“May you find serenity and tranquility in a world you may not always understand. May the pain you have known and the conflict you have experienced give you the strength to walk through life facing each new situation with courage and optimism. Always know that there are those whose love and understanding will always be there, even when you feel most alone. May you discover enough goodness in others to believe in a world of peace. May a kind word, a reassuring touch, and a warm smile be yours every day of your life, and may you give these gifts as well as receive them. Remember the sunshine when the storm seems unending.

Teach love to those who hate, and let that love embrace you as you go out into the world. May the teachings of those you admire become part of you, so that you may call upon them. Remember, those whose lives you have touched and whose have touched yours are always a part of you, even if the encounters were less than you would have wished. It is the content of the encounter that is more important than the form.

May you not become too concerned with material matters, but instead place immeasurable value on the goodness in your heart. Find time each day to see beauty and love in the world around you. Realize that each person has limitless abilities, but each of us is different in our own way. What you feel you lack in the present may become one of your strengths in the future. May you see your future as one filled with promise and possibility. Learn to view everything as a worthwhile experience. May you find enough inner strength to determine your own worth by yourself, and not be dependent on another’s judgment of your accomplishments.
And May you always feel loved.”

- anonymous

We use time as an excuse as to why we don’t do things. Why we don’t exercise, read more books, take up that pet project, do more with our children etc. I often joke my free time is between 3 and 4am! I squeeze as much as I can into my days but like most of us, I do not have much free time available. We live in a world where everything has been designed to give us more time (from pre-washed and cut veggies to microwaves, email and faster cars) yet we somehow find ourselves with less time and energy! (Anyway that is another post) What I have come to realize and now say is that there is no such thing as having enough time, you never will, so forget that old moan and get on with it! You don’t have time…You MAKE TIME. It comes down to priorities and planning.

Both Eastern and Western Spiritual teachers, from Thich Nhat Hanh to Eckhart Tolle, are known for their teachings of experiencing mindfulness being fully present in the moment. A famous quote I love is that we are human ‘beings’ and not human ‘doings’. To be aware of each magnificent moment of our existence and to be fully present for our lives is the answer to peace, happiness and success. What these great teachers fail to fully get across to us is that as few of us live like monks in the Himalayas and instead live very hectic lives, even the act of being present requires 1) Time and 2)Action (the doing).

All worthwhile things require effort – Even reminding yourself to be present in the moment. The constant action of bringing your mind back to the moment and whatever you may be doing in that moment and the continual re-focusing on the breath, requires effort and discipline. We can BE so to speak, only if we DO.

Next on the agenda is the topic of happiness. (I am taking the long way round here to get to my point, but hopefully you are still with me here!) It always amazes me just how many people tell me they are not happy and ask what they can do to be happy with their lives. I wish I had a happy pill, if so I would have millions of Rands in the bank and it would make me happy! Bottom line is we have to take the time/make the effort to be happy. It does not hit us in the face boom and there we go, happy forever. No, happiness is much more subtle, it sneaks up on you and gives you a glimpse of something intrinsically beautiful for just long enough for you to take a few breaths of appreciation before it leaves. ( Long enough too, I guess for you to also have a sense of what you are missing, when you don’t experience it!) Happiness is not a destination, not an emotional state where you arrive and are forever changed and content. Most happy moments do not last, which is why we actually note them as happy and need to hold on to them. While out there looking for the big sign about how to be happy you are missing out on the stranger who smiles at you while sitting in your car in the traffic, the unexpected hug from your child, the beautiful sunset over your city that evening. Happiness comes in all forms. Find it in the offer by your husband to make dinner that night, the fluid movement of your body as it exercises, the 30 minutes extra to cuddle under the blankets on the weekend, the smell of a new paperback as you open it for the first time, the traffic lights all turning green on your way to work, baking something yummy on a Sunday afternoon, finding a top that looks good on you at the shop, getting a call from a friend that cares. If you appreciate the little things, you will find the bigger ones come more easily.

