Adventures

Adventures are how we grow and realize the hidden strengths that are inside each of us. Today I am started a new adventure with two great friends. For all three of us, it is a leap of faith headlong into a new adventure.
Martha Beck in her book, “Finding Your Way in a Wild New World” speaks about leaps of faith. She says that the term for a collective (like herd of cows) for leopards is a “leap”. A leopard will jump up into the branches of a tree with an antelope carcass in its mouth that outweighs it. Each time the leopard leaps, it is an act of faith that it will make it up onto a branch 10 feet above it. If the leopard doesn’t make it, it could mean it’s death, as it would most likely land on its back with the weight of the antelope on top of it.
She goes on to say that each time we face an unknown, with creativity instead of grasping at known quantities, we leap. Each time we dare to think that our art (I insert here whatever your personal genius is) can sustain us financially we leap. She reflects that each time we surrender to the way things want to happen (not under our control), we leap.
I highly recommend the book – I bookmarked it for you to check out. http://amzn.to/1Xbnz56
What we discover when we leap, is what we are really made of. Do we shrink back at the challenges or opportunities that present themselves to us? Do we pass by the aid of angelic guides, because we think that what we see isn’t the answer we were looking for? That one is too easy, this one is too hard?
Today I took a leap. trusting in the magic of my soul. Today was the day that I took a deep breath, let go of certainty, trusted my heart, and leaped into “seeing what happens next.” D Elton Trueblood said, “faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation.” So today we traded in all of our fears for faith and trust without reservation in divine guidance.
I think of Dorothy and The Wizard of Oz. She learned so much about herself with her adventures. She had her companions with her, just as I do today. I don’t know the “how” part of this decision. But I listened to my heart, which said that it is the right decision. Dorothy didn’t know the “how” of getting home, but she listened to Glinda and set out on the journey.
Glinda the Good Witch tells her at the end, “you had the power to go home from the very beginning”, so Dorothy of course asks, “why didn’t you tell me?” Because Glinda said, “you would not have believed it. You had to learn it by yourself.”
The same is true for me, and you. Adventures is how we learn what are powers are, and what we are capable of creating together.

Follow Your Own Road

Rumi said, “It’s your road and yours alone, others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.”

When we try to walk down another persons road, it leads to disillusionment and disappointment. It isn’t “our” road. In the book “The Pilgrimage”, Paulo Coelho said that “it is our decision to walk, that creates the road ahead of us”.

It is both being courageous and having curiosity, that keeps us forging ahead on the path. It is the journey itself, that grows us as a person. It has been said that it’s never about obtaining the “goal”. It is rather about who you need to become, to achieve the goal. Marianne Williamson said, “you must learn a new way to think before you can master a new way to be.”

I have always loved the saying, “It’s not the destination,… it’s the journey”. This is because the path isn’t the destination. The path is where we live our life. It is all of life’s experiences. The good, bad, and the ugly. The messy pieces as well as the glorious adventures. The destination is simply a road sign. A sign that we made it to “X”. Then we begin planning a new destination or goal. It’s all about the road we choose, the path we forge.

So cast off the bowlines. Sail out of the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds and see where they take you.

David Bowie

David Bowie’s death was announced today and I learned something important about him. Not only was he a talented musician and actor, he was also a history maker.

This from the German Foreign Office: “Good-bye, David Bowie. You are now among #Heroes. Thank you for helping to bring down the #wall #RIPDavidBowie”

In June 1987, David Bowie returned to the divided city of Berlin for a concert that some Germans, still view as having helped change story.

In 1977, the year Bowie recorded Heroes, the second of his three Berlin albums, East German border guards shot and killed 18-year-old Dietmar Schwietzer as he tried to flee west across the wall; a few months later, 22-year-old Henri Weise drowned trying to cross the Spree River. Heroes was haunted by the Cold War themes of fear and isolation that hung over the city. Its still-famous title track tells a story of two lovers who meet at the wall and try, hopelessly, to find a way to be together.

Bowie returned for the Concert for Berlin, a three-day open-air show in front of the Reichstag, he chose “Heroes” for his performance. The wall couldn’t keep out radio waves., and there were thousands on the other side that had come close to the wall. So it was like a double concert where the wall was the division. You could hear them cheering and singing along from the other side.

“The mood was one of enjoying forbidden fruit,” Olof Pock, then a 15-year-old kid living in East Berlin, later told Deutsche Welle. “We knew that this was somehow being done for our benefit.”
When Bowie performed on the second night, he began by telling the crowd, in German, “We send our wishes to all our friends who are on the other side of the wall.” He sang “Heroes,” the song he’d recorded in Berlin a decade earlier amid the city’s Cold War fear and violence.

Though “Heroes” is today remembered as an anthem of optimism and defiance, its lyrics capture the hopelessness and desperation of a city divided, friends and family in the East kept apart from their loved ones in the West by violence and terror. The song’s narrator pleads, “I wish you could swim / Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim,” a reference to the East Germans, like Weise, who died trying to cross the Spree.

