sábado, 30 de julho de 2011

Invitation


I found this poem today and I felt like posting it here. I invite you and myself, you and all of us to find or discover this place within us. Let’s invite ourselves and accept our own invitation. Let’s accept life’s invitations to be better each day, to see beauty within and all around us. The invitation to be and to express love.

The Invitation by Oriah
http://www.oriahmountaindreamer.com/

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.


It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.


It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.


I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.


I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.


It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.

I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.


I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.


I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”


It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
 I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.


It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.


It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.


I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.


By Oriah © Mountain Dreaming,
from the book The Invitation
published by HarperONE, San Francisco,
1999 All rights reserved

sábado, 23 de julho de 2011

“Recipes”


I have no recipes. There are no recipes, though there are plenty of recipes out there because in fact people do need tools. So you can observe that every webseminar, everything, every book always end with a recipe, a “how to”. It’s funny that they tell you not to worry about the how, but everyone is in search of the how: “how do I become happier, how do I find happinnes, the perfect love, become rich”. There is nothing wrong with that per se. I too have looked for the how. I too am still in search of how, I must admit. Sometimes we feel so tangled up in our emotions and we want to know: “How do I get out of this mess”? I think we don’t “get out” of anything. We are transformed with and by it.  We experience. But how do I see, experience and live love? Well, according to Neale Donald Walsch it is by giving it to others, by being the source. So, this blog is my way of experiencing “the recipe” by writing my way of living through the chaos, through the healing process, going in my spiritual process. This blog is to post my insights, my discoveries and my hopes. Thanks for reading and for being (t)here.

The Daily spiritual path


I am on a Spiritual quest. I recognize I am impatient. I feel impatient because I think I´m not getting it yet. “What am I not getting”? I ask. “How can I get it?” I beg. “why am not getting it?”  “what am doing wrong?” – all of these are from a place of lack, of impatience, like the story below posted in Paulo Coelho's column shows:http://g1.globo.com/platb/paulocoelho/

Sem resultados

O místico Ramakrishna começou a dedicar-se à vida espiritual desde dezesseis anos. No começo, chorava amargamente por não conseguir nenhum resultado – apesar de sua dedicação ao trabalho no templo.
Explicando mais tarde esta etapa de sua vida, ele disse:
-Se um ladrão passasse a noite em uma sala, com apenas uma parede fina separando-o de um quarto cheio de ouro, ele conseguiria dormir? Ficaria acordado a noite inteira, arquitetando planos. Quando eu era jovem, desejava Deus mais ardentemente do que o ladrão desejaria aquele ouro, e me custou muito a aprender a maior virtude da busca espiritual: a paciência.” (http://g1.globo.com/platb/paulocoelho/)
Translation

No results

The mystic Ramakrishna started to dedicate himself to spiritual life since he was 16. In the beginning, he would cry a lot for not being able to get any result – despite his dedication to work in the temple. Later on, explaining this phase of his life, he said:
-If a thief spent the night in a room, with a thin wall separating him from a room full of gold, could he sleep? You would stay awake the whole night, archicteturing plans. When I was young, I desired God more ardently than the thief desired that gold and it cost me a lot to learn the greatest virtue of spiritual search: patience”.

Reading this story prompted me to write this message because it a message of my Higher 
Self  to myself.  A message of patience in my Spiritual Quest. Yes, I am in one (I guess we all are, even if we are not conscious of it. Maybe I am conscious of it now). But in my impatience, I have forgotten some things. And in writing this post, I am reminded of the following:
1)    First, there is nothing to “GET”. We don’t need to “get it”. You live, you love, you flow. So, in that sense, I am living, I am flowing (even if it is in tiniest (are they really tiniest?) moments like this, writing this message. This is flow. And I am loving, because I am sharing this first with my self (my Higher Self) and with others. So there is nothing to complain about.
2)   Second, there is no hurry. The path is the journey. The destination is the journey. As someone said, spiritual path is everyday with yourself and others and the universe: being kind, patient and gentle. Offering love. Being patient. As Mahendra Trivedi said: “no bull, just living”. Sometimes I think I complicate too much. Too many techniques, too many strategies. “do this, do that”. I get to remind myself: “NO bull, just living”. I must confess,  this is easier said than done. But that is part of the path. That is part of the journey of the Spiritual Path.

Today, let’s practice patience towards ourselves first. Let’s just be patient and kindly tell ourselves: “there’s is nothing to GET. Only live, love, learn and flow.” Serenity, acceptance. Practice those and flow. And fly.

Messages from my Higher Self to follow my Voice


The UNIVERSE IS ON MY SIDE. Today, when I decided to honor my heart voice and to start this blog, I got all these messages from my Spiritual Guides mailing lists: from Thoughts Become Things ©, Neale Donald Walsch, Wess and the Daily Love. All of them gave me different messages: follow my passion; dream big, be grateful before it happens, do the big things first, and no excuses, no holding back. Just start!

