decluttering - physically and digitally

One of the things I am frequently aware of and evaluating, especially as a business owner, is how I am spending my time. I haven’t yet met someone who feels they have the work-life balance down pat... and why would they? Our needs and responsibilities change throughout our lives.

In the last few months, I have become increasingly aware of how much time I spend managing my stuff and how out of all the things I spend my time on, this is one that doesn’t bring me much joy.

So I’ve been taking advantage of these rainy days to do some decluttering and purging. It’s helped by the fact that I will be downsizing where I live in the next few months. And as I’ve been working with the things I own, I’ve also been noticing how much digital clutter is accumulating, too. And I’m realizing that I don’t always want the answer to be to just get bigger houses or larger memory devices... everything has a weight to it. Even our digital footprint.

Have you done any cleaning recently and how did you feel after?

no resisting the resistance

There’s a lot of movement happening right now in my life... all of it bringing me closer to a life fully lived and soulfully aligned- a nomadic and freer life.

And there’s excitement. And also fear.

Have you ever experienced that? The fear that if we actually get what we want it might be ‘wrong’ or too much for us to handle? Or that we might fail at it?

So here I am, on the sofa, watching an old favorite show, eating chocolate... all ways of resisting what is asking to be stepped into.

And I also know that resisting the resistance doesn’t help. So today, I acknowledge the resistance and the fear and I allow it to be with me. Even as I take baby steps forward... fueled by chocolate, of course.

the difference of a day

What a difference a day can make...

I often hear from my clients how hard they can be on themselves when they see ‘progress’ and then old triggers activate, old patterns and old grooves get followed... when the darkness comes back again.

And who is to say which is better? These flowers need both this beautiful sun, and also the nourishing rain. They allow each to fall on them recognizing no difference... both are sources of food.

Are you allowing your own judgements and perceptions to keep you from receiving the nourishment of your own life?

Take a few deep breaths.

Come back to your heart.

You can always bloom again.

how do my feet experience life?

Last week I had a reflexology session and I set myself the intention to experience the session as my feet experience it- not from the head, not even from the heart... from the feet.// What a simple and yet profound shift. Since then, I have been playing around with experiencing my day-to-day existence as different parts of my body. // Part of my soul’s journey in this incarnation was to come in afraid to be here. Not wanting to be here. Remembering enough of the sacred place we all come from to be aware of how much this illusion we call life pales in comparison. // All of which brings me continually to the question: why, then, are we here??? // And the greatest and most paradoxical Truth is: just to be and enjoy and explore... for the purity and love of the adventure. // And so I have come to embrace what it is to be both of the tender and loving Sacred, as well as embodied in a challenging, sometimes painful, often beautiful human existence. // And today, once again, I allow myself to experience the world through my feet. And what I am left with is gratitude. Gratitude for the bumps, the uncertainty, the strength, and all that supports and carries me.

Our Wild, Sacred Journeys

There are moments when something softens or cracks us open enough that a wisdom deeper than anything we could produce on our own comes through.

It was one of those times in a meditation during my training in Integrative Energy Medicine when I heard the words: “Out of Nothing, you could have been Anything.. and you are you.”

I would be lying if I said I’m not still unpacking the full depth and meaning of these words. But I remember this sense of the vast space of creative potential… the cosmos. And then this sense of me: a bundle of contradictory perfections… of hopes, joys, and fears… of heart break and of the deepest and most sacred love. And I felt the completion of these seeming contradictions within each other.

I would be lying if I said that like that, out of the blue, wisdom entered and my whole life shifted and everything settled into perfection…. and yet, I wouldn’t.

Because in that moment, while my life didn’t shift, my perspective did. It widened out and put my whole life and all that I am into a context so expansive that self-acceptance, self-love, and compassion were inevitable. My definition of perfect cracked open like a seed and blossomed into possibility and not because I was different, but because I saw differently.

Several years later, I am still practicing this new way of seeing, both on my yoga mat and through energy work. As someone who has believed for many years (as all of us do in some way) that I was only worthy through the things I did and achieved, that I had to constantly strive to be better or do better because there was something fundamentally wrong or broken about me… the idea that I could’ve been ANYTHING and came into this world AS ME and that that act itself is THE ONLY service I actually need to offer to life in order to fulfill my destiny… is radical and, at times, extremely difficult to continue to trust. And so I practice, and I learn, and I question, and I live, and I surrender, and I grow.

Sacred, pure Love is so different from how we humans love when we learn to love as an equation, as a give and take. We come into this world as and knowing only the sacred and pure Love. But this world does not (yet) operate on that frequency. And so we learn that there are people who fear our purity, who do not yet own their own. In order to fit in and survive, we send parts of ourselves to live outside us, to be dimmed down, we come to inhabit these human parts of our experience willingly, imperfectly, and in fragments.

And so our journey is not one of fixing, or becoming anything new… it is actually one of reclaiming all those pieces of ourselves. Instead of remaining a colander, we gently invite our fragments home to plug the holes and we seal the cracks with a deeper love for ourselves, and we become a container… something much more capable of holding the innocent Spirit that is each one of us. In so doing, we take sacred, pure Love to new depths with us because now it has been tested, and its weak spots have fractured, and when it gets built again… it will be even stronger for knowing its own weakness. Turns out, Life is just a stress test for Love… so that it continues to evolve, stronger and purer with each test.

What a precious gift then YOU are to the Divine. It is only through your struggles and challenges and joys and love that it comes to know itself. Nothing cannot know itself. You, however - as Something - can be its mirror. And so our ego’s mission impossible, should it soften enough to allow our heart to accept it, is nothing more or less than to live courageously, fully, freely, expressively, creatively, and in full embrace of all the colors and textures of our unique and collective humanity… and to offer all that beauty and messiness as a prayer to a Love so deep, it can feel as overwhelming and frightening as an ocean.

What a wild, sacred journey we are on.

**This post was written as a guest blog found at: http://thepoweryogatribe.com/wild-sacred-journey-kate-powell/ **