Shifting Focus

It's really not my way to attend to things in a linear fashion... focusing on the same thing continually. I float.  I find myself attracted here and there.  I find things, situations, people attracted to me and then they flow away.  This is the nature of how I am... and one of these days I'm going to acknowledge that in the depths of my being and let it be a guiding principle.  For now that realization alternates with a desire to settle into something and ride it according to someone else's schedule. 

At the moment I'm making a leap.  I'm saying 15 days is plenty for the Mandala Making process.  That's how much energy there was.  Those 15 days were fueled by a desire to mandala make and the work arose from a deep place beyond the constraints of mind.  So that was deeply harmonious.  Then the energy stopped.  At first I found my mind saying... but, but, but... and I tried to forge ahead.  I started to work on a 16th image.  Nothing was gelling.  And I realized.. no.  That's all for now.  15 day Mandala Challenge.  Complete.  Check.  On to what's next.

What's shown up now is the exploration of the power of shifting my handwriting to transform my life.  I got hold of Vimala Rodgers' Transform Your Life Through Handwriting kit published by Sounds True.  Vimala says work in 40 day cycles.  OK... I think.  I can do that.  And then I realize... well, maybe.  The important thing is that I think this would be fun to explore... and the 40 day thing is about inviting a new pattern to have time to settle in.  So I'm going to be OPEN to a 40 day potential... without being attached to a 40 day anything... and see what emerges.

Vimala suggests working with a particular letter for 40 days while also attending each day to the Letter of the Day.  These letters are thematically driven... in the sense that you choose letters that represent some aspect you are open to transforming in your life.  I like to work in a divinatory manner, so I selected my '40 day' letter by setting a clear intention to tune to a quality that would be beneficial for me to deepen into and/or tranform at this time.  I blew my intention into the card deck that holds the 26 letters with their soul qualities and intentions.  I connected the deck with my 3 power centers:  yachay (3rd eye), munay (heart center), and llankay (sacral).  Then... eyes closed.... I chose the card for the '40 day' letter...

P:  truly loving and appreciating yourself.  Intent:  I interact with everyone as though they love me.

I think that's fabulous.  I look forward to rockin' that intention for 40 days (or however long I feel called to continue with it).

Before I start with the letter P however... I'll invite a Letter of the Day.  Her process involves focusing on the Letter of the Day first and then following it with the 40 day letter. 

OK.  Today's letter is T.  Status in the world; the letter of the visionary.  Intent:  I grow in spiritual stature as my choices align with my vision. 

These are interesting.  Off to explore these with handwriting... so I'll do that in my notebook....

Perhaps this is more detail than you really needed.  Just sharing what's unfolding in my life.  Today is a Writing Intensive Day and I've chosen to incorporate attention to my physical handwriting as an integral part of my writing process ... and as a way to honor the arising nature of writing.

I Intend...

I Intend Mandala:  Day 14

What do I intend?  What am I willing to align with? 

I intend... to write prolifically, allowing the words and writing projects to arise from a deep place in my being.

I intend... to relish each moment joyously.

I intend... to be vibrantly healthy, nourishing myself fully in ways that I can easily digest on all levels.

I intend... to have fantastic support for everything I do in life.

I intend... to be in the right place at the right moment ... every moment... thriving in environments that deeply support me.

I intend... to say YES to what resonates deeply with me and let everything else flow past on its way to those for whom it is appropriate.

I intend...  to celebrate authenticity wherever I experience it and invite authenticity to flourish where it is lacking expression.

I intend... to streamline my life so that all my energy and attention is harnessed by the depths of my being in ways that fuel a vibrant existence.

I intend... to look deeply, tuning to the depths of my being to find clarity from which I can act in generous alignment with my deepest, most authentic self.

I intend... to sweeten each moment through authentic being.

munay,

Barbara

Enter the Heart

I work with people who are ready to live exquisite lives... for their own well being and the well being of All That Is.  I support them as they make the leap into who they are becoming... their luminous, authentic selves.

"But I'm already myself!" I've heard people object.  Well, yes.  It feels that way.  It feels that we're living our authentic lives, because we've gotten used to things the way they are.  And, yes, there's an inherent perfection in each moment that reminds us nothing needs to be changed or fixed.  We are who and what we are in each moment and that's just as it needs to be in this moment.  But there's so much more to who we inherently are than most people have begun to live.

We can make a leap into the depths of our being and manifest a much more authentic experience.  The next moment in life is always an opportunity for surprise and for authentic transformation.  Will we continue to manifest as we are in this moment or will we realign with our deeper nature - our authentic self - and live a far more robust, joyous, creative, loving life?

We carry around energies and patterns that are not authentic, not germane to who we truly are.  The richest, most creative, loving, joyous, vibrant aspects of ourselves get crushed beneath all the excess baggage, contorted by misdirections of our life force.

