Issue 47

In this issue:

1) Welcome Letter by Sibyl McLendon
2) The Woman Who Tried to Climb The Lake Author Unknown
3) Women Who Run With The Wolves, Excerpt from the book by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
4) Seventh Meditation of the Twelfth Moon by Jamie Sams
5) The Power Of Music
6) Finding Your Soul Purpose by Steve Chandler
7) Thoughts on ...Creativity and Daily Living by Louise LeBrun

<<:::>><<:::>><<:::>><<:::>>

Welcome to MousePages! I have had a pretty amazing week. My oldest son, Howard, has gotten a recording contract! He is an amazingly gifted singer, and also composes. He made a 6 month commitment to getting signed with a record company, and his dream has become reality in less than 3 months. I will keep you updated on his progress.
My youngest son is still not in the Army! The paperwork is endless. I am starting to see that the red tape involved here is almost overwhelming. He is hoping to go for his physical this week. Again, I will keep you posted, and thanks everyone, for the prayers about him. He is very anxious to just get on with it.
Also, the Grandmothers and Grandfathers have led me to meet a really amazing couple who live in Michigan. Tray and Cassa are both mixed-blood American Indians who are starting a new Tribe for mixed bloods, The Lost Tribe. They are good people. If any of you readers are part American Indian and in the northern Michigan area, write to me and I will connect you to them.
To all you men out there: do not be put off, please, by all the articles this week with the word "woman" in the title. These articles are of interest to everyone! I would never leave you out. 
I pray that you all have a blessed week.

<<:::>><<:::>><<:::>><<:::>>

The Woman Who Tried to Climb The Lake
Author Unknown

Once there was a woman who spent her whole life climbing a very high mountain. 
She began as a tiny child, and she could not remember a time before the mountain.

Year after year she would ascend the steep cliffs, and in the process she became very good at the motion of climbing. The muscles in her legs and her back grew very strong, and after a while, climbing felt as natural to her as breathing.

As time passed, and she went higher and higher, she didn't even have to try and climb anymore - her body did it automatically.

At last, one day, the woman reached the top of the mountain. She was overjoyed with her achievement, and couldn't wait to start out on the next portion of her travels, and to conquer her next mountain.

As she looked over the horizon, she saw a beautiful blue lake, stretching sideways as far as her eye could see. But being a climber all her life, the woman had only lived on the mountains, so she had never seen a lake, and if fact, did not even know what a lake was.

She watched the strange expanse before her and concluded that it must be some unusual kind of blue mountain. Since the only way to continue her journey was to cross over the odd-looking blue form, she decided that is what she must do.

So the mountain woman walked up to the water, and began to try to "climb the lake" with the same motions she'd used to climb the mountain. At first she could not understand why she was not making any progress, and, in fact, was exhausting herself.

So she mustered all her energy in her strong body and tried to "climb" even harder, placing one leg in front of the other, using her hands to try to grasp the "blue rocks". But her efforts were useless. She kept falling over, and wasn't going anywhere.

Just about this time, when the mountain woman felt like giving up, she noticed a person floating on top of the blue lake, gently gliding his body through the water with the slightest movement of his arms and legs.

"What are you doing my friend?" he called out to her.

"What does it look like?" she answered, her face flush with embarrassment. "I'm climbing the lake"

"Good woman," the man of the lake replied, "don't you know that you can't cross a lake by climbing it? The only way to travel through water is to swim"

"But I am such a marvelous climber!" the mountain woman insisted. "I've spent my whole life learning to climb. I can climb any mountain. I can reach the top of any peak. Surely there is some way I can climb the lake."

"I'm sure you are an excellent climber," the man of the lake answered politely. "But that skill won't help you here in the water. It took one kind of wisdom to get you to the top of the mountain - you had to make your power stronger than the mountain. Now you need to learn another kind of wisdom to get across the lake - you need to surrender to the power of the water and allow its force to be stronger than you. You don't have to try hard anymore. In fact, the less you try the better you will do!"

And so it was that the man of the lake taught the woman of the mountain how to swim. At first, she splashed and thrashed around in the water, for she was accustomed to using her very strong energy in her climbing. But her teacher was very patient, and slowly she learned how to float on the water's surface, and allow the waves and wind to carry her gently forward until she was hardly doing anything at all.

