Category: Inspirations

Easter is coming upon us and the renewing of Spring’s cycles upon our hearts and bodies. The Story we have told for centuries about Easter is one of death and resurrection, one of trauma, abuse, betrayal and salvation. In many ways, quite simply, Easter is the story of our lives. We experience every moment an Enlightened Master experiences…betrayal, violence, forsakenness, the power of love and forgiveness, being delivered from our own darkness through a profound choice to humbly surrender to the Light of the Divine and the Sacred. Although the details of our story may be uniquely re-arranged from another‘s story, yet in the end, the Story We Tell, reveals the same mysteries of the Sacred awakening and guiding the Potential of our Lives and Hearts. Eckhart Tolle in his book, A New Earth, that over 700,000 people from around the globe are simultaneously studying and over 1.5 million people are downloading, writes that the spiritual story we need to tell is one where a ‘radical transformation of human consciousness’ must awaken us to a higher awareness of our inner purpose. He writes that whether we call it enlightenment, salvation, the end of suffering, liberation or awakening, a new story of transformation is required or we will die.

What a powerful time for the world to be studying this book given that much of the world will honour, in some way, the Easter story , spring equinox, this March, Passover in April and other religious celebrations. Whether or not you have claimed Christianity as your spiritual tradition of faith or not makes no difference. The point is can you see the deeper story of love and transformation available to anyone who can hear and anyone who has eyes?! The story that Buddha told is the same story that Jesus told, that Atman told, the same story in the legends of the Native peoples, a story of inner sacred knowing that requires our discipline and truth to live and set ourselves free to evolve in Love and Light. We are now being called to be open to align our stories with the Light of ‘Christ/Buddha/Nature’s Consciousness’.!

Olive Ann Burns died in 1990 and before she died she wrote one of my favourite and very funny stories, Cold Sassy Tree. How we tell our story from day to day can vary depending upon our willingness to receive the deeper currents of truth and love that lie beneath the surface of our emotional rationales. The story, set in southern Georgia, is largely about a grandpa who marries a younger woman after his wife dies and the relationship he shares with his grandson, Will Tweedy. Will Tweedy is often struck by the way his grandfather simply throws out the ridiculous of religion and culture and finds within his own heart, the truth that sets him free to live, laugh and love.

So as you enter into the new spiritual consciousness available to us this Easter, what ‘transformation, enlightenment or salvation’ story are you willing to be open to tell? If you need some laughter to help you to awaken to your story of transformation and enlightenment out from beneath the darkness of your story that may have started with violence and betrayal and abandonment, I invite you to discover the wisdom of faith in Grandpa’s words to Will Tweedy as he recounted his ‘sermon’ to his new young wife, Miss Love.

Tweedy asks, “Gosh, Grandpa. You mean you don’t think Jesus rose from the dead?”
“I’m a-sayin’ thet did He or didn’t He ain’t important, son. What’s important is thet when the spirit a-Jesus Christ come down on them disciples later, they quit settin’ round a-moanin’ and a-tremblin’ and got to work. They weren’t scairt no more, and the words they spoke had fire in’m. Compared to a miracle like thet, Jesus rollin’ back a dang rock and flyin’ off to Heaven ain’t nothin’. …..

“Grandpa, you don’t think Granny’s gone to Heaven? Tweedy asks.

“I like to think so, son. If’n they is a Heaven, she’s Up There, I know thet, he said softly. “ Ain’t but one way to find out if she is or ain’t, though. And I’m not thet curious. He sighed, spat and said, “ Havin’ faith means its all right either way, son. The Lord is my shepherd means I trust Him. Whatever happens in this life or the next, and even if they ain’t a life after this’n, God planned it. So why wouldn’t it be all right? He looked dead serious, then all of a sudden laughed again. “You know, if’n I was a real preacher, Will Tweedy, wouldn’t nobody come to my church.”

“I would Grandpa.”

Now I encourage you to re-read this small section of story again and transpose the word Him for Her/Goddess. So what if the Consciousness of Christ had come to us in the form of a woman? What awakening of freedom and transformation become available to you in this SPACE? And now re-read it a third time from the vantage point that YOU have come out of Light, and put your name in the place of the disciples. What story of transformation or enlightenment is sparked in you that you now need to tell? It’s our choice which story we tell of our past, of our present or the one yet to come. The story we tell, however, will lead us to the GREAT LIFE, the GREAT LOVE, the GREAT HARMONY/PEACE we seek or the story of our death, our sickness and our darkness. Sweet Blessings!

