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Big Dreams, Joyful Exertion
In yesterday’s post and my commentary on Rosemary’s message on big wishes and dreams, I revealed my big dream for the year to attend the 2014 Kalachakra Initiation event offered by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Ladakh, India. It is a dream I am visualizing and in one way or another working on every day.
One of my practices this year is to work with a card deck, CD and DVD published by Sounds True called Living Wisdom with His Holiness The Dalai Lama. The cards are photos of His Holiness taken over the years by Don Farber. There are six sets of cards for the Six Transcendent Perfections with guidance on the Perfections from His Holiness on the reverse side from the photos.
The Transcendent Perfections are Generosity, Ethics, Patience, Joyful Exertion, Meditative Concentration and Wisdom. I draw a card each day after my “Morning Pages” and meditation. And the Perfection of the day is always right on the mark for what I need to hear and learn!
Yesterday was no exception. After writing my post the day before, I thought about the effort I’m putting into this Kalachakra Initiation Project I have set for myself. I wrote about that in my pages and then drew a card, The Transcendent Perfection of Joyful Exertion! And here’s His Holiness’ phrase that jumped out at me:
In spiritual matters, we should not allow ourselves to be too easily content, because truly there is no limit to our spiritual potential.
He goes on to say the only limit is to our lives. The real meaning of Joyful Exertion is to continue to explore, to search and seek the truth in all matters Spiritual; it is a life-long pursuit.
Practicing Six Session Guru Yoga as part of my work on my Big Dream is not an easy undertaking. Getting in three sessions during the day and three during the night means getting up in the middle of the night, sleep, to sit and practice. Yesterday morning at 4:00 am, falling snow not yet changed to rain, I wondered if I could continue. When I drew the card and read the words: “no limit to our spiritual potential” I received my answer. And for the remainder of the day my practice, my exertion, was joyful!
There is a Zen evening Gatha (prayer) that comes to mind:
Let me respectfully remind you,
Life and death are of supreme importance.
Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost.
Each of us should strive to awaken.
Awaken! Take heed!
Do not squander your lives….
How deep can you go, spiritually? His Holiness says there is no bottom to the depth of exploration. The only limit is the shortness of our lives.
I do not intend to “squander” my life! How about you?
Dream a Big Dream! – Richard’s Commentary
Rosemary begins her message with a question:
Do you know your Heart’s Desire? Do you have a Big Wish?
Well, do you? The very first step in moving forward with your life is to visualize it, see it, dream it! As humans we are good at making pictures. We are an extremely visual species. Consider the simplest of things we do; if we want to go out to the store, in the snow, to get that last loaf of bread, we first make a picture of the store, the way to get there, the car, the road conditions, and a thousand other images that pop into our minds just to accomplish this simplest of tasks. We create a “map” of the task to “see” us through to successful completion. No matter how simple the action we visualize it before acting.
And what if the task is bigger; what if we are talking about a “heart desire”? Then the visualization needs to scale to the level of the desire.
I’m using a visual perspective here because we are strongly visual. But if we engage all of our senses, our emotions, our intuitive senses and even our spirit in creating a dream-environment how much more powerful the “map” becomes to get us there. If we begin to hear the desire, smell how it might be, taste the flavors anticipated, feel the quality of the air and imagine being in the midst of that desired condition we can actualize the dream that much more powerfully.
Let me give you a personal example: my Big Wish for 2014 is to travel to India to participate in the Kalachakra Tantra Rite of Initiation being offered by His Holiness the Dalai Lama this year. He is offering it in Ladakh, in the north of India in the Himalayans. This dream touches on many of my wishes – travel back to India, travel to the Himalayan Mountains, visiting Buddhist Monasteries, participating in Buddhist rituals – the list is quite long. And as I begin to picture this dream it becomes very large, almost to the point of overwhelm. But I am taking my own advice:
The first thing I have done is to read more deeply about the Kalachakra Tantra Rite of Initiation. I have read Jeffrey Hopkins’ translation of His Holiness’ work by that title. And now I am practicing the Six Session Yoga as a prerequisite of the Initiation. I am visualizing the practice, visualizing Kalchakra and Vajradhara and beginning to get a deep, heart and soul understanding of this Tantra.
I am also reading about Ladakh. And I am remembering the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings and wonders of being in India. I have only visited three cities before, Mumbai, Bangalore and New Delhi. I have not been to the north or anywhere near the mountains. But I have been above 14,000 feet in Colorado and I have been above 19,000 feet in Africa; I can combine my various experiences to begin to form a picture of what it might be like in the highest mountains in the world.
