Difficult Realities Inspiring Active Hope

This photograph was taken in 1993. A starving Sudanese toddler struggling to reach a feeding center with a well-fed vulture perched behind her.

Kevin Carter is the photographer who preserved this moment that we are now experiencing. He was awarded the Pulitzer prize for the photograph and three months later he committed suicide.



How does this image effect you?
What happens to your body, to your emotions, to your sense of being a human when you sit with this reality?

The world is filled with pain and suffering. We know this to be true. We each experience this in different ways.

My prayer: May we keep our eyes open, acknowledging what is and holding space for health, nourishment, well-being, love and connectedness. We each individually have the power to show up authentically, boldly offering our unique contributions to the world. The universe needs what we have to offer. May we connect with each other around love, respect and trust because that is, from my perspective, the essence that will support us as the tapestries of our illusions dissolve.

Anchoring to Essence

I'm floating in a sea of emergence
The environment around me
blossoming forth
with new life

unfurling realities of vision
seeding their way into manifest being

A throbbing fiery center of essence
pulls at my heart, inviting her
to enter deeper--
to fall in love
again
and
again




She is being-becoming the fire
She is following the flow of essence
Anchoring in this moment



Fire mandala by Thomas Arthur
On Fire healing card by Kara Brown
Photograph in candle light by Ashley Cooper
Inspiring post on anchoring to essence by Christy Lee-Engel

Spring Breath

I love the images that Fred shares at Fragments from Floyd. This Transparent Green of Spring helps me breathe.

Gorgeous, Cuddly, Clinging Angels

Sweet sharing from The Obvious?

Sometimes I want time to just stand still

My beautiful five year old daughter half wakes at around 11.00 pm each night and I go up and carry her through to the bathroom. Feeling that gorgeous, cuddly, little angel cling to me as I carry her is something I know can't last forever but I so, so wish it could....

Do you have a moment that you wish could last forever? Please do share!

You are Worthy of the Most Wonderful People

"What kind of people do you need in your life? What kinds of people do you want to attract?

Know that it is possible to attract people who will complement and compliment you, if you're open to receiving them in your life. Know that you're worthy of the most wonderful people and you will attract them. Settle for nothing less; expect at least that."

Thank you j a c k / z e n.

Reminds me of some older posts on compliments and complementing with others.

I'm in Love!

Two new artists have come into my awareness.
Andy at Older, but no wiser opened my eyes to Andrea Pratt.

Andrea has a webl, colouring outside the lines, has just launched a new site, small art, a marketplace for small and affordable works of art, and has a gallery.

Andrea then opened my eyes to Barbara Roden.


Barbara has a webl, Day and Night Painter,
and you can see other amazing pictures by visiting here.

Have fun!! And a deep thank you to these two women for sharing such beauty with the world.

The Marketplace

I spoke to my friend and web wizard, Michael DuBois, the other day. Michael is involved in the online life of many evolutionary initiatives including his own Integral Visioning and others like Shift in Action, Integral Naked Forum, METTA Center for Nonviolence Education, Easily Amazed and more. He was explaining to me his perception of an interesting phenomena in the technical world. He’s noticed that often geeks will ride in on a wave of cutting edge social software. They will get the systems installed and then kind of disappear, riding the wave out just as they rode it in. He’s found himself in situations where he is being hired to help nurture the current online structure, integrating various threads that are present, possibly exploring the cutting edge of online integration.

Like many of us, this work is a labor of love for him. He is involved in projects that he sees as adding value and resources to the world, supporting the evolution of consciousness and providing tools to assist collective intelligence.

He shared some of what he is observing in the online world; what social, theoretical, and spiritual sites are flourishing, are being recognized by the populace, are being recognized by the thinkers, etc. I was inspired and moved by his awareness and the ways in which he is using his talents and learning from what is already being done.

I felt called to ask: “What do you need to be supported?”

Taken back, he said…. “Well, business advice. I started doing this work as a hobby, volunteering my services. My skills have grown so much and as more and more people are contacting me it is becoming more of an official business. It’s been so long since I started up a new business and this is different because it’s not about a product, but a service where a lot of the activity takes place online. I need some business consulting and some help with accounting.”

Hearing this, my mind and heart started spinning: What if it were that simple… What if we express our needs, articulating the simplest, most elegant offering that would further our ability to share more fully our gifts with the world, and then as a community we find ways to support one another, encouraging each of us to show up fully, offering our gifts, receiving and flourishing. What if…..

