Here in New England, we are beginning the seasonal descent into less sunlight and more darkness while also entering the busy season of holidays. Our bodies may want to curl up more on the couch in front of the fireplace while our social self pulls us in the opposite direction of more activity and interactions. How do we manage this seesaw of needs and invites? It is simple really....make love with your life.

We have all been taught to distrust the unknown, to be afraid of what we do not control, and to not give power to the unseen. And while we are biologically wired for physical survival, we are wired as well for exquisite partnership with the sacred.....the partnership at the foundation of art, of creativity, of thriving as a human being....the beauty that reveals itself when we choose to trust Life enough to make love with our life.

As with many matters simple, it may not be easy, but what delight we real.ize when we make love with our life, when we allow ourself to open up to what Life brings for our experience and awareness, our unique expression to be shared, our real.ization and our creation. Our life wants nothing more-and nothing less-from us than for us to make love with it and to realize the sacred partnership of the physical and the infinite, the seen and the unseen, the known and the unknown...for this is how we create that which we do not even know is possible to create...and is this not the call of our times and world?

This weekend we are in Brooklyn, NY for a birthday celebration for my younger daughter with the family and friends who live here. We visit once a season or so, enjoying what residents love about living here, including awesome and inexpensive cuisine from around the world through simply a subway ride. Last night we chose dinner in Tibet courtesy of a restaurant the size of a large walk-in closet and sipping Tibetan hot buttered tea, I studied the autographed pictures of the Dalai Lama near our table.

Noticing my interest, the owner of the restaurant showed me another picture near the register and he proudly pointed out the words the Dalai Lama had written across the photo...."Don't give up your dream". He told me how he had spoken with the Dalai Lama at a recent meeting of Tibetan exiles living in New York City and how his despair at being exiled from his beloved home and culture had transformed into renewed tending his dream for peace instead.

Dreams are critical for our life human and without our dreams, humanity would not unfold. Our imagination plants the seeds of dreams and we tend to our dreams with our thoughts and the actions we engage on behalf of them. Dreams have their time and their way and need the courage of our heart and our deepest faith in both humans and life. When we despair of a dream ever becoming, embracing patience and commitment serves the dream while the "proof" that our eyes and minds demand does not.

So honor the dreams that come through you, trusting as you tend to them with faith, they will grow, and that they come to you in faith of your tending as well. The Dalai Lama had simply reminded this man exiled from all he had known that his dream to return through peace was impossible only when he give up on it. For while a dream's time to be is not be in our control, keeping up with our faith in our dreams is....

Choosing to Be Queen

As women, our roles often involve supporting and accomplishing things for others can leave us with an unease about whether our own life is being supported and accomplished as well. Symptoms that we are not doing so well in honoring our own life show up as feeling overwhelmed, a lack of time and energy to engage in what has meaning and value for ourselves, and crankiness towards those we are supporting and accomplishing for. In short, we have forgotten we are Queen; yes, with the tasks it takes to rule our kingdom..and, not as much through doing for others as through envisioning, empowering, and leading the way.

One of the challenges we will face at mid-life is deciding whether we want to honor being Queen of our life, or not. To be Queen means acknowledging that as women, we are the organizing energy around which relationship, family, and community constellate. When we choose to leave being a princess (daughter) to step into being Queen (a woman sovereign), we choose no longer expecting others to tell us what to do, what is important, and where to spend our precious time and energy. We decide for ourselves using the infinite vision and resources of our hearts and souls, as well as our present minds and conditions. To decide for ourselves means we let go of blaming others for the states of our affairs and instead, with courage and clarity, take up sorting through our life and choices as we do closets, determining what still has value and what now needs to be let go in gratitude for how it has served.

To honor (and act) on what is true for ourselves requires the vision of a Queen-broad and long, the vision of seven generations many traditional cultures remind us is necessary for making decisions that serve all well. No longer can we place our heart and soul's wisdom and guidance separate from what crafts our choices for our daily lives and the lives we guide and support as women. The sacred is meant to be part of our everyday life and the Queen-the visionaries and leaders in kingdoms intimate and common-illuminates and enjoys living this. Through her grace innate, her grit the inspiration of legends, and her gratitude active each day, a Queen uplifts and inspires those she serves with in the sacred temple of everyday life.