These excess energies are free to move out of our fields when we recognize that they are intruding on our essential nature, and when we claim the right to be our deepest, truest selves.  This authentic transformation is often so much more available when we realize that being ourselves is the most amazing gift we could ever offer the world, our colleagues, our friends, our family, ourselves.

These distorted patterns come into more harmonious alignment when we honor the choices that have been made, acknowledge that we are not our stories, and embrace the knowledge that we are free to choose to live in more authentic ways... that we have the power to release the conditioning energies that have gotten us off track.

We also go without parts of ourselves more often than we know.  We allow our most delicious aspects of ourselves to go walkabout... leaving us cut off from a sense of wholeness and unity.   Sometimes these parts of ourselves have stayed put, but are hunkered down in confusion under the weight of the rules, guidelines, and dictates from friends, family, or community that we've taken as gospel and allowed to drive our authentic knowingness deep underground.

Although there are many techniques and processes that can support Authentic Transformation, at the core what brings the authentic self forward into a state of thriving wholeness is what is known in the Andes as Tukumunayniyok:  the TOTAL POWER of Unconditional Love.  Love trumps all other powers.  Love is the vibrant heartbeat of the universe.

I feel enlivened when I have the privilege to look deeply into the heart of a person's authentic, luminous nature with the intention of inviting authenticity to flourish for their benefit and the benefit of all.  I know in the deepest part of my being that when we live as ourselves everyone and everything thrives more fully.  It's a rare gift... one most people don't even contemplate offering to a world so clearly desirous of living in a more beautiful way.

You are invited to live your authentic life.  I invite you.

Enter the heart.

munay,

Barbara

Winter Solstice Ceremonies

Winter Solstice Fire Ceremony:  02010.12.21

Today is the beginning of a new year.... a year of tuning deeply to the patterns of nature... attending to the shifts in season, in lunar cycles, in flows from day to night to day....

This afternoon I stomped out into the snow in the woods behind our house to honor the Winter Solstice and the Full Moon with Full Eclipse by holding fire ceremony.  The temperature warmed today. Snow and ice have begun to melt.  Sheets of snow slid along the metal roof, balanced precariously over the edge... dripping... dripping... before slumping to the ground in one heavy thud after another as the afternoon progressed.

I called the directions:  Winds of the South, West, North, East.. and the powers of Below and Above..... inviting them to hold the space sacred as I deepened my intention to live life in harmony, in alignment with Tukumunayniyok... the total power of unconditional love. 

The woods gift me branches and twigs throughout the year to fuel my fires.  Today those branches were cold and damp from their time hiding beneath piles of snow.  I utilized some dried sage gifted to me by a client to inspire flames to leap up from the ice cold fire pit.  The fire sputtered and was subdued most of the time, but it felt refreshing to be out in the snow covered woods beside Autumn Lake.  I meditated on the iced over lake, adorned with swaths of wind blown snow.

I invited vigor and ease into my life.  As I gifted a branch (my life/death arrow) to the flames I recommitted myself to the practice of opening to the rich abundance the universe showers upon me and to continually offering to bring my gifts fully into the world for the benefit of all.

After the fire I moved into the house, opened my mesa, and brought a huaca through... to infuse the world with a fresh burst of creative energy in service to the evolving consciousness of the universe.  I will feed the huaca with my breath each day during this moon cycle to help fuel authentic transformation on the planet at this time in the sweetest ways possible.

This is a potent time of change, of deepening, of expansion, of ease.  This is a time when we can drop the pretense of control and in so doing open to a more luminous potential thrumming within us at all times... the opportunity to allow life to unfold, to carry us forward, to elicit our deepest, most authentic nature to step out and thrive.

I say YES to the unfolding luminosity.  I say YES to authentic becoming.  I feel deep appreciation for what is unfolding at this time.  Moment by moment I hold space for authentic transformation on the planet.

Huaca Ceremony

Please feel free to visit my Winter Solstice 02010.12.21 Facebook album for more images from the Fire and Huaca Building Ceremonies.

Offering blessings for joy, beauty, love, vitality, and creativity to flourish.

munay,

Barbara

Celebrating the return of the light

Winter Solstice! Welcoming back the light.  This solstice is powered even more intensely by the alignment of a full Lunar Eclipse in the early hours of the morning.  First time since 1703 that a Winter Solstice and a Lunar Eclipse combined.  The cloud cover in our area kept the lunar eclipse from view, but we witnessed the clouds turn orange with an eerie glow. Laying in bed tuning to the energies as the sun, earth, moon lined up with the heart of the galaxy, I saw and felt the energies bouncing around the room. The energies were palpable.

I created this mandala a few days ago and love the way it is built completely of images I took when I was visiting Jyoti and Tod in Sedona in November.  That's a place of power and highly alive energies.  And the world is alive and crackling with the potential for change at this time. 

