The Wisdom of the Elements

Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon?  I have, some time ago.  Nothing could have prepared me for the absolute breath-taking view.  You don’t realize how very tiny you are until you stand beside it, feel the ancient energy of it and imagine its creation.  I don’t know exactly why, but I was remembering the Grand Canyon in a dream I had a few nights ago.  I didn’t recall it for its aesthetic beauty and grandeur.  I recalled it because of what my mind has been wrestling with forever, it seems.

The steadfast rock and Earth surrounds us, water flows within and around us.  Great rivers erode the rock slowly over time and yet in some place and at some times, the work of the water flowing etches gently and cuts deeply into the Earth.  If you think about it or truly realize it, as stunningly beautiful as the Grand Canyon is – remember, it was created by water flowing over rock and wind whipping through it over time. I think of us, mere mortals, our daily trials and tribulations and even the minor things we tend to get so upset about.  To me, it’s all like water flowing over rocks and wind whipping through.  We may be etched and cut into by the various elements of existence that flow around and through us in our experience but we are no less beautiful in the end than before our lives began.

We do so many things, we strive to achieve this or that, to acquire, to gather and hold things to us and that is a funny thing to me.  Nothing remains forever just as it is.  Life here is forever changing, merging, falling away - blowing away even. We fly, we crash, and we tumble and flow.  Just like the wind, the water, just like the rocks we live upon.  We can stand firm in the fullness of our being and let life flow within and around us.  It doesn’t matter what we do, what we achieve, what we learn or acquire, the part of us that witnesses all of our life-experience, remains the same – unharmed and ever transformed.  We live, we breathe and we die but there is that part of us that remains untouched like the day we were born, pure and pristine.  It doesn’t matter what we go through and grow through because in the end, that pure and pristine part of us lives on.

The point of this is not that you should not acquire, grow or learn as you live and breathe in this life but rather that you should understand what remains and what changes.  In a way, what remains and changes is the same.  That is confusing in a way.  Perhaps it is all about aspects and perspectives of what we choose, how we take in an experience or how it is we might use it?  We ARE.  No matter what we have or don’t, who supports us or won’t, how we live or die – no matter what, we still ARE.  We are made neither greater nor lesser by what we do really.  We still ARE.  If we dress Class Act, or bare cozy and comfy, we still just ARE.  I think that the more I live, the more I understand what nature is trying so hard to teach us.

These observations and thoughts didn’t come to me all at once.   These thoughts didn’t occur to or comfort me as I acquired and gathered, or while I surrendered and lost.  Whether I was climbing ladders, or admitting defeat, I still AM.  There is a part of me that remains pure and pristine no matter what it is I mire myself in.  It seems that what I do, is for my entertainment, because I feel moved to do this or that.  It feels good sometimes to do this and that.  It feels bad sometimes to do this or that.  But when the feelings of whatever it is I am or was engaged in fade, I remain just as whole as I was.  I still AM.

I go back to my memories of the Grand Canyon and take a slow and easy breath in and out. The water is not evil because it cut the walls of the canyon.  The colorful rocks that have withstood the years and seasons are not weak because they stood still.  No matter what the experience, they still ARE and yet they are beautifully transformed in a way by the experience but their essence and their power is not lost or made lesser by interaction with the elements.  When I see the rocks now, I feel gratitude and deep appreciation for their existence.  When I see the rain, water flowing – I feel grateful and a deep affinity for it’s existence.  When the wind blows it carries aspects of rock and water and I’m grateful as the air I breathe carries the pure power of transformation.  When I feel the heat of the sun, I am reminded of the gifts of transformation it too brings.  These things can harm and support me but I am made neither greater nor lesser for my experience of them.

You, in your lives, living day in and day out, working and achieving or learning and growing – you are made no greater or lesser as a result of your experience.  Even though you may be transformed willingly or unwillingly remember that there is an aspect of you that will remain pure and pristine as the day you were born.  Live, laugh, play and love.  Enjoy fully the richness of your experience here.  Appreciate your surroundings, check in now and then to see if you find value in what you are learning. Strive if you feel moved to – to understand all of your amazing and magical teachers in this life.  Everything matters. You too matter.  Never mind how life has shaped you, cut through you or changed you.  Your soul is still beautiful and filled with magic.  You still ARE.  Blessings of great love to you.

Copyright 2020, Jaie Hart (Photo NPS.org)

Journey to Acceptance, Self-Compassion and Love

Sometimes I think we are just too smart for our own good.  We look out at life and see the ripples and waves of complexity...we go frantically in search of this thing or that thing that we think will bring us that sense of peace, wholeness and contentment.  But, what if you knew that kind of quest would only ever be fruitless if searching outside yourselves?  What would you do then?

