Let it be

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be experienced. Joseph Campbell

It’s always fascinating for me to sit and ponder the many – seemingly diverse – thoughts, insights, experiences and conversations I have had across the week, only to find a lovely synchronicity emerging when I sit down to write.

Last week I spoke of my realisation that I tend to be very grasping in my approach to spirituality – amongst other things, well, everything really.

This week I have seen an impatience, alongside this tenacity, I want it all and I want it now. Move over Veruca Salt…

To experience a synchronistic event is to necessarily be changed at our core. Paul Levy

My friend came over on Saturday night, we are both studying druidry and we had a lovely meditation ritual together. After a robust discussion of all aspects of life, the universe and everything, he said something that resonated with me.

Interestingly I know he has said this to me before, but I never really got it until he said it that night.

He talked about how easy it is to misconstrue spirituality and emotionality. Emotionality is all about feel-goods. Don’t feel good? White-light that sucker, affirm it away, have an exorcism…

I mean I’m being silly to demonstrate a point, but there is certainly an element of this thinking in many New Age practices. Only love and light are acceptable, all other experience must be ‘cleansed’ away.

True spirituality, he argued, makes no value distinction between light/dark, good/bad feelings. All experience is honoured, all aspects of life are a reflection of the nature of existence and it is the value judgements on these aspects as good/bad, light/dark, and the ego-based reactions to these judgements that are the issue, not the experience itself.

I haven’t done justice to his words, but hopefully you get the gist.

Life is cyclical, death/rebirth, growth/decay, day/night, summer/winter – all cycle round in their perfect balance and order.

No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell. C. G. Jung

I was listening to a spiritual podcast last night, the host is lovely and very earnest and interviews some really interesting people. Last night it was Anita Moorjani who has an amazing story of spontaneous healing after a near-death experience.

The energy produced by the interview and the callers asking questions was palpable. Both the interviewer and interviewee were in tears by the end.

I felt very moved and then I thought “Aha! Emotion!”

Synchronicities by their very nature demand our active participation, as they are not something we can just passively watch and remain unaffected by. Paul Levy

So I think while an emotional reaction to hearing a story or watching a powerful ocean break waves on the shore, or standing in a sunny verdant glade at dawn, can be an ‘in’ to connecting with spirit, it can’t be the be all and end all.

After this initial ‘in’, to the heart, there must be some substance. And this substance for me, comes from a practice. In the same way a romantic relationship starts on emotion, but needs to develop into something more substantial than feelings for it to last.

And I am the first to admit I am a real sucker for the emotion-bursting experience. Yet I also see that if that is the sum total of my spiritual practice, well, it’s pretty meaningless.

Synchronicity’s inherent revelatory nature is ultimately offering us the realization that we are playing an active, participatory and hence, co-creative role in the unfoldment of the universe. Paul Levy

As such I am in training to be a druid. I know, I know, it brings up old images of Doctor Who and hooded cults at Stonehenge, but when I read more about it, it is actually a beautiful nature-venerating practice, that honours all the things I believe in.

 It is also the practice of my ancestors the Celts, and it has strong shamanic influences. It venerates music and storytelling, and nature worship, as key spiritual practices. It’s so me, it’s not funny.

Actually it is kind of funny. It makes me laugh. I’ve been searching my whole life for something, and it’s been here for thousands of years.

Druidry honours music and creativity very highly, so it fits in beautifully with my Chakradance practice.

One of the many beautiful aspects of Chakradance, is the influence of Jung’s archetypes on the imagery for the chakras. As such there is a focus on both light and shadow, which has made the practice incredibly powerful for me.

Honestly, as someone who after experiencing life as my own private hell, swung the pendulum way too far the other way and tried oh so hard to be oh so good for way to long. All this achieves, as my friend so eloquently reminded me is a larger shadow to deal with when it inevitably pops up. Which it will. It’s like Neo trying to fight Mr Smith in the matrix.

So any spirituality worth it’s salt will acknowledge and honour the shadow. Yin and Yang, night and day, light and shadow – where would we be without both? It’s like trying to paint with only bright colours, or listen to a piece of music with only the white notes.

Whenever I dance the throat chakra, I see images in my mind’s eye of women wearing blue robes. Sometimes they seem ancient Grecian or Roman, sometimes they are timeless, this week I saw only one woman, intend of three and I intuitively felt that she was the Mother Mary.

