Seize the Struggle and Step Into Spirit

My journey on my mat yesterday was a beautiful experience of self-love and compassion.  I went on an intuition that my body needed a little tlc after my accident and yet a little cautious for the awareness of an injured shoulder and arm.  I committed to myself to find child’s pose as much as any area of my body needed the rest of me to be there.  I listened sweetly to my shoulder as it told me “yes, go ahead and raise me during this sun-salutation or no, don’t raise me here.”  I was able to do most of the poses and those that I wasn’t I found a sweet love with and of myself that is really quite endearing.  I’ve heard some of the best yoga teachers talk about how it is so much more respectable to listen to your body on each respective day and find the modified pose or even child’s pose if you need it at anytime during a class.  My experience and I think most people would resonate with being bullied by the loud taunting of the ego saying, “you can’t go into child’s pose now…. Childs pose is for wussies…. Just push it a little harder and then you can walk away from class feeling like you did it, like you are enough!!!” Not so, little ego, not so…  Indeed, there are times when I will be flying into side crow with finesse and ease and there are times where I have the right to, and will, chose not even to spread my arms in a twisted chair pose.  This is so true of life…. Some days we have more energy and vitality than others.  Some days we are blissed out to find ourselves perfectly in the flow of life, in that sweet spot where everything seems to be unfolding sweetly and without effort.  It would be great if we lived from this place every day and certainly as we grow in our spirituality through our yoga, the program and other spiritual avenues we will find ourselves inhabiting that sweet spot-flow-state more often but there are bound to be days where we are just a little left of center and there seems to be a challenge, sometimes even a “full-court press” of stress and struggle.  But, if like yesterday, I can find it in me to bypass my ego and take care of myself better than anyone else could, I find I bond and grow in love and strength and bypass the ego-based struggle into the realm of the Spirit. From this place my Spirit grows as the director of my life and I as a spiritual being having a human experience expand in my power and grace on the planet.  My consciousness and energetic vibration is raised in moments like this.  So seize these moments of struggle as huge opportunities for expansion and sink in and listen….listen for that intuitive voice within which whispers it’s guidance to you.  Listen and follow through no matter what.  The person next to you may be flying the most beautiful side-crow of her life and GOOD FOR HER!  Today is her day to fly.  Today is then your day to celebrate her success and celebrate the success of your Spirit over your ego by NOT FLYING TODAY.  Some days we are in training and some days we are in triumph.  Accept and be honest about your point of evolution in any moment and heaven will begin to have it’s way with you :-)!  Love Out Sober yogis!

What Can I Glean from Crashing and Burning

On my way to chair a meeting and before a long day of planned goodness of meditation, yoga and x-games, life happened yesterday morning.  I hit a patch of ice and crashed my 4runner hard into a barrier on my way to work yesterday morning.  I spent the day shaken up and was swimming in a pot of mixed emotion throughout the day.  After some much needed rest I awake with a little more clarity in my soul as to what is important in my life.  I wake with an invigoration and a drive to move forward in some areas of my life that I have been in contemplation around.  In this very moment Spirit is whispering inside of me, “be invigorated and inspired but continue to be patient…. Always wait on the flow of Spirit.”  It’s like a ski turn or the transition in a yoga pose…. Wait…. Just wait that extra second or two, allow the breath, the natural flow of life to carry you, to drive you, to move you.  It’s so often for me that when I feel pregnant with something that is about to unfold in my life, I jump the gun and often go running off in the wrong direction.  So, with my vigor and my inspiration I will just show up for today with a sense of awe and ease and a little anticipation for what is being birthed in my life, in my sobriety, through this accident, in my relationships, as my ministry, my home, my activity….. everything…. I give it to God…. and although there is a strong impulse in the light of yesterdays events to take the reigns, I will not.  I will not be driven by my ego, by my pride, by my fear…. I will be motivated to be even more available to the natural flow of prosperity and freedom and abundance but I will not be fooled by myself into thinking that I, of myself, can control my way through this.  I turn my ENTIRE life to the care of such sweet goodness, to such love.  I pray that I get out of my own way and allow myself to be so loved by the Universe that the highest potential for my entire life unfolds with ease and grace.  I release the need to detour, to deter, to defer, to trek off my highest path to gain little gifts.  No, I do not believe in poverty, lack, limitation.  I believe in the ever present Life force and it’s complete action and inspiration in my life.  I step out of the way and as Michael Beckwith says, I let the God times roll.  I am blessed, I am guided, I am supported, I am free to be 100% clear in every area of my life.  In Love and Light.

