Exploring the Waters

Thoughts of the Day

2009-07-04T09:39:00.000-07:00

Into the darkest nights the light still sings its song.

It may not be heard by all but its melody still rings inside the soul that wishes to be ignited.

There are dreams that aren't mean to be shared.

There are hopes that were never meant to be dared.

There are things that we cannot and perhaps never will understand.

There are things that we can and should be able to know with care.

It is in the times in which we are searching that the light seems the dimmest.

It is only dim because we are not focused upon it. When we seek we can sometimes look unto places that should not hold our focus.

We can sometimes forget who it is we really are and yet that is what life is for. Remembering what we forget.

When does not exist. There is only now. If we let go of waiting for something to happen we would be free from despair.

Dark turns into light. Light turns into dark. It is a cycle nothing more nothing less.

Call of the Wild

2009-05-21T10:26:00.000-07:00

Within us all there lies a voice.

It calls to us with every breathe, beckoning us forward along the way.

It is the voice of our instinct our soul our inner light.

Calling us forward to where it is we are suppose to fight.

It is a wild and untamed beast that lives within us all.

Encouraging us to move forward fearlessly on our paths.

Telling us that it is ok if we shall fall.

What is your voice saying to you?

Can you hear its whispers?

Or does it shout to you?

It is this call this voice that lights our way. When all seems lost listen still and you shall know which way to turn.

It is the call of the wild that lives in us all. It beckons us forward and shows us there is no shame in taking a fall. A leap a plunge of faith and into our hearts where we may finally see our own face.

The Presence of Death

2009-03-22T08:27:00.000-07:00

I face the death of a beloved grandmother. It has been 15 years since my last grandmother died but it has not been the only death I have been through. I witnessed my beloved dog being put down. I have held a foal in my arms as it took its last breathe. I have watched a mighty stallion fall and stood in stillness while another was born. I have grieved for all and felt the sadness pierce and break my heart for each one.

I have also seen birth. I have helped a number of foals come into this life and been witness to the miracle of birth. As I face death again it is impossible not to see the link between the two and now I wonder what is the experience of death like?

I have channeled the spirit of the ones that fell so I know without a doubt that life exits beyond this plane. I have felt their spirits around me and heard their words in my ears as if they were right there... they were. I see how similar birth and death really are for the soul. I wonder now as my grandmother faces death how that experience is for her. What is she seeing or experiencing? What kind of wonder is she going through? The family watches with sadness but it is our sadness that is reflected in our own eyes. She is on a journey as we all have once been and so again as death becomes our family I seek to see the light that threads itself with death.

ghosts from the past

2009-03-03T20:03:00.000-08:00

I have often wondered about who I was and where I was from. Lately I have been thinking about what I am.

I believe that my soul or spirit originates from some place else besides where I am. Although I am learning to embrace being on earth I often feel as though I am existing in more than one place.

In the last couple of days I have felt a feeling stirring of familiarity but to what I do not know. I have been awoken at night to a feeling that I am being visited and have traveled to different places in my dream. There is something from my past some lives that are presenting themselves to me during this period of time.

I was reading a book today about a girl who was a fairy princess in one world and a mere mortal girl in another world. Her lives existed at the same time only in different dimensions. This may sound crazy but as I was reading a certain passage in the book I had that strange sense of deja vu or that it all sounded familiar. Later today I was walking my dog in a park that I feel is full of the fairy realm and I climbed and sat on a tree. As I sat there I had that familiar feeling again. It is as if what you are thinking about is on the tip of your tongue you can feel it but the name eludes you. That is what I feel walking around this last couple days. It is as if I am existing in two different places and being reminded of one world while I live in another.

I truly believe that our lives here are close to those of other realms and we are merely blind to what is around us. I feel as though there are days I walk around in a mist where I cannot sense these other worlds. Other times I feel they are so close that I swear I have one foot there and one foot here. It is comforting to me to know that beyond what we see lies other worlds and other beings watching us and wanting to help us.

Every evening I do a card reading for myself. It is a way that I unwind from the day and tap into the energies that are around me. I was using my way of the horse deck and the card I pulled was ancestral spirits. The meaning was when the ancestral spirit of the past is interefering or is a undercurrent energy where you are at the moment. I felt that to be true for me right now as I know there is something happeneing and stirring within me that cannot be related to what I am living in the now.

