This quote, often attributed to Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, according to the Goethe Society, is from a man named W. H. Murray:
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!’
Martha Graham offered this brilliant advice–these famous words–when, according to Agnes de Mille: “I was bewildered and worried that my entire scale of values was untrustworthy. … I confessed that I had a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that I could be. Martha said to me, very quietly,
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique.
And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. … No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.” ~Martha Graham
I read the first part of this quote many years ago but it was only recently that I discovered the rest of it. Tonight it really spoke to me–the part of me and so many others I know who struggle with doubts and wonder sometimes why we do what we do and when we will finally feel we have it right.
Here’s to all the artists.
“Chronos is clocks, deadlines, watches, calendars, agendas, planners, schedules, beepers. Chronos is time at her worst. Chronos keeps track. …Chronos is the world’s time.
Kairos is transcendence, infinity, reverence, joy, passion, love, the Sacred. Kairos is intimacy with the Real. Kairos is time at her best. …Kairos is Spirit’s time.
We exist in chronos. We long for kairos. That’s our duality. Chronos requires speed so that it won’t be wasted. Kairos requires space so that it might be savored. We do in chronos. In kairos we’re allowed to be … It takes only a moment to cross over from chronos into kairos, but it does take a moment.
All that kairos asks is our willingness to stop running long enough to hear the music of the spheres.” ~Sarah Ban Breathnach
I’ve been thinking a lot about time, lately. The longer I live the more precious time is to me. When I find myself caught up in a flurry of activity that I know means nothing to me I’ve learned to stop and check in with myself to see how I got there. The next time I won’t be so quick with my yes. Giving myself time to feel into something before I decide makes all the difference in the quality of my life.
It’s taken many decades for me to realize I could change the way I relate to time. I see now that time is my ally, here to serve me, if I allow it. Time creates a framework for experiences; it offers the grace of a supportive structure in which to learn and love one another and make wise choices that allow us to live well.
And with one simple breath I can transcend that structure and experience the expansiveness of Being. That always gets my Yes.
Time, like energy and attention is one of the natural resources with which life blesses everyone. We all have the same amount of each to spend or squander, as we choose. How do you experience your relationship with time? What is time telling you?
Be the Beam
Ride the waves of potential
Feel your passion swelling
Like the ocean at high tide
Raising the energetic waters
From your very depths
Momentum building
Rolling over
Spilling out
Overflowing
In frothy exuberance
Landing at your feet
Sending tingling currents
Of possibility
Crashing against your shore
Pounding on your door
“Here we are
In all our crystalline glory!
Here, at your disposal
In your Presence
At your beckoning
Engage us as you will
Your wish is our command
Your desire turns us on
Play with us
Together we create
Birthing new worlds
The adventure begins
Expressing, expanding
Wave on wave
Breath after breath
Step by step by step”
Engage the possibilities
Ignite your passion
Live your potential
Be the glorious beam
You are
Light In Motion
Copyright (c) 2008-2010 Jodi Flesberg Lilly ~All Rights Reserved
The weather has been dreary here, in Northern California, for weeks now. The sun finally peeked through the overcast sky this afternoon when I wasn’t busy with other things so I grabbed my iPod and my ‘outdoor hoop’ and went out to soak up some of the golden goodness.
Before I knew it I found my rhythm, and got back into my own groove in the only place that really happens for me these days, in the center of the sacred circle of the hoop.
It was only six months ago that I got my first hoop. At the time I had no idea how deeply it would impact my life or that I would discover a passion that makes my whole being beam.
Whenever I feel lost or frustrated or out of sorts these days, I find myself alive and joyful and very well, in the hoop.
We all need a way to get back to the center of who we are. The world pulls so hard and relentlessly that it is easy to lose our bearings. Where do you go and what do you do to find yourself when it’s time to come back to yourself? What is it that makes your heart and spirit sing? What brings you blissfully awake and alert and alive?
The idea that one can breathe Love has intrigued me from the first time I heard about Breath of LOVE. I wasn’t sure what it meant then but now I know first hand that it is the real deal. Did you know that you can stop a cycle of obsessive thinking or worrying and essentially reset your brain with a two-minute breathing exercise? Or that you can collapse the emotional charge on a memory and free up that energy for use in other ways, even after decades, in about an hour?