Today I am allowing myself to lighten up as the days lengthen and the world moves into a more expansive way of being.  I invite myself to say YES to All That Is.

One third the way through the mandala process

Whirlpool Mandala:  Day 11

I'm just over 1/3rd of the way through the 30 day mandala making process I've embarked on.  I can feel the shift in the process as I move into this next phase of continuing to deepen and expand into the flow of what longs to arise. I'm a person who moves in waves. I'm not a steady plodding forward kind of creator.  I flurry and flow. 

Engaging the same process for 30 days in a row is a challenge in itself.  I'm contemplating whether I want to liberate myself in the future from any such intensity of continuity.... or whether I want to dive deeper into this mode of attention focusing on other projects.  We'll see what unfolds in the new year. 

Something I'm very much enjoying here is that my preconceived notions of what constitutes a mandala were immediately blown out of the water.  The images that have been arising don't necessarily feel like what I thought I'd be making and that's very exciting for me.  When I bring work up from a deep place in my being, it startles and delights and sometimes disconcerts me.  I love it.

OK... I'm not actually creating a mandala every day.  I'm creating 30 mandalas in 30 days and I'm sharing one every day.  That's the pattern I'm adhering to at this time.  Off to create a few more.  I have only one in reserve at the moment... which I'll post after midnight... to celebrate the Winter Solstice/Lunar Eclipse.

altering images of self

Eye of Flower:  Day 10

I take a lot of self-portraits. Over and over I point the lens of my camera in my direction.  I let the camera inform me of what's unfolding in my life.  Rarely do I take those images and alter them in any way.  I prefer to let them be what they were in the moment they happened. 

But in this mandala making process I'm reassembling reality.. looking through a lens of collage.  I love to collage.  Usually I collage with physical objects... pictures and words borrowed from magazines or printed out from online sources or generated from my own work - writing and photography that I blend with other pieces of creation to build a vision container.

This mandala building project is taking on a more surreal quality in some ways.  I'm moving in the dreaming allowing images to call out to be together.  This mandala gathers from 4 different images I took while in Phoenix in October.  I was teaching on the staff of Donna Eden's Energy Medicine Program.  Having taught in the Inaugural Year of the program and then moved on, it was interesting to return to explore my relationship with the Eden Energy Community and with myself as a teacher, mentor, ally, etc.

This image shows me the potency of dreaming a new world into being... the power of looking with a new sight... blossoming a new dream out of the cold stones.

That's what I see when I look at this image today... this image that grew itself. 

I'm grateful for the opportunity this trip back into the Eden Energy Program gave me to see where I am in relationship to energy and healing... and where I am being called in the future.

What's True for Me....

What's true for me... what's true for me at this time... that's what intrigues me... what holds my attention when I am not distracted by everything that's floating through my awareness... everything that serves to syphon off my attention when I neglect to connect with my deepest, most authentic self. 

I make it a practice moment by moment to enrich my connection with authenticity to the best of my ability.

I'm delighted when others attend to what is true for them at that time... and live in harmony with their authentic knowingness.

I acknowledge, celebrate and assist authenticity to flourish in others... their own deep awareness of what's true for them... in that moment... in that unfolding of their authentic experience.  I choose to be present with the intention of holding space for authenticity to flourish whenever and wherever it can find purchase and grow.  I invite authenticity to arise and sing to us, to sing through us.

I'm not interested in telling anyone what they should do.  I'm happy to share insights that arise as I put my attention on what's unfolding in their authentic experience.... if invited.  That's something I love to do... to look deeply and share what's arising... that comes from the vast, rich pool of information and energy and consciousness available when we tune in to the essential, the underlying nature of reality.   I notice that looking deeply, acknowledging what is and inviting what arises next to be in stronger connection with authentic nature brings potent transformation in ways that are often surprisingly radical and yet at the same time sweet and effortless.

I flourish when I share what's unfolding in my awareness.  I notice that my sharing often offers others something that sparks their desire and ability to mobilize their authentic selves... catalyzing a deeper connection with who they truly are.  When others share their own awarenesses - their own experiences of what they are attending to in their lives from a place of clarity, I benefit as well. 

It's my contention that the entire world benefits when each being lives as their true selves... bringing themselves and their gifts fully into the world.  That's how I experience the world.  I'm delighted to let people know that I see things that way. 

I'm celebrating the possibilities that are available when I live my life as myself.... and when others choose to live as their authentic selves.  I'm dreaming a world into being where the potential for authenticity to flourish is greatly enhanced.

