Slow Down

This is a poem written by a teenager with cancer….she reminds us life is short…..slow down and make it wide….

SLOW DANCE

Have you ever watched kids
On a merry-go-round?
Or listened to the rain
Slapping on the ground?
Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?
You better slow down.

Don’t dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won’t last.

Do you run through each day
On the fly?
When you ask How are you?
Do you hear the reply?
When the day is done
Do you lie in your bed
With the next hundred chores
Running through your head?
You’d better slow down

Don’t dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won’t last.

Ever told your child,
We’ll do it tomorrow?
And in your haste,
Not see his sorrow?
Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die
Cause you never had time
To call and say,”Hi”
You’d better slow down.
Don’t dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won’t last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere
You miss half the fun of getting there.
When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift…..
Thrown away.
Life is not a race.
Do take it slower

Hear the music

Before the song is over.

Receiving

There is a secret about human love that is commonly overlooked: Receiving it is much more scary and threatening than giving it. How many times in your life have you been unable to let in someone’s love or even pushed it away? Much as we proclaim the wish to be truly loved, we are often afraid of that, and so find it difficult to open to love or let it all the way in. – John Welwood

Giving is easier than receiving.  We pretend to ourselves that we are open to receiving, when  in fact, we have built a fortress around our hearts protecting it from the pain of being hurt or rejected.

Eckhart Tolle says if we don’t face the pain of why we do not receive,  if we don’t bring the light of our consciousness into the pain, we will be forced to relive it again and again.

I have always struggled with receiving.  I blocked my ability to receive from past fear and low self-worth and as I released my old patterns of belief, I allowed my heart-space to grow and began to receive the love and abundance that was waiting for me.

We may believe it is easier to protect ourselves from receiving than to open the wounds of our past and let go, but what happens is that we miss out on the fullness and abundance of life and the gift of trusting in life’s purpose for us.

We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.”  – Dalai Lama

Resist all forms of negativity or doubt and replace them with simply knowing that you and your Spirit or source are one and the same.

Make the choice to let go of that lifetime of beliefs, and begin activating thoughts right now that allow yourself to feel good and to know your dreams are achievable.

The supply is unlimited. The more you partake of the universal generosity, the more you’ll have to share with others and receive for yourself.

Don’t stop the flow of abundant energy by hoarding or owning what you receive. Keep it moving. Use your prosperity in the service of others, and for causes greater than your ego. The more you practice detachment, the more you will stay in harmony with life.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ you are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. You were born to manifest the glory of God that is within you. This is not a description of privilege but of responsibility.” – Marianne Williamson

Once we understand we are responsible for the flow or block of abundance to receive love, money, success or achievement, then you can become conscious of why you are not receiving this abundance.  We have to learn to trust again and believe we are worthy.  Practice becoming grateful each day for all that you have, even if what you desire hasn’t arrived yet.

“Fear melts when you take action towards a goal you really want”. – Robert G Alle

Becoming

“All the plans, all the expectations…. they are all so hard to give up – The promise of who our son was becoming and the realisation that he had now become – and it was now us, who were becoming and he was our teacher.” – Mother who lost her 11-year-old son….

When we are growing up we all have expectations and dreams of who we will become.   The reason they often fall short is only because of who we believe we are deep down.  We dream of the perfect home, the perfect husband, children that obey us and the mortgage that is paid off in full, so why don’t these dreams manifest?

A belief system provides a core set of values on which we base everything we do, say, or believe in life.  Everybody interprets events in life differently, what seem’s difficult to one person doesn’t necessarily seem to traumatise someone else.   Regardless, our belief systems can be empowering or disabling.  They can be built on optimism or pessimism.

“As long as you have life and breath, believe. Believe for those who cannot. Believe even if you have stopped believing. Believe for the sake of the dead, for love, to keep your heart beating, believe. Never give up, never despair, let no mystery confound you into the conclusion that mystery cannot be yours.” – Mark Helprin

Our beliefs determine what we think, what we are capable of, or not capable of.  What our parents taught us as children, or perhaps a traumatic event, or a breach of trust, can sometimes influence our belief system.  For example, we have been raised in a family were there was a lot of negativity, consequently, we end up internalising shame, guilt, and low self-worth.

Our emotional state can be affected by fear and deep-seated anger. It can be really hard to get to the root cause of our hurt that caused the anger and resentment in the first place. It’s easy to blame other people for the hurt, resentment; however, in a lot of cases the truth is just the opposite.

Our unresolved hurt and pain is actually a barrier between us and those we love. In a lot of cases people who have been hurt, are confused as to why they treat people the way they do or why they are treated badly.  People will say “I know I deserve the best in life” but are actually attracting the opposite and not able to receive this abundance of life.

