As the year draws to a close, I feel it in my body — a bone-deep need for rest, for solitude. The sweet ache of my soul for its own company. The longing to return to the quiet rhythms of my heartbeat after months of joyfully singing with the choir.
It’s been a rich, full year, brimming with blessings. More than 35 years of teaching, writing, creating, and still, today, this work, and the people whom I am privileged to walk alongside and delighted to serve, remain my most beloved teachers.
My students and clients keep expanding into the infinite bounty of their inner being. And, as they become more fully themselves — as they shape their businesses around their soul’s deepest desires — they create abundance, peace and delight for themselves and their world.
It happens part-way through every program I teach. Struggle and frustration, despair and aborted dreams give way to bright enthusiasm, abiding faith — the astonishing discovery that miracles flow from our fingertips when we find and truly inhabit our place in wholeness.
Wholeness is our natural state. We are born whole. We arrive here knowing we belong in the larger Wholeness that is our home.
And yet, from the moment we arrive in this world — drunk on light and drenched in glory — we are shaped by the world around us. The noise and glitter of it, its agony and brokenness, the empty stories we are told and, half-bewildered, come to believe — all of these fall like thick shadows between us and our souls. They separate us from the truth of who we really are.
To rediscover and inhabit our wholeness, we need time, spaciousness, solitude — and skills. We need daily practices that restore us to ourselves, that bring us back to who we really are.
You may already have a daily practice – meditation or dance, yoga, chi kung, prayer or gratitude — that brings you back to the heart of belonging. If you do, you likely also have a structure in place that supports you in using it.
Here are some of the structures that support me.
My daily practice is anchored by placing myself in the presence of the Sacred, at least four times each day – when I first awake, before opening my eyes; after I’ve brushed my teeth, showered and dressed; at the end of my work day; in bed at night, before drifting off to sleep.
Each day includes a conscious attunement to the Devas of those qualities I wish to embody more fully. I commune with one or more of these Devas, and use energy alchemy skills and tools to participate in their activity – to increase my capacity to hold, radiate, act from, and express those qualities in my life.
I also cleanse, balance and harmonize my energy body daily — in the morning, at the start of my day; before and after each session with a client, or each class I teach; and again at the end of the day.
All of these are foundational practices for me – I have done them for most of my life, so they are deeply familiar, and deeply comforting. At the same time, each one is utterly unique — a moment of relationship and communion unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. The practice is ultimately just me, open to the presence of the Mystery.
And then, there are practices that bring me into relationship with my world through the ordinary, grace-filled moments of each day. A prayer of gratitude each time I brush my teeth. A blessing of love and appreciation for my chair, each time I sit in it; for my computer, each time I use it. Deep gratitude for the breath that fills my lungs; love and appreciation for the food that nourishes my cells; the book that inspires and delights; the tree outside my window that yields so gracefully to the caress of the wind.
We belong in the lap of wholeness. We are the human body of divine providence.
Our belonging gives us that most precious of resources — the unshakable experience of being held in the lap of the Sacred, and the brimming joy of our creative potency, of being the activity of the Sacred in the world.
We are the source of all that we seek.
Love. Safety. Provision.
Generosity. Kindness. Spaciousness. Joy.
Creative delight.
We are that.
We are all of that, and more.
As creative beings, as entrepreneurs, we blend art and beauty, inspiration and freedom, power and communion into a richly savory broth that nourishes the whole, hungry world.
Yes, we are divinely human. And, we have deeply human needs for rest and replenishment. Nature’s rhythms are our rhythms writ large.
So, for now, I am taking time to be with that quieter, deeper pulse. To rest in stillness until it naturally flows into movement. To play, quietly or exuberantly. To read poetry. Walk by the sea. To write, when the spirit moves me. To appreciate the gifts of this exquisitely intelligent world.
I trust you will do this too, in your own timing and in your own way. My wish for you, this new year, is that you find that place of stillness where you can hear the song of your creative heart. Away from the bright tumult of the holidays, into the primal womb of the generative dark.
The night sky reveals the fire of the stars.