This is my struggle. I find there are times and things that happen to me that I cannot relate to my "earthly" life and I struggle with having to exist and live in a place that seems to have no relevance on who I am. It is during these times that I believe I am remembering parts of my self, lives that I have lived different realms that I have existed and it all becomes intertwined.

It makes for an interesting existence and I am constanly questioning again who I am and really what it is that I am. Am I human? If so what does being human even mean? Or am I a spirit that is occupying a human body for a purpose to be fulfilled here on earth. Whatever the answer is I am sure I will not truly know until I die or this life comes to an end.

I embrace these ghosts of my past existences because I believe they are here for a reason. A reason to serve a purpose a higher meaning and allow me to remember who it is that I really am. Who we really are what we really are is much more than we can even know and even believe ourselves to be.

Ground Stroke

2009-02-15T10:32:00.000-08:00

I was working out on the elliptical today when I remembered a dream I had last night.

In the dream I was visited by a stallion I once worked with named Ground Stroke.

When I first met Ground Stroke I was struck by his beauty and also his raw energy. I was warned that he was somewhat "Crazy," and had once grabbed a groom by the neck and swung him up and down. They told me that the man was still alive only because of the layers he had on. I was told that when I was taking outside I was to carry a stick with me in case I needed to hit him on the head, because he was a very aggressive stallion.

I should have been afraid, timid even at this. I wasn't. I was captivated by him, totally enthralled and felt he was only misunderstood. I felt a tenderness deep inside of him and I was pulled towards him.

It soon became my job to take the stallions in and out on a daily basis and the walk out to the pen with Ground Stroke was always my favorite. I felt his anger but I was not scared of it and I know that he knew he could trust me.

We formed a silent bond him and I and I would often stop off at this stall before going to bed to say goodnight and tell him about my day. He most times did not look up but I knew that he heard me.

What amazed me the most about this beast was not the anger or the silence that he sometimes emitted. It was a passion and a fire for life and for existing and an intelligence beyond what he was.

I remember waking up one morning and going down to let him out when it became apparant that something was terribly wrong. He was docile, dull and in obvious discomfort. The managers of the farm had gone and I was on the farm with only one other person with all the chores to be done. I knew I had to stay with him and so I took him out of his stall and we walked around the barn for a long time. I was hoping the exercise would relive his discomfort.

Hours past and he was not getting any better. The managers finally came back and I let them know there was something wrong with him. They didn't take me seriously or didn't think it was that bad. This was frusterating for me because I knew something was wrong.

The day passed into the night and still no more change. I went to bed that night tired from the day and hoping he would be ok. I was awakened at midnight the vet had come, it didn't look good and they were taking him in for surgery. I was so angry at them for letting it come this far but I knew Ground Stroke was a fighter. I prayed for him that night, I believe it is the first time I prayed for anything in a long time. I felt so helpless but something in me knew that he would pull through. Sure enough he did and was back to his old self in no time. A miracle in face of the severity of the condition that he had been.

I tell his story because as I was dreaming of him last night I was given clarity into why I felt so drawn to this wonderful stallion. When I met him he had only been around human contact for for a couple of years. He had been bred with riches and boasted a pedigree that was of kings and yet he sat in a field alone and abandoned for 11 years as a ownership dispute was being settled. No one saw him, no one paid attention to him and even after being moved to be around a farm with people he still went un noticed. It was hard for me to believe that people would see past what was there. The managers on the farm didn't pay him any attention nor think very highly of him and yet I saw a magnificant being.

I think of what came to me today how our stories in some ways are similar. I have felt abandoned a huge part of my life as if no one could see me. Yet I knew there was something in me and I have kept fighting through all of my challenges. I know I felt connected to him because there is something about our spirits that were very similiar. Abandoned but not broken a fighter but also a broken spirit who was hiding behind a brick wall.

It has been 4 years since I have seen him and so it came as a bit of a suprise when he appeared in my dream last night. I feel as though he is sending me a message to get back up to get out into the world and keep fighting. To know that the only person I am fighting for is myself, there is nothing I need to prove to others.