Alleviating the Same Ol' Thought Patterns

Beginning step three again last night was not quite the experience I had expected based on prior work with the third step.  “Becoming willing to turn our will and our life over to the care of God, as we understand God,(3^rd step of AA.)” means I need to examine the areas of my personal willfulness and “growing edges” as I call them or character defects as the program would call them.  Essentially this version of working the third step begins with examining what is blocking us from turning our entire will and life over to the care of The Divine and therefore the powerful and intimate connection, faith in and love of the purest possible connection with God.  My sense of people who are powerfully connected to source is a heart centered life, a relaxed and joyful attitude and a calm and ease that is so tangible.  The more I journey with this the more I recognize the tendency of so many people to live in their heads.  I think our mind, unless used simply as a tool or awareness or avenue of the hearts creation, is the place of much of the blockage that is the action self will, it is the action of the ego.  This leads then to the clarifying point that self will is ego and God’s will is that which is Infinite and Divine but lives at the center of us and is the very nature of who and what we are.  When this life within us finds it’s expression than the glory of God is born through us.  Funny then that we grip to our mind, to our ego, to our intellect, to our humor, to repeat and regurgitate who we think we are, blocking then the spontaneous movement of Goodness through us…. Something authentic and pure in the moment.  This repeat of old thought patterns which keeps us the same is the triumph of our ego, it is stagnancy and therefore the very experience of hell in our lives.  So, why then wouldn’t you drink to alleviate the boredom of sameness that we strive so hard to keep in our life.  The point of sobriety is to unleash the wildfire of the soul, for the natural excitement of life to take way and to show us things we never dreamed of seeing, it is to get to the pure unabated joy that is always waiting at the center of our soul to be set free!  So, stick with it today and set it free my friend.  If the unleashing isn’t quite happening yet, believe me, it will.  Intend to be in your heart.  Intend to breathe deeply into that space and to know it as your guide and your creator and the trip that you are in for is better than any you’ve taken by way of a chemical…. I promise you this. 

Two Parts to Step Two.....

Peaceful, inspired and in serious need of yoga class after a double eject out of my ski’s while zipping down the mountain at mach 12 yesterday.  Due to the flat light I didn’t see the giant divit which when I cam barreling through, stripped me of my ski’s.  My humerus and deep in my upper right arm are aching, but like a kid again I have a tinge of pride for surviving an accident like this.  After a few moments of lying in the snow and the time it took to re-gain a somewhat normal breathing pattern, a belly roar came from the center of the Universe and up through my smile.  Beginners mind and feeling humbled and yet safe is such a sweet spot.  I accept mis-haps like these where I am simply “going for it” in life and “stuff happens.”  This is much unlike the crazy succession of misnomers that used to occur in my using days.  I wouldn’t go ski a lap back straight over that same divit knowing that was there – because, well, that would be insane.  Hmmm, this brings me to insanity a very crucial component of the second step.  For most, the second step(which is came to believe in a power greater than ourselves that could restore us to sanity) is about coming to believe in a power greater than ourselves, well as a spiritual life coach and a minister in the making accepting that there is something Infinitely greater than I, was not the issue.  Recognizing the insnity however, was.  I metaphorically skid through the same divit only to have a worse “double eject” every single time, hurting myself more, every single time.  When I knew that drinking would lead me to drugs through consistent painful research, I would drink again and again I would do drugs and again I would feel the incrompehensible shame, demoralization, degradation, downfall and just when I would crawl out of the hole that I dug so well with my using I would almost systematically ski straight for the substance divit.  This is my definition of insanity for myself and my own life and thank God for today I have a beautiful reprieve from the insanity of my disease which lies to me and tells me that it would somehow be different.  I am sane today and it works brilliantly.

