? (at least to me it does)  As i come up on the end of this year, i am starting to do a year end sum up in my head of where i've been and where i'm going to.  Lots of moments and situations feel challenging in my life.  sometimes challenge can have a negative underpinning, but i'm gratefully putting on this conscious choice of knowing that the things that show up in my life to challenge me are just what i've been asking for. Only sometimes, i'm not so great at matching up the challenge to the actual prayer i've uttered on its behalf.

for example...

Prayer/intention/ internal plea when i'm feeling all heavenly and nonplussed...

"Please let me be conscious of my own issues, don't let them become burdens for other people to deal with, please let me recognize them and shift within to allow a space for growth, maturing and love..."

sounds good doesn't it, can't you just picture a prayer like that?  even setting such a lovely intention feels all yummy and pure from the inside...and then what happens....


my take on the resulting 'opportunity to gain this strength i've phrased oh so eloquently'...

i park my car in the wrong place because i'm in a hurry to do someone else what feels like a gargantuan favor and they've already way overstepped what feels like appropriate levels of taking advantage...and my car gets towed, my tire goes flat, i end up in the biggest fight i've had in a year because of it...

 Now when i was all at peace and ommmming the crap out of that loving intention, i never knew i was asking for such a shakedown to get over my little ways of not clearly stating my boundaries, not lovingly holding my own space and letting someone else take on the consequences for their own learning..., and hey, why would i ever consciously think to shoulder someone Else's "prayer" of learning?  So i can lovingly give back what isn't mine to handle, learn or take on...but to feel good about it, i am learning that i must do it with awake eyes, not angry shrugs.  When i can hand back a big packet of learning without getting my ego in the way...my heart opens with huge ease, my sense of tranquility and peace on earth become the mainstay rather than the occasional visitor and i am happy.

My shit may not be all worked out, but wow, it's way better mucking my own stables than somebody Else's.  (sorry hope i didn't lose ya in the mixed metaphor journey, it's just that more than anything these pages are for my ego to catch up with what my soul has been shouting for eons--sometimes you just gotta work this shit out on paper!) So at last, here i am with some eyes wide open, seeing how life is answering these kind of prayers left and right, how i can get really clear with my own prayers and intention and lessons become so much more welcome and gentle, and how with that awake learning, my discontent is all kindsa wintered out!!!

and my heart is open to the Spring!

Co-creators all!

'WTF'..she asks herself when waking with the craziest migraine that ever snuck up on a sleepy sunday morning!

moments of wondering what the hell my spirit is up to--i think every now and then it steps up to test the things i say to see if i really mean what i am asking for...as in

"Allow myself to introduce myself"

1.  loving the hiking thing and having the most recurring hamstring tightness ever

2.  experiencing an incredible new lightness of being and hitting the top of the scales

3.  embracing the challenge and thrill of offering spiritual guidance and releasing my own attachment to having any clue how to guide myownself

4.  opening my heart to deeper loving and feeling dark moments of pure alone

5.  reveling in the self-discovery that writing brings and complete stream of consciousness writer's block

(i think there are many, many more of these i could identify, but it feels like empowering the grip of the self in me that laughably believes it is in charge of figuring things out)

so here it is for today, life isn't what i make of it...i sum it up into all these neat little boxes all the time, simple ways my brain can analyze and synthesize just what is happening in my world.  but if my world were up to the very finite reaches of my own brain, my life would be limited indeed.  so the true beauty here of all the hard stops and face-plants is learning to trust the amazing co-creator i am with the universe and know that as i call a way of being into my world, the very things to help me get that are what shows up.

here is the gift of this moment of awareness

there is an eye(I) within that does not require visual confirmation, it yields and flows as harmonics emerge.  there is no struggle for clarity and making sense--these are true functions of a limited vision; rather there is a Self that resonates in the equilibrium of the Soul awakening to its own return.
It is within the I(eye) of this hurricane that the deepest stillness resides.