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Simplify to Amplify

gratitude

Aloha Dear One, 

Do you have a lot of ideas of how the world could be a better place?

Do you often wish others would behave differently?

Do you find this is a recipe for woe and a foundation for chronic disappointment?

One way to stop doing this, without lowering your standards, is to simplify to amplify. A coach taught me this years ago. And now I’m finally embracing it at a deeper level. 

My simplified message is this: We get to dwell in a playful heart.

From this place, it’s natural to 

  • Cherish connection.
  • Cultivate gratitude.
  • Count blessings.

When we reside here, relationships flourish, heal, and resource us. They also uplift the environment. We get to remember that relationships are the playground of the heart or the battleground of the ego.

We get to tend to what matters most and weed out the things we don’t want to grow, turn them into compost, and cultivate whole-hearted living.  

The heart is the home of heaven or hell here on earth. Joy or misery lands here. Peaceful expansion or painful contraction create our realities.

What if we choose

  • heaven
  • joy
  • peace
  • expansion
  • liberation

And from this, we amplify LOVING RELATIONS. 

What are you simplifying today? 

What are you amplifying today?

 Let me know.

Warmly,

Amy

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Boundaries

boundaries

My relationship with boundaries is defined by ebb and flow, yes and no, rise and fall.

You and me make we. Yet we are not me. And our collective trauma in the relational biosphere prompts climate change. The good news of global warming is we are melting the frozen energy of trauma stuck in our cells. We learn resilience by expressing an unguarded heart and offering unconditional love in our boundaries with others.

What becomes available to us when we relinquish a winner take all mentality?

Surrender to win?

A perforated armor lets the lungs expand. A pock-marked shield opens the guarded heart. An aerated dead-pan patch of soil allows nutrients to deepen and sustenance to grow. An open gate edified with structural supports builds shelter. An empty field sprinkled with stalwart sentinels creates shade from an unrelenting sunshine. A vast salty ocean peppered with islands of aloha provide ground.

My hurts | Our hurts.

Seamlessly the scars beautifully trace the border between you and me. And we nourish each other in the deeper knowing that this border has no border–it is fluid. This river of unconsciousness between us mingles with collaborative memories and individual sorrows–universal dreams and desires and the illusion of independent suffering. This river, complete with banks of order and chaos, rigidity and creativity–this is where we swim–we float–ideally face up–in sweet surrender to the flow.

Our haunts | My haunts.

The flow between yes and no, swell and slack, the king and neap tides of connection and intimacy. Dropping the armor of a protected heart brings true freedom from want and Presence. Our True Nature. Feel the aching haunt and squishy mystery. And the expansive quality of being tender. And more powerful than ever.

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Love Letter to Your True Self

love

I invite you right now, to write a love letter to your true self. Even if you happened to do this writing exercise last month, do it again. Let it be fresh.

Simply pause, whatever you’re doing, and drop out of your busy, busy, busy mind. In this busy mind palace you can surrender. No longer trying to rearrange all the furniture, you can quit trying to manage all its contents. Drop the remodel.

Sit down, instead, and pull out a notebook. Pick up a pen and write.

Dear Beloved,

Grateful to come home to myself again, and again, with tenderness and compassion, I touch and caress this skin on my arms, I say thank you to my arms for hugging all those you have hugged and being willing to embrace the embrace.

Tickling my armpits, I smile at the hair that grows here during these pandemic times. Thank you for wicking away the toxins. Thank you for turning me away from the public standard of beauty and tuning into my true self.

Smoothing the wrinkles on my forehead, I appreciate the laugh lines around my eyes. And on my cheeks. I remember all the good times that have transpired. And I look forward to tomorrow.

Patting my soft belly, my tender emotional brain, I greet the real, raw, and vulnerable me who has been craving oatmeal cookies for days.

As I succumb to the crumb, I allow the sweetness of my son’s girlfriend kind gesture to fill me, here, in this vulnerable tender belly. This sacred space that is void of guilt and shame and simply delights in the delicious sweetness of her spontaneous plate of cookies.

Arriving at my doorstep, I receive the sweetness I’ve craved.

