The Violet Flame

“The use of the violet consuming flame is more valuable to you and to all mankind than all the wealth, all the gold and all the jewels of this planet. ” – Saint Germain

I first came across a book on use of the Violet Flame in a chain bookstore while my husband at the time and I were there. He was lego interested and I was not particularly, so I found myself wandering over to the new age spirituality section which I hadn’t spent time in since my late teenage years. Somehow I was interested to peek there with no current reading agenda that required a purchase but because I had recently been given a gift card to the store, there I was.

I stumbled across a very small book tucked in to the shelf called, “The Violet Flame”. Having an incredible fondness for the word violet, I had to peek. I’ll explain myself a bit more: My great aunt was named Violet and she made herself available to care for me as a premature infant, living with my family for a time period until I had grown to the point that my parents felt comfortable with other arrangements. She and I developed a sweet bond that continued on until she passed away when I was twelve. Besides this, the previous husband with me at the store had partially grown up on Violet Court and was living there when I met him, and one of my favorite group song projects from my freshmen year of school was Das Veilchen by Mozart which you may guess means “The Violet”. It’s a funny little song about a violet who wishes more than anything to be plucked and held by a maiden he admires. Instead of his wish, she tramples him and still he is satisfied because it was her… So I was drawn to the word Violet and had to know about this flame. The book had bits in it that rubbed me the wrong way at the time because of religious intonations but the curiosity I felt was stronger than the uncomfortableness. I bought it along with some other treasures that day.

I began with the prayers in the book as meditations and chose to think of them like that so that I could move past my limitations and just see how those words may work in my life. The more I recited the words, which I did about three times a day, the lighter I felt. Forgiveness began to move through me in new ways and other books began to show up in my life that allowed me to work even more thoroughly with forgiveness and compassion for memories that replayed of childhood challenges and scenarios that cropped up as a newish parent myself. The words I found in this book allowed me to go back into memories and release what was difficult as well as to do that in the moment when I found myself feeling blaming energy. The words helped me again years down the road when I found myself living without a husband and doing my best to offer steady, balanced, and loving parenting to my children so they wouldn’t need to go into their memories as adults to forgive mistreatment. However, I’m not claiming to be a perfect parent here. I’m sure my children will have things they plan to do differently and if they can make improvements, I applaud them. I hope they will.

In hindsight, I know this little book was a gift to come across and in the case it helps you now, I’ll share one of the prayers I found to be especially supportive:

I AM Forgiveness acting here,
Casting out all doubt and fear,
Setting men forever free
With wings of cosmic Victory.

I AM calling in full power
For Forgiveness every hour;
To all life in every place
I flood forth forgiving Grace.

If you choose to work with this text, it’s also lovely to close your eyes and visualize a gently warming violet flame holding you as you recite. As you grow more comfortable, see the flame growing also. Let the flame grow to hold your home, your neighborhood, your community, and beyond until you have the entire planet wrapped in the violet flame with forgiving grace circling everyone and everything.

Forgiveness is important work and the more you can forgive, the better life will be. Hope you decide to try this out, dearest ones.

Empty Cup

“Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Fill your life with love. Scatter sunshine. Forget self, think of others. Do as you would be done by. Try this for a week and you will be surprised.” – Norman Vincent Peale

If you can invite the concept of self- emptying, creating a void space within you, and then making yourself into a cup ready to be filled, you may be delighted with what follows. As an empty vessel, allow yourself to be filled and to empty again and again. Let your thoughts and your feelings come and go so that you become a vessel for life to flow to, through, and from you in beautiful ways. The perception of emptiness as a problem is all in the eye of the beholder. What if the moments of emptiness are actually full of potential ready to take new form based on what you are prepared to hold?