I have also visited Buddhist monasteries, practiced Buddhism there, enjoyed the beautiful art, heard the bells, chanted the mantras, smelled the incense, tasted the simple fare, felt the cold hard floor of early morning meditations in the middle of winter and shivered not with the cold but with the moving spirit of the sangha.
I am putting lots of pictures, experiences of all the senses, and deep feelings of my past into as complete a picture as I can of my Big Wish, what it might be like. I am energizing this wish. I am empowering it and sending it into the cosmos as something already done. And I let go of the particulars of how; I leave that to the Universe. I am doing my part!
Rosemary asks another question in her message:
So what do you want? What is your Heart’s Desire?
Answer that question, and the rest is up to you to paint the picture of your Heart’s Desire. Go for it!
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: Dream a Big Dream!
Do you know your Heart’s Desire? Do you have a Big Wish?
Remember when you were a kid and grownups kept asking you what you wanted to be when you grew up? Most children have a ready answer for that question. It might change over time, but they know in the moment. Doctor. Firefighter. Teacher. Soldier. Dancer.
I have a friend whose little girl is saving up for her own plane. She knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to tell you.
So what do you want? What is your Heart’s Desire?
For most of us, past the age of 21, our Heart’s Desire isn’t some THING to own but something less tangible. World peace. An end to hunger/homelessness/poverty/cancer. A happy family. A grand romance. To be on TV with Oprah. To be healed of a disease. To have financial security. To have a child.
What is your Big Wish?
Reach into the depths of your Heart and ask yourself that question. Most of us can come up with the answer we think we’re supposed to say, like ‘an end to illiteracy’ or ‘world peace,’ but keep asking yourself, “What’s behind that wish?”
What we really want is the feeling we’ll have when our wish is realized.
Some of us have never really probed into our own desires. In today’s world, it can be especially difficult for women to access what their Heart’s Desire truly is. We’ve been taught to fulfill everyone else’s needs before we even address our own needs, much less our desires. Men, too, can struggle with this because they have been taught that it is their job to make things happen and they might be afraid to dream too big and be unable to realize that dream.
But I give you permission, right now, today, to take some time to explore what you truly desire, deep in your Heart of Hearts.
There is no judgment about your dream. No one will laugh or criticize or tell you that you can’t achieve that dream. What desire is it that, when you picture yourself having that desire manifest in your life, makes your heart sing? What is the deep desire that brings a smile to your face as you consider it?
It might also bring a quaking to the knees and a sense of fear and even the sound of ‘old tapes’ playing in your head that cause you to shut down and grow small again. If the dream doesn’t challenge your reality then it’s probably not the BIG ONE!
Dream BIG!!! Find out what your Heart’s Desire is.
And then energize it. Plan for it. Think about it. Figure out the first step to realizing it. Picture it as if it is already here and step into how it feels. Share your Big Dream with a carefully selected audience who will support you no matter what.
The first step to living your dream is to DISCOVER IT. There’s a song in the wonderful show, ‘South Pacific,’ that contains the line, ‘If you don’t have a dream, then how are you going to have a dream come true?’
The next step is to CLAIM IT. Be bold. Let yourself dream big. Find that Heart’s Desire that energizes you.
And, finally, stop hiding in your life and PURSUE THE DREAM! I’ll give you another song from a show as inspiration. In the Disney movie, ‘Frozen,’ there is a great song, ‘Let It Go,’ that is sung by Idina Menzel with such great enthusiasm. It’s about being YOU in all your BIGness. Claim YOU without hiding. Your dream is yours to realize.
Live YOUR Heart’s Desire!
ROSEMARY’S INSPIRATION: Find Your Heart’s Desire!
Rosemary’s “Two-Minute” Video for this Week: Find Your Heart’s Desire!
MONDAY’S POEM: Gaia, The Dark Womb
I am working with a new card deck with artwork by Susan Seddon Boulet and her amazing Goddess images. The other day I drew Gaia; the image, the words about Gaia by Michael Babcock and Lao-Tzu’s Taoteching inspired today’s poem:
Gaia, The Dark Womb
Gaia holds us in all of our empty states:
She bathes our soul in her deep dark water;
She sustains our physical bodies when we emerge
As breathing life in her atmosphere;
And, she welcomes us home into her moist warm
Soul (soil) when we are finished with these bodies.
There she nurtures and gestates us again until
We are ready to free our spirits completely
And merge with her Loving Presence.
