Kategoriarkiv: #English

Beauty surrounds us

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I don’t think I’ve ever experience the beauty of fall as I am this year. And I don’t think fall has gotten more beautiful – I think the change is in me. I’ve never been so aware, never taken the time, to look, to see the colors, the contrast, the smell, the vibrancy. The energy!fall love 1
I’ve become better calibrated. It’s like I’ve been fine tuned. My senses are functioning, on a whole new level. Whole heartedly.
I notice. I take it in. All of it.
For the first time, it feels as if I fully n o t i c e all the beauty that surrounds me.fall love 4

It’s been there before. Of that I am certain.
But it was never a part of my reality, in the way it is this year.
Because this year, my eyes have opened.
They take it all in, all that is, and always has been.
The texture, colors, smells, movement.
Wind. Sunshine. Dark clouds.
The heaven and earth.
fall love 5The withered hops in the allotment.
fall love 2

The horse chestnut leaves, glowing orange.fall love 7

The black walnut tree. The bark, the lichen, the leaves. And the fruits!fall love 6

The last holly hock, smiling at me, as I pass it. I have to stop. I ask if I may take its portrait. Of course, it tells me, smiling.
I smile back.fall love 3

It feels as if a view has lifted off my eyes. And my heart.
As I take it all in, I can feel myself expand, my awareness, love and gratitude for the beauty of the world fill me up, every cell of me.

Life.
I love it.
See it.
And live it.

Do you notice the beauty that surround you?

Podcast 43/52 – How are you?

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Svara

Guess what? I have a new podcast for you this week. At long last, you might think, perhaps getting fed up with On Being, Good Life Project and One You Feed, with a few others sprinkled on top these past 42 weeks. If that is so, today is your lucky day!

I stumbled upon ProBlogger a month or two ago, and have listened to a handful of episodes. If you are into blogging and want to expand your blogging skills, I would definitely recommend that you check out the entire podcast series from ProBlogger. But this episode holds value to each and every one of us, regardless if we blog or not.

Darren Rowse goes personal, and invite his listeners to do the same, truly asking ourselves the question: How Are You?

HowAreYouIt’s a question that invites an honest look at a lot of areas of life, perhaps all. If you’re up for it. Otherwise, pick one, and go deep.

Health? Diet? Exercise?
Love? Relationships? Friends? Family?
Parenting? Hobbies? Work?

As I ask myself How are you, in general I’ve never been so well, as I am today. As far as I know, I have my health, I eat better than ever, move about daily, even though, if I’m honest – there’s a nagging sense of wanting to be stronger and have more stamina. So there’s something to look into some more. Or. Perhaps I should just get on it, instead of looking into it… I mean. I know what it takes. Knowing myself, the best way to go about it, is to make a plan. Once I commit to a plan, it seems I don’t have a hard time sticking to it. So a plan it will be.

I listened to this podcast two times, back to back, so there is something about How are you that beckons me. It’s very easy to just breeze over a question like this one, especially since in many English-speaking countries it’s a greeting phrase, and not really meant to be answered honestly. Or? I wonder if I am?

Day 7 #NaJoWriMoPrompt: Who Inspires You?

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For today’s prompt, think about and honor the people (personal friends, family members, writers, singers, artists, spiritual leaders, speakers) who inspire you in any way. Write a list of those people, and if you have time, add a few sentences about how each person inspires you. Happy journaling.

I’ve done this before. Or I do this routinely, would be more correct to say. In the blog Christmas advent calendar counting down to Christmas last year for instance, I showcased many people who inspire me. And I regularly write on the blog, about people that inspire me in some way, both people I know and those I just know of. So perhaps, a challenge for me, would be to try to write about people I haven’t written (much) about before? Or, perhaps, I’ll try to stay close to home instead…

My maternal grandmother, my Momo –  So skilled with her hands, in many ways. Her paintings adorn my walls. She passed away many years ago, but thanks to her art, she’s with me in everyday life.

My niece Sara – Another artist. Yeah. There is something about artists that attract me, people able to create beauty with nothing more than a pen, paper and their own hands. But I can also have very deep conversations with Sara. I am inspired by her wisdom, and honored that she opens up to me, for us to have these conversations.

Malin, my bonus daughter – Curious on life, filled with questions, and often with a huge grin on her face. She is like liquid sunshine, able to light up a room with her mere presence.