In order to become empty, meditation is necessary. You must learn to still your mind even if only for small increments. The more “nothingness” you create within, the more presence and potentiality you invite. The thoughts will still come. The feelings will still come. It’s okay to hear them and feel them and then to notice if you can detach to let them fall away. The more this is practiced, the more the small self diminishes so that the wisdom of your soul can shine through. Let yourself be wonderfully surprised by “emptiness” perhaps better felt as “openness to receive” while also letting yourself take inspired action (such as giving to others, participating in creative projects, saying or doing the thing that you know needs your attention, showing up to places that call you, remembering to bring all of your awareness into the present moment, etc.) without concern for fullness coming into play. It will come and it will go.

Waking Up

“The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up” — Paul Valéry.

We could look at this quote and marvel at the simplicity of first getting yourself out of bed everyday and consistently moving towards your dreams: one step at the time. To shift yourself from contemplation to actionable reality perhaps was what the French poet intend we derive. However, I can’t help but pull multiple meanings from this every time my eyes scan over the words. Perhaps we’ve been in one way of thinking too long and we must wake up to a pattern. Maybe it’s that we’ve been excusing behavior from others that limits us and we have to wake up to claiming our own right to space and expression. It’s even possible that we’ve settled into relationships that were comfortable for us at one point in time but as we all grow and change, we have to remember to wake up to the present and not the past versions because who we and they were five, ten, twenty years ago isn’t the same as today. Life may cause us to go through something that shifts us in a particular way to prepare us for a new way of being that we have to wake up to. From yet another perspective, perhaps the dominant energy in whatever life dynamics we find ourselves is providing the perfect illusions to keep us small and working in systems that deter our growth or keep us dependent on someone else’s dream or base desires. Within the same thinking, it could also be that our energy feeds the demands of another and we have so little left for our own wants and dreams that we begin to feel deflated. Perhaps we don’t even know what to dream anymore…

There are so many ways we may find ourselves waking up to reclaim and probably redefine our right to dream. Please don’t assume these dreams have to be big to be valuable. The smallest dreaming is quite powerful and affirming. You may find small dreams are the most rewarding all along your path. We certainly all deserve to live nourished and free in our hearts desires – surrounded by those who help us remember our sacred sovereignty.

Hug it In

What happens when you avoid or dismiss something or someone that makes you uncomfortable? Perhaps you bypass it or them because you think it’s not worth your while but yet when it rolls around into your awareness there’s a kind of stickiness there and maybe even a sting.

As we wind down 2025, year of the snake and shedding, what if you let whatever this could be in your life have a bit more airtime? What if you expand to meet it and even include it or them in your field with conscious awareness. Let avoidance be part of your shed, dear one. The sooner you meet whatever / whomever this is with your heart light, the sooner you embody peace and wellbeing with yourself across all aspects of your life.

This is not to say you should sit in difficult feelings for a long time but acknowledgment with the light of the heart helps to transmute these feelings into neutrality, and with more and more practice, you can even shift the feelings into loving acceptance and possibly joy.

May you expand in loving light. 💛🙏🏼✨

Night Yoga

I’ve been immersed in a training since March that I find shifting me at every level of being, integrating past expressions and future intentions with the ability to hold those loosely in present moment , as well as healing beliefs that are ultimately blocks in true self embodiment.

As we wind down into the final modules, invitation to illuminating the shadows of self to better inhabit a consistent vibration of joy led me to a night practice of asana (yoga postures) outside over the last month or so. I practice outside during daytime hours when possible but have not extended that to night before. The intention to welcome the shadow hits a little differently under a blanket of darkness with considerably less human activity occurring.

Ultimately, after dedicated practice I began to feel myself as the point of illumination. Miraculously, the shadows shrink when you hold yourself as the light. It’s a powerful experience.

I’d invite you to try this should you find yourself in an environment that can offer you darkness safely.

Circle Around

I’ve had more experiences than I can count of certain themes circling back around in my life, each time a little different, and I’d like to think improved in how it appears and in how I respond.  A good portion of this post was written in 2020 and saved as a draft until now that the topic has circled back around with significance at the end of 2025:

I had several voice teachers during high school and college who all had different ideas about the best practices in singing and each one would take you through warm ups of melodic lines based on his or her own training, peer influence, and personal insights.  My second voice teacher in high school approached singing from the German school of thought, valuing a round, darker quality in the voice producing a lot of resonance in the chest.  To create this sound, you can get a feeling for it by pretending you have a whole orange or a golf ball in your mouth and say a line, any line.  If you’d like to reference performances of Wagner’s works (i.e. Tristan und Isolde), you can hear more of that quality in recordings of professional singers.