And that's how the mountain woman learned that the strength of surrender is just as powerful as the strength of pushing forward.

<<:::>><<:::>><<:::>><<:::>>

Women Who Run With The Wolves

Excerpts from the book by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ballantine Books, New York, 1992 

You can dent the soul and bend it. You can hurt it and scar it. You can leave the marks of illness upon it, and the scorch marks of fear. But it does not die, for it is protected by La Loba in the underworld. She is both the finder and the incubator of the bones

People do meditation to find psychic alignment. That's why people do psychotherapy and analysis. That's why people analyze their dreams and make art. That is why many read Tarot cards, cast I Ching, dance, drum, make theater, pry out the poem, and fire up the prayer. That's why we do all the things we do. It is the work of gathering all the bones together. Then we must sit at the fire and think about which song we will use to sing over the bones, which creation hymn, which re-creation hymn. And the truths we tell will make the song.

There are some good questions to ask till one decides on the song, one's true song: 

What has happened to my soul-voice? 
What are the buried bones of my life? 
In what condition is my relationship to the instinctual Self? 
When was the last time I ran free? 
How do I make life come alive again? 
Where has La Loba gone to?

Go back and stand under that one red flower and walk straight ahead for that last hard mile. Go up and knock on the old weathered door. Climb up to the cave. Crawl through the window of a dream. Sift the desert and see what you can find. It is the only work we have to do.

You wish psychoanalytic advice?
Go gather bones. 

<<:::>><<:::>><<:::>><<:::>>

Seventh Meditation of the Twelfth Moon
Taken from:
"Earth Medicine — Ancestors' Ways of Harmony for Many Moons"
by Jamie Sams 

Anything that has brought a smile to your lips, joy to your heart or a lightness to your step is a Blessing.

Anything that has made your life more comfortable, has lightened your burden or has brought warmth to your home is a Blessing.

Anything that has supported your body, has increased your endurance or has opened your heart is a Blessing.

Anything that has made you look deeper, has expanded your understanding or has increased your compassion is a Blessing.

Anything that has tested your strength, has fortified your commitment or has forced you to grow is a Blessing.

Anything that has reminded you of how precious life is and has taught you to treasure your Relations is a Blessing. 

<<:::>><<:::>><<:::>><<:::>>

Imagine
John Lennon 

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today... 

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace... 

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one 

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world... 

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one 

<<:::>><<:::>><<:::>><<:::>>

Finding Your Soul Purpose

17 Lies That are Holding you Back, & the Truth That Will Set You Free Copyright © 2000 by Steve Chandler 
(An excerpt from the book) 

THE UNIVERSE IS LEAVING US CLUES

As my daughter Stephanie was getting ready for her first year in college, she worried because she didn't know exactly what she wanted to study.

"Study everything!" I said.

"That's how you're going to find out what you love. Pay attention," I told her. "Think back to all your times of happiness in life. In grade school, in junior high, and in high school. What did you love the most? What made you happy? Whatever that was, it was a signal to you. It was the universe knocking at your door, trying to tell you what your soul's purpose is. It tells you at least once a week. Listen. Listen. Take courses on a whim. Take courses you think are wild and frivolous. Take anything that strikes your fancy. Use your time in college to chase these clues down. Pay attention to your own happiness, and remember at all times that you deserve to be happy. It is your right to pursue happiness. Don't get confused by wondering what other people might think. Don't wonder what would make me proud of you. Because I'll tell you what would make me proud of you: happiness. Your being happy would make me the proudest. I don't care if it's music, or medicine, or whatever you want. I don't care if you drop out of college. I don't care at all. I want you to get busy as if you were solving a huge crime. Do you know how the detectives work around the clock to solve the crime? How they put the victims' photos up in their offices just to look at them and help motivate them to find the killers? I'll tell you who the killers are. The killers are the people whose expectations you are trying to live up to. They will kill your spirit. Forget them. They only have expectations of you if they have no lives of their own. If they have lives that they are living on purpose, they don't care at all what you do. They just want you to be happy like they are. It is only the person without a life that criticizes another's life. It is only a parent without a life that criticizes his child's life. 