©2014 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
Settling In
This phrase has been popping into my life since the New Moon and New Lunar Year. It seems it comes to mind every day as I write my Morning Pages. I catch myself writing it and wonder, what’s this about…
And I realized today, as I wrote it once again, that I am settling in. There are many aspects to this, not the least of which is settling in to the new energies coming in with the New Moon and New Year. It’s different. Is it just me who is feeling and sensing the difference? Do you sense it?
So, I am settling in to this New Year, the Year of the Wood Horse, or Green Horse. In the Chinese Medicine Five-Element system one of my dominant elements is Wood. With the New Moon we left the Water Snake Year of 2013 behind and moved into Wood Horse. There is an energy about this Horse coming in; some have said it is galloping in! And the Wood energy is hitting right on top of my Wood tendencies. What this means is lots of energy for me and I am finding myself needing to dampen it down; adjust. I am settling in to this New Year and I expect it to take more time. After all the Chinese celebrate the New Year for two weeks, until the Full Moon, which is still a week away. Maybe it takes the two weeks to settle in to the new energy.
We are also still setting in to our new home. We spent some time yesterday moving filling cabinets so we can more easily file and re-file paperwork for the business, church and personal lives we lead. We are still finding places to put things and still looking for things misplaced! Settling in.
And it occurs to me that this is what life is really about. We are always settling in. Do you feel this way? And it’s a good thing. Settling in is becoming present. It is sensing our environment and getting comfortable with it. It is getting in touch with our bodies and settling in. It is examining our emotions, our heart-feelings and settling in to whatever arises: joy, sadness, grief, gratitude.
There is also a settling in of our mental state as it ebbs and flows from alert awareness and high functionality to drowsy calmness as we get ready for sleep. I even find myself settling in to the rhythm of time, adjusting to what seems to be shortening days (can they really still be 24 hours long?).
And spiritually I am becoming very settled. No, not complacent nor dogmatic, not fixed in anyway but very open and always questioning. Yet at some level I am accepting that I will likely not find the answers to my all my questions in this life. I’m not settling for this as a final conclusion, but I am settling in to this possibility.
I have a greater sense of calm around this notion of settling in. I’m in this for the long haul – and it could be very long, if the reincarnationists have it right! So, why not settle in and enjoy the journey!
This phrase seems to be following me everywhere. Even in my yoga class last evening we were led to “settle in” to our bodies during shavasana. And I knew just what to do.
I hope you are not settling for anything. But do find some peace and settle in to your life; it’s so much easier that way!
Have a great weekend!
The Year of YOU! – Richard’s Commentary
Rosemary is nothing if not provocative. She wrote her Ezine article last week after coming down from her very successful Possibilities Playshop during which she led our group through an afternoon of meditation to meet a guide for the year, more meditation to clear blocks and cut cords, and most importantly to get in touch with our “bodacious wish” for the year. Then we created a “roadmap” or a “guidebook” to move us through the year to help us make our “bodacious wish” come true! So, I am not surprised when she states:
This year make a pact with yourself to BE WHO YOU CAME HERE TO BE. If that is your only resolution, goal, to-do YOU WILL BE AMAZING this year!
The Playshop was all about being. We did not use our left-brains; we did not plan; we did not schedule; we made no resolutions. The only “to-do” was to continue to work on the Guidebook and add detail selected intuitively using our right-brains and our own inner guidance.
The Playshop, the Guidebook, pictures pulled from magazines, words cut out because they trigger some meaningful thought or feeling or experience, cards pulled from an intuitive deck or Tarot deck are all tools to help us plumb our inner depths. We all know why we are here; we were born knowing. As we grow, get an education, move into a career path, earn our way, build relationships, join communities, we often forget or repress our truth, our purpose. But we know!
Books come into our lives to help us remember. Yesterday evening our Spiritual Exploration Group came together around the topic of books, especially books that were the most influential in our lives. My measure of this is “What single book would you want to have if stranded on a desert island?” We had a wonderful conversation; many fabulous books were discussed and shared. The books that seemed the most meaningful were those that drew ourselves out; set ourselves free; helped us remember who we are and why we are here!
BE WHO YOU CAME HERE TO BE begins with remembering. Find and use the tools to remember. It’s there inside; draw it out.
With this new year of the Wood Horse I am meditating more, dreaming more, practicing mindfulness and receiving incredible guidance. Where does this come from? Inside me; I am remembering. And these memories are beautiful, expanding and powerful expressions of WHO I AM.
And I WILL BE AMAZING this year!