Birgers dogMy maternal grandfather Birger – never ”too old to learn”. I remember finding this dog during one of my #cleanse4expansion-sessions. He emailed that drawing to me few years before he died, or wait… No, he painted it using Paint on his computer, printed it and sent it via snail mail, that’s why it’s signed by him! Anyway,  80+ and eager to learn to use his new computer. That’s inspirational to me. And what a gifted story-teller he was! When he got started he had us all in raptures, eager to hear just one more story.

Then there’s Me – I inspire me. Huh. Go figure. Didn’t have that one pegged what I started this journaling session. But it’s true though. I do inspire myself, especially when I notice how far I’ve come towards unveiling the one deep within, the self of pure potential that is there, inside, shining through more and more often. When I see how differently I act Today, compared to Yesterday, it makes me very curious about Tomorrow!

Sitting here, listening to some music, hubby cooking dinner in the kitchen, reminiscing about my grandparents who have long since passed away, but also on the younger ones on this list. And then there is me. In the middle. A bit farther on the Journey we call Life than Malin and Sara, but with a long way to go before hitting old age. Aware of the links between us all, how I am connected to the past and the future, while being in the present.

I close my eyes. Exhale. And relax into gratitude. Gratitude for life, for awareness, for the sense of immense connection to all that is. Realize, there’s inspiration all around and within me. It’s abundant. I just have to look for it!

Ellen Langer talks about mindfulness as the act of noticing new things, and suggested looking at your spouse with the intent to find five things about them that you’ve forgotten about, that have faded into oblivion, into everyday ordinariness, in a way that makes you just not see it anymore. She suggested your spouse would come to life again in front of your eyes, rekindling a bit of the wonder you felt towards them once upon a time.

I just saw that inspiration is the same. As I sit here, I become aware that most people are inspiring to me. There’s always something inspirational. Just as I could probably find something really annoying about most people, I can find something about them that inspires me. *haha* Guess which one will make me feel better? I’ll choose the act of noticing things that inspire me any day, rather than going on a quest for annoyance.

What about you? Inspiration? Where? Who? What?
Do you actively look for and notice it in your life?

 

 

Letting go – Letting come

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Svara

Found this little video snippet in the MITx U.Lab-group on Facebook, about the power in spending more time being, rather than doing. And no. I don’t knock doing. I know we live in a world where we have to do both this and that, to survive. But still. I’d venture a bet that the doing part sort of works itself out, without us fussing so much over it. But the being part. Now, that’s something that it seems we’ve almost forgotten about, how it’s done. *pun intended*

One of the concepts within the #ULab is Letting go – Letting come. And I love that. I’ve let myself sink into that concept, it’s like a soft woolen blanket, wrapped around me, reclining in a comfortable armchair…

Letting go.

When letting go, I open up for new things. If I let them, that is. It can be as hard to let go of my resistance to let go, as it can be to let come. These ladies talk about what they wouldn’t give for a chance to revisit their younger self. Being kinder to themselves, with the ability to let go, spending more time being, not doing.

It’s beautiful this video, I’ve watched it several times now, and causes me to stop.
Pause. Look around me. Inhale and smell my surroundings.
Take in the sounds close and afar, feel my body relax as I exhale. Noticing.

Relax. Breathe.
#LetGo. 

What might come, if you let go?

Dissolving into the infinite

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I sit on the sofa, with D in front of me. He just arrived, as we had agreed the day before. He said ”I noticed a resistance, like my timing was off?” and yes… he was so right. I had four more hazelnuts I wanted to munch down, before we got started. Felt a bit embarrassed at myself, chewing, chewing, chewing. As he raises the slightly off-vibes, immediately I drop into the NOW, and realize, here is a person who sees so much more than that which is visible using only the eyes. An hour long therapeutic process awareness experience commenced, widening me, to the extent that I felt I was close to being without boundaries – so far outside of my own body, it’s almost scary. But just almost. I would not trade that experience for anything in the world.

Being seen. Held. Loved.

Tears and laughter.

Deep anguish, as well as the most divine experience of slowly dissolving into the infinite, that which is me, and outside of me, ‘til the end of spacetime…translucent

I don’t know how to describe what D leads me to experience, but it’s something other than anything I’ve ever experienced before. It’s going within, while simultaneously going out, far and wide, reaching all that is, has been and will be.

When we are done, and I’ve landed again, somewhat at least, within the confines of my own body, there is a translucent feeling to it, to me. I am tired. Like having run a marathon… or so I imagine, since I never have.

