Tag: life

Everything I Wanted

“In the Divine Plan, every righteous desire of the heart is satisfied”. – Florence Scovel Shinn

When I was 17 I had the inspiration to write a list of what I wanted in life. I included details about my ideal partner, my children, how it would feel to be together, and how I would feel with all those things secured. I sealed up the list in an envelope and I tucked it into my favorite book at the time.

Twelve years later, I was packing up to move to another state with that ideal partner and those two kids just in the gender order I had specified, and the forgotten list fell out of the book. I paused for a long while looking over what 17 year old me had very directly listed I wanted to have and I felt everything freeze around me seeing it all received. I HAD EVERYTHING I WANTED. That may look like a lovely blessing and I definitely felt it as such at the time. I was a bit wowed at how I had simply listed it all and easily received it all without toiling over it. I didn’t repeatedly look at the list and wonder about how it would happen. I just clearly stated what I wanted and let it go. So this realization of how life *can work shifted into my conscious awareness and I say it like this because I have no doubt that some unconscious part of me understood already. It also helps that I wasn’t asking for anything outside of the realm of what we consider to be common occurrence. Those things take more trust and imagination to bring about.

As the move continued on, I didn’t think about the list much more but in the year to come, I found myself begin questioning everything I thought I understood about reality. HOW did that happen exactly? I began to feel curious about astrology and venture down pathways to understand different lenses of life as well as to write poetry and some short stories regularly which caused me to seek inspiration points in others. I found observing the qualities in others as well the way people relate to one another to be an excellent past time; it was super informative for how reality appears to be different depending on the participants.

As more time passed, I began to have symptoms of what many refer to as spiritual awakening. I felt different in my reality, with contrast coming up between me and those around me. I saw others differently than I had seen them before because I was changing. I learned to respond differently to the reality to heal the unhealthy patterns that were playing. I devoted myself to creating a healthier physical form after childbirths and within that began a practice of Kundalini yoga which I attribute now to the pattern awareness that occurred. When I first practiced this yoga I felt like I would vomit after every session for many weeks, and yet for some reason I kept doing it with adjustments here and there to help myself through that reaction. More recently, in a training to teach Kundalini, I understood that was a release of toxins in my body. The breath work and the lymphatic cleanse cleared so much energetic density from my body and it was absolutely worth it to do that work and to ultimately feel better. This also meant becoming more sensitive to my body and what my body needed as well as what it did not need.

I became more sensitive to everything around me as well. I could always read people with ease, but their motivations began to become apparent to me and I could feel their feelings too so that a person’s energy would speak to me before they ever said a word. I found this to be overwhelming for a time, wishing I could just process myself and not so much other information at once too. As I learned to anchor into this way of experiencing life, my external reality took on some challenges that didn’t match that original list at all. Everything I wanted was shifting into an external expression that wasn’t at all what I wanted, but now that I’m a decade deep into venturing away from the list, I’ll say I’ve come to view the growth that has occurred as it’s own blessing. Loss is a great teacher. I’ve learned to have gratitude in each day, to let forgiveness be an ever-present practice, to be mindful of what I speak, that saying less and sometimes nothing is more effective than anything I could have uttered, how to give without a thought for what may come back, how to expect the best from others knowing that allows them to show up as such, and how to love others as well as myself unconditionally. I’ve also learned to trust the universe to know best what’s in alignment with my highest good and to welcome what shows up in my reality now under that frequency.

Sometimes our ego and our soul want or need different things. Making sure they’re aligned is imperative. Otherwise, it could be that everything you want is only in service to a particular aspect of you, but not in service to the whole. That moment of thinking “I have everything I wanted” for me was a gateway to one of many spiritual awakenings. Sometimes Spirit creates a little precursor moment to releasing the ego because the soul has other plans.

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.

