"Diamonds in the Rough"

I once heard a commercial with the following line:
“The precision of the cut is what brings out the greatest beauty of the diamond.”

We are all ‘diamonds in the rough’ if you will, allowing God/Spirit/Infinite Love to sculpt our lives and our spirits to bring out the greatest beauty that Infinite Love can express in each of us. What a wonderful thing to know that all of the things we think seem to take forever, and so we become impatient, are done that way so that the precision can be maintained, thus revealing our greatest beauty hidden within. This point of view can give Being present a whole new light for when we love ourselves and others enough to show up fully in our true Presence, we share the greatest gift of ALL. This beautifully sculpted Being.

Watching a documentary on how diamonds are formed in the earth and how, being the clearest and strongest element on the planet the only thing that can cut a diamond is another diamond, and thus shape it, I thought about the phrase ‘diamond in the rough’ and how there are many references to people as just that. Having heard the reference of crystals and ‘Christed being’, and being the curious kid I am, I looked up the word diamond in the dictionary to see where it came from or what it meant. The origin actually mentions that the word comes from the Greek term adamas (“a human being”). Yes, really. So of course this clears up my perceptions of ‘life on earth’ as each of us is here to help sculpt each other ‘with precision’ so that our greatest, clearest Being can be expressed. Having been blessed with learning and doing ‘subtle energy work’, I feel so grateful for each ‘diamond/spirit’ I work with, being well aware of the mutual and yet individual sculpting we are participating in.
All of our experiences help to shape us into a Being that reflects our true inner beauty, our true infinite Spirit, which is Love and Light.

Thanks to all of my fellow ‘diamonds in the rough’. You are truly beautiful in every way.

Namaste,
Elaine

The Journey and Joy of Being

When the mind is allowed to be at peace and the heart is allowed to heal and open to its true state of joy, spirit flows easily through our lives, expressing ecstatically its true Being here. It may take some practice to quiet the mind, but if we can simply allow the silence and stillness for a bit, letting all mental debris float effortlessly to the surface and gently back into our natural flow, we find ourselves in a clearer state of true awareness than we've ever known. From this place of simply Being, we begin to remember our true selves, seeing that we are infinite Love and Light itself. Our 'journey' here is simply Being. Anything our spirit feels inspired to Be.

My spirit is here to help awaken the Light of peace within, so that you may begin to heal your heart and open it to the joyful essence that you truly are.

Namaste,

Elaine

WHO YOU ARE

“It’s who you are, not what you do” (that ‘manifests’ your ‘life’ here.)

Since there is actually no ‘real’ cause and effect, as everything happens simultaneously, ( time is an invention/illusion of the mind), you are not the cause of your ‘life situation’ or problems. And you are not at the effect of the apparent ‘forces’ in the world. (unless of course you direct your thoughts, and energy in believing that you are)

Life streams. Not ‘life force’. Easy flow. Not pushed.
Being is your journey here. If you want to change something in your apparent life situation, change the thoughts you are Being. It’s that simple.

Who you are is what ‘manifests/reveals’ your life, if you let it. Mostly we do not allow our true selves to Be here simply because we have learned how to not trust.

A very long time ago a deep fear crept into the human condition when (as spirit) it began to fully experience this 3D world and experience itself AS form. That is, it began to identify itself as the form it was expressing to experience. Eventually it believed itself to Be the human form and a human mind and soon after began to feel a separation from itself, as infinite spirit. Forgetting it’s infiniteness, the sense of separation led to feelings of isolation which birthed this deep fear as not trusting.

Who you ARE already and have in truth always been, is this Infinite Loving Spirit.
There is nothing you have ‘to do’ in order to Be who you are. That of course would not make any sense.
Most of the struggle we experience in our day to day lives is no more than our mind’s unwillingness (or misunderstanding) to let go of all that we are NOT, which is everything except infinite Love and Light.
Feeding our minds continual doses of thoughts that make us feel separate from our infiniteness is the most heart-wrenching and most widespread of ‘dis-eases’ on the planet.
Being who you are (Infinite Love and Light), truly allowing and accepting it, is the only real ‘cure’.