I smile into my eyes as I look in the mirror and send healing vibes to this sty in my right eye.

I apply a tender moist heat. This compress of understanding of all the horror that I have seen, and all the beauty that I have soaked in through these rods and cones. A direct circuit to my brain. And I pray for more sunrises and sunsets, smiles and sorrows.

Thank you, eyes, for giving me the experience of a more beautiful way of being in my body.

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Do you believe in the power of love?

Why love matters is beyond simple description. 

The power of love is notably felt in the romantic phase. Feeling powerful, free of pain, invincible and higher than high is an amazing life experience. Yet this experience eventually fizzles out; it’s not sustainable.

We can chase it; we can’t contain it.

Romantic love, and the stories we tell ourselves about it, pull us into the highest highs and push us into the deep funks.

Love is a powerful force indeed

In the early stages of our romance, we felt the chemical swirl of feel-good hormones and daring behaviors. The hot and steamy seduction connected us deeply. The pursuit of these passions dominated our days.

Then came the mental wrestling match: Is this really happening? Is this okay? Is this the right time? What about _____ (fill in the blank)?  All of this mental meandering resulted in the back and forth, together/apart dance of our relationship.

You know what I’m talking about?

Then came the subsequent surrender. We fell, hard, in love. Hooked on the drug of love. Biological imperatives called the shots; we were hooked.

From here all things are possible

And it was complicated. I met Marc in 1997. There was a lot going on in graduate school as these flames of passion licked our beings. Rarely is falling in love a clean situation. Other people are often involved. Marc was married at the time. I was in the early stages of sobriety and wanted to treat people honorably; myself included. 

Difficult decisions determined the future. We were tempted and waited. We slipped and slided. We merged and collided. We broke it off and waited. Divorce proceedings simple. I was blamed as the “other woman.”

During the lulls, the resultant longing and disappointment sometimes made me hurt so much I would wish I’d never even engaged. 

My body’s wisdom knew this man could heal me in ways I couldn’t on my own. My body’s wisdom knew we would create amazing things together.

Surrendering to the wisdom of my body, I committed to the relationship. I quit stirring the worry pot and I let the mental meanderings settle, my soul softening to the moment.

Romance reminds me of my meditation practice

In romance, I’m falling in love with my wholeness. I see my wholeness when I look in my beloved’s eyes. I think it’s outside of me. It’s not. 

In meditation I am searching for my wholeness. I think it’s outside of me. I realize it’s not.

In romance I feel blissed out; I can experience this in meditation also.

My mind, left unchecked, bounces back and forth between things I want more of and things I want less of. I praise people or I blame them (including myself). It is a dizzying game of push and pull. This game creates suffering.

This doesn’t get me where I want to go. When I’m caught up in praise and blame, I’m basically manufacturing my own misery.

Romance can do this, too, where we often-times stay stuck in blaming the other person. We get caught up in the power struggle and end up blaming our drug dealer (our lover). The very person who generated the feel-good chemicals in the brain, now becomes target for our disappointment because the feel-good chemicals of romance, to meet and mate and procreate, are not meant to last forever. We need to evolve to something more sustaining. 

When my mind is freed of the burden of attraction and revulsion, I’m free to settle into the moment. Fresh moment. New awareness. Joy and freedom. This is the joyful journey I’ve discovered in my primary love relationship. I’ve moved beyond push and pull (for the most part) and settled into sustainable sweet connection. When we drift, we recalibrate back to this again and again. I believe in the power of love.

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” 

Lao Tzu

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Release to Know and Give Peace

mike-kenneally-1044986-unsplash.jpg

Release to Know and Give Peace

This ancient blessing deals with forgiveness, affection, detachment and liberation and was created in the Nahuatl language, spoken in Mexico.

“I release my parents from the feeling that they have already failed me.

I release my children from the need to bring pride to me; that they may write their own ways according to their hearts, that whisper all the time in their ears.

I release my partner from the obligation to complete myself. I do not lack anything. I learn with all beings all the time.

I thank my grandparents and forefathers who have gathered so that I can breathe life today.