Of course, my next teacher a few years down the road was not a fan of that style at all.  She preferred the Italian school of thought: Bel Canto.   With bel canto or beautiful singing, one focuses on a lighter quality with more fluid agility , pointing the sound towards the space above the hard palate, stretching up to the point between the eyebrows.  You may want to reference Bellini and possibly Cecilia Bartoli who is a well known practitioner of the style.

In my relatively long ago experience of moving from the one approach to the other, I was given the assignment of singing “like a witch” for two weeks straight.  I suppose my voice teacher thought two weeks could override two years of previous practice. Singing “like a witch” meant that I had to sing everything in my nose and record it as well as listen back over whatever that sounded like followed by journaling on the experience.  Truly, this voice teacher set me up for the spiritual reflection process that would be important to my current path.

The assignment was an over exaggeration calling me to work in the opposite direction for sound produced in the mask of the face.  It felt beyond weird and sounded worse.  However, after two weeks I was completely out of the golf ball territory causing me to almost swallow my sound under the soft palate and I could comfortably access a different internal focus, right above the hard palate of the mouth, in the nasal cavity.  If you’re not sure about those, you can feel the hard and soft palates by flattening your tongue out against the roof of your mouth behind your front teeth and sliding it back towards your throat.

So after two weeks of the one and two years give or take of the other, I could better understand how to access the space in the middle of these.  When I was asked to send my sound towards the middle of the brows, accessing a midway point felt relatively easy.  She was correct that two weeks was enough time for her desired change to take hold.  With more time dedicated to this new placement, I learned to send sound out in an arc between my eyes or up through the crown of the head. These points are also spoken about in Kundalini Yoga as triggers for awakening to your spiritual self which made it much easier to access when I found myself in those practices.

These vocal explorations led to momentary success in producing what the current teacher desired to hear. It also felt lighter and easier to sing this way.

I went on to teach public school music at the elementary level with a volunteer chorus offering in the mornings.  Early on in teaching public school, I was asked to take on private students.  I decided to only work with adults that wanted to give singing a try.  However, later I did begin to say yes to working with singers of all ages in the private studio with the understanding that we would only learn melodies that they liked together and sing to sing. I found myself refusing to train anyone in a specific way or other. If I saw a singer doing something wonky (unhealthy or stressful) in their sound production we would find ways to address that with movement and visualizations but otherwise the rule was to “let your voice be your voice” and don’t worry about sounding a certain way. Looking back on it, mostly I was encouraging better postures, relaxing muscles that were tight, and giving students visual tools that would help them get out of a self sabotaging mind. It was called a voice lesson but often times it was leaning towards a meditative practice.  Maybe I was on the tip of the iceberg I find myself on the underside of these days.

After about seven or eight years in the public system, I was done. I didn’t feel like singing anymore or pretending that I had some remarkable answers to making the best sounds. I thought, “anyone can tell someone else to drop their jaw and release tension”.  I stopped working with people on this topic and focused on my family. When I did come back to sing again, it was through mantra that was part of a yoga practice and my voice was half what it used to be when there at all. I was a mother to two young children, not sleeping well, and not singing much so that makes sense but I knew it was more than that. Some say singing is the truest expression of spirit and mine was lost it seemed. I was only interested in quieter forms of expression for a long while and I began to rely more on a home kundalini yoga practice to feel connected to myself. Thankfully, that grew into feeling connected to something more than me and with that, my sound in mantra became more steady and purposeful.