Live your own life. Listen to your loves in life. Be a detective of love. Sit quietly in a room by yourself and write down all the things that make you happy. Look at what they are telling you. Listen to the clues. The next time you feel real joy, stop and think. Pay attention. Because that joy is a communication from the universe to you. That joy is the universe's way of knocking on your mind's door. Hello in there. Is anyone home? Can I leave a message? Yes? Good! Well, the message is that you are happy, and that means that you are in touch with your purpose. The point of life is not to just be happy, because that can lead to unrewarding pleasure-seeking. The point is to create meaning in your life by living on purpose. Doing that, living with a sense of purpose, will give you repeated and recurring happiness. You will feel good. And the last thing I have to remind you of is this: it is not selfish. Mother Theresa, Gandhi, Ella Fitzgerald, and Picasso lived in joy. And they lived in joy because they brought joy to others with what they created in their lives. What do you want to create? Ask yourself that question every day until it comes to you. What do you want to create?" 

The universe leaves us clues. It's just that we don't know, at first, what the clues mean. It tells us what we might do. If we are willing to consider ourselves to be really important people, we can pick up on those signs early in life. Because the truth is that we are really important people whose joy really matters. Any other statement about ourselves is a lie. 

<<:::>><<:::>><<:::>><<:::>>

Thoughts on ...Creativity and Daily Living
Louise LeBrun

The notion of creativity is often linked to what we would consider exceptional achievements, like the art of Picasso, the invention of the laptop or the sleek design of the space shuttle. But for most of us, creativity brings its greatest rewards when it expresses quietly and much closer to home. 

The dictionary defines 'creativity' as the act of causing to exist; to bring into being, give rise to, bring about. The very nature of the word itself implies bringing into existence that which does not already exist. And yet for most of us, our daily lives are filled with the repetitive and the habituated. We move through the basic routine of getting up, getting ready and going to work with one sequence of habits after another, rarely if ever noticing that we are engaging this repetitive process, day after day after day after ...

We find ourselves lamenting the state of our lives, looking around us and trying to future out what's 'wrong' with our lives; with our work; with our friends and family. Yet maybe there's nothing 'wrong' at all. Maybe what's missing is a creative outlook - a different perspective or new world view - on what's already there. 

Creativity has its roots in curiosity. Without curiosity, there would never be the questions to which we seek answers. Or the daydreams that call out to be fulfilled. Or the change and innovation that we often intensely pine for. Without curiosity, there would be no reason for us to go anywhere new or meet new people or think a new thought. And yet, how many of us have become stuck in the habituated way of living our lives, applying our greatest creative expression to finding a variety of ways to explain and describe why we can't have the life we want! 

Imagine what your life could become if you got curious - about yourself, about your world-view and about your motivation for making the choices you make. Suddenly, life would be filled with astute observations and their corresponding, life-expanding insights. The next time you find yourself in that same old __________ (you fill in the blanks: conversation, relationship, job, problem, etc.), instead of looking around for someone to blame for keeping you there, get curious! Let yourself notice you, for a change, and ask yourself the following questions: Isn't that interesting! Every time x happens, I do/say/respond with y. How come that seems like an intelligent response? How does it serve me to continue to do that? When was the last time that I actually chose my response instead of just acting out of habit? What is it that always doing x allows me to continue to not pay attention to? What would happen to the quality of my life if I did something else instead? Who would support me and who would be angry/sad/disappointed/frustrated with me? How much more of my life do I want to live like this? What am I waiting for to be able to choose differently? Whose permission do I need to be able to begin to live my life in a way that leaves me feeling alive, dynamic and energetic? Who do I need to become to allow myself to claim a joyful life?

The answers to these questions may not come easily, and you certainly won't find them in anyone else's mind. These questions may even lead to those dark moments of the soul, where uncertainty can sometimes feel like that great gasp for breath - the one that will expand you into a new level of expression. And as Ilya Prigogine - one of the finest minds in theoretical physics - once said: "The future is uncertain...but this uncertainty is at the very heart of human creativity."

Louise LeBrun is the Managing Partner of Partners in Renewal Inc., a company providing education, facilitation and public speaking services in organizational change and career / life transition using the latest methodologies, including NLP and Quantum TLCTM. She is a world-class educator, speaker and facilitator; as well as a published author (Fully Alive From 9 to 5!) and creator of the Women and Power audiotape series. She can be reached at wel-systems@canada.com 

HOME