Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in my part of the world, a great time to reflect on all I'm grateful for, and on the meaning of gratitude.

What is gratitude?

Sometimes looking at a thing's opposites helps me to see that thing more clearly. To be grateful is to be thankful, to revel in life as it is. The opposites then, those things that keep us from gratitude, are unmet expectations, unforgiveness, a belief that life should be different, and a lack of acceptance. In perfect acceptance, perfect gratitude is easy, natural.

How do we reach acceptance?

Acceptance follows surrender. It doesn't much matter who or what we surrender to: God, the Divine Flowing Nature, the... Read More »

To seek balance, I have learned, can be a trap, a means of attempting to control life. Control is almost never a good thing as it tends to be self-centered; attempting to control our lives denies divine will. But in awareness and resonance with the will of divine, life seeks its own balance.

A balanced approach to balance creates the balance we would seek. In mindfully embracing all levels of awareness - of mind, of heart, of body, of soul, of God, of others - the lives we live become balanced, happy, and fulfilled; balance seeks its own balance.

What can we do then to achieve the balance we desire?

First, we need to be... Read More »

Some believe there are but two levels of truth, absolute truth and relative truth. Absolute truth, often spelled with a capital “T”, is thought to be the highest truth, God's Truth, the “real” truth. Relative truth then, is everything else, based on our human perceptions, beliefs, thoughts, and actions.

We like to see things as simple, as black and white, as this and that, as right and wrong, but can life really be that simple? I think not.

With a little quiet reflection, it's relatively easy to see that our existence, our perception of existence, and our created existence (by our patterns of thought), can be looked at as a series of levels: instinctual, sensory, cognitive, intuitive, awakened, divine, inclusive. (Of course, this model, like any model introduces limitations, but regardless, models can be useful in the dissemination and understanding of ideas and ultimately, knowledge.)

Accepting this model of levels of awareness, of... Read More »

Our world is changing; there are signs everywhere that we are experiencing an unfolding of a time of love and world peace. With this change comes a desire and need to work together, to collaborate and share our inspiration, our gifts, our passion, and our creative love.

Collaborative projects and endeavors allow us to match our skills and passions with those of another. In this merging of diversity, richness and breadth are made available. Where I am weak, you are strong; where you are weak, I am strong. The union of our strengths allows more creativity to blossom.

But also, and perhaps even more significant, as Napoleon Hill tells us in Think and Grow Rich “No two minds ever come together without, thereby, creating a third, invisible, intangible force which may be likened to a third mind.”

In our collaborations, new ideas spring forth, new possibilities, new approaches, which would not have occurred... Read More »

Seek not love blindly
Messiahs for a new age
See true love within

Where is love? Is it in the teachings of icons and cheerleaders for a new way? Is it in the channeling of distant intelligence from faraway realms? Why do so many of us have a need to seek the answers to life's questions in the words of some small group of elevated elite?

Love is simple. Love is easy. Love is inside you, just beyond that wall of needful fear, of desperate intellect. Find the courage to surrender to love, and love is all you will see.

This needn't be difficult, but we make it so. We make it so by elevating love, by believing love is just out of reach of the majority, the majority we see ourselves a... Read More »

Our feelings and emotions are funny things some days. When we feel less than brilliant, less than inspired (as I do today), it's not always so easy to determine whether these feelings of stuckness are caused by fear of moving forward and shining or whether they're a signal that we're on the wrong track and need to make a course correction.

Procrastination, in small measure, is good in times like these. Rather than diving deeper into what may be the wrong stream, it can be useful to pause, reflect, and to examine our goals and intents. In these quiet moments, connecting with divine, we ask for direction, for clarity, and for the courage to hear those directions.

Choices are presented to us every single day. Sometimes the choices are big ones. Usually though, it's the small and subtle choices that determine what we... Read More »

In the presence of perfect love, there is only light. Darkness does not exist in this place.

Many of us understand these ideas to be truth, an ideal truth that we desire and seek. But how many of us have really both discovered and remained in that place of nirvana, of absolute love, of perfection? Not me, that's for sure. I have had some wonderful, miraculous, mystical moments – instants of grace when I touched the Face of God. But those moments didn't last. I came back here to my humanity to walk among the living. This is my place.

To pretend then, that I perceive only love would be either dishonest or delusional. Not authentic. A walk in fantasy.

Life is a journey and... Read More »

One of the things I love doing is hanging out at the beach. Some days I bring my camera and capture the beauty of a seagull in flight, the arrival and departure of the waves, seagrasses dancing in the breezes. Other days I bring a journal book and write poetry. And some days I walk. As I walk along the beach, I often spot little stones or shells. Colors, textures, rich varieties.

I've had a thought, a wish, a dream, an intent, that one day, walking along the beach, I will pick up a stone and find that it is a diamond. Riches delivered by God. A gift.

It's not a bad thing to have dreams. It's wonderful. Imaging and imagining how life will unfold, the blessings we'll receive. The risk though, and the thing I'm realizing this morning, is that sometimes we miss the simple gifts when looking for the big... Read More »

With all the big words and concepts in the world today, words like non-dual, transition, evolution, awakening, and enlightenment, it's easy to get a little overwhelmed. Sometimes it's better to look at the simplicity of what we're really trying to live and be.

• Non-dual: Accepting the whole of who we are, human and divine.
• Transition: A time of change
• Evolution: Change
• Awakening: Waking to the truth
• Enlightenment: Living in the light that is our truth

It doesn't serve us to over-intellectualize all these simple concepts. All we... Read More »

Life is a roller coaster. Ups and downs and sudden turns. Unexpected moments. Unexpected circumstances. Chance meetings. Chance opportunities to see with new eyes.

In the why is the quest. In the what is the answer. In the questions lie the truth. Deeper, where the Heart sings its quiet songs, there is found the reason. There is found that which is real.

They stood, facing each other, closer than comfortable, gazed deeply into wanting, seeking, questioning eyes. Dropping their needs for but an instant, they saw the answers they sought. In... Read More »