Dierks Bentley

Here are the lyrics to a song I heard at church last Sunday.  It is a very moving song called “Beautiful World.”

All the noise and the voices are screamin’
What they have to say
And the headlines and sound bytes are givin’ me
Demons to hate
And the man on TV
He tells me it’s ugly
But if you ask me

It’s a beautiful world
It’s a beautiful world

There’s tears and there’s fears and there’s losses and crosses to bear
And sometimes the best we can do is just to whisper a prayer
And press on because
There’s so much to live for and so much to love

In this beautiful world
Say what you will but I still believe
It’s a beautiful world
It’s a beautiful world

And I know (I know)
I’m not dreamin’
I just choose (choose) to believe it

So I hate that I sometimes miss what’s right in front of my eyes, oh
And I know at the end of my road I’ll be wantin’ more time
Just another sunset
One more kiss from my baby
A smile from a friend

In this beatiful world
It’s a beautiful world
Yeah, it’s a beautiful world

Say what you will, but I still believe
It’s a beautiful world
Yeah, it’s a beautiful world
Oh, it’s a beautiful world

I Am

A new poem:

I Am

I am the clarity that calms

the peace that passes through

I am the light that leads

the stillness in the storm

I am the love that levels

the ecstasy that embraces

I am the energy that engulfs

the aspirations that arouse

I am the courage that coarses

the wisdom that brings wealth

I am the divine that dances

the spark that springs forth

I am one with wonder

the connection to creation

I am not removed by remorse

but awake with awareness

And on another note: Happy Anniversary, M!  I love you with all my heart and am so grateful for the past 11 years and this amazing journey we’ve shared.  You have given me more than you will ever know.  I am so proud of all we have accomplished and created and just how far we’ve come!  You are such an inspiration to me and I am in awe of your amazing ability to do everything so well, especially take care of our precious family!

The Winner Is…

Megan Monique is the winner of Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth.”

Vision Board 1

On January 1, 2009, I attended a workshop entitled “Design a Divine 2009″ that was led by Elizabeth Barbour.  Over the course of the day we all created these beautiful vision boards.  I wrote a little about this once before so I’ll try not to repeat myself, or at least not too much.  I first learned about vision boards in “The Secret.”  It is a great way to put Creative Visualization to work.  What you do is find images and phrases that represent what you would like to see in your life and you put them together in a collage.  I think, though, that Elizabeth took this a step further and explained that sometimes an image will just call us to it.  We might be pulled to put something on the page without a real explanation for it.  She even shared one of her own vision boards with us.  On it was a picture of a woman floating in a pool.  When she put that picture on the board it simply represented peace and tranquility (or something like that, I may be wrong…sorry Elizabeth if you’re reading), little did she know that months later she would move into a house with a pool in the backyard.

So as 2009 is coming ever so closely to an end and major changes have happened in my life, I have been analyzing my vision board.  I wanted to talk about a few of the things on the board that seem to have manifested or taken me by surprise by manifesting in a way I had not expected.

The first is the phrase “Something big is coming!”  I had finished my board and was cleaning up when I stopped and opened a Rumi Calendar.  On the page I flipped to there it was “Something Big is Coming!“  Okay.  I responded by grabbing scissors, cutting it out, and quickly gluing as the group began to gather.  I knew that the message was for me.  In 2009, something big was coming.  I just had no idea what.  In my ego mind I thought maybe it would be a book deal or possibly a big move or who knows maybe even another baby.  I didn’t expect that I would reconnect with an old friend who would suggest blogging and I would create this space where I’ve expressed so much and been dealt some blows and have shared it all with so many.  It is yet to be determined what that seed will grow into but it is already enough to call BIG! And never in my wildest dreams did I suspect the biggest thing of all – that one of my dearest friends of 18 years would die, just two days after becoming a mother.  It is this that leads me to the next observation I’d like to make about my board.

