“I feel like I am in a constant state of prayer.” - Danielle LaPorte

I need to warn you that this post is going to be more traditionally spiritual than normal.  Although I have been working with the sacred for years now, I have kept away from talking about religion and God partly because some of the blogs that I have read that discuss their views on religion have put me way off reading them again, partly because it was really UNcool to talk about God when I was younger and that is a hard habit to break, and partly because I am still working on what I believe.

But paying attention has its benefits and lately the whispers to my soul have been focusing on prayer.  I, of course, have been largely ignoring them, but while poking through Google Reader today, I read Danielle’s latest post and her words felt like they had disco glitter on top and a hallelujah chorus behind them:

“I feel like I am in a constant state of prayer.”

Now that makes sense to me. That feels holy and real and right and just a little dangerous. That is a practice I can get behind. Prayer as a conversation; as constant as breathing and as close as gratitude.  Sacred as everyday.  By holding space for prayer, we take space away from fear.

And who wants to sit beside fear?

In Your Sacred Self Wayne Dyer writes: “Keep uppermost in your mind that there is a place within you where there is perfect peace and where nothing is impossible. If you give yourself the right to pray regularly, you will get to that place. Peace is yours for the asking.”

Beginning now -

deep breath.

gratitude.

yes.

xo

PHOTO CREDIT: Speaking of gratitude, this photo was taken by my Dad. He blogs too!

“These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because they are ancient and hidden; they have survived and grown strong through darkness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling. The woman’s place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.” – Audre Lorde

Have you met yours yet?

xo

(P.S. Once again, I don’t know who did this – if you know who I can credit, please let me know!)

“Love bravely, live bravely, be courageous, there’s really nothing to lose.” – Jewel

The powerful shifts of 2012 began this morning before I had even gotten out of my pyjamas.

My cells feel scrambled and the world looks different than it did 20 minutes ago.

I started the day listening to the last Circe’s Tribe call recording. In the opening meditation, Jamie had us visualise something that included a colour and an emotion associated with it.  The colour that I saw was pink, and when she said emotion, I thought that I felt panic.  I have been feeling that feeling off an on for a few months now and I have been swallowing that feeling down, giving myself heartache in the process.

I almost stopped listening, but then a question came into my head: “Is that actually panic that I am feeling? Is it really fear or could it be another energy? Could it be power? Excitement? Passion? The colour was pink after all?!”

The question stopped me cold.  In that moment I realised that I have the same reaction to all of the great big strong emotions. Afraid of their bigness, I call them all the same thing: fear. Being afraid of them meant that I stopped knowing what they really were.

That realisation brought on the most incredible feeling of expansion.

Then anxiousness.

Then excitement.

Big excitement.

And then I wrote this in my journal:

I commit to meeting my emotions, naming and allowing them; letting them be as big as they need to be and expanding myself so that I am big enough and brave enough to hold them.”

There’s that feeling again, but I am going to walk over and meet it face-to-face.

yes.