The "Night Blooming Jasmine" in Your Heart

The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.

Baba Ram Dass
                                    



On a dark, moonlit night most of natures's floral offerings excuse themselves from the diligence of the day and nod off to silent slumber, releasing their daytime rigors and replenishing their energies in anticipation of the first break of dawn.  But there are several verdant beauties that choose to blossom instead in the velvety night, stirring under the exquisite luminescence of Mother Moon.

Casablanca Lilies, Moonflowers, Cereus and Night Blooming Jasmine are some of these nocturnal angels.  And, it seems, in choosing the blackness of the evening boulevard, they display to us a special wisdom in their enterprise.  These moonflowers, cereus, lilies, these jasmine choose the quiet of the night as their daily point of departure. 

They do not engage with the clamor and bustle of the day.  Rather, they await the peace and tranquility of the night tide and, in this gentle ambiance, they quietly attune themselves to the senses and sounds surrounding them...

the whisper of the wind,
the hooting owl,
flitting fireflies, 
wandering spiders. 

They feel the majesty of the moon sailing in the sky. 

Intuitively, they embrace the knowledge and wisdom which are crossing their paths rather than attempting to dispense it themselves. 
As always, Nature continues to gift us with metaphors of a life well-lived.  Is there a "night blooming jasmine" in your heart waiting to guide you to the beauty and knowledge and wisdom you have been too busy to see?


The quieter you become the more you are able to hear.




                                                                                     Marie Helena
                                               


image from pinterest.com

Dreaming

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

                 Henri Bergson





Quantum physics tells us that our consciousness constructs what it is we see before us.   Therefore, what we are willing to conceive of and entertain is what we will experience.


Do you wish to stand before a landscape of beauty and vibrance? 
Do you wish to see individuals generously sending and receiving love in every moment? 
Do you wish to sense Divine intelligence treasuring all of creation?


What are you prepared to comprehend?


Is it the gift we have been given to live in this magical playground on earth?  
Is it the exquisite design of nature and all of her inhabitants? 

Is it the beauty of every human heart which has the potential to see the world through eyes of love and feel the happiness this brings?



Can you still dream your child-self's dream of being loved so deeply and so dearly that everything you encounter and experience is a gift for your journey?  


                                                                                               Marie Helena 


image from jefusion.com

Beautiful Dreamer

 

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

             Winston Churchill






Our boy Winston has an epic concept there...ardent, passionate, towering, rhapsodic energy that completely sustains itself as we move in life from one adventure to the next.  No matter the quest.  Irrespective of the outcome.  With no expectations.

ONLY the exuberance of the tinkering and imagining of our intellect. 
ONLY the pleasure of our senses dreaming the possibility and then experiencing its manifestation. 
ONLY the heart deciding to embrace, decline or defer what has revealed itself in the process.   
ONLY the stray, crucial threads emerging which lead us to our next, personally satisfying cutting edge conception.


ONLY THAT.


After writing this description of the JOY of the JOURNEY I'm ready to don a cape and fly off on yet another adventure for who does not want to play the detective, the dreamer, the magician!  The ever fervent seeker of how things mysteriously circle back to us for our pleasure when we have consciously let them roam free to find their connections in the corridors of our heart!


The SECRET to sustaining the life force which always embraces the excitement, the joy AND the  turbulence and tumult of the journey is the knowledge that we exist for the purpose of EXPLORING this magical playground designed to provide us with whatever we can dream.


Beautiful dreamer, wake unto thee!
Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee!*


                                                                                                    Marie Helena 




*lyrics from Beautiful Dreamer by Stephen Foster


top image from quoteko.com
bottom image from favim.com 

What's the Name on Your Marquee?

Can you see yourself in a luminous spotlight...an emanation that moves when you move...goes where you go...beautifully illuminating your corner of the world?    

This SPOTLIGHT is a physical expression of your BOUNDARY...the place which you occupy and where no one else belongs.