“Reflecting through the Heavens, All darkness is made light.
Descending, the vastness of the great sea Is filled with the voices of Joy.”
Morihei Ueshiba

 

©Shirley Martin

In the last hours of our time in Japan, most of our group had gathered to relax until the parting time for the train station. We had taken one last stroll around the neighbourhood in Tokyo where we were staying. As we were relaxing, a group member decided to check her email one last time before the trip home. Upon logging in, the above quote came up on the screen in full letters with a picture. No one could explain from where it came, but we all were amazed at the powerful moment of synchronicity and blessing as the trip was coming to a close. As only poetry could do, this quote captured our trip and the experience of the soul.

Whenever we journey great distances, whether physically or within the Heart of Being, the power of hope keeps us progressing forward even when the light of love has seemingly vanished. I journeyed great distances in preparing for Japan and again while on my voyage, both external and internal. This journey brought with it its own challenges and its moments of new hope and the voices of joy. Not only did I have to navigate a very different culture and social mores, I also had to navigate the journey in my own soul as I encountered the many spiritual energies downloaded during my trip.

If we look back over 2007, many of us can see where hope guided us through the stresses and unknowns that presented themselves to us. I’m the kind of person who likes to look back at the end of the year and see that so much has changed in my life, especially internally, that I say, “Wow, look who I am…I don’t even remember who I was last January.” This year is no different. At the end of December I want to look back and find the snow has covered the tracks where I have been, so that I look forward to 2008 with new hope about where I am going, both internally and externally. This is not a year I need to look back to honour my journey. I have honoured it all along the way.

How am I able to do that? I practice Reiki on myself and meditate daily for at least 2 hours. It’s my commitment to myself. What I have learned is that the more I practice, the more I am required to practice. It takes discipline to meet the quiet truths of HOPE for new life when the old voice of woundedness and betrayal echo in our ego mind and keep pulling us back into our wounds. Ueshiba’s quote reminds us that it is time to silence these voices with a voice that reflects the heavens, fills us with joy and turns the darkness into light!! And that’s the season of NEW HOPE—to birth within us a NEW MINDSET and a NEW VOICE!

For New Hope to be real to us in every moment, we do need to descend into the vastness of the great sea within—the heartsoul. Descending, we may encounter many memories of darkness. The strategy is to use NEW HOPE as our guide, always moving us forward to the next voice of joy. And the voice of joy will be present as this is the promise that Hope brings us. For example, for some, Christmas season can be a time of great stress as the hours of celebration seem to surface the inner truths of discontent in our lives. Some struggle to actually feel the joy of the season. Many find that the ‘family bonds of love’ hold more experiences of loneliness than they do connectedness. Many too, find that the season of imposed frenzy and bustle overwhelm their already guilty conscience for the secret thoughts of just wanting to skip out of all the gatherings and be quiet with their hearts.

Yet, despite all the internal stress that many experience over the holidays, we are presented with a prize opportunity to celebrate NEW HOPE that comes with the SEASON OF LIGHT and NEW BIRTH. Just think of the times wherein the worst moments of sadness and hurt from which you may be writhing and then serendipitously, you encountered a baby who catches your attention or perhaps your heart. Whether it be an infant, or small toddler, a kitten or puppy, the innocence and delight with which they engage with the world envelops us with a blanket or deep and soulful hope that all will find its well-beingness and order once again. For hope truly brings a positive mindset and opens our hearts to the possibilities of miracles deliciously manifested!

Marzie and I are retreating this season to be filled with the Light of NEW HOPE and NEW BIRTH. We intend to step into 2008 with this HOPE as the fire of our inner power!! I truly bring with me from 2007 all the sense of freedom, wisdom and hope I need to leap into the New Year with laughter, a great, big smile and a huge YES! This season of new hope is asking me to plan for the birth of a miracle!! Will you join me in utilizing the energy of new hope to plan for a miracle in your life this 2008?
Blessed be!
Shirley Lynn Martin and Marzie

 

©Shirley Martin

Can you imagine living in a place where ‘love’ is actually believed more to be a noun? Can you imagine living on a planet where ‘love’ means you have to give up your right to freedom and identity in order to assure yourself a place or time of belonging? Can you imagine a place where ‘real love’ is more defined by your gender rather than your soul essence? These are questions I have posed of God and Goddess that arise from what people have shared with me over the 15 years in my professional service.