I am blessed beyond imaginings with beautiful friends, prosperity, opportunity, increasing clarity, love, accountability, joy, freedom and an overall sense of well-being.  Stick with your sobriety, examine with me this morning the insanity of our behavior patterns when we drink.  If this doesn’t clarify the goodness of our choice to be sober today, I’m not sure what will J  So much love and joy to you this day as you embark on another beautiful day of sobriety.

Surrender to Serving Love, to Serving the Whole

Becoming One, Becoming Aligned through Surrender to that Life that is so much bigger than I am, are the action and the state of Being that at my deepest layer, I am seeking.  I surrender to Infinite life at the center of my life and all Life this morning.  I surrender my thoughts, desires, ideas, designs, any focus that is not here in this moment.  I surrender to the orchestration of The Divine whom I have come to Trust deeply and implicitly.  That Power whom I know that I may only begin to sense the most miniscule version of it’s majesty and power – that life which knows all and is everywhere present and is so intelligent that it is now in this very moment orchestrating your good and my good and everyone else’s good at the very same time.  I surrender my mind and my ego for the fullness of my heart and my soul.  I surrender my fear and my planning for the evolution and revelation of my purpose on this planet.  I surrender knowing that all of my needs are met and that the very longing at the center of my soul to be in full expression in every area of my life is that very life whispering it’s plans to me.  I surrender knowing that my dream states and my waking states are part of one life and that to be more attached or faithful in one over another is naivite in action.  I surrender those thoughts, ideas and feelings which are attached to the past and no longer serve the newest evolution of my soul.  I turn everything, every area of my life to the care of God.  My actions are the natural creative propulsion within me and I am moving forward in clean and clear ways as the life of Good unfolds as me.  There is no separation or belief which can hinder my full development and growth, any longer.  IN this moment of full surrender now, I am fully available to Divinity and all of it’s ways.  I am free.  I am free to be a wave in the ocean of life who is identified with the whole and not with self, identified with the ocean and not the wave.  I am free to live the bliss of being on purpose and on fire while remaining grounded and true. 

This morning I am fully steeped in the first, second and third steps of the program.  I surrender to this power I have come to believe is good beyond my wildest imaginings.  I surrender to the Light within and set it free to shine brightly in the world.  I say yes to a life that is good beyond my wildest imaginings and become fully present to the gifts of each moment throughout this day.  I surrender and ask, how can I be of service?  This is an act of love through me…. how can you serve love this day?

I Remind Myself, Don't Let the Celebration Take Me From the Work

As I sit here looking out my window at the picturesque view of Aspen Mountain, I can’t help but be overwhelmed with gratitude.  I have had so much fun skiing and playing with a few friends that come to town every year at this time.  Last year at this time I had just begin a horrific relapse and showed up for one night of seven that I had intended to be with my friends.  I partied so hard that first night and felt so terrible about myself that I ditched my plans for the rest of the week and tried to began again, recovery mode.  I wasn’t ready to be completely successful yet but rest assured within a few months, I began this period of sobriety.

Thanks to the incredible Grace of God, this year has a much different overtone for me and although the events and people are much the same, I am having a completely different experience- one of tranquility and celebration.  Last night, I walked home a little earlier than the rest of the crew and, as I think about that I realize that I truly am learning to set my own parameters based on what is healthy and good in my life.  I realize that there is a bridge between myself and my friends that is beautiful and sweet and allows us to play together from very different points in our respective lives.  I am finally playing a note in this particular score that fits snugly in the orchestration of this beautiful time.  I feel grounded and powerful and yet humble and true.  These are the gifts of sobriety and as many old timers like to say, don’t let the gifts of sobriety take away the gift of sobriety.  I have done that before coming to a false sense of self and thinking that somehow I had something to do with all of the good things flowing into my life.   What happened?  I went right back out heavens door into the hell of addiction.  I have grown to realize this time that I am fully steeped in the gifts of sobriety and the energy of life is coursing through my veins – the vision of my life is full, bountiful and pressing through my every cell…. So much so that I have not slept well in quite some time now.  But hey, if it’s the vision for my life that is energizing my mind, my heart, my thoughts so much that I can’t sleep…. I am grateful.  This is a stark contrast to the chemicals that used to swim through my body sucking every ounce of life energy of confidence of hope from me and leave me twirling and swirling in a stagnant world of self-loathing and negativity.  You may notice that I continuously work this first step because it is so important that I stay connected to my powerlessness and remember.  I am currently working with my sponsor on The Hazelden packets and we have started again on step 1 – writing and writing on powerlessness and unmanageability.  I have worked the program several times in my past but never with a true admission of powerlessness and unmanageability.  Coincidentally this is the first time that the obsession to use or drink has truly been lifted- praise be to God. To be honest, in earlier attempts at sobriety, I wasn’t working either of the two parts of step 1.  I couldn’t admit powerlessness but for the wee hours of a wretched hangover and unmanageability well… because my families life had always been unmanageable I wasn’t really able to relate to a baseline of manageability.  I am exploring the second part of this first step and grateful to have a sponsor and support system to remind me to continue to put my sobriety first. 