Your Sensory invitation

If you are feeling overwhelmed, anxious, fearful, or insecure these days, you are in very good company! Most of the people I know-both clients and peers-are experiencing sensations that reflect a measure of the turmoil of transition that is going on outside of themselves. And while we know that inside and outside are simply reflections of each other, in times of transition, the level of turmoil that comes with any transition-let alone one of the magnitude we are all in-can be a challenge to navigate while living everyday life.

Overwhelm, anxiety, insecurity, fear are simply mental states that invite us into remembering we have more than our minds with which to navigate and negotiate what life brings our way. We are transitioning from a time in which the mind reigned supreme and our body, spirit and soul, and heart relegated to second string in living our human life. Yet as many a wisdom tradition knows, our soul/spirit and body/heart-what I call our "sensory self"-are crucial to living the capacities and capabilities of our life human. As we move into a time based more on the energy of vibration, we need to no longer exclude these innate resources of transmitting and receiving energy our body contains.

We have been taught that we have but five senses in which to experience and engage life and this is simply not so. Wisdom traditions base their tools and techniques on the many ways we humans have for both sending and receiving information, resulting in a much richer palette from which to respond to life and it's challenges. Our soul/spirit and heart/body offer tangible and powerful guidance and support for the sacred journey of a human lifetime. The invitation-and imperative-of these times we all find ourselves in is to re-acquaint ourselves with our full range of sensory abilities for meeting our turmoil and transitions.

When we learn how to engage our full (and already installed) sensory self, no longer are we limited by what we know or what we seem to have as physical resources. Learning (remembering truthfully) how to tune into our spirit, soul, and heart using the sensory aspect of our body, channels the wisdom that lives in the timeless Universe, simply awaiting our sensory-not mental-call of invitation and download. Given the vast resources of what makes the Universe go around, is there truly any challenge we cannot meet when we engage our sensory self?

So the next time you feel overwhelmed, anxious, fearful, or insecure, smile to yourself and say "my mind is talking, let's see what my sensory self is saying" and use your breath to take yourself within your body for finding out what else is being said. Our (mother) earth is clearly in the turmoil of transition and with our physical bodies as her children, we too are feeling the effects of this turmoil of transition. Our bodies as women, with their capacities and capabilities of creations and transformation, invite women into leadership in remembering our sensory self is for our daily lives!

A Woman First

At my family reunion last weekend, one of my "outlaws"-as the spouses of my siblings have come to call themselves-asked me to explain to him the whole "divine feminine thing" he kept hearing about from the women he worked with in his job as a surgeon. It was a question sincere in his seeking and I smiled in appreciation at how women's evolution was impacting even this man who prided himself on being a man in charge of his kingdom.

Simply put, I said, the "divine feminine thing" was the invitation for women-and men-to evolve the definition of a woman as one based on the "to-do lists" of roles and relationships to the living expression of grace and the sacred in our life as human beings. The whole 'I am what I produce each day thing" I said was not so great a definition for anyone's life as a human being; for women, basing our value in life upon what we produce through the to-do lists of each day is especially inappropriate and devaluing.

To be born a woman is a grace and a destiny that comes with innate vision, strength, and creativity, a destiny that can be challenging in a world where one's value is often what we produce for others. To be born a woman is the capacity to deliver vision and leadership for the benefit of those in her community (although to be born a woman still means for far too many women abuse simply due to birth as a woman.). To be born a woman is a dignity, divinity, and nobility that is not old-fashioned and limited to times and ages gone by.

The "divine feminine thing" in it's most simple terms is a woman's commitment to living the grace, strengths, and abilities being born a woman granted her. The divine feminine is the choice to live first her integrity as a woman and second the to-do lists and expectations of the roles and relationships she is in. The divine feminine is the decision to live one's spirituality in the sacred temple of everyday life, not in compliance with authorities outside herself, but through living what is true for Herself within. The divine feminine is the honoring that she is the guardian for all of life and as such, it is her responsibility to speak up, show up, stand up as she heeds the call for sacred vision.