This next part of my life this next phase is for me. It is to lead by example and to keep charging ahead even when it seems I have no support behind me. Ground Stroke never gave up his life, even when there were people that perhaps would be happy if he did. He fought because it was his life, it was for no one else to take away.

I can feel him here as I write this and hear the truth in the words as I write them. I am branching out in my life again, facing some old demons and pains that I have long buried and that are resurfacing once again. He is here as a message of strength a message of inspiriation telling me I can do it. I do have the strength and the power to get through this next mountain that is standing in front of me. I know there will be challenges, but to not face them would be even more painful than going through the storms that may lay ahead. He is here to tell me the choice always belongs to us and no one else. It is up to fight for our lives, our paths and our journeys. There is no one that can hold us back if we decid not to let them. It is the desire to live the knowing of a purpose that will drive me ahead and nothing else. Ground Stroke was the one who taught me this and is still teaching it to me today. He is the example of fierceness of passion and of freedom. He never caved to the outside never gave in to what others expected on him. His beauty was haunting to me because of his pain and of his conviction to live a life that he choose. His scars and his wall made him who he was and he embraced that and what it brought to his life. I look at my own scars and begin to see them not as something to hide but to embrace and share with the world. It is our pain that makes us beautiful that gives life to our passion and fire to live. I thank this horse for the lesson and the bravery he has shown me about freedom and a life to be claimed as my own.

Hidden Messages

2009-02-10T10:05:00.000-08:00

Hidden Messages:

There are always signs that present themselves to us. They are always around us whether we are paying attention or not. When we ignore these messages they will become louder and louder until we have no choice but to listen.

I have been having some vivid dreams lately. In my dreams the animals come to me and as they do they bite me and then they disappear. It has happened three nights in a row, twice it was the coyote, once it was a rabbit, once a crab and once a wasp. All different animals of all different habits and the same. I feel as though they are trying to get me a message and it can be very frustrating to try and figure out what it is they are trying to tell me.

The thing that I know is that the more I struggle to understand what it all means, the more the answer eludes me. The meaning is simply if I would allow it to simple come to me it would be easy to know what it is they were trying to tell me in that moment. In my dreams.

Perhaps I do know the answer and I am to scared to know. Perhaps it is there right in front of me and I am refusing to see it because to see it would mean to change to take a risk to follow my heart.

I use to believe I was someone who followed my heart that was able to take risks. I use to believe in my dreams and maybe is still do maybe somewhere deep down I know where my path is leading me.

Sometimes it is hard and sometimes I forget who I really am. Sometimes it is easy to get caught up in the every day to get pulled into the expectations of others or what I think are expectations of others. Perhaps I get caught in the role I am playing or suppose to be playing. Then I have the glimpses of wisdom where I remember and then I am sad that I ever forgot.

There are days where I feel there is an internal struggle to decided one thing only to fear the outcome. It is in this struggle that I paralyze myself and then a thought says to me. Perhaps there is no struggle perhaps what you think is a struggle is simply the divine unfolding as it should. Perhaps if you changed your perspective you would see the clarity and perfection of your life in the moment. PERHAPS IF LET GO AND SIMPLY WERE INSTEAD OF TRYING TO BE YOU WOULD SEE THAT ALL IS AS IT SHOULD.

I THINK OF MY COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE ANIMALS AND HOW THEY ALWAYS REMIND ME NOT TO THINK SO MUCH . How WHAT THEY DO IS SIMPLE ON INSTINCT. They DO NOT QUESTION THEIR PATH NOR THEIR FATE. The birds do not ask why they fly, the fish do not ask why they swim. The grass doe not wonder when winter will end so that they may have room to breath the sun once again. The trees to dot miss their leaves as they fall during the autumn season.s It is the natural way of progression and perhaps my life with all of its ups and downs with all of its stops and gos is exactly as it should be. In truth there is no destination which I have to constantly remind myself. Life is a journey y and a beautiful one at that. If we allow it. If we let go of our stories of how we think life should be , if we simply accepted the way of the earth the way of nature we would be able to see the perfection in the chaos. Perhaps the chaos would disappear all together and the way would become clear. Even if we cannot see even if we cant hear the messages it does not mean they are not there.