Being unmediated manifestations of the dreamlike nature of reality, we can interpret synchronicities just like we would interpret a dream. Paul Levy

Now for those of you who have not done much visualising it can be hard to describe what happens. Also it’s different for different people. Some people are all visual, others have other sensory input. I have some visuals, not very strong, almost like the reflection of light through a stained glass window, they are getting clearer with practice. My strongest sense is clair-sentience, it comes as an insight supported by a strong gut feeling.

So in this dance where I saw the Mother Mary, I visually saw the image and then I sensed that it was an image of the Mother Mary. So here’s where it can get tricky. This to me is an archetype, so what I’m experiencing is an image that the collective unconscious, as interpreted by my consciousness, associated with certain ideas.

Archetypes are the image-making factor in the psyche, informing and giving shape to the images in our mind and the dreams of our soul, and as such, they insist on being approached imaginatively. Paul Levy

Obviously Mother Mary is holy, revered, devoted, sacred, a loving mother and a universal image of compassion and truth. Also, in the last few weeks I find myself listening to the Beatles album Let it Be, and the title song with the soothing words of Mother Mary resonated deeply in me.

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom ‘Let it Be’. The Beatles

Don’t force just let it be.

It is easy to think that synchronicity equates with simultaneously but it doesn’t always. Often what Jung talked about was that time spent considering a certain insight where suddenly it seemed that every conversation, every image, every occurrence has some relevance and meaning to this idea.

To quote Jung, “Synchronicity is no more baffling or mysterious than the discontinuities of physics.” It is the place where causality and non-causality overlap and become somewhat murky. It is only our ingrained beliefs in the nature of causality that creates ‘intellectual difficulties’ and makes it appear unthinkable that such events could exist and simultaneously be meaningful. “But if they do, then we must regard them as creative acts, as the continuous creation of a pattern that exists from all eternity, repeats itself sporadically, and is not derivable from any known antecedents.”

Continuous creation is to be thought of not only as a series of successive acts of creation, but also as the eternal presence of the one creative act. C G Jung

This has been my experience in writing this blog. My focus on intention, my open and curious mindfulness to nature and the world around me, has created a perfect petri dish for synchronicity to flourish.

I will often have a few concepts floating around my mind and then these concepts will play out in the world, in my relationships, my interactions through art and reading, and of course, my Chakradance.

This week I had a conundrum. I am planning to run 9 week cycles of Chakradance next year. Saturdays really suit people but I work alternate Saturdays at my day job. At that rate the 9 week cycle was going to take about six months. It also clashed with me going to Bali in May for shamanic training.

I realised I couldn’t find a solution, so I waited for inspiration.

It came pretty quickly in the form of some discussion on the Chakradance facilitators forum on Facebook. A wonderful virtual community of teachers where people ask really helpful question and the group shares their experience. So one facilitator asks about the way people structure their courses and another responded that she run the cycle over 6 weeks, doing two chakras a week.

Now this is not earth shattering, I know. But it seems to be how things work, if I let them. I had an intention and it wasn’t working, I paused for reflection and guidance, and then the solution appeared.

Sometimes the wait is longer and these synchronous events occur slowly over time.

At the moment I am feeling a bit pressured, there’s lots happening in my life, and other areas of my life where I would like lots to be happening have slowed or stopped. The archetype of the blue ladies reminds me of peaceful silence, reverence, patience, temperance, compassion and trust.

And I see that sky blue of the throat chakra everywhere. It causes me to pause and reflect on these messages from my unconscious.

With a personality like mine, the complete opposite of the above, it’s no wonder they have to keep coming back, again and again!

Affirmations:

I acknowledge a world beyond my senses, a truth beyond my intellect, a wisdom beyond logic, a power beyond my limits, a serene design, despite any distressing display.

I open myself to every transformation that is ready to happen in and through me.

I understand that both negative and positive events can be synchronicity, and both are here to serve me.

I trust that the universe will allow what needs to come to me, when it needs to come to me

Even if I am changing and I cannot yet see the reality changing to match me, I know that everything is different, and will be, because I am different.

You can’t force synchronicity. It seems to only occur in the optimal conditions. It is only by allowing and trusting in the unfolding of life, the mindful attention to each moment and the open awareness and teachability to notice the symbols as they emerge, only then can it happen.

Bless!

Images by Stephen B Whatley 

Further reading:

Catching the Bug of Synchronicity by Paul levy

Crisis of the week – really?