When I finished my rather impassioned words of what "the divine feminine thing" is for me, my brother-in-law looked at me and said "I would love nothing more than dignity, divinity, and destiny be the values my daughter lives her life by and that the men in her life support her in doing. God knows my wife is who I count on to keep me smart about what is important in life". I smiled and said that maybe he knew much more about the divine feminine thing than he was giving himself credit for and perhaps the nurses ribbing him was simply his invitation to share at work what he honored already in his home.

The "divine feminine thing" is not something outside ourselves; it is our choice to honor ourselves first as women, making our choices in daily life in alignment with the dignity, divinity, and destiny that is ours as women. When we honor ourselves as women first and to-do lists second, we deliver the vision, leadership, and creative grace within ourselves with ease and effort that simply flows. To honor the divine feminine is simply to live that being born a woman does make a difference.

The Strength of Rituals

This week, my 6 siblings and I, living literally coast to coast, are gathering in the middle to celebrate our parent's 56 years of marriage as well as my father's life of 80% of a century, as my youngest daughter loves to tell him. Preparations for this occasion began last winter in the hope we could gather the 3 generations, no small goal in today's busy busy lives. With the aid of computers, google calendar, conference lines, and a bit of compromising summer schedules, every single member of our family will be together, the ultimate gift for a man whose definition of family often was "all together".

In the process of coming to agreements for the weekend celebration-the location, the activities, the menus-even when we would have the conference call for these discussions!-ghosts of childhood past mixed with the differences in lives chosen as adults. We not only learned where we still nursed hurts from our childhoods past, we also learned where what we thought of a sibling could be happily updated. And most importantly of all, we learned that "family" was being maintained and honored no longer by the patriarch of the family as much as by us 7 children through our active commitment to working together, even with ghosts and differences real.

It brought home once again, the power-and need-for rituals, perhaps even more so now in our world of speed and information. All 7 of us have lives full and rich with to-do lists large enough to fill years of time let alone a weekend. And yet, in wrestling with the issues of and compromising for, the commitment and details needed to gather in the mid(middle)west for honoring our parents, we chose again as adults to share time and space together again for creating and honoring our family.

Cultures have long understood the need for ritual gathering for the pleasures of the celebrations as well as our need as humans to gather in community for the guidance and support it offers as well. While we may no longer need to gather in order to see who among us needs supplies to make it through the winter, we certainly have not lost the need as humans to gather for offering-or receiving-food for our heart and soul.

So off we go to gather as family, honoring parents we are grateful to still be able to hug and kiss, and to take up the mantle of "family" from ones who have carried it so long and so well for us children. And by doing so, we are offering our children this gift of ritual of gathering we call family, imperfections and ghosts less important for now than the reminder that love and community are matters worth more of our time and less of our differences.

Leaning into LIfe

An earlier plan to visit a friend in Vermont for the 4th of July weekend fell through and my daughter and I were faced with recreating plans. My daughter of 12 years wanted to go to real fireworks and I wanted to go to the ocean, not having been for months altho' but an hour from my favorite of all the earth's elements. We had free tickets to a whale watch company in Provincetown and a couple of days free from any obligation of merit. A quick call to find out if the dog sitter was available-yes!-and we had a spontaneous recipe for a 4th of July holiday celebration!

We made preparations and went to bed early figuring that taking off by 6 am would ensure a place to park in Provincetown. Of course, plans do not make reality and I awoke at 3 am, not able to relax enough to get back to sleep and by 5 am, I was convinced that the plan that the gods seemed to have blessed were evaporating due to my sleep-deprivation. Not wanting to disappoint my daughter nor wanting to forfeit my opportunity to play, I got up tired and went into the motions of getting ready for our day of adventures.

We took off for our 2 1/2 road trip and 1 hour into the trip, I realized I had left the whale watching tickets back in the wallet I chose not to take....sigh. I would simply have to buy tickets..."this is not an auspicious beginning'.... began the whispering within ......"you are too tired, you have made a mistake to think you can pull off the plans for the day" continued the whispering....and my personal favorite....."maybe this is a sign you ought not to doing this"....

We all have a version of this voice within us, the voice initiated when a parent or an important grownup communicated for us not to trust life so much for staying safe, for being loved, to be good or nice. A voice born in childhood and continuing way past it's time into our adulthood. It is the voice that perhaps at one time meant well, but now-when listened to without updating-keeps us more afraid of ourselves, others, and life than it's original intention. A voice when listened to limits what we can experience, learn, and become from our life and living.