This is a profound and dynamic journey that really does get so much better the further you go.  The further we go, the less we know and the less we know the more sweet is our spot in the Universe.  Love and Blessings to you J

A Great Legacy Lives Forever, What's the Legacy You're Designing

I am proud to be alive today in this way.  I am proud to be Wilder Dwight’s sister today.  I am proud to be sober today.  I am proud to be a yogi today.  I am proud to be a friend today.  I am proud in the most non-egotistical way.  I am proud in the way that it is the natural joy of Spirit bubbling up in me.  I am joy in the way that I am grateful for it all.  I am grateful in the way that I am connected to it all.  I am connected to it all in the way that I am steeped in compassion for it all.  I am experiencing Unity and Presence.  The dedication to my spiritual practice is palpable on mornings like this when every cell in my body feels A’light.  I am genuinely happy and so very grateful to be alive.  I am so grateful that I didn’t have every glass of wine that I might have had.  I am so grateful for every moment that was not wasted in self-pity, self-seeking motives.  I am grateful that every moment that has stretched and challenged me, did not break me.  I am grateful that my progress has been built on something solid and that it continues in a forward moving direction – my growth is on the trajectory of my highest potential and it has nothing to do with me.  It has all to do with a spiritual life, applying the principles, walking through the challenges(most often hand in hand with others.), staying the course and being present.  I am inspired by my brothers legacy which was one of being at one.  He had this incredible ability to drop the mind and live from the heart.  From the heart he exemplified passion for the moment, for the person standing in front of him, for skiing, for life.  At 10 years old he got my sister who was 11 at the time out of bed in Florida and took her down to the beach to see the full moon.  He knew something about life that most people don’t and through my preparation to speak tonight at his banquet and my own spiritual growth and being witness to the incredible legacy and life energy that still lives 20 something years later, it occurred to me that if everyone lived the way Wilder did, there would be no reason to seek fulfillment from the outside in, life would indeed be the natural out-picturing of our inherent Joy that is within all of us.  Perhaps I am bubbling with a little bit of Wilder today.  Access to this state of grace today would be impossible without my sobriety and there are far too many angels to count who contribute to my sobriety and therefore this heaven that I am experiencing on earth.  What legacy are you leaving as you move through this world?  May Love burst forth from the center of your soul today. 

In Memory of Wilder I Pursue My Dreams

As I prepare myself to speak at the my brother’s memorial ski race banquet tomorrow evening – I am reminded of how truly precious the gift of life is.  Wilder was tagged by the countries greatest professinal skiers and coaches as the next great Olympic skier.  He was skiing in the junior Olympics by the time he was 10.  He had incredible potential that in some peoples perspectives, went unrealized.  I think this is a similar perspective of my father - so much potential and yet, he crashed and burned out before the triumphant part of his life.  This could have been me too - so much potential and yet, the disease almost took me too.  You see, I come from a family of people who all have this incredible potential and the natural propensity to succeed but something or other kept taking us down.  But as I re-read the articles in the Aspen Times that were written immediately after my brothers skiing incident, I find an incredible gateway to compassion and empathy for my family.  In just a few moments I drew a quick line from that point in time to this moment now and all that has occurred in my family and where we stand today.  I realize that Wilder’s death propelled addiction and our lives were essentially dictated by the chaos of addiction for the last 20 + years.  Mind you, there is the most intense and beautiful love in my family and I would not trade my family or the events of my life for anything else in this world – in fact, I believe I chose to know life through the window of death in my immediate family – my brother and my father’s suicide which I have come to understand was actually caused by this disease.  This was the rich soil for the maximum growth of my soul and I love my family dearly.