When Life gets Hard

2009-01-12T07:17:00.001-08:00

When life gets hard, I want to cry.
When life gets hard, I want to hide. I want to run. I want to fall.

When life gets hard I want to sleep right through the day and into night when all is right.

When life gets hard there is one way and that is how I get back up.
When life gets hard the only place there is to go is back on top.

Each time I fall it gets a bit easier to get back up.
Each time I feel as if I have failed. It gets easier to be grateful for the lesson I was given.

Each time something is taken. It gets easier to see not that was lost but what was gained.

Each time I feel lost, the way out seems to find me a little bit faster.

Life is really not so hard. It is how we perceive it that shadows the way down.

If we saw our life through a bigger picture. A higher perspective. We would see that not all is lost at all. We would see that the very thing that a seems to be chaotic is really a perfectly formed puzzle taking place.

It is in the confusion that we find clarity. It is in the dark that we find our light. It is through death that we continue to live. It is in our journey that we reach our destination. If we remember who we are and who we were born to be. Life would be much lighter for we would finally see the truth in who we came to be.

stillness speaks

2008-12-13T07:45:00.001-08:00

Stillness Speaks

There are times in our lives when it seems as though the world around us has stopped. It is almost as if we are walking in stillness breathing in stillness. The glimmer of ice reflects off our surroundings as we are caught in awe at how still life can become.

I am the stillness. It is as if everything in my own place has stopped, as if I am inside a bubble with chaos going on outside but in my own space it is stillness.

This stillness can sometimes cause discomfort. In a world where we are often always on the go, a break in that can cause all kind of discomfort, worry and fear to arise.

I find that as my bubble my space is still, within me the emotions of the past begin to boil to the surface. Each day I awake with a new feeling of something that has come up and is ready to be released. I am grateful for this opportunity to shed yet more layers and yet the process is one I sometimes would rather run from.

It is within this stillness that I am able to reflect. It is within this stillness I am able to look deep within myself and learn to love the darkest parts of my soul. It is within this stillness that I have been given a gift.

Life gives to us different opportunities, different ways in which we can grow, reflect, and know our deepest parts. These opportunities are not always welcomed. It can be an incredibly challenging, difficult and painful parts of our journey that we are seemed to be forced into. And yet there is always sunshine after the rain and within us too we must go through these times to get to the gifts that await us at the end of the journey.

I am in the stillness. There are moments that I wish to run from it but in the end I know to run would only be running from myself. We cannot run forever, I cannot run forever and so I sit in the stillness and I listen to it speak.

Journal Entry #1

2008-12-04T11:23:00.000-08:00

Fear of death.

How do I feel? I feel as if my whole world is at a stop. That I am standing at the stop sign looking both ways and not sure of which way to cross. It is not as if I am at a crossroads it is only as if everything is in freeze mode. I see myself and yet I cannot move. It is a space that is not all that comfortable but I am getting through it. There is something in me that knows that something has to happen before I can move forward.

It has been 3 weeks since I have moved back home and although I looked to this move as a part of my journey I would be lying if I said that there is a part of me that is in deep turmoil from the move itself. There is so much I left behind so many things I said goodbye to as all of a sudden I find myself somewhat trapped. My freedom of being miles away is gone, there is no space for me to call my own and so I try to find that place within me to not lose myself in my surrondings, it is a battle I am fighting everyday.

I feel so much fear inside of me these days and the source of the fear is something that I cant' grasp. It seems to be hidden deep inside of me and to seek it out to feel it to know it and to release is something that scares me even more. It is not the fear that scares me as much as it is the death of an identity that I have held onto for so long. It feels to me that everytime I am at a place in which I am guided to look within to let go what no longer is working, my view of who I am is shattered and I am left to be in a place of vulnerability and that scares me. Who I am without the labels I put on myself.

What am I feeling. This is what I have been asking myself lately as to get out of my head. What am I feeling. It is the vision of the stop sign how all things are stopped in the moment there is no movement it is just still. This is where I am right now in the stillness it is an eery stillness a forgotten stillness but stillness it is.

