Let Beauty Lift You

Let the beauty that we love be what we do.

Rumi

There is a little known fact that I find absolutely fascinating. It goes like this. The mind does not know the difference between what you do and what you think you do.. They have done tests on brain activity and have found that if you give someone an ice cream cone and let them eat it, and then just have them close their eyes and remember every detail of eating that same ice cream cone that the brain reacts in the exact same way. Now the ramifications of this information can be used in a million different ways but the one I want to focus on is our feelings of how we experience the world around us.. In particular today, how beautiful things effect us..

This morning I received an e card that was accompanied by the music of Chopin,"Valse Brilliante Eb". This is a beautiful piece, bright and uplifting just filled to overflowing with joy and lightness and fun. Visions of fairies dancing and swirling in fairy dust came into my mind. I was filled with such joy, I was almost giddy from the experience. As a matter of fact I find myself smiling again and re-feeling that wonderfilled delight as I share it with you. It was beautiful, absolutely beautiful, and the beauty filled me; completely filled my soul with joy and my heart danced.

My mom wrote me a note the other day, she and my dad had gone on a tour of a glass blowing studio and then a stained glass artists studio. She made a statement about how all the beautiful colors and creations had filled her with joy enough to last her a few days. She experienced being lifted by the beauty around her, and she was filled. As I read her descriptions of all the magnificent things and how her heart was filled, I became filled with her joy. I could feel the lightness and fun from her words. The joy of the beauty she felt was spreading, because that's what beauty does.

After musing on this beauty thing for a bit, I'm thinking this is important stuff, maybe a key to helping me find my joy even when I'm very sad. If my mind doesn't know the difference then if I look for beautiful things around me and I go back in my memory files to moments when I was experiencing the joy of something beautiful then I can with my own choice of thoughts fill myself with that joy. I can lift myself up and out of the pits of despair with my choice of what to focus on.. I can go to places that are beautiful to me and know my heart will be lifted. I become that which I see. Oh joy, oh rapture, oh giddiness and yes. All of a sudden I'm filled with power, the power to choose what I will look at, knowing that that choice will then dictate how I feel..

Try it, go ahead, I dare you. Right here, right now, as you sit reading this. Think... Think.. Think.. What is the most beautiful thing you can think of.. What is the most beautiful sound you've ever heard. When was the most beautiful moment you've ever experienced. Go ahead, take your time, find that memory. Let yourself delve deep into it, every little detail, each nuance and feeling within it, allow yourself to be drawn fully and completely into that space and time. The more detailed you can be with your memory the greater your re-experience of it will be. Can you feel it? I know you can. Is it lifting you? Be in your moment.

To look at beautiful things, to listen to beautiful sounds, fills us. It's an incredibly powerful tool this beauty around us. Now I know that the world is full of ugliness and anger and pain and suffering, all of those things exist simultaneously with the beauty. Maybe they are there to help us appreciate the beauty. If everything was wonderful and beautiful and lightfilled and there was nothing else, would we be able to appreciate the beauty as much? I wonder about things like that, I wonder a lot.. Like the light, if there was nothing but light, would we see it as fully as we do? Or would we maybe take it for granted, after all there would be nothing to compare it to. It's just a thought.

Ok here I have to put in a plug "The Little Soul and the Sun" a children's book by Neil Donald Walsch. It's one of the best examples of this I have ever seen. I recommend it for every home with or without children in it. It's an absolutely beautiful story, that has the power to change lives in great and huge ways.. Try it, you'll like it.

So if beauty fills us and we can choose what we look at, how much power does that give us over how we feel? I'm thinking maybe all things Beautiful are treasures to search for and go after like life itself. It's all around us, all the time, the dainty blossom of a violet, the clouds as they float across the sky, the birds singing in the morning just before dawn, music as if drifts through our days, our favorite colors, the sound of a loved ones laughter the feel of the wind blowing through our hair, All beautiful all having the potential to fill us with joy.

OH! It lifts my heart to think on these on things, and all of a sudden I'm thinking how full my life is, how wonder filled each moment could be, If I but choose more carefully what I want to see. Could it all be that simple, we'll see, yup we'll see.. If we are what we eat, then beauty will be my diet.. If each moment is my choice, then for this one I'm choosing to go after all things beautiful, like I would go digging in my yard if someone guaranteed me that there was a million dollars buried there.. Wow, how incredible this gift might just be. This giving to myself of the beauty I see. Yes, oh and yes I hear my heart singing. What gifts to myself I could be bringing..

