Unexpected Gifts the Moment Reveals

Our concerns and cares change over time, don’t they?  When I began blogging back in 2009 or so, so much of my life was in chaos and I carried so many worries and concerns.  I carried my hopes and dreams too and actually managed to manifest a few.  But my concerns and worries have vastly changed.

 

Call it the wisdom of aging and experience maybe or finally learning what matters most in life, I guess.  But then I think again, have my concerns and cares really changed or is it I who have changed?  I’m pretty sure the latter heavily influenced the former.  I think that is how it is – this life here on Earth.  Some moments in time feel like an utter eternity, particularly during the most painful, bewildering and challenging moments.  I remember a phrase so often heard throughout my years that stuck with me and has been reinforced over and over again to the point that even in my most excruciating moments I know to the heart and soul of me, “This too, shall pass.”  Every happy moment, every sad and tragic moment, every fear, every moment of elation – This too, shall pass.  We too shall pass.

 

I think this is why mindfulness grabbed a hold of me unconsciously at first.  It resonated so deeply within me I didn’t recognize the truth of it  - although I knew the present moment was all we had logically.  It passes and quickly and we must then courageously face the next and the next moment for as long as our hearts are beating.  How do we do that?  It is literally one breath at a time.  Even if the breaths come quick and ragged, one breath at a time.  How do we get anywhere or achieve anything?  One step at a time.  We may wish with all of our might that we were anywhere but a current painful moment.  But, if we were to rush past it without fully experiencing it, we would miss something important.  A moment is fleeting, like a heartbeat, the blink of an eye…so quickly does life pass in a stream and sometimes seemingly, a rushing river.

 

I think the greatest gift I’ve been given in all of my life is trust in myself to manage the painful moments without shrinking back from them.  That doesn’t mean my foolish mind doesn’t at times wish I could jump timelines or dimensions.  It does.  But I don’t seek that with sincerity.  I stop, breathe in the moment whether I judge it good or bad - painful or joyful.  I leave that moment and carry into the next the wisdom and trust to know I can face the next moment because I survived the last.  Funny thoughts for a Sunday I suppose.  The day escaped me so quickly.  I could swear 5 minutes ago it was 5:15 am and my cat was meowing at my door to be fed.

 

But since that moment, I accomplished so many other things I set out to do and now here it is nearly 2:00 pm on a Sunday.  My mind is very present appreciating the quality of the light as I notice Summer slowly readying itself to merge into Fall.  There is just something about the light, the position of the sun, or the way that the shadows from the branches of my tree move that I begin to notice in earnest every year about this time.  Something within shifts and I move from the hopeless heat of an unforgiving Arizona Summer into the hope of Fall and cooler nights soon to be followed by cooler days as the days slowly begin to exist shorter and shorter minute by minute.

 

Time is a funny thing in and of itself.  It can reel you in or spin you out if you are not careful and grounded.  I never expected to be this me at this point in time.  But moment by moment, breath by breath, step by step, and heartbeat by heartbeat I got here to this moment.  I am not unscathed by the moments that came before, but I remain grateful for this moment, well – all of my moments and I remain hopeful for the next and next.  I do not wish to rush and I will not fight time’s passage by wishing it to slow.  In mindfulness I have learned to appreciate what is as it is.  That appreciation was and is hard won.  It takes a long uphill battle to find that prize.  I hope it remains ever in my grasp.  Blessings for your precious realization of this moment, and courage for your next breath, step and heartbeat.

 

 

© 2022 J.L. Harter Photo and Words

 

 

Gentle Awakenings

The more you begin to become familiar with the filters through which you view all of your experiences, the more you may begin to wonder what is true and what is not.  You also begin to see the filters through which others judge not only themselves but others too.  When you gain this tiny little bit of understanding, the tiny cracks in your heart that created these filters through which you often mistakenly view your worlds opens wider.  They open wider and more light floods in leaving with you ever greater and ever expanding compassion for your self and the journey you have made and others as well.  You may come to a point where your every motivation, interaction, desire and even dreams begin to slowly disappear like morning mist as the sunrises.  As the bright golden light of a brand new day dawns you care less about the things that seemed to matter so much before.  Even love transforms and changes into something much more universal and less possessive.