I have learned to listen to this voice within as I listen to those in my life who love me, want me to be safe, or want to pass on their hard-earned wisdom from life....with love, although not always with agreement. In order to do this, I examine and renovate my beliefs so that the basis of my decisions is current with what I call my "signature values"-a value consciously chosen as fundamental to living my life. As I was driving to the Cape, hearing my critical voice within tell me how tired I was and how I had already begun the day badly by forgetting the whale watching tickets, I instead choose to listen to the voice of my signature value of faith in "leaning into life"....to trust that the day was conspiring for my success, as much as my mind might be telling me otherwise.

So while I could hear the whispers of the past whisper their form of care and messages of safety, I listened instead to my voice within for the actions I would commit to.... "people are good, the whale watching folks will work with you on this ticket matter"......"you can rest on the boat and simply take breaks during the day"...."trust your life wants you to play today".

So what was the day like on 3 hours of sleep, steamy heat and humidity, with crowds galore? Awesome and blessed....all day parking for a$10, great seats for the 4th of July parade (an education of all kinds for my daughter), a wonderful sushi lunch on a cushioned bench right under the blasting AC....ahhh....with a waiter who delighted my daughter with his attention and way, whale watching ship owner who not only gave us free replacement tickets but placed us on the boat out in the harbor for the fireworks, whale families galore seen right next to the boat on the tour, a stunning sunset that the Cape is known for, amazing fireworks viewed from the boat, and a policeman who gave us cuts into the traffic heading back to Boston that most likely saved us an hour or so!!

Not only was a wonderful time had by all, another notch in the belt was made for choosing to lean into the trust that life conspires on my behalf. We are here on Earth not out of punishment, nor rejection by the divine, nor out of a sadistic choice to watch us fail, although at times we do make less than exalted choices. We are here through the sacred gift of a human lifetime, for sharing the radiance of our souls, real-izing the illumination of our infinite wisdoms, and for inspiring those we journey our human destination with....all made more possible through leaning into the trust and faith of our sacred partner....our life.

The Importance of Ceremony

A common theme these days is the rapid pace of changes, both personal and wordly, some chosen and some unwanted and many challenging in some way to deal with. When asked for my wisdom on how to deal with the challenges of change, I speak of transitions being hard for most folks...and that creating ceremony offers ease to our human dislike of change by honoring what has served our life in it’s way.

So when something's time is up-be it a relationship, habit, job, or place to live-it is important to consciously honor how what is leaving-whether it be our choice or not-has blessed our life. Doing so allows us to continue to receive the blessings of what is moving out of our life and to be in ease with the changes. Ceremony, with it’s calling upon elements of our being other than our minds, offers a sense of understanding and completion otherwise not possible using only our mind.

My ceremony for ease and gratitude with change is below. You may have other ways of ceremony; my invitation is simply to make conscious your gratitude...

1. Sitting down in a quiet place, close your eyes and take some deep breaths in and out, relaxing yourself into your body until you can feel yourself calm and focused within.

2. Write down what is leaving/changing, focusing on realizing clarity and positivity in how it served your life. (Even things we did not like/are happy are moving out have something to be grateful for, even if it is that it is leaving!)

3. Closing your eyes, bring what is leaving/changing into your heart, imaging beautiful light and joy surrounding what is leaving. Invite those who surround and guide you to help you understand how what is leaving has served your life. When you can feel the warmth of gratitude for what is leaving you, offer your well wishes for it’s service forward.

4. Opening your eyes, take the piece of paper with what you wrote and with a prayer, burn the paper. This releases what you wrote and the fire element offers release and transformation.

Ceremony offers us the opportunity to remember we are not simply the doings of our life; that our living has nobility, courage, and destiny. And so when you are feeling yourself bemoan what is changing in your life or world, take some time to remember with your body and your conscious choice, what is good and of noble in what is happening with the changes and the challenges.

Being a Woman Matters

We are living within amazing and powerful transformations of the foundations of how life on our planet is ordered with all that calls Earth home affected, essentially requested to transform. We have valued the intellect at the cost of the spiritual, the seen world at the cost of the unseen world, and having learned the wisdom of these choices, we are being expanded into more wisdom and beauty. We are being asked-really, demanded-to bring about more balance into our world through reclaiming and revitalizing our relationship with our spirit and soul....to live less by the belief that the divine is separate from us and to embrace in ecstasy that we are the divine embodied.