 
From this vantage point you can view all the many other spotlights around you, each shining on other persons.  You can be an OBSERVER as each individual lives his life...writes his own story.  And, most importantly, you can clearly see the difference between their spotlights and yours.
 

And here is the most important part...

When someone standing near you makes a move (no matter what the emotional content...no matter whether it is an affirming gesture or an annoying one)...it is clearly a part of their spotlight,  NOT YOURS.  It may feel like it is coming at you, but it is NOT YOUR STUFF.

It is an indication of where that person is and that's all it is.  

It may feel like an arrow shot into your heart but that will only be because you have crossed from your boundary over into theirs and have tapped into something you do not own.
 

Somehow...for some reason...you have decided that you are NOT the determiner of your life and that you NEED CO-PILOTS to tell you how to feel. 

You are letting these copilots decide whether you will be happy or sad.  You are, in fact, borrowing their stuff and making it yours.
Now your happiness is out of your control.  it depends on what someone else thinks or says...does or doesn't do.
 

And it doesn't need to be this way.   


We are truly the most wonderful pilots all on our own.  

We do not need to have someone give us our happiness.  We do not have to wait for someone to deal us that card. 

And, conversely, we do not have to attach ourselves to their problems.  

When someone is out of sorts and speaks to us in a disturbing manner we only need realize that it is something they are going through and a part of their story.                
 
It's NOT our stuff.  

It's NOT a part of our spotlight.  

Somehow we have blurred the boundaries and can no longer see what is ours and what is theirs.

Other persons' spotlights do not belong to us...

when we recognize this we can clearly see that our happiness or lack of it does not depend on what they say or do.

 
The decision to be happy or sad is ours and ours alone and once we see how the spotlights are designed and delineated we realize that WE are the determiners of the content, the dreams and the joys of our own life.
 

Writer, director, producer and actor...we inhabit all of these roles.  If we let someone else take over, we have misplaced our power and we suffer for it.

What's the name on your marquee?


                                                             Marie Helena




image from llmcountryclub.com

originally published September 30, 2011

HeartSounds

image of Andrea Bocellil from sonbab.deviantart.com 
Andrea Bocelli by sonbab

The Voice of an Angel...Andrea Bocelli...
  my go-to place for heart connection!

Italian tenor and singer/songwriter Andrea Bocelli is a very important part of my morning ritual.  I am not by nature a morning dove...rather a night blooming jasmine.  But when this jasmine awakens to (very slowly) acclimate to the morning, Bocelli's music is what begins the process of my energizing.

I've been listening to and loving Bocelli for quite some time.  His voice connects with my soul and though I studied a little Italian in preparation for a beautiful encounter with Firenze several years ago, the fact is I do not understand what this impressive tenor is singing.

And it makes no difference to me because it is ONLY the words I do not understand. 

The FEELINGS expressed by his beautiful voice ARE  the MESSAGE and they SPEAK to me.  And they do MORE than that...they vibrate with the sweep of my heart.


And I am mesmerized by this vibration...it SUSTAINS me.   This impulse tells me it is my HEART that is designed to direct the music of my life...not my intellect (though I dearly love to exercise it).     

I believe this is true of everyone.

In some individuals the heart may be sleeping...hibernating...because of unhealed pain, protecting itself from life's countless and often unpredictable adventures.  But the desire to FEEL is a human need we all share.

And the OPPORTUNITY to feel and to have the feeling RECOGNIZED is a Gift of Life.

The Divine Universe is unendingly creative in the way it sends its messages to us. Just this morning I realized I had received another tapping of this awareness a few days ago when I attended a planning meeting in Florida with David Webber, Chief Operating Officer of Practice Technology, Inc., who commented to me that he always reads his email for the FEELING of the writer, not for the words. 

It is not the words of Andrea Bocelli that affect me so profoundly.  It is the WAY he sings those lyrics.  And it is not the words of an email that David Webber "hears"...it is the message of a heart.


Is your heart vibrating with emotion?  Have you given yourself permission to feel this primal longing?  And do you "hear" the HeartSounds of everyone around you?


                                                                                                         Marie Helena