These moments are precious few.  They can be so bewildering but take heart.  During these times, great transformation is at hand and you will be surrounded with what I’ll simply call the magic of re-creation and your life begins to unfold anew.  Curiosity more than caution are like the rose colored lenses you may newly view the world.  Your understanding may bring little wistful bouts of deflation or concern.  Let it go.  Let it go and just breathe.  All will be revealed in very good time and in the mean-time, you will have much to discover as the years of fears embedded within your consciousness begins to shift and change.  It is painfully beautiful, infinitely peaceful and epic  You will begin to catch the tiniest glimpse of the Source of true love.  You will begin to understand that truth is never dictated by a wounded ego but the things that trigger you most in the behavior you think unsavory in others, the ones  that when you observe really seems to get your goat –- Those are messages from your psyche to your waking conscious mind – “Look here love, there is something here for you, something long forgotten that needs your love, compassion and a new understanding.”

ly empowering.

If only our lives came with consciousness instruction books.  But they don’t and maybe that is okay.  The discovery at each junction, each cross roads, each mountain that seems beyond our ability to climb is simply delicious.  So, get lost in a blue sky, dream with the stars beaming their infinite seeming light, feel the energy of a tiny flower or blade of grass.  Sit under a tree with your back resting gently against it.  Listen there in silence for a few moments, not with your ears but the depths of your soul.  Whether you understand consciously or not makes no difference.  There is a part of you that truly knows how to listen in this way.  Although it may seem a fruitless endeavor, I assure you it isn’t.

Life is teaming with energy, love, and an infinite well of creativity from which we can redesign our lives with much more meaning.  Let go of the small stuff, the tiny judgments of not good enough, unworthy, and the parts that want to disappear in shame for some silly little thing whose consequence you didn’t have the capability to understand from your formative years.  Reach into the heart of your soul and do so patiently until you begin to feel the truth of you and then the understanding of the truth of others and how they have chosen to paint their lives.  This understanding, this expanded interactive view of your life and the lives of others will give you pause to forgive and let go more and more of the things that never really mattered.  Then and only then will you finally be free to focus on that myriad of unique and special and intricately beautiful aspects of life designed just for you.  Freedom, blessings and infinite love for your journey beautiful dreamers.  Higher love and understanding is here.  It’s here.

Wisdom of Legos

The sands of time begin to tell their tale in the lines about my eyes these days.  Youth left me quite some time ago and although at times I might wince just a little, I do not fear the hands of time.  It is those very lines that are evidence of the things that I have learned and that, primarily, is that life is a precious gift, as is the body, laughter and love.  I walk this path alone most days but on the perimeter always and ever stand those who would guide me from beyond without a moment's hesitation.  I'm grateful for their presence always even when I don't always care for the wisdom they will impart nor the things I know at the level of my soul that I must ponder and act upon.  But I always know what resonates deep within my soul and through daylight I walk this world with wonder and a curiosity that never sleeps and I carry these observations into the land of dreams each night. There I am met by love everlasting, giving, beautiful, breathing light.  Oh to leave the land of dreams sometimes seems like punishment to me.  But I know now what I came here for and it is not duty and drudgery.  I certainly didn't come here to maintain a perfectly clean house!  Were that the case, I would have neither children nor pets that enrich my life in ways I am infinitely in a state of gratitude for.  The parents out there might understand this concept a bit more like this:  The wisdom of Legos dictates that when we walk the halls of our homes in the darkness and happen upon an unseen pile of Legos with our exposed bare feet, it is not that our children have been reared improperly to be so thoughtless--a fact we will deal with in the morning.  It is that we have children we love and care for so much that it matters not that our homes are perfectly spotless but that there is love in the home. (This was a rather painful lesson I was once taught at precisely 2 a.m. while heading for the kitchen for a glass of water).

Life is so funny sometimes when we take the lesson plan or play a bit too seriously.  The obvious lessons are so well hidden in plain sight that it can take us years to see what stands plainly within the field of our vision.  It makes me laugh even more to recall those moments I have been swept away in ranging emotions for trivial things.  The light of love and truth has come so many times and I did not wish to see or maybe I did not have the where-with-all at the time to truly understand.  But having suffered for embracing my own ignorance, I decided to step out from the darkness into the blinding clarifying light of truth - open my eyes and throw my arms open wide to embrace the love that lies deep within everything in existence I can even remotely begin to comprehend.  So, back to the play I suppose it is with me.  I have apparently much more to learn and in a certain area in particular.  How do you search when you have found what you are looking for?  You search no longer but proceed with your life and let what will be - well, be.  Pretty simple huh?  There is no pain in realization really.  You must hold love and forgiveness for self as much as anyone else and in time you relax a little more into your own skin never minding the fact you don't look like Barbie or some famous and beautiful movie star.  There is no soul who comes here without experiencing their own nightmares at least for a time.  We are so much alike even though seemingly and incredibly diverse.  We are one and not.  We are here and elsewhere.  We are shadows seeking dissipation in the light. We are everything and nothing at all.  I'm okay with that.  I'm really okay with that.  Blessings.