How are you experiencing the Wood Horse energy after the first quarter moon into the New Lunar Year? Are you ready to be who you came here to be? My bodacious wish for you is to have an amazing year! We live in an amazing time of heightened potential. We all have a role to play. I will look for you in the field!
PS: The Possibilities Playshop Rosemary held to create our 2014 Guidebooks, roadmaps for the year directed by the moon and our intuition, was a truly amazing event. And now you can play too! The videos of the meditations and the process for creating the Guidebook are now available; Details Here
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: The Year of YOU!
How are you looking at 2014? Are you still keeping your New Year’s Resolutions? How are doing toward your goals? Do you have a big to-do list for the year?
This year make a pact with yourself to BE WHO YOU CAME HERE TO BE. If that is your only resolution, goal, to-do YOU WILL BE AMAZING this year!
January is a good time for an assessment of where you’ve been and where you’re going. A lot of folks work towards the New Year on January 1 but the holidays and end of year confusion can sometimes make that a difficult time to concentrate on deep desires for the coming year.
How about trying something new this year?
Let’s declare the New Year starting with the Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year, with the second New Moon after the Winter Solstice. This way we can move beyond all the end of the year hullabaloo and spend our January recovering or putting away decorations or getting the bills out of the way and then relax and focus on the energies coming in for the New Year.
2014 is a year of the Wood Horse. This is the energy of new growth and charging forward. Are you ready?
2014 is also the year of Transformation that carries us forward on the tide of change that 2012 energized within us. The Big Shift is upon us.
If you focus your Horse Year energy on BEING YOU you can take yourself forward into the life you were meant to be living on Planet Earth. When you go inside yourself and commit to BEING YOU, you will find that all the tasks on your to-do list follow naturally from that Being-ness. Goals follow in the same way.
And there is no need for resolutions because you are learning to trust the inner voice that comes from your inner guidance telling you, reminding you, to be the Light that you already are.
Too often people seem to get excited about goals and resolutions in the New Year and they forget to live in the present moment. They are focused on some time in the future, after they change something about themselves and/or their life. They start living in ‘Someday’ and ‘When X then Y’ thinking.
Here’s the most important goal for you to have in 2014:
“I listen to my inner guidance and commit today to live my life BEING ME.”
That’s it. That’s all the resolution that you need for the New Year. All your goals fall under this.
Once you have freed yourself from creating a list of resolutions that might even be based on what you think you should do, not on your heart’s desires for the year, you can relax into being yourself and following your heart.
What are you greatest dreams? What is your Life Purpose? Do you know your Life Lesson so that you can use it to help you grow and not succumb to it as a blind spot?
What is your ‘Bodacious Wish for 2014’?
Answer all these questions and you will have a blueprint for how you want to be this year.
Once you have identified your dreams and wishes and Purpose you can develop your business plan or vision board or list of goals but they will all be in the context of who you ARE in this year.
Climb onto your 2014 Horse and charge forward, being the YOU you were born to be. This is your year. Live Your Richest Life!
PS: Are you ready to BE YOU? Here’s a way to get some insight into what it means to BE YOU: Rosemary is offering a video recording and all the bonuses from her 2014 Possibilities Playshop she held last week. It’s a great way to move into self-discovery about how you want to BE this year. Details Here
ROSEMARY’S INSPIRATION: Possibilities Playshop 2015!
Rosemary’s “Two-Minute” Video for this Week: Possibilities Playshop 2015!
The video for this week is a brief selection from the end of Rosemary’s 2014 Possibilities Playshop she held last week. We had a great time creating our guidebooks for 2014. If you want to create one for yourself, you can purchase the video product and all the bonus material she offered. And this might be a great way to also prepare for the 2015 Possibilities Playshop! Details Here
MONDAY’S POEM: Heaven and Earth
I don’t know about you but I’m still basking in the energy of the New Moon and the New Year! And it’s going to be a great year; just look at my post last Friday: ADVANCE!
I wrote today’s poem on Lunar New Year’s Day, the 31st, with references to the I Ching Gua I cast for the year and the “moonth.”
Heaven and Earth
Six line, three strong
Heaven below, Heaven on Earth?
Support for the Way
Wood Horse gallops forward.
Six lines, three weak
Earth above, Earth on Heaven?
Lifted upward, floating on water,
Flowing peacefully ever onward.
Six lines, auspicious Gua;
First Gua for the New Year.
Tidal Gua in its rightful place;
Rough ways smooth, returning.
Six lines, Advancing;
Auspicious for prosperity and peace.
Remember, Advancing leads to
Hindrance, Heaven above, returning.
©2014 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
Men and The Goddess 