Fragment, or Mother Knows Best

Earth will always prevail. She knows far better than we.

Arrogance, dominance: look where they've gotten us!

The earth is speaking. She will persist until we get the message. Louder and louder she'll speak until we listen, until we remember.

The Book of Secrets: Finale

News Flash!

Tune in to WZBC's online archive before March 25 to listen to the third and final segment of Deepak Chopra's The Book of Secrets audiobook. (Click on the March 12, 10:00 show--see The Stream of Joy for more info.)

This concluding portion reveals the last four secrets:

Secret #12: There is No Time But Now
Secret #13: You Are Truly Free When You Are Not A Person
Secret #14: The Meaning of Life is Everything
Secret #15: Everything is Pure Essence

If you don't get to hear this within the next two weeks, you can always find the book and audiobook in your local library or favorite bookstore. It is a gem; check it out!

Unstoppable

The great thaw is on here in New England. Bit by bit the lawns and gardens have been resurfacing this week after a long slumber under a cold, deep blanket of white. We'd almost forgotten them under there. There is very much the sense of this all returning from the dead, and I tell you: it is so good to see the earth again.

Once it starts, it can seem the great reveal happens all at once. It was only a week ago that the first bits of garden and grass were beginning to show. I know this because it was just last Friday, when I stepped out to feed my vacationing neighbor's cats, that I noticed green in my garden where there had been snow...surely just the day before. It was the beginnings of daffodils, growing in serpentine fashion, oddly, alongside the ragged edge of a shrinking snowbank. Daff's don't grow like this naturally. They were curvy because they'd had to grow around something. That something was a hard crust of ice and snow. I realized this at first glance, and it made me smile.

It's marvelous to me to think of those bulbs under inches of earth (and snow!) getting the signal--sensing the subtlest shift in light, sun growing slightly nearer every day--of those leaves beginning their climb through the soil and then above it, then stopping for nothing once they've started. What power, I thought. What insistence. It lifted my heart to see them. Here was spring in no uncertain terms barreling toward us.

I knew I had to try to capture this sweetness. And I knew that even in the time it would take to get my camera, the scene would change. The light would have shifted from what felt like spotlight position, the leaves would have begun, continued their stretching toward the sky, straightening their bent little backs in the process. Still, I figured if I had any chance, it had to be now, not after the cat sit. So I went for it.

I love that photography calls--well...that Nature calls me. I don't think I will ever tire of the imperative inherent in this endeavor. And for what am I answering, hopefully capturing? For sharing the wise voice of the earth, that her whispers may reach far beyond the singular curl of my ear.

Clarity = Freedom

I discovered a letter in my archives today that I'd forgotten about. It was written in 2002, a very powerful time when I chose to "sink or swim" vis-a-vis the Claritywork I had been doing "on the side," the Claritywork that I had been saying would come into its own in its own time. In February of that year, knowing full well that each time I conducted a Claritywork session, I felt I was doing work I was put here to do, I decided I would go for it. I bought a domain name - my first! I created a brochure. I designed a business card. I found an icon in my MS Publisher program called "Web Site," and clicked on it. I started fooling around in there and before I knew it, I had a website too--also my first. Then I started sharing the news with everyone I knew:

"Four years ago," I wrote, "I was asked by a writing student-friend to apply my coaching and listening expertise to a matter concerning not his writing but his life. So emerged the Claritywork that I have been facilitating with clients (writers and non-writers alike) ever since. Over that time, this work has been happy to occur in the wings, while my teaching, coaching, and writing practice maintained center stage. A recent step back from it all has proved the perfect opportunity for me to bring this powerful, important work out of the shadows.

"Since mid-September, it feels as though the whole world is breathing from different lungs. Our lives are transforming, and at a greater clip than ever before. Do you feel it? This is not imagination; this is real. One result of such a shift is that so many of us are finding the old ways just don’t work any longer. Great loss creates emptiness. And emptiness begs to be filled.

"Confusion, indecision, half-heartedness: these can derail us for a day, a decade or a lifetime. In Claritywork, one not so much acquires meaning, direction, etc., as remembers them. A single clarity session--intensive, rich, illuminating--can bring peace, focus, and action to areas of your life that confound you. No one, myself included, is immune to such derailments. The good news is: they needn’t last long.

"My passion for spreading the news of this work derives from my desire that it be available to anyone who wants to create and live a more engaged, authentic, fulfilling life. I want people to know that Claritywork is a distinct option.

"I am an artist. Days, hours escape without notice when I am engrossed in, impassioned by a work in progress that feels not so much a product of my hands as of Life itself. I am transported. Such total engagement yields a pure result. The genuine, in whatever medium, is attractive. It pulls on us--we crave it. We trust it. To attain this authenticity in writing (or sculpting or music or painting…) is grand. To attain it in life is extraordinary.

"There is no greater oeuvre than a life lived wholeheartedly, powerfully, genuinely and purposefully. Therein lies the meaning we are each unceasingly invited to realize. Therein lies a love and joy that our trusting, abiding planet so needs, now more than ever.

"I invite you to give, to yourself or to a loved one, the gift of Clarity."

I might have said "...the gift of Freedom."

Last week I happened upon a note that I received from a client I worked with long distance between Ireland and Israel. I share it, with her permission, because it embodies so beautifully that freedom that comes with clarity:

Thanks so much for providing the facility of listening to the recording. The repetition of the multi-conversation (You and I and the guidances you make connection with and listen to), moments of looking for the language to convey accurately, moments of silence and listening, how you build it, how you thoroughly gather the information you need, as if to help you climb the ladder of ascension. Revelations one wants to hear again and again… Afterwards, I was dancing through the rooms of the house with freedom and relief.

Well it's a fascinating journey to free oneself…Thank you!

It is a fascinating--and extraordinary--journey indeed. And my great privilege to facilitate it.

What places Love has led me. What blessings have come of it.