I had this moment of deep clarity this afternoon where I realized that truly by the grace of God which has given me my sobriety, I am living my potential.  I am living a balanced life that has a wonderful vision that IS emerging.  My dreams are no longer “pipe dreams” I used to talk about from a bar stool.  They are no longer at risk of destruction from my next binge and missed appointment, three days in bed, self loathing, feelings of suicide or any other manifestation of my diseases desire for me to be dead.  My dreams are no longer in jeopardy because for today, my disease is in remission.  My father died of this disease and this disease affects my family in countless other ways, even to this day.  But today, for me, I am free to go and speak on my brothers behalf – on my families behalf.  I am free to be the conduit of my bothers spirit tomorrow and to inspire the racers and their families with insight into Wilder’s Oneness with all of life.  He was one with his skis, one with the mountain, one with his peers, one with his race, one with his family.  Wilder had this incredible ability to be at One.  At-one-ment.  Atonement…. Perhaps he was an ascended master who came for a short time to exemplify Oneness, At-One-ment.  Atonement.  Either way, the number of ways that this experience is a gift, a reminder, and the kind of experience that shifts my perspective to to a perception of Truth… to remembering what truly matters in life.  It matters that I am sober today and that I stand for what I believe in without being rigid and righteous.  What matters is that I am seeking the same natural happiness that you are and that I am free to be happy and to support your happiness.  I am proud to share my brothers Light and Legacy tomorrow and know that this is only occurring because of my sobriety.  I am grateful to be sober and on track.  All Praise and Thanks to that Presence which lives in all of life, that I call God.  In memory and honor of my brother I pursue my dreams with a new vigor and a deepened inspiration.  I love you Wildman!

Be Elevated By The Flow Which is Birthed in the Silence

There is an incredible elevation in my soul.  I am learning to embody a greater presence in the moment.  I am learning even new layers of being here now.  I am opening my eyes to the gifts that are all around me, in me and through me in their fullness.  Did they just appear this morning?  I believe they are here in their fullness every moment of every day.  It seems as though I opened my energetic eyes to feel, sense and perceive greater truth in this moment.  Last night as I was taking the bus home, I looked up to a night sky full of stars and it felt as if they were wrapping themselves around me as if to give me a personal hug from the One.  Jack Johnson has a song with a line that I love that says “there were so many fewer questions when stars were still just the holes to heaven.”  Simplicity is the operative in the principle that Jack is describing.  In using, drinking and life we decorate what was always and already perfect with flavors and tints of energies that may have felt fun at first but somewhere become exactly the opposite of what they were intended to be – they become dampers on the true nature of life.  It takes a while in sobriety for the physical body to re-stabilize to have balance and harmony in it’s energy and connection to Source as something that feels connected and charged.  For me, someone who loved to use things that made me feel as if I was going faster, had more energy to do more things in less time, it took a while to sink into the true flow and pace of life.  This is not the pace that Americans have conditioned us to believe in.  I am simply talking about the true and natural flow of my life.  You have one too.  Finding it is a beautiful journey.  In some ways you have to decide “no” that is not pace.  No, drugs and alcohol were not pace.  No it is not my pace to work 9-5, 5 days a week – somebody else made that timing up based on a lack of balance in their own life and a bunch of us have followed.  I chose to work no more than 3 days a week for another company.  I will consistently and constantly be “working” in the realm of the revelation of my great purpose and plan on the panet but that just feels wonderful, natural and energizing anyway so the title of “work” can hardly be placed upon these activities.  Anyway, the point is, dedicate yourself to knowing your flow… to knowing your balance…. To knowing what makes you smile from the inside out…. To a life that is so deeply meaningful…. To that thing within you which has never waivered… that thing you may have put away and put away again because you or someone else told you, you weren’t good enough, that life doesn’t work that way, maybe later.  Forget that buloney and go for it now.  Dive into the flow of your inner soul and let the lotus flower within you, the Christ, the Buddha within you…. Shine.  Let it shine.  In order to know this Truth of yourself, you have got to slow down and get quiet.  Now is the time of your life.  Be here now.  Blessings of Love and Light my friends.

