All of our relationships are a powerful motivators for growth. When we know and love ourselves, this awareness is reflected in our personal relationships. Please enjoy this short video on how our relationships center us in our lives.
© Josephine Laing, 2015
Peace Pilgrim said that if we smile at the world, it smiles back at us. When we connect with the grace and innocence of our pure love, for both the animate and the inanimate world around us, then our connection with Nature's voice is awakened.
In modern times it has become progressively easy for us to connect with other humans, but what we have forgotten is how to connect with the Natural world around us. However, we don't have to re-invent the wheel here, we humans have been listening to the subtle communications coming to us from Nature since time began. We've gone on vision quests and written in pictographs. We've seen the forest as our brother and the river as our sister. Reclaiming this part of ourselves is as easy as stepping outside.
Of course our dutiful beloved subconscious minds are always going to protect us from something we have been taught to fear. And make no mistake about it, all of our fears have been taught to us. We learn them from our families, our religious groups, our friends and even our government. Unless our subconscious programming along these lines is intentionally changed, it can sabotage our attempts to open our hearts to hear Nature's voice. Beliefs like "People will think I'm crazy," or "I may loose my grip on reality," or "This is against my family belief system," are all scary enough to stop you in your tracks.
This is where self love steps in. We need to love ourselves enough to give ourselves what we need and really want in the world. Many of us yearn for this connection with Nature and when we get whispers and glimpses of it, it brings us so much joy.
I feel that joy is the basis of our spirituality an that it is our job as humans to nourish the Universe with our joy. So, if we'd really love to have that beautiful connection with our mother, Nature, we need to free ourselves from the tyranny of our own minds.
Identifying our fears, so we can move through and past them, is how we do so. Once we have become aware of them, we can use our intention plus our attention to change those old thought habit patterns and manifest new thoughts instead.
Our spiritual practices can also help us to listen to the voice of Nature. Self love, meditation, dream interpretation and prayer all help us to calm our minds, activate our inner vision centers and connect with the Divinity in everything, including Ourselves. When we do this, we open our hearts and let the love flow. We free ourselves to smile at the Natural word. And then it smiles back at us. We step into our joy with open hearts and Hear From Our Source How We Can All Serve The One.
© Josephine Laing, 2015
Peace Pilgrim once said, "Who could know God and not be joyous?" When we overcome the illusion of our separation from the divine we find ourselves in joyous contact with the Ultimate Reality from which we spring. This connection frees us from any misunderstanding we might have about ourselves and the nature of life. It allows us to experience joy.
I first discovered a sense of the divine during my early teenage
years when I was with my horse Duchess. I reveled in the beauty of the
natural world, admiring the energy of the trees, the soil, and the air
surrounding us. We can experience this feeling of reverence whenever we
are in contact with nature.
For me
the divine is free from association with religion. It is the
ultimate source of the universe and of consciousness. I like to think
of the ultimate mystery as God and that God is the mystery of pure
love. It is the totality of everything. The illusion of our
separation from the divine is the cause of all of our suffering. This is what
robs us of our joy.
Though happiness and joy may seem pretty similar, they are actually quite distinct. Happiness is an externally based form of pleasure. We become happy when someone gives us a present or a compliment, or when we find ourselves in a lovely environment. We take a ride at an amusement park and we laugh.
On the other hand, joy percolates up from deep within ourselves. Joy is linked to our sense of "All is Well." No matter what, we know the rightness of everything. We feel this way when we are doing what we truly want to do, when we follow our inspirations, when we open our hearts in love.
Everything is a part of the totality and when we know that we are learning and growing, a sense of well-being pervades our every experience. Years ago a friend of mine shared with me a saying that really knocked my socks off when I first heard it. "Gratitude is my only reaction." I see now how very profound this idea is.
One beautiful way to reconnect with our joy is to take a moment to stop and think, how many times have you brought to your awareness that great mystery, that deep love, that ultimate source of creation? Have you seen it in the eyes of another? Have you felt it in the breeze in your hair? Did you feel it in the sun from the window as it warmed your hand?
I invite you this week to see how many times a day we can reach for that joy. Find that connection with something larger than ourselves and just surrender ourselves to it. Allowing it to cause that deep joy of connectedness, percolating up from the very roots of our being.
© Josephine Laing, 2014