(c) 2012 Jaie Hart (photo is a beautiful work of art I found on google images).

The Ugly Christmas Sweater

Some thoughts to ponder...every single thing in life is a gift.  It may not always seem like a gift but it is, in fact, a gift.  The beautiful part about life is learning that you have a choice as to what you will do with the gifts that are given to you.  Take an ugly Christmas sweater for instance.  It may come to you as a gift from someone you love, someone you tolerate or someone you don't care for at all.  When the gift is presented, you may look at it and determine you do not like it and will never wear it, you may decide that you would like to return it or you may decide you do not wish to accept it at all.  You might even decide you'd like to have hurt feelings that the giver would give you something you think is ugly.  Some of the "gifts" in life we are presented with are like an ugly Christmas sweater, particularly where human relations come in.  You may accept the gifts that you are given and appreciate them, keep them if you desire or you may argue with the giver about their seeming lack of thoughtfulness in presenting you with such an ugly gift.  You  might even decide to give the gift back just like it was given to you or you may decide not to keep some gifts.  No matter what you choose, there are lessons both in the presentation and in what you ultimately decide to do with them.  Regardless, there is learning to be had in the gifts we are given.  Wisdom can be gained if we seek compassion and understanding while at the same time standing in our own light and honoring first and foremost, our authenticity.  You've all, no doubt, received the gift of the ugly Christmas sweater in some way, shape or form.  What did you decide to do with it?  Do you understand why you decided to do with it what you did with it?  Did you understand or seek to, the reason it was given?  Food for thought.  The objective is understanding and not the judgment of self for the disposition nor the giver of the gift.  Seek understanding and you will be given an even greater gift than what is presented to you.  That gift is the wisdom gained from the experience of giving, receiving or returning.  Always there is something to learn, to understand and to strive for.

Me, myself, I don't care for ugly Christmas sweaters and so will thank the giver of such gift (even if only within the privacy of my own mind).  What I decide to do next will depend on the frame that I choose to hold in a particular moment and whether or not I find myself courageous enough to stand in my own light.  Sometimes I might say thank you but no thanks.  You keep this gift but I appreciate your desire to share.

Blessings of higher love and understanding beautiful dreamers.

(c) Jaie Hart (photo, random internet find - and, to the owner of this sweater, please take no offense as I greatly appreciate the heart of creativity that went into this design - really).

Summer's End

I stand here alone at the edge of a change in seasons.  Hot pink angel wing clouds sail silently across the deepening blue sky.  The sun has set and a cool wind blows.  I'm not sorry to see this season end.  This year and I have seen lessons great, love unimaginable and and new thoughts to contemplate.  I look back and see how far I've come from a place I never thought I could move away from.  Some of the things that I've learned so far are that sometimes love is born so deep inside of you it has no end and there are connections with certain souls that just seem to begin in that very same place.  It's beautiful and unimaginably complicated in terms of human standards.  But, no matter.  The learning is etched so deeply within my soul that it has become a part of me now.  I've come to a place where I'm ready to let things drop away and I'll welcome the seeming emptiness for a time because I know that only when the soul is fully empty and willing to remain open can that soul be truly filled.

I've walked a long stretch of lonesome lately and just when I thought I'd never get it, that I'd never understand the lessons sent to me, the universe saw fit to send me soul friends and it is they who inspired me to reach deeper for understanding.  So blessed am I to walk this world among these treasured souls.  I've been on a roller coaster of sorts for quite a while seeking the wisdom through the tears and shadows of pain, finding the love even when I couldn't see and knowing no matter where I went, that love was always right there inside of me waiting to be called forth.  It takes so much silence and stillness to truly understand why we do what we do and why others come forth and yet others let go.  We're so funny in that we want so very much to keep all things good just exactly as the way we think they are.  But then, then the truth dawns and well, you have to let go of the fantasies and embrace a reality that is truly more beautiful than ever you could have realized.