Time disappeared as we sat opposite each other on the sofa. All that was, was all that is. All. And nothing. At the same time.

I saw more of me.
Saw those that came before me, the generations upon generations of women who have given birth to babies, who in turn bore babies, and somewhere along the line this resulted in my mother giving birth to me. And me giving birth to my daughter.

About holding it in…. or not.
The pivotal moment in time when the path ahead, for the women stemming from my womb, going back all the way to the womb of my First Mother, shifts, no longer carrying the weight, the burden, of judgement and inner harshness, concealed within. Letting it out into the world. Being, perhaps, created by those who cannot stand to see it, visibly, so used to it being concealed. Cringing from the physical aspects of it, when it is recreated outside, rather than sneakily hidden underneath the skin, the flesh, deep within our soulbodies. So much easier to ignore, pretend it’s not existing, turning it into something that-we-must-not-name…

About the jagged sensation of Worry.
And the much softer and huggable Concern.

Running a gauntlet.
Not because of the session itself, but because that’s what I have been doing, inside myself, for so long. So long I almost cry thinking about it. And cry I did. Oh, how I cried. For what has been. And what might be.

Dream-paralysis.
Lethargy.
Heavy. So heavy I cannot even flutter an eyelid. Impossible to move.
And yet… the ability to move is there. I choose not to. But why? Why?

Tired.
Oh, so tired, from running that gauntlet.
Feeling so alone. Absolutely alone, with no assistance… and then D reaches out his being to me, and hold me with his eyes.

Crying, desperately. But for once, sharing the burden of my pain, not alone in it, not having to carry it all alone. D is there, helping me carry… and I can imagine what it would feel like, to let go of all the responsibility that is not mine to carry, that I have been lugging around, for eons of time… believing that I should? That I would have no value unless I took it all on?

Oh. Be gentle. I am still learning. Stumbling about on earth, doing the best I can, failing miserably at times, exultingly successful other times. And meanwhile, putting myself through that gauntlet, over and over, a never-ending story.

Or? Might my time as a gauntlet-runner be coming to an end? Now that I’ve seen it, experienced it, become aware, so aware, excruciatingly painfully aware of what I’ve been internally putting myself through, out of… what? Fear?

Pure. Innocent.
Might I be? Am I allowed to be? To just Be? Aware?
Letting go of all that has been, being reborn. Like Phoenix, reborn from the fire, rising from the burning embers, flapping it’s wings and flying off… Being, Aware, and only carrying theweight of the responsibility that is Mine to carry. Letting the rest burn off, turn to ashes in that fire.

Liberated.
Jivanmukta.

As I write this, it’s there once more. The sensation. Dissolving into infinity.
At least, I feel it again, I revisit it as I write. I close my eyes, and it is within me. The liberation, experiencing the moment that is what is, all that ever has been, and all that will ever be. In one single point. Now.

Have I ever had an experience as humbling as this?

Podcast 42/52 – to hold the question

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Svara

Like last weeks tip, here’s another podcast that I’ve been putting off blogging about, because it’s simply so rich that I am at a loss to find the words to write about it. It’s an episode from Good Life Project this time, with Nilofer Merchant, my favorite walk-and-talk-lady!

Nilofer is a woman who’s led a very interesting life, that’s for sure. She shares openly and without a lot of sentiment, but still, there is a vulnerability to it. She talks about her inner tyrant *been there, done that* and then a very interesting piece of conversation follows, on ”sustained uncertainty”. Just listen, and you’ll get what that points at.

Anyway. I’ve listened to this show umpteen times, and the other day I listened again. And guess what! I heard something I hadn’t heard the other times. Isn’t that amazing? How I suddenly got something else, probably because I listened differently this last time.

Joint creation by Vanessa Smith and Helena Roth at Summit of Human Potential Realization.

Joint creation of the global community by Vanessa Smith and Helena Roth at Summit for Human Potential Realization.

The thoughts about community and the epidemic of people feeling alone and cut off from the rest of the world… How we are actually not paying attention to the phenomenal amount of communities we are a part of, and then they give example after example, and I had to stop to take it all in. There are a few communities that I instantly come up with if you’d ask me what I ”am a part of” so to speak. But what Nilofer and Jonathan point to, is a much larger sense of community, that really stopped me in my tracks, this time around. I am very grateful for that!