What is the stillness bringing to me what am I gaining from it. These are questions I try to ask myself as a way to keep my sanity to keep from falling into the grips of fear. In this stillness I have the opportunity to be still with myself and to perhaps uncover some mysteries about my very essence. In this stillness I am being forced to look at no one but myself too seek within to gain clarity and peace of mind. In the stillness there is no where to go, there is nothing to cling to but myself. As scary as it is, it is what is here now.

The Game of life

2008-12-04T11:02:00.000-08:00

December 4, 2008

There are many phases to this life that we go through that we learn from. We don’t always know why there is a lull when there is a lull but then again we might never know what is going on behind the scenes it is the complete faith within us that is needed to know that what is here isn’t always what is available.

It is easy to question it is easy to give up to frustration to anger to the not knowing it is easy to give in to the fears and worries of others it is easy to get dragged down by the outside world and get caught up in what is happening around us, instead of listening to the call of our own souls.

This life often seems to me like a game as if we are the players and the world we live in acts as the backdrop of the game of life. The game can end anytime we choose to and we can simply be, however most of us gain some sort of pleasure by playing this game and buying into the illusions as truth. For me it can sometime seem as though I am caught in a dream, I can see the way out I know the way out and yet I am caught with playing the game. It is a struggle I go through in my mind and heart on what is “right” on what is reality.In this search for reality I often lose touch with what is real and then I question what is reality anyways.

There are rare times that a gleam of clarity shines through when all of a sudden I am aware of this life the purpose and I vow to never get caught in playing the game again, and just like that I find myself back in the role inside of the game I have created in my mind. It is funny in a way that as someone who is constantly seeking I am in a way eluding myself of the very thing I seek to become. It is within my grasp because it is simple, and yet here I am trying to make it complex, trying to beat the game of life instead of seeing it for what it is which is an illusion of the mind.

What holds us in the game? For me it is fear, sometimes it is the fear of simply letting go for in that letting go I fear that there will be nothing, seems a little silly doesn’t it. For me it is real for it is what my mind has created for me to be real to keep me in the comfort to keep me from seeing my very own light. It is the fear of myself my power and my ability that keeps me locked behind the cage of fear and seemingly paralyzed when it comes to moving forward.

I am somewhat someone who tends to over analyze and as I am writing this I can see the pattern of which I create within my own being. How tricky the ego can be trying to mask itself as a spiritual being that is only “seeking for answers.” When really what it is doing is seeping more self-doubt more lack of trust, faith in whom I am. It is telling me to search the outside for it fears what it will find when I go within. What is so scary about listening to our own hearts, listening to our own souls, listening to what truths are here for us. It is in the truth it is our truths in which our world around us can often disappear, for all of a sudden what we knew what we defined ourselves as can become vapor just a shadow of what we thought we once were. All of a sudden we don’t know who we are, or we think we don’t know who we are when I fact we have just peeled the layers to find who we really are. It is in the things we identify ourselves with that causes the greatest harm to our personal growth, we are not the roles we put ourselves in we are not the person others see us as. We are beings we are souls that are constantly growing that are constantly shifting finding new ways to be to think when it happens that another definition breaks away we feel vulnerable as if we cannot be seen the fear of who we are seems to paralyze us all of a sudden and yet to see what we are going through to truly see it will truly see how our minds can create the fear that if we simply just allowed ourselves to be with no judgments of what or how it looks like we would finally be free. The game of life as we know it would vanish and all that would remain would be the terrain in which we are living our lives. It is in the terrain of our souls our hearts that is truly a measure of who we are and where we have been and where we are going to.

It is in no ones hands but ours to let go of the things we cling to the most. I cling to a role of saving the world; saving the ones around me fixing things and making them better. It is in that role that I limit the very essence of who I am. It has been a humbling experience for me to look at myself to see what it is I create what I align to and see how false it truly is. There is nothing that needs to be saved, nor fixed including myself. There is not some huge issue in my life that needs healing in order for me to move on. To admit that was to admit that in all truth I am perfect just the way I am. That there is truly nothing that is “wrong” with me. To know that is to see that you and the world around you is exactly as it should be and perhaps just by altering our perspective on ourselves and our worlds we perhaps alter and remove the masks in which we view the world. We will see once and for all the perfection of all imperfections and the beauty to all life.