Monika loves you

I feel so infinitely blessed and grateful for all of you. I am in awe, being shown again and again how much I am loved, how safe I am, and how supported I am by friends who are so deeply wise, open-hearted, joyful, humble and beautiful - beyond what I could have ever imagined or asked for.

This time in my life is one of the most exquisitely painful, and at the same time expansively joyful. I believe the two are not in fact separate. At times I feel I might die, or at least break......and then I don't.

Just over a week ago the universe gave me a new name. Miraculously, not only did the name come in a form I found more beautiful to me than I could have ever thought of myself, but it also came with a fearlessness, confidence and unconditional love which I've been given the honor of now growing into. My greatest hope and intent is to first embody it, and then share it with all of you to the best of my capacity.

The universe is teaching me about unconditional love, and we're all learning this, together, and I trust it.

Thank you, thank you to the souls who are walking this path with me..........Words cannot express the gratitude and devotion I feel for your presence in my life.

Letting Go

Letting go is...

Trusting that you are, in essence, everything beautiful and good that you have released.

Opening the closed fist so that it can be filled with the warmth of your own being.

Feeling the remorse of unconscious acts.

Feeling the pain of having believed you are less than you are.

Sacrifice.

Giving freedom.

Understanding that nothing is ever lost.

Surrendering to the unknown.

Love.

A Love Poem

There once was a man
With such love in his heart,
That he wanted to share it,
To make loving his art.


So he started to love
From the small to the tall,
No matter the person
He gave love to all.


He did it by sharing
His kindness and caring,
His joy and delight
For this world full of light.


His spirit was magic
And all that he met
Were touched by his presence
They loved him, and yet...


Sometimes he felt sad
That the love that he had
Could not seem to cure them
Of all that was bad.


So one day he thought
With his eyes full of tears,
'Enough of this madness,
I'm facing my fears!'


He cried and he cried
All the sadness away,
He cried it for Sally,
For Joe, and for Ray


He cried it for animals,
Rivers and trees,
He cried to the depths
Of the bottomless seas...


And once he had reached
To the emptiest place,
The crying subsided
And then, there was space....






...His being was filled
With a marvelous grace.....







With wonder he found,
To his utmost surprise
That the tears of the world
Had been clouding his eyes.


But now he could see
Where he couldn't before,
That the tears were just footsteps,
And his sadness, a door.


And so he continued
To love and to share,
But this time he knew
That the sadness was there.


With nothing to fear
He could love with such might,
That he transformed himself,
and the world, into light.


The End.

By: Stephanie

The Knack of Life

It seems to me that life is sort of like a knack that you can only get the hang of with practice. You can learn all the technical motions, read all the right books, imitate others, and pretend, but it's only when you get the knack of it that you start to feel "aha!" And that very "aha" is living.

But without the effort, the desire to learn, the reading of books, imitating, pretending and so forth, there may never be any chance of getting the knack in the first place. Like sometimes you gotta fake it until you make it. And you may happen upon it by accident a million times before you begin to get the knack.......but pay attention, because the millionth accidental time you just might realize how you did it. Or at least how you didn't undo it. How it happened to you when you got out of the way. And what it was that was in the way that you thought was you but actually wasn't.


Ahhhhh.


What a relief.


For me, the knack has something to do with acceptance. When life is stressful I imagine, and experience myself as a soft breathingness in the centre of my body. Around me are pains and tensions in my body, heavy emotions, negative thoughts........but I am just the soft breathingness that is perfectly peaceful in the midst of it all. I can observe that there are pains and contractions and daydreams and anxieties, projections of the future, baggage from the past, and accept these without having to indulge them or become distracted from the soft breathingness.

And there is only ever this one moment that I can do anything in anyway. So why worry.

So then all of the things I had distracted myself with become superfluous and I'm faced with myself. Shit!......
or Hallelujah!.... I can't quite decide....