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. Robert Brault

I was joking to a friend that I should rename this blog “Tina’s crisis of the week.” It just seems like a formula lately: have challenge, have screaming melt-down, have awakening, find resolution.

I wondered, after I realised last week’s anxiety meltdown took up about 1000 words of my blog post – and presumably a similar proportion of my actual life – if maybe I could skip the meltdown and make for a more snappy read.

But seriously. What would it look like to not go down that well-trodden path? To instead, face a problem calmly and with the trust that, based on previous evidence, there were pretty good odds I could find a satisfactory solution. And besides that, losing my schizzle didn’t really help either way.

Last week I attended the launch of The Slow School Of Business – a new collaborative learning space where purpose-driven professionals can realise the potential of deep connections and foster an environment of innovation, creativity, and sharing.

Among the bevy of fantastic people I met that night was two standouts, a meditation teacher and an intuitive energy artist. The three of us had a wonderful discussion about how to keep our energy centred in this crazy world.

If it be knowledge or wisdom one is seeking, then one had better go direct to the source. And the source is not the scholar or philosopher, not the master, saint, or teacher, but life itself – direct experience of life. Henry Miller

The ‘meditation guy’ said that he stayed centred in his heart centre, and experienced reactions of his other chakras via the ‘filter’ of his heart energy.

I found myself saying “yeah, but.” When what I really thought, quite condescendingly, was “that’s all very nice, and okay for you, but in MY life there’s too many demands on me to stay heart-centred ALL the time.”

After I left the party and walked through the nighttime city, I began to reflect on my week, and on how I might have acted differently if I had been acting from my heart energy, as opposed to this mental construct of stress and pressure.

Would I have been less attached to perceived deadlines and things that, in my mind,  just ‘had to get done?’  Would I have been more responsive to real life circumstances that popped up and needed my attention, like my family and my lover?

Would putting aside my plans and designs for a moment, in order to act in loving kindness towards my loved ones, have created greater harmony and joy for me and others?

Hells yeah!

So this week I set the intention to notice when I am feeling pressured, agitated, rushed, panicked, anxious, or threatened, and consciously visualise breathing a deep green light into my heart.

Anxiety is love’s greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic. Anaïs Nin

It’s working beautifully. (So far, I’m on day 3.)

Traditionally, I had found when my lover and I were having deeply intimate – and for me, difficult – conversations, I would feel a pressure in my solar plexus and that familiar feeling of anxiety would begin to grow. So this time, I commenced the heart awareness, visualising green light radiating in and around my heart, and instantaneously the anxiety shifted.

There was a sense of opening, perhaps the Vedic imagery of a lotus flower unfurling is a good one here. Imagining that transition from a tight bud, into a blooming flower utilising plenty of space in its open, relaxed form.

Interestingly, my ability to listen without judgement or insecurity or a need to defend my point of view accompanied this shift. When I spoke my truth from my heart, the communication was clear and effective.

Obviously, I don’t stay in this space all the time, and I can see the difference when my analytical thinking kicks back in. Now I’m not knocking analytical thinking, it has its place, but not in relationships. My greatest wisdom in relationships comes from my heart.

This ability to change my thoughts and thereby my perceptions at will is, according to French philosopher Charles Renouvier, the essence of free will. I read this in a fabulous book I’m reading called Superconsciousness by Colin Wilson. I’m sure I’ll be commenting more on that in coming posts.

To my mind, when I engage my heart centre, my mind shifts into a different gear. It moves from a rather frenetic sense of pressure and time constraints to a focusing in on what the heart wants.

And what does my heart want? Connection. With people I love, with beauty, with nature, with the things that inspire in me a connection with something greater, something divine.

It may be that through engaging the heart-mind in this way, I can live a life where my priorities are based on love, not fear.

What does that mean? Well, let me break it down for you. When I operate from a very analytical thinking space, I always focus on the gazillion things I have to do, and I find it hard to focus as I’m always worried about hurrying up and finishing the thing I’m doing so I can start doing the next thing. But never really present with what I’m doing because I’m busy ruminating.

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. Henry Miller

As such, I can become stressed and pressured, quite inefficient and emotionally detached if they are people involved in the equation.

I experienced all of that this week, and as a result, not only did I take longer to do what I needed to do, but I managed to alienate a few loved ones along the way.

Not a gold star effort at all!

