Tag: Positive Thinking

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

We Rise

“Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?” — J.M. Barrie

“We rise by lifting others” — Robert Ingersol

Have you ever been in a relationship, either platonic or romantic , that required you to be less kind than you would be in your natural expression?

Have you ever felt contained, capped off, or extinguished by proximity or perhaps agreement spoken or not?

What kind of information does this provide you?

Let yourself sit with reflection on those connections that drain versus the ones that create peace as well as the ones that amplify your energy.

How are your relationships feeling when you look at those three categories?

When relationships are loving and supportive —truly based in love without fear, control can soften, and your better aspects based in love can be supported for expression in the world. You may find you can be kind without consequence and loving without reason to those sharing in the relationship as well as those encountered at varying degrees of frequency because your dominant vibration magnetizes the positive aspects of others.

When allowed to rise with love and kindness, every interaction can meet you in that elevated state.

Friendly Equals Flirty

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve visited this topic with my closest female friend and my sister. We all have a more friendly outgoing nature when we are in situations that put us at ease or there’s not a threat of some kind that causes a need to monitor your natural energy. Once in a while for some folks this is a problem because they assume the friendliness is flirting; you must be asking for more with being so darn friendly. The thing is, for each of us, that’s not the case. Friendly equals friendly and that’s it.

Many years ago a woman in a shop greeted my sister and I when we were in our extra exuberant playful and friendly energy with a comment that allowed me more understanding about this. She said, “Wow, you two are super joyful. That’s such a high vibe.” I was able to see it as simply an energy mismatch for another person if they weren’t feeling joyful and if joy felt too far away to access in that moment, it could be annoying.

When the friendliness causes others to feel uncomfortable or threatened, it’s truly a reminder to look within. It can help us look at what it would take to get back to joy, if that’s what we’d ultimately like to do. It can also help us to accept that we are in a different feeling state than someone else and skip the judgements. You have to start with asking what it is about you or your life experiences that feels uncomfortable in that external friendliness and joy? Must there be an ulterior motive if that’s your assumption?

I take this advice for myself too. Anytime something makes me uncomfortable, I pause to ask the feeling what is has to teach me. What do I need to learn? Just today something made me uncomfortable, and this evening, I will take that to my meditation as well as journaling time. I know it’s to do with authority and control as well as a tendency to sour at systems that seek to contort us from our true expressions, however, there must still be something to learn because I had a feeling cue today that kept me from expressing the joy that could have moved though me in response. I don’t write this to suggest that Joy is a more important feeling than any other feeling or that other feelings are meant to be overlooked or escaped. Every feeling has value and I think it’s important to stay with each feeling for as long as what may come from it has some good for you. It’s just as important to understand we choose how we feel by what we focus on.

Here’s to being honest with ourselves and staying open to learning when the opportunities present. May we be aware enough to see ourselves clearly and to hold steady or change depending on what’s required so that more of our soul light can be inhabited in each moment. ✨💛✨

Consent

 “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” — 

Eleanor Roosevelt

This includes you! Check your relationship to self in this regard as well as the possible assumption that Eleanor Roosevelt meant only relationships outside of self. The more you hold loving space for yourself, the less tolerance you will have for scenarios that cannot reflect you accurately.

For example, a comment that doesn’t align with you will roll off as if it weren’t said and the impact will become only a reflection of the person who spoke. If the comment is an internal script, you will begin to notice it as untrue from the point of an observer.

The less sponge like you are for the projections of other people and mistruths you may be conditioned with , the more quickly your interactions will shift to mirror the truth of you.

Call your reality into true resonance by loving and respecting yourself deeply. ✔️✨

A photo from last year when I was first making the change to look at myself with loving kindness in the dressing room no matter how I may be feeling in my body and whether I liked the article of clothing or not. Before this change, I would find all sorts of judgmental faces in that space made at myself I’d never make at someone else. 💕 It was one of many ripples over the last decade that shifted my relationship to self. 💖
Small changes matter. 💫

Work in Progress

I’ve been in my drafts folder the last week or so. Here’s another post written in 2020. I mostly still agree with what I wrote then, especially the last paragraph and as for the rest I suppose the excessive wordiness led to the resolution, so I’ll accept it as necessary to my process. ☺️

Five Years Ago:

When lines become attached across various aspects of our life so that the heart and mind also become intertwined, we can feel conflict between the two.  When the heart and mind are separate from one another, we can instead develop an interest in what causes conflict and resolve response to our interests.  The ability to separate SELF from mind where emotions reside creates room to instead reside in the heart from where purity of right action stems.

Facing conflict can release disguise of avoidance under appropriateness.  What can be learned in staying with a situation that appears to present inappropriateness or conflict of interest if you are willing to abstain from your own interests – to deeply examine those, set them aside, and let something larger than you work in your stead?

The external is a reflection of the internal.  We bring about situations externally to assist us in resolving what is unseen internally.  This is not intentionally manipulated to be so in most cases; it is simply the nature of our world.

If there is no conflict internally, no conflict will show externally.  If a conflict arises in the external, can it merely be a reminder to release the ego or does it need to be cut away externally to appease the internal discomfort created by perceived conflict?  If the ego is released will not conflict fall away on it’s own?