I don't mean to sound as though I'm talking in circles but it is cycles and circles that have perplexed me much in the days, weeks and months that unfolded so far in this year two thousand and twelve.  Every day and with every heart beat, life is so worth living and experiencing.  Life in this dimension is awe-inspiring, challenging, mind-bending and even crazy making sometimes.  But you see, that IS the beauty of it.  No matter where we are or what we do, life goes on and moves, changes and evolves and when we're willing...we evolve too.  We become greater or lesser than we could be by choice.  We align with either the light or the darkness whether we are conscious of those choices or not.  One of the beautiful things is that in every single moment, we can be reborn in our thoughts and emotions if only we would allow it.  So, off I go into my most favorite season of them all.  ~sigh~  I so love the Fall.  I hope for all of you that this change of season finds you hopeful, tested and standing with courage in your own light.  There is no better place for you to be.  Much love and light.

(c) 2012 Jaie Hart (photo, random internet find)

Illusion and Separation

The illusion of separation is one among many we hold in this frame here on Earth.  We are never separated from Source, God, Goddess or which ever reference you may choose to use.  I think that we are thoughts from Source, given the divine power to create as we move forward from the moment of our own creation but we never loose that point at which we were created and the moment we realize we were never not connected to Source, the love within wells up from the depths and life takes on new light and new meaning...and then we learn to create similarly to the ways in which Source created us. 

There are other illusions, such as seeing others as separate from you, seeing yourself better than others or worse than others.  Even more prevalent, the attack presented or the attacks we unwittingly engage in.   Did you know that we create the magnetic energy within us that calls to those with those characteristics that will psychologically trigger us?  In a way, we create them for the sole purpose of learning.  Why?  Because until we awaken, we unwittingly learn the wrong things that equate to misguiding us wholly into beliefs until we have proper understanding.  Then a belief is no longer a belief, it becomes an experience.  We wish to call those challenging people to us because we truly wish to heal the wounds inside of us that we misunderstood...the things we took on as truth but are not true at all.  Once we gain the courage and compassion to dive in, look and understand - we begin to see and when we finally see, bliss shortly ensues.  Every one who triggers us in some way is a messenger.

Life has many messengers.  For as much as your energy attracts to you magnetically those who will trigger you, your energy will also attract to you those of like mind and belief who will support you.  They support you in their sharing and learning and they give love so freely and you naturally give back because nothing feels more right.  The funny thing is that all of these souls, the ones we attract for seemingly negative reasons and the ones we attract for positive reasons - they are all us and they all - also are an extension of Source.  Treat every single person you meet as if he or she is God or Goddess incarnate, seeing through the masquerade and you might learn some very interesting things in life.  You do have free will though and you do not have to learn or transcend anything.  If your actions produce outcomes you appreciate greatly, continue them.  If your actions produce outcomes you do not appreciate, change them.  You are so powerful and can create in this life by understanding what creation means.  The Hermetic Principals teach of cause and effect, polarity, gender in everything, everything always in motion, as above - so below and more.  Great tools of understanding there about this framework within which we do work.  A Course in Miracles helps to teach us that all we see is an illusion - the attack is unreal - the enemy before you is no less than an extension of God...as are you.  Buddhism teaches that our desire brings us suffering and that compassion and detachment can bring you serenity.  There are so many different paths in this world (and please don't take the short aspects from these paths I have noted as the whole - they certainly are not and I selected aspects only to make a point) that can lead you to understanding and can beg of you to trade your "beliefs" for experience.

I'd rather not hold beliefs because beliefs are like an untried scientific postulation or theory.  A belief is not real.  Experience is more real but even that is subject to our judgment and psychological filters.  I suggest that we keep a very open mind as the layers of our understanding are peeled away bringing us ever closer to definitive truth and moving us ever farther away from our perceptions, assumptions and provisional truths.  Life is important and every single thing you do, say and consider matters.  You matter.  You are a child of this universe, no greater nor lesser than all the other beautiful children of light in this universe.  I pray you feel the love of compassion and the wisdom of understanding all of the days of your lives.

(c) 2012 Jaie Hart, (photo, random and beautiful creation from the internet)