People make fascinating discoveries about themselves with each new layer of memory we process using the Breath of LOVE technique. Breakthroughs happen quickly and before they know it the original memory has shifted so much that the intense emotional charge is gone. In its place they find peace of mind and neutrality about what happened in that memory, for the first time. They begin to see the situation with new, more compassionate eyes for themselves and the others who were part of that memory.
Here’s what one of my clients had to say about her session:
Have you ever found acceptance or given forgiveness only to experience the emotional pain rear up and rejuvenate a memory you’d rather never relive? Working with the Breath of LOVE method is like dropping a pebble in a reflection pool of your mind – the waves of energy dissipate the reflection – in this case the reflection of a painful, charged memory. Whether collecting the dust of time or suppressed, locked in a chest – carrying weighted memories takes up space and creates side effects in the life you desire. Jodi, Breath of LOVE Practitioner and intuitive guide, has been able to help me move through life-transitioning memories which have impacted my vision and walk through life. In my experience, it felt like shrugging off a lead shawl that I have carried with me so long, it feels like it has always been there.
My last session ended with the urge to smile as healing tears of release pooled over the rim of my eye lashes. I have witnessed no medication as powerful as one’s own innate healing breath. Jodi is a gifted spiritual healer with the intuitive power to assist others in connecting with their own natural-potential healer. Open your mind and breathe!
Kelly
Love, love, love… With Valentine’s Day coming soon, I think of February as the month of Love. Take a deep breath. Breathe in Love. Let Love fill your lungs and stir your soul. That’s something you can do right this minute. You can do it any time you need a little reminder about who you really are. Let love bathe your cells and remind you what really matters. Just breathe. No appointment necessary. Breathe Love. Love yourself. Love your life.
I wrote the first passage in October 2008 on a call with a group of women writers with whom I have written, off and on, for many years.
My heart has taken command of my life, of late. After years of being ignored and pushed aside like a nagging, insistent child by a mother who is too busy to listen to one more word, my heart is having her say.
“Stop!” she said. “If you don’t, I will. I’m hurting and sad and angry. Can you feel me now?”
Yes, I feel you. I get the message. It is time to come clean. It is time to let go of all the trappings and mindless, heartless distractions and come home. It is time to sit quietly with you and give you the reins. We both know I’ve always wanted to follow you.
Fear has had his reign; his day in the sun. Now is the time for the heart to shine.
At the time I wrote that, my heart was literally aching and I didn’t know why. I felt my life contracting around me and nothing I did seemed to make any difference. The tide was out, a major cycle in my life was completing and I had no clue how to make it different than it was. Something in me knew though, that my desire to feel more vital and alive would somehow prevail and I would get to the other side. I was aware that a lot of the things I had been doing were not working for me anymore. I also knew that I was the only one who could change it. And since I didn’t know how to move forward I did the only thing I knew to do; I start letting go of the situations and things and ideas that I knew weren’t right for me anymore. I purged and cleaned and purged some more.
Fast forward to March 2009. Someone I know through an online group sent me a link to a site about Sacred Geometry called WISH FOR LOVE. (The WISH FOR LOVE–LOVE is an acronym for Laws Of Vibrational Energy–website has been replaced by the new CORY HERTER website.) I started watching videos of webinars and reading what I could find on the site that explained what it was about. I kept thinking, REALLY? Sacred Geometry can help change a person’s life? REALLY? I joined the WISH FOR LOVE online community and started meeting and reading about the experiences of others who had been using the Sacred G technology. I kept feeling drawn to learn more and experience the effects of using Sacred G for myself.
I started with a couple of cases of Sacred G posters and saw changes in my sleep and dreams immediately. Beyond that, I started to have insights about how to solve problems, my intuition was sharper and answers came more quickly. Before long, I had some undeniable experiences of my own. And my heart stopped aching. And I started to make remarkable discoveries about myself–what was true for me and who I am beyond all the stuff I have or haven’t done or been or had.
It has been almost eleven months since I was introduced to Sacred G and Cory Herter, the brilliant creator of Sacred G Technology. So much has happened in that time it feels like it’s been eleven lifetimes. In a good way. I’m happy to say that my heart does have her say today. I feel more vibrant and alive and truly myself than ever before. I have a phenomenal network of friends, creative projects and work I enjoy, my relationships with those I am closest to have improved and I am finally at home in my own body.
As I mentioned in a previous post, at the beginning of last year the message from my Inner Guidance was that 2009 would be The Year of Miracles. I can say without a doubt that it was indeed a miraculous year. And in 2010 it keeps getting better.
What is your heart telling you?