As women, we are ambassadors for humanity and divinity through our innate powers of creativity, sacredness, and sensitivity. As women, the realms of magic, mystery, and miracles are ours simply through the grace of being born a woman. Many of these elemental aspects of ourselves as women have been previously denigrated, deemed dangerous by those in our culture who feared the unknown, As women, we have not been encouraged to develope our awareness or trust of our wisdom, creative power, or the strength within us. As a woman, we have amazing power and deep impact, simply through being a woman......are you in conscious relationship with your sacred powers?

We are women first and secondly our roles of daughter, mother, wife, sister, which are wonderful workshops for learning, remembering, and then offering as our wisdom. All humans are born through a woman, learn first from a women, and seek to be loved by a woman. We are the creative force of the universe-we simply need to become aware of what we are teaching those around us about what we value and what we believe is the gift of a human lifetime. Trusting our knowing and speaking of what we know ignites the vital healing of ourselves, our times, and our world.

Simply, the divine is inviting us to become the teachers, healers, warriors, and leaders the world dearly needs us now to be. Live the radical notion that within us is all that we need and that in bringing forth what is within yourselves, not only are our own lives transformed for the better but our families and communities as well. Choose to make love with your life......choose to receive in trust and faith your divinity ...choose the bliss and bounty and beauty that is yours through birth as a woman.

An Ode to Mother, big and Small

It is that time of year when we allot a day to the honoring of Mother, using flowers, food, and perhaps our presence to show gratitude for the women who honor the sacred trust of tending, guiding, and nurturing the young -and not so young-for the world. In recent times, we have expanded our notions of mothering to include those who nurture others through compassion, consistency, and care as well as those whose role in a family is Mom. Yet, we have not so much expanded our active support for the mothering role, still subscribing to beliefs from an age when Father knew best and Mother simply made it so. If mothers truly took their power-not only their responsibility- to heart, would we mothers truly allow the killing of children we call “war” as an acceptable form of conflict resolution? Juliet Ward Howe, instrumental to the celebration of Mother’s Day in the US, certainly did not think so as evidenced by her poem in honor of the power of mothers.

To be Mother is to be the first teacher, leader, warrior and healer that a soul in the human journey encounters, her impact beginning in the womb deep and wide. A mother first informs the young what is and is not true, what can and cannot be done, and what is to be and not to be...the first map of the human world for the next generation as it were. We mothers also benefit from investing in the mothering role (for life truly is mutual); while mothering we stumble upon places within ourselves still un-mothered... the sacred invitation to heal a wounding of our past instead of simply passing the wound onto the future. And in traditions ancient, the prayer of a mother is said to be the one prayer the gods must answer.

In working with women in transition-and who is not these days!- what I have come to understand is that often before we can relax into more of our unique selves as women, our daughter-selves need to allow our mothers to have been both good and bad, right and wrong, big and small, individuals and accumulated lineage. When we cannot allow our mothers to have been human with her own needs and desires as a woman and limited by the times she lived in, we put ourselves at risk for not allowing our needs as women and dissolving the limitations we may feel from the times and roles we are in. Where we still act as daughter, while otherwise claiming the full rights and privileges of being a grown-up, is an invitation to not so much make our human mother wrong as much as a reminder to call upon our Divine Mother and Earth Mother to nurture us as their children.

Honoring the sacredness of the role of Mother invites us to become more conscious of the lineage of the women before us in our family, for truthfully, this is who is present-known and unknown, liked or disliked- in ourselves as women. We all know where we swore we would be different from our mothers; are we also willing to also give gratitude and acknowledgment to their wisdom and ways that we are passing on? Mothering is a role with tremendous power and impact, a role sacred in a world often profane.

And so, my prayer for all mothers in honor of Mother’s Day is that we honor the role of Mother, taken up in sacred trust with the souls we call children, on behalf of All. And I pray that we truly and actively support mothers in not only the attending responsibilities of this sacred trust, we truly and actively support her engaging the power of this sacred trust as well. For all reality begins with a dream and is it not the dream of all mothers that her children realize a life long of health, happiness, and the holy from the gift of a human life? All of us are children of Mother Earth and I know this to be Her prayer for all us children, simply we are asked to remember our sacred relationship as such....mother Small, mother big..