Granted

“Watch nature, because it is your greatest teacher. It moves and flows and moves on again. There is an incredible beauty out there in the mountains, in the forests, to teach you it’s silence, it’s beauty, it’s humility. Stay aligned to that.”

— Stuart Wilde

More than a decade ago, I wished to not operate from the various components associated with the personality but to function from spirit within the body; I believed this would allow room for pure spiritual growth. Moving in the world without a pesky personality would allow a free flow of connection to every living thing — so I thought — and I was so wrong. The personality is far too complex for such a wish! However, that wish was then and I am writing this years and years down the road.

What did I learn? When you wish for something from the heart, my experience has repeatedly shown me that heaven and earth will move for you to experience that thing as long as you’re willing to receive it without dictating the how, what, when, where, and who of the wish. Having lived through what followed (which was repeated experiences in various shapes sizes and scenes to release “Valerie”) I would wish you never ask for such a thing and that instead you spend each day embracing yourself as much as possible. You need your ego to function in the world with a grounded view of reality. It may be important that aspects of your personality change, but change is not elimination.

In conversing with one of my daughter’s art teachers in the last few years, I learned she had ventured down a similar rabbit hole at one point. She wanted spirit flow to art without restraint. With the chance you’ve ever gone down or are tempted to a similar path, I’d say to not wish aspects of yourself away. If you must make change – wish for peaceful change that highlights your strengths. We grow with and through our humanness. Spirit works through the expression of personality as an intended stroke on the large canvas of life. So show up with your quirks and your humor, loving every aspect unconditionally for your best possible outcomes.

The current expression of you in this moment is your incredible beauty. You showing up every day as you is a mountain and it is a forest of sorts. You hold a wealth of wisdom within and there’s nothing external that can teach you what’s inside or allow it to flow into the world better than it will naturally. The external can only reflect, reveal, and maybe polish. Your healthy ego directing that glorious personality is the key to your ideal life experience. With pure intention, stay aligned to that.

Unexpressed

Today I heard someone say, “Unexpressed gratitude is interpreted as entitlement or even ingratitude.”

So I’m curious about this. The topic was to do with ongoing, close relationships where people sometimes get lazy in communicating what they appreciate about one another.

Does it apply in the broader scope of relating? Something to consider…

I’m taking this as a reminder to write out my thanks for the wonderful experiences (no matter how small) over the holiday season! 💛

Every genuine thank you lifts the spirt of another. It’s absolutely worth your time.

Letter 10

As you continue along in the winter season and prepare for a fresh new year, consider what you’re willing to give to Mother Earth in the coming year…


Ten Love Letters to the Earth
by Thich Nhat Hanh.

X

Can You Count on Us?

Dear Mother Earth,

The human species is but one of your many children. Unfortunately, many of us have been blinded by greed, pride, and delusion, and only a few of us have been able to recognize you as our Mother. Not realizing this, we have done you great harm, compromising both your health and your beauty. Our deluded minds push us to exploit you and create more and more discord, putting you and all your forms of life under stress and strain. Looking deeply, we also recognize that you have enough patience, endurance and energy to embrace and transform all the damage we have caused, even if it takes you hundreds of millions of years.

When greed and pride overtake our basic survival needs, the result is always violence and unnecessary devastation. We know that whenever one species develops too rapidly, exceeding its natural limit, there is great loss and damage, and the lives of other species are endangered. For equilibrium to be restored, causes and conditions naturally arise to bring about the destruction and annihilation of that species. Often these causes and conditions originate from within the destructive species itself. We have learned that when we perpetrate violence toward our own and other species, we are violent toward ourselves. When we know how to protect all beings, we are protecting ourselves.

We understand that all things are impermanent and without a separate self-nature. You and Father Sun, like everything else in the cosmos, are constantly changing, and you are only made of non-you elements. That is why we know that, in the ultimate dimension, you transcend birth and death, being and nonbeing. Nonetheless, we need to protect you and restore balance, so that you can continue for a long time in this beautiful and precious form, not just for our children and their children but for five hundred million years and beyond. We want to protect you so you can remain a glorious jewel within our solar system for eons to come.

