“Wander here a whole summer, if you can. Thousands of God’s wild blessings will search you and soak you as if you were a sponge, and the big days will go uncounted.
If you are business-tangled, and so burdened with duty that only weeks can be got out of the heavy laden year, then go to the Flathead Reserve; for it easily and quickly reached by the Great Northern Railroad. Get off the track at Belton Station, and in a few minutes you will find yourself in the midst of what you are sure to say is the best care-killing scenery on the continent – beautiful lakes derived straight from glaciers, lofty mountains steeped in lovely nemophila-blue skies and clad with forests and glaciers, mossy ferny waterfalls in their hollows, nameless and numberless, and meadowy gardens abounding in the best of everything …. ” John Muir
Glacier National Park – just a few photos of the wonders there…
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don Miguel Ruiz’s four agreements provide a path for deepening into the simple life that is clear, uncluttered and transformational. On the road of life’s journey these are simple tenants of being in the world that can be life changing and enhancing when expressed in each moment. There is ease and comfort here. Remembering.
Ruiz creates an invitation of exploration. What could living this life road look like? Feel like? Although simple, these four agreements require a constancy and attention. Truth in action. Awareness.
1. Be impeccable with your word.
2. Don’t take anything personally.
3. Don’t make assumptions.
4. Always do your best.
Simple.
Life changing.
I believe the first tenant, “be impeccable with your word”, means not just spoken words but thoughts too… keeping it true and right in thought and word – impeccable. A tenant to aspire to.
Ruiz’s little book, The Four Agreements, explains the tenants further, but each person can evaluate the truths hidden within each one for themselves. There’s a tiny pocket version too – perfect to slip in your purse or backpack.
I love that this Ancient Toltec wisdom is still with us in 2014 and can be slipped into a backpack in tiny book form….. continuing to help us become wise, wild and free!
“Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use your power of your word in the direction of truth and love.”
“Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally… Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.”
“If others tell us something we make assumptions, and if they don’t tell us something we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and to replace the need to communicate. Even if we hear something and we don’t understand we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don’t have the courage to ask questions.”
“Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less. But keep in mind that your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next.”
“To be Toltec is a way of life. It is a way of life where there are no leaders and no followers, where you have your own truth and live your own truth. A Toltec becomes wise, becomes wild, and becomes free again.”
Wiley, curious, handsome/beautiful, loyal, these creatures cross my path often. Fox seem like the perfect combination of cat and dog – a wild and free version. I’ve read that they keep the same den for multiple generations – roots are important to their tribe.
We have a den nearby and a red fox that passes through often. I hope he enjoys his home here near ours.
The photos in the gallery above are all of red fox even though their colors are in a range from black to beige, with a nice red in between too!
Love when these curious, intelligent, four legged, grace my day with their wildness and questioning faces…
“Men have forgotten this truth”, said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”
Is there anything more peaceful and powerful to the soul’s experience than the rhythm and power of surging, moving water? Torrents of water are falling from the sides of mountains everywhere now. Where the water narrows into smaller and smaller spaces the intensity builds to a crescendo of power and music.
Negatively charged ions are showering us when near this powerful movement of water. This is a good thing!!
From the article “Ions and Consciousness” in the magazine “Whole Self”:
Technically speaking: “Ions are charged particles in the air that are formed in nature when enough energy acts upon a molecule such as carbon dioxide, oxygen, water, or nitrogen to eject an electron from the molecule leaving a positively charged Ion. The displaced electron attaches itself to a nearby molecule, which then becomes a negatively charged Ion. It is the negative ion of oxygen that affects us the most.”
I also read from Comtech Research: “the normal ion count in fresh country air is 2,000 to 4,000 negative Ions per cubic centimeter (about the size of a sugar cube). At Yosemite Falls, you’ll experience over 100,000 negative Ions per cubic centimeter. On the other hand, the level is far below 100 per cubic centimeter on the Los Angeles freeways during rush hour.”
So, get out to the rushing, moving water! Feel the positive energy all ’round and Breathe!
“As many raindrops join to form a great river of water,
many souls join their highest intent to form
the river of evolved consciousness.”
– Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Searching, absorbing teachings, reading the masters, sitting in meditation, being with nature… all in the quest for “enlightenment”.