I think when life feels mundane (and a bit like living in the movie groundhog day) it becomes more of a challenge to take note of the good things and appreciate all that actually is healthy/functional/good/fortunate in our lives. Do we need to win the lotto or have an exotic trip around the World booked in order to feel excited and alive and happy? Do we need to have the perfect job paying the high salary, be married to the perfect spouse and have 2.5 perfect kids to be happy? If that is the case, we will always come up short, as what we look for does not exist. Within each opportunity and experience in our lives is the possibility for happiness or disappointment and the choice to choose which we experience. Which emotion do you feed? Which do you put effort into experiencing?

One of the most profound spiritual practices you can have is the daily act of being grateful. I try and update my gratitude status on this blog, whenever I am online and trust me there are some days when I really have to think about it, but if you forget the mind-blowing amazing expectations of what we should be grateful for, you find that there really always is something to note. A powerful daily practice is to keep a gratitude journal. Every day note about 5 things that you are grateful for. It creates awareness, appreciation, humbleness, awe and love for this beautiful thing called life. Another amazing aspect of keeping a gratitude journal is that, it brings more of what you are grateful for, into your life. Being grateful allows the energy of your life to flow and creates a state of abundance. By focusing on the good and what is right in your life, you get more of it. It is a basic universal law, but we are often so focused on what we are lacking, that we forget to take note of what is good and what we do have. In that scenario, we end up getting more of what we lack. So turn the tables on this negative mindset trap and at the bottom of your list of 5 daily things you are grateful for, make another list of things that you desire, but write them in a way of being grateful for them, as if you already have them in your life. Eg. I am grateful for all the money flowing in to me, I am grateful for the healthy baby safely growing inside my belly, I am grateful for loving relationships in my life.

Writing in your journal each day takes discipline and time and we all fall off the discipline treadmill now and then. Get back on. Make the time. Take action. Be in the moment and be grateful for what you have. It will change your life, it will

Ps: And so I took a look at my life in the here and now. In the boringness that it feels to me at the moment and I chose to look beyond that, at the little things and precious moments for inspiration, joy and happiness. Here they are:

1. Amy telling me ‘ I love you so much mommy’ and the sincerity and genuineness that comes from untainted youth.
2. Nina gathering sand up in her hands and throwing it in the air with sheer delight.
3. Baking cupcakes on Saturday and having fun decorating them with messy icing.
4. Using my little grey cells and creativity by coming up with new craft projects to do.
5. Having the time to relax and veg on a Monday night, while watching LOST and Vampire Dairies.
6. The pink sky at night over our beautiful city.
7. Seeing so many South African flags as we drive around and the feeling of pride that swells in my heart for this beautiful land.
8. Enjoying the comfort foods of winter – soups, hot chocolate, dhal, rusks.
9. Fresh herbs picked from our beautiful herb garden.

10. The car guard taking my trolley so that I don’t have the difficulty of having to return it to the trolley bay, with two kids in hand.

11. Arranging flowers in a way that looks just so darn pretty.

12. The supermarket stocking everything on my shopping list and having the money to afford those things.

13. My family enjoying the meal I cooked for them.

14. Climbing in to my bed after I have put on the freshly cleaned linen.

15. Waking up without a headache and the feeling of freshness in my head!

16. The excitement of looking forward to an outing with the girls this week.

17. The comfort zone of my wonderful caring family and space to ‘just be’.

18. The satisfaction of a clean kitchen after tidying up.

19. Watching the Robins in the garden.

20. The sound of Nina laughing – pure joy.

21. The new possibilities for my life…

I said to the wanting creature inside me;
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travellers on the river, and no road
Do you see anyone moving about on that bank or resting?
There is no river at all, no boat and no boatman.
There is no towrope either, and no-one to pull it.
There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no fjord!

And there is no body, no mind!
Do you believe there is some place that will make the soul less thirsty?
In that great absence you will find nothing.

Be strong then and enter into your own body;
There you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don’t go off somewhere else!

Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of imaginary things, and stand firm in that which you are

- Kabir

I love beautiful words and am so envious when I read something so eloquent, magical and poetic that I wish I had written those words myself. I am compelled to share these words by Maya Stein, from her blog. (If you visit her blog, read further down to the post called Listen – equally stunning!) The message of this post reflects my feelings and the type of messages I try to share here. I have made bold, the sentences that really stand out for me. Prepare to feel inspired.

‘Take exquisite care of yourself
she said, and that day, fighting a cold,
I misunderstood, took myself directly
to bed, then to the kitchen for soup,
then wasted an obscene amount of hot water
on a late afternoon shower.

Later, when the weight in my chest
had cleared, when I could breathe again,
and tell the difference between fogginess and fog,
it occurred to me I had not been listening
for a long time.

Here, she was saying, is the poem of you.
Here is your delicate architecture, you fragile aliveness.
Here are your deer legs, your dandelion heart.
Here are your dormouse tracks on fresh, permeable snow.
Here is the way you sing, your voice millimetering toward sound,
how you hold your gaze on the coastline as if it were
a fiber of gold. Here is your language,
thin as a moth wing, your kiss a whisper
of offering. Here is how you cross the street,
how you drive the car, how you throw a Frisbee and bake a cake.
Here are the contents of your purse,
the Chapstick down to the quick
the receipt for midnight groceries,
a square sachet of lavender, a pair of broken
sunglasses still, somehow, salvageable.
Here are the thousand tiny ways you know to love.
Here are your wild little arms,
the soft tentacles of your fingers.
Here is how you sleep and how you wake up,
how you tiptoe toward the edge of the water
like a turtle, a drip of honey, an heirloom sweater
buried in a pile of attic castoffs.
Here are your shoes. Here is the way you eat.
Here are your secret favorite things, the underbelly of clover
lining the deck boards, the moss erupting near the recycling.
Here is your devotion to precision and the giddy, uncontainable
mess you nevertheless effort to contain.
Here are the sounds you make when you’re happy,
the alleyway damp of your sorrow.
Here is the lullaby tucked inside your bureau,
the joy hidden under the last shelf in the pantry,
the smooth belly of peace obscured by traffic lights.
Here is everything you know,
and everything that is still waiting patiently
for you to know it.

And I saw that this exquisite care
I was asked to take was not a matter
of sleep or soup, or hot water,
but an unflagging allegiance to my own wisdom,
the curves and wayward bends of it,
wool-scratched and seaglass-soft
syllabled or a baby’s babble,
however it was shaped and however it shaped,
wisdom, mine, certainty and uncertainty, a light,
however dim, steady and beckoning.

and this too:
loyalty to the peculiar and exceptional
ticking of my heart, which, without any intervention,
knows exactly what it needs
to chase the next breath
and the one that will come
just after.’

This is the first chance I have actually had this whole week to sit at my computer. I have just been busy with the kids and a few unexpected social occasions (a play-date, joining my mom for bookclub, playgroup, dinner with a good friend and another dinner). I had been intending to sort a few admin things out and plan an online course in detail this weekend, but it does not look like I will get a chance. Life has other plans for me at the moment. It is so funny how these things work. It has been months since I have had a busy social life and even the most basic plans to get together with friends have usually fallen through. Then suddenly the dry spell is over and I actually have to turn down invites.  So I have experienced a social theme. The energy and central ‘themes’ for our lives continually change. They are influenced by our own personal emotional and spiritual growth, priorities, as well as the seasons and the movements of the planets at that particular time. Apart from this current social theme, I have also had the increasing feeling that I am needed for healing/listening in various people’s lives right now. These are mainly people close to me but also a few acquaintances have unexpectedly broken down and confided in me. Often when this happens, the person is surprised at themselves and embarrassed, yet this is something I have become quite used to in my life, even out of a work environment. I guess you are what you are and for whatever reason, people just do open up to me. In all honesty it is an honour that they trust me in that way. Anyway, I feel that right now I do not need to try and fix things in the lives of the people I care about. Right now, I am being guided to simply be present for them and listen. This is what I have been doing and continue to plan to do. It is not always easy when you have a tendency to take on other people’s stuff and have a strong desire to eliminate their suffering. Not easy when you want to be able to take their pain away and ‘fix’ all the things that weigh down on their shoulders or make them sad. But, one of the lessons I have learnt on this long journey is that I can’t always do that. Most of us can’t. Each person walks their own path and experiences their own pain. We should not judge. We should try our best to empathise, even though we can never fully comprehend another person’s experiences like our own. We can not tell them what to do or fix their problems and often they don’t actually want us to anyway. What people want most of all, is to simply be acknowledged. More than to be loved, to be acknowledged. To show someone that you really ‘see them’ and acknowledge their feelings, is the greatest gift you can give them. As Oriah Mountain Dreamer said, “I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. “  So, the lesson is that if you want to be there for someone in your life, just listen, really listen, to them. That will help them in more ways then you could ever comprehend. Acknowledge their feelings, open your heart and just listen. We can all benefit from a bit of that.