The challenge of any professional who walks beside those who seek deeper meaning, purpose or a true sense of soul identity in the midst of chaos, neglect, abuse and violence or even overlays of confusion is never to lose the deeper rhythms of the Universe or the faith that God and Goddess are more powerful and wise than any rampant evil or violence here on this planet. Everywhere we look we can see violence and betrayal—on the streets, on TV, on the internet, at our work, in our families and homes, in our words, even in our own minds and hearts for goodness sake. And what’s even more perplexing is that often our disorientation away from our core ethics permits our participation in such betrayals of our own True Spirit over and over again.

In a recent conversation with my Spiritual Coach, we dialogued about doing what we love. In other words, love is a state of being that is active and dynamic. Actively magnetizing what is truly our natural expression of love. Actively expressing our needs that fulfill our deepest soul purpose. Actively engaging the people around us to experience their own power to love. Actively inviting ourselves to follow through with what we most dream about. These actions require love to be in motion and for us to be in our truth. Even when we are asked to wait and be patient upon God’s and Goddess’ timing and do ‘nothing’, love still requires us to trust the task of waiting and do nothing. I have learned we are never left behind when we love and do what we love. That would be a contradiction to Universal Law. Love must complete itself. Fear can never complete itself. It has not gained the wisdom to do so. Love must find its union to be whole. Love seeks wholeness and truly is always whole.

When we truly love, we are in motion and so when we truly love our motion is guided by our principles. We often refer to these principles as our ethics. Ethics are our soul imperatives that serve as guardians and guides in making decisions and choices for graceful living and joyful peace-walking, for example. Such an example can be found in 1 Corinthians 13: 4-6 where the apostle Paul writes:

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.”

When I read such soul wisdom, I am re-oriented to the ethics that require me to think with patience, to speak with kindness, to genuinely complement and to be delightfully forth-giving with praise. It reminds me I must treat everyone as equally worthy in the eyes of the Divine and cannot act in ways that puts others in doubt of this truth. When I love, I release control of the higher outcome in all situations, not because I am hopeless or feel powerless, but rather because it is imperative that I trust. Love trusts! Love tells the truth! Not just sometimes or some places, but in every time and in every place. In fact, the text says I must rejoice in my truth, whatever my truth is.

These principles are simple. They are ancient and universal in any true spiritual community. Yet, how often do we get trapped in our emotions and our negative cycles of thinking that we forget, truly forget that our soul has an imperative to love? With an imperative to love, then I must be patient; kind; truthful; affirming of others and myself equally; I must surrender to the path and knowing of love; and I must commit to its completion no matter how challenging the way. When I choose love then I must do what I love and stop the resentment that comes from doing what I don’t love.

Although I asked these questions long ago and from time to time I return to God and Goddess to ask them again, I am always returned to Love, not a noun I can cuddle up and go to sleep renouncing all responsibility of my soul purpose, but a verb that enlightens and evolves me beyond what I can imagine and believe I am capable. When I return to Love as a verb, it becomes the healing antidote to woeful feelings and negative thinking.

We have just stepped into the fall season of harvest and thanksgiving. Harvesting the fruit in our lives and being grateful for our abundance requires an attitude of love. They require the soul to be in inspired motion. Inspired motion of the soul is love’s ultimate purpose and divine desire. Today, when you sit with Love, what ethic guides you in choosing what you love to do? Will you release resentment for what you dislike or even hate, to follow what you love to do? Remind yourself: Love seeks its own completion. Then ask: What imperative lives within calling me to trust that love knows the way? Remind yourself: For the Universe is love. The Universe knows the way.

Today, join me and be willing to live this imperative: to live as though you love. The health and peace of our souls and the planet depends upon it!

