We each have the essential gifts that we carry through this world.  Some we have developed, and some we are born with.  It’s not a matter of what we do, what we are good at or what talents we’ve honed, its the deep and essential truth of who we are and what we bring to the world.

Prior to the time that as children, we are tainted by the messages of the world, we are the embodiment of that essential being and those gifts are shared freely, without thought or purpose. The sweet presence of our life-essence  is visible at every moment.  That light shines through from infancy and remains until the world tells us that we have to hide who we are, and begin to express what we are good at.  Thus begins the spiral leading to the confusion and loss of the sense of self.  What results is an outward facing definition of who we are, and so begins the journey of losing touch with what was once our  burning radiance.

Beneath the noise and years of piling on false selves, the pure essence of who we are yearns to come back home.  It begins with a flash of recognition one day, when you catch a glimpse of yourself and recognize in your eyes, that true sense of who you are.  The feeling sears through your body and soul, and the recognition of a lost part of yourself returns.  

The road to the rediscovery of who you are, your essential self, and of your true gifts, can be a quick one.  It doesn’t take years of digging and exploration, because it is all there.  Time in silence, in nature, and moving your body once again as you did as a child, brings back a flood of all that was buried for so long.  

A childlike grin of recognition crosses your face as you greet your old friend walking across a field to you.  She steps into your body and every cell is once again infused with your brilliance.  An explosion blows away your old life and lights up your universe.  Transformation. 

I am blessed with an insightful and unwaivering intuition.  For many years I didn’t recognize the gift.  I thought that it was a hyper- vigilance, rooted in a childhood that had me on high-alert to every lurking danger around me.

I have come to know that my deep sense of knowing of the world is not about hyper-vigilance.  It’s an innate insight and rightness that is clear and often comes as a voice/a sense in my head and my body that rings with clarity.  I have come to trust it without question.

What I’ve realized is that I have trusted that faithful knowingness more for occurrences, events, and people who are outside of myself, rather than for me. It’s been easier to have faith in and more apparent to me - that sense of the outer world.  When a profound sense of “something” flashes in front of me, I don’t discount and deny it when it pertains to someone else or a situation outside of myself.  

I’m now reflecting on the countless times that the same senses surrounding my own life, have overwhelmed me and somehow, I have moved them off of my radar screen.  It’s so quick and so subtle, that dismissal of the intuition around my own life, that it has often sat bubbling below the surface, only to have the voice roar up after a confirming event in my life has occurred. “Ah”, I’ll say to myself, “Somewhere inside, I knew that”.  

Something switched today for me.  The unsettling recognition that I have been ignoring messages around my body, health, and personal “rightness”, pounced in front of me.  The same credence, belief and honor that I have given to my knowing about the outward, I now bestow upon myself, and am holding on for the ride.   

In the quiet of the morning, Jennifer Berezan’s “Returning” plays softly and hauntingly in the background.  The room is dark, with only the light of a lavender candle flickering.  The rhythmic question beats through the softness of the morning -  faint at first - but then with arms wrapped around me, coaxes an answer that emerges.  ”What does your heart say today?”   

My heart says that I want more time.  More time for writing, for photographing, more time to spend in the revealing depths of contemplative silence, more time in the garden creating a space reflective of the needs of my soul, more time walking with my dog, more time exploring song, more time in nurturing and provocative conversation with friends, more time exploring places that tell a story and where people bring a completely different and soul-nourishing perspective to my life; more time creating.  I am tempted to censor what I write, but since the heart is directing this day’s writing, I only type what I’m told. 

One person, one body, one 24 hour day each day; one store of energy, is what we are given.  My life is simply out of balance. As my heart types that it wants more time and enumerates where it wants to reside, I fully feel the deepest and truest sense of myself.  My heart and my voice will never be silenced.  They are decreeing that as of today, no more time will be spent begging to be set free.  The sound that I hear next, is the ripping off the chains of a compartmentalized life.  

Sometimes, the gaping holes in who we are, never quite fill up.  What was once lace-like in quality tiptoes to solidify, as we build our life to wholeness. There are times when we realize that not only do the holes run deep, they are cavernous and etched with a permanence that grabs us by the throat to remind us that the space may be with us forever.  

Our instincts are to push back, damning the gods and ourselves for our perceived weakness and recognition:  That Life Force Still Exists.  As we resist, reach for the shovel and scramble to fill the hole, its power strengthens and threatens to consume us and a lifetime of progress that we’ve made in embracing our beautiful and well-earned wholeness.

The lesson never changes.  Its mastery just eludes us.  Surrender, stop the resistance, and embrace our full alive being-ness, holes and all.  When we are able to breathe into that place, we move around the holes and they around us. The gaps narrow and fade, and we welcome home the solid ground beneath our feet.

There is a quickening to the passage of time for me recently.  Some of the work that I do entails planning for months in advance. It speeds up time.  If that planning can speed up time, then can’t time be slowed down as well?  What is it that grounds time and allows each moment to be savored?