Rev. Dr. Charlene Proctor writes about the research done at the HeartMath Institute in America in her article ‘Nurturing the Heart Center’

I have read many of the HeartMath Institute’s papers on the electromagnetic field that radiates from the heart, the largest rhythmic electromagnetic field produced in the body.

Researchers at HeartMath have been investigating heart-brain interactions for years, especially how the heart and brain communicate with each other and how this communication affects our conscious and subconscious mind, and therefore our perceptions of the world. The heart responds to emotional energy, and as such is particularly affected by our emotional state.

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are. Anaïs Nin

It is heart, not the brain, that generates the body’s most powerful and extensive rhythmic electromagnetic field. Compared to the electromagnetic field produced by the brain, the electrical component of the heart’s field is about sixty times greater. It permeates every cell of the body, and even well beyond the physical body.

In many meditative cultural traditions, it is a focus on the heart-mind, not the head-mind which is developed.

Your body is physically designed to send messages to your environment through your heart, and to receive electromagnetic information, not just from other people but from the natural environment also. Which helps explain why plants and animals can be soothing to our parasympathetic (fight or flight) system.

Voluntary simplicity means going fewer places in one day rather than more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I can do more, acquiring less so I can have more.  John Kabat-Zinn

This is one of my favourite heart meditations:

 

It seems I have been reminded of a valuable lesson. I have the choice how to experience my life. It can be task-focused and pressured, or I can take a broader, more holistic view of all the wonderful things happening around me, all at once. Do I choose awe or overwhelm? Pressure or abundance awareness?

I am reminded by the Slow Movement, of the power of slowing down, connecting within to that space where I can find my true self, and simultaneously find connection with my environment.

But possibly most importantly, for a stress-head like me, I am kind to myself. My inner dialogue is gentle and loving, not harsh and critical, and that radiates out from my thoughts into my speech, actions and energy I bring into the world.

The heart chakra is the central point of the seven main chakras. It is the bridge between the physical and the purely vibrational elements of our energy body. As such it provides a wonderful median point to achieve both grounded centredness and a connection to our higher consciousness.

I can choose, at any time, to connect with my heart, breathe in that soothing energy, and remember that I am alive, I love, and I am grateful.

Affirmations for heart-centred living from Chakra Anatomy:

I am open to love.

All love resides within my heart.

I deeply and completely love and accept myself.

I nurture my inner child.

I am wanted and loved.

I live in balance, in a state of gracefulness and gratitude.

I love the beauty of nature and the animal world.
I forgive myself.
I am open to love and kindness.

I am grateful for all the challenges that helped me to transform and open up to love.

I am connected with other human beings.

I feel a sense of unity with nature and animals.
I accept things as they are.

I am peaceful.

Bless!

 

Images:

http://www.wakingtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/WIKI-Light-Bulb.jpg

Getting creative: Vision boards, God boxes, and crafty things

You are what your deepest desire is.
As your desire is, so is your intention.
As your intention is, so is your will.
As your will is, so is your deed.
As your deed is, so is your destiny. Upanishads

As I got myself deeper into contemplation about the science of intention in my last post, almost convincing myself to become a physicist – just to prove my own theories – the thought occurred to me that, perhaps, I had got a little off track. Just a little.

Maybe, I thought to myself, it’s time to revisit my intentions for this blog.

You see, I had these seven intentions for these things I desired in my life, and I wondered what would happen if I tested out various ways of manifesting intentions. And I thought I might write a blog to chronicle the experiences I had along the way. That’s it. Nice and simple. No PhD in physics, chemistry, or even philosophy, required.

This post is all about making stuff: vision boards, God boxes, and the idea of creating visual representations of my intentions – which seems to be a popular practice in manifesting intentions. Maybe I should have called this post ‘Manifesting Intentions 101’.

So arts’n’crafty stuff, that should be easy, right? Especially after attempting to wrap my head around algebra in the last post.

Surprisingly, no. Being somewhat of an pseudo-intellectual, I have some resistance to the use of craft activities as a medium for manifesting. Well, I do publicly anyway. I mean there’s creating beautiful, worthy things, and then there’s making collages to attract a new car. Okay, so maybe I’m a bit of a craft snob. I think it goes back to art class in school. I never got to do the stuff I wanted, as such there was a lot of teenage girl eye-rolling at the crafts we were forced to do.

I’m afraid I haven’t improved much with the eye-rolling.

