Sisters

Biologically I have only one wonderful sister but I am blessed with many sisters of choice for which I am profoundly grateful. It has been only since my husband’s passing five years ago that I became aware of the richness of sisterhood that I had been missing in my prior life. I left a coven of soul sisters in New Mexico with their encouragement and blessings and wasn’t sure I would be able to find that here but I have been pleasantly surprised that it has been so easy to reconnect with members of my soul family.

Certainly I had girl/women friends growing up and as a wife and mother. Usually these were because we shared a common interest or activity. It became natural to associate with women whose husbands were friends of my husband or children and in such we could all share activities. While we had many things in common, with a couple of exceptions, I can’t say many of them were would what I would call sisters in light of my new awareness. Compared to the depth of the relationships I have today, these were just aquaintenances.

For me sisterhood implies a deep bond of love, appreciation, acceptance, and caring at a soul level. We are there for each other to honestly mirror, chide, and encourage each other to be our best, most authentic self and to grow in depth and awareness that we are unable to do apart. We may not be our sister’s keeper but we can be each other’s greatest supporter and champion as we grow into oneness together.

While previous friendships may have had an undercurrent of competition and withholding truths that did not reflect the image we wished to portray, my sisters today have moved past that limited vision and are reflective of the higher awareness of who we really are and who we wish to be. By reaching out to a sister and sharing our truth we are able to minister to each other and to grow together in love. It is wholeness being manifested in the bond of sisterhood.

I have been reading M. Scott Peck’s book on community building and he talks about appreciating the richness we bring to each other with our differences. It is in accepting and valuing each other in our own unique ways that we forge the bonds that create community. I am fortunate to be participating in a living, growing community of sisters in the truest sense of the word and for that I am profoundly grateful.

Penny

Making Love Not War

I am grateful for all of the people in my life but especially the men for they give me a different way of looking at the world. I am delighted to see that the gratitude circle I attend each week is usually about equally represented by both men and women which has not always been the case in previous groups I have been in. Perhaps men and women are finding ways of coming together in more cooperative forms of intercourse.

I think back to early TV shows like I Love Lucy and the Honeymooners where relationships were all about manipulation and deception in order to achieve personal wants. I am so glad at least some of us seem to have evolved past these outdated dramas – at least I hope we have. Or is it that I just live in the rarefied environment of Sedona where more enlightened souls have chosen to congregate. Hopefully this is a harbinger of the new reality.
I truly believe that men and women do think differently. It is not just that women want to talk a problem to death and men just want to fix it. That may have been the old paradigm but now we seem to be learning to come together and honor both our masculine and feminine natures. The new paradigm is about balance in all things and working within the dynamics of cooperation and respect rather than fear and isolation.

I know I can roll a situation around in my mind, examining it from many levels and come to my own conclusions but it is inevitably when I compare my findings with the men in my life that I see a big missing piece that escaped my attention. It seems we do need each other not just in a physical sense, but to flesh out the complementary parts of our own vision and experience.
I remember a couple of weeks ago my friend, John spoke and blogged about women, or perhaps a woman, who helped him open up and express his feelings and emotions. I think a lot of evolved men are discovering the same thing and it feels good. At the same time we women are learning to respect and honor that and to accept our own power to direct our lives, solve our own problems, find our voices, and trust and honor our own wisdom which also feels good also. In the surrender to our own vulnerability we seem to be integrating as well as learning to work together in higher purpose. That feels really good.
I am very grateful for the men in my life that have shown me that the battle of the sexes is a no win and that greater rewards are to be found in finding common ground and making love not war. Thanks guys… I am very grateful.
Penny

Along Came a Spider

Sometimes it is through our fellow participants in our dance with Nature that we hear the voice of our soul calling. I entered the pool this morning in a meditative state and began moving in resistance to the water in order to create “exercise”. I glanced to my side in the center of the pool and saw a huge spider nestled in the safety of the lane marker where he had found refuge. I began wondering how he had found himself in this remote area without any apparent place to go since both of the ends of the floating surface were submerged in the water. We coexisted in this space for an hour until I finished the movement, each eying the other watchfully.

I debated whether to take off my water shoe and offer him a ride to the side. I remembered the video we had watched the day before by Wayne Dyer who was talking about allowing our true nature to unfold. I decided that perhaps this was a lesson he needed to experience for himself and that it was not my job to interfere so I didn’t. After I left the pool I glanced back and noticed that he was no longer there.

I felt that there was a deeper connection and meaning in this so when I returned home I looked up the medicine wisdom of the spider. It is all about weaving. I know that the archetype of Penelope in Greek mythology is the weaver as well.

According to the animal wisdom “Spider is the symbol for the infinite possibilities of creation. Spider wove the web that brought humans the first picture of the alphabet. The letters were part of the angles and symbols in her web. Spider is the female energy of the creative force that weaves the beautiful designs in life. Spider could be asking you to use a journal to write out and review your progress.”

My sun sign Gemini and Mercury are all about communication. For the past fifteen years I have been weaving books out of the wisdom of others. My e-book on 2013… Blueprints for the New Paradigm is now ready to share. It seems the time has come for finding my own voice and weaving this into the web of life to create new designs. This blog is my soul that is opening up to its expression as well. Thank you spider…

Mirrors of Appreciation

I have been contemplating how to accept a compliment in an egoless state.


One of the men I share a house with is the world champion acknowledger and appreciator. Nothing and no one in our world goes unrecognized or unappreciated in some way. He frequently calls me within a couple of blocks of home to tell me something I have done that he is appreciative of and has neglected to mention. I have never been acknowledged or appreciated so much by anyone in my life. This was becoming almost annoying.

While I have no doubt as to his sincerity, on some level I felt that I did not deserve the praise. Somewhere I picked up the idea that praise and appreciation were rewards for hard work and achievement so it felt unearned. More like I was being honored for something I did automatically like breathing. Maybe part of my DNA but then I realized that I am part of the DNA of all creation and am reflecting an aspect of that whole. It seems egocentric to accept a reward for something that is more an accident of birth and upbringing or living long enough that you have worked out the kinks of life. And, I wonder, does appreciation imply comparison which Brugh has cautioned about?

I told him that my heroes that I appreciate are those that may not have the tools I have but have overcome challenges in their lives and have chosen to take a higher road to achievement. While he concurs that this is indeed commendable, he points out that many people have the tools to do something but it does not mean that they will use them unselfishly or care enough to step forward and make a difference in the lives of others without fear or expectation of reward.

The fact that I am willing to show up and move fearlessly, following the vision of how I intend things to be, regardless of how they appear, is what is remarkable and cause for acknowledgement and appreciation, not just the results of my actions. It is not just that I can pull off the perfect dinner party without breaking a sweat but that everyone there feels loved, appreciated and honored. Because it is so effortless they are at ease and able to share their own gifts as well which creates the magic when two or more are gathered together.

That I get and accept with gratitude because we all struggle with what it means to live a life of integrity and honor and it is nice when someone notices when we hit the mark and says “I see you” in the Avatar sense. It is how we encourage each other to reach higher.

Thank you my friend for being a mirror to me when mine is smudged.