Insight:
If you fear anything, you fear yourself. (It is like god fearing god.)
When you trust yourself and in who you are, you know there is nothing to fear.
This is trusting the eternal YOU, your eternal loving essence, not as a thing or even an idea or thought, but as that infinite Love that you already are.


To fear ‘something’ or believe in fear or in the idea of ‘needing to be’ afraid, is to deny your truth as already Being infinite Love and to choose instead to believe in the concept or idea that you are separate from yourself, your true nature as infinite Love.

You are that which wishes to ‘heal’ itself. To essentially return HOME to Its own Truth.

Perspectives

Today is infinite. Always.
This leads to disillusionment.
What's on the next list of temptations?
Perspectives only.

If we but ask and allow no 'answer', we will begin to get a glimpse, of the infinite perspectives
that will guide our lives without reason. It will appear as if there is even no 'rhyme' as the saying goes, but there IS a rhythm, as natural as the sunrise, the flow of every river on earth, a cool breeze in springtime and the quiet atop the stillest mountain.

If we but allow uncertainty to steadily creep into our conscious thought process, we may find the grandest and gentlest of rhythms. That of infinite peace and silence. Grace. It takes patience and a willingness to BE with it, but it is there.

We can still choose our perspectives day by day, moment by moment. But with an open, joyous heart, we choose the infinite as well. We choose grace while choosing to live in the flow of our Truth of BEing Love and Light.

It's all perspective.

Peaceful Presence

There are times in our lives when everything becomes crystal clear. It may not make much sense from the stand point of our 'logical' mind's perspective, but in a peaceful, completely present, non-linear way it appears clear. I call this 'infinite perspective'. Just BEing in nature always seems to give me this sense - as if to tell me that everything is okay even when, on the surface of our day to day lives, things appear to be scattered or confused. Sitting in Hope Valley, California alongside the Carson River high in the Sierra mountains always gives me this sense. It is a feeling of peaceful balance and clarity that comes so easily away from 'the rest of the world'.

In essence, we have this 'with' us always. It's just that sometimes, (ok, most of the time) we forget that that is what is natural and thus real instead of our constant pushing and pulling or being pushed and pulled by others and circumstances. Truly BEing in Yosemite has shown me this many times. Each time I would return from the sierras, I would sort of go through a 'culture shock' in coming back into the 'city life', but what was really happening was that I would 'return' to pushing and pulling my way through the days, like I always had before going to retreat to the mountains. I kept forgetting what was real, natural.

In order for us to experience peaceful presence in our lives, we simply need to remember that it is always 'here', is natural and can be chosen at any time. In those brief crystal clear moments of our lives this is what we have chosen. Unconsciously, but we have chosen it.

Healing the Heart

Open your heart, for it wishes to be free.
To enliven your Spirit with endless joy.
It wishes to sing and dance and forget that it was ever closed in the first place.
This dance of joy also wishes to enliven and heal those around you, for nothing furthers compassion more than to share it.
Your heart has wings you see, to let your Spirit soar within it's infinite light of Joy.
So open your heart to loving and being loved, for that is the only way that it can heal.

Whatever it takes, open your heart.
_________________________________________________
Peaceful joy to you,
Elaine

The Open Door and Your Path

Yesterday I received a rather different story from my surroundings. While visiting my mother's home, I sensed as if someone was in the courtyard, just outside her front door. The door was open, but when I looked over to it from the living room, I suddenly got the message quicker than I could blink. From standing in the living room, since the door was open at the time, I could see only one wall of the courtyard from my vantage point. In order to see completely outside the doorway, I had to actually step into and across it. Why was this so obvious to me? Well, on my journey to understanding myself, the world, my place in it, and my chosen path better, like everyone else, I always ask myself 'how' do I get started, such as 'how do I find funding for my book', or 'how do I find the perfect job', etc. I have learned that indeed there is no 'how' for asking this question over and over again without taking any action towards our goals is simply denying that we already have the answers inside. As Robert Frost said "we dance around in a ring and suppose while the secret sits in the middle and knows".

