What is success?

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Have others defined success for you? Do you subscribe to the popular view that bigger and more is better?

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Grandmother Cottonwood

How do you define success? Is it a big house and three car garage in the fashionable part of town? Is it a stressful high powered career in which you get to boss others? Is it lots of money in the bank?

Is your definition of success winning at your game of choice? Are their losers in your game?

Is your idea of success feeling happy in the life you’ve chosen? Is it thriving in the place you’ve chosen, doing what makes you heart sing, feeling comfortable in your body? Is it having time to relax and enjoy your family and friends; the simple but soul satisfying moments of a life well lived?

Decide what matters to you, what success is to you. Take the time to quiet your mind and get in touch with your inner spirit, beyond thought. Your heart will know the truth.

You are the master of your life, your time, your energy. You choose how to spend these most precious resources. Spend them wisely! Spend them in support of a life that satisfies your soul!

Access your power!

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Does your mind outpace your body? Do you feel spacey and disconnected?

If your mind races ahead and leaves your body behind, you are living in the future and forgetting the present; neglecting your grounding in the here and now, your need for earth energy, for your full and complete presence in this time and place. Don’t jump or skip ahead!

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Red wing blackbird on a breezy day

If your body rushes ahead and leaves your mind in the dust, you are living in the past ; disembodied, perhaps getting yourself into situations that do not serve you well. Perhaps you feel stuck.

Can you bring your body mind and heart together and concentrate all your focus in this moment? Can you keep it together?

The present is where your power lies! When all of you is in the present.  This is the state of flow, where you are plugged into your power supply – All that is – and you have access to boundless energy.

Here’s a practice for you to help you pay attention to what is now. Choose one of the 5 senses: feel, taste, touch, smell, sight. Focus for a few minutes on only that information coming into your body and mind through that sense.

Can you narrow your focus that much, aligning body and mind and balancing your consciousness in this point in time? Can you gather all of yourself, your scattered energy, thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and know your wholeness?

In this way, you train yourself to be wholly present, to empower yourself and tap in to amazing energy!

Intoxicating…

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Must you intoxicate yourself? If so, intoxicate yourself with the summer day.

Lose yourself in the shifting and dappled shade under a friendly tree, the breeze moving through the grasses like waves on the sea.

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Female red winged blackbird

Feed your spirit with the shimmering silver leaves on the crown of a cottonwood tree, birdsong, insect music, cloud patterns, rushing water in the creek weaving patterns in the sand and silt, the scent of wildflowers and tree blossoms…

Come under the influence of the soft morning air embracing you, the hoot owl at dusk, patterns of sunlight and shadow in the leafy neighborhoods, soaring birds riding the thermals, the hot sunlit air…

Surrender to the beating of your heart, the breath flowing in and out of your lungs, the weight of your body and limbs as you let yourself rest, as you allow the earth to support you

Fall in love with the moon waxing to full, filling the night sky with her silvery light, waning to new, repeating her ancient cycle without end.

This is your world, your precious gift. Give yourself to it, body and soul.

Worried?

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Worry is like a thick gray cloud around your mind and heart; a self-generated fog machine.

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Storm clouds

 

Dear ones, worry wears you down, ages you dims your clarity and light, weakens you.

If you are worried, you are not living in the present. You are living in your head projecting scenarios and events which will most likely never occur, which you most likely have no power over!

In short, you are wasting your time and energy when you worry! You are scaring yourself with self manufactured drama for no good reason.

If you are worried about the future, get the facts you need to solve your problems and face them head on! Take informed action within your locus of control. Make plans based on the facts. Set boundaries within your circle of influence. Live in the here and now.

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Thistle flowers

Inhabit your body, place awareness on your feelings, sensations, your senses, the flow of life through your body, the natural world around you. Come into the here and now where your power lies!

Your sweet spot

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When you are energized, when you have no sense of time passing, when you are living in the moment, enthused, and inspired, you are centered in your sweet spot. Your physical body and spirit are aligned in harmony.

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Butterfly on elderberry bush

Do you spend most of your time in your sweet spot or do events, thoughts, and fears pull you off balance and out of true?

You work here is to do what needs to be done to line yourself up again and again with the amazing flow of energy, the inspiration, the delight and clarity of your sweet spot. This is where the things you care about get done! Effortlessly!

Can you catch yourself before you lean too far off center, before you get too far from your sweet spot? One way is to create a daily practice for yourself to keep yourself in balance.