Let all that is Beautiful be the greatest of our treasures. Happy hunting..


Please share your greatest most beautiful moments here if you like. Sharing beauty spreads it around. So lets start an epidemic.

Thoughts in The Dark

Thoughts in the dark

I love the night, it inspires me deeply and touches a cord in me that sings of ancient wisdom and mysteries beyond the reach of human knowing..
When I was researching the bible I found reference to Gods word being hidden in the stars.. The three wise men were astronomers you know.. Before biblical times the most ancient of civilizations on this planet studied the stars and watched the night sky to learn and to find understanding..
We are taught that somehow darkness is to be shunned that there is something wrong with darkness, when it is half of everything in the world.. With out the darkness of the night we could not see the brilliance of the light..

But tonight I sit here in the stillness and I ponder this world and all that is going on in it.. I see upset, and struggle and fear from the farthest corners of our planet to right here in my own home... It appears to be no different anywhere right now. But if I have learned anything at all, I have learned that appearances are very, very deceiving.. We only see what we focus on and we only receive perception from the angle we are looking from.. So, as I was very tempted to join in the fear something very quietly spoke to my heart... Nothing is as it seems, remember it's all just a dream....
This is all just a piece of a much larger picture that is bringing us to a place of new thought and new conscienceness that is older than life as we know it.. This is all just a thought and then reactions to those thoughts.. So my choice becomes what will my actions be? Will I react to all that I see, or can I somehow just change my point of view and let the rest be? Maybe if I just step this way or that I'll be able to see from a different perspective what's really what with all of this and that. What if I stay quiet and react not at all, oh to be able to be that on the ball.. Its all in how I look at it, its all in what I see. So in the end what will my choice be?

With out the darkness we would not understand light. So I think we need both, neither wrong, neither right.. The dark and the light make a whole day complete, with out the night when would we sleep..
When the world is asleep there is peace, deep, deep peace.. Like right now, my whole day has been filled with anger and fear, but now all that is sleeping so a deeper voice I can hear... That still quiet voice that tells me there is nothing to fear, nothing at all, just come here, just come here.... Come into the quiet and be wrapped in the night, and let all the thoughts of what's wrong and what's right, slip away, slip away, don't hold them, don't let them stay. Rest in this quiet so you can be ready for yet another day..

No matter what happens, whatever dreams may came, there is still nothing but love once its all said and done. Trust in that love, trust in that day, when all love comes round, it will stay, it will stay.. There is nothing to fear, not even fear itself, there is only love everything else is just a dream, its really not at all what it seems... Let your heart be lightened with just this one thought, fear, anger and frustration only work when they're bought.. So tonight I"m not buying, nope at least not tonight.. For now I'll buy love, and in love my heart takes flight, Only peace, oh and joy, and that's what feels right... For my heart anyhow I'll look from that angle, from loves point of view that my heart can handle.. There is no fear in love, and love knows no fear.. That's what I'm hearing from that still small voice, it's speaking so clear.. Be not afraid to love, and simply be not afraid, let my love cast all other feelings away..

May the peace I find in this night not stray from my sight with the days first light. So I thank the darkness for the quiet it brings, so I can my hear my true heart as it sings, Bless the night, bless the night as to my heart it brings light, the light of love, and for me, that IS what's right...

Hmmm - quantum musings continued

Hmmm - quantum musings continued

A post for peace, and a blog of note.. This is a powerful prayer.. Join us won't you!

Ode to Joy!

Joy, bright spark of divinity,
Daughter of Elysium,
Fire-inspired we tread
Thy sanctuary.
Thy magic power re-unites
All that custom has divided,
All men become brothers
Under the sway of thy gentle wings.

Whoever has created
An abiding friendship,
Or has won
A true and loving wife,
All who can call at least one soul theirs,
Join in our song of praise ;
But any who cannot must creep tearfully
Away from our circle.

All creatures drink of joy
At nature's breast.
Just and unjust
Alike taste of her gift ;
She gave us kisses and the fruit of the vine,
A tried friend to the end.
Even the worm can fell contentment,
And the cherub stands before God !

Gladly, like the heavenly bodies
Which He set on their courses
Through the splendour of the firmament ;
Thus, brothers, you should run your race,
As a hero going to conquest.