Oh. And then, the part about questions and answers, close to the end. As a person enamored with questions, this part blew me away:

My job is to hold the question. […] I think most of us were trained with the idea that you needed to know the answer. […] if you actually own the question, other people can help you with the answer […] and more importantly, they can help you make the answer a reality! – Nilofer Merchant

There’s a question that’s been a constant companion of mine these past two and a half, close to three years. And I still haven’t gotten tired of it. What’s the question that lie at the center of your life?

Day 6 #NaJoWriMoPrompt: How colors speak to you

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Colors are very much a part of creative expression. For today’s prompt, write each of the following colors (red, blue, green, yellow, purple, pink, black, and white) and explain what each color means to you. Avoid thinking about the stereotypical definition of those colors, and instead think about what the color communicate to you personally. Think about how you use those colors in your personal life. 

Red – love, blood, family. Haha. And off I go, diving headfirst into the stereotypical definitions of the color. Ok. Back on track. What does red convey to me, how to I use it? Well, it’s a color that gets noticed, so I actually have some red clothing that I put on when I want to make an impression. I like red as a color tone, as I sit in my sofa looking out on my  living and dining room, red isn’t a predominant color, but the tone of red is very much present.

Blue – Blue is a color that I really like someplace, and really can’t stand in others. Blue lights for instance, yuk. Bought a blue lamp at IKEA once. Had to return it. Makes that awful blue light, that you can see when you walk past a house at night, when there is a TV on. I really don’t like that, it’s too cold and sterile for me. But besides that, I really like blue. Light sky blue, jeans color, is a favorite. I like wearing that color, it brings out the blue in my eyes, and I feel pretty in it. There is something light about it.

Green – Very important color for me. The color of nature, of life, of growth. Makes me feel grounded. Safety is a feeling that I get when I think green. I love when the garden starts to awaken after the winter sleep, when small green growth starts to rise from the snow or soil. And every spring, I get amazed at the infinite amount of green hues that exist in nature.

Yellow – Yellow is a color that I am not too fond of actually. I basically don’t have any yellow (or orange) clothes, and I don’t feel comfortable wearing it either. I am not a big fan of yellow (or orange, these two colors kind of go together for me) flowers etc, so you won’t find many of those in my garden. But again, sitting here in the sofa at night, my entire home emits a yellow/orange(/red) tone. I don’t feel comfortable with blueish electric light, it has to be yellow. Otherwise I cannot relax, my body tenses up. So even though I don’t favor yellow in stuff, clothes, furniture, accessories etc, my home would be totally horrible to live in without the color yellow providing its warmth.

Purple – Ah. That is a favorite color, and it has been for a long time. I remember a purple cardigan I had in my early teens. I loved that cardigan! Purple draws me in, I can dive into it, somehow. While it is a color I love, it’s also a color that I shy away from a bit. It’s as if I am ashamed of my love for it, and I have no clue why.

Pink – Not my color. I don’t think I have any pink pieces of clothing… oh. Oops. Perhaps I do. I’m actually lying to you right now, as I sit here, in my dusty pink wool sweater. So yeah. I do have one piece of pink clothing. But besides that, there’s not much pink stuff around. Pink flowers though – as well as purple! -, those are plentiful in the garden! Interesting this, that I cannot imagine having (a lot of) pink clothes, while there’s an abundance of pink hues in the flowers in the garden. Why is it like that?

Black – Black isn’t my color, in the sense that it doesn’t bring out the best of me, rather the opposite, it makes me look fairly pale and anemic. Still, black is a convenient color for clothes, and there is a fair amount of black clothes in my wardrobe, making it easy to mix and match. I think convenient is a good word for my relationship with the color black.

White – White. Not my color either, at least not chalk white. But just as with black, it is a convenient color in clothes, at least tops and sweaters. White pants I’ve never really felt very comfortable in though, and I can never seem to keep them clean for more than a few hours anyway. I come from a family of white painted walls though, and that is a tradition that I seem to be sticking to. For me, it’s as if the white walls hold space for the rest of the room, for the furniture, the paintings, and also the people. I feel held, within the arms of the white walls of my home.

I am a bit intrigued that I start to relate to colors from the concept of clothing. But perhaps that’s not so strange…. I mean, the clothes on my back go with me all day, regardless of their color, it stays with me for a long period of time. So maybe it actually makes a lot of sense that I start to relate to colors like that. Do you?