Perhaps there’s no such thing as conflict of interest, only mind that seeks to be in balance, and the choice of working in the external or internal so that one can reflect the other as desired.  Choose the inside work, otherwise the situation will show itself to you time and time again, though the faces and setting may be varied.  Growth in peace with what is, as it is, will allow you to dissolve anything external that challenges your comfort.

– from a Chihuly exhibit at The Biltmore in 2024

(Not a huge fan of the Biltmore but a very big fan of this artist & his team. 💕)

We Women

I have been blessed with a lens into the most beautiful support from women in the last few years that allows one to hope for a nurturing future of how we connect to one another in community. Honestly, I have been lucky to have a handful of wonderful friendships from a young age with girls who have become lovely women. I know not every woman is so fortunate, however, the choices for women are evolving. I have been part of a group of women who are absolutely dedicated to supporting each other however they show up for the love of sacred feminine energy re-emerging on this planet. That means all judgements and comparisons are dropped and competition is not entertained as necessary or desirable, and not just because a woman has aged out of being perceived as a threat; acceptance is offered with camaraderie simply because you showed up. Wow, yes to more of this!

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We all have our own paths and learn how to be in the world based on our familial exposures and that cannot escape the over culture that creates our conditioning on a larger scale. I grew up in a household of a working mother and my closest friends in elementary as well as middle school had mothers that stayed at home and maybe who decided to work when they were older, some in traditional systems and one as an artist from her own space. My mother focused on work outside the home and with time became the breadwinner of our family. It was a different dynamic than the other households of my friends. I noticed their mothers were more relaxed and perhaps happier in some regards while I knew my own mother was pleased with what she had been able to create in her life after marrying my father while still in high school. I was proud of my mom and felt she was an excellent example of dedication to making the best of your circumstances.

Years down the line, I was surprised when I found myself desiring to stay at home with my children, and I felt it created an assumed point of disappointment with my mother though now I know differently. Before this — my work as an elementary music teacher had already faced the judgement of females who had chosen careers of more influence and power. I found as I moved in the world as an early twenty something that elementary public education was not so valued by many. Parents of students were unbelievably disrespectful and colleges of my at the time husband who was studying medicine on occasion belittled the work calling it “cute” or “adorable” (never his male colleges by the way, only the females) which when I was still living from an immature ego myself, infuriated me. I felt my work was important but also that because it was with children, knew it was perceived as less valuable. This is nonsense, of course, because music works across both hemispheres of the brain to create better coordination and advanced thinking as well as providing an emotional processing platform for youth among other things. Working with children is an incredibly powerful point of shifting the future reality of humanity as we mold the subconscious and nurture belief systems with more ease at that impressionable period of life. If you want to make a change, do it within yourself and then with your children.

With my spiritual work and diligence to changing patterns within the familial line that I knew were not going to be passed on to my children and enough years staying at home to deeply accept my choice, I now no longer care how I am perceived by a woman who has chosen differently. I knew what I had to do once the children were here and I have the good fortunate of being supported in doing so for which I am eternally grateful. I didn’t want the rearing of my children in the hands of paid providers. There’s nothing like being faced with your ingrained patterns as well as those of the other parent day in and out, and work outside of your home can make the perfect escape so that outdated patterns persist. Can you work and make these changes? Yes, absolutely, if you are self aware with a want to improve, you can. Can you stay at home and ignore needed change? Yes, absolutely. Immersion made the way clear here.

These life experiences have created for me a vantage point of total support for other women in whatever they choose so long as their hearts are happy and they have the support they need in however their paths take direction. However, I sometimes still encounter a woman who carries a sharp edge in her tone for the woman who stays at home, maybe she dismisses her as less important than other woman who work or makes defensive comments for her choice. While I don’t care how I am perceived, I do care for the good of women and the connections women are able to form. If the working woman can see that the work of living everyday for every person has its inherent value regardless of the system or the kind of work — it would release her from judgement. If the woman working feels judged as somehow less of a mother or less of a woman, how far from the truth is that? It’s only as true as we give it belief. If the woman choosing to stay at home can be at peace with the work she is offering as just as valid as whatever current societal stories are pitching, we may all be able to claim our womanhood for however it fits each of us best. We are all Goddesses, as far I am concerned and we are all working, children or not.

If we could drop these judgements, how much better would we all be?

Imagine if we replaced all the judging and comparison with lifting each other up. What if we women united and allowed ourselves to be in the energy of fierce love and devotion to one another simply because we can see that’s where real influence and power can thrive for the good of us all?

Ain’t Misbehavin’

Traditionally interpreted as a song about staying true to another person, the title by Fats Waller dropped into my mind for another reason: staying true to you. For the purposes of this post, “misbehave” means behaving in any way that isn’t authentic to your essence; it’s any action or non action that is an untrue expression of your soul signature. So stepping away from conventional standards if those have you in their grip, is essential to know if you’re behavin’ or misbehavin’. You may also need to allow a lot of space around what you’ve been conditioned to believe is right and good as well as timeline management on what needs to happen when, if it applies to you behavin’. Here it can be especially important to remember that we humans have created time and the ideas around how life *should be mapped out. Just go ahead and let yourself drop any should right now unless you’re applying it to what feels true to your heart and brings peace to your mind while upholding the highest good of all. This may also require looking at what the “highest good” means with a soft heart and deep trust in the intelligence of your emotional body.