Love and Fear

"The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is."

"Our eyes are not just viewers.  They're also projectors that are running a second story over the picture that we see in front of us all the time.  Fear is writing that script.  Fear is going to be a player in your life.  You get to decide how much.  So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality.  What we really want seems impossibly  out of reach and ridiculous to expect so we never dare to ask the universe for it.  I'm saying that you can ask the universe for it.  Life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you.  As far as I can tell it's just about letting the universe know what you want and working toward it while letting go of how it comes to pass.  Why not take a chance on faith.   Not religion but faith.  Not hope but faith.   I don't believe in hope.  Hope is a beggar.  Hope walks through the fire and faith leaps over it.  You are ready and able to do beautiful things in this world.  You'll only ever have two choices.  Love and fear.  Choose love and don't ever let fear turn you against your playful heart."  Jim Carey 

Nelson Mandela

"There is no passion to be found in playing small- in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living."  Nelson Mandela

Stillness to Listen

"May we find a little stillness- a place for rest & daydreaming, a time for letting our deepest longing guide us back to our soul desires in those places where we may have wandered a little from who we are in the busyness of life. Of course there are risks in living close to those desires- risk of faillure, risk of fulfillment, risk of living with the fullness & messiness & heart-opening beauty of being human every day. May we find the courage to live a soul-directed life."

Dreams come True

You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.
~Dr. Seuss

Abundance

"One of the most difficult things for us to accept is that beneath all our dreams and disappointments, we live and breathe in abundance.  It is hard when in pain to believe that all we ever need is before us, around us, within us.  And yet it is true.

The humble challenge of being  human is not in agreeing or disputing this truth.  Our humble way, if we can open it, is to root ourselves beneath the thousand dreams and excuses that keep us from the ground we walk.  Time and again, we are asked to outlast what we want and hope for, in order to see what's there.  It is enough."  Mark Nepo

Suffering

"Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering."
~Don Miguel Ruiz

Hanneli's Wish

"May the integrity of Peace and Truth be celebrated.  May love and courage shine in your heart stronger than ever, and may you find within you the light of a thousand suns to blaze through whatever challenges you face in times ahead.

May you meet the suffering of the world with compassion, both for yourself and for others.

May you shatter your self-imposed limitations with fierce honesty and persistent love.

May you invite the demons to show their faces with the confidence of your inner strength, knowing there is no darkness you cannot face with love in your heart.   May you find yourself in many unexpected fields of wild flowers and circles of compassionate friends.  May you share laughter and tears with openness and freedom. 

May we recognize the heart of ourselves in the eyes of each we meet. 

May you follow your aspirations, your heart and your dreams more fully than ever before.   When you feel awkward, know you are walking your own edge and growth and healing are also present.  Deep breath....

Dreams

‎"Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live." Henry David Thoreau

Parenting

THE WAY WINGS SHOULD

What will
our children do in the morning?
Will they wake with their hearts wanting to play,
...the way wings
should?

Will they have dreamed the needed flights and gathered
the strength from the planets that all men and women need to balance
the wonderful charms of
the earth

so that her power and beauty does not make us forget our own?

I know all about the ways of the heart - how it wants to be alive.

Love so needs to love
that it will endure almost anything, even abuse,
just to flicker for a moment. But the sky's mouth is kind,
its song will never hurt you, for I
sing those words.

What will our children do in the morning
if they do not see us
fly?

~ Rumi ~

Risk and Dreams

"But if a person has had the sense of the Call -- the feeling that there's an adventure for him -- and if he doesn't follow that, but remains in the society because it's safe and secure, then life dries up. If you have the guts to follow the risk, however, life opens, opens, opens up all along the line. I feel that if one follows what I call one's "bliss" -- the thing that really gets you deep in your gut and that you feel is your life -- doors will open up. They do! They have in my life and they have in many lives that I know of." ~Joseph Campbell

How Many?

How many people who believe they never dream are sleepwalking in their marriage, in their job, in their church, blindly adhering to ideas they never question, with no heart in what they are doing?"  Marion Woodman

Words Awakening...by "Me"

Sweet, Innocent One
Eyes wide, heart open
Your fragile and growing dream eggs
Gestating
All in one hopeful, well-chosen (or so you thought) basket.

In such a hurry
Born of boredom
And weary of waiting
So much, so long held back
Bursting at the seams of your someday.

What you only see now
Is how many of those dreams
Were lovingly chosen
By well-meaning others.

You filled your plate
Your cup runneth 'ore
You graciously and anxiously accepted
Grateful at last to have found your place.

You busied yourself warming eggs
And unknowingly feeding others hatching baby dreams
Unaware you held inside
Your own embryos of joy
Growing; patiently waiting
Wondering if you'd ever stop long enough to listen.

He was raised as a sheep
At least that is what he was always told
But deep inside the fangs and fur,
Of a wolf were growing
They more suited his spirit and fed the feelings of aliveness he craved.

Told bedtime stories of lives lived happily-ever-after
Grazing on grass
With the guidance and protection of shepherds. 

Sometimes his tongue caught the sharp edge of a canine
Other times he struggled to push down the urge to run free
Way faster than he had been told sheep could run.

It concerned him, but he never quite dare
Untie the string he'd discovered
Holding the cloak of soft, white wool around and over him.


You, were raised as a shepherd girl.
It suited you.
Spending your days tending to others
Occupying your mind with their safety and happiness.
It sort of helped, but inside the little girl longed
To abandon the bonnet
And take off running
Not caring where it took you. 

He picked you as his Shepherd.
Hoping you could make him happy in the rolling hills of green
When wandering and hunting were slowly
Boiling in his blood

Both innocent actors
Playing parts
Wearing costumes
Long ago assigned,
But growing tighter by the day.

Both awaking confused
At yoke-covered whiskers
Your mysteriously closing heart
At the sight of your missing eggs
But afraid to look for explanations
Not wanting....but wanting...the play to end.
After all, sheep don't eat eggs or have whiskers
And Shepherds don't abandon their flock.

Only recently
Through spectacles of hindsight
Have you dared really look back
And stare at the set
That was your life
And compassionately embrace
The broken hearts
The deep, mutual disappointments
The missing eggs
The dissatisfaction of subsiding
On a diet of grass
And living life in one pasture
With only one basket of dreams
Meant to keep it all together

In the end, the curtain descended
The wolf took off the cloak and took the blame
But also deserves the credit.

For in eating your eggs
And life hiding your basket
You were left
Perfectly poised
To take center stage
In the starring role
As yourself. 

Valerie Wilkins Alder 2008

Desires and Dreams of a Woman

"Many women believe that they ARE living their own desires when they choose to be thin, chic, fashionable, sexy- imitating the anorectic muse of our era.   And young mothers may feel that they have chosen, rather than been elected, to be full-time moms.  But these are not free or autonomous choices when they develop from conscious or unconscious desires to be wanted, approved or worthy."  Polly Young-Eisendrath

Courage

"May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more."
John O'Donahue