I'm happy to explore and encourage these potentials with individuals and groups in ways that are deeply harmonious for us all.  I am open to invitation.

munay,

Barbara

Appreciating my Human Design Mandala

My Human Design Mandala:  Quad Right 4/6 Manifesting Generator w/ Emotional Authority

I'm 6 months into my Human Design experiment. [NOTE:  Correction:  Just over 7 months!  Time flies] I'm drawn to exploring various models that map uniqueness in human experience.  Human Design is one of the more intriguing and compelling models I've encountered in my journey into deep understanding of authenticity.  It resonates with me.  I feel a hum in the depths of my being when I engage with Human Design... and that's actually an integral part of my experiment... following what Human Design founder Ra Uru Hu calls Strategy and Inner Authority.

I'm not feeling a need to explain these concepts here at the moment.  I'm just reflecting on the way that the Human Design charts are often displayed as mandalas ringed with the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching.  This seems so harmonious with the 30 Day Mandala Challenge I've embarked on at this time.

I am simply feeling the rightness of this mandala exploration in the depths of my being.  As a Manifesting Generator with an Emotional Inner Authority my Human Design strategy is to Wait to Respond.  I experience that as being alert to what is arising in my field of awareness and being alert to the responses I feel in the depths of my sacral center.  When I get a visceral confirmation, which for me shows up as a humming or a solidifying of the core of my sacral center, then I know I'm onto something that may indeed have merit for me.  Because I have an emotional inner authority, my next step is to wait further... to allow myself to move through the emotional turbulence to assess what is in fact deeply appropriate for me to attend to, to act on, to live fully.

When my friend Jyoti mentioned on Facebook in May that she thought I might find Human Design interesting and valuable, I had an immediate sense of YES YES YES deep in my belly.  That yes continued to deepen over time, so I knew that it was right for me.  I have been following this practice of checking in with my gut and riding the variations over time for many years.  My introduction to Human Design served to reinforce what I've already been engaging... but with even more vigor and commitment.

I'm appreciating the unfolding process of deepening into authenticity... in all the ways I engage that process.  Today I am deeply appreciating the Human Design clarity... the simplicity of the process and the rich complexities.  I'm grateful to everyone who has stepped up to share their knowledge, wisdom, insights, enthusiasm, and practices regarding Human Design.  I look forward to deepening my exploration going forward.  I'll share more as I move into new areas of exploration.

Desert Living Mandala

Desert Living Mandala: Day 9

Intitita and I co-create a mandala

Intitita Father Sun Mandala:  Day 8

I'm relishing the freedom to understand and create from a place that is not the province of the mind.  I'm experiencing mandala as a process of recognizing what is already being co-created before the mind steps in and attempts to apply structure and definition.  This image of the sun, taken while I was on a journey opening to Unknown Blessings through the western part of North America in September of this year, informed me of how the sun, the atmosphere, my camera, and I all came together to create a mandala of considerable power without any additional manipulation being necessary other than a counterclockwise rotation of the image, which seemed to make the vibrancy of the sun's rays more vivid, and a frame to hold the images with colors drawn from the sun's illumination.

I'm deeply appreciative of this mandala creating experience.  I'm finding myself mobilized to engage the photography in new ways and to invite myself into a more immediate relationship with the images.  I'm inviting my body to explore the terrain of the image files in a vibrant burst of oh.. yeah.

During the entire Unknown Blessings tour in September, I was vividly aware that Intitita, Father Sun, was present with me, sharing warmth and light, illuminating my journey.  As we move toward this powerful Winter Solstice with a full Lunar Eclipse, it's great to be able to meditate on this image of the sun from around the time of the Autumnal Equinox.  All part of my stepping into closer connection with the Pampamesayok, the Daykeeper Lineage... and fully embracing the nature of my total oneness with All That Is.

I am grateful for the reminder to be completely self referencing as I approach each day in harmony with the deepest part of my being... the place where I know myself to be part of everything....

Mandala Creation

Fire Ring Mandala:  Day 7 of 30 Day Mandala Challenge

A Facebook Friend (FBF) alerted me to a 30 Day Mandala Making Challenge on FB.  It sparked something in me.  I dove in.  I'm noticing that the group on FB isn't at all active, but the existence of the challenge and the fact that someone notified me about it and my deepest self went "YEAH!" is good enough for me.  Today is Day 7.  I'm finding myself creating images that are arising from some of the photography I've been doing this past year.  And I'm playing around with photoshop... expanding my familiarity with the program's capabilities.

Snow and sleet on the way... Watching Pacers and Lakers play...

We are warming ourselves by the fire as we await the arrival of a snow/sleet storm.  The cold so far this month has been oppressive.  I have a feeling I may never leave the house again... and then I remind myself that seasons move in their own ways.  December has been uncharacteristically cold ... so perhaps January and February will be balmy.  I can dream on that at least...

Tonight we'll watch the Pacers play the Lakers from the comfort of home.

Cyberspace for Authentic Creative Expression

I'm streamlining my life at this time... and stepping into a greater flow...

This space is the new home for everything I feel inspired to share about what's unfolding in my life.  Let's see what arises.