And so I wonder… What do you need? What do you have to offer? (and do you know anyone who is interested in doing some business consulting with a friend of mine?) In my dream world every community has a marketplace where we can share offerings and requests with one another.

Transitions

Thank you Graceful Presence.

Icons to use for Visual Thinking

Thanks to Nancy at Full Circle Online Interaction Blog for directing my attention to Michael Erikson's generous offering of

87 icons that I’ve released to the public domain to aid Graphic Facilitators, Lean System Process map makers and Visual Language practitioners. Use Freely with my blessings, I release ALL copyrights
Michael Erickson

Follow this link to download the icons. On my computer I am not able to see all of the images on that page but once I downloaded the powerpoint I had access to them all. He says there are more to come... What a gift, Thank you!!

Online Tools

I'm exploring some of the social online tools that are out there (I don't even know what to call them), especially tagging related sites.

Here's what I'm finding today... I would love any feedback you have to offer about any of these (and even what I call the category of this technilogical stuff).

I'll share my whole flow: My site meter showed me that someone had linked to easily amazed through:

• Shadows -- A site to tag, comment and rate your favorite websites. This led me to
• Opposable Mind -- a thought provoking new blog to explore... there I discovered an
  
• Article by J Wynia about
• AttentionTrust -- from J Wynia

  Well, with AttentionTrust you can keep track of the sites you visit from all of your computers. To push it a step further, and get absolute control over your clickstream and also have easy access to deep analysis, you can set up your own attention server

  At Opposable Mind I also saw that he was using
• Swicki -- A site for harnessing the collective energy of and strengthening your online community.

  A swicki is new kind of search engine that allows anyone to create deep, focused searches on topics you care about. Unlike other search engines, you and your community have total control over the results and it uses the wisdom of crowds to improve search results. This search engine, or swicki, can be published on your site. Your swicki presents search results that you're interested in, pulls in new relevant information as it is indexed, and organizes everything for you in a neat little customizable widget you can put on your web site or blog, complete with its very own buzz cloud that constantly updates to show you what are hot search terms in your community.

I'm off to explore Swicki some more... maybe you'll see it on this site soon!

Bounce!

You have to watch this comercial.
Really, you have to it's absolutely amazing.

As You Are

"There is a way which is supremely effective. Just look at yourself as you are, see yourself as you are, accept yourself as you are, and go ever deeper into what you are.

Nisargadatta Maharaj, Indian mystic

The Voice of Wisdom

It's interesting to notice the buzz words in the circles we walk. An essential part of my practice is to become intimate with the language I use. I like to explore how words respond and resonate in myself and other people. Lately I've been hanging out with the feeling, sentiment, expression, and presence of the word wisdom. Recently I asked here:

What is your experience when in the presence of wisdom?
How do you recognize wisdom's presence?

Thomas:

Wisdom always expands my felt sense... The felt sense of life emerging. We know we are in the presence of wisdom when our whole being experiences an intensification of Life. I experience wisdom as a deep, quiet, powerful, slow-moving current. Wisdom is ever humble.

Chris:

It goes right through me, and activates some energetic source of engagement. When I am in the presence of wisdom I can feel it animate my mind and spirit and most importantly, I can feel teachings arising within me. It's amazing really."

Mike:

I recognize wisdom both in my head and in my heart. Two or more seemingly very different things weaved into a new "third" thing.

I've been noticing how and when wisdom arises in groups. It percolates up from the cauldron of energy swirming together... A voice gives rise to words or other types of expression that burst within my being as an opening of Yes!, reverberating with a sense of gratitude, joy and awe. Possibilities immediately expand, space is freed, light twinkles.

What fascinates me in this wisdom exploration is how unpredictable it is when and where wisdom will show up. I am always learning from others, new information informing my being through interacting and engaging. There are some people whom I regularly experience as sharing wisdom; I honor these teachers, grateful for the flow of learning that pours forth in our interactions. With some others I don't often find myself in a state of deep learning, but when wisdom shows up through them I feel a sense of reverence in my expanding understanding. Dissonant interactions often offer me jewels of awareness if I simply pay attention. I absolutely LOVE how nuggets of wisdom can fall from anywhere in the sky.

And I am especially coming to appreciate the unpredictability of wisdom surfacing in groups and the need for each person to honor the wisdom that is present in each other person. It is only from this place of deep mutual respect and willingness to accept whatever arises that collective wisdom will really find its voice.

Light Blogging but New Toys!!!

Here's an online Whiteboard... you can invite others to join you in co-creation.