Do you think that in such times, the tiny little aches from within your own heart might seem like a bit more than just the echoes and tingles of past pain or your own seeming failures?  What are your regrets?  Did you know that these things....these things we try so very hard not to think about are THE very things begging you for greater understanding?  Holding these as uninvestigated nagging little somethings without our concerted attention, creates only fear, self-loathing and disease or discomfort?  We don't need pills, a bottle, busy work or hobbies to stave off the pain.  What we need is love...a big dose of healthy self-love, compassion, connectedness and understanding.

The world will give us nothing but more reminders of those tiny little nagging cracks in the core of our hearts.  As much as it might seem so, this is not cruel.  It is by design.  These are not horrible moods or emotions but messengers of hope, faith and love.  How on Earth could this possibly be?- You might think.  Truly, however, it is only a slight shift in understanding that could make this a little easier to grasp.  Within you is a limitless store of magic, untapped-energy, light, love and gratitude.  All that prevents your awareness or awakening to your own inner divine truth is the fear to investigate that which nags you to your core. 

To get to the bottom of these nagging little fears and pains you must realize that it is wholly unnecessary to root out all possible causes or other-worldly seeming origins.  Sometimes, all that is needed is your full awareness and presence of these little nagging urgings into fear or anger or some other uncomfortable emotion.  Sometimes, simply acknowledging their existence while breathing with intent into a moment and showing yourself great compassion, understanding and gentleness is all that is necessary.  Imagine talking to yourself with gentleness as you would a young child in need of wise counsel.

You have walked so many miles on your path.  You have covered great distances.  You have learned awesome, important and amazing things.  You have accomplished so much in your journeying.  Relax into this awareness and breathe deep within your core the gentleness of a single ray of glorious sunlight, a cool and gentle breeze, or the beautiful and powerful music of wind rustling in glorious leaves....it is much more simple than you can imagine.

Relax you, your resistance and move into peace.  Flow like a stream as your truest intuition guides you, follow the true calling of your hearts and feel the blessings therein.  They are many and of infinite value just awaiting your discovery.  Know that you can heal through living with the greatest integrity towards self.  You can achieve greater contentment not through things or striving to be better than anyone else but through connecting with your presence and through your presence, the Spirit of  nature and the All of Everything.  It is not so complex.  Intent is all that is needed.  Willingness to explore is all that is needed.  Faith is a must...a true faith in yourselves and your own energy to begin.  So, just begin.

May your God or Goddess bless and carry you ever more fully into your trues core life purpose with every breath and step.  Feel for the truth of you, breathe through the essence of you and through that essence, the connected consciousness of everything.

© 2017, Jaie Hart (photo/words)

Be Still and Allow What is to Be

Seemingly unsettled somewhere deep in my bones, I cannot help but wish for a greater space of silence and stillness to just be.  Unfortunately, it seems this deeper desire competes with an unconscious one to become so busy, there is no time to think or just be.  Reality speaks in busied tones these days with too much to do and not near enough time to do it in.  Couple this with some unreasonable and unseasonable bouts of pain related to repetitive motion injury and gosh, life has become a bit challenging of late.  Were it not for the ability to slip into mindfulness and watch the play accepting and yet disconnected from the reactionary urges, I’d probably be quite mad about now.

The sky only begins to lighten the tiniest bit and my coffee sends up tiny swirls of steam into the cool coming in from my open window.  I used to want to figure everything out.  I’ve spent hours and hours in contemplation, writing as I go for some strange reason.  May it is that I have this hope that others who stumble upon my words will either know they are not alone in their noticings while they live or maybe I’ll run across someone who has already figured out what calls from seemingly, the center of my soul.  If I stop that thought I habitually think right there and ask myself to explain, I wonder what might come through.  So, let’s give it a whirl and see what happens.

So, my soul, most trusted essence of everything that makes me, me, what is it with this dichotomy of feeling both stasis and a continuing curiosity to figure things out?  What have you got to say or, maybe, what is it that you seek in this moment?

There is nothing that I seek for I only witness the goings on of this world connected and then disconnected simultaneously. This is no thing that I need – no thing that I want, I just am.  The dissatisfaction you feel is connected to regret, this sense of wasted time which is a very skewed perception of what you think it is that you see, have seen and will see but none of that truly means anything more than your meandering mind desiring to flex it’s muscle so-to-speak.  Let the mind roam, it will do no harm and through it, if you pay close attention to the feelings the process brings you, you may become aware of the things at your core – namely experiences and your judgmental perceptions of the experiencer that will call to your attention.  Within that attention you embody the whole and all of its component parts.  You can analyze with clarity each of the parts but you will be unable to calculate them into the whole.  A drop in the ocean cannot adequately define the whole of the ocean as it hasn’t the ability to see past itself in a see of same creation.