Shirley Lynn Martin and Marzie (the one who has taught me to trust in love); Pepper (my cat who has taught me to be patient for love) and Cailie (my cat who has taught me to be honest in love)

We have once again finished the winter season of going within which led into the Easter season and now the beginnings of Spring and the bursting of her flowers. For me, Easter is a season of celebrating the choice to fully embrace our Light and to live the calm purposefulness of our Authentic Divine Self. And each year, just as we renew our choice, spring flowers always follow vivaciously pushing through the ground smiling and dancing to their inner rhythms of beauty and blossom, boldly displaying their vibrant colours. They cannot be ignored. We look forward to their coming as a sign of new life and new hope for the spring and summer of our lives.

Unlike many of us, Nature seems to welcome the cycle of death and new life. If spirituality is the divinely inspired movement of our ever expanded existence toward LOVE, then each death and birth cycle is really about becoming closer and more intimate with the Divine. We die over and over again so that what is less and less the Divine expression of Self can be transmuted and be put to rest. Do you every notice how perennial spring flowers after many years of this death and re-birth cycle become more resilient, vibrant, bold and prominent? They know that each year they become more and more able to anchor into the Earth, finer and more highly subtle energies than the year before. It is these fine, dynamically new Divine vibrations that bring the subtle and ever increasing transformations onto the planet.

So what are these finer, more subtle Divine vibrations or frequencies descending upon the Earth and enfolding her atmosphere? It is quite simple.–a new Octave of Love. There are already ten Octaves available to the masses. These ten Octaves of Love are really known to us like music that opens and expands the human heart, ever increasing our awareness and action in truth, in forgiveness and compassion, in conscious breath, in freedom, in non-conditional love and in divine union so that we can govern ourselves, both individually and globally as Spirit in form. Quite simply, these Octaves of Love call us to to harmonize with Divine Love, where we love ourselves and our neighbours in the same way we love God, Holy Spirit or an Expression thereof.

In this spring season, we feel and see and become renewed by the new life of buds and birds’ eggs and flowers. Our hearts naturally feel open to receive their vibrancy, their joy of living in the moment and the hope of wonderful things to come. I have heard many who speak of the vitality that returns to them in the spring. It is a rebirth they welcome. Yet, only in death can new life be truly experienced. What the flowers teach us about the Octaves of Love is that with each death we become ever closer and more transparent in our relationship with the Divine. Divine Harmony we name it. Never do flowers awake in fear or in negativity of the death they have just experienced or with the plants (our name for them is weeds) around them. It ’s a glorious moment because they trust the life that awaits them. Flowers just live it while we need to practice and condition ourselves to live this Divine Harmony of love.

For those of you who diligently and with gentle discipline walk your true spirit in form, may now find yourselves knocking on the door that ascends you to the next Octave of Love. It does not matter which door you are at, only that you open it and ask for the harmony of Love to open your heart to forgiveness in action or compassion in action or perhaps a greater liberation of soul in action. Great deaths are encountered here as well as the beginnings of new life in the gentling of hearts and stilling of minds. It is like the coming together of being both flower and mountain at the same time. The spirit softens all the while the centre of truth grows bolder and purer. Interesting that in Chinese medicine, spring is the time of the liver–a time a cleansing. To live and walk as both flower and mountain often requires great spring cleaning of our minds, our hearts and bodies of toxic patterns and habits that have diseased the temple of our soul!!

Of course, these Octaves are wonderful mystical structures of understanding what happens as we more deeply delve into the Harmony of Love. And yet, quite simply, it is as though we live both the purity of a small child’s heart and the wisdom of the elder simultaneously. What would it look like to speak to ourselves in the privacy of our minds with love and harmony parallel to the flowers who vibrate such fine vibrations of Love like that of the Goddess or of the God within, for example? What would we be saying differently about ourselves and others? What harsh and judging voices would quickly need to be put to death? Each spring we prune back the many dead branches and old vines so that new growth and life can more richly reach out and take deep breath. What relationships, busyness or false desires would we have to prune out from our over occupied minds and lives?