The relative nature of time and how each of us experiences it, leads me to believe that we can affect the way in which we experience time.  Being in nature is a key to the slowing and full experience of each minute.  There is an expansiveness of time that that takes place when we are in nature and conversely, there is a quickening, a speeding, and a sense of lack of being able to hold onto time, that takes place when we are grounded in the physical/modern world. 

The natural world merges our hearts with the essential elements of life. Our bodies reconnect with their most primitive sense of time; A rhythm of the body with the earth and all elements in the universe.  

Time can seem to stop as you take a walk through the countryside, fill yourself with the brilliance of a sunset, or fully take in the primal sound of the crashing of waves and the call of a seagull.  Something as elemental as allowing the sun to enter our bodies, fills us with the radiance of the energy of something powerfully outside of us and removes us from the world that hurries us and threatens to flatten our lives.  Fullness emerges and minutes can bring a day’s worth of renewal.  

The practice of being present has eluded me for much of my life. I can remember being a child and praying to be somewhere else. A protective life-sustaining coping mechanism at the time, returned over and over again, as a haunted way of living.

Many people are plagued by living in the past. For me, it is a projection to the future that eerily permeates my daily life. I struggle with the concept of being present and at the same time, planning or having goals. I reside in that often fear-filled future at the expense of filling myself with the truth and beauty of each present moment.

It’s years of thought patterning that has led me to a place of inability to stay fixed in the present. I live with a fierce conscious focus around the gift of the present, and can feel the holy calling of that state of being. My racing, thought filled mind relishes yanking me out of that peace and dragging me into a future that is likely to never take place.

I live in a state of gratitude for all that I have. It’s a breathing prayer that I carry with me, and is the great gift that helps to root my soul in the present. I am gifted with eyes that see gratitude in a warm shower, a hot cup of tea, the waging tail of my loving dog, the smell of a burning fire, living in the beauty of the mountains, the love of good friends, and so much more. It’s the way that I dance through the world and is my ultimate salvation from the lure of the future.

We tend to fear the unexpected, rather than welcoming the blazing burst of aliveness that it brings to us. I always wonder, who it was who told all of us, that life would be a series of planned events and that we would have control at all over what life brought our way. How is this myth is perpetrated and how does it continue to exist as a universal truth?

We cling to that illusion, despite the fact that every experience that we have on this mortal planet, runs counter to that. Our life experiences are completely unexpected and unplanned; random - falling in love, the meeting of a person who becomes a life-long friend, illness, death and birth - All unexpected.

We awaken this morning believing that we know what our day will bring, when in fact there is absolutely nothing about this day that can be predicted. Would we really want it any other way? To miss the smile of a child that we hadn’t seen coming; the near accident on the freeway that breathes fresh life and gratitude into our hearts; the call telling us the news of the engagement of our child that brings unanticipated joy; the unexpected change that brings our life to a screeching halt and turns us in an entirely new direction.

I find myself longing for a knowing of how everything will unfold, when in reality, I want nothing resembling that in my life. Deep inside, in the place that I’m afraid to go, I long for a wildness that will embrace everything unknown.

Today, I open myself and dance the proclamation that I have breathed in the invitation to rejoice in the unfolding path, yet unseen.

Why is it that breath is so illusive at the times you need it most?  Worlds collide, a crashing cacophony of pure, raw, life events, settling in as though there is a vortex to be filled. Some dragon to be fed. As it all descends, breath retreats, leaving us holding on in a body that allows a lifeline, if we only grasp it. 

Why do we have to be constantly reminded to breathe, when breath is the life force that moves us through the most difficult of times, and infuses us with the life-force needed to peek through the keyhole and see the world beyond? Perhaps if you don’t understand the aching physical need for breath, this question never arises, and you go along shallowly gasping for air, rather than fully infusing your cells; bathing your mind, body and soul with the glorious gift of breath; your staunchest ally in living in this physical world.

So today, “Breathe!” is screaming in my head and begging me to open, rather than shut down to all that is available, to ease the severe turns in the curves in the road.  I am blessed to hear that voice in my head and dwell in the the holy temple of a body that listens and responds.

There is a natural cycle of shedding the old and bathing in new regenerated growth, that exists universally.  Things come and go; are born and die.  Other beings in the natural realm seem to understand this.  It is only we humans, who resist.  We want to hold on to the old, not just for the wealth of knowledge and lessons that reside in our experiences,  but because we are afraid of what lies ahead for us, without the comfort and shelter of what is worn and has outlived its usefulness.

Look today to see if your skin is begging to be shed; if it has started the shedding process again and again, only to be thwarted by you clinging on to it, in every possible way.  Look deep inside and see if you are slowing your own miraculous metamorphosis, grasping onto past, habits, things (literally the stuff in your life), ideas, and emotions, that no longer serve you.  They are echoing a haunting verse, begging to be set free.

Each new season, each new time in space, is an opportunity to shed the old and joyously welcome the breath of newness swirling around you, pleading to be let in. Let today be the day that you accept that spark of transformational light.