I’m taking another shot at National Blog Posting Month. February seems the perfect time for it. I’m in the mood to write and it’s a short month.
I love the idea of daily blogging. I have been writing Morning Pages, a la Julia Cameron, every day save two or three for over seven years now. I started writing Morning Pages in October 2002, while living at the beach in Hawaii. We had just realized it was time to leave our island home and head back to California. It was a time of nonstop transition–things had already been shifting rapidly for the past few years and we were facing down yet another major change.
There was nothing external to hold onto so I grabbed a colored pen and retreated into my journal to find refuge from the storm and get my bearings. Morning by morning, one day after the next I sat down to write my three pages, longhand, before I did anything else. When all else failed I could still write. When I had no idea how to put one foot in front of the other anymore, I wrote.
Slowly but surely, and I’m talking years here, a new phase of life began to take form. I forged a new relationship with myself that was reliable. I grew to trust myself by coming back to the page and pouring it all out without censoring or judgment. Over time it became easier to see what was true for me and what I had taken in or taken on that really had nothing to do with me.
My new awareness came not from the writing, alone, though writing has served me well as witness, guide and mirror. The real teacher was Life. Letting go of what wasn’t me and whole-heartedly embracing those things that moved me, like running, dancing, singing, breathing, hooping, spending time with those I Love and living life as it comes, allowed Life to right me.
It isn’t easy to let go, and yet there are times when there is nothing else to do. In the end it is what we are and not what we have that matters. The irony is that the more I have let go, the richer and fuller my life has become. Try it and see for yourself.
Thanks for stopping by. I’m looking forward to the unfolding of this month-long adventure of daily blogging. I have discovered that there is an interesting phenomenon that happens with disciplined writing. New insight and awareness come to light when we reach for more words than we think we have. Stay tuned. And please come back soon.
There is nothing like a few good deep breaths to help a person slow down and relax. I took my first ever CPR Certification class over the weekend and one of the things they recommend doing is having the injured person breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth to help them relax.
I have long been a fan of breathing. I learned many years ago that breathing consciously and deliberately helps in letting go of tension, breaking habits and focusing, to say nothing of the difference it makes in one’s ability to perform physical tasks and exercise.
It was fairly recently, though, that I really began to understand the transformative quality of the breath that enables one to release even the toxic emotions and memories that impact us so deeply they change our sense of who we are and what is possible for us in this life.
Breath of LOVE (acronym for Laws Of Vibrational Energy) is a new technique taught by Cory Herter that makes it possible to pretty much rewrite one’s own history or at least change, in the present, our experience of the past. Breath of LOVE allows a person to release the emotional charge of traumatic or disturbing memories so the experience can be integrated and the person is free of the weight of that experience and the behavior patterns that were developed as a result.
I have been asked by several people about the wisdom of letting go of these old, painful memories, after all, they say, don’t we need to remember those things to make sure we don’t forget what we learned from them? The answer is no, no, no. Once a memory has been processed and integrated the experience becomes part of who you are rather than something that happened to you. As a result, you have a piece of wisdom networked into your being that was previously sitting, unresolved in the subconscious. Once we face those things that happened and breathe through the layers of the experience we begin to make connections we were not aware of before. Insights surface about ourselves and others in the experience and we begin to see how other experiences are related. When the memory has been fully processed we come to a new awareness about ourselves and our life.
The breath is a transformational power tool. Most of us just haven’t understood how to use it for our transformational healing. Breath of LOVE makes it possible to literally ‘change your mind’ and lighten up in about an hour.
I have had a nagging feeling there was more to say about 2010 being a year of magic so I looked up the journal entry I wrote on the morning of New Year’s Day when I first posed the question:
So what about this fresh new year?
This is the year of Magic. The year in which old rules are broken and new possibilities are realized. A year in which I (you) learn to command energy and create transformation and inspiration follows fast on the heels of it.
This is a year in which dreams are realized, changes happen swiftly and beautifully and that which was once thought to be miraculous becomes commonplace.
This is an extraordinary year being born right now. A year in which empowerment is understood and wisdom prevails.
There is much that will take place in these first three months as the pieces move and a new design is created. The picture will change in a way that will awe and delight you.
I am already seeing evidence of magic manifesting in my life–the picture changes daily in ways that truly amaze me and boggle my mind. Life is good. Have you noticed?
Thank you for taking the time to stop by. I’d love to hear your thoughts on magic or hear about how it is playing out in your life. Enjoy!