Late Winter Musings

A Story for our Times

I am looking out my window at the snow is falling, our wood stove and fireplace keeping us warm, and a fresh stock of marshmellows for roasting later. I love the cozy feeling that comes from being safely inside a warm dwelling while Mother Nature is expressing herself, something she is doing very much so these days. I have grown to love New England winters, their days of more darkness offering me more opportunity to dwell within myself.

My daughter and I recently went to "Avatar" the 3D movie released in December 2009 and I came out of the movie theater again reminded of the power of seminal movies. The themes within "Avatar" are an invitation to become more aware of how our current beliefs and choices effect our life and our world. Without giving away the movie, here are some of the themes within both "Avatar" and people's lives today . And how this may present in your life as a woman~

1. "Sh*t happens that challenges our life in often big ways; we choose to engage our powers to transform it or claim being victim of it." Greet challenges as simply requests for more of your heart-based wisdom, love, and strength already present in your powerful gift of birth as a woman.

2.Beliefs and habits from tribes you pledged allegiance to at one time now may not be beliefs and habits that serve you. What serves at one age and stage of your life often needs to transform to be of service in your next age and stage of life. Your own experience will edit what is true and not true for you and your life.

3. Without the presence of others, your challenges will not become transformed; sovereignty of soul is not the same as solitary in being. We are sovereign souls here to serve the sacred gift of our human lifetime and journey and we count upon others-as others count upon us-to provide mirrors for what we cannot see ourselves. We all need people in our life who kindly mirror where we lack clarity and awareness, the result is greater ease and joy in our lives.

4. Our hubris as human beings is ignorant and immature; not only do we share this planet with other life forms, these life forms are considered by many cultures as nations themselves....the green nation, the animal kingdom, etc. We humans are simply one aspect of the Earth's eco-system, dependant on other forms of life for our living while other life forms are not dependant on our living. If for no reason than our own self-interest, we are being called to respectfully relate to the Earth and her other life forms who truly can benefit us if we but alter our relationship with them.

5. Women is the first teacher as Mother and the vessal through which all humans existence enters through. An active, strong feminine acts as guardian for the sacredness of all life, even for life we ourselves do not create and life we seemingly do not benefit from. Women in many traditional and ancient cultures are considered the heart and guardians of the culture and it's well-being and the divine feminine honored as the creative aspect in life. Where women are not respected and honored as the embodiment of the divine feminine, the culture considers that place at risk or in decline. When we honor the feminine as the grace of the divine, the divine will grace us in return.

6. Events in life will demand we choose; not choosing is our choice and all choices have an impact. If you are there, you are part of what is being created, the invitation is increased re-spondabilty. Even the carefully constructed scientific standards for experiments concede that who/what is present to the experiment influences and impacts the results: ie. there is no such thing as an impartial result. Whatever event, situation, relationship you find yourself in, you are being called to become conscious of your impact and power through your response-ability to the situation.

7. Courage is necessary in life and engaging what does not seem possible in trust and faith does result in miracles.When we call upon the courage of our convictions-what is true for us within our hearts-divine grace answers our call and serves what we call a miracle. What has been previously thought to be impossible become possible through our engaging in acts of faith and courage with others.

8. Calling upon those who lived before us- our ancestors-is calling upon the strength, wisdom, and light from those who came before us. The heart and wisdom we contain does not die with our bodies; never doubt that what you transform within yourself continues as light and wisdom for the benefit of all who follow you.

Part of my winter interior work has been contemplating ways to expand my connection and service with our community of women from all over the world. To that end, I am very excited to be working on a series of teleseminars which will begin later in March~ more information soon! It promises to be a wonderful and powerful way of engaging the transformational energy of Spring, offering guidance, tools, and community in honor of your life as woman at this time.

In closing, please accept my gratitude for your gift of presence in my life~it is my honor and privilege to be in your life. My guests on Blogtalkradio continue to inspire and inform me and I invite you to download a show or two to hear what people in service to others have to share about the world these days.

love and blessings...

JaiKaur

www.jaikaur.com
http://jaikaur@jaikaur.com

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