My hummingbird of hope
Words of wisdom and comfort.
THE DALAI LAMA GLOBAL VISION SUMMIT: THE POWER OF COMPASSION
Talk: The Four Chambers of a Compassionate Heart: Availability, Appreciation, Acceptance and Action
Guided meditation: An Invitation to Accept Yourself
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EXCERPTS
Spiraling
THERE IS A TENDENCY TO BELIEVE that life is linear. We travel through the phases of existence pausing here, stopping there, skipping, sauntering, running, and yes, at times, colliding, tripping and falling, from one stage to the next. We think that as we matriculate from one experience to the next, we accumulate knowledge that will catapult us into a rarefied place, an exalted state.
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Sacred Landscapes of the Soul
IN THE THICKNESS OF THE UNKNOWN it can appear that you are traveling into no man's land. This is true, for no individual has ever gone or will ever go where you traverse. As you forge ahead on your journey, you will come across diverse terrain. You will meet dense forests and fertile gardens overrun with unfamiliar trees and plants. Stop and smell the roses...
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Go Directly to Jubilee
KNOW THIS MUCH: You may lay down your weapons of anger and fear, and start playing your heartstrings. You may strip away the tattered garments of your former selves and let them collapse in a heap at your feet. Instead, drape yourselves in coats of many colors stitched together with the threads of your spiritual practices.
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Bring the Party
YOUR POWER IS IMMEASURABLE, boundless and beatific. Step right up, move past the conditions and concerns of your life, and take your place on the grand stage. You are charged with the life-affirming task of acting out the scenes, designing the sets, directing the action and choreographing the movements. This is your production.
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A Life Is God Writ Large
TO FOCUS ONE'S LIFE upon an inner vision is to surrender and let God be God. Grace does the seeing. The heart does the hearing. And God, always God, bestows the rhymes and the rhythms, the allusions and the allegories, the imagery and the imagination. When you surrender, God will let it flow—whether it's the words onto the page or a vision for your life.
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Soot into Soil
THERE WILL COME A TIME when you realize that you have said enough, cajoled enough, denied enough, braved enough, chastised enough, purged enough, cried enough, done enough—and all that is left is you. Not the you others think you should be or believe they know, but the true you: the embodiment of unadulterated essence and pure love.
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In the Here and Now
UNFURL YOUR LANGUID RESERVATIONS and hurl them into the cosmos, assured that they will morph into giant possibilities and stick to the lens of your dreams. Unfold your desperate denials and cast them far out beyond the horizons of your insecurities, confident that they will return to you with all of the energy of a boomerang and land at your feet with aplomb.
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Creation Story
DEAR BELOVED,
How I miss the way you used to delight in our playtime together, your child-like laughter cascading along hillsides, shimmying down majestic trees, skipping over waters like pretty stones. We leaped and loved, luxuriating in the possibility of whatever your heart may have desired. You did not deny me—not once, not twice, not even thrice before the crowing of the rooster.
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In This Skin
IN THE GREAT GETTIN' UP MORNING, when you fly away into the Is-ness, the All-ness, the Nothingness, the Eternal, the Ephemeral, you will think on this particular journey in this life and in this skin, and count the many ways you loved yourself and were therefore able to love everyone else.
READ MORE →
THERE IS A TENDENCY TO BELIEVE that life is linear. We travel through the phases of existence pausing here, stopping there, skipping, sauntering, running, and yes, at times, colliding, tripping and falling, from one stage to the next. We think that as we matriculate from one experience to the next, we accumulate knowledge that will catapult us into a rarefied place, an exalted state.
READ MORE →
Sacred Landscapes of the Soul
IN THE THICKNESS OF THE UNKNOWN it can appear that you are traveling into no man's land. This is true, for no individual has ever gone or will ever go where you traverse. As you forge ahead on your journey, you will come across diverse terrain. You will meet dense forests and fertile gardens overrun with unfamiliar trees and plants. Stop and smell the roses...