The real damage often happens in our close relationships with those who we love the most.  It’s the hurt, breaches of trust and trauma that prevent us from having close relationships with them.

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anais Nin

When we acknowledge it is only ourselves that block the flow of love and abundance, we can begin to work out where these barriers began and slowly break them down and open our hearts to receive this wonderful abundance that is waiting for us.

So how can we create our dreams when our belief system is unconsciously destroying them?  Affirmations can help but because we have programmed our minds with negative thoughts unconsciously, we don’t understand why our affirmations don’t work.

When you make your affirmations, more importantly, notice the backlash thoughts that come up after you have said them.  Have a sense of forgiveness about them and where they originally came from, and release them each day.

Choose to believe in yourself and the creative power of the Universe that flows through you.  When you become conscious of your thoughts, you will see how they are limiting you.

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.” – Anais Nin

Be patient with your becoming.  It will evolve as the layers shed overtime and you will start to see the beauty and the truth and like a butterfly you will be free to manifest your dreams.

Understand Death

“It’s not who you think you are that holds you back; it’s who you think you’re not.” ~Unknown

Death in our civilization is seen as entirely negative, as if it shouldn’t be happening. Because it’s denied, people are so shocked when somebody dies – as if it’s not possible. We don’t live with the familiarity of death, as some more ancient cultures still do. The familiarity of death isn’t there.

In other cultures who understand death more deeply such as India, you can see the dead bodies being carried through the streets, and being burned in public. To the Westerners, it’s shocking and shouldn’t be seen, but who is right?

Approaching death and death itself, the dissolving of the physical form, is always a great opportunity for spiritual realisation. This opportunity is tragically missed most
of the time, since we live in a culture that is almost totally ignorant of death.

Not long after our son died, I was putting my six-year-old daughter to bed and started to cry and said “I wish Natty would come home to us.”  Looking perplexed, my daughter confidently said “But Mummy, he is home.”

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” – Mark Twain

When we understand death is a natural passing into another dimension, no matter what age and that when we let go of the illusion that it could never happen to us or our family members, we can come to understand death rather than fear it.

It is painful only as long as you cling to illusion.

It doesn’t mean that the waves of sadness don’t come or the heartache they are no longer with us isn’t felt, but in between the waves of sadness, if you look at death more deeply, more spiritually, you will begin to feel a sense of peace within.  As you sense that peace, you sense a timeless essence and begin to know it is not the end for us or our loved ones.

We need to surrender to our conditioned understanding of death.  Learn from other cultures about death and  how they grieve openly and have a deeper knowledge of it.

Honour that sacred dimension and realise that what your mind is saying, that it isn’t right, is just a form of conditioning – it isn’t the truth.  Find the truth about death.  Face it, and know that the fear of it is more likely to destroy you than “living fully” in the knowledge that it can come at any hour.

“We all die.  The goal is not to live forever.  The goal is to create something that will.” – unknown

The process of surrender

Lynette Dickson teaches relaxation, yoga and meditation to people with chronic illness and the general public.  She shares her story in the magazine “Wellbeing” describing her journey with Multiple Sclerosis.

I wanted to share a paragraph she wrote on her daily process of surrendering with Yoga and Meditation.

“How do I interpret my journey? What does it mean for me? The honest answer is I believe I am configuring my energy system.  For two-and-a-half years I have devoted most of my daily thoughts to striving for the highest I was capable of.  I have used the power of my mind to visualise yoga, when I was unable to do it because of MS, meditate, chant ancient mantra’s of light, relax and transform my daily experience of life.

I haven’t been perfect.  I have make mistakes in the way I relate to people.  I have been very human and these moments of perceived failure have caused me excruciating emotional pain.  What I have done is maintain the original intention to move toward freedom and that intention planted the seed for a tree of transformation that is still growing.

It’s not a miracle in the sense that I went to sleep one day and woke up cured the next; and I’m not extraordinary in the sense of being particularly gifted in any way.  I have just worked very hard.  The techniques I have used are based in ancient practice and anyone can learn them.”

She is inspiring!  There is no easy way out of our pain, there are no quick fixes in healing our emotional wounds.  I shared Lynnette’s journey because she share’s truthfully about walking through difficulties and confronting fears.

She has not cured her MS but she has cleared away years of emotional wounding through daily practice of Yoga and meditation,  enabling her to access the world of spirit and a new energy to give her the strength to move forward.

If you decide to face your fears, the wounds of your past, remember always…..Use ancient practice’s or energy healing to move through your pain.  Although at times it seems too difficult, through surrendering daily to your old ways, you will find freedom, peace and more energy to create your dreams.

“Something amazing happens when we surrender and just love. We melt into another world, a realm of power already within us. The world changes when we change. the world softens when we soften. The world loves us when we choose to love the world.” – Marianne Williamson