Follow your passion:
From the Passion test: "Passion will draw you irresistibly along the path of your destiny.  It connects you with the most profound part of your own nature. When you are aligned with your passions, you will feel expanded, open, turned on."  - from The Passion Test

Dream BIG: from Notes of the Universe:
Believe what you want. Give yourself permission, and don't be afraid to go BIG. (TUT ©)
Yay!!!!! I’m giving myself permission.

Be grateful before it happens: from Neale Donald Walsch’s newsletter
On this day of your life, I believe God wants you to know...
...that gratitude in advance is the most powerful creative
force in the universe. 

Most people do not know this, yet it is true. Expressing thankfulness in advance is the way of all Masters. So do not wait for a thing to happen and then give thanks.
Give thanks before it happens, and watch energies swirl!
To thank God before something occurs is an act of
extraordinary faith. And that, of course, is where the
power comes from.

I am thankful for my book, for my blog, for all the comments people will post on, for the inspiration it may give to people, for the doors it will open, for the resonance, coincidences, serendipity, love, flow, magic, and dreams that come true!!!

Do the BIG things first: From Gratitude Newsletter  
by Wes Hopper(http://www.dailygratitude.com/)
 
"Efficiency is doing things right;effectiveness is doing the right things."

            Peter Drucker

If you're like most people, you have more than one thing to do. You have a bunch of
 little, easy things and you have a couple of big, complicated things.
It's so easy to fall into the habit of doing the little things first. You can convince
 yourself that it'll only take a short time and you can get those little things out
of the way.

 And at the end of the day, what have you gotten done? A few little things, and no big things.

Next day, same thing. So when are you going to get the big, important stuff done?

There's always going to be lots more little things.  Brian Tracy wrote a book about
this called "Eat That Frog!" His point is that the big important tasks HAVE to be done first!
 
He says that if the first thing you do in the morning is eat a big raw frog, the rest of the day will be easy!

When I remember this, I get stuff done. When I forget it, I get to the end of 
the day with the frog still sitting there.  It feels really good to get stuff done. 
So eat the frog.   

Just Start! No excuses, no holding back:

TheDailyLove (TDL # #TDL : 07/21/11 How To Rise Above Your Circumstances‏

One of my daily sources of inspiration

http://thedailylove.com/

Your Circumstances Aren’t Holding You Back, Your Excuses Are

by Mastin Kipp on July 21, 2011
More often than not it's the excuse rather than the circumstance that holds us back.
We love to talk about all the reasons why we can't do something. I don't have enough money, time, energy, education, vision, talent, etc. We tell ourselves these things over and over again and the truth is that our stories about why we can't have something become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It's true, if you don't MAKE TIME, you won't have enough.

If you think that it takes a TON of money to start taking action towards your dream, then you won't start.
If you think you need the seal of approval from a fancy school before you can start, then you won't.
Unless you want to be a doctor, astronaut or dentist, chances are you don't need the perfect education to start.
How many billionaires are college dropouts? Many of them didn't even go to high school.
Success in life doesn't come from collecting outer seals of approval from other people and institutions. It comes from our own inner seal of approval and recognizing we already have the approval of The Uni-verse.
You don't need that much money to get started. I have been writing TDL for years and with almost zero investment. I didn't have to raise hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. I didn't need to mortgage anything. I didn't need the perfect marketing plan or social media strategy. I just started and I write every day.
My first email in 2007 was sent to 20 people. Now emails go out to over 60,000 people daily. My first tweet was sent to nobody, now the tweets reach almost 500,000 people daily.
I feel deeply that the Uni-verse doesn't reward us with things by giving us the money and perfect amount of time first. Rather, we are rewarded for the things we would do for free and make time for anyways.
That is what we are really passionate about. When it doesn't matter if we get paid or not, we know we are following our bliss.
So realize that it is truly the excuses that are holding you back. You can take a small step today - and one more tomorrow and one more the next day. When we rid ourselves of the excuses, we are then faced with the only option: taking action. And taking action brings up our fears, so we must consciously plan on acting in the face of our fears and letting our excuses go.
Your circumstances are not holding you back, your excuses are. Let's drop our excuses, face our fears and take one step today.

So, you see that this is living proof that when you give the first step towards your passion, your dreams, your Heart Voice, the Universe hushes to shower you with hints, clues and messages pushing you forward. All these messages I got had the same theme: start, just do it, be grateful, move, ACT. I have difficulty acting. I usually am a dreamer, Need to work on the act side. So, thank you Universe for all these wonderful messages. I am following my passion, I am dreaming BIG, I am doing the BIG things first, I am grateful before it happens, and I have just STARTED!!!!

What about you? What are your passions? What is preventing you from following them? What big steps can you take today to start? Let me know. Post your comments here.