The open doorway at my mom's was trying to show me that we are always shown the door, the next step to take, but we have to actually step into and go through the doorway to see the whole picture for that step we have just been asked to take. Only then will the next open door present itself, the next step. But most of us don't take that first step because we have learned to not trust ourselves or the world.

An open door always gives us hope, a little more light on our path and that is all we need to walk effortlessly and trustingly on our journey. The 'open door' may be a co-incidence or some synchronicity in your day, but it is an energetic doorway showing you a possibility. The choice to step through it is always up to you.

Wishing you peace and many light-filled open doors on your journey.

Clear Reflections (NGT)

September 2006
Big Sur, California
River Inn

Sitting next to the Big Sur river, my gaze settles on a very quiet spot. The water is very low at this time of year moving very slowly, but in this area is almost completely still and clear, almost like a small calm pool. Due to the calmness in this spot, the reflection of the trees above are almost completely clear as well and because of the subtlety of the image, I notice that the trees appear only slightly distorted in the reflecting water. This makes me realize that if the water were perfectly calm, with absolutely no movement at all, the reflected image of the trees would be completely clear and undistorted. And perhaps I would not have noticed the subtle significance of the distortion.

As we journey through our life, trying to understand what is real and what is not, we find that illusions are many. Mostly we find that our mind creates a myriad of illusory realities. I say this because, in all of the stories I’ve learned from nature, I’ve always realized they were simply mirrors of my own inner story, so the less clear the story, the less clear most likely was my own mind. Like the calm or turbulent river, we cannot see our own image clearly, especially our inner self image, while our mind is in turmoil or is creating torbid currents which create a distorted story. We’ve all heard of the ‘zen’ way of being and perhaps the clear, quiet stillness does indeed have the most to show us as it reflects the clearest picture of our true selves.

Hummingbird lesson (NGT)

September 2006
Carmel, California

While staying at a friend’s house, enjoying her lovely garden, surrounded by green everywhere and watching the many hummingbirds who frequent the space, I stopped to watch one hummingbird who was sitting on a low branch in a small tree. He must have sat there for at least five to ten minutes. Not only was I surprised to see it resting for such a long time, as I thought hummingbirds were always busy feeding due to their very high metabolism, but it was singing up a storm, and I didn’t realize hummingbirds could make so much noise!

After about five minutes of this adorable little bird chirping away at an almost constant pace, I figured I’d just listen, as if maybe it was ‘talking to me’. I have learned to listen more and think less while in nature. The story I heard in my thoughts was that when you have been through intense periods of learning and growth in your life, in a sense feeding lots of new information to your mind, you need to take time to digest it, allowing your whole being, body, mind and spirit, to integrate it into your Being and your life. This made perfect sense to me as I had just finished five months of traveling to many natural places, getting tons of stories and information and writing about all that I’d learned. It was no wonder that I was so tired all of a sudden and just felt like resting.

After about five minutes of me ‘listening’ to the hummingbird, it finally went to visit a couple more flowers and then flew up to the top of a larger tree, one in which it could see a much higher and wider view of the entire garden. This was almost as if to show me that when you allow yourself to take the time to rest and integrate what you‘ve learned, only then can you get a better, clearer perspective of what lies ahead and where your path might lead you next.

Twisted oaks and shadows of illusion (NGT)

From April 19, 2006
Garland Ranch Park, Carmel Valley, California

Thick, rough, curved and entwined oak trees, even with Spanish moss hanging on them. What chance does the sun’s rays have to penetrate this forest, of shadows? Still, the fresh, new grass and flowers growing ever so easily beneath spread out with joy in the springtime breeze. The softness of the scene does offer its peace. As the sun shifts, so do the shadows, reminding me that the sun always shines and is omnipotent, whereas the shadows are always changing, inch by inch, minute by minute, and so not to take them too seriously, nor contemplate their depth of character. We are neither the light nor the shadows, but life itself.