The seeking for the deepest truths is a lifelong quest, but the journey to enlightenment finds us right where we started… in this very moment, being truly and uniquely who we are. Knowing the creative potential in the moment, with focused, savoring, attention on the be-ing-ness of living, takes me as close as I think I’m going to get to enlightenment – and it is enough.
As the quote goes:
“Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.”
Sound. Primordial manifesting. Healing and transporting. The music of the spheres providing the foundation of our experience. The word.
Traveling with the sound healer Tom Kenyon in Bhutan brought the totality of sound’s power to bear on my life. In conference rooms and temples, the pure resonance and connections of his tonings were astounding.
The nuns pictured above too held us transported with their chants & singing.
Every culture uses sound and music and has a need for these expressions. Drumming, toning, chanting, singing….
Tom Kenyon’s work as a therapist brought him initially to the exploration of the potential of the power in sound for healing for his patients. This exploration moved into deeper and deeper realms… his five octave voice is a miracle. The sounds, toning, music, and chant seem to come through him, not from him.
“I become like a tuning fork to the information that is coming through me, in shamanism they call it being the ‘hollow reed’…”
-Tom Kenyon
“It’s ok to look up to make sure there’s only one person up here making these strange sounds. But what’s important is what’s happening inside YOU. That’s where the power is.”
-Tom Kenyon
A new film about his work, called “Song of the New Earth” is making the rounds of screenings around the country.
You may not embrace, understand, or believe all that is contained there, but if you can allow an opening to healing and connection while absorbed in the sound, you may find an expansion of your perception, and find help with healing and connections.
Click here to access a sound healing session called the Inner Sun Meditation:
I often listen to Tom Kenyon tapes for meditation and for healing and hope they may be helpful to you. As the quote from Tom states below, I’ve seen miracles happen with sound.
“I’ve seen miracles happen with sound…”
~Tom Kenyon
“Each celestial body, in fact each and every atom, produces a particular sound on account of its movement, its rhythm or vibration. All these sounds and vibrations form a universal harmony in which each element, while having it’s own function and character, contributes to the whole.”
-Pythagoras (569-475 BC)
“We have fallen
into the place where
Everything is music”
~Rumi
“I wonder if anyone else has an ear so tuned and sharpened as I have, to detect the music, not of the spheres, but of earth, subtleties of major and minor chord that the wind strikes upon the tree branches. Have you ever heard the earth breath?”
-Kate Chopin
“The earth has music for those who listen.”
-George Santayana
Absorbed and immersed in the music, greens, life energy, breath of the earth’s longest day among 365. Solstice! A sweet celebration to breath into…
“As I begin to love myself, I freed myself of anything that is no good for my health – food, people, things, situations, and everything that drew me down and away from myself. At first I called this attitude a healthy egotism. Today I know it is love of oneself.”
-April 16, 1959, Charlie Chaplin, (on his 70th birthday)
“Something inside you emerges….an innate, indwelling peace, stillness, aliveness. It is the unconditioned, who you are in your essence. It is what you had been looking for in the love object. It is yourself.”
– Eckhart Tolle
Today I surround myself with Good things. Nature, my dog, nurturing food, lovely wine, home, books to grow from, flowers, big green trees, quiet, earth magic.
What do you see? What is left out, not acknowledged, missed? In recent posts I’ve focused on the small wonders – tiny flowers and sparkling raindrops. Taking time with these wonders have reignited my passion for seeing with the heart. Taking the time, focusing the attention, allowing feelings to inform the seeing, engaging the heart, will always deepen the experience.
In taking the extra time, focus and attention is there a feeling just under the surface of sight? A whole huge world can unfurl and unfold in that moment of heart seeing.
Carlos Castenada in his studies with the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan, learned the definition of “seeing” as: “perceiving energy directly as it moves through the universe”. (He certainly was taking “seeing” to a whole new level of awareness!).
It is possible to feel the energy moving through the universe and to increase our depth of seeing and feeling our world. Taking a long sweet breath, go out to this day, this one and only new day, and see what’s new and what’s been there all along…see with the heart.
“One day with life and heart is more than time enough to find a world.”
don Miguel Ruiz’s four agreements provide a path for deepening into the simple life that is clear, uncluttered and transformational. On the road of life’s journey these are simple tenants of being in the world that can be life changing and enhancing when expressed in each moment. There is ease and comfort here. Remembering.
“Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.”