Before attending the workshop, Heather, Kristin, Amy and I had just started discussing a girls’ weekend.  I was finally, after 5 years of motherhood, ready to do this.  As I flipped through magazines I wanted very much to find a picture that represented my friends and our trip.  I found the perfect (well almost) picture of 3 friends drinking wine and looking through a scrapbook (that’s what it looks like to me) with the caption reading “Get Away.”  I immediately cut it out, but did pause for a minute to consider the significance of only 3 friends in the picture.  I had a couple of ideas.  The women in the photo represented each of my friends or maybe one of us would not be able to make the get-away.  Whichever it was, the image made it to the board.  Upon returning home from Amy’s funeral, I stared at that picture in the upper left hand corner.  There we were the 3 remaining Amigas, doing just what we had done in Kristin’s kitchen when I arrived in NC: drinking wine and looking through photo albums.  We had even had a few moments of laughter through our tears…  I have to admit when I look at it now all I hear in my head  is “and then there were 3.”

I am going to end this on a positive note by pointing out the references to love.  What I wanted most of all in 2009 was to reconnect with my husband.  I wanted us to take time to nurture not just our girls but each other.  It seems that the power of the vision has worked it’s magic.  Tomorrow Mark and I celebrate 11 years of marriage and I am more in love with him now than ever!

*I titled this post Vision Board 1 because I do plan to write a little more about my visions for 2009.  As I learned from the month of October, A LOT can happen in one month and there is more than a month left in 2009.

Click Story by Renee

Allow me to introduce Renee Liss, a fellow writer, blogger, and friend! You can visit her blog here.

A Short Trip
by Renée M. Liss
© 2009

The words stared at Shayna from the pages of the magazine, taunting her. “Where do you want to be?”

“Well,” she thought, “certainly not here.”

This was true in reality and metaphorically. She was not living the life she wanted to live and she was not living in a place she enjoyed. The words spoke to her in a way the article’s author did not intend when he wrote them. The article was about religion. Some anonymous editor pulled out that line to highlight in the page’s layout. Was it the Universe talking to Shayna through this page? Or just a silly coincidence?

But where Shayna wanted to be, she didn’t know. Looking back over the last 35 years, she only knew that she never wanted to be where she was at any particular moment. Yet once she left a place, she wanted to go back. Because, after all, the place before was so much better than where she was. She bounced from job to job, always thinking something about the new job would be better than the old one. She moved from city to city, state to state, always seeking that elusive Perfect Place.

“It simply doesn’t exist,” she said out loud. To herself. Because there was no one else around to hear her.

And then she realized she’d been pondering this great philosophical question way too long because she looked at the clock on her computer and it told Shayna the time was 5 p.m. Time to go home. Time to figure out what to eat for dinner. Time to find anything and everything to do that was not what she should be doing.

She should go for a walk. She should go to the bookstore and sit in the café and plan her future: the one that did not include slaving away at a desk job 40 hours a week waiting for something to happen to her. This would all be so much easier, Shayna thought, if she just knew what it was she wanted.

And at that moment, Shayna made a decision. She was quitting. Her job. Her life. She was going to reinvent herself. She’d hand in her resignation tomorrow, quit the lease on her apartment, sell what she could and give away the rest. She’d pack up what few belongings she had left, clean out her savings and go on the road. She was going to drive across the United States, explore Canada, fly to Europe and backpack. She’d live on her wits alone. People had been doing that for thousands of year. Why couldn’t she?

Shayna’s long blond hair trailed behind in the wind as she wound her red convertible along city streets toward home. Home. What was home? It was where a person felt most comfortable and safe. Shayna felt safe, but not comfortable. She knew she was making the right decision. She knew it!

She unlocked her front door, kicked off her high heels and threw herself down on the couch, curling her legs underneath her body. She pulled her laptop off the desk next to her and starting researching travel routes, hotels, places she could stop and stay with friends for a while. She checked her bank account, did some math and budgeting in her head and then on paper.

“This really could work!” she said, excited.

Shayna typed out a resignation and put in writing her intention to vacate her apartment in 30 days – though she hoped it would be sooner. She posted everything she could on Craig’s List. All the while, her excitement grew. She wouldn’t stay in one place long enough to grow restless. She wouldn’t have time to learn to hate a place. She would be free of obligations. Maybe she could write articles for a travel magazine somewhere to finance her wanderings once her money ran out.

Maybe …

The thoughts and plans ran faster and faster through her mind. It made her smile. She was doing this!

Shayna finally exhausted herself, falling into bed at 1 a.m. The alarm sounded at 6:30. She dragged herself out of bed, a little more energized than she should have been. The adrenaline rush from the night before continued coursing through her, forcing her up and out. This was it. This was her moment.