We know that you want us to live in such a way that in each moment of our daily lives we can cherish life and generate the energies of mindfulness, peace, solidity, compassion, and love. We vow to fulfill your wish and respond to your love. We have the deep conviction that generating these wholesome energies, we will help reduce the suffering on Earth and contribute to alleviating the suffering caused by violence, war, hunger, and illness. In alleviating our suffering, we alleviate yours.

Dear Mother, there have been times when we suffered greatly as a result of natural disasters. We know that whenever we suffer, you suffer through us. The floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis aren’t punishments or manifestations of your anger, but are phenomena that must occur on occasion, so that balance can be restored. The same is true of a shooting star. For balance in nature to be achieved, at times some species have to endure loss. In those moments, we have turned to you, dear Mother, and asked whether or not we could count on you, on your stability and compassion. You didn’t answer us right away. Then, beholding us with great compassion, you replied, “Yes, of course, you can count on your Mother. I will always be there for you.” But then you said, “Dear children, you must ask yourselves, can your Mother Earth count on you?”

Dear Mother, today, we offer you our solemn reply, “Yes, Mother, you can count on us.”

Letter 7

Ten Love Letters to the Earth

by Thich Nhat Hahn

VII

Your Ultimate Reality: No Death, No Fear

Dear Mother Earth,

You were born from the dust of distant supernovas and ancient stars. Your manifestation is but a continuation and when you cease to exist in this current form you too will continue in another. Your true nature is the ultimate dimension of reality—the nature of no-coming and no-going, no-birth and no-death. This is also our true nature. If we’re able to touch this we can experience the peace and freedom of non-fear.

And yet, because of our limited view, we still wonder what will happen to us when our physical form disintegrates. When we die, we merely return to you. You have given birth to us in the past, and we know that you will continue to give birth to us time and time again in the future. We know we can never die. Each time we manifest, we’re fresh and new; each time we return to the Earth, you receive and embrace us with great compassion. We promise to train ourselves to look deeply, to see and touch this truth—that our lifespan is your lifespan, and your lifespan is limitless.

We know that the ultimate and the historical—the noumenal and the phenomenal—are two dimensions of the same reality. Touching the historical dimension—a leaf, a flower, a pebble, a beam of light, a mountain, a river, a bird, or our own body—we can touch the ultimate. When we deeply touch the one, we touch the all. This is interbeing.

Dear Mother, we vow to see you as our body, and to see the sun as our heart. We will train ourselves to recognize you and the sun in every cell of our body. We will find you both, Mother Earth and Father Sun, in each tender leaf, in each flash of lightning, in each drop of water. Diligently, we will practice to see the ultimate and realize our own true nature. We will practice to see that we have never been born and we will never die.

We know that in the ultimate dimension there is no birth and no death, no being and no nonbeing, no suffering and no happiness, and no good and no evil. We will train ourselves to look deeply into the world of signs and appearances with the insight of interbeing, in order to see that if there were no death, there could be no birth; without suffering, there could be no happiness; without the mud, the lotus can’t grow. We know that happiness and suffering, birth and death, lean on each other. These pairs of opposites are only concepts. When we transcend these dualistic views of reality, we’re freed from all anxiety and fear.

Touching the ultimate we’re happy and at ease—we’re in our element, free from all notions and concepts. We’re as free as a bird soaring in the sky, as free as a deer leaping through the woods. Living deeply in mindfulness, we touch our true nature of interdependence and interbeing. We know we are one with you and with the whole cosmos. The ultimate reality transcends all notions and concepts. It can’t be described as personal or impersonal, material or spiritual, nor as the object or subject of mind. Ultimate reality is always shining and shining on itself. We don’t need to look for the ultimate outside of ourselves. We touch the ultimate in the very here and now.