To live in divine harmony with life and the planet is to open our heart to higher and finer vibrations of Love. This Love seeks the wisdom of death and new life over and over again. Each cycle is ever expanding our capacity to Love, evolving us and moving us to serve a wider and wider circle of life, practically, responsibly and peacefully. Celebrate this spring by daily taking time to slow your rhythms, to feel the fine vibrations of Love singing from the flowers. Take time to gentle your heart and still your mind. Ask to receive the next Octave of Love deep into your being so that you can step into a higher practice of transformation!! Blessings of Divine Harmony!
©Shirley Martin

What wisdom have we discovered in coming to the threshold of new beginnings, of letting go, of changing old habits and ways of being in the beginning of this year? This question was asked from deep within the whispers of the holy to which we were invited to open up and to listen (Read the last inspiration below). When we discover this wisdom, we come to the awareness that now we need to do something with that wisdom. What new habits are we committed to making our own? What project or service to others or to our community do we wish to offer? In what relationship do we grant forgiveness? What anger do we simply release for the experience of happiness once again?

We all desire our happiness. We have many versions and definitions and promises to happiness tossed our way daily, whether be it through the latest technology, the latest alternative, the latest new device, or even by the latest deal or fashion. In reiki, we walk a spiritual path of our enlightened happiness. For me, this enlightened happiness is more than an emotional feeling. Happiness comes as a result of living my true and authentic self no matter what life may bring me. My state of happiness equally embraces the greater happiness of all creation and the created order. In other words, my happiness is simultaneously both about ‘me’ and ‘we’. My happiness is personal, communal, universal and cosmic all at the same time.

As I daily ponder the question what is my true happiness in Reiki Light meditations, and even in my wrestling with the angels, I am shown what I thought it has been and isn’t, where it is and I haven’t noticed it or even where cultural codes and corporate marketing tells me it is and yet this kind of happiness lacks true meaning and timeless satisfaction for my soul. I am shown where I deny it and where I settle for less.

An example that I sure hope generates conversation and responses is the recent release and media devotion to the movie and book “the Secret.” I decided to watch the movie in Reiki Light meditation and in openness to be transformed by it. I was, even though the ideas are very familiar to me. The transformation came in an unanticipated way, however. Briefly, in the movie, they speak of the secret to life as the need to focus our attention and energy to what we want, not to what we don’t want. The movie highlights that the thoughts and feelings we choose about how we think about our life creates our experience, our reality. Therefore, for us to be happy we need to know what we want, to want what makes us feel good and take action appropriate to what we want. All good and true!

However, herein lies the confusion for many, I believe. What is that we each truly want? And how do we explain when something we want so deeply doesn’t manifest even when we pursue it with diligence and passion? The path to knowing what we truly want needs to be discriminated and discerned in the midst of cultural codes that define success and happiness often in very limiting and disempowering ways. We furthermore need to discern our true happiness in the midst of religious doctrines and systems of beliefs that define our salvation; in the midst of family norms and loyalties that measure our value and sense of belonging; and in the midst of pharmaceutical claims and multi-media or corporate marketing, to name a few. These latter entities target our subconscious to psychologically manipulate what we buy and our perceptions of who we need to be to become happy and healthy. On the other hand, we live in a free will Universe where timing and choice can create learning curves for us. To have what we want, we may need to exercise patience, to surrender control, to demonstrate our readiness and even to wait. This waiting may serve to deepen our faith (which is beyond emotionally believing in an outcome) that Love is powerful enough to navigate through all adversity to manifest our real desire.

Moreover, how do we prioritize what we want so that we can remain in harmony and balance with the natural rhythms of our soul wisdom? Stress and overwhelm plague our morale, our bodies and our psyches. To want only what makes us emotionally “feel good” alone, as the source of our happiness, is never spiritually satisfying. We will always want more—an insatiable addiction for bigger and better and more. Ancient wisdom calls this gluttony. To truly understand what makes our soul, our spirit “feel good” is to graduate our list of wants into the realm of Spirit.

Some may argue that this is really what the movie, The Secret, is about. I believe the speakers’ intentions are good and hold truth. However, the discussion that remained absent for me is the one of context. We live on a planet that is presently in dire straits because of all our untamed, emotional wanting. Jung or Erikson defined this sole focus on the emotional self as narcissism. More recently, we have named its subcategory as entitlement. We live in a time where consumer capitalism and the historic model of the “corporation” are designed to have only one goal: to make money for its stockholders. As an entity, the ‘corporation’, legally deemed a person, has no ethical conscience or heart awareness. My invitation to you is simply, do you know the difference between what your heart spiritually desires and what you think you want at the emotional level? When the emotional and the spiritual become aligned, connected in their integrity, then we can attract our real desires and experience our enlightened happiness.