The lyrics, remembered in this context, are tragic, each verse ending with the line “nothing can keep us together”:
I, I can remember (I remember)
Standing, by the wall (by the wall)
And the guns, shot above our heads (over our heads)
And we kissed, as though nothing could fall (nothing could fall)
And the shame, was on the other side
The song ends with a plea that eventually things will change, if only for a day:
We’re nothing, and nothing will help us
Maybe we’re lying, then you better not stay
But we could be safer, just for one day

On the final day of the three-day show, East German authorities decided that they’d had enough. Police in areas near the wall, where young East Berliners had gathered to listen, cracked down violently, attacking people with water cannons and arresting some 200. “They kept arresting people, dragging them along the surface of the street. It was like a horror movie. We were enraged,” an eyewitness told Deutsche Welle.

“Many of the eyewitnesses claim that the violent police crackdown on the third night of the concerts … were crucial in changing the mood against the state,” the Guardian has written. East German authorities, by overreacting, had turned the gathering of concert listeners — people who just wanted to hear music — into a subversive political act.

A week later, US President Ronald Reagan visited West Berlin and, standing in front of the city’s famous Brandenburg Gate, called on Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”
Reagan’s speech, along with the Concert for Berlin a week earlier, had helped change the mood around the wall, which had stood in some form or another for more than a generation.

What does the term, “the sky’s the limit mean to you?”

What does the term, “the sky’s the limit mean to you?” For me, it is where the comfort zone meets “what else is possible?” It is an extension of “what is possible”, that is beyond what “normal” is for me. All limitations are put on us, by us accepting them. The sky is not the limitation, I am.

We see these limitations in our professional life, our personal life and our spiritual life. Some of these limitations come from our culture, through the “roles” we play with our friends and family. When we go on a hero’s journey, the walls that we have built around us, to limit us, get torn down.

When you take any really great story, you find within it what Joseph Campbell called the Hero’s Journey. The main character is going through a “normal” or boring life. Nothing much is happening.

Then there is a call to adventure – something new is introduced into the characters life, which alters the hero’s destiny. At first the hero refuses the call to adventure – this isn’t for me. I can’t get involved. This can sometimes be because the hero knows that the role that you play within your family, or tribe will be forever changed once you cross the threshold.

Then the hero encounters the mentor – someone who gives advice and gets him ready. It could be someone supernatural, mystical or angelic. The hero crosses the threshold – leaves home and enters into the adventure.

There are tests, allies and enemies are encountered in the journey which teach the hero a lot about him or herself. Plan A and possibly Plans B and C fail, as the hero experiences setbacks and has to rethink how to proceed. The hero has faith which leads them to access higher levels of knowledge and abilities to meet the tests with.

The hero sees their limitations and ultimately has to defy and defeat them in order to pull through. The setbacks all lead to the ultimate crisis of life or death, where the hero struggles to complete their destiny.

Now the hero gets the reward – they have won out over the enemies. Many times the loses are mourned even as the victory is celebrated. The hero begins the journey back home, forever changed by the journey. The old limitations of what the hero thought they were capable of have changed. They have been forever transformed.

I believe that we all take numerous hero’s journeys. We take them in our personal lives, our professional lives and our spiritual lives. We take small journeys and we take “dark night of the soul” journeys. Each time we need to transform our lives, we take a hero’s journey. We reinvent ourselves, we improvise, adapt and overcome our self made limitations. We get creative, we become flexible and adjust as we experience paradigm shifts.

Bruce Lee said, “There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” So don’t tell me the sky’s the limit when there are footprints on the moon. Use your imagination and creativity, to discover that the possibilities of your world are limitless.

Thankful Service

1,000 people attend funeral for Billy Aldridge, a US Marine Corp veteran with no family.

Billy died at the age of 80 in an Indianapolis nursing home last month and the company handling his arrangements posted his story on Facebook. They asked the public to help give this man a dignified funeral service.

I think they did a good job!

see more: http://www.kctv5.com/…/1000-people-attend-funeral-for-veter…

Change is Good

 

Lao Tzu said, “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”

Every year in January the majority of us will set goals for the new year. We may call them New Years Resolutions or goals. They can be personal goals such as our weight or physical fitness goals, or business/financial goals. What ever they are they generally designed to enhance our life in some way.

One thing that I have discovered about myself is realizing when I am pushing a goal to happen in a certain way or time frame, life gets frustrating and hard. But if I step back and look at my goal from the aspect of divine timing, I can usually see that the reason why the goal isn’t progressing. There is something that I am missing, something vital to make it happen. When the progress towards the goal starts to become pushing a boulder uphill, I know now to walk it backward down the hill until the pressure is released.