DAY 5 #NAJOWRIMOPROMPT: Write 10 burning questions about your life

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For today’s prompt write a list of 10 burning questions for yourself about your life. I suggest not overthinking your list of questions, and you probably should not think about trying to answer those questions right now. Just write whatever questions come to mind. Remember, you’re writing in your journal. No one else should see your list, and you don’t have to answer to anyone about the questions you raise. You may find the this list troubling to write, but the questions might a useful to return to for future journal entries.

Well. This was interesting. I’ve been avoiding this prompt for a few days, for some reason. But now that I have my 10 questions written down, I wonder what I was afraid of? There’s some challenging questions, but none that come as a surprise to me, and none that make me want to stick my head in the sand.

But no. I won’t publish them. If nothing else, I won’t because the prompt actually tells me not to. And I think I want to sit with them a bit more, question by question. Reflect upon them. See what comes to mind, rather than ”try to contrive an answer” to them. That doesn’t ring true to me at all, that’s not the way to go about these. But rather stick them in my mouth, one by one, like a lozenge. Letting it sit, slowly melting away… and possibly, there will be an answer. Or more questions perhaps? That would be welcome as well. I really like questions, and I like the not knowing. Hanging out in that place of limbo, where the question has materialized, but the answer hasn’t. Possibly the answer is like a mirage far away on the horizon. Something illusory, that cannot be analyzed and examined in great detail, because it doesn’t really exist. not knowingOr it might be slowly coming to form before my eyes, a bit like the statue of David inside the great block of marble, being liberated chunk by marble chunk by Michelangelo and his chisels. Or. It might be totally obvious, like a billboard commercial. Neon lights blinking, a clear message to me.

Who knows? Not me, that’s for sure.
And that makes me sit here with a grin on my face, laughing to myself.
Imagine that, huh?

Me.
Enjoying the process of not knowing, revelling in it.

Who would have thought?

 

Can you draw?

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Stumbled upon a TEDx talk on Facebook this morning. Started to watch it in bed this morning, and didn’t get far before I sat up and got out a pen and paper. Graham Shaw asks the audience if they think they can draw, and then prove them all wrong:

Here’s my drawings (and my thoughts when Graham asked the question was ”No, I can’t, sadly, I am so bad at drawing anything that is figurative”), and I’ve already drawn a few more since then as well, all extatic that I can actually create something that looks like a person!

Now. Graham got an entire audience (bar the handful of people who actually did raise their arm, knowing already that they can draw) – including me! – to go from thinking they cannot draw to actually having produced a handful of sketches of people, actually looking like people!

people

I don’t know about you, but I sure have gotten a different relationship going with my thoughts and beliefs, based on the fact that most of them are but thoughts and beliefs. They are not real. They are thought, not The One and Only True Thought. They limit me, in the sense that I myself let these beliefs become boundaries for me. And sadly, even though I’ve gotten better at spotting these limiting beliefs, I do still let them stop me from experimenting and playing around more.

albert

Now what is that Albert Einstein quote? Oh yeah:
We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

And that’s really what Graham does in these 15 minutes. He shows me that the notion that I cannot draw is actually not a truth. And voila, something is created!

Graham ends his talk thus:
How many other beliefs and limiting thoughts do we all carry around with us every day, beliefs that we could perhaps potentially challenge and think differently about? And if we did challenge those beliefs and think differently about them, what else would be possible for us all?

Wow, you DO that?

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Last weekend we picked the apples from our own apple trees. This weekend me and the kids went to my mother, and picked the apples from her apple trees. All the perfect specimens I carried up into the attic, where I placed them on news papers. Took this photo that I posted on Facebook:

apples

Got a funny response from a friend who commented on my Facebook-post with an astonished: Wow, you DO that?

And yes. I DO do that! This year I am experimenting though, since the attic is actually almost empty after my #cleanse4expansion-process. Earlier years I’ve wrapped apples individually in news paper (with help from the rest of the family of course!) and put them in crates up in the attic, this year, I am trying a new technique.

more applesWill see which works best! There wasn’t as many apples as normal on my mom’s trees, so we will just have to see how long these will last us but some years we’ve had enough apples to last us until March! There’s still room for more though, so who knows, I just might go for some more apple hunting in the neighborhood!

The non-perfect apples we eat, make apple pie or crumble and apple sauce on, use in smoothies, yoghurt and porridge. Or make apple and carrot sallad as a sallad to go with dinner.

And last week I took out my apple peeler/corer and stood for hours making apple rings, that I hung on a clothes horse. Now they’ve all dried up and I have a large stack. Will try to make some more, as dried apple rings are the best candy ever!