A journey into the Heart of the Feminine
Settle in the here and now.
Reach down into the centre
where the world is not spinning
and drink this holy peace.
Feel relief flood into every cell.
Nothing to do.
Nothing to be
but what you are already.
Nothing to receive
but what flows effortlessly
from the mystery into form.
Nothing to run from or run toward.
Just this breath,
Awareness
Knowing itself as embodiment.
Just this breath,
Awareness
Waking up to truth.
~ Danna Faulds
“So run, my friends, run fast and furious from all false solutions.
Let divine passion triumph, and rebirth you in yourself.
For the past week I’ve discovered such a joy in simply saying the word passion outloud – to myself and to others….⠀
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P A S S I O N… P A S S I O N … P A S S I O N!⠀
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What does this word evoke in you? For me it’s like a fire has been lit in my belly and my heart. And it brings a big fat smile to my face! ⠀
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‘With passion pray. With passion make love. With passion eat and drink and dance and play. Why look like a dead fish in this ocean of God?’ ~ Rumi⠀
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To me this doesn’t mean I ‘should’ always be smiling but it does mean that when life delivers it’s challenges, when loss and grief knock on my door passion helps me to remember a deeper knowing of who I am. To see every part of life as a gift. To move towards the fire and be grateful for the gifts in every experience. Like a moth to a flame, give me the burning of the heart any day.
P A S S I O N ❤
“So run, my friends, run fast and furious from all false solutions.
Let divine passion triumph, and rebirth you in yourself.Passion burns down every branch of exhaustion.
Passion is the supreme alchemical elixir, and renews all things.
No-one can grow exhausted when passion is born,
so don’t sigh heavily, your brows bleak with boredom and cynicism and despair—
look for passion! passion! passion! passion!Futile solutions deceive the force of passion.
They are banded to extort money through lies.
Marshy and stagnant water is no cure for thirst.
No matter how limpid and delicious it might look,
it will only stop and prevent you from looking for fresh rivers
that could feed and make flourish a hundred gardens,
just as each piece of false gold prevents you
from recognizing real gold and where to find it.False gold will only cut your feet and bind your wings,
saying “I will remove your difficulties”
when in fact it is only dregs and defeat in the robes of victory.
So run, my friends, run fast and furious from all false solutions.
Let divine passion triumph, and rebirth you in yourself.– Rumi
Photography by: Lani Noble, Thong Nai Pan Yai Beach, Koh Phanang Thailand, 2015
When we evoke this energy of gratitude at first we associate with the memory or thought of something – but actually when you let the memory or thought fall away, the energy of gratitude remains – because it’s not actually connected to any one thing.
At a personal level the feeling we observe is the release of dopamine, activating our pleasure or reward centre in the brain. It’s the pleasure sensation that the brain receives when dopamine levels are elevated that motivates us to proactively take action. So simply put, we do something that makes us feel good, we are motivated to repeat this action, so that there is more feel good.
The tricky thing is that when we place our dependence on things outside of ourselves to trigger that reward centre – relying entirely on the outer world to feel good…we forget so much about ourselves and leave ourself open to crazy highs and lows.
But neuroscience is now showing that actually just the act of looking for something to be grateful for…is enough to trigger the neurotransmitters in our reward centre…giving us a little boost of dopamine. And the amazing science of neuroplasticity shows that when we repeat the activation of these neurons…new pathways are formed…effectively changing our brain chemistry. So the more we evoke the energy of gratitude, or look for gratitude – the more we support this change in chemistry – and the more gratitude we observe…and this gratitude has absolutely nothing to do with anything in our outer world.
Reality is I’m no neuroscientist and maybe my rational mind hasn’t fully wrapped it’s head around the scientific part of this all yet…but I know how I feel and I know that when I take 30 seconds to tune in to the energy of gratitude…I feel abundant and it’s as if my entire world shifts with the blink of an eye….and the more often I tune in…the more abundant I feel and the more aware I am of how the universe is conspiring WITH ME every single step of the way.
…sound like woo woo…give it a try and see how you feel…go on I dare you 😉
Today I’m especially grateful for words…and music…and the combination of the two together – amazing lyrics and sacred sounds….brings an instant awareness to the sacred tremor of the Heart.
I’m loving on this beautiful artist right now. Infinite love and gratitude ❤
Watching the first sun rise of 2016 over Perth city this morning it occurred to me what a gift it is to be human and to experience this thing called life. Not just to be sitting there with my eyes watching the sun come up, but to really be experiencing it. Feeling it from the inside out…appreciating the magic of life unfolding.
The reality is I’ve been incredibly blessed the past 3 new years to have been on the stunning Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, where I would spend the first few hours of the new year completely alone and in awe of mother nature, blissing out & reflecting on the reflections of the sun on the lake….contemplating the sheer wonder of life. But this year I was back in my hometown, Perth…and instead of crawling out of my treehouse to watch the sunrise I had to get in the car…
And as I did this I noticed a little hesitation…was it really worth getting out of bed in the dark to watch the sunrise… in Perth?? Don’t get me wrong as far as cities goes I think Perth is incredibly beautiful…it’s just that I’ve had a bit of a resistance to city living these past years so I wondered if it might suck just a little bit to have to incorporate people and buildings into ‘my’ new year ritual….but thankfully I did it anyway.
Because guess what…different does not = bad. Watching the sunrise over the city I grew up in did not suck at all, not even the tiniest bit!
I wondered why I hadn’t done this a million times before…but mostly I realised what an incredible gift it was to be right here, right now, watching this with fresh eyes.
As I sat on the edge of an incredible park with more trees than I could even begin to count, surrounded by dozens of others sitting in quiet appreciation of these first rays of sun for 2016 I began to feel a familiar sensation inside of me, the one of the sun rising – not outside of me but from within me…and I was confronted with the very very real realisation that this was a particularly extraordinary moment that was also really very ordinary…as in it happens every single day and I wasn’t alone in my experiencing it!
And just to help make sure the message really came home for me…I looked up and saw these words in the wall
“May you find serenity in this sacred place”
A huge smile spread across my face…for me the sign didn’t mean…this place as in Kings Park…to me it signified THIS place inside of the heart…that is where I am, where you are…these places, WHEREVER they are. ALL of these places are sacred, it’s just our ideas that like to make one more sacred than another.
The truth is we don’t need to travel the world to search for extraordinary moments, all we need do is open our hearts to life as it is, right here and right now…and allow ourselves to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. Really what does sacred mean anyway…to make holy…and holy in its simplest form is to be whole..complete.
So to all of you extraordinarily ordinary..or is that ordinarily extraordinary…human beings out there…may we open our hearts in 2016 more and more and more because it is HERE and only here that we will find the serenity in ALL places. And if not now when? And if not you…who?
Happy new day ❤
Admit something:
“Some say my teaching is nonsense.
Others call it lofty but impractical.
But to those who have looked inside themselves,
this nonsense makes perfect sense.
And to those who put it into practice,
this loftiness has roots that go deep.
I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate towards yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.”
~ Lao Tzu (translated by Stephen Mitchell