And suddenly there's a deep sadness......so many unlived moments! So many times there was a knock on the door and no one was home! So many times I could have loved myself and instead, neglect, betrayal and compromise. How can I ever make it up to me?

But you can. By starting right now. THIS time, don't neglect. THIS time, stay here with her. THIS time, love her no matter what. THIS time forgive her immediately and let it go when she forgets everything you just said.

I guess this will take some time. But I'm sure with practice, eventually, I'll get the knack of it.

Transformation

Doubt and fear are a natural part of forging into the unknown, pushing deeper, releasing the old and familiar because you've outgrown it.

I have had my share of doubts and fears, and I've persisted. Persistence has perhaps been the way that I've loved myself most. Not knowing why or for what, moving through darkness, pushing forward because of my faith that actually We are an ultimate bliss, joy, love and peace that is so exquisite and poignant that I could never possibly begin to contain it in words. My trust in this has been my guiding light, and it has lead me so far.....

...and life keeps expanding into something more and more incredibly beautiful and abundant than I had even dreamed.

At times I feel a sense of "this can't be real"....having been plodding for so long, with such grand ideals and yet a great deal of suffering....to have become accustomed to being in pain................and gradually - though it feels sudden - I begin to see pain ending. Not only is pain ending, but the ultimate joy I have known as home is beginning to break through as the true reality.

All of the most uplifting, heart-expanding dreams I had ever conceived, revealing themselves as truth, here and now.

My mind is in a kind of stupor. It didn't expect this. All along it's told me that love was its goal, and yet when love arrives it is speechless - it didn't even know love, it was only following orders. How humbling. It feels like such an incredible gift, and I didn't create it, I didn't think it up, I didn't figure it out - how can I deserve it? And yet, I do, I must.

And the people around me are awakening. Crabby, self-absorbed, whiny people.........a woman I work with, suddenly has a positivity to her that appeared to blossom out of nowhere. A cloud has lifted, and though the old shell is till there, a light is shining through... the crusty woman seems a little bit ...happy. Or maybe, I've become less crabby, self-absorbed and whiny, so I can see her now! She's so sweet! We're actually all so sweet!

Healing is taking place now. As I continue to heal myself, to heal my self-concept, I notice there is something I can already say with absolute confidence.

I am a powerful healing force.

Part of me wants to hide from my own words, behind some kind of false humility. But I'm growing awfully tired of false anything. I AM a powerful healing force. And if I don't start owning it, how the hell am I supposed to live it.

Bless this beautiful tribe, and the courage and compassion of those individuals who are taking the risk to live their greatness. You are an incredible inspiration, and you are transforming this earth into ecstacy.

Breaking the Silence

So I've never before written in a blog of my own.
Inspired in part by the blogs of others, and in part by my own readiness (*trumpets sound*), I think it's time to break the silence.

I guess it's partly because it's like talking to myself.....only out loud......where others can hear me, but in a sense I'm still alone. So it's like writing to others, only I'm more completely honest than I might be if I had some specific other in mind. Which is why I think starting to write blogs is a seriously awesome idea. People might get to know me more as I know myself.

Talking to myself, alone, out loud, is actually a recent discovery for me. I never realized what amazing company I actually am! So often I've gone running around looking for answers - answers from people, from experiences, from books, from anything and everything OUTSIDE. It seems that I reasoned that just by being OUTSIDE, *fill in the blank* was deemed somehow inherently more likely to have "the answer" than I would. More likely than INSIDE would, that's for sure.

What a silly misunderstanding! I am finding such rich company in myself! The advice I give me is so helpful, since I know myself best - it seems now somehow absurd that I would have looked everywhere else first!

And actually, when I enjoy my own company, I realize that I love me so much that I just want to SHARE. When I realize that I don't have to go ANYWHERE to have ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING that I've ever looked for........I feel so much joy! I can rest now.

I feel like I'm in kindergarten.