This week, at home with my hideous sore throat for two days, I set myself up in bed with a bunch of old magazines, scissors, glue, and a scrapbook. The very same scrapbook I bought at the beginning of this adventure ten weeks ago. Thus far it had remained untouched as I read, researched, and grappled with the various esoteric concepts I thought I should get clear about before I, you know, made stuff out of paper and glue.

Fortunately the head cold rendered me docile enough to quite enjoy a task that captured my hands without requiring too much mental exertion. Without any theoretical framework whatsoever, I happily spent several hours making my vision boards, representing my intentions of home and purpose. Then I made one entirely of picturesque scenes of Eastern temples. An intention to travel, perhaps? I think yes!

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. Thomas Merton

Here’s my guilty secret. I LOVED making the vision boards – it was fun. When my son came home from school, he was elated to see me surrounded by cut-outs and glue, and apart from a break to make dinner, I continued with them until bedtime. I was hooked. And apparently having fun, generating joy around your intentions is a REALLY good thing. It sure felt good.

And the funny part is, I realised, those vision boards, they look an awful like my fridge-door. My fridge is plastered with quotes and postcards and my son’s bits from school. You see, I have been vision-boarding the heck out of my fridge door and I didn’t even realise it.

The concept of making a visual or physical object to represent a connection with the creative energy of the universe is not new to me. Many, many, many years ago when I was at a women’s rehab, we made God boxes. A God box is an actual box that you put little handwritten notes of problems, desires, or people that you want an certain outcome for. You write it down, put it in your God box as a visual representation of petitional prayer, or of letting go of something that is worrying you.

I can tell you, there was A LOT of eye rolling in that room of twenty odd women, some of whom had just got out of jail, and most of whom were crack addicts from the streets of South Minneapolis (not quite LA, but a long way from Melbourne). Yet as we sat with our plain white boxes, decorating them with feathers, sequins, and paint, something quite magical transpired. The room became light, not as in ‘let there be light’, but a lightness, a levity overtook those women. There was laughter, and banter, as our hands placed the decorations just so. There was the good-natured teasing of the heavily tattooed ex-jailbird who proudly displayed her finished box, which would have put Mardi-Gras to shame with its collision of rainbow-hued feathers and gold sequins.

I’m just trying to change the world, one sequin at a time. Lady Gaga

Most of those women, myself included, would not have prayed if you put a gun to their heads, and yet we used those God boxes. I’m sure most of the petitions involved someone eating that last cookie or not cleaning out the ring in the tub after they took a bath. But we learned the power of letting go by writing those silly little notes and putting them in our multicoloured postboxes to God.

I kept that box until it fell apart about ten years ago. Then a few years later, after I left my marriage, and felt that every day I needed to let go of so many impossible things, I found this beautiful box at Ishka and the tradition was reborn.

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple. Dr Seuss

As I did a Google search on vision boards, to try to find some theory behind the practice, I was somewhat put off by the plethora of commercialism accompanying the concept. I had finally watched The Secret DVD this week – I mean how can you write a blog like this and NOT watch it? I have to admit I had avoided it in the past and had it written off as a kind of twee New Age informercial – think Dan Brown meets Tony Robbins. Well, what can I say? Now I have watched it, tick, let’s leave it at that.

The reality is, people have been visually portraying their intentions since early humans mixed up a bit of dirt and berries and painted that giant buffalo, the one they intended to catch and eat for dinner, on the cave wall. Its obviously a very primal instinct to put our thoughts into a more concrete form to assist the manifesting process along. Isn’t that the whole idea of churches and temples, to create a physical space that attracts God?

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. Aristotle

I am coming to the realisation that some serious discernment is required in the quest for understanding the power of intention. There is the ancient wisdom from the Vedic texts, buddhism, mysticism, philosophy, and more recently quantum physics, and then there is the revamped interpretations of all that knowledge by a spectrum of ‘experts’ ranging from the highly educated and pragmatic, to the downright shonky.

That said, I continue to read widely, watch all sorts of things online, and basically take what I like and leave the rest.

This article on The God Box did appeal to me. Mary Lou Quinlan – women’s marketing expert and author – was inspired to write a book after finding her mother’s God box when she died. These boxes revealed her mother’s innermost thoughts, fears, and desires, through her little notes to God.

She inhaled a worry. She exhaled a prayer. Mary Lou Quinlan

This has evolved into The God Box Project which aims to empower women and girls to fulfil their dreams. She is currently performing a play, based on her book, The God Box: A Daughter’s Story and donating all the proceeds of tickets and book sales to not-for-profit organizations dedicated to women, family and educational causes. All from her mother’s quiet intentions. Pretty amazing.