Shayna showered, dressed and ate breakfast. She grabbed her printed and signed resignation letter off the desk and walked out the door. She arrived at work at 8:30, set her things down in her office and headed toward her boss’s door, holding the letter. She raised her hand to knock.

That was the moment Shayna froze. She looked down at the letter. Her stomach knotted. She returned to her own office.

She bawled up the letter, threw it away and proceeded to delete every add she had placed on Craig’s List.

“Next year,” she thought. “Next year, I will leave and never come back.”

Talking vs Listening

Growing up my biggest role model was a talker.  She could talk and talk and talk about anything and everything.  She had a ton of friends and people were constantly telling me how sweet she was and how much they loved her.  As time went by I equated the two: talking = being loved.  I figured the only way to be popular and have lots of friends who thought you were awesome was to talk a lot.  This was all good and fine except for one thing…I was and am a quiet person.

It plagued me as a teenager.  When I was in a large group, I’d freeze up.  You wouldn’t hear a peep out of me.  In small groups with close friends, I could talk a lot, but with new people it was hard.  With boys, it was even harder.  I used to end up getting crushes on every guy I could actually talk to because that was a rare find.  I put a lot of pressure on myself to make conversation which only made things worse.  The more I tried, the harder it was.  I’d say and do silly things just to break up the silence.  I was terrified of silence.  In high school a group of guys we hung out with called me “Poonch” because in one of those quiet moments I playfully punched the guy I was hanging out with and said that.  Argh, to this day it embarrasses me and makes my tummy do flips thinking about it.  They would all shout that whenever I walked into the room.  It was awful and of course made my quiet complex even worse.

When I got to college I just started drinking in social situations.  When I was drinking, I talked and people thought I was funny and fun (at least that was my interpretation of it).  The problem was when I’d meet party friends while sober, there was nothing to talk about and the magic was gone.  I started and ended a few “friendships” that way. In my desire to be talkative, I have often gotten caught up in gossiping and complaining…because hey, it’s something to talk about.  I never really thought about the negativity involved in either of those acts because at least I wasn’t being quiet.

Over the past year I have reconnected with old friends and a few people have said one thing about me.  “You were always a good listener.”  Most of the time (unless I am really distracted) I AM a good listener.  I have always looked people in the eyes when they talk and almost always  remember what they tell me.  In college I actually trained myself to stop remembering people’s names (I know, crazy) because I felt stupid for ALWAYS knowing the names of people I met at parties when they did not know mine.  It happened so often that I just said “fuck it” (Of course as an adult I’ve had to retrain myself to catch names).

I have finally begun to stop judging myself for being a quiet person.  I talk to people I connect with and I talk about things that are important to me.  I don’t try to force myself anymore.  I try very hard not to gossip, although I do still catch myself from time to time.    My greatest desire is to be a good listener and a trustworthy friend.  Those are the attributes that will bring loving relationships into my life.  And I know for certain it is quality not quantity that counts!

Megan’s Click

The following post is written by Megan Monique Harner.  She is also known as Pink Lovemuffin Extraordinaire over at Owning Pink. She is loving, sweet, and wise beyond her years.  You can visit her website here. You can also follow Megan’s tweets: @meganmonique.

For as far back as I can remember, I was always searching for something. I looked for ‘it’ everywhere: boyfriends, churches, books, family, friends, conversations, new cities, new places, writing.  I never knew what it was that I was looking for and I most certainly had no idea that I was searching for it. I moved to Austin when I was 19 to venture out on my own. I left with little to no money, a few of my personal items and my boyfriend at the time. I just knew I had to get away from where I was or I would never leave, I would never get anywhere. I had always had this incredible urge to just ‘go,’ which led me to running away from a lot of things. After I was in Austin for a month or so, I received a card (one of many) from my Dad that said, ‘I love you and hope you are doing well. I hope you find whatever it is you are looking for.’ This was a realization to me; everyone else could see that I was searching for something.

When I got to Austin, I became employed with Crystal Mountain Animal Hospital, a fabulous holistic animal clinic with an extraordinary team of animal lovers. Through my boss, Charles Vandermause I was introduced to The Landmark Forum which allowed me to understand me and others on an entirely new level. I was able to forgive, release anger, and get down to the basics of love. My search ended after that first course. I learned that everything I needed was inside of me all along. We are all born with what we need to develop and find our purpose, after-all everything exists only in our mind, who knew?! This was a valuable lesson for me at 19-years-old. Charles Vandermause has been a ‘God’ to me ever since.

