This Little Light of Ours

 

So True

"Whatever the darkness there is in this world, there is a constant, irresistible stream of beauty and meaning."                               

Idakatherine Graver 

So Proud of My Friend

http://voyagephoenix.com/interview/check-idakatherine-gravers-artwork/

Thank you Alexandra

This afternoon my wise friend Alexandra reminded me of the question Jack Kornfield calls the very last question each one of us will ask in this life...

That question is "How good was my love?" 

We Are The Change We Seek

Akhilanda

Akhilanda

Akhilanda represents the essence of the Phoenix; she’s the indestructible energy that embraces change. She knows that everything is conspiring to transform her into only more love and light. 

Akhilanda is an elusive goddess from Hindu mythology. Her full name is Akhilandaeshvari. Ishvari in Sanskrit means “female power” or “goddess,” and Akhilanda means “never not broken,” so she is the goddess of never not broken. She can never be broken, because she always is. She is the embodiment of what we try to avoid—the dissolution of our ego’s identity.

Her power is unparalleled. She radiates the potent light and joy that’s the goal of change, transformation, or pain. There is very little written about her; she is meant to be known through experience. She is an intimate, interior goddess that we meet when we are in the darkest moments of grief and heartbreak.

She shows us where our energy is trapped, where we have been stifled in routines or others’ expectations of us. And she whispers the liberation we will experience once we let ourselves break open and allow the new expression of our self to come blazing through. She reminds us that we always have the power to choose to see every event as yet another opportunity to become more light, to become more of the radiant soul we are here to be.”

Nothing Like A Family Trip To The Rim To Help Heal A Wounded Heart!

https://youtu.be/Dee7vh9F_4g?list=PLbdYd52Yo5TrOUlpZemI_OH9PTzZRS0Hu

The Youngest Have The Most Power

Feel All The Feels

You're invited to celebrate Unhappy Hour. It's a ceremony that gives you a poetic license to rant and whine and howl and sob about everything that hurts you and makes you feel bad.

During this perverse grace period, there's no need for you to be inhibited as you unleash your tortured squalls. You don't have to tone down the extremity of your desolate clamors. Unhappy Hour is a ritually consecrated excursion devoted to the full disclosure of your primal clash and jangle.

Here's the catch: It's brief. It's concise. It's crisp. You dive into your darkness for no more than 60 minutes, then climb back out, free and clear. It's called Unhappy Hour, not Unhappy Day or Unhappy Week or Unhappy Year.

Do you have the cheeky temerity to drench yourself in your paroxysmal alienation from life? Unhappy Hour invites you to plunge in and surrender. It dares you to scurry and squirm all the way down to the bottom of your pain, break through the bottom of your pain, and fall down flailing in the soggy, searing abyss, yelping and cringing and wallowing.

That's where you let your pain tell you every story it has to tell you. You let your pain teach you every lesson it has to teach you.

But then it's over. The ritual ordeal is complete. And your pain has to take a vacation until the next Unhappy Hour, which isn't until next week sometime, or maybe next month.

You see the way the game works? Between this Unhappy Hour and the next one, your pain has to shut up. It's not allowed to creep and seep all over everything, staining the flow of your daily life. It doesn't have free reign to infect you whenever it's itching for more power.

Your pain gets its succinct blast of glory, its resplendent climax, but leaves you alone the rest of the time.

If performed regularly, Unhappy Hour serves as an exorcism that empties you of psychic toxins, while at the same time -- miracle of miracles -- it helps you squeeze every last drop of blessed catharsis out of those psychic toxins.

Pronoia will then be able to flourish as you luxuriate more frequently in rosy moods and broad-minded visions. You'll develop a knack for cultivating smart joy and cagey optimism as your normal states of mind.

Our First Phoenix Death Cafe

Our first Phoenix Death Cafe Sunday afternoon was fascinating. 14 people showed up! Everyone participated. People were genuine. Open. Self disclosing. Sisters who had just lost their Dad we’re also dealing with their Mom’s memory loss. One dear gal who’d lost her mentor bravely admitted to drinking everyday to get through her grief and shock. No one tried to fix or rescue anyone. One dear man talked about his fixation with what happens after last breath... it was fresh, wild, rewarding. Jan and I are very pleased and look forward to hosting another Death Cafe soon.

On This Day Rumi

ZERO CIRCLE

Be helpless, dumbfounded,

Unable to say yes or no.

Then a stretcher will come from grace

to gather us up.

We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty.

If we say we can, we’re lying.

If we say No, we don’t see it,

That No will behead us

And shut tight our window onto spirit.

So let us rather not be sure of anything,

Beside ourselves, and only that, so

Miraculous beings come running to help.

Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,

We shall be saying finally,

With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.

When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,

We shall be a mighty kindness.