I step back and re-look at what I am doing. Re-look at the time table. Re-examine the reasons behind the goal to see if I need to adjust what the goal is trying to accomplish. I love the analogy of flowing downstream in a river. There are these little bays or inlets, eddies in the river where you can float in stillness. In these places, you acquire knowledge, skills, make partnerships, etc.., things that will be needed later down river. You have a chance to examine and revise your goals based on new knowledge. Then when the timing is right, you re-enter into the river and flow further downstream.

Lena Horne said, “It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.” Stop struggling against the load, Instead, relax and float. You can float for hours. It is the struggle that makes you exhausted, wastes all of your energy and breaks you down, so that you give up.

Go within, where the wisdom and clarity reside. Instead of having to defend ourselves, or prove something, we discover the compassion to simply let life flow forward and outward in simplicity.

Ending with my two favorite Bruce Lee quotes: “Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put water into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” And the second one is “there are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there. You must go beyond them.” I wish you success in growing beyond any plateaus that you are currently experiencing in your life. Be water and flow.

Live Your Dreams

 

If you can see it, you can be it and do it!

Lt Col Brandt, had an idea when she learned that more women pilots were coming to her base. She did the math and realized that they had enough women to do an all female crew to break some records for the longest flight without refueling the aircraft for military aircraft. And that is just what these ladies did. Way to go Ladies – what a great example for the girls growing up to realize that they can be and do anything that they want to with their lives.

This month marks the first anniversary of Lady Hawk Day in the city of Grand Forks, ND. Mayor Mike Brown established the day in recognition of the “Flight of the Lady Hawk,” the longest flight without air refueling on record for a military aircraft, led by an all-women team.

According to Lt. Col. Brandt, what differentiates this particular record from others like it, is that all of the women pilots included in the mission came from the same squadron. Historically, groups have had to reach out to other squadrons or units to get enough women together to achieve a record. And in addition to the six women pilots managing the remote flight, the more than 50 support staff and ground crew were also women.

Capt. Natalie Winkels, one of the pilots who participated in the historic mission, reached out to us to share the group’s incredible accomplishment and to “show aspiring young men and women out there that women are setting world records.”

See more: http://www.womenyoushouldknow.net/flight-of-the-lady-hawk-…/

The heart knows a thousand ways to speak

When I look at this quote and picture there is such a bond between the dog and child. You can just feel the energetic connection. Our pets sense our needs so well that it seems as though our hearts are speaking to each other.

I remember as a child I would hold my dog Snoopy and sometimes just cry out my frustrations. I felt like he was the only one who I could talk to about my problems. I knew that my dog was never disappointed in me. He was always happy to see me. I think that he is the reason I remained sane in an sometimes insane childhood.

Our hearts don’t just pump blood throughout our body. They also have their own nervous system that can process information just like our brain. It also is a hormonal gland, producing among others the hormone Oxytocin, also known as the love or bonding hormone.

The heart actually plays a major part in determining the quality of our emotional experience from moment to moment. The heart appears to play a key role in intuition. Although there is much yet to be understood, it appears that the age-old associations of the heart with thought, feeling, and insight may indeed have a basis in science.

So the poet Rumi’s words of the heart knowing a thousand ways to speak is actually true as our heart functions speak to every sense that we have in our body, speaking to our body even more than our brain does. As a source of wisdom, spiritual insight, thought, and emotion it proves that Rumi’s words may well be more than simply metaphorical.

No Legs, No Limits

Wow! Truly ‪‎inspirational‬. Her personal mantra is “no legs, no limits”. Reading her story I realized that my excuses for not being physically fit are pretty lame. What ‪‎limitations‬ are you buying into with your life today?

She isn’t letting what some people call a disability hold her back. She is proving that owning who you are makes you hot. What is holding you back from your dreams today?

There is a personal belief in yourself and your dreams that is definitely in play here. If it is in your heart, and you really feel it, the vision pulls you. There is nothing that will stop you. I read this in someone else’s Facebook posts and really liked it “it is like the sun – you can’t block it, it will shine regardless”. Do you feel that sunshine?

A true ‪‎LemonadeMaker‬, she is redefining the rules around beauty, and she is gorgeous. Kanya Sesser’s goal is to prove that “different” is sexy. She’s been modeling sports brands, bathing suits and personal lingerie since she was 15.

In addition to be being a successful model, she surfs, skateboards, races bikes, and is currently training for the 2018 Winter Paralympics as a mono skier.

She was adopted from an orphanage in Thailand when she was 5 years old. I want to give a shout out to the parents who adopted her. They raised her to be a strong, confident woman who is not afraid of who she is.

“I love showing people what beauty can look like,” she says. “These images show my strength.”

Future

Sometimes we need to let go of how we thought our life should be. Instead we need to embrace the life that our soul is calling out for. The life we were meant to live.
It is scary. It can feel like we are all alone.
But maybe the journey is all about unbecoming who we are, so that we can become who we are meant to be.