You millions, I embrace you.
This kiss is for all the world !
Brothers, above the starry canopy
There must dwell a loving Father.
Do you fall in worship, you millions ?
World, do you know your Creator ?
Seek Him in the heavens !
Above the stars must He dwell.

The original music by Beethoven
Words by Freidrich Schiller

Dreaming of Rainbows

The Rainbows End..

I just want to share these beautiful pictures with everyone.. As you wander through these images take time to really breathe in the feelings of awe and wonder that they inspire. Let them take you out of your day and fill you with JOY!!! Enjoy... Open and be filled.. What lies at the end of your rainbow? My pot of gold, is all of the beloveds I get to share this world with...

http://www.missouriskies.org/rainbow/february_rainbow_2006.html

Thank you to everyone who has sent me messages about how much you are enjoying this blog.. It is my absolute pleasure to create this space.. May it always be a place of rest and renewal for us all...

Imagining A Dream

Imagine!

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Albert Einstein

So I ask you? Do you dream? Oh I don't mean at night I mean when your wide awake and thinking about what your thinking about.. Do you allow your mind to wander into fantasy, are you ever fully free to just let your mind be free?
Sweet blessings to the child hearted, for we don't really have to think about it, our minds are always wandering off into Neverland, or OvertheRainbow, or out into Universal Realms yet unknown. But I believe its a gift we can all learn to cultivate and should.
It has always seemed to me that the greatest of the masters, have all been very childlike in the way they see the world.. So I encourage us all with all my being, to let our minds wander and play, free from the details of the everyday.

That alone is significant and fruitful which gives free play to the imagination.
Gothold Ephraim Lessing

So what do you dream, when you imagine your dreams? I dream about fairies, and magic, and realms beyond realms beyond what we can see. I dream about how amazing we humans can be.. I dream of a God beyond all reality, beyond god or goddess, beyond creator being, beyond any and all forms of anything anywhere ever that has been. The I am, that I am, beyond beginning and end.. I dream of a beauty beyond any eye, and a sound yet to be heard from the one perfect harmony of Peace from on high. Oh the dreams that I dream of mystery and magic and magnificence to the extremes. Oh yes let me share with you the wonder of my dreams.
Oh please Great all that is beyond the beyond, and yet still right here in my heart where you dwell. Let our dreams inspire us all to dream more, may we dream of all peace out beyond this worlds door.. Let all that we are know all we have been and my we remember that's its all in the dream, and may we see past all of this as it seems.. Ah to dream, Ah to dream, Ah to dream, Ah to dream..

A wise woman said that our dreams and our fantasies free us from our pain.. So let us dream of a world where pain is no more. Don't let little things like reality stop you from dreaming a world of peace, and love, we have to hold on to the dreams, and not loose them to facts..

I think that only daring can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.
Albert Einstein

I've been thinking about that all day now, and because I believe that our thoughts are energy and that energy is creative; I think when we allow our minds to dream wonderful and amazing things and we allow ourselves to get lost in those dreams, going to that place of painless, formless, wonderment, we are adding that thought feeling energy we are feeling to the whole (cosmic conscienceness) of our world and so we add, goodness to life.. With our own quiet moments of dreaming we are making the universe a more JOY filled magical place.

Then within all these thoughts of dreaming I came across this quote.

Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. Roald Dahl

So with all this in my mind I think to myself. Self( as I often have long deep conversations with myself) I may have a lot of perceived limits within this physical world, But.. I have no limitations to what I do with my mind. I am my only limit in that realm. I can dream! My dreams when I let them take me to the most amazing places even I never dreamed I would imagine. And we are so many wondering wanderers out here in this great universal space and time. As long as we are here, we might as well dream big.. We might as well dream the most unconditional love, and the most incredible good will, and the most fun and wild and wonderful dreams we can possibly imagine.. We really are our only limit..

With God all things are possible. Bible

Never limit your dreams no matter how things seem. Never limit, never limit your dreams..

Dream On!

Dreaming a Breath

Breathing

For me no matter what happens in my world, no matter how crazy, how insane, how out of control things appear to get I can find my greatest peace in the most simple and basic thing we do.. Breathe......
I love that song that is out right now," Just Breathe"..