Meditate and Fall In Love

I hear the whisper “Ash, get out of your own way – I’ve got this, every last detail.”  It seems to me that purpose of the steps, yoga, other spiritual practices, is to get out of our own way so that the great goodness of the Universe can have it’s way with us and show us things that we never imagined possible.  The purpose of  being consciously in a relationship with a God of your understanding is to be in awe.  If you aren’t in awe that you need a bigger God.  God is as Big as you can perceive it to be.  God is Infinite so even the most evolved person is only sensing Infinity.  Wow!  Infinity – ponder that for a few moments and be prepared to have your hat blown off.  Seriously – sit quietly with yourself and look for the gap between your thoughts and there you will find God.  Thoughts can certainly be beautiful and sometimes even inspired.  But most often thoughts are regurgitated patterns of old.  In sobriety and in life we are truly seeking newness – the spontaneous movement of Spirit as creativity, freedom, flow, joy, truth, inspiration.  We must become present in the moment to experience the heaven of the spontaneous movement of Spirit in the moment.  Attachment to past or future keeps us from a full availability to the heaven of this moment.  All of the great Spiritual icons of the ages speak to the importance of meditation – of becoming still.  Often we say “Be Still and Know…., Be still and know…..  Be still and truly know that the I AM of your soul IS God!”  Wow, ponder that…. A God that is within you and all around you at the same time.  Ponder a God that loves you into Infinity – A God that Loves you more than everyone who has ever loved you in any moment of your life, put together, times a million… times infinity.  That is the Love of a Higher Power that I am talking about.  In fact, every moment that you have ever felt love from another or a hug from a starry night sky, that was God seeking yet another way to make you feel It’s Love.  Get quiet and ponder a God that Loves you and is Loving you right now, in this very moment.  It never leaves you and never forgets to Love you.  It is the very Love that You are.

Intend to Know Your Heart

One of the things that I love about sobriety is we start to get involved in dreaming about a beautiful future for ourselves.  And, what I am learning is that “the future, is no place to be(Dave Mathews Band.)”  There is a fine line between taking the time to set goals, dream and plan for the future and becoming centered in the future.  The key in sobriety and in life is to stay centered in the day and still have a dynamic and beautiful growing vision for the future.  There is a stark difference between our “small designs and plans(big book) and our Higher Power’s vision for our life.  One indicator is where in your body you are feeling your vision.  If it is in your head and before long it is making you crazy trying to figure out how you(yourself) are going to make it happen – forget about it…. This is surely a part of your small plans and designs.  If the vision feels like it is rising from the base of your belly or your heart and it feels bigger than life and it is informing you with inspirations and ideas beyond your wildest imaginings – then you know you have tapped into the vision for your life.  If none of this is making any sense at all then please sit down and ask your HP directly – what is your idea of my life?  It will reveal the answers to you through feelings, through images, even through smells, tastes and sounds in some cases…. It will reveal it to you through someone’s word or action, in the quite of your meditation…. It will use every avenue possible to inform you of your life vision.  So begin to ask the question : What is the Divine idea of my life?  What must I become in order to facilitate this vision?  What must I let go of to be in service to the vision for my life?  What gifts, talents and attributes are already in place? ** please note that these questions are a set of questions developed by Michael Beckwith and it is called the Life Visioning Process.  It is an excellent way to works steps 2 and 3 in the program where the idea of God’s will for our life can seem very vague and perhaps even a little daunting.  Also, begin to notice as I mentioned above – where am I feeling this in my body.  If you spend most of your time in your head…. it’s ok and for a lot of us “really smart alcoholics” we love being identified with our intelligence and to live in our mind.  Perhaps we aren’t even aware that there are other energetic centers to live from in our being.  Well, I discovered something on my way – and that is that the heart and intuition are more intelligent and far more powerful than the mind could every be so my suggestion is begin to know your heart.  Simply intend to know your heart.  Begin to hear it’s whisper and begin to allow it to be your guide.  Your life in sobriety will open like a lotus flower and life will begin to taste sweet like you have never imagined.  Blessings of Love and Light to you this day!