You can let your mind roam over the memories and years and concern yourself with your perception of time or you can move through it without such care except for that you most wish to focus upon.  We have no needs but to understand satisfaction, harmony, alignment; imperfect perfection.  The seeming dichotomies you face are not divisive but rather parts of a clock that perhaps move in different directions and yet the whole of the thing keeps perfect time.  No intervention is needed unless the clock that is your dream or life is the kind that needs winding or a battery.  Maybe you merely are in need of recharging and that is actually the center core issue that is your impetus for curiosity at this time.  Sometimes life is very simple and you merely over-think it.

So, now, slipping back into my normal thought process reigning in the mind to view what I’ve just written seems to make sense to me.  I understand and an automatic deep breath comes in and out freely as I read my way through sentences written without specific thought or direction.  The sky lights more and now the trees outside have returned in silhouette form to punctuate the darkness with outlines against the faint but expanding light.  The skies are gray yet this morning but the sun rises even if I can’t see.  Some say life is meaningless, others say there is nothing more meaningful than life.  What is it I believe?  I think, in this moment, my belief doesn’t matter.  Whether I dispute it or give it more energy to query, everything will be as it is.  Curiosity or complacency are on the same spectrum as is every other type or category of desire, emotion, even impetus.  I think I found satisfaction in a tiny little moment of freedom gained from letting it all go.  Maybe this series of random thoughts will make more sense as the day progresses.  Maybe they won’t.  Either way, still I breathe and still I hope and still I live.

Whatever it is you think should be will be.  Whatever it is you desire you will pursue.  There is nothing that you will do to prevent your own growth and progress on this journey that is your dream, your life in this place and space in time.  Be still and listen, be still and know, be still and take comfort.

 

  © 2016 Jaie Hart (photo/words)

Moments Strung Together

The last couple days have been so incredibly busy that I've hardly had time to think, let alone be inspired to write.  Two days in a row, I drove home late into the setting sun.  There are interesting moments at those times when the sky takes on that silvery pale orange color and even the streets seem to glitter with the color of the sun's fading rays.  I notice the people rushing around always focused on a destination rarely ever giving much thought to the journey.  Our time here is so limited and so to me, to waste any moment not focused on the present is a loss.  There are all those moments in between, all of those spaces in between we think are filled with nothing and then one day you may realize all of those spaces in between starting a journey and arriving at your intended destination held by far more than you realized.  Well, and hopefully you do realize those precious moments before the end of your days come and you think about how many moments you've squandered focused on getting somewhere.  What if there is no "there" to get to?  What if the journey is all that there is and the destination remains illusive?  What then would you do?  Would scream and throw a temper tantrum at the universe or those who must have hidden it from you or would you relax, take a deep breath and realize all moments come together for a reason?

Sometimes I feel like I've squandered precious moments I can never get back but then I realize there was nothing to save those moments up for.  I don't mean for that to sound negative because that isn't my intent, nor is it what I'm feeling.  I think I've finally come to realize the precious sense of everything in everything.  All of my moments strung together lead me to now in this warm comfort within my own skin.  It's early evening after a long seeming day that seemed to follow a week that took an eternity.  Time has momentarily slowed and I find that interesting because the moments since 1/1/11 have spun by me so quickly I don't really even recall all that much time to catch my breath.  I exaggerate, certainly, but you get the feeling maybe.  I wonder about all of those things I held as important on that very day.  Such wonder had I concerning infinite possibilities and so many unknowns.  I held different plans and dreams than I hold today.  I've destroyed them, set fire to them, ignored them, hid them, walked away from them only to start over again and again and again like some strange sort of ground-hog day.  The monotony of routine seems to set my being on edge sometimes but at the same time, I could not be more grateful for dull, boring and unexciting, non-adrenaline producing existence.  I'm actually quite amazed at the abundance of adrenaline I have produced in my life time.  I think I have finally effectively kicked that habit among many others that no longer suit and support me.  Do I have more to go?  Oh, sure I do and I look forward to thinking and feeling my way through each one in order to let go of all that troubles me and embrace more completely what it is I have come to know really matters.

We're not alone here, not even in our own minds it sometimes seems.  We're surrounded always physically as well as ethereally.  A single thought from miles away can come crashing through an ordinary moment and leave you with a feeling you didn't have only moments before.  We think our paths are set in stone but that's only because we can see only just to the point of our horizon.  After that, we can't yet see but we can feel when we want to.  I like to sit back, relax and see what comes next.  Oh, I wonder about it often just like everyone else does but I don't tend to put too much energy into fruitless endeavors these days.  I need my senses, my energy and my being in full capacity of all of my faculties.  I don't know why just yet but imagine this feeling will bear out in some new interesting journey of love, lessons and greater understanding of this life and my place in it.  It's Friday night and I'm sitting in my living room, with the fan on to cool off this sweltering heat and I'm watching the sun set in a summer sky.  A glass of red in hand, music in the background and words in front of me.  Hmmm, never thought this would be the highlight of my week...but it is and I'm so grateful, you have no idea how grateful.  So, well, enough rambling then and I shall be off to finding some sustenance.  This morning's oatmeal lost its ability to sustain me hours ago and I think the stress of the day has finally settled enough to allow me to eat with peace in my being (so much more important than you may realize).  Simple pleasures are often the most amazing sometimes.  Especially, if you take a moment fully present and thoroughly enjoy every precious second.  ~Blessings of peace, love and light dear souls.