Now I know that sounds really oversimplified considering some of the things we are being bombarded with in our days, and for years I balked at the idea of "Just breathing" I mean really I breathe all the time and it sure hasn't done much for me up to now. No, breathing hasn't done much for me... It is to laugh.. Breathing has kept me alive, kept my blood pumping, kept my mind filled with oxygen so I can think, ( I hear you laughing at this one, but hey just because my thoughts are a little out of the ordinary doesn't make them invalid) keeps all the systems in my body working and yes breath can be an incredibly powerful healing tool if we use it with intention and focus...

I was watching "Greys Anatomy" the other night and the chief who had just astounded his resident with his skill, when asked how he was able to perform the amazing feat, simply said, "stick with the basics".
What could possibly be more basic than breathing...

Breath is manna, that which fills. All spiritual traditions connect spirit with breath and wind and air..
Air is one of those amazing things that is so essential and yet unseen, one of those things that can only be known through an experience of it. So I want to share a deeper experience of Breath, with you..

Just Breathe

Start by stopping.. Just stop everything your doing and everything your thinking.. (ok I know the thinking part is not easy) I will devote another entire post to quieting the thoughts but for now were just going to use a little a trick I like to call the old bait and switch, or simply put, DISTRACTION. By thinking about the breathing you are keeping your mind busy while giving it something quiet and within you to be thinking about... Hehehehe sneaky, very sneaky.. Now this takes practice so don't get all frustrated if your mind tries to wander off and go play back out in the chaos, were use to all the noise, its a comfortable discomfort zone... Be patient, little steps, all we have to do is take one breath.. And let it out and then take one more.. You don't have to worry about a whole day or even a moment just one breath in and one breath out.. We've been doing it our whole lives, only now we will do it with conviction, with meaning, with love for ourselves, as our own sweetest gift to ourselves..

Ok a couple more words on this breath were about to take. Yes we have been breathing for years but this one precious sweet breath we are about to take is special, so we take it fully into ourselves with the greatest of intent... The intent.......... To fill, To lighten, To renew, To refresh, To heal, To quiet, To bless, To be........ This is the experience this one breath will bring us.. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

The other word is about how we are going to take this breath in.. After all we've been taking breaths in for our whole lives, its the first thing we did when we popped in on this planet.. So the way we breathe in this breath must be different, blessed, most sacred among acts... We will bring it into us as a wave gently rolling onto the sand... Like breathing in life itself, life filled with all the most amazing and wondrous and beautiful and loving experiences you have ever known. The air being the life force of all that is light and love and healing and wonder and magic and Joy and Peace... That is what we are filling our beings with.. This breath that we will take into the very center of our deepest being soul.. The absolute AH of the AWE.. So when we breath it in we will fill our deepest belly all the way through our depths, and then feel it filling your center, then your chest and your throat moving up into your face and then to very top of your head.. Feel this breath fill your very being.. Now for just a second we will hold it in ourselves feeling it, watching it, experiencing it as this precious life force gift fills our cells and our pores into our organs and our minds filling filling filling, and then simply releasing back out to the source from which it came, escaping from our mind, our face, our throat, our lungs, our belly's, pushing out the last little bit from our deepest core, knowing that the breath has taken the tension with it. Feeling your body as the breath leaves it, softening, relaxing, letting go as the breath takes all that is not light and love and life.. And now our bodies are ready to be filled again and the next breath you will find will be even deeper...
This is a slow intentional gentle experience, if you feel yourself forcing it then do a little wiggle.. Wiggle while your jiggle, hehehe. It is an exercise in blessing, a way to release and renew... Just relax and enjoy filling your self with life....

As you breathe in listen to the sound of your breath, I can hear the ocean when I breathe like this.. I hear it rolling onto the shore and then drifting away, I would love to know what you hear... Follow the sound and the feeling as you are filled, follow the breath through your body, for this moment that's all there is, just you and your breath, just the breath... One breath at a time, in and out, slowly and gently, staying in your breath... You are in this moment giving yourself life, love, peace, shhhhhhh....... Just Breathe............. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! And when you feel you have been in this moment as long as you can for now, with your last breath out, let it be a sigh, a long sweet ahhhhhhhhhh out loud.. Ahhhhhhhhh...

Practice this breath often and you will find that you can get utterly lost in the breath and then where your thoughts go are to the quiet. The greatest cargos in life come in over quiet seas...
This moment has been brought to you by the Universal love, that ultimately we all are...

Blessings and blissings, Enjoy ....