A We Program

My Sundays are dedicated to Spiritual Practice.  I love Sundays for this reason.  I love coming to the well to fill up.  So much of life is drawing energy out of us.  So much of life the way it is lived in our society is a head game and whether we like it or not, we are drawn into our heads.  Then when we get home after a long day at work we wonder why we are feeling so squirly.  The best answer for this is that life lived in one’s head is a squirly venture at best…. The heart and the root where Intuition, Love and Wisdom live are the residences of peace, power and freedom within our body.  When I spend a day dedicated to becoming rooted in my heart and addressing and releasing fear, attachment, future focusing, past identifying and become unified and identified with my heart and my intuition, I become calm and free.  I feel like the center of a lake right now…. subtly but powerfully peaceful and free.  This is what often happens in a meeting or on our mats, we drop from the head to the heart.

I have the beautiful opportunity to chair our Friday morning meeting here in town and my experience of community and love a few days ago is still with me.  I asked a dear friend to speak and she spoke on the first step.  She spoke of the paradox in the program to do with powerlessness and becoming powerful – that in order to become powerful we must first admit that we are powerless over alcohol.  For a lot of us, we were fiercely independent in our using – I know I was, at least when it came to “dealing” with something that brought up fear for me.  I am finally just beginning to understand the magnitude of the foundational principle that this program is built upon – one alcoholic helping another – this is the crux of it all - this is a “we” program and the crux of it all.  It’s definitely a journey into unchartered territory to learn to open and share and be vulnerable… even baby steps are great in this area…. but don’t feel bad when you crack one of those soul birthing smiles from the center of your being when you experience the love of a total stranger lifting you out of your darkness with a simple word or a touch.  It’s crazy when you first get sober because we often feel like we don’t deserve anything…. that we don’t deserve love…. and then someone loves us without condition and it is the most unfamiliar and profound gift that an individual can receive…. If you can, open….open…..Open to the “we-ness” of this program.  Allow others in to the best of your ability.  This experience of love is the high we were always looking for – you may not believe it, but it’s true.  Come and get addicted to the good stuff of life – to the love.  Know too that there is always more where that came from but in order to receive, you have got to find ways to give it away.  There is an old adage that what you resist persists and what you give away, you become available to.

Gratitude and Forgiveness

On my facebook page yesterday I invited people to join me in 365 days of gratitude practices.  I am inviting folks to use their daily status updates to make statements of gratitude in their lives.  Gratitude offers shifts in perspective, deepening into the life energy which births more good in our lives, activates the law of attention which states that what you place your attention on you attract more of – so why not attract more of what you are grateful for, and simply elevates us to better lives all around.  Find wasy to practice active gratitude today for your inetions for 2012 are richly supported in the soil of gratitude.  If there is something in the way of you accessing authentic gratitude than deal with that first with the practice of forgiveness.

It can be challenging to feel grateful when you feel like someone has stepped on your toes.  This is why a constant forgiveness practice is essential.  For example, yesterday I had a resentment come up with my boss – I worked really hard on something for a few weeks that she gave the store credit for in an email to our regional managers but did not associate my name with the accomplishments that resulted from my work.  Because of a deepening awareness of myself and keen ability to recognize “energetic hooks” in my body, I was able to identify this pretty quickly.  I tossed and turned a little with it last night but ultimately I realize that there is no use wasting energy on worrying about this.  I get down on my knees and I say something like “ God, relieve me of the bondage of self, of differences, this person and I are made of the same God stuff and she is doing the best she can with what she has got.  Perhaps this was an oversight – perhaps not, either way it does not make her wrong and me right.   There is nothing outside of God and my God is Good beyond my wildest dreams and therefore there could be nothing against me in this world.  I release my need to hold onto this resentment and I ask that you forgive me for holding a resentment, at all.  I ask for the grace to communicate directly with this person in an open, honest, loving and direct way and I ask that I am free to be the full and best version of myself throughout the day.  Free from this “hook” I am able to experience the natural gratitude within me.  Thank you sweet spirit.  May my intentions for 2012 continue to be birthded in this soil of gratitude and may I continue to become increasingly more clear every day in every area of my life.  In fact I am open to a total metaphysical leap into perfect, Divine Clarity.  I am the courage and the faith to walk in the direction of the guidance that I clearly receive.  Today, I am grounded in the gifts of today by remembering throughout the day, all that I am genuinely grateful for.