(c) Jaie Hart (words/photo)

Connected Moment

There are just those times in life that you command the ability to tune in very clearly to your own soul.  Most of the time we are unaware and don’t care to think of such things but sometimes it can be as important as breathing air.  Sometimes that “tuning in to the authentic self” can be quite revealing and show you things that you just couldn’t see.  Things and plans and even people can change in terms of how you perceive them and so can your own actions.  At times the things that seem most important turn out to be the tools for learning and when the lesson is learned, there comes a time for solitude, separation and quiet time for the sole (soul) purpose of pure and unadulterated contemplation.  I’ve run across such times periodically throughout my life and find myself in such a situation now.

There are things I thought I wanted and then once I achieved them, an empty aching took over my soul.  I paid attention to those inner feelings and I was lead to greater understanding of some things, at least in terms of me, my own life and my own purpose.  I am a gentle and very sensitive soul and sometimes find that I tune out way too many things that I really should be paying greater attention to.  But, I just didn’t know what was happening in my own being.  I know now but that doesn’t help much in terms of the things I had previously created and because of those creations pain has ensued.  It’s not a bad thing, pain underscores our lessons sometimes in order that we might really remember them.  It’s okay in the end even when it truly doesn’t feel okay.  Time and patience, more gentleness and understanding will bring the lesson home.  Sometimes that means letting some things go that might stand in the way of true understanding such as limited thoughts and beating one’s self up for not seeing things.

I stand quietly in morning’s first light giving thanks to the All of Everything – the Source, the impetus of thought that created me into being in this hologram and framework called life.  I am nothing more than a thought experiencing its own reality for the sheer purpose of the experience itself.  The colors, the images and the emotion all have purpose regardless of which form they take in terms of manifestation in my awareness.  But, I can dream and have learned that I can create within this dream.  Nothing is lost and everything matters even still if actions desire consequences.  Sometimes things are as they are so other things can come to be as they were meant to be.  Soul searching I gaze up at patchy clouds letting in a blue and pink tinged sky.  The sun makes her seeming ascent (it’s really only the world turning) and I stand here feeling the dichotomy of very small and insignificant along with incredibly vast and very powerful.  It’s interesting to feel both at once but everything has purpose – every inkling in our souls, every tinge of sensation in our bodies and every thought in our minds.

I breathe in the cool morning air and feel a solemn sensation – a seriousness of life but when I dig a little deeper, I scratch the surface of bliss for the beautiful energies in this life I have experienced.  Bliss, a connected moment yet again – I find I am feeling beyond all measure of gratitude for every soul, every word and every experience in all of my lives and not just this one.  The ones to come, I’ve had a sense of as well.   An interesting sensation and visuals, I must say.  But, enough of such thoughts for now.  I would really enjoy another cup of creamer with a little coffee in it (smiles) and I need to get a lot of things done today to find time to play.  I’ve got two little girls much in need of a picnic in the park and I so wish more than anything to give them the most joyful visit they’ve had so far.  It will be beautiful and I can’t wait.  I embrace this day.  I embrace every action I have ever taken.  I embrace every thought that has ever crossed my mind.  I embrace every emotion I have ever called into existence for me.  I am truly blessed.

Thought for the Day...

Seek not to propagate judgement, hatred, enmity nor adversity. Our words are very powerful and when used in the negative, we create a very negative stream of energy that serves as a magnet for more of the same. We can judge others and things around us but how can we know the truth when half truths are spoken by those repeating what they do not understand? Seek knowledge from reputable sources - see it before you believe it and then understand what you are seeing before you speak and when you speak, speak in positive words towards positive solutions. We can distrust and decry government, politicians, companies and blame everyone else in existence for all of the problems of this world or we can focus on our own hands in our undoing. Consider focus on self and righting self actions and self thoughts. Live and breathe an example of morality, kindness, compassion, wisdom, love and understanding and let that be the energy you spread out into this world. If nothing else, you will sleep easier each night when you retire knowing you seek to contribute to long-lasting and meaningful solutions instead of spreading the problem.  Remember, we create what we experience in this world. ~Blessings of infinite love and light!