We all have our mental shadows of which we have become accustomed to thinking of them as who and what we are. They tend to shift only slightly year after year, but even in our attaching ourselves to them, we have shifted as they have, moving as the sun moves them. It is just that we have not allowed ourselves to see the sunlight which creates the illusion that they are there in the first place. There are many experiences in our lives that can, if we allow them to, help us to not only see the shadows for what they are (temporary thought structures), but show us a glimpse of the possibility at being able to see the sunlight and to perhaps dwell in that space instead. If we are having a ‘rough’ day or week or even year, we usually figure out that at some point things will get better. We almost expect it. But if we continue to dwell in the ‘roughness’ of the day or week or year, identifying the roughness of our life as who and what we are, it becomes difficult to see the shadow of that thought as a shadow or to even see the fresh, new grass and flowers of blooming possibility underneath it all. Thus it becomes challenging to see our true selves, the truth of our beautiful shining spirit and being aware of that, live in alignment with it.

The Light of Infinite Love lives within our hearts.
The Light of Infinite Peace lives within our every step.
The Light of Infinite Joy lives within our Being.

Nature-guided Therapy

From my visit to Sedona, AZ November 2004

Native Americans believe that everything in nature has a spirit, an essence that lives in it. If we look up the word “Nature” in the dictionary, it literally means essence. If you look up “Spirit” in the dictionary, it literally means, ‘the essence or nature of something’.

I think of this as I sit near the mouth of Boynton Canyon in Sedona, Arizona and admire the rain and wind-sculpted red cliffs that surround me. One looks sort of like and old Irishman with derby cap and all. Another resembles a large cave-like hand high above as if reaching out to grasp something. At some point I realize that the cliffs are showing me not what the weather has sculpted but the actual essence within them. I wonder if the spirit within the mountains are simply showing who they are. (There is even one in Sedona that looks like ‘Snoopy’ laying on his back.)

This is their story:
“The rain drop does not choose which way it will run down the wall of the mountain, sculpting it over time. Rather it is the essence of the mountain itself that determines which way it will allow the rain drop to fall and shape it. The weather of your life (your life experiences) does not determine or create who you are. It is the core of your Being that decides not only which way experiences sculpt it, but also which experiences it chooses to use to do the sculpting.”

It is like the painter choosing which colors to put on his canvas based on what image he wants to create. If you have ever noticed with paintings, each artist’s work has a distinct feel or concept which comes through. We can say, oh that must be so and so’s painting because it looks like their work. We become familiar with the expression on the canvas and identify it with the artist’s expression of who they are. The painter is not the canvas nor the image. The painter, like the spirits of nature, is the essence or core that paints and sculpts to express what it is.

We can also view the interaction between the rain drop and the mountain, both as spirits, essences. The interplay expresses both while at the same time effecting both, changing both. Sort of a dance of essence with essence, spirit with spirit. But even in this, the true Being of each determines the interplay. Like dance partners, we choose which one we want to dance with in order to learn different steps and thus experience ourselves and our lives in different ways.

Welcome to the Peaceful Inspirations Blog

Welcome to the Peaceful Inspirations Blog.

My intention for this sharing of light and love is to help others remember their true light. As the owner of Peaceful Inspirations, it is my goal to help awaken the Light of Infinite peace, joy and love within all. As Infinite Spirit having a 'human experience', seeking to creatively express our light and creative genius and experience ourselves as that, we can choose our reality in each moment. This took a very long time for me to learn, but I am ever so thankful to all of the great spirits living today and past that have truly inspired so many to shine in their true magnificence. This is what we are all 'here' to do.

My normal canvas for helping others awaken is through nature. Specifically through Nature-guided Therapy, expressed in writing, singing, counseling and Being.

"If you want to know what True Infinite Love is and what it feels like, go to nature. Nature is an expression of true, pure Infinite Love. True Love, Pure Infinite Love, surrounds you, supports you, mirrors all of your beauty, allows to you grow, and engulfs you in unending peace and inspiration."
~ from "The Love of Nature and the Nature of Love" by Elaine Bolduc
(to be published 2007-2008)

Peace,
Elaine

www.peacefulinspirations.org