Clarity and Purpose

Two of my major intentions for 2012 are Clarity and the Revelation of my Purpose.  It is important to visit your intentions periodically, perhaps once a day or once a week, without digging them up.  There is a mental law which takes everything that we plant into it in the form of a thought plus a feeling.  Each time we spend time feeling our intention as if it’s done it is planted again and the life of the creation is watered and nurtured.  So, plant those babies and let the Universe take care of the how.  We are in charge of the “what” and God is in charge of the “how.”  I open myself his day to allow the nature of Clarity to inform me and my life.  Two particular areas of my life that I am making myself available to clarity are school and relationships.  My intention/prayer is something like this(always write your intentions in the present tense as if they have already happened) :  I am the clear movement of Spirit in this world.  All of my affairs are the harmonious union of Good in my life.  Each and every person, place and situation is served by this Divine Clarity.  Each area of my life is nurtured and lit up by the bright shining of clarity.  I am the clarity that I am.   As I am increasingly clear I have the courage to follow the guidance of God.  I follow my hearts whisper into the triumphant clarity of being and trust that my clarity is for the good of all and that each is supported in the same Infinite Love of God.   2 :  This is the year that my purpose becomes visible to the outside world…. My light, my word, my creativity, my truth – all shine in this world in a way which elevates and inspires those around me to a deeper and more profound relationship with God, with Good, with Purpose, with Power, with community, with their own Divine nature.  I participate in, teach, facilitate and grow in communities of Love.

So, set your intentions my friends and dive deep into relationship with your intentions this year.  No, mamby pamby, fly-by praying for those seeking heaven on earth.  Root down in God, in sobriety and Truth first.  Dedicate yourself to your inner life and your outer life will shine with the dynamic wonder of who and what you came to be.  I honor and love the light within each of you.  Namaste!

The Good Life

It has been a rich couple of days filled with Spiritual practice, gratitude and intention setting.  This is an auspicious time in the world.  There is so much interpretation and speculation about what is occurring in history.  Carolyn Myss who is a mystic and a world-renowned historian said this is the most pivotal time in know history.  The Mayan calendar ends this year and the question is whether they felt the world would end or whether they simply got bored of making a calendar for the future.  The world may or may not end but the Truth will always be that life is eternal and it will always evolve into new shapes and forms…. So whether the essence life makes a dramatic drop of the world as we know it, or not, the life of God will continue on some other plane and the soul that is you and the soul that is me will take on another shape as well. 

Regardless, through my sobriety, yoga practices, other spiritual practices, traveling, friendships, landscapes, writing, skiing, surfing and more…. I love the world we live in.  I feel the powerful energy of global newness and enlightenment in this time.  I am choosing to align myself through my practices of conscious awareness, gratitude, intentionality, attention, compassion, joy, purposefulness and truth to set myself up for the best year ever.  Many of the happy new-year texts that I received included some version of this message – this is going to be the best year yet and this year, I believe it.

I celebrated New Years in a completely new way this year.   I enjoyed a sober Chinese dinner with two of my favorite people, I streamed into one of my favorite spiritual communities service and celebration, was actually awake AND aware at the stroke of midnight, went to bed with intention, clarity and joy and I woke fresh and clear yesterday available to arguably the best new years day yet, which was not tainted by a nasty hangover and the usual activities of greasy breakfast and more alcohol just trying to cover up the nastiness of the prior nights excessive drinking/drugging.  Instead I woke up and tapped into yet another spiritual service, went on a spiritual adventure with a dear one in my life and finished the day with a beautiful blessing service.  Only in sobriety can “we pack so much into the stream of life.” 

I am currently on a mini-2012 intentions retreat.  I invite you to bust out a fresh vision board, journal or some other “canvas” to begin to co-create your year with the most powerful force, in fact the only true source of power – God.  If you don’t like the word God, then fill in the blank with a word that fits your understanding and description of your HP.  Feel free to share your intentions on my blog or with a friend for they are given power every time you share them with a like-minded individual.  When you set an intention the Universe lines up all of the players and situations necessary for the fulfillment of your intention.  Let’s ride the global wave of goodness together and get our intention setting on.  After all, we are sober to live the good life.