I sit here, trying to think of a particular moment that changed my life. Though taking the Landmark Forum was definitely one of the moments, I don’t feel that it is the explanation for who I am today and why I have come so far along on this spiritual journey.  When you get down to the nitty gritty of things, every ‘aha moment’ we encounter is what compiles to create who we are today. For me, giving credit to just one instance would not do my life justice.

Austin, Landmark, Charles Vandermause was where my journey really started. It was the first step in what got me where I am today, but between then and now- oh Lordy. It’s only been 4 years- wow. It definitely feels like a lifetime. In conclusion, writing this ‘aha moment’ post for me is in itself, a moment. It is easy to dismiss the circumstances we go through as insignificant because we are waiting for that one big moment when all of our dreams are coming true. But the fact is, all of the little things along the way are the true miracles getting us to where we need be, to snowball into that one BIG thing.

If you take the time to notice all of the minor miracles along the way and stand in awe of what is taking place, when you finally get to that BIG dream of yours, it won’t seem so unbelievable, so scary and big. Looking back at all of the things you already overcame and accomplished will give you the courage you need to get there and own it.

After all, ‘It’s not the destination, but the journey that gets you there.’

Book Give-Away 3

Sorry guys, it’s been a long time since I’ve done a book give-away.  The book is “A New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle and was made famous with the help of a woman named Oprah.  I borrowed and read this book before it was an Oprah pick and loved it enough to go buy my own copy. It’s been on my bookshelf now for 2 years and I haven’t gotten back to it, so it’s time to pass it on.  If you are interested in winning the book just leave a comment on this post.  I will check the comments on Friday night at 8pm, put all the names in a hat, and draw a winner.  I will post the winner on Saturday morning.  Once I have the winner and necessary mailing info, I will send the book out on Monday! Thanks and good luck!  Now go, comment!

Namaste

The common definition I have been given for the greeting “Namaste” is “the light in me greets the light in you.”  That “light” is the spark of divinity within all of us.  It is also called our Christ Consciousness.  I’d say it was a huge moment in my life receiving this information.  I am not just this human body and mind, but within me lies a light and that light is God.  My view of life has not been the same since.

I am grateful to have found an amazing church that is supportive and encouraging of the search for truth.  I go to church not to gather with friends (although they are an amazing group of people) or out of duty or obligation, but for spiritual food.  Some Sundays I stay home because my nourishment that day is meant to come from loving time with my family, time in nature, or reading spiritual literature.  But most Sunday’s I feel a pull to go.  It never fails that when I respond to that pull and show up, I receive “my message.”

Today I received a few messages, but the most important one came in a song.  From time to time our music director will have us sing the song “The Face of God.”  This particular song, I believe, expresses the same sentiment as the greeting “Namaste.”  The lyrics are as follows:

You are the face of God.

I hold you in my heart.

You are a part of me.

You are the face of God.

Usually after 2 verses of the song, we are asked to turn toward someone next to us, look into their eyes, and sing the song to them.  I will admit that often this is an uncomfortable feeling.  I think it has a lot to do with the quote I posted yesterday.  It is hard for us to accept our own divinity.  Many of us have had lifetimes of being told we are miserable sinners.  We also have a difficult time truly connecting with other people on a soul level.  So to look in the eyes of someone you either don’t know or don’t know well and acknowledge their spark is quite the challenge.  Today when the song started, I felt a bit nervous.  Who would I sing to and how would it feel?

When it came time to find a neighbor, the friend sitting next to me had stepped out.  I turned around and saw a visitor, who was there with her daughter.  The woman was probably in her 80’s.  I reached for her hand and looked into her eyes as I sang the song.  She had beautiful blue eyes and I watched as they welled up with tears.  By the end of the verse the tears were streaming down her cheeks.  Her daughter looked at her and began to cry as well, then I also began to choke up.  It was a beautiful moment.  We had gone past the superficial level and experienced the true meaning of “Namaste.”

I put this video up so you could listen to the song if you want to.  Hearing it gives a little more meaning to the post.  It seems the video must have been put together in the aftermath of Katrina as it contains a lot of those images.

Marianne Williamson

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”