Tag: Pause

Expansion

Hello Dear Ones,

Today we move with Jupiter, the planet of expansion and luck, into Leo , the fire sign of heart led passion. And what is Leo not passionate about?! When Leo is inhabited in its highest expression, fear fades away and love takes center stage in expansive thinking leading to generous ways of being. There are so many ways to be generous with yourself – with your listening, with your smile, with your fully embodied presence. The places where you used to hold back, are now ready to be held with honest visibility and absolute divine grace shining through.

With this in mind, I ask you to pause today and consider how you may personally move with this lucky heart centered placement over the next year while Jupiter holds this energy.

What in your life is ready to expand?

Where could you use some extra love and luck in your life? What may change in this area by honing in and giving your undivided, trusting focus here?

How can you live more and more each day from your heart to expand beyond the obstacles you perceive today?

What can be held with curiosity over fear? Dearest, what does happen when you trade fear for curiosity?

What pattern is playing in your mind that needs to be thrown in the trash? I’m not good enough. I’m too old. That’s too expensive. Perhaps it’s something else.

You will see clearly what needs to go when you pause to ask your heart for guidance:

1. Heart, as Jupiter moves to Leo to inhabit the generously heart-led energy of the Lion, how can I expand to assume luck and love are mine to experience in every possible form?

2. What script, conscious or unconscious is ready to be released from my field?

Give yourself plenty of space and time with these points of reflection. The answers may come straight away or they may appear to you over time through your own vessel, through others, in songs, in the title of some article, or in nature. Stay open, Sweet Souls to the beautiful ways Spirit may communicate with you.

I’m right here with you asking myself these questions. Everyone has work to do, even when they’ve done so much already. There’s always room to grow.

Let’s grow together. ✨💕

With love and gratitude,

Valerie

Airlie Gardens, Wilmington, NC

Stag Gazing

This morning there was the most beautiful visitor passing along the trail that runs through my yard. He’s probably my favorite passerby yet; there’s just something majestic about them that makes me hold my breath in their presence. With that stilled breathing, my heart slows too and I sink into deep appreciation for nature and the wisdom a stag seems to carry with his crown.

The Stags by Kathleen Jamie

This is the multitude, the beasts 

you wanted to show me, drawing me 

upstream, all morning up through wind-

scoured heather to the hillcrest. 

Below us, in the next glen, is the grave 

calm brotherhood, descended 

out of winter, out of hunger, kneeling 

like the signatories of a covenant; 

their weighty, antique-polished antlers 

rising above the vegetation 

like masts in a harbor, or city spires. 

We lie close together, and though the wind

whips away our man-and-woman smell, every

stag-face seems to look toward us, toward, 

but not to us: we’re held, and hold them, 

in civil regard. I suspect you’d 

hoped to impress me, to lift to my sight 

our shared country, lead me deeper 

into what you know, but loath

to cause fear you’re already moving 

quietly away, sure I’ll go with you, 

as I would now, almost anywhere.

Darkness and Light

If taking a moment to ponder a poem looks like bliss, this post is for you. If it looks like torture, this post is also for you as a possible mindfulness exercise.

Approach the words from a point of present moment awareness, let this be an invitation to read them and let them go without attempting to process or understand them, and be present with only the word held in your mind at that moment. If you could hover a light over only one word at the time, pausing with each one as a momentary discovery, what would your take away be?

Would there be any coherence? Would that matter?

Darkness and Light

By Stephen Spender

To break out of the chaos of my darkness

Into a lucid day is all my will.

My words like eyes in night, stare to reach

A centre for their light: and my acts thrown

To distant places by impatient violence

Yet lock together to mould a path of stone

Out of my darkness into a lucid day.

Yet, equally, to avoid that lucid day

And to preserve my darkness, is all my will.

My words like eyes that flinch from light, refuse

And shut upon obscurity; my acts

Cast to their opposites by impatient violence

Break up the sequent path; they fly

On a circumference to avoid the centre.

To break out of my darkness towards the centre

Illumines my own weakness, when I fail;

The iron arc of the avoiding journey

Curves back upon my weakness at the end;

Whether the faint light spark against my face

Or in the dark my sight hide from my sight,

Centre and circumference are both my weakness.

O strange identity of my will and weakness!

Terrible wave white with the seething word!

Terrible flight through the revolving darkness!

Dreaded light that hunts my profile!

Dreaded night covering me in fears!

My will behind my weakness silhouettes

My territories of fear, with a great sun.

I grow towards the acceptance of that sun

Which hews the day from night. The light

Runs from the dark, the dark from light

Towards a black or white of total emptiness.

The world, my body, binds the dark and light

Together, reconciles and separates

In lucid day the chaos of my darkness.

✨

Tete-a-tete

Tete-a-tete

by Navakanta Barua

Ah, it is pleasant
We are sitting ,simply sitting
Sitting silently.
I have so many things to tell
Which I know I cannot, shall not tell

Last night I talked with me 
Of too many this and that—-
I was in an anguish to tell

But now 
This is enough——we are sitting.
The sun above is throwing little pebbles of its rays
Through the leaves of the tree,
They are falling on your nose, lips and arms
Not on mine
We are sitting, sitting —-
And we have had our talk.

———————————————————-

Sometimes we do intend to say something and find ourselves coming together in silence instead. At times, we need moments of peace together and at other times, to unburden our hearts. There is beauty in both and wisdom in giving yourself space to pause in consideration over when it’s time to speak and when it’s time to remain quiet.

Trust your sharing and trust your pauses too.