READ MORE →
Go Directly to Jubilee
KNOW THIS MUCH: You may lay down your weapons of anger and fear, and start playing your heartstrings. You may strip away the tattered garments of your former selves and let them collapse in a heap at your feet. Instead, drape yourselves in coats of many colors stitched together with the threads of your spiritual practices.
READ MORE →
Bring the Party
YOUR POWER IS IMMEASURABLE, boundless and beatific. Step right up, move past the conditions and concerns of your life, and take your place on the grand stage. You are charged with the life-affirming task of acting out the scenes, designing the sets, directing the action and choreographing the movements. This is your production.
READ MORE →
A Life Is God Writ Large
TO FOCUS ONE'S LIFE upon an inner vision is to surrender and let God be God. Grace does the seeing. The heart does the hearing. And God, always God, bestows the rhymes and the rhythms, the allusions and the allegories, the imagery and the imagination. When you surrender, God will let it flow—whether it's the words onto the page or a vision for your life.
READ MORE →
Soot into Soil
THERE WILL COME A TIME when you realize that you have said enough, cajoled enough, denied enough, braved enough, chastised enough, purged enough, cried enough, done enough—and all that is left is you. Not the you others think you should be or believe they know, but the true you: the embodiment of unadulterated essence and pure love.
READ MORE →
In the Here and Now
UNFURL YOUR LANGUID RESERVATIONS and hurl them into the cosmos, assured that they will morph into giant possibilities and stick to the lens of your dreams. Unfold your desperate denials and cast them far out beyond the horizons of your insecurities, confident that they will return to you with all of the energy of a boomerang and land at your feet with aplomb.
READ MORE →
Creation Story
DEAR BELOVED,
How I miss the way you used to delight in our playtime together, your child-like laughter cascading along hillsides, shimmying down majestic trees, skipping over waters like pretty stones. We leaped and loved, luxuriating in the possibility of whatever your heart may have desired. You did not deny me—not once, not twice, not even thrice before the crowing of the rooster.
READ MORE →
In This Skin
IN THE GREAT GETTIN' UP MORNING, when you fly away into the Is-ness, the All-ness, the Nothingness, the Eternal, the Ephemeral, you will think on this particular journey in this life and in this skin, and count the many ways you loved yourself and were therefore able to love everyone else.
READ MORE →
TALKS
Oh me, oh Maya
AGAPE INTERNATIONAL SPIRITUAL CENTER
Still I Rise
February 28, 2021
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
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JUBILEE COMMUNITY! CHURCH
God's Love Keeps Lifting Us Higher and Higher
Valentine's Day 2021
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INNERVISIONS ESSAYS
Seeing and flowing
The Glass is Always Full
DEAR BELOVED,
You have everything you need. Even now as the planet nearly falls off its axis and plummets, as your emotions rise and descend like waves washing upon some jagged-edged shore. Even now as your blood runs fear-rigid in your veins. Even now as you leap-frog into seeming oblivion. I am here and I am always going to be here—with you and as you.
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Woodsy vision on my journey
Life As We Know It And See It
IT IS POSSIBLE to see beyond appearances and feel our way into what is real—not just what one can sense with the senses—but what which is eternal, ethereal. It is possible to touch the hem of the garment, and then to drape oneself in this very garment, for we are each the Christ. It is possible to spin tired yarns about what could have been—and weave them into tapestries of truth and transformation. It is even possible to ingest toxicity and emit rainbows.
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Me, as painted by my heart out in the world
You Will Know
YOU WILL KNOW an expansive love that hurls you into tender, free-falling moments where you remember your first breath and every gasp. You will know honesty, compassion and resolute faith. You will know stillness and silence, brazen radiance and floral flourishes that envelope your suffering then vanquish them with the grace-filled deftness of the warrior that you are. You will know you. You will know.
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My paintings with Spirit.
What I see and foresee.
© Karen Brailsford 2020-2021