In my wrestling with the angels to manifest my happiness, I have come to believe that it is equally time to graduate our emotional wanting into the realm of awakened spiritual desires. When we align our true heart desires with universal wisdom for happiness and enlightenment, we discover what it means to know and desire what we want. We even discover what it means to be responsible for what we want. Indeed, there is abundance. Of course we can have prosperity. Absolutely, we have unlimited potential. There is an abundance of creative ideas, of goodness, of power, of love, of vision and of purpose. I invite you to bring together how your true happiness supports and heals your communal relationship with the Earth. You may find your own path in this relationship. I have certainly experienced Reiki to be powerful and transforming in my pilgrimage to my enlightened happiness.

If you haven’t seen the movie, I still invite you to ask yourself the questions I have posed and reflect on the above discussion. This discussion, I admit, is not complete. Nor is it designed to be. Wrestle with your angels to discover what is really, really true for you. What are you inspired to name in your Truth and Love that enlightens your happiness? Act on that!

©Shirley Martin

A large and warm welcome to all of you in this inauguration of Feathers, Rainbows & Roses’ website and inspiration page. The journey to complete this website has been one of listening to the whispers. The artists involved, Donna Kwasnicki and Robert Blonski, patiently awaited the whispers and flashes of cosmic inspiration to capture most simply the vision and purpose of what my soul desires to teach and share.

Coming to the deeper thresholds of our lives is often a frightening and daunting undertaking for our minds. Our minds tend to see only the scars of the battles fought and the wounds of our wars that yet remain. Long ago, deep in our subconscious, we have decided we would never agree to such a war again and so we haven’t agreed. And yet, somehow, we have not fully dismantled the leftover artillery rusting away in the old battlefields within. Every time we visit, in mourning, this battlefield of long ago, we step back in time to the memories of brokenness, betrayal and pain.

In our desire to change the past, we come back to it again and again. We meet God or Spirit in our looking back and discover heaven’s honouring of all our pain. But what is truly honoured in the heavens of our battlefields?

When the whispers of the holy come knocking on your heart to honour your battlefield, and they will, listen deeply and feel the stirrings of your soul. A threshold awaits you. Many times we have turned toward the battlefield of our mind and have only seen what we have always seen of the battlefield within. We continue in the same ways of understanding our experiences as we did before. We cling to an identity of ourselves that was borne out of our experience. In our sheer dedication and loyalty to this identity, we may even romance it as the one and only for our lives.

It’s in the whispers of the holy and in the persistent gentle nudges that we are lead over the threshold into a clearing of wisdom’s glory. The whispers of the holy ask us to see the soul’s wisdom of our experiences and to honour the wisdom that we have gained. The whispers invite us to open our arms and embrace the next truth in our path and to consider the evolution of our inner identity beyond the pain of the battlefield.

For wherever there is pain, there must also be joy. They are opposites that become one only after we have crossed the threshold that lies in the middle. It is a simple design, a simple action of the soul, like stepping from one side of a teeter totter to the other. Yet, finding our new ground is a journey where the whispers of the holy gently guides and loves us across the middle point, that once had been our inner balance. It is a risk for many of us, a risk we take to trust the love that stirs our souls.

We risk crossing into joy because the whispers of the holy have loved us in the raw places and in the worn, tired places of our hearts. The whispers of the holy persisted to find our hearts no matter the chaos of our thoughts. They awakened bit by bit the deep hunger within us to know our own holiness, to know our own cornucopia of joy. It is a soul hunger for holiness to which these whispers of the holy gently enlighten us, far deeper than even our mindful wanting.

In this season of Light and celebration of the birth of our True Self, Marzie and I invite you to listen deeply and with dedication to the whispers of the holy. Let your heart feel the love and peace as your soul stirs and dances to the whispers of the holy, reminding you daily of your own sanctity.
©Shirley Martin
Marzie adds her exuberance and love to have a happy holiday!