I am passionate about working with women. I find the dynamic that exists when  women are together in a group, equally inspiring and fascinating. It doesn’t always have to be a self-development workshop, it can be a book-club, yoga class or coffee morning. Women need each other and the support, empathy and healing that can arise from a group of women is truly wonderful. This works best when women connect on an authentic level, where superficial facades and fear of being judged are set aside and honest heart-to-heart conversation occurs. This is the magical moment where we discover we are not alone. Not alone in our fears, in our frustrations, in our forgotten dreams and darkest desires. We are also not alone in the experience of joy as well as confusion, challenge and wonder of being mothers, wives, daughters, friends and females in what still is an all too male world. I think women are amazing in that they are so strong, so capable, so resilient and yet so humble in it all. I have been blessed to cross paths with so many amazing women. Women of different ages, races, religions and backgrounds. Working with energy allows me to have access to and ‘see’ a person’s true self. Our true self is of a higher vibration and is in a sense, wiser and purer than our physical self. It reflects our inner nature, abilities and gifts. I am always blown away by how incredibly beautiful most people are. It is as if I get a glimpse of their potential, their life journey and choices, as well as the endless exciting and expansive possibilities available to them and the purest and greatest form of who they can be. It is exciting and inspiring and I only wish I could share that view with them.  If they could just get one small glimpse of that, I think their self-worth would rise drastically and what a difference that would make.

There is a lesson in that for all of us.
It is:
- To acknowledge the totality of our being – our strengths and weaknesses.

- To honour who we are, as we are in the moment while still striving to be the best of who we can be.

- To no longer compare ourselves and find ourselves short, and to no longer desire to be like anyone else, but to simply fully experience being ourselves.

- To realize that who we are is already perfect and that our task on this earth is not so much about having to learn that fact, but rather to remember it.

My friends and I have been talking a lot about how we as women, need each other. We need the moral support, the empathy and nurturing care that to be honest one often can’t get from a partner. Men tend to want to ‘fix’ things, while women just want you to sit and listen. Maybe a few tears will be shed, maybe a few bouts of hysterical laughter. Women need to connect with other women to feel fully understood and supported. Ladies we need to stick together to help keep each other sane in an insane world. So, here are some great words from today’s Daily OM:

” There was a time where women stood together in a bond of sisterhood, women supporting women. It is only natural that the pendulum swings out of balance for a while so that we may have the experience of what we do not want. It is up to women to bring the pendulum back into balance and bring back the sacred sisterhood we yearn for at our core.”

In another email I received today, there were these words,

“God doesn’t give you the people you want; He gives you the people you *NEED… *to help you, to hurt you, to leave you, to love you and to make  you into the person you were meant to be.”

Worth reflecting on…

Oops, it is already Thursday tomorrow! Here is a rather late but still (hopefully) inspirational quote for the rest of your week. Hope you are having a good one xxx