Devise a ritual that helps you line up and place yourself fully in the center of your life, where your power lies, where you belong! You will be amazed!

Many humans are called at this time to step into their full power, to line up with their light and live fully in their sweet spot for the blessing of this earth. Will you?

Helping others

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Have you read that caring for others is the highest good? This refrain has been repeated so often with such piety that many believe this to be gospel! To be a saint is to deny the self and care for others, to sacrifice your own desires for others.

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Budding hosta

I am here to tell you that this idea must be questioned and tested. Your true purpose comes from within and cannot be imposed upon you by others, or by some rules and codes of conduct devised in ancient times.

The highest good in life is to be fully yourself, to line up with your purpose, your light and power. Perhaps your divine purpose is to be a light for others to help guide them… and perhaps your true purpose does not involve caring for others.

Dear ones, you can help others, if you are called to do so, by allowing them to access and know their own power, to discern their purpose, to draw on their own inner resources. You job is not to hold others up with your own strength or to rescue or to save them.

You are to line up with your light first and foremost. In this way, you will find your true and sacred purpose. Do this and you will thrive!  Those closest to you will thrive as well!

You can feel better!

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Over the years of your life, energy, inspirations, emotions, feelings, ideas, thoughts, fears that you block and deny and push down have nowhere else to go but to stay in your energy field. The energies that makes up these thoughts get stuck, build up and accumulate like heavy storm clouds.

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Storm clouds and prairie grasses

If you are sensitive, you feel the extra weight, the heaviness. Does it hold you back, press you down like a weighted blanket, a back pack full of stones?

It is not your work to carry this weight. You can clear and release it with patience, courage, commitment.

Foreign substances in your body will not solve the problem, will not clear the clouds, but only allow you to pretend for a short time.

Tap into your emotions, the buried ones, the old and stale ones, the emotions that flash through when something triggers you. You must focus and feel the emotions within you. You do not have to react to them. Simply feeling and acknowledging is enough.

The emotion is not you, it is energy that is meant to flow through you.  I am telling you, you can feel better!

Find help if the emotions feel overwhelming. It is like learning to walk, learning to read. This is a life-saving skill you can learn, and it will set you free.

Clean house!

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It is time to clean house! Begin at the top, dusting, sweeping, clearing out the old, the stale, the outdated, those objects, ideas, attitudes, that are no longer useful.

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Grandmother Cottonwood and the untidy nest

Go into the hidden places- the closets, cupboards the drawers. Clear things out! Bring in light and air and fresh energy!

Bring in the new, new clothing, new ideas, new intentions, new friends, removing from your home and experience the clutter and junk and dead wood that weighs you down and dims your clarity- that causes your focus to fade, that holds you back.

Clear out, renew, clean, polish, and shine, leaving only what you choose to have in your life. Choose to keep only those objects, experiences, people, feelings, emotions, ideas, that enrich and empower your life!

Another chance

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Dear ones, you will always have another chance to live by the truth of your heart mind and spirit. Have you made grave mistakes? Have you hurt others? Have you done things you regret? Have you wasted the precious moments of your life?

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Grandmother Cottonwood, early June

Begin this moment to create thoughts, feelings, and take action in the direction you wish to move. Begin to define who you really are deep at the core of you. Let the person you show to the world match the true you, the inner you. In this way you define yourself as a person of integrity.

You who wish to make changes may still at times cause hurt, still do and say things you regret. My dear, you are not a carving of stone, unmoving and unmovable. You are a fluid being of free well. With time, attention, and commitment you can shift yourself in the direction of love and wholeness and inner peace.  Have patience with yourself!

Believe in yourself! You can do this. Make these changes for yourself, the health of your spirit, and the blessing of this planet!

Roots hold fast

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Your roots will hold fast during the storms of life when the wind rises and the rains pour down. Your roots hold fast when you fear for your life or health.

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Summer grasses

When the thunder cracks and lighting blinds you, your deep roots will keep you upright. Bending with the wind will keep you from breaking. You will weather this storm and the next and the next for there will be more. It is the nature of life.

Your deep roots allow you to stretch to your full height and reach, to feel and know your belonging to this earth in this place and time without fear of toppling over, breaking, or blowing away.

Our roots, the roots of all growing things interweave and stitch together the soil, the stuff of life that feeds your planet and makes your existence possible. From the deepest taproot to the tiniest microscopic thread searching for water, roots hold your world in place with love.