And now, I find myself a few days out from a vocal session with a former operatic singer who leads sessions in connecting to the voice for healing.  She works with anyone who is open to her work and shows the voice as the key to wellness. She incorporated the bel canto with tantric yogic practices in our session and I found myself laughing a little as I felt like a dog chasing my tail for the past 25 years — always searching for something, you know.  I haven’t been to a vocal class of any kind for at least 15 years and certainly not one focused on myself as the singer.  I attended this session not because I was actively seeking it but through yogic training with the teacher being a guest speaker.  I swear, Life always has so much fun with me and it’s a blessing to feel that way.  The more I notice meaning and synchronicity, the more they appear. The other participants in my training have not previously trained as singers and it was so beautiful to witness them engaging with singing in this non judgmental, healing, and joyful expression of connecting to the pelvic floor and root chakra while letting gentle sounds move through their vocal folds.  We were in a virtual environment and muted apart from the teacher, which in this case seemed to provide the participants ability to make sound freely though under the gentle care of this teacher, I imagine they may have felt this regardless.  I found myself in tears a few times actually, because in a flash my entire path felt connected and purposeful.  I felt a larger hand at play.  How lucky  are we who experience standing directly over our unwitting threads revealed as a more intentional tapestry?

Wahe Guru! I bow my heart and head to the Infinite Teacher.

Good Enough

Many folks struggle with perfectionism across different fields. We may want any extension of ourselves to be perceived as perfect in the workplace or even as a hobbyist. Truly this depends on your internal scripts and your intentionality in being. My personal experience began in musical expression, primarily vocal, for the enjoyment I found there. With interest leading to classical study, I found myself in a world of strict do’s and don’ts which shaped me and prepared me to execute some things I didn’t know I was capable of and in other ways stripped me of my authentic voice. I didn’t continue with a disciplined personal study of music for more than 8 years before trading the trainee role for a teachers role. Once in that position and honing in on the child’s experience of music, I began to see the value of play over perfectionism. With each year, I witnessed more benefit in play and exploration of sound for its power in creating meaningful experiences. I wondered at the value of the work I did with youth choral groups shaping them into various visions of mine. While that provided satisfaction for me in some regards, the overall learning experience and embodiment of expression was far greater in sound play without prescribed performance goals.

As that part of my life wrapped up and I found myself staying at home with my own children, other creative goals crept in and I found my internal script for what was good enough to share and what wasn’t as strong as ever. I wrote poetry without telling anyone what I was up to so I’d not have to hear a critique and knowing the minute it was under someone else’s gaze, my own would become harsher. I began baking with the aim of perfecting pie crust because I’m goal oriented and I needed that idea of perfection to run the actions enough times to understand what makes a marvelous flaky crust. The baking interest continued beyond pie crust and strongly alongside writing poetry, however, the baking I found myself sharing with others. It was safer somehow even though it too can invite critique and there are quite a few ways to screw up a batch of cookies or turn out a cake that’s a total flop. Even so, when it’s flour, fat, and liquid that fails it somehow seems more forgivable than a poorly executed score or script.

I did find myself tossing baked goods that just weren’t good enough to share because I was constantly trying new recipes and not necessarily focused on making something tried and true. However, as the years roll on and I no longer run mind scripts about getting things perfect because I’ve dropped that concept as a worthy effort, I let myself share baked goods that would have never made it out of my house ten years ago. I experiment with recipes and share them while usually letting folks know, “hey, this isn’t my best and I’m working on that recipe.” Or “wow, this isn’t my favorite recipe. Would you like to try it anyhow?” Most people don’t care at all. They appreciate the honesty and will try your less than best with open anticipation for the next round. I’ve found there’s a lot of freedom in sharing whatever it is that’s been made and being ok with that not meaning anything about me except that I’m a walking example of what it means to free yourself from the grips of perfectionism.

Once you allow this into one part of your life, it can take hold elsewhere and you may find yourself capable of loving yourself and others with a lot less expectation and much more ease.

Frolicsome

I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

—

Starlings in Winter excerpt by Mary Oliver

Perhaps you’re not a starling gifted with wings, but you may have the capacity to find your way to light and frolicsome behavior before this week is out …and that may lead you to feel as if you do.

Good wishes to you ahead of the next full moon, also known as the pink moon or budding moon. May you step into your own expression of full light in whatever way that can best support you now.