Like all explorers, we are drawn to discover what’s out there without knowing yet if we have the courage to face it. Pema Chödrön

So, vision boards, God boxes, and overcoming my aversion to craftiness. It all seems so hokey. This is a real exercise in humility – I feel embarrassed to publish a post admitting that I am actually doing this stuff. It all feels very teenage girl, as if  any minute now I’ll be sticking pictures of Johnny Depp to my wall again. Actually…

Anyway, I had a serendipitous moment as I cleaned out my God box from last year in order to take some photos. It was a pretty crappy year, so I used it a lot – and I read my many petitions to God.

I asked that my brother and sister-in-law have a baby (they’re pregnant) – tick.

I asked for travel (and in spite of having very little money I went to the UK last year thanks to my lovely friends in Birmingham) – tick.

I asked to find the perfect school for my son to love and thrive in – tick.

I asked for help with my dad’s health and my mum’s difficulty caring for him – tick.

I asked for the strength to let go of a relationship that despite my best hopes and efforts, just didn’t work – tick.

There was some other ones too, but these really struck me. It may not seem much, but when I put these things in my God box, I did so because based on the circumstances at that time, a solution to these problems seemed impossible.

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. Martin Luther King Jr.

So I wrote out my seven intentions for 2014 and put them in my God box. I’m a big believer in the multi-faceted approach.

This discovery has renewed my faith in intentions – realising the idea is neither new nor unsubstantiated to me. Surely with this demonstrated success of my past intentions, I can suffer the taunts of my friends and colleagues for making and sticking up magazine collages to my wall. Especially if in a year’s time I can say, “ooh, look, I’m a paid writer and published author with a fabulous home and traveling the world as part of my work.” Who looks silly now?

And yes, I am embarrassed to put that out there too. But as my dad always says “in for a penny, in for a pound.”

To be honest, I think I would be looking pretty silly if I did expect all that to happen from a few vision boards. Obviously I realise the vision boards are only part of the process. I have to actually put in some footwork too. As such I am compiling a list of magazines I’d like to write for and I’m sending them submissions. I’m networking with other writers – in fact pretty much everywhere I go at the moment, I am meeting new writers. And as a result of stating my intention to write so publicly, people I have known for a while who never knew I wrote are offering support to me.

Maybe intentions are cosmic navigational aids, they ensure you are pointed in the right direction, for a significant amount of time, thereby increasingly the likelihood of you following through with actions, and being aware of the opportunities that lie in the direction of your dreams.

The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. Barbara Kingsolver

And on the home front, I bought some lavender seeds so I can grow lavender in my hanging baskets. I’m decluttering and rearranging my living space. My vision board showed a peaceful, uncluttered living space, so I can make that a reality right now.

In this way, I can see how vision boards help. They are very right brain, so they use your creative side to harness your imagination, intuition, and holistic way of thinking. This allows you to play with your purpose, plan, and vision, in a way that a list of goals does not. Creating a vision board requires that you focus on only a few things at a time, and really decide what resonates with you. Do I really need to live in a mansion or just somewhere with a sense of space? The use of images creates emotional connections, which according to experts on manifesting intention, such as Wayne Dyer, is fundamental to making them real. 

Vision boards are also hard to avoid – unless you hide them away – I see my mine about 100 times a day. That’s a lot of reinforcement. Unlike my God box where I write something down and then forget about it, I mean, ‘let it go’, I am constantly revisiting my intentions every time I look at my vision board. And in doing so, I see the parallels between my intentions and what I already have.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. George Bernard Shaw

In addition to that, it is also about realising that all the materials for creating yourself are already here. You already are everything you need to be, you are not broken or damaged or sick. All the materials of the universe exist within you. Intent is not about being more, having more, doing more. It’s just about embracing being. Fully, wholly being.

And in the spirit of being all you need, today’s affirmations are from Farnoosh Brock, of Prolific Living

All that I need will come to me at the right time and place in this life.

I am deeply fulfilled with who I am.

I am a unique child of this world.

I am too big a gift to this world to feel self-pity and sadness.

I love and approve of myself. I embrace the rhythm and the flowing of my own heart.

I have every bit as much brightness to offer the world as the next person.

I matter and what I have to offer this world also matters.

I may be one in 7 billion but I am also one in 7 billion!

Bless!