I release them from past failures and unfulfilled desires, aware that they have done their best to resolve their situations within the consciousness they had at that moment.

I honor you, I love you and I recognize you as innocent.

I am transparent before your eyes, so they know that I do not hide or owe anything other than being true to myself and to my very existence, that walking with the wisdom from the heart, I am aware that I fulfill my life project, free from invisible and visible family loyalties that might disturb my Peace and Happiness, which are my only responsibilities.

 I renounce the role of savior, of being one who unites or fulfills the expectations of others.

Learning through, and only through, LOVE, I bless my essence, my way of expressing, even though somebody may not understand me. 

I understand myself, because I alone have lived and experienced my history; because I know myself, I know who I am, what I feel, what I do and why I do it.

I respect and approve myself.

I honor the Divinity in me and in you.

We are free.”

(This ancient blessing was created in the Nahuatl language, spoken in Mexico. It deals with forgiveness, affection, detachment and liberation). 

I send this on Saint Patrick’s Day, to honor the Irish legacy in my life. I release my grandmother from the grips of alcoholism. I am sober in her honor and to leave a legacy of love as a sober woman of integrity. 

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Step into the Portal of Ritual

Christmas wishes

Step into the portal of ritual. This time of year rings of ritual and meaning for many and echoes of emptiness and longing for many more. This being human is relentless, it is an ending chore of intake, release, repeat. What is the portal of ritual that you enter this time of year? Today is Winter Solstice. 

Ingest, Digest, Assimilate, Eliminate. Inhale, Delight, Exhale, Wonder

The dark of the night comes. The winds, the rain, the snow, the surf, all swirling around the seemingly static features in life.

What is the portal of ritual that you enter this time of year? Today is Winter Solstice. winter solstice ritual

lake taupo

 A Ceremony to honor this time of year. Our family travelled to Aotearoa and this photo was in front of Lake Taupo, Aotearoa with Hālau ʻŌhiʻa, our Hawaiʻi lifeways.

Solstice, longest night of the year. Earlier this week we choose to celebrate bringing back the light and honoring the dark. For a special night we host a candle gift exchange and simple quality time with friends. It is a ritual to sit in the dark with friends, no devices, and light candles and sing. It is sacred. 

In our family, we also celebrate Christmas, with our special expansion of the energy of this event. Christmas Wishes- a Gordon ʻOhana (family) tradition to spread out the joy (and remind our kids, and ourselves, that the true happiness in life is not about materialistic things!!!)

CHRISTMAS W.I.S.H.E.S. 20-25th of December

*Warmth : the energy of life.

World hugs and Heart fire! (when we lived in the Pacific NW we knitted scarves and hats and bought new wool layers. Here we get new sun-shirts if need). You can generate warmth by doing breath of fire (yogic breathwork).

*Illumination : the bringing of the light

– stoke the inner flame (we make candles, luminaries, fires). You can generate illumination through breath of fire and imagine it is igniting the inner fire within you. 

*Sweetness : the sweetness of life, hugs, kisses,

and yummy eats, too (chocolate or organic treats) (Toby wants his own organic egg nog). You can generate sweetness by allowing that inner fire to soften your succulent cells with the sweetness of unconditional love, love that is not contingent upon anything else.

*Health : our true wealth

we take a family walk, hike or swim together (we stock up on vitamins or acupuncture or massage). 

You can generate health by recognizing how good the sensation of love is in your being. The oxytocin, the God chemical, the substance of life generates wholesomeness in your being.

*Earth : air, fire and water

habitation of humanity, nurturing personal responsibility (we pick up trash, plant trees, mālama ʻāina, take care of the earth). 

You can generate earth by allowing the gods to guide your feet, treading lightly with each step, each consumption, each interaction.

*Santa : saint of spirited giving

Good behavior, respect, and we decide on one global charity to donate to, this year to help with bees and goats and trees for communities in need. The spirit of generosity is also demonstrated through gift giving.

You can generate the spirit of generosity by adding to the space between in each interaction.

Speaking kindly, honestly, and wholeheartedly, these rituals are most needed and welcome on this planet.

Warmest wishes to all of you! In whatever portal you enter the sacred. Love.