Today, the first day of 2013, is tinged with powerful possibility and the promise of many twists, turns, and expansive openings in the road. There is a sense of opportunity unfolding, and also a knowing that 2013 will be a year of many firsts.  The key to all of this is remaining fully and wildly open and saying YES to things that at first appear foreign or unknown. Fear is not a resident of 2013.  It has dropped so far into the background that it is almost unrecognizable.  Your old companion, Fear, yields no power in this upcoming year.  

Some things are clearly visible today and others are softly seated in the background waiting to eek their way out.  All are possible and will move forward at the right time, settling with a new comfort into the home of your heart, mind, and soul.  Everything being birthed will be breathed into you and you in turn will breathe them, sometimes gently and sometimes ferociously, back out to the world.  Become quiet and you can feel it everywhere.

Heavy hearts search for the light.  When there is nowhere to go, nowhere to turn, we look for the light to guide and comfort us.  The answers are there….we know it; we feel it.  When things are the most difficult, our faith fades into the darkness and there is a shudder of fear whispering “I have lost my way”.  The struggle ensues to wind our way back to the light, praying that all will be illuminated and answers will make themselves visible.  It’s a slow journey through the darkness, but a constant that leads to the epiphany.  The light is there.  It is always there - even in the bleakness of a darkness that grips us and will not easily yield comfort.  

Our temporary blindness requires a slow easing into it all, so that our eyes and hearts are not overwhelmed by the brilliance cradling us and taking us home to the core truth - the light does not live outside of us.  Rather, we are bathed in the soft and burning radiance that resides inside; That, is our soul.  

The deep, cave-like journey outside always leads us back to that eternal truth, where peace and sight return.

The hyper-time-warped world in which we live and the constraints of time have forced us to compartmentalize who we are.  Our gifts take a back seat to “work” as we segment who we are into descriptions or titles:  ”Manager”, “Painter”, “Athlete”, “Writer”, “Mother”, “Dancer”, “Singer”, “Sculptor”, “Healer”, “Architect”, “Inventor”, “Poet”.  

Only the merging of all of our gifts and talents result in the fully alive person that we are meant to become.  Our concept of time and of how we spend that time is linear.  We don’t broaden, but rather, narrow in attempt to get one thing done so that we can move to the next thing……if we have time.  There is narrow space for becoming, as we carefully choose how to spend our precious time.  Little time and space exist for the opening that integrates all of our selves into the one miraculous being that we are.  Until we get there, we struggle to put all of our pieces together in a way that is artificially constructed. We craft ourselves from our thoughts and beliefs of what and who we are, rather than from the experience that allows us to fully explode into the rich fullness of ourselves.  

There is no creativity in this linear life.  It is only when we open up fully to flipping our world, our concept of time, and our consciousness upside down, that our beloved selves emerge.

I’m wandering through the gnarled, tangled web set out in front of me.  It’s sometimes dark, sometimes ominous and threatening, and other times, simply complex and challenging.  Always, though, the light is visible on the other side.  

The pull of the light allows a voyage, that while fraught with twists, turns, and seemingly un-navigatable passages,  is easy to circumvent.  When no focus is placed on the obstacles, they cease to exist and the warmth of the hearth of possibility is all that is felt. Instead of stepping, I float to the place where smiles emerge freely and everything is within reach.  

There is ripping off of the old lenses required as we navigate through life. What often appears as an obstacle, pitted with danger and peril, is an opportunity lurking in the shadows. A call to step into places that we would have never dared venture into, had we not been presented with a challenge that we couldn’t have seen coming.

You can’t safely navigate. What we once thought of as safety - a state that we craved and lived enslaved ourselves to - is the illusion of safety. There is no such thing. What replaces safety is a sense of stability under your feet - a terra firma - that comes from traversing new places and finding within yourself, the ability to always lean forward.

What emerges is the truth of yourself and a deep knowingness about your place in this world. That solid ground, which is at the core of you, is your new safety. The external world and all of its false messages, slips away, and a truth more powerful than you ever believed existed, nestles within you. You are peacefully, and at the same time, powerfully home.

It’s often an easier and more intuitive task to define what it is that we don’t want rather than what it is that we do.  To clearly stake out in your mind and heart, that territory you can see with crystal clear vision as the thing that you do want; the way you want to live your life; the fulfillment of the destiny that is not only your right, but your life’s purpose to fulfill, is not a straight-line path.  

Everything that brings us closer to the state of being able to filter through the daily mass of information that clouds our minds, requires time alone, solitude and the ability and fearlessness to go deep inside, in order to examine what is at our core.  

There is no short-cut in getting to this place.  It is “work” of a different kind.  We are used to having to work hard, try hard, spend time chipping away at tasks and requirements.  The way into ourselves requires that we put all of that aside and take the inner journey - one that takes no learned skill, but simply requires that we put the daily “stuff” aside and quietly go inward - No devices, no manuals, no “steps” will take us there.  It is simply us - alone - with ourselves, often accompanied by our true ally, the natural world, that will guide us gently and then often startlingly, to the place that will allow us to understand